Chapter Text
“Son of a bitch!” Mordred growled, throwing her controller down on her bed. She fell back into the cushion with a huff, staring daggers at the bright game-over screen flashing on her large monitor. The pixelated body of her character slumped on the digital battlefield as her much larger opponent posed in victory.
She had been one hit away from sealing her victory in ‘Kings of Combat 3: Fated Alliance.’ Unfortunately, in her hubris, she got hit by a nasty setup and took three command grabs in a row, depleting her character's HP. Her blessed win streak, just on the verge of surpassing Tomoe Gozen's weekly record, got eradicated in seconds.
“Stupid Grapplers,” she grumbled to herself, picking her controller back up to exit the match. Suddenly, the communication terminal began to go off, a red light blinking above its screen as it buzzed.
Mordred groaned. It was probably another routine maintenance check for something pointless. While she considered ignoring it, the rules were clear: All Servants on standby had to respond to a direct summon.
With a dramatic sigh, she stood up, stomping over to the terminal and jabbing the accept button with more force than necessary.
The screen flickered to life, displaying the holographic image of Chaldea's resident master, Ritsuka Fujimaru. Her eyes looked a little tired with dark circles underneath them, but she still carried that same gleeful attitude she was known for.
“Hey, Mordred. Sorry to interrupt your downtime.”
“Well, consider me ‘interrupted’," Mordred complained, crossing her arms over her chest. "What’s so important that it can’t wait an hour?"
“We’ve got a situation. A small singularity popped up on our scans. Da Vinci wants a team to investigate and resolve it quickly. I’ve already called Astolfo and Ishtar. I need you to meet us in the grail casting chamber in five minutes.”
Mordred’s scowl deepened. “Ishtar? You’re kidding me. Why her?”
“Why not?” Ritsuka answered smugly, before reassuring the knight. “It'll be quick, Mordred. Please.”
“Ugghh, fine.”
“Alright, I'll see you there.” With that, the screen went dark. Mordred kicked the leg of her desk chair, sending it skidding a few inches across the floor. She grumbled a string of curses under her breath, mostly directed at a certain goddess of beauty and war, before turning and marching out of her room. The halls of the Storm Border were quiet at this hour, most staff and servants either asleep or occupied with the night shift. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead as she made her way to the central chamber.
When she pushed through the heavy doors, she found the room already occupied. Ritsuka stood near the center of the glowing blue platform, wearing her standard combat uniform. To her right, Mash Kyrielight hovered attentively beside the smaller Da Vinci, clipboard in hand. To her left were her two teammates. Astolfo bounced on the edge of his feet, his pink and white outfit almost painfully bright under the lights. He waved enthusiastically.
“Mordred! Over here! Aren't you excited? We're about to go on another adventure!”
Mordred ignored him, her gaze moving to the figure floating a few inches off the ground. Ishtar had one hand on her hip, examining her nails with an expression of profound boredom. She wore her usual gold and white top, thong, a few gold bracelets, and not much else.
“Took you long enough,” Ishtar remarked without looking up. “Honestly, thought we were going to start without you.”
“Would’ve been fine by me,” Mordred shot back, coming to a stop next to Ritsuka. “So? What’s the big emergency that needs this particular dream team?”
Ritsuka gestured to Da Vinci, who brought up a holographic display of a rotating model of Earth, notably having one point in North America pulsing with a soft light. Data streams scrolled beside it.
“About three hours ago, during our standard anomaly scan of the leylines, we detected this,” Mash began, pointing to the pulse. “A singularity has formed. Its energy signature is stable but… strange. We can’t pull any historical data from it. No era, no major events tied to its coordinates. All we know is it’s anchored in what appears to be a massive city.”
Da Vinci leaned over to chime in. Her voice was cheerful but carried an edge of professional curiosity. “The really odd part is the composition! The singularity isn’t forming around a Holy Grail or a major historical distortion we can identify. Our sensors indicate its foundation is being generated by clusters of some kind of crystalline energy source scattered throughout the area. They’re acting like corruption nodes, warping reality around them.”
“Crystals?” Ishtar tilted her head. “Like gems?”
“These readings suggest that they're more complicated than the ones you use,” Mash added, adjusting her glasses as she read from her clipboard. “The energy they emit is highly irregular. It doesn’t match any known magical spectrum in our database.”
Mordred listened, her initial annoyance giving way to mild interest. A mystery was better than some other ‘scout and retrieve’ mission. Still, she had to ask. “And why us three? You got a whole roster of heroes sitting around doing nothing.”
Ritsuka grinned, a bright, mischievous smile this time. “Honestly? I thought it would be super fun! You three haven’t worked together on a proper mission, in like, ever! And the building blocks of battle are dependent on servants working together.” She looked at each of them with sparkling eyes. “You all have your unique strengths, so I'm sure you can form some kind of strategy together! Think of it as a mandatory friendship field trip! It’s gonna be great!”
Mordred blinked, caught off guard as always by Ritsuka's enthusiasm. She puffed out her chest slightly. “Whatever.”
Ishtar finally lowered her hand and floated closer, her expression one of theatrical exasperation. “Master, really? This is all unnecessary." She gestured dismissively toward Mordred and Astolfo. “These two will only make things harder. One's a brute who solves every problem by hitting it harder, and the other is… well, Astolfo.” She turned a much warmer, almost proprietary smile toward Ritsuka. “Just leave it to me. I can handle this little Singularity myself. We’ll get it done in half the time, and then we can do something actually worthwhile with the rest of the day.”
Mordred saw red. While she initially was uninterested in the mission, the goddess awakened her competitive side. In addition, she wasn't going to let her try to steal Ritsuka all to herself. She took a step forward, her fist clenching at her side. “Excuse me? What did you just say, you pompous bitch?”
Ishtar’s eyes narrowed. “I said we don’t need dead weight. Do you have trouble comprehending basic speech, or are you too much of a barbarian to even do that?”
"Barbarian?! I'll show you a barbarian!"
Ritsuka stepped forward between them, raising her hands with a look of mock-sternness that didn’t quite hide her amusement. “Ladies, ladies. No fighting! There’s more of me to go around.” She pointed a finger between them, bouncing on her toes a little. “This bickering is exactly why we need to do this.”
The two servants continued to argue while their master tried to ease their hostility. Da Vinci and Mash were busy setting everything up so the rayshift proceeded smoothly. Astolfo, meanwhile, was watching the two groups do their thing when someone caught his eye.
“Hey, Master?” The pink-haired knight began.
“What is it, Astolfo?” Ritsuka asked, absentmindedly.
“Is the Rayshift machine supposed to be pink?”
“P-Pink?” Ritsuka repeated, confused. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked. Sure enough, the large cylindrical apparatus that typically emitted a soft blue light from its core and various interface panels was now unmistakably glowing a soft shade of pink instead.
Da Vinci frowned and immediately rushed to a nearby console, her fingers flying across the keyboard faster than any human could manage.
“That…is definitely odd,” she muttered as data flooded her screen.
Ritsuka watched Da Vinci type away while Mash followed closely behind the genius. “What’s happening?” Mash asked.
“I don’t know,” Da Vinci admitted as lines of corrupted code began scrolling upward on her monitor faster than she could read them.
Ritsuka leaned in to get a better look at the screen displaying the singularity’s energy feed.
At that exact moment, every light in the room flickered violently. A low hum built from the Rayshift chamber itself until it became an audible vibration that rattled the floor plates. Red emergency lights bathed the room in a hellish glow.
“What is going on?!” Mordred shouted.
Da Vinci continued typing until the console sparked violently in front of her before going completely dark.
"The singularity…it's connecting to our systems! It's somehow reached through our observation link!”
Before anyone could move, the pink glow from the Rayshift chamber intensified.
“Senpai! Get out of there!” Mash cried out.
Ritsuka was only able to turn back at her before the platform erupted into a blinding light that flooded out through the room. In a split second, she, along with the three servants, was engulfed by the sudden light. Then just as fast as it appeared, it disappeared. Leaving no trace of the four.
This story will be using a slightly altered version of MedycynaSensei’s ruleset for their Corruption Impact stories. I highly recommend reading the glossary and the main story connected to it, as I probably won’t go into that much detail about why certain rolls need to be rolled and whatnot. But as a basic overview of how this story will work, our heroes will progress through the various areas of the corrupted singularity to find their master. Each time they set off, an encounter roll will be done to determine what scenario the group finds themselves in, ranging from finding enemies, shops, traps, or even treasure. Two specific and rarer encounters are safe rooms, which function as a place for the party to rest, and crystals, which function as dungeons to fight a particular area’s boss.
When the party encounters an enemy, several rolls are done to determine their strength, initiative, and the possibility of stronger and lewdier enemies appearing in that particular encounter. Combat is mostly the same, with characters having a basic attack, trait, skill, ultimate (in this case, Noble Phantasm), and negative trait or demerit. Enemies will try to strip and fuck the party into submission, corrupting them until they’re defeated. The only big difference is that instead of a clothing value, characters will have an HP value that can be recovered in the middle of a fight.
Crystals will work closely like how ‘Boss Hunts’ work in the original, with the only difference I remember making being that there will be no day and night cycle, with characters being able to choose when they want to camp and rest instead.
Safe Rooms are locations that allow servants to rest, summon, and switch out their party, and possibly either purify themselves of a demerit they received during their adventures or have them fall into lewd shenanigans. Servants can be summoned with a specific material collected throughout the story. Once a servant is summoned, they’re added to the roster of servants that can enter the party, with six servants being able to go adventuring at a time. Once we have more than 6 servants, I’ll begin making polls on who will be adventuring for each chapter.
I believe that’s all I wanted to mention (likely I’m forgetting something, but who cares.) With my explanation out of the way, let's begin!