The Honkai Star Rail Dating Sim Event

00: Simulated Universe Gone Wrong!

I like this game a bit too much

As every single atom of his body was reconstituted at the entrance to Herta's office, Caelus couldn't help but feel just a bit lightheaded. The feeling of travelling through a Space Anchor was a bizarre one, almost as if one was floating into space and suddenly launched at superluminal velocities. It was a feeling that Caelus had gotten used to, and instead of vomiting on the Expresses' floor like the first time, he was now at least able to hold the contents of his lunch in.

This meeting at Herta's office was rather ad-hoc, with Herta rushing him to come as soon as possible. Apparently, the several members of the Genius Society wanted to test something within the Simulated Universe, and Caelus was needed to make sure these tests were as accurate as possible.

Once the door to Herta's office was open, he saw faces both familiar and unfamiliar. Placed around a round, metal table were six chairs, though only three were occupied. Asta and a seemingly inactive Herta puppet were both there, but there was also another person which he didn't recognize. He was dressed rather bizarrely, with a flashy black cape, slick backed hair and a fedora on his head.

The unfamiliar man noticed him as soon as he walked into the room. Standing up, he went up to the Trailblazer and introduced himself.

"You must be the Caelus boy that Herta was talking about" he said, amused "And a receptacle for a Stellaron nonetheless. I am Weiss Fischer, Genius Society number 85. I'm the newest member, so it's understandable if you haven't heard of me."

"Ah right, my name is-"

"Caelus is it not?" Weiss replied, cutting him off "Herta told me all about you and your help towards this little project of hers. The data you have provided has been very useful for the necessary calibrations, which we will be testing today."

"Calibrations?" Caelus asked, intrigued

"Well, as much of a marvel the Simulated Universe is, the process of how it simulates things still needs a bit of refinement. With how large of an energy output that the Universe takes up to just keep running, even an improvement ringing from 0.5 or 1 percent can drastically increase the limits of how accurately the universe can render things. We'll be simulating a small galaxy cluster, and we also removed a lot of Stephen's gameification for the time being. Essentially, we'll be monitoring the tetragametron flux rate and hoping that we can mitigate the effects of the Uncertainty Principle..."

Caelus nodded along to what Weiss said, the information going out one ear and out the other. The amount of niche, scientific lingo that Weiss spouted sounded like utter nonsense to Caelus. After a few minuites of listening to the Genius society member rant about things like "Aeonoculi", "Stellarium Biocardia" and a plethora of other headache-inducing terms, Weiss stopped and apologized.

"Sorry for the rant. Youre also the grand champion for Aetherium Wars, right? Can you teach me the basics?"

Caelus smiled

Guess geniuses didn't know everything after all.

Herta Space Station
One Hour Later

After some time having tea and chatting with Asta, Weiss and Herta, the other two members of the society that were slated to be present arrived. Shortly after the chat with Weiss, Ruan Mei and Screwllum would enter the office, and after Weiss and Ruan Mei played a match of Aetherium Wars (which Weiss barely won), he got ready to enter the Simulated Universe.

Once standing on the platform, he felt a sort of static energy surrounding him, something that had always been familiar to him during his prior attempts. He felt the energy condense, the hair on his body beginning to rise up as more and more energy was being pumped into the Simulated Universe's Entrance.

"Energy levels are stable" Screwllum confirmed "It is now safe for Caelus to be transferred into the Simulated Universe"

Caelus took a deep breath and exhaled, calming his nerves as he began to feel the floor disappear beneath him. Once again, he felt that familiar feeling, a flash of white filling his eyes as he was launched from the Space Station towards the simulated world.

Little did he know that something had gone terribly wrong

...

Fluffy

That was the first thing Caelus thought of as he opened his eyes. Much to his surprise, he was laid down on a rather fluffy bed, perfectly fitting his size. Looking around, he found himself inside a strange room. Posters were strewn across the wall for games like "Aetherium Wars" and "Honkai Impact", while a closet, a metal trash can and a rather vintage computer were also present.

After standing up to check the disappointingly empty trash can, Caelus looked out the window to see a rather primitive world before him. There were no signs of great space elevators or large multi-kilometer spacecraft in the atmosphere. This pristine world seemed untouched by any sort of spacefaring technology, a relic of the past that was once a reality for many worlds perhaps thousands of Amber Eras ago.

What interrupted his train of thought was a knock on the door and a gruff, almost familiar voice calling out to him.

"Caelus, are you awake? Your mother is looking for you."

And that was when the entire world turned grey. Time stopped around Caelus, panicking the Trailblazer as he tried to instinctively summon his lance to his side.

That... didn't work, so he tried to summon his baseball bat.

That... didn't work either.

After a few seconds of panic, Caelus heard a conspicuous "Ding" enter his ear. At the same time, he saw a pop-up within his vision, and what was shown in said popup shocked him

"Congratulations, you have become the protagonist!"

Caelus had only one thought on his mind

"What... the fuck?"

Herta Space Station

Fifteen seconds

That was the amount of time Herta Space Station's power was out for, disabling everything from lights to artificial gravity generators. For fifteen seconds, all of the people in the station suddenly felt weightless, as the singularity reactor in the Station's core sputtered out with all the backup power being consumed.

And just as abruptly as the reactor stopped, it once again spooled back to power, causing the artificial gravity generators to power on. In an instant, hundreds of people were slammed towards the space station's floor, with injuries ranging from light bruises to broken bones.

After recovering from the sudden jolt, Herta looked at the entrance to the Simulated Universe, expecting the device's safeties to have kicked in and booted him out of the Simulated Universe.

Except... he wasn't there.

Before anyone else could recover from the turbulence, Herta sprinted towards the Simulated Universe's control panel, and inputted her acess codes. To her horror, instead of letting her interface with the machine, the panel displayed a red, menacing pop up.

[YOU CAN NO LONGER ACESS THE SIMULATED UNIVERSE]

A/N: This started out as a funny event proposition that I had in my head, but I decided that I wanted to write something based on it because I would find it fun. This story is heavily inspired by Fate Grand Eroge by SpatialPheonix, so if you want to read peak FGO fanfiction, go read that. Uploads pretty slow, but its a banger.

As for pairings, that is pretty up in the air right now. I do have an overarching plot in mind, and Dan/March will feature heavily in the story, but as for who I'm pairing with Caelus, I'm not really sure just yet. Ive been having some thoughts about Caelus/Seele, but if you guys have other suggestions, feel free to let me know.

i also havent written in a while, so forgive me if this is a bit basic

Anyways, have a nice day. Or night, or afternoon. Whatever floats your boat.

-twocubed