Chapter 56

Michael and Calder sat on a park bench with a small pile of burgers laying between them.

The two men watched as the clouds slowly floated by with content on their faces, "See, I told you I'd get you out of there."

Calder didn't respond to Michael's words and simply went back to devouring the burgers with vigor. The two of them had ditched their armor. Each set was flawed in their own ways, with Michael's being broken beyond repair and Calder's smelling like a rotting corpse, but above all they didn't quite allow them to blend neatly into a crowd, so they had to go.

When he'd told the Manager he'd stolen his new clothes from a Walmart she'd been practically giddy.

With a sigh Michael sat up, "You ok with me leaving you here for a bit. I got something to take care of."

Calder's eyes cut towards Michael, and he swallowed another mouthful of burger, "Do as you wish, Monster."

"Hey, no need for name calling. This monster is the one who bought you that food."

With that Michael disappeared with a flash of light and reappeared somewhere he'd only ever seen in pictures.

The oval office was just as nice in person as it was on a TV screen, and with a grin Michael eyed the person sitting behind the ever so fancy desk. He had short black hair and wore a fancy blue suit. Atop his desk was a nameplate that simply said 'President Smith'.

Michael stepped towards the man, "Well this is convenient. I'd thought I'd need to make multiple trips down here before I actually managed to catch you."

The man's eyes widened, and with a flash Michael teleported behind him and grabbed hold of his arm. A quick glance revealed Smith's finger inches away from a panic button.

Michael patted him on the shoulder, "Hey, it's ok, no need for that. I honestly don't have much of a problem with you, but you see, I do have something that I kinda need your help with."

Smith struggled under Michael's unwavering grip and his eyes widened, "Son, don't do this. I need you to be aware just how large of a crime this is. You can still back out now, I won't tell anyone you were here."

Michael waved his hand, "Oh relax, you'll be fine. I'll even fix some of those wrinkles for ya."

With that Michael poked the president in the center of the forehead, and the flesh that hates virus spread throughout his body in an instant.

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Michael leisurely walked over towards Calder who was still sitting in the same spot he'd left him in.

Michael grinned, "I almost expected you to run off."

Calder took his blinded eyes off the clouds, "And do what? This world isn't even remotely close to how I remember it. I wouldn't even know where to go."

"Fair enough."

Michael handed over an ice cream to the demigod and took a bite out of his own.

"If you'd decided to run off on your own, I'd be willing to bet you'd have been snapped up by the SCP foundation. Assuming whatever ruckus you caused happened--" Michael looked up for a moment. "--sometime before noon."

"Why would the time matter?"

Michael laughed, "Oh you're gonna love this. Let's go find a TV."

"What in the bloody hell is a TV?"

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Twenty minutes later Michael and Calder found themselves in a fairly empty bar. It was just them, a couple of patrons, and a bartender off in the corner on his phone.

The good news though was that they had free rein over the TV, and Michael had it turned to a news station that was going over how the president had suddenly declared the need to make an emergency speech.

Michael turned up the volume, "Calder, what do you think of when you hear the word monster?"

"I think of their corpses beneath my feet."

Michael scratched his beard, "Eh, that's a good enough answer for now. You want to help me kill some?"

Calder shrugged, "I don't really have anything else I do."

Michael chuckled, "Well that's good. Anywho the speech should be starting in three, two, one."

The president walked up onto the stage and was greeted with a roar of applause and camera flashes.

He had a big smile on his face, and after he took his place behind his podium the noise slowly died down until it became inaudible.

The president cleared his throat and slowly began his speech, "Hello my fellow Americans. I'm here today to make a confession to all of you. I've been untruthful to you, the American government has been untruthful to you, and most importantly, the SCP foundation has been untruthful to you."

With a great smile on his face Michael downed the rest of his beer. Those higherup bastards at the foundation thought they could hide and he'd simply give up on getting his revenge? No, hell no. If he couldn't break their physical legs, then he'd just break their metaphorical legs. The fact that this was a crucial step in ridding the world of monsters was just the icing on top.

The president continued, "Our world is filled with creatures that we've strived to hide. We believed that it was necessary in order to keep you all safe. To keep the world safe, but recently I've come to the conclusion that you all are ready to know the truth, and that it's time we did something about these monsters.

"But first I'd like to welcome a dear friend of mine to the stage, the very one that opened my eyes to this issue. Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Stevens."

Michael stood up from his stool and patted Calder on the shoulder, "Alright that's my que, you just sit here and enjoy the show. This shouldn't take fifteen minutes."

With a flash of light Michael disappeared and reappeared beside the president with a smile on his face.

"It's a pleasure to be here Smith, but it also saddens me that it was necessary."

Michael turned towards the crowd of thousands. Cameras all around were broadcasting the event live. Which was the desired effect. He and Keith had thought this through quite a bit back in the abyss and came to a rather quick conclusion on why nobody had actually succeeded in doing something similar to this.

The answer was rather simple, and had a couple reasons. The whistleblowers were far too easy to get rid of, there were far too few eyes on the events, and above all, the people spreading the truth were too easy to silence.

Fortunately, this plan counteracted all of those. Which simply left Michael standing unopposed in front of the word, ready to give his speech.

He smiled brightly, "The SCP foundation recently tried to kill me, but that probably doesn't mean much to you. Especially considering you don't even know who they are. So let's start there."

Michael lifted the mike from its stand, "They're the people that the government calls to make the bad noises in the night go away. They secure, contain and protect the monsters, and they do so relatively well. Up until they don't. Anyone who doubts their existence only needs to do one thing to confirm them. Just look towards the prison system and ask yourself an extremely simple question."

Michael spread his arms, "Where are all the prisoners disappearing to?"

Michael's smile faltered, "I'll answer that. They take them by the thousands and use them as guinea pigs in their experiments. Most die relatively quickly, and it's not something they can easily cover up. Hell, they'll probably try to disprove this entire speech as a hoax" Michael chuckled.

"They'll fail, obviously. I'm not somebody who can be easily silenced."

Michael leaned in closer to the mike, "You people can't kill me. Now, let me ask another question. How many people have disappeared because they simply didn't know what to do when encountering a monster? How many deaths would have been easily preventable had the foundation just provided some of their ever coveted data to the public. I don't know the answer, but I can promise you that it's a lot of people."

Michael scratched his beard, "Let's see, just off the top of my head there's a play that turns anyone who watches it into a murderer, a ghost that takes the form of a young woman and kills you should you pick her up on certain roads, or a monster that hunts children and uses their organs to make toys."

"I killed that last one, and I'd like to do the same for many more. Some can't be killed, but awareness of their existence will inevitably save lives. Oh, one last message to the foundation, I'm not a fool. I know you're going to try your hardest to cover all this up. It's simply your nature. So I'll give the people a little more hard evidence."

Michael turned around and faced the Whitehouse, and proceeded to ask a question he already knew the answer to. Mainly to show he cared.

"Did you evacuate everyone from the building like I asked?"

The president nodded.

Michael grinned, "Good."

Michael pointed towards the White House, "Show time."

A few seconds of silence passed before vines of flesh broke the doors and windows. They stretched around the building like hundreds of snakes, and less than a minute later they'd completely covered the building.

Scarlet flowers bloomed throughout the vines, and in each of their centers sat a fully formed human eye. They moved sporadically and examined the crowd.

Michael admired his work for a moment with a sly grin. Simple but effective, and all he'd needed to do was have the president bring a couple infected cows into the White House. Which was honestly easier than he'd thought it'd be.

Michael turned back to the now unsettled crowd, "Now what should you take away from this little demonstration. Well, monsters are real, and they'll all die at my hand. I just thought y'all should know."

Michael smiled and waved his hand, "Toodles."

With that Michael disappeared with a flash of light and reappeared back in the bar he'd left Calder in. He walked across the bar and retook his seat beside Calder. Nobody seemed to notice the sudden reappearance, and the only actual change in the bar was that the news feed seemed to have been cut off at some point due to 'technical difficulties'.

Michael ordered another beer and turned towards Calder, "So, how long did it take them to cut my speech?"

Calder shrugged, "Almost immediately after you showed up on the TV."

"Well those bastards are nothing if not persistent", Michael chuckled.

A moment later Michael accepted another beer from the bartender and immediately drank the entire mug before slamming it back down on the counter.

"Alright Calder, wanna come with me and prove that my speech wasn't complete bullshit?"

Keith chuckled, "You do realize that he literally heard none of your speech, right?"

Calder nodded at Keith's words, "The mask says the truth. Now what would we be doing?"

"Killing monsters."

Calder grinned, "Ah, I'm rather good at that."