Fate Cast React To SCP (Fate x SCP)

SCP-001: Scarlet King #3

Dr. Montauk: This interview is-

PoI-3172: Oh, alright, alright. I am sorry. I am not trying to hurt you, doctor, truly. I just want to understand. It's just- it shouldn't have worked. The child should have been born.

There is a pause of several seconds.

Dr. Montauk: I… was angry. When I drew it up. It was unprofessional.

PoI-3172: Did you think we took Jacob?

Dr. Montauk: Well, what the hell was I supposed to think? I start looking into your lot, making discovery after discovery, and then he disapp- look, this isn't relevant.

PoI-3172: Alright, alright. I am sorry I asked. But can we agree that it was not a decision made scientifically? That it was done in a moment of fury, rage, hate?

Dr. Montauk: I didn't- the girl, I didn't mean to-

"The girl?" Da Vinci asked.

PoI-3172: But you did, doctor. Look, I'm sorry, I don't mean to dredge these old wounds up for you-

Dr. Montauk: Why are you, then?

PoI-3172: Because I just want to understand. And now I think I do.

Dr. Montauk: How?

PoI-3172: You… I don't know where to begin. Let me go back. I don't think your department has had very much activity in recent months, not after the Hand's attempt to open the gates, right?. Your procedure keeps the girl from giving birth, the nomads keep fighting their endless war, the spears are safely locked away by the Bookburners, and the Devourer- well, there's nothing you can really do about the Devourer now, is there?

"It seems that the procedure they talked about has to do something with preventing girls from giving birth." Archer concluded.

Dr. Montauk: SCP-2317 isn't SCP-001.

PoI-3172: Wasn't SCP-001. But the thing is, you've been telling everyone he is. Technically, you're meant to think that he is, if I understand Foundation hierarchies correctly. You are only a level 4, after all.

Dr. Montauk: I don't understand.

PoI-3172: Across every culture, in every city and tribe and civilisation, you've come across the idea of the Scarlet King. Always the same: an emperor in red, with a burning crown and an ethos rooted in some archaic fear of female sexuality. He is always the same: a monster that is all-consuming and terrible, but so understandable. The big bad thing in the dark, full of rape and fire and old blood-ritual. Does it never strike you as odd that this is the thing behind the eyes? You've faced monsters far grander and more subtle, as you told me yourself. But always, always there's that lingering fear and knowledge of this hidden but oh-so-simple thing standing behind it all.

Dr. Montauk: You know it strikes me as odd. I told you as much myself. But I also stopped trying to make sense of our world a long time ago. The anomalous does not play by the rules of man. I'm too old to start redefining the universe.

PoI-3172: But the thing you don't remember, or don't know, is that this wasn't the only past. The Scarlet King used to be something very different. He wasn't a monarch, and he wasn't always red. He was the whisper on the wind that kept the peasants working, staring up in fear of his righteous famine. He was that inborn knowledge of a world of gods and demons which belied human agency and existed beyond us. He was the cold hunger of a famine that had no rhyme and reason but the cold apathy of a supernatural beyond us.