31. P O W E R : Assistance

AFTERWORD

***PLEASE READ ENDING PORTION***

It's taken ages, but the time has come at last. I was so excited to finally introduce the SCP Animated characters into the "Safe Haven Saga". If you haven't watched the SCP Animated YouTube series, I'd highly recommend you go and do that right now. It's really, really good.

Now, let's talk hidden references, plot-hole fillers, and Easter Eggs. And once again, this going to be really long, because I put a lot of stuff in this book. So hold on tight.

PROLOGUE: Cameron's extended dream from "Icarus" is revisited and continued. Her fall comes to a jarring end as she's mocked by a laughing Fisi. Then she is confronted by Draconis, who bids her to rise, telling her that the war is not over yet. This line's meaning is two-fold: first, it obviously refers to the Safe Havens' war against Fisi and the Dark Celestials. However, if you go back to the first "Safe Haven Saga" entry I ever wrote ("Phoenix"), there's a scene in which, after their fight, Draconis tells Cameron that she's won "the battle but not the war". Connect that scene to this one, and we get an ominous conclusion: while he is indeed offering a hand in alliance for now, the Dragon is not quite finished with the Phoenix.

CHAPTER I: As we enter the world of the SCP Foundation, we get a quick reminder that this universe is parallel to the Haven Realm via the appearance of Researcher Abidan Derschwitz. This is clearly an alternate dimension doppelganger of Xirxine Northwest's chairman.

We also pick up with Draconis right where we left off: he's cooperating with the Foundation to perform experiments and whatnot. He's still beefing with Buck and congenial with Collingwood, and just as condescending as ever.

Concerning Dr. Buck, there's a reference to her encounter with SCP-3887-B in this chapter, which took place in the SCP Animated episode "Monster Under the Bed". In my opinion, it's one of the best episodes in the series, and I was glad to be able to reference it in this story.

In addition to all of this, Chapter I introduces you, dear readers, to some of the other members of the SCP Animated main cast from the original universe (more on that later): Agents Lawrence, Carson, Thomas Green, and Ramsey. This marks their collective debut in the "Safe Haven Saga" (not counting Carson's cameo in "Breach").

CHAPTER II: In this chapter, we get a reference to Fitch's fight with the Director, which Xirxine has now dubbed the "EXORCISM Event". The all-caps denotation, while not seen before, is Xirxine's naming convention for anomalous events. Other official titles would be the "EXPOSURE Event" (when they "discovered" the Safe Havens), the "NEMO Event" (seen in "Protectors"), the "NEXUS Event" (the Opening/Convergence), and the "EROS Event" (seen in "Brokenheart").

In the Foundation portion of this chapter, there's a reference to Carson's infraction in "Breach", when he spread around pictures of Dr. Buck from SCP-978's rendering of Draconis's desires. He makes a crack about Green sending him pictures of Buck in a swimsuit, at which everyone has a laugh at Dr. Buck's expense.

I think most of you might've caught the reference to Caedis Imperius ("Target"/"Peacekeepers") in the form of Commander Cade Imperio. It was pretty on the nose.

While closing in on Retrieval Team 2, one of the soldiers calls their mission a "skip hunt". For those unaware, the term "skip" or "scip" is short for SCP, produced by pronouncing the letters phonetically.

Meanwhile, the Retrieval Team goes through the part of the chapter I like to call "the Blame Game". The members try to trace all this madness back to a single moment—which, obviously, is impossible. But this scene was produced from my own thought process concerning (surprisingly enough) the Safe Haven Army for Freedom and Truth, or "S.H.A.F.T.". I wondered to myself: "Who would the S.H.A.F.T. blame for what was happening? Fisi? The Phoenix? Xirxine? And if they blamed one, what about the event and/or people that caused that choice to be made?" It's a never ending search for a source of the Safe Havens' troubles.