Chapter Text
For the better part of the past year, the Fatui skirmishers under command of Lord Dottore were attempting to break into the barrier surrounding the Mikage furnace. If they knew what they would find on the other side, they would have deserted, because even the Tsaritsa could hardly be as unmerciful as the twin gods residing in the ruins of Tatarasuna.
The two siblings, formerly known as the Balladeer and the Raiden Shogun, were regaining their strength. Scaramouche had fought Ei, died, come back to life, returned with an army of Primal Constructs, discovered the Shogun was sentient, convinced her to abandon her creator, and tried to commit suicide by stabbing himself with Musou Isshin and insulting Ei with everything he had. He had failed, been revived by his new sister, drained the archon residue out of a green-haired girl who was impaled by one of the Primal Constructs falling from the sky (who survived, or so he hoped) and the new sibling duo had fled to Inazuma, where they were now biding their time.
(They had also ran into the Guuji Yae, who herself was weakened after coming into conflict with the Dendro Archon.)
On that night, lightning crashed, splitting open the sky above the Sacred Sakura. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, seeing that every single individual connected to the element of Electro was in a stormy mood that night. Scaramouche was clinging to life with spite and a dream. The Shogun was very uncomfortable. And Yae Miko was grasping her tightly, as if, like an actual lightning bolt, she would disappear in the next instant, and leave devastation in her wake.
“Ei… you’re back. I missed you so much.”
To the two puppets, who had ever seen the cold hearted, practical side of the Youkai, this was unnerving. Scaramouche quietly crawled over to the Sacred Sakura’s roots, though, if he looked back, his sister’s eyes would be pleading at him to get her out of that situation.
“I don’t know what happened with these archons swapping places, but it wreaked havoc on all of us. It’s good to have you back. Inazuma needs it’s true leader.”
The Shogun opened her mouth, but couldn’t find the words to say. Instead, Scaramouche, slowly purifying himself of the archon residue, began to laugh. It started out as a chuckle, but it gradually built in intensity and madness, until he was howling at the storm clouds in false mirth. That was the one thing that got Yae Miko to drop her hands from the puppet and to turn and face the former Harbinger.
“What are you laughing at?” She asked, venom in her voice. Rain pelted the three of them, as though the gods above were crying at this divine tragedy of almost-godly figures.
“I can’t believe the bitch has people who love her,” Scaramouche said. “Isn’t that hilarious? Alas, you’ve got the wrong girl. This one doesn’t seem to share your affections.”
Yae Miko looked back. The Shogun rubbed her own arm after moving a safe distance.
“Bring her out,” Yae commanded. The Shogun averted her eyes away from the mental pressure. “Bring her out!”
“I cannot enact that protocol at this time.” Now that she had spoken, the subtle difference between the Shogun and Ei became apparent.
“Why not, you stupid piece of junk?”
“Hey!” Scaramouche, weak as he was, pulled himself upright, though he still leaned against the Sacred Sakura. “That’s my sister you’re talking to!”
“The One Within has been left behind. In Sumeru. City. I do not currently have access to the Plane of Euthymia.” The Shogun answered.
Yae Miko stared, her eyes hollow, at the Shogun, who seemed to wilt beneath that unadulterated hatred. “Get out,” she said, coolly.
“I would like nothing more. Unfortunately, we require the use of this tree in order to recharge our Divine Energy, so to speak,” Scaramouche said snidely.
“Do you think I would allow two half-baked failures to leech the Divine Energy off of the Sacred Sakura entrusted to my care by the Electro Archon herself?”
“Yeah.” Scaramouche put on a brave face. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure that he could take down a five-tailed fox. The Shogun was drained as well. However, Yae Miko looked just about as tired as the two of them- like she hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in the past month. He would have to stake everything on this next bet.
“You’ve been weakened as well, haven’t you? We’re all at our lowest,” Scaramouche said. “There’s no guarantee who will leave this place alive, and I don’t think any of us want to die.”
Yae glared at him.
“We don’t want to be a bother,” the Shogun said. “We just want to go home.”
“And where is that?” Yae asked coldly.
“…”
“Please stop using generic sentences from your word bank, sister,” Scaramouche said. “We just need to regain our power.”
“And what will you do then?” Yae asked.
“Whatever we want,” Scaramouche replied, grinning.
“Could you kill an archon?”
“At full strength… and if you give us the Gnosis.” Scaramouche said. “Relax, I’m not after it yet.”
“I’m willing to trade for it,” Yae Miko said. “I want two things. I want the Musou Isshin.”
“Sure, we’ll return your girlfriend to you. Once we’re strong enough, that is,” Scaramouche replied.
“I want you two to visit Sangonomiya Kokomi and get her to continue fighting. I’ve heard that they plan on stopping their advance at Yashiori, now that they’ve retaken Orobashi’s corpse. Do what you have to, and make them continue,” Yae said.
“Wow, petty much?” Yae glared at him. “Sure, sure. Since you’re being so open today, I’ll do it.”
“In that case,” Yae Miko said. “Your sickening faces will be allowed to reside at the Sakura for one night only. I expect you to be gone in the morning.”
“I wouldn’t want to be there to see your face anyways,” Scaramouche said. “Let’s recharge now.”
“Yes, brother,” the Shogun replied.
The rain didn’t let up, but Yae Miko did, returning to the main shrine. As for the Raiden siblings, they sat by the Sacred Sakura, gaining the strength to flee to Tatarasuna.
“Brother, what was that about?” The Shogun asked.
Scaramouche closed his eyes. “The old fox is a wily one. She doesn’t normally allow her true objective to be seen until the end. Well, tonight she was obviously shaken up when she saw you.”
“I didn’t like it,” The Shogun said. “She felt… weird.”
“Because she’s slimy,” Scaramouche lazily said. “With someone like that, you can never let your guard down. You can never be predictable. Believing her words will lead you astray, but refusing to follow what seems like a rational suggestion will get you in trouble as well.”
“So.., we’re going to do what she asked?” The Shogun asked.
“At first.” Scaramouche slumped down further against the tree. “Once you’ve stepped into her schema, you’ve already lost. She doesn’t have our best interests at heart- the smartest thing to do is disengage. She has the Gnosis, though. I’d very much like that. So we’ll play along for now. I think I know what her endgame is, but I need to make sure. When we discover her win condition, then we can figure out how to make her lose.”
“Why do you want the Gnosis?”
“It’s a long story.” Scaramouche said. The Shogun waited expectantly for him to start telling it, but then realized that he wasn’t actually going to. The two shifted into an awkward silence as they waited for day to break.
In the morning, when Yae Miko woke up, the two godlings were gone- but it was clear that they had all but torn up the shrine in an attempt to find the hidden Gnosis. She could almost hear Scaramouche going "it's worth a shot" before kicking down all the doors, even though she had been lost in a nightmare at the time he would have done so.
Though her shrine maidens were horrified at this act, she redirected their attention towards rebuilding, and made sure that no news of this incident would reach their archon, Lesser Lord Kusanali.
---
Tatarasuna was a dead zone. At one point, it had been bustling with life and industry, the crown jewel of Inazuma. It was the engine that fueled the war machine of the Shogunate, the beating heart from which all metal flowed. Now it was uninhabitable, and electricity quickly killed anyone who tried to enter without the protection of electrograna.
The puppet formerly known as the Raiden Shogun was picking out various scraps of cloth for which to form new clothes from. After the events of the Sumeru City Incident, the two’s clothes had been torn up, and would fall apart soon. Thus, with Scaramouche’s limited knowledge of sewing and (more importantly) their shared ability to bend nails into knots, they were preparing new cloaks.
The Shogun picked up a piece of a kimono with sakura blossoms on it. She turned it over in her hands, feeling the silky material run through her fingers like water. Scaramouche saw it, frowned, and tossed it out.
“Why did you do that?” She asked.
“It reminds me of the fox,” he replied.
Purple light shone through the broken windows of the cabin that they were scavenging in, forming rays as it reflected off of the particles of dust lazily swirling through the air. Scaramouche and the Shogun were kneeling on the floor as he picked up another piece of brown tarp.
“She wanted to kill me when I was born,” Scaramouche said. “I will return the favor.”
“You will try to kill her?”
Scaramouche, taken aback, couldn’t help put let out a short, barking laugh. “Ha, I suppose so. I forgot how literally you take things.”
“Hmm,” the Shogun hummed, not really getting it.
“Well, what should we do first?” Scaramouche asked. “After we build our new costumes, shall we retake Inazuma? Invade Snezhnaya? Maybe traipse about in Liyue, or lord it over Sumeru?”
“I don’t want to go back to Sumeru,” the Shogun said, shuddering a bit. “The one who is no longer within is there.”
“Right.” Scaramouche said. “Let’s avoid Liyue, too. Inazuma it is?”
“Yes. Inazuma is familiar.”
“Got it.” Scaramouche picked up another scrap of cloth he was satisfied with, and bent a nail into shape to bind it to another. Now, his cloak was nearly complete. While it was a shame his vest was terribly tattered, it was completely invisible underneath his patchwork cloak. He planned to add a ring of metal scraps around his shoulders, to continue to maintain his original horizontal “get off me” zone.
“Hey, Sis.” Scaramouche waved her over. He plopped his hat onto her head.
“What’s this? It restricts my vision.”
“Don’t be a baby, it’s a hat. You’re way too recognizable, even in that cloak. We’ll need to cover your face and hair, too. That means I’ll have to go up to the furnace and fashion a mask for you.”
“What about you?”
“I’m not famous, I’m a spy. Only some Fatui would recognize me, and if they do, fuck em, we’ll just kill them before they can report back. Now, it’s a shame that the Adventurer’s Guild is an arm of the Fatui, but there’s ways to get around Sandrone’s Katherynes.” Scaramouche said, deep in thought.
“Why do you want to use the Adventurer’s Guild?”
“You can get most things by threatening people, but a lot of the time, it’s faster if you have money. Inazuma’s dirt poor, frankly. But it does have enough money to buy a bunch of large sacks.”
“Large sacks?” The Shogun’s face scrunched in confusion.
“Yeah, to hold lots of mora. We’re going to be robbing the Northland Bank. Because fuck Pantalone.” Scaramouche smiled.
Lightning crashed outside of the cabin again, and their power levels jumped once more as they absorbed the energy from the furnace.
“What was she like?” The Shogun asked.
“Who?”
“Our mother.”
“Don't call her that.” Scaramouche’s voice was bitter.
“Why not? If you are my brother, then it follows that she would be both of our mothers,” the Shogun said.
“Let's get one thing straight. I'm not your brother because we were made by the same person. You're my sister because I chose you. If it weren't for that, we'd be nothing to each other.” Scaramouche fussed over her cloak, pinning one fold and straightening a different crease to bring the lumpy fabric into something resembling a more even consistency.
“...Plausible,” The Shogun said. “I will accept this explanation.”
“Y’know, I get why Ei didn't give you a brain.”
“I have a logic processor. I am able to create thoughts.”
“Oh, no, it's a song.”
“Can you sing it.” Scaramouche looked over at the Shogun’s eyes, and was it the lighting of Tatarasuna, or were they actually sparkling like a wet puppy’s?
“Fine. But I'm only doing it once.”
“I am listening.”
Scaramouche took a breath, cleared his throat. He hummed the first note to orient himself, then, satisfied, he straightened his posture.
“Mama always said, if you had a brain you'd be dangerous, a brain you'd be dangerous (Mama could be wrong)”
“Mama I'm’a grow one day to be famous, and I'ma be a pain in the anus (Mama here I go)”
“I'mma use this head as a weapon, find a way to escape this insaneness.”
“Son, if you had a brain you'd be dangerous, guess it pays to be brainless.”
“Wow. What does it mean?”
“I don't know, are songs supposed to mean something? Humans just create random combinations of lyrics and notes to make some tune to memorize. It's not that deep,” Scaramouche said, though his voice cracked slightly on the word “that”.
“Hm. I was under the impression that it was something important to them,” the Shogun said.
“Here's your first lesson of the day, sister. Humans care about many things. Most of them are useless. Ideals. Friendship. Songs. Don't let yourself be fooled. It's all a game of pretend.”
With that, Scaramouche finished patting and fussing with her cloak.
“You look unrecognizable. All you need is to cut off that braid of yours.”
“Like this?” The Shogun asked, dragging her spear in a wild swinging motion behind her head. It caught the braid at an odd angle and lopped most of it off, leaving the ends frayed.
“Maybe not quite like that, no.”
“Oops.”
“It's okay. We can make it work,” Scaramouche said. “How are you feeling?”
“Weaker.”
“Liberated?”
“If by liberated you mean disconnected from my source of power, then yes.”
“That'll be an issue for us. We need to find a new source of power for you. I don't know if Ei made you to self-sustain or if you won't function without some source of electro plugged in. All the more reason for the Gnosis.”
“Right.”
“We'll go over to Watatsumi tomorrow. Right now, we have to play the game Yae set for us, and that means getting them to continue their war with Narukami.”
“Yes.”
“If you're bored by me talking at you, you can say that. You can have your own opinions, if you want.”
“I appreciate it, brother. But it causes no strain on me to listen to you speak.”
“Is that so?” Scaramouche turned away from her. “I couldn't ask for a better underling.”
“I can still hear you.”
“Good!” He said. “Maybe one day you'll stand up for yourself when you hear something like that!”
The Shogun was silent. She wasn't used to forming her own opinions or even being denigrated. There was that one Fatui, but other than her, everyone cowered in her presence.
(Not hers, her creator's, who had earned the reputation the Shogun took advantage of.)
Was there any future disconnected from this face, from this life she had sleepwalked through for the past four hundred and eighty three years? It was possible, but it might take a hundred years or even longer to do so.
As the sun came up, she still hadn't answered the question tumbling around her processors, but Scaramouche was quick to snap her out of it, with a roughly-worded “get up and get ready, foolish airheaded sister” to get her in full gear before they prepared for getting to Watatsumi island.
While they could swim, it was largely inconvenient for them to do, and it was far better to hitch a ride on a boat, but lacking in mora as they were, the next best option was to hijack one, which meant waiting out of sight as a waverider approached the western shore of Yashiori. It appeared to be some sort of civilian vessel, seeing as it did not don the Watatsumi revolution flag.
Scaramouche signaled to the Shogun to keep low and keep approaching. Electricity crackled softly in his arm as the handle of a katana began to emerge from his left wrist, and he grasped it tightly with his right hand.
In his stealth crawl-walk, he continued through the grass, with the Shogun crawling along the grass with her polearm behind him.
Two men stepped off the boat, stretching their arms after the cramped ride. One of them was wiry and thin, the other pudgy.
Scaramouche pointed at the closer one- the fat one, then to the Shogun, then at the further one and himself. He split off from the path he had been following, with the Shogun following suit. He shooed her with his hand, letting go of the katana for a brief moment.
The wiry man pulled out a gun and shot at him, knocking off his hat. Scaramouche lunged forward, swinging his katana in a wild arc that cut his gun in half before whipping it back into his wrist.
The Shogun burst forth, impaling the fatter man with her polearm before knocking him over.
“Fatui,” Scaramouche said. “Always be wary of the fat ones.”
The two men, defeated, were tossed back onto the boat and tied up. Scaramouche set sail, and they were off to Watatsumi island, where the clamor of rebellion rose.