Chapter Text
Chaldea, the last fort of humanity. An organization that does its best to correct human history into the right track and to save the Proper Human History. A base that houses all kinds of humanity's greatest heroes, summoned forth by a single Master, Ritsuka Fujimaru. While far from the best magus for the job, he has an uncanny ability to unite the heroes. Some of the heroes are evil, but decide to stick around due to their attachment to their Master, and some heroes are good, who originally only responded to the summons to the emergency but stick around because of what they see on their Master. In other words, one could say that Ritsuka is the supporting pillar that holds Chaldea together.
On a day that seemed rather standard for Chaldea, Da Vinci detected an irregularity in the systems that seemed to tell that something had breached their base, took something, and quickly escaped into a singularity situated in Japan. After doing a hurried check up on what the taken thing could have been, the inventor found out a terrifying situation. Ritsuka Fujimaru, the last Master of Humanity had been taken, and the singularity he had been taken into had been slowly quarantining itself, making it impossible to rayshift into it in a few minutes. Panicked, Da Vinci grabbed the first group of servants she saw wandering in the halls of Chaldea, quickly briefed them in the situation, and managed to rayshifted them into the Singularity right before the Singularity completely sealed itself off. Which leads us to the newly rayshifted group of servants currently in an alleyway, ready to look for their missing Master.
“Urgh, why did I have to be dragged into this mess? I just wanted to fetch Lord Xiang Yu for a nice breakfast and then I got drafted into a last minute team to go save my stupid kouhai. Just great.” Yu Mei-ren, the former member of Team A and an immortal Chinese elemental, complained half-heartedly.
“Can you please stop complaining? Your lies are causing me a headache, and I want to fully focus on locating Master right now.” Kiyohime said as she rubbed the bridge of her nose. Why of all the Assassins in Chaldea, did they get the one who complained the most? Even that insufferable Kama would be motivated with Master on the line. At least they had Chiyome with them, who had already departed to scout their surroundings.
“Don't be like that Yu. You might say that, but you didn't hesitate to accompany us to save Master. Now, I think we can all agree we won't accomplish anything by staying in this alleyway, so why don't we go see what we’ll see out in the street?” said Erice. She had been walking with Chiyome, Fujino, and a reluctant Kiyohime towards the cafeteria when Da Vinci had pulled them out of the hallway for the mission.
“Agreed. The longer we stand around doing nothing, the bigger the chances of Master being in danger become.” Fujino noted in agreement.
Thus, with an agreement reached, all the girls decided to walk out of the narrow alleyway into the street. What they saw were multiple wooden buildings lining the edges of the streets, with some of them having Japanese letters on them. Most of all, the people were not dressed in modern clothes, instead they were dressed in clothing that would not look out of place during the Edo period.
“By the looks of things, it looks like we're in an old period of Japan.” noted Erice. While the passerby were confused by their attire by the looks on their faces, they for some reason didn't decide to voice their thoughts and continued on with their day.
“Who cares what period we’re in? We need to find Master.” As the other servants were about to discuss more about their situation, such thoughts were cut short when Kiyohime decided to start walking with a fast pace towards one direction, forcing her compatriots to follow her.
As the servants kept walking in their randomly chosen direction, they eventually reached a plaza. As they were taking a break to discuss what to do next, Erice noticed something above the wooden houses that surrounded the plaza.
“Hey, is that an Imperial Palace?” Said as she pointed towards the building she had spotted.
“Looks like it. What about it?” Kiyohime huffed, still disgruntled about not finding anything about their Master’s whereabouts.
“I was just wondering-”
“Finally I found you. You could have left a hint where you all went, you know?” All the servants present cast their eyes towards the direction where the familiar voice had come from. There they saw the other Assassin of their group, Chiyome.
“I was starting to wonder where you went, Chiyome. Did you find anything?” Questioned Fujino.
“...Yes. Though I don't think not all of you will like what I’m about to tell you.” Chiome said, visible fidgeting. After a moment of silence, Chiyome took that as a sign to continue and so she did.
“Good news is, I found Master and from what I gather, he is in good health. Unfortunately, it seems the one who kidnapped him has hypnotized him into believing he is the new young Emperor.” Chiyome paused her report to give the others time to process the new information.
“That… is quite bad, yeah. But we’re servants, couldn't we just storm the palace, take him back and return to Chaldea?” Yu commented.
“I don't think that would be smart. First, the enemy had enough strength to somehow travel from this singularity to Chaldea, and has planted multiple charms around the palace that detect things in Astral form, so going in Spirit Form would be more disadvantageous than going in physical form.” Chiyome said with a frown, as she had nearly set off one of those charms. Fortunately, she had avoided setting it off, hopefully.
“Then what are we supposed to do? We can't just sit around and do nothing!” Kiyohime almost yelled, but after noticing her own outburst, she started taking deep breaths to calm herself.
“Well… There is one way…” Chiyome said quietly, but loud enough for all the servants to hear.
“Well? Out with it then.” Yu asked impatiently.
“...They are currently in the process of looking for concubines for the new emperor… That might be our only option…” Chiome said with a visible blush, revealing the reason for her nervousness. The blush on her face that was quickly mirrored on some of the other servants’s faces. Multiple servants did have feelings for their Master after all, so upon hearing those words most of them suddenly found their minds wandering. All but one that is.
“Are you kidding me?! I’m not doing that! No way!” Yu was immediately against said idea. She was loyal to Xiang Yu after all. While she did care for her kouhai, it never was romantic even if she caught Ritsuka blushing sometimes around her. She blamed her revealing outfit for that.
“Don't be like that Yu, think about Masters safety!” Erice argued with her cheeks still pink from her fantasies.
“You guys can handle it yourselves! There’s no way I’m doing it!”
“You don't have to be serious about it, you know. There will most probably be some kind of qualification to it, so you can just drop out at that point.” Fujino reasoned.
“...” Yu bit her lip as she thought about it. Sure, she cared for her Master and Kouhai, but this far? Then again, just as Fujino had said she’d only need to get to the point where they could take Ritsuka back from the enemy. With a resigned sigh, Yu came to a decision. “Fine, I’ll come. But if this mission stretches further than today, I’m leaving. Understood?”
With an agreement made, all the girls departed towards the palace, but not before looking for alternative clothing. After all, everyone except Kiyohime were wearing rather unique clothing that would raise suspicion were they to try and infiltrate. After a couple hours of searching in Spirit Forms, Everyone had found a fitting kimono.
Erice had found a light blue kimono with a white sash, Yu had found a black one with an orange sash, Fujino a purple one with a red sash, and finally Chiome who found a pink one with a white sash.
All of them dressed for the part, they departed towards the palace.
As they arrived at the palace gate, they had expected lots of things. A crowd of women looking to get into an emperor's good graces, or maybe even a line of them. Yet the only people at the gate were the guards. As suspicious as this was, they had already been spotted, and thus they had no choice other than to stick to the plan. As they approached , the closest guard stopped them.
“Greetings. Might you ladies be here for the Emperor’s concubine selection?”
“Ah yes, our families heard that the young emperor was looking for concubines and decided to send us for it. Are there any problems?” Chiyome took the lead and answered the guard. They had decided she would do all the talking, as she was the only one familiar with infiltrations due to her past as a kunoichi.
“No, there are none. But-” The man put his hand in front of Chiome before she could walk further past the gates. “-the candidates are to go into the palace one by one. No exceptions.”
That threw a wrench into their plans. Chiome was scowling under her fake smile at the new situation as she tried to think of another plan. But even if she did, they couldn't discuss the plan amongst themselves as leaving and coming back would rouse further suspicion. So they had no option but to continue.
“Very well. I wish you all luck then.” Chiyome bid her companions luck as she was the first to walk past the gates and into the palace.