A/N: What the hell, it's 4/13 somewhere.

Duelist Foundation

A message to Command

The worst-case scenario has indeed come to pass. Rifts are spreading across the universes faster than we imagined. Tell Home Base to dispatch all available agents at once.

The Omniverse Event is under way.

Prologue: April 13th, 2016

April 13th, 2016
17 hours after initial manifestation of rifts

O5-8 had lived through a lot of bad days, even by Foundation standards. He'd seen the scientists lead D-Class subjects to their deaths just to shift the destination of SCP-120. He'd seen containment breaches which left hundreds dead, and heard the last words of technicians to their families before detonating on-site nukes to destroy an escaping SCP. He remembered his horror upon first reading the details about what was growing inside SCP-231, and his further horror at the nightmarish procedure the Foundation had created to prevent its birth. He vividly remembered the day he'd been on-site when SCP-682 had escaped from containment; it had been subdued within an hour, but it had been the most horrifying and visceral hour of his life, one which still occasionally haunted him at night.

But listening to the reports pouring in from all over the world, even he had to admit that neither he nor the Foundation as a whole had ever seen a day quite this bad.

"For the last time, the Council doesn't know where these anomalies are coming from!" he shouted into the phone. He was currently on a call with the director of Site-76, who was screaming at him about "vanishing skips" and "country in danger". As if the O5 Council didn't know that the country- hell, the entire world- was in potentially unimaginable danger.

Beside him, O5-11 was speaking into his own phone. He was the youngest member of the council, having been promoted to his seat just seven weeks previously. He had never seen a crisis on this scale before. No one had ever seen a crisis on this scale before. "I don't care about the goddamn duck pond!" he yelled to the person on the other end. "At this point our priority is Keter-class objects: 682, 076, 239, 106, the ones which can and will level cities or destroy the world without active attention. Secure those first and look for the others later."

O5-3 entered the room. She was a reasonably attractive middle-aged woman with brown hair that was graying just a little. She was normally the most collected member of the council, but in times like the ones they were now experiencing, no one could hope to stay completely calm. Indeed, her hair was untidy and there were lines under her eyes from the stress of recent activities.

"Has the Administrator been contacted?" she asked.

"We're trying right now," said O5-11. "Although I can't imagine one man is going to be much help, seeing as the entire O5 council can't do anything."

"You clearly aren't familiar with the Administrator," said O5-3 with a sly smile.

On the phone, O5-8 was becoming increasingly frustrated. "What do you MEAN you've lost 169?!" he exclaimed; he had now apparently transferred to a different call. "The thing is 4000 miles long! There are only so many places it can be!"

"Oh, on the contrary," said a new voice, "I believe there are an infinite number of places it can be."

All three of the council members whipped around to look at the source of the new voice. Standing in the door to the council room were two people. One was a man who appeared to be in his late thirties, with untidy black hair that was already graying slightly and carrying a steel briefcase; the other was a younger woman with shoulder-length brown hair and wearing the standard uniform issued to field agents.

"Who the hell are you?" snapped O5-8, slamming down the phone unceremoniously. He reached toward the button to alert security while simultaneously reaching into his suit to seize the revolver he kept on his person at all times.

"It's alright," said another new voice, "they're with me."

Into the room walked a new figure: a man in his 60's with graying hair and a look which could best be described as a perpetual sigh. This was O5-13, often referred to as "the oldest and least necessary member of the council". O5-13, though a full member of the council, had few official responsibilities beyond those standard to a Level 5 officer; his primary role on the council was to be the tiebreaker vote in matters which required the full consent of the O5 Council.

"This," said O5-13, gesturing to the man, "is Doctor Allan Hall. He's a research director at Site-62 and the Foundation's foremost specialist on extra-dimensional activity. The woman is Agent Felicia Williams; during her time in the field she's handled more missions involving SCPs with dimension-altering properties than any other surviving agent. They're here because Dr. Hall claims to have an idea about what's been going on, and he has a plan of how to respond."

That got everyone's attention. O5-8 turned to look at Dr. Hall, completely ignoring the fact that the phone was ringing yet again.

Hall shifted uncomfortably. "I was informed I would be giving this report in front of the entire O5 Council," he said. "I think it's really something we need full Foundation commitment for..."

"You can give the full report when the others get here," said O5-8. "For now, just give us a brief summary of your findings."

"Alright," said Hall, straightening his tie. "As you know, over the last 24 hours or so, SCPs all over the world have been vanishing into what appear to be rifts in space. They appear near a skip, suck it and anything else nearby in, and then vanish without a trace. So far there has been no correlation in terms of security level, numerical order, or any other pattern. It's as if something is targeting SCPs specifically, but in a random order."

"We know all this," interjected O5-11. "What do you think is the cause of all this?"

"Well," said Hall, "I can't confirm or deny a specific cause, but what I believe is happening is that the skips are being transported into another universe."

At another organization, such a suggestion would have been met with mockery, wild skepticism, or at the very least some raised eyebrows. Not at the Foundation. The O5s and the other members of their organization dealt with the strange and impossible every single day. They'd seen statues that moved and lizards that wouldn't die and a lake of blood that spawned unimaginable horrors. So the idea that the items they kept locked up were being sucked into a parallel universe elicited no significant reaction beyond a comment of "Go on" from O5-3.

Hall quickly placed his briefcase down on the conference table. He opened it to reveal a cluttered array of papers that he had apparently printed out: research from previous Foundation scientists, data charts, files on other SCPs, even some old newspaper articles. Most of the data was incomprehensible to the present O5s, but they figured Hall would explain it soon enough. He placed several of these papers onto the table.

"You see," said Hall, "about three hours before the first rifts were officially reported, I started getting a signal on my equipment, which is normally used to monitor the activity of SCP-579, which is of course my primary responsibility. But not only was there no unusual activity from 579, but the signal was different. Instead of being a strong signal from a single point, it was a weak signal that seemed to have been somehow extrapolated across the face of the planet. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but once the rifts started appearing I knew there had to be a connection. I quickly ran the numbers, and sure enough, the energy that the rifts spat out when they appeared didn't match the frequencies of any known energy in the universe, anomalous or otherwise. Thus, the only explanation is that it's going into another universe."

"And do you have any idea who's taking them?" asked O5-11. "Are there any GOIs we know of with the capability of doing something like this?"

"Not that I'm aware of," said O5-8. "And I highly doubt Dr. Hall here knows of any that we don't."

"In any event," said Hall, wisely choosing to just skip right over the insult, "I don't think the SCPs are being 'taken' at all- at least, not deliberately. If I had to guess, I'd say that some sort of cataclysmic event has created cracks in the borders which divide this universe from others, and now the skips are sort of...bleeding through into the other world. If someone wanted to use the SCPs as a weapon, they would take the Keters first. This isn't an attack; this is an inter-universal natural disaster."

"Then why only skips?" challenged O5-8. "Why aren't rifts opening up in public places? It has to be targeting us!"

"You don't understand," insisted Hall. "When I said the signal was coming from all over the planet, I meant it. These rifts that we're seeing are just the points where the walls are weakest. The real instability is surrounding the entire planet. As for why the SCPs are slipping through, I can't say for sure, but I think it's because of their anomalous nature. For now the rifts are relatively weak, tugging gently at our universe. And of course the things that will slip through first are the anomalies, the things that break our laws of physics, that don't really seem like they belong in our world anyway. They're not as fixed in our universe as we are, so they're all just...sliding out."

"For now?" asked O5-3. "You think that the rifts will continue coming after it takes all the SCPs?"

"Almost certainly," said Hall. "If my calculations are correct- and they almost always are- within a few days seventy percent of all currently contained items will have been sucked through. Around that time we'll start to notice rifts appearing in places with no known anomalies. The rate of materializations will accelerate, until before long we'll reach the point where there will always be at least one active. And then at least two active. Then four, then ten, then fifty, then a thousand, until finally they tear the whole planet to shreds."

"So what you're saying," said O5-3, "is that we're looking at..."

"The end of the world," finished Hall somberly. "XK at the very least; possibly up to ZK or even beyond that, depending on whether other universes are experiencing the same thing."

There was a moment of dead silence as everyone took in the meaning of this.

"You say that you have a plan to stop it?" confirmed O5-11.

"Indeed," said Hall, quickly grabbing some more pages from the briefcase. "I haven't fully refined the details, but I believe I have worked out a rough schematic for a device which can stabilize one of the rifts, converting it into a fixed gateway, a kind of portal between the two universes."

"And you say you came up with this in the last seventeen hours?" said O5-8 suspiciously.

"I work well under pressure," said Hall. "Besides, I came up with an initial prototype some time ago as part of a proposed plan to investigate 403; fortunately I came to my senses and never suggested the plan. I never expected to have such a large-scale use for the device. Anyway, once this gateway has been established, I propose leading a team through to the other universe...once it's been proven safe, of course. Then, provided my team is granted access to certain...assets which I believe to have been reverse-engineered from SCP-2003 and 317, we should be able to begin the search for these missing anomalies. With a bit of luck, we may even be able to find the source of the rifts and figure out how to reverse it."

"You're out of your damn mind if you think we're giving you that technology on faith!" snapped O5-8.

"It is an awfully large leap," admitted O5-3. "This theory of SCPs leaking into another universe is all well and good, but until we have some definitive proof of your theory, I don't think it wise to commit resources, human or otherwise, to your project."

"We don't have time to wait for proof!" shouted Hall, completely forgetting that he was talking to three of the thirteen most powerful people on Earth. "These rifts are appearing at an accelerating rate, and more often than not when they suck in one skip, they let loose several more. We have containment breaches on an undocumented scale. I've read the files on the Ganymede Protocol, and it looks like we're mere hours from having to activate it. Is that what you want? What happens in a few minutes, or a few hours, when a rift snatches up a harmless Safe-Class object and lets out 682, or 076, or some other Keter with massive destructive capabilities? What happens if one damages 319 or 2700, or puts 239 in a bad mood?"

"We're not going to let one man decide the actions of the entire Foundation!" roared O5-8.

"In a few days, there might not be a Foundation anymore!" Hall roared back.

The phone rang again. O5-11 answered it, as O5-8 and 3 were too busy arguing with Hall to answer. As he listened to the person on the other end, his face paled. He turned to the rest of the group.

"There was a rift at Site-19," he said. "It sucked up 131, but dozens more got loose from the force of the rift opening. They're experiencing a containment breach like we've never seen before. At this point it's not clear how many got loose, but it looks to be a whole damn lot, Keters included."

The room was deathly silent. Hall's emotions seemed to be torn between the same horror as everyone else and a kind of grim smugness at his point being proven.

O5-8 turned slowly towards Hall. All the suspicion was gone from his face. Replacing it was a hollow look: horror mixed with desperation, all buried under a mask of forced tranquility.

"The rest of the Council is on its way here," he said. "When they arrive, we'll decide how best to act on your information...and your proposal."

Hall nodded. He had to force himself not to smile, sensing it would be inappropriate for the situation. It was time to put the plan into action. Today, the Foundation made its presence in the Omniverse known.

A/N: You have no idea how many times that chapter title changed.

So. Many. Times.

Anyway, welcome one and all to the debut of my new story, Duelist Foundation! This story is part of The Omniverse Event, a multi-writer crossover anyone can take part in; check my profile for information on how to participate. Next episode we'll start to see the other side of this crossover and the true nature of the story will start to unfold! Sadly I wasn't able to get those other two chapters ready in time for release. But hey, really, how often does that happen anyway? I think a streak of three multi-part releases is enough. (Yes, three; I didn't actually realize this when I started, but Calvin's Quest ALSO released its first two chapters on the same day. Life is awesome sometimes.) I'm currently still reeling about Homestuck Act 7, so it might be a little while before the series updates; but when it does, I think you'll agree it will have been, as Gabe Newell would say, "worth the wait".

Oh, and did I mention to brace for plenty of pop culture inspired cards? Because that's probably going to be a thing that happens, partly to further the "multiversal collision" theme and partly because I'm too lazy to come up with original card designs for two ongoing stories.