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SCP-049: Your Show Must Go On


Canis
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Hey there, this is a short story depicting how SCP-049 made it from Don't Starve Singleplayer to Don't Starve Together.
You can play as SCP-049 by downloading the character mod from Steam:  [Singleplayer] [DST]

In addition, there is a tale that takes place before this one. It depicts how SCP-049 got captured and sent into the Constant.

Anyways, here is the story.

 

SCP-049:

"Your Show Must Go On"

Spoiler

 A lantern's bleak light illuminates a small area around the Doctor and his colleague as they move at a wary but determined pace through the melancholy underground. There is nothing in sight but darkness, save for whatever is 4 meters in front of them. The only sound that breaks the silence are the sounds of their own echoing footsteps, and the soft hum of the lantern. They find nothing but stone, an occasional fern or plant, or breaks in the ground that drop off into an infinite abyss. They continued forward into the unknown, and the Doctor looks down at the ground; the stone is becoming more and more covered by a blue moss-like flora. Then, they find a large, familiar plant with a bulb of light on the tip of the stem. As they got close, the stem erected itself upward as the "light bulb" activates, brightening an area around it. This caused a domino effect, as the light created by one plant awakens another, and another, and another, lighting up the entirety of this blue biome that the pair find themselves in. There was nothing but the plants, some boulders and stalagmites, and sometimes a wooden structure in the shape of a carrot.

 The doctor's head was pounding. Being so far deep in the caves has taken a toll on his sanity. He sat on a flat boulder and sets down the lantern, turning it off to save on fuel. He takes in a long inhale and takes just as long to breathe it back out. He then looks at his partner, a white porcelain mask, possessing the decomposing corpse of a pigman. "Maybe we should turn back." The rotting vocal cords of the possessed pig gurgles. "We have been walking for a long time, and the food you have is starting to go stale." The doctor takes off his out-of-place beige backpack and opens it to get hit with the smell of stale jerky and meat. He puts one hand on his migraine-suffering head, and uses the other to close and swing the backpack over his shoulder. "We still have enough to keep going." The doctor's voice rings with a supernatural echo. "We must progress." He slowly stands up off of the boulder and scans his surroundings.

 "Better safe than sorry." The Mask's host shakes it's head, as a drop of water seeps from the ceiling of the cave onto it's head. It looks up and hold's out it's hoof. "Great, I think there's a storm upstairs, which means that it will start raining down here soon, which we are not prepared for."

"I refuse to turn back now, when we have found new lands. We must progress, we have to, else the wilderness will consume us." The Doctor said with authority, still searching the visible horizon.. The Mask's host takes a step towards him and says, "I think this cave is getting to your head. If you want to go forward and get yourself killed, I'm with you until the end, but know that this is not the best-"

 "Do you see that?" The Doctor cuts off the Mask as he points towards something in the horizon. The Mask sighs and turns around. "Yeah, it looks like a golden rock or something." The Doctor rolls his shoulders and neck, picks up and stashes the lantern in his garments, and starts heading towards the foreign object, and the Mask shortly follows, speaking to the Doctor along the way. "What if we find danger? What if there's a group of animals that want to eat us?"

 "My touch will deal with them well enough."
 "And what if they have a thick hide, or are made of stone, or is something else that makes your touch ineffective?"
 "I have a spear in my garments, and you have raw strength in your host. We will be fine."

The Mask is annoyed as it's expression anomalously shifts to a 'tragedy'-style frown. "Why are you being so arrogant about this? Your life is on the line here!" No response is given as they approach the shining rock. It is seemingly made of an orange metal, with artificial engravings. The Doctor runs his finger over the cracks. "Perhaps we can use this metal." He says as he reaches into his robes and pulls out a crude, rusty pickaxe. He gives a look to the Mask.

 "Knock yourself out, I don't have thumbs." It holds up it's pig hooves. The Doctor turns back to the metal rock, holds the pickaxe over his shoulder, and then slams it down before repeating the process, with the resulting sounds filling the cave.

TING! TING! TING! TING! TING!

On the sixth swing, the metal breaks into several pieces, revealing a large hole underneath, seemingly going down to a deeper level of the cave. The floor below is far down, however illuminated by the same plants that surround them, along with unfamiliar pillars spanning from floor to ceiling. The Mask steps forwards and looks down the hole with the Doctor, who drops the pickaxe and takes off his backpack again. He opens it and pulls out multiple pieces of thick rope, and begins to tie them together. "Tie this end around a rock."  The doctor says as he hands one end of the rope to the Mask, who sighs and turns to to the stalagmite closest by. As it begins to wrap the rope around it, the Mask looks down and notices that it's stepping on something, and lifts it's leg to see the webbing surrounding the rock. The Mask looks back up and comes face to face with a red-eyed cave spider. "S██t!" The mask says as it stumbles back,  alerting the Doctor to the nearby infestation. He drops the ropes that he was tying onto the ground and watches as about three spiders come out of the stalagmite, two of which are sporting a shell of some sort. The spiders do a half hiss, half gurgly roar in unison, as the shell-less spider starts spitting out rocks towards the group. One hits the Mask's host in the arm and gets lodged into the skin. The Doctor instinctually attempts to grasp one of the spiders in hopes that it ceases to live, however their shells block his touch from functioning. It bites the Doctor in the foot as he reaches for the pickaxe on the ground and swings it from the side, causing some of the spider's shell to splinter off. He kicks it off of his foot and swings again on the opposite side. The spider then retreats into the shell. Close by, the Mask is chasing the two other spiders around the webbed stalagmite. He catches a shelled one and begins punching it with it's host's inherent brute force. It begins to crack and fracture. The third, shell-less spider pelts the Mask's backside with spat-out rocks, almost every single one impaling the host's decaying skin.

 The Doctor breaks through the first spider's shell, and then grabs the top of it's body, instantly causing it's bodily functions to cease. He then lunges forward and grabs the spitting spider, causing the same to happen. The Mask shatters the third spider's shell, picks it up, and holds it over it's head. He limps over to the large hole in the ground and throws the spider into it. With all the spiders dead, the pair look at each other and take a sigh of relief. Then, like clockwork, the Mask goes back to tying the end of the rope around the now pest-free stalagmite, and the Doctor kneels back down and continues tying one end of a rope to the beginning of another. Soon enough, they had a long enough rope to safely descend to the next level of the caves. The Doctor looks at the Mask who gives a firm nod and says, "The rope is as tight as it'll ever be." The Doctor then throws the other end of the rope down the hole, and slings the backpack back over his shoulder. "How are going to do this?" He says to the Mask.

 "I'm heavier, so you first." The Mask replied. "I'll start going down when you are on the ground." The Doctor then looks down the hole one last time and sighs as he firmly grasps the rope. He then starts to make his way down the rope, still determined although slightly worried for his life as it is a long fall is he loses his grip. The Mask watches intensely from above as the Doctor slowly descends the rope. After what felt like forever, the Doctor's feet touch the ground and he takes a large sigh of relief. It was now the Mask's turn. It attempted to grab the rope but was having trouble as it, again, had no thumbs. The Mask instead pressed the rope between the host's torso and arms. As the Mask was going further and further down the rope, said rope was making a noticeable amount of stretching noise, more so than when the Doctor was on it. "I-I might be too heavy for it, Doc'!" The Mask cried out.

 "Just keep going, you're going to get down here either way." The doctor said in a monotone way.

 "Gee, thanks." The Mask mumbled to itself as it slowly let the grip of the rope loosen and tighten again, letting it go downward. The rope, however, started to audibly tear. Before the Mask could look up, the rope snapped, and the Mask fell several dozen meters to the ground with a loud thud, causing the earth to shake. Plenty of loose stone and the like fell from the cave's ceiling. "Is the host still usable?" The Doctor inquired.

 The Mask was slowly picking itself up from the ground, it's host body mutilated in several areas. "As long as I don't fall another three to four stories." The Doctor helped the Mask up off of the ground, and both of them looked up. Their way out is gone. They are trapped. They both stood in silence, taking in the situation. "I told you so." The Mask lightly punched the Doctor in the arm, who shooed him away. "What now?"

 The Doctor continued to stare at the hole far, far above them, impossibly out of reach. He then stared at his surroundings. Four large pillars surrounded them. Within the cracks of the stone in the pillars and on the floor beneath them, a purple light seeps through. In addition, the stones sported a foreign, almost hieroglyph-like pattern. "We must be getting closer." The Doctor said as he pulls his lantern out of his robes, which automatically turns on. "We need to keep moving." The Doctor looked around himself and found what looked like a path of the patterned stone against muddy soil, so they walked among it. There was still nothing but darkness, save for areas around the light flowers. Soon enough, they find that the path leads to another set of four pillars, with a large bug-like statue in the middle, made of the same orange metal as the rock that was plugging the hole they came through. On that statue was a large blue piece of paper, with black stains plaguing it, suggesting that it has previously gotten wet. The Doctor hands the lantern to the Mask as he takes the paper off of the statue. "It appears to be a blueprint of some sort."

 "Of?" The Mask asked.
 "Hmm. It is labelled "Jury-Rigged Portal.""
 "Portal? That's our way out of here!"
 "Yes, I believe so." The Doctor said in an unnaturally cheerful tone.
 "What do we need for it?"
 "It says that the required materials are stone, blood, gold, and a magic eyeball..."
 "Eyeball? You mean like..."

 The two looked at each other as the Doctor rustled through his robes once again, both of them knowing exactly what the blueprint is calling for. After a few moments of searching for it, he pulls out an eyeball the size of a basketball. "The legendary Deerclops eyeball. I am pleased that I decided to bring it along." The Doctor than began to list other needed materials for the portal. "Boards... Nightmare fuel? Thulecite? What are those?" The Masked almost immediately looked at the statue that the Doctor was standing next to.

 "Maybe 'thulecite' is the orange stuff that the statue is made out of?"
 "That's an excellent guess." The Doctor put the eyeball back into safe keeping within his robes as he began searching for something else within them. "Oh dear, I seemed to have left the previous pickaxe behind." The Doctor said as he began crafting another one from the materials that he has stored within his backpack. Before long, the Doctor has another pick. As the Mask continued holding the lantern, the Doctor stashed the blueprints and then began mining away at the statue. A few moments after the entire statue collapsed into several pieces, an absurdly loud wail emitted from the darkness from all directions, and the ground below them shifted from a semi-glowing purple to a brightly glowing red. "Do you feel that?" The Doctor asked the Mask, who raised it's head upward. "I do." It said back. Without saying another word, they both knew what was about to happen, and they both we're fearful of it. They still had time, albeit not a large amount. The Doctor picked up the pieces of thulecite off of the ground, and then took the lantern from the Mask, and continued forward.

 It started to rain heavily on their heads as water seeped through the cave's ceiling, causing the Mask's host to melt away at a very slow pace. The host is not going to last much longer. They found more statues, and they also discovered a black liquid, seeping out from the eyes and mouth of these statues. "Hey, they're stealing my look!" The Mask jokingly says, as the Doctor uses his finger to wipe some of the liquid up to closely examine. He then realizes the importance of it. He turns to the Mask and says, "My best guess is that this liquid is the 'nightmare fuel' that the blueprint is calling for." The Doctor takes a glass vial out from his medical bag attached to his belt and scoops up as much nightmare fuel as it can hold before putting a cork on the top. He then proceeds to mine the statue down and continue towards the next visible statue, doing the same process: Scooping up the nightmare fuel and breaking the statues for thulecite. After about a dozen destroyed statues later, the Doctor gets down on one knee and takes out the blueprint, and lays it on the ground in front of him. The Mask places the lantern next to the blueprint. "Do we have everything we need?" The Mask asks the Doctor.

 "Let's see." The Doctor takes off his backpack and lays out all the necessary materials. Stacks of wooden logs, stone, and gold. He then laid out the several vials of nightmare fuel, and then the Deerclops eyeball. All that's left was blood.

  "Is there any blood left in your host?"

 "I dont think it's blood will work, it's most likely contaminated at this point." The Mask shrugged.

 The Doctor sighed as he takes out a fresh vial, and a surgical knife. He then makes a cut on the palm of his left hand, letting the blood flow into the vial. He then corked the vial, and set it down with the others. He clenched his fist as he stood up and turned to The Mask. They began picking up materials and started to construct this 'Jury-Rigged Portal' that was detailed in the blueprint. It didn't take them too long. The Deerclops was placed into it's wooden socket lined with gold, nightmare fuel was poured in places where the blueprint said to pour, and thulecite lined the entire structure. It was complete. The Jury-Rigged Portal was in the shape of a doorway, with the eyeball watching over it. All that was left is to attach a lever to the front of it and start it. As the Doctor stepped forward to place the makeshift lever, the loud wail echoed throughout the entire cave again, shaking the earth. The ground now violently glows with a pinkish-red. They looked around to see that more and more lights started to appear in the darkness. They looked like cracks in the ground, and eldritch nightmare creatures started to crawl out of them, solely made up of nightmare fuel. The Doctor took out a spear from his garments and handed the lever to the Mask. "Start the portal, now."

 They were surrounded. There were at least 5 of these nightmare-spawning cracks nearby. The eldritch horrors towered over the Doctor, but he fearlessly stabbed and swung the spear around, not in an effort to kill, but to delay. The Mask forced the lever into it's correct position and forced it upward, causing the portal to start functioning. A white glow slowly grows from the center of the doorway. "It's opening!" The Doctor used all of his might to keep the oncoming shadows away from the Mask. As the white glow now covers the entirety of the doorway, the Doctor is bitten by a shadow in his leg, causing him to fall to the ground with a sharp grunt. "Doc!" The Mask yelled, as he quickly looked back and forth from the portal to the Doctor, seconds away from being mauled by the nightmarish abominations. He makes a split second decision, and leaps away from the lever and madly swings at the shadows, forcing them back a meter or two. The shadows retaliate and attack the Mask, ripping out a sizable chunk of the host's torso and knee.  Then, a pair of claw-like hands come from the shadows, grabbing the Mask. The portal is beginning to close, and the shadows are moments away from tearing them both apart. The Mask uses what's left of his strength, and picks up the Doctor, and holds him above it's head.

 "What are you doing?!" The Doctor yelled.
 "I'm saving your ███! Your show must go on!" The Mask then threw the Doctor into the portal. As The Doctor looked back, he could see the Mask's host being lifted up into the air, and then ripped apart by the onslaught of nightmares, tearing them limb from limb, organ from organ. The last thing the Doctor could see from the other side was the Mask itself falling off of the host and onto the floor. Then, he couldn't see the other side. He was just falling. Falling in a white void.

 After what felt like an eternity, The Doctor stumbles out of the other side of the portal, and falls down. He groans as he rolls onto his back. His eyes are assaulted by sunlight. He covers them as he slowly leans upward, taking in his surroundings. He was above ground, for sure. He realized the fact that he still had the spear clutched in his cut hand, and used it to pick himself up off of the ground. The Doctor looked at the portal. It had a completely different design. It was made out of marble, and had roses and vines growing on it.

 When he finally came around, his senses were almost overloaded with old, but oh so familiar feelings. Although far away, he could sense living, breathing human beings, infected with the Pestilence. It was clear what the Doctor had to do next.

 

Spoiler

Epilogue:

 The Jury-Rigged portal has been closed for several days now. The shadows are long gone; the cracks in the ground emitted no light. In the darkness, the Mask feels itself being picked up by a pair of hands.

 "I like you, I am going to keep you." A woman's voice rings out. "As for Maxy and friends, now they have another obstacle to overcome."

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Canis
added some flavor text where it was needed.
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5 hours ago, minespatch said:

Interesting introduction but kind of weird to humanize the scp since they're supposed to be otherworldly.

The term "SCP" basically means "an anomalous object contained/known by the SCP Foundation." SCP-049 is one of the few "mainstream" SCPs that has a true canon personality. SCP-035 does not have his personality specifically written in his file, but from context, almost everyone assumes that 035 loves the flair of the dramatic, as he is a comedy/tragedy mask after all.

Basically, it's not really "humanize" but to put their personality more in focus.

Edited by Canis
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