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Article: What Nobody Expected, Part 1
Original Author:Dr Ore
Original Article http://scp-int.wikidot.com/nuri-19-2
Translator:
Last time on Nuri:
What Nobody Expected, Part 1
Grandma Nikitin's funeral was simple and straightforward, like almost everything else in the village. Nevertheless, there was consternation around the coffin as people viewed Grandma's remains.
When she arrived with Dean and Nuri in their mourning clothes (a few rubles changed hands), all eyes turned to Elli. Vorbyov, the closest thing to a village doctor here, approached her.
“Elli, I'm glad you came, and that goes for you too.”
Dean nodded and Worbjow continued.
“But I have to ask, are you responsible for this?”
“For what?” asked Elli.
Worbjow led her to the coffin and she glanced inside.
“Yeah,” Elli confirmed jovially. “That was me.”
Grandma Nikitin felt sand beneath her and opened her eyes. Above her stretched a green sky with three pale moons, one of which seemed to be crumbling. Around her was nothing but barren desert.
Confused, she sat up. She remembered lying on her deathbed. So was this the afterlife?
She noticed that two things were missing. First, she was completely naked, which she was not comfortable with at all, and second, her limb pain was gone. She frowned as she looked down at herself.
Her old, gnarled hands were neither old nor gnarled. As she looked down at herself, she estimated her body to be no older than 25.
Drink this before tonight. It will make the afterlife a little more bearable for you.
The drink Elli had given her must have rejuvenated her! And probably killed her too, because nothing was free. Nevertheless, Grandma Nikitin chuckled amusedly and then began to laugh.
Then she was trampled by a giant monkey. But it didn't last long…
About 800 years later
No matter what it is, there is always someone who doubts it. The Earth is a globe? Lies, say the flat-earthers. Climate change? Lies, say the climate deniers. Vaccinations protect against disease? Lies, say the anti-vaxxers.
And then there was an organization that took the whole thing to extremes. SAPPHIRE, the Society of the Atheist Partisans of Progress for the Halt of the Irrational and Religious Enemy. They denied the anomalous, anything that couldn't be explained by conventional science.
This was a particular problem for Elli, because she was anomalous in every sense. And unfortunately, she had done goofed. She had simply accepted an invitation from a certain Dr. Hideo in Japan.
Hideo, an elder bearded man who could have been mistaken for a wizard who gave great quests, had invited her to dinner. Elli knew him from the past. She had turned his world upside down in the 1970s when she took him on a trip to some parallel universes. It had been part of a Faustian bet.
Well, apparently she had driven the poor doctor insane. He had joined SAPPHIRE, denying her and her abilities because he didn't understand them. And what SAPPHIRE didn't understand, it destroyed.
Thanks to her divine resilience, Elli had not succumbed to the worldly poison in her food, nor to a total of seven attempts to strike her down from behind, nor to the approximately two hundred bullets that had been fired at her. They only tickled her a little, and if something armor-piercing did happen to penetrate her skin by chance, the wound closed almost faster than it had appeared.
Well, then the hydra poison that had also been mixed into her food had taken effect. Mortals were killed by a careless whiff or mere touch, gods were killed in seconds when administered. Elder gods? For them, it was an anesthetic. Elli still remembered how the house above her began to collapse as her senses gradually faded.
She now found herself tied to a chair in a large vaulted cellar. Given the screams she heard in other parts of the complex, it appeared to be a facility for “processing” anomalously gifted individuals.
Well, Elli could have simply teleported herself out of this cell, even without her Nexus, but this divine ability had a weakness. She could only use it if she could take a step. At the moment, her arms and legs were bound.
“Inconvenient,” she muttered.
She wondered if any of her divine insignia could help here, but she needed a free hand to use them. The chair she was sitting on was made of metal, screwed to the floor and had metal chains. Elli could bend it with enough force, but that was all. She could have transformed herself into a form that could break or remove these shackles, but she didn't know how closely she was being watched and what countermeasures had been taken. She decided to wait until someone entered the room so she could see exactly what she was dealing with.
“And I was so looking forward to Japanese alcohol…”
Suddenly, shots rang out outside. Someone screamed suddenly, then there was silence. The door to her cell opened. And in came…
“Oh no, not you again…” Hoya groaned.
“I'd rather be somewhere else too,” Elli remarked dryly. “Still, I'm really happy to see you. We should go for a drink again somewhen.”
“I still have a headache from last time,” Hoya muttered as she fiddled with Elli's chains.
Elli quickly did the math.
“That was two years ago!” she remarked.
“I know,” the demon fox replied sharply. “What are you doing here?”
“I was slipped a Hydra Roofie1. How about you?”
“Rescue mission. Those bastards somehow managed to capture a good friend of mine. Imagine, they wanted to convince her to be ‘normal’.”
“Works pretty well on vampires. Did you get her out?”
“Yes, but now that we've tracked down a SAPPHIRE cell, we might as well take it apart. Where's the big guy?” Hoya asked.
“Nuri forced him to go shopping because she doesn't want to carry everything herself. No idea where they are right now,” Elli replied with a shrug. “Somewhere in Kyoto, I guess.”
“Oh, so you kept the little girl, huh?” Hoya asked, less than enthusiastic, and untied her bonds.
Then her face froze.
“Wait, shopping? Elli, how old is Nuri now?!”
“Uh…” Elli began and tried to stand up, but Hoya leaned over her with a sharp look and placed her hands on the armrests.
“What did you do?!” she asked urgently.
“Um… Nuri is now… eight hundred and six…”
The demon fox folded her hands in concern and took a deep breath.
“How bad is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“For you, it may have been a little over eight hundred years, but for me, it was five months. I still have vivid memories of that little powder keg. Has she gotten herself under control?”
“Can we discuss this somewhere that is not here?” Elli asked. “I'll also help free the prisoners.”
Hoya growled something incomprehensible and stepped back.
“This isn't over yet.”
Elli walked past her a little faster than she had intended and out into the corridor. They seemed to be in some kind of bunker. The corridors were narrow but high.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“An abandoned bunker somewhere in the Sea of Japan. No idea when or why it was built,” was Hoya's reply. “Probably World War II. If you want to help, come with me. The vanguard has already penetrated deeper floors.”
“And you're getting prisoners out of their cells?” Elli asked. “Aren't you the boss?”
“Woman, you have absolutely no idea how pungent your breath is,” Hoya hissed. “When I smelled you, you became a priority target. Who knows what SAPPHIRE would have done with the knowledge you have in your head. Or what you yourself would have done to get out.”
“I don't know whether to be offended or flattered,” Elli remarked dryly.
They came to a stairwell. Numerous people were coming up from below. Agents from the Korean Serpent's Hand and prisoners. And soldiers from SAPPHIRE? And they were all in quite a hurry to get upstairs.
The women exchanged glances. Hoya seemed to be just as clueless as Elli about what was going on. She picked one of her people out of the crowd and pulled him toward her.
“What's going on here, man?” she asked in a commanding tone. “I said move forward!”
The man, a young Asian with reptilian scales on his face, shook his head in panic.
“I'm terribly sorry, Director, but all hell has broken loose down there. A kumiho has appeared and is attacking everyone she encounters. And some huge guy who… I have no idea what he's doing.”
Hoya furrowed her brows.
“A demon fox?” she echoed. “How many tails?”
“Nine.”
Hoya glanced at Elli, who was visibly sweating and loosening the collar of her shirt. The demon fox groaned in annoyance and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“Casualties?”
“Bruises and two broken bones. We were able to distract her with soldiers from the Deniers, she seems to prefer to attack them.”
The director frowned.
“Okay, kid, up you go. Both of us,” she pointed to Elli and herself, “will take care of this.”
The man nodded and seemed grateful when Hoya finally let him go.
“Didn't you say you didn't know where she was?” Hoya then asked Elli.
“Hey, if you can sniff me out, Nuri probably can too. Besides, a house collapsed in the middle of Kyoto while I was in town. What do you think the two of them concluded from these two circumstances?”
“And how did they get here?” Hoya asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Dean,” Ellis replied briefly. “We've learned a few new tricks in eight hundred years.”
Hoya seemed to think about it for a moment.
“And what are they doing down there?”
Elli just shrugged helplessly. The two set off, pushing past the fleeing crowd and heading downstairs. It didn't take long before they were moving faster, as the stream of fugitives suddenly stopped.
The corridors were deserted, except for the corpses on the floor. All of them were members of SAPPHIRE. Some of the ceiling lights had been destroyed or were flickering.
“Was there any resistance?” asked Elli.
“You have no idea how fanatical the Deniers can be. Not as resistant as the book burners, but we still prepared ourselves as if they were,” explained Hoya, kicking one of the bodies lying on the floor with his shoe.
The body suddenly groaned.
“The guy's alive?” she wondered, turning him onto his back.
Someone had beaten his face black and blue, and he had a long, bleeding scratch on his arm. But that was all.
“Was it Nuri?”
“Mmf…” Elli said helplessly. "Looks like something she would do. We tried to control her murderous nature with martial arts, but by the end of puberty, that wasn't enough anymore. Nuri now needs a certain amount of brutality in her life to function properly. That and… something else…"
“But she doesn't kill her victims?” Hoya remarked in surprise and continued walking. “Doesn't she have an appetite for liver?”
“Nälka cuisine,” Elli replied simply. “Once a week, she gets organic liver meat. With a seal of quality.”
“Hmm. Clever solution,” Hoya commented, slightly taken aback. “And how does she usually get her fix of violence?”
“Underground cage death matches,” Elli explained, following her. “Pretty good source of income, especially when no one knows about her. The betting shops give me and Dean great odds.”
“So instead of helping her control her urges, you enable her?”
Elli shrugged again.
“I don't know what you want from me, either that or she eats people!”
Hoyas closed her eyes and frowned again.
“Did she absorb any more essence into her fox marble?”
Beads of sweat formed on Elli's forehead again.
“Elli?”
“This is very embarrassing.”
Hoya pierced her with her piercing gaze.
“ELLI!?”
“Uh, yes, but she stopped doing it on her own at some point,” the blonde tried to reassure her.
“Oh? How so?”
“Her fox marble had gotten so big that she couldn't gag it up anymore. It got stuck in her throat. She almost choked when she realized it. Pretty much ruined her evening.”
The demon fox took another deep breath.
“This is the first time I've heard of such a thing,” she said. “You're telling me you helped create the most powerful demon fox in known history?”
Now Elli was getting a little annoyed.
“Don't talk about Nuri as if she were a mindless beast. You haven't even seen her yet. We've encountered later iterations of yourself, and none of them had any major problems with her.”
Hoya wanted to reply, but suddenly there was movement under her balloon cap as her fox ears pricked up.
“I hear someone giggling,” she said slowly, continuing to listen. “And beating someone up.”
Elli smiled apologetically.
Hoya moved forward slowly, and Elli decided to do her a favor and sneak along as well. It wouldn't do any good though.
The corridor opened up into a wider hallway with numerous doors leading off of it. And there, in the middle, lit only by a single flickering lamp, a figure crouched on the floor, beating someone lying on the ground with mechanical patience. Occasionally, laughter could be heard as the guy on the floor whimpered. A bundle of fox tails waved lazily behind the attacker.
Two fox ears suddenly turned in their direction.
“Hey you!” Hoya barked immediately, drawing her pistol and pointing it at the figure. “Get up and approach slowly.”
“Hoya, I don't think you need to be so careful-”
“YOU shut up, Elli,” hissed the demon fox without turning around, while her conspecific slowly stood up. Higher and higher.
And higher.
And higher…
Hoya tensed, because Nuri, for it was no one else, was so gigantic that she didn't even go up to her chest. And the fact that she couldn't stand up completely in the hallway and fanned out her nine long, fluffy tails like a peacock made her seem even more threatening. The director of Dinodon's Hand pointed her weapon at her. Amused giggles came from the darkness and Nuri walked towards her.
“I'm warning you,” Hoya growled tensely. “Any funny business and I'll pull the trigger and blow- ho- ho- ho- … Hi…”
Hoya's threat to blow Nuri's skull away was interrupted when she stepped into the light and was able to stand up straight in that part of the room. Elli noticed with astonishment and a touch of envy that Hoya's jaw had dropped.
Yep, Nuri had taken on the form she had briefly had when she was four2… Elli wasn't sure if it was because of the incredible amounts of essence she had absorbed as a child, if it was something in her genes, or if she had eaten something wrong (or right, depending on perspective). She had shot up and blossomed at the age of twelve and only stopped at twenty. She was so beautiful that she could break up romantic relationships simply by walking past couples, and she had caused traffic accidents just by being on the sidewalk.
She was fully aware of her effect on others and seemed to get a certain kick out of either charming or unnerving people with her looks. She still had her hip-length, straight hair, and at the moment she was wearing loose gray pants and black shoes. Her upper body was clad in a white blouse and a gray jacket. Both were cut to reveal a plunging neckline. Ellis's bag dangled from her arm.
“HOYA,” she exclaimed happily, arms outstretched, lifting the demon fox, who was still staring at her as if paralyzed, off the ground and pressing her to her chest.
As a precaution, Elli began counting down the seconds, because at that moment, the nine-tailed was effectively suffocating Hoya in her embrace, without the leader of the Korean Serpent's Hand even touching her sternum… But after only a few moments, the Korean woman seemed to recover and emerged from the depths into which Nuri had plunged her, gasping for air.
“Um… Could you let go of me?”
“Naw,” Nuri grinned smugly, her teeth now looking much more predatory after her baby teeth had fallen out. “Is someone shy?”
Hoya looked up at her and grimaced in annoyance.
“I have a laser pointed at your thigh…”
“Oh, I thought you were just happy to see me.”
“Last warning…”
“You just can't flirt with that woman,” Nuri muttered, rolling her eyes, and let Hoya down again, who immediately took a few steps away from her, but kept the gun in her hand.
“Nuri, the last time Hoya saw you, you were four,” Elli warned.
“Oh,” Nuri said in surprise, raising her eyebrows suggestively at Hoya a few times as she struck a pose. “Well? Impressed by the merchandise?”
Hoya's face was a mixture of irritation, anger, and suppressed embarrassment. She bared her teeth. Nuri grinned broadly and smugly at the sight.
“Oh, Elli, that reminds me: I found your bag!” she suddenly remarked.
“Instead of me?” Elli scolded her.
“I was following your booze, it overpowered your breath,” Nuri defended herself indignantly.
“And you didn't come down here because you were hoping for more people you could beat up with moral justification?” the blonde asked with a piercing gaze.
Nuri looked everywhere but into her eyes.
“Um. No?”
Elli sighed.
“Where's Dean?”
“Right behind you,” Dean replied dryly.
Hoya and Elli spun around with a cry.
“Stop it, Dean!” Elli barked.
“How the hell did you sneak up on me?!” Hoya blurted out.
“It's called teleportation,” Dean corrected them, ignoring Elli completely. “How do you think we got past your troops?”
Hoya opened her mouth to say something, but then seemed to remember that she was dealing with Elli's entourage and closed it again.
“Now that we're all back together, can we get going again?” Nuri begged, pouting. “I've discovered dust on my breasts.”
“So?” Elli asked, curious to hear how the argument would continue.
Nuri seemed to stumble over her words briefly before answering.
“Hello?! Dust! Can I please go pick someone up?”
Dean and Elli groaned resignedly after this answer. She rubbed the bridge of her nose. Hoya, for her part, looked silently at everyone present one after the other.
“Elli, what exactly does she mean-”
“That was the other thing that keeps Nuri under control,” Elli interrupted her. “And I have to say, if she keeps this up, she'll eventually beat my body count…”
“I see it as a challenge,” Nuri commented cheekily and smiled dirty at Hoya.
Dean groaned and rolled his eyes again. Hoya grimaced again and narrowed her eyes slightly.
“So just so I understand correctly,” she summarized. “To keep your sanity, you rely on controlled amounts of sex and violence?”
“Also gladly accepted as combination,” Nuri confirmed with a shrug and thought for a moment. “Yes, that and ethically sourced human meat.”
“And with a special definition of ‘controlled,’” Dean added grimly. “Let me guess, Elli was on a different floor?”
The others nodded in agreement.
“Where did we go wrong? Nuri, I'm disappointed,” Dean stated.
It was hard for outsiders to believe, but Nuri shrank a little under the words.
“But I found her bag…” she muttered with her fox ears drooping.
“Did you leave your bottle open?” Dean asked Elli. “I told her to smell your bad breath.”
“No, I didn't,” Elli hissed, taking her bag and rummaging through it. “There, you see, it's sealed—oh!”
Nuri and Hoya's eyes filled with tears and they had to frantically cover their noses from the overwhelming aroma that flooded the corridor. Elli's hip flask was closed, but there were two holes in it.
“Damn! A bullet must have flown into my bag when I was shot at.”
“PUT IT AWAY!” Hoya and Nuri growled in unison.
“All right, all right.”
Elli put her destroyed hip flask back in her pocket and pulled out a second one that looked exactly like the first and took a sip, further angering the demon foxes.
“Luckily, I've learned to always carry a spare.”
“Now that we can be sure you're okay and the blood content in your alcohol has returned to acceptable levels, what do we do now?” Dean asked. “I don't want to rush you, but earlier one of these guys made an emergency call.”
“Are reinforcements coming?” Hoya asked.
Nuri looked hopeful. Dean, however, shrugged.
“You tell me, you left posts on the surface, right?”
“They can't reach me down here, let's go back and warn the others.”
“'Okay,” Elli grumbled and grabbed the demon foxes by the shoulders.
Then she took a step forward, Dean grabbing hold of her just in time. Her foot landed on the roof of the bunker. Everyone else was still with her.
“What the hell!” Hoya exclaimed. “I thought those were just exaggerations from the Library!”
“Get used to it,” Nuri grinned maliciously and stretched with a healthy crack. “You've befriended the goddess of bullshit.”
“That's not my official title,” Elli protested.
“But it's used unofficially in enough places to be one,” Dean grumbled.
“Madam Director,” came a voice from below. “What are you doing up there?”
“I'd like to know that myself,” Hoya called down to the young woman who stood there looking up at them in bewilderment. “Keep an eye out for a boat or plane, they sent a radio message.”
“Uh, about that, we have an approach from the northwest,” the woman reported. “We're observing at the moment.”
“We'll take care of it,” Nuri stated grandly.
“You don't even know if they're SAPPHIREs,” Elli remarked.
“True, but you can check,” Nuri countered with a grin.
“You just want a brawl,” Dean accused her.
“No, I want to get laid, and that's not possible as long as we're stuck in this SAPPHIRE business,” Nuri replied. “No offense, Hoya.”
“Mm,” Hoya said dryly and lit a cigarette with some difficulty. “If you take care of it, I'll go back inside.”
“You seem to have gotten over the shock with Nuri pretty quickly,” Elli remarked.
Hoya angrily held her index finger under her nose.
"SHUT up! I have no idea how you do it, but somehow what you're doing works. I've stopped questioning it. Besides, I already have the dubious honor of informing the Serpent's Hand that the rumors about your divinity are not exaggerated and that you are in possession of a furry superweapon. Right now, I'm just fed up. Take your nine-tailed nymphomaniac and go massacre the crew of this ship or whatever you do to them, as long as I have nothing to do with them! Also, fuck you, and I'll see you tonight at our bar!"
“Didn't you say you still had a hangover from last time?”
“YES,” Hoya snapped. “And when this is over, I'm going to need a really strong drink, and if anyone knows how to get expertly hammered, it's you!”
“Huh,” said Elli happily. “See, Dean, I told you it was a useful talent.”
Dean groaned in annoyance.
The small ship approaching the island did indeed belong to SAPPHIRE. A few scattered forces were on their way home after receiving the distress call to come and help.
They would never arrive in time.
A black portal with a gold frame appeared in the door to the bridge, which was met with great astonishment and alarmed shouts from the crew. Weapons were aimed at this apparition, which should not have existed at all.
And then a woman's voice rumbled…
"Against all the fools that ignorance can conjure.
All the deniers that mankind can produce.
I will send unto them… only you.
Rip and tear, until it is done."
Six men, sweat on their brows, continued to point their weapons at the portal.
Nuri revealed herself behind them and tapped one of them on the shoulder.
“Hello there,” she said with a sly grin that almost immediately took on nightmarish features as she broke the first guy's jaw with one blow, giggling as she did so.
Amidst loud shouts, the other men fired. Or at least they fired at the spot where Nuri had just been standing. One didn't live to be eight hundred years old without decent footwork, at least not when you were traveling with Elli. She snatched a rifle from a man's hand and then beat him down with it. Then, as she continued running, she conjured up a blue will-o'-the-wisp the size of a soccer ball in her hand, which she shrunk to the size of a pea after a moment's thought. She used it to set the pants of another opponent on fire. The poor guy immediately ran outside and grabbed a fire extinguisher.
Then she stared at the barrels of the last three rifles and tilted her head to the side in a flash as they fired simultaneously. She grimaced in pain, as the gunshot at close range had a very unpleasant effect on her hearing. She decided to take it like a woman and gave one of her opponents a literally bewitching smile.
“Disarm,” she ordered.
The hypnotized sailor took his own rifle to knock his comrades' rifles out of their hands and fell to the ground when a scuffle broke out between him and one of his colleagues.
The last one, now unarmed, lunged at her as she blocked the only way out of the bridge. Similar to Hoya, he didn't even come up to her chest. He completely underestimated Nuri's close combat range, and the foot at the end of a long leg sank into his face in a beautiful karate crescent kick.
Dean and Elli watched Nuri's carnage on the cosmoscope. Elli had brought a bucket of popcorn.
“Did you ever regret taking her in?” Dean asked as he watched Nuri dislocate a man's arm with a judo hold while laughing maniacally. The man had attacked her with a fire axe.
“Well,” Elli mumbled. “Yes, she has a violence problem. Yes, she's vain and mischievous and constantly messes with people. She's messy and can't cook anything except deserts. And yes, she gets into more peoples pants than I do. She's an absolute monster, that woman.”
She swallowed.
"But she hates injustice. She's empathetic and spares and defends the innocent. She likes children. Thanks to her, we have one of the most beautiful gardens in the multiverse. Her skills as a pastry chef and confectioner are legendary. Her jokes and pranks are never malicious, and she gives surprisingly good relationship advice. She has her own refreshing kind of kindness. A true friend."
“What do you mean?” Dean asked.
Nuri, meanwhile, had apparently found someone in who was skilled in unarmed combat,namely Comerade Pants on Fire. It was taekwondo, if Elli read the movements correctly, and she was trying out her self-developed martial art on him. She called it Yeuo-Bal, devised with the physiology of demon foxes in mind. In addition to holds, punches, and kicks, the martial art also made use of claws and tails for distraction or feints. Given how much her opponent had to take, it seemed to work quite well.
"What I mean is, I never regretted taking Nuri in. Sure, she can be exhausting, but for me and also for the Serpent's Hand, she is living proof that with enough patience and care, even someone whom the whole world believes to be lost can be saved.
THE END