Chapter Text
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the setting of F/GO the game and the extended Nasu-verse beyond it.
The concept for this story is love and the expression thereof . There’s no real shipping here. The love here is platonic. But if you like, I think you can read it as KarnaGuda shipping.
A Master's Guide to Rehabilitating Self-Destructive Muffins
1.
Karna, Hero of Charity, sweet and dependable as cinnamon rolls, can-do-no-wrong Karna… has been streaking around butt-naked everywhere in Chaldea.
This is the startling discovery awaiting Ritsuka Fujimaru in the aftermath of Saṃsāra of Genesis and Terminus, Yuga Kshetra. The Lancer wears nothing but the skin in which he was born and little pieces of divine armor grafted to it. Worse, this is not a recent development. As a matter of fact, that has been the only thing he has ever had on ever since he came to Chaldea a little over a year and a half ago, hot on the heels of the fifth singularity in 1783 North America, where Ritsuka had first met him alongside Edison and Helena Blavatsky. And Ritsuka has not even the barest of ideas until now.
In other words, her dear friend, trusty servant, and the person who gave himself up twice for her in the Indian Lostbelt has been living more or less as a pauper while she’s just next door in her cozy, blissful obliviousness.
It goes without saying that this cannot stand.
“I don’t understand, Master.” Karna stands in the middle of the hallway on the way to the combat training simulation room where Ritsuka has found and cornered him, perplexed as he eyes the clothes pushed more or less in his face.
“You… Karna! You… the… your… You barely have any… any clothes on! ” Ritsuka blushes furiously. It would be one thing if she didn’t know, quite another now that she does. She tries to look anywhere but the very, very conspicuous golden speedo that she had, prior to this day, taken for his armor. A codpiece, like the ones found on medieval knights. It technically is… and it likely would have bothered her a little less if it weren’t so… so… skintight! As it is, it is practically grafted into his body like a particularly uncomfortable and highly impractical variation of body paint. There’s almost no width difference between the gold part and the black parts… which she has been told is Karna’s skin itself, only dyed black as a manifestation to the curses that ended his life. Really, not to be untowards but does Little Karna even have room to breathe in there?! Doesn’t it get uncomfortable? Isn’t it… cold?!!
“I don’t see why this is a problem. Many of the female servants wear even less than I. It certainly does not impede their prowess as warriors and heroes in their own right.”
Right… because you heroic spirits are all levels of ridiculousness that living humans can never aspire to! Who rides into battle in nothing but a bikini and some furboots, and ride your enemy soldiers to death? And then get immortalized in it! Ridiculous! That’s who! But they aren’t here to discuss the practicality of fashionable skimpy wear on the battlefield. This is about Karna! And his lack of a choice in the matter!
“Tha-that’s not the point!”
“Then what is the point?” The Lancer looks at Ritsuka quizzically before a muted, dawning look appears on his face. “Ah… I see. I have made you uncomfortable by baring my body unnecessarily. Humans of this age simply don’t do that. My apology.”
He takes the clothes from her hands and in a flash of more servant ridiculousness, puts them on before Ritsuka can even blink. A set of pants and a shirt. Nothing fancy. They are spare stocks for Chaldea employees sitting unused in the backrooms. Whoever designed the specifications for these uniforms had not spared at cost. It is made of quality Egyptian cotton-fiber mix infused with protective and temperature-regulating magecraft.
…It looks absolutely ridiculous on Karna.
Karna lifts one hand. The fabric stretches across the length of his arm and hangs limply off of his shoulders. At once, too short and too big on his uncomfortably lean physics. The pants are even worse.
“I’m concerned these will not hold up to my usual training regiment. But worry not, Master, I shall endeavor to preserve these to the best of my ability. Failing that, I will try not to discomfort you with my bare body.”
“Th-That’s not what I meant!” Arghh! Maybe grabbing the first set of free clothes on the way isn’t the best idea for what Ritsuka’s trying to achieve. She blames the hot, crippling wave of mortification that crashed into her and almost bowled her over once she realized… how terrible a friend and a master she has been to Karna all this time.
Servants are often larger-than-life figures. For all that they come from all stripes and walks of life, this is the common point among them all. Drama and trouble often go hand in hand with such figures. Ritsuka still has the battle scars from that one time Young Medea wanted to bake pancakes… using Demon God Pillars as the star ingredient… or that other time Semiramis wanted to prove her chocolate lady mettle by creating an entire chocolate dimension populated with questionably sentient chocolate critters and people that had to be put down and… eaten… for the entire dimension to go away. That mountain-sized chocolate Maha Naga gave Ritsuka indigestion that lasted an entire week. The conclusion? Much as she loves her servants and is grateful for their support, they can be a headache at times.
But Karna, sweet Karna. Always so dependable, so stable and steadfast. Always trying to help. Never to give her extra trouble to contend with. If Arjuna is not in the picture, he can be counted on to hold up the skies. And even if Arjuna is in the mix somehow, he will still hold up the collapsing skies. There will just be a tiny bit more laser beam eyes in the mix. Totally understandable in Ritsuka’s book! What’s a bit of boisterous sibling rivalry?
But… but… but… this is something else! How was she to expect that he was sitting on something like this the entire time?!!
But no! What kind of excuse is that? Ritsuka is the Master. She’s the last Master of Humanity! It’s her job to make sure each and every one of her servants is taken care of and has everything they could possibly want! Yes, she knows that kind of indulgent philosophy is the kind that leads to pancakes that moan with the suffering of a thousand tortured souls and Chaldean hallways flooded to the roof with mysteriously sentient chocolate beings and maybe, just maybe possibly the chance that Ritsuka might have committed something like genocide of sentient chocolate-kind and she doesn’t want to think too hard about it! But they are at World’s End! Damn it! And her servants work hard! So they absolutely deserve all the love and care she can possibly give them! It totally has nothing to do with Ritsuka’s burgeoning, maternal-instinct-fueled fantasy of running a massive nursery where she gets to take care of all her cutie patootie servants like the little babies they are! Nope! Not at all!
“What I mean is… is…” Ritsuka fidgets while staring at the holes around Karna’s knees, where the spikes of his armor are poking through. Yeah. The uniform is a really bad idea huh? “You have so... so little. I never realized it until now and… I’m a horrible master and.. I really should have realized this a whole lot sooner. I am not making excuses for myself! What I’m saying is I’m going to fix this! Yes! I will fix it!”
For a second, Karna seems somewhat taken aback by her declaration. Shaking his head, he says. “You are wrong, Master. I have everything I could possibly need. No servant could have asked for more than you have already given. I am rich with your care. You need to fix nothing because there is nothing to fix.”
“Karna!” Ritsuka exclaims, exasperated. A man running around in nothing but a speedo that he has worn all his life and some metal spikes shouldn’t be allowed to speak on matters of wealth!
“Master!” replies Karna in kind, eyes shining in excitement at the sudden episode of emotional bellowing of each other’s names. He usually only gets to do this with Arjuna and so is eager to try it out with someone else.
“Karna!” Yells Ritsuka again, hoping the exasperation in her voice punches through Lancer’s steel-plated obliviousness.
“Master!” It clearly doesn’t, because the Lancer’s obliviousness is not plated with steel but Orichalcum!
“Karna!” Maybe if she puts up both hands he will finally see how serious she is and it will get the message through?
“Master!” And now they are clapping double hands while standing in the hallways like two street hawkers from competing shops.
“Arghh!!” says Ritsuka calmly as she contemplates the chance of making the stubborn Lancer heed her words. Arriving at the foregone conclusion that no, there is no chance this one is listening once he has made up his mind, she thus contemplates alternative battle plans. If her words won’t win the day, then evidently, her actions will have to do.
“Fine! I see that you won’t listen to reason! So then… I shall have to convince you… with my actions!!” Evidently, this course of action is the correct one, because at once Lancer perks up to full attention, his eyes glittering in preparation for emitting heroic beams, and his spear manifests in a shower of sparks.
“I’m still not sure what it is you are trying to make me see, but my honor as a warrior and my respect for you will not allow me to take your challenge with anything but the utmost regards! I await to be convinced by you, Master! Our battle shall be glorious! Convince away!”
Notes: Happy New Year! Currently, I'm down with a bout of flu. I suspect it might be COVID-19, but I can't be bothered to get tested out because it's not like I get a day off of work even if I do. I'm not feeling too hot and I really should be putting more work on either Travelogue chapter 6 (now with illustration!!!) or Lies and his wife Truth chapter 2 (with a NSFW illustration in the works that won't see the light for a while yet because that XXX scene is far away down the plot line), but this story needs to get out. I came up with the idea for this semi-crack story literally 2 years ago, even had an illustration commissioned for it, and had another illustration gifted to me by my friend Erimies. And then, I proceeded to sit on it for two years without doing anything.
The story idea languished in the chat box between I and Erimies until the other day, Erimies realizes that if we didn't save it or do anything with it, it would be lost to Whatsapp arbitrary data purge like a whole bunch of other story ideas that my dumb ass came up but was too lazy to note down and the only thing I did with them was entertained and ranted them at her.
So here we are.
...Yeah...
Next chapter soon. Probably within the week. Probably.