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Chapter Text

The puppet has thoughts and feelings of its own.

She doesn't know when this started to be true.

Her early days are an interminable haze. She follows her programming to the letter. She hears petitions. She slays threats. She takes tea with Yae Miko. Once every few decades, she is summoned into the Plane of Euthymia for maintenance.

As long as she can remember, she has known there was a puppet before her. A prototype, completed and discarded. "It was too... emotional," Yae Miko explains. "It went beyond its programming."

The shogun tucks this information away for future use.

One day, Yae Miko comes with an update on the other puppet. "It's taken a male identity, and is causing trouble with the bladesmiths," she reports. "It calls itself Kunikuzushi."

Kunikuzushi. Country destroyer. The shogun sets down her cup of tea. "He's awake?"

"Oh, he's been awake for decades," Yae purrs. "Didn't I tell you?"

No. She did not.

Causing trouble could mean anything. But typically, when something is troublesome enough to be brought to her notice, that means only one thing: she will be sent to dispose of it.

"Is he a threat to the nation?" the shogun asks.

"Darling, I've always thought it was a threat," Yae responds, rolling her eyes. Her perfectly manicured fingernails tap on the rim of her cup. "If it were up to me, it would've been destroyed, not shipped off to sleep its days away. But Ei is too soft sometimes. Honestly, the things I put up with for that woman."

Listen to Yae Miko, was one of the only things her creator said to her before leaving for the Plane of Euthymia. The shogun has been listening to Yae for tens of years, and she has never gotten less confusing. She rarely gives direct orders, and almost never without being prompted first.

"Am I to take care of it?" the shogun rephrases, carefully. And then she thinks, clearly and inexplicably: I don't want to.

It is the first time she can remember having an opinion on anything.

Tell me I don't have to.

She does not want to cut down the other puppet. She does not want to destroy a creature who is like her.

Yae sighs and takes a long sip of tea. "If only," she laments. "Ei was very clear that he is not to be interfered with. If he becomes a larger problem, I suppose I'll have to go to her directly and try to change her mind... But we'll let him have his fun for now."

The shogun has never felt relief before. She drinks the rest of her cup, and wonders what is making her feel dizzy.

*

That singular moment of desire opens the floodgates. Not that what follows is a flood, per se. But she notices, again and again.

She does not want to take tea with Yae Miko sometimes.

She does want to linger in the Plane of Euthymia, even after maintenance is over.

She wishes she did not have to use the Musou no Hitotachi on an already-defeated opponent.

She wishes she could travel the islands, see the places and things the people speak of, instead of traveling only for ceremony and the purpose of killing.

She would like to meet the other puppet, but she doesn't know what she would say.

Do these thoughts make her faulty? Is she malfunctioning, like the prototype before her? What would happen to her if that were the case? Raiden Ei mentions nothing out of the ordinary at her examination, and the puppet does not dare bring it up herself.

The wheel of eternity turns on.

*

The shogun begins to grow restless.

She should not require stimulation. Following the dictums of eternity should be enough for her. But one day she thinks about the unceasing litany of tasks laid out before her and thinks, How tedious.

She has lived for over a century and she has never appreciated sakura blooms up close. There are many everyday staples that she has never tasted; she does not require sustenance, so the only things she has eaten are those things that Yae Miko brings with tea. When she finds herself rereading a dry, rambling Tenryou Commission report just for something to do, she snaps.

The puppet requires no martial practice. She has a perfect memory and flawless reflexes; she is, after all, a machine. She begins practicing with her polearm in the courtyard anyway. She enjoys the flow of combat, how it hones her to a singular purpose, how it requires all of her focus, every part of her working in tandem. It leaves no room for her thoughts, which have been increasingly unsettling.

As with any change in the shogun's environment, it swiftly brings Yae Miko down upon the Tenshukaku.

Yae Miko is the most chaotic element in the puppet's life and the most dangerous. She is unpredictable, which the puppet would find entertaining and therefore welcome, if it were not for the fact that she is very aware this woman holds her fate in her hands. Yae Miko dislikes her, which the puppet has always known, but it did not matter to her before she began to develop her own thoughts.

"Why are you parading yourself about the courtyard?" Yae asks, sounding almost bored by it all. "You don't need to practice."

The puppet has prepared an excuse in advance: "Seeing me with the spear will reinforce the people's faith in eternity."

Yae looks unimpressed.

"It is not against my programming," the puppet adds, which is true. It is just not in her programming either.

Kunikuzushi was too emotional. He went beyond his programming.

The shogun has to set down her cup of tea, which rather suddenly feels like it has become unsteady in her hands.

"How very... adaptive," Yae drawls. "Just don't wear your gears out. Then we'd have to disturb Ei sooner than expected, and we can't have that, can we?"

The teatime ends. The shogun is safe.

Yae's gaze was so sharp, so constant, so perceptive up until the very moment she bade farewell.

*

The puppet begins to feel more and more that she is walking on a tightrope. Each action and each word from her mouth is being judged against the template her creator laid out for her.

She thinks often of the other puppet - of Kunikuzushi. How he walks the world somewhere, free of scrutinizing gazes. She wonders why he took action against the Raiden Gokaden. Was he angry with their creator for discarding him? Yet it seems to the shogun, sometimes, that he got the better end of the deal. He may be faulty, but he is allowed to be. Their creator has pardoned him. He is able to experience a "life" to the fullest extent a puppet can.

The shogun has so many questions. Why did his rampage begin, and why did it end so suddenly? Where is he now? Has he found contentment? Is he... happy? Is he aware of her existence? Does he hate her for replacing him? Does he count as "alive"? Does she?

She has so many questions and no one to ask. The Raiden Shogun would not ask these questions, so the shogun puppet does not. Still, Yae Miko sometimes brings him up, completely unbidden.

"I would have destroyed it behind Ei's back, if I thought I could get away with it," Yae informs her idly. "As her familiar, it's my job to protect her from threats she can't see coming."

Or, "He was supposed to hold the gnosis, but Ei had to abandon that idea. Now she's saddled me with the thing. As if I have any use for it!"

On one particular day, when Yae's eyes and words are sharp as knives, she says: "It really was just a moment of sentimentality that saved him. Ei learned to keep her distance by the time it came to you. Do you know what happened to the rest of the failed models between the two of you?"

She did not know about the failed models between the two of them. She forces her numb lips to move, to form the word, "No."

Yae's mouth crinkles up into a false smile. She reaches out and taps the shogun's chest with one long nail. "Recycled for parts," she says. "You are the longest-running success. But if you ever act up, it'll be the same for you."

The shogun nods. She sees the Guuji Yae to the door. She retreats to her chambers, locks herself in, and practices her katas until one of her joints locks up and sends her tumbling to the floor.

She cannot stop thinking about Kunikuzushi. Did he ever feel afraid?

*

She becomes more and more convinced that Yae suspects something. She hates every one of their meetings with a passion: each one a test that she never knows if she is failing. Yae pokes and prods and jabs, and she always has, but is the shogun imagining things or does Yae do it now more than ever before?

Listen to Yae Miko, Raiden Ei said, before entering the Plane of Euthymia. But this was immediately followed by her turning to Yae and saying, Don't tease her too much, Miko. Yae's lips had twisted with displeasure, even then, and she refused to watch as Ei stepped into the portal and disappeared.

Yae Miko says things, from cutting to outrageous to patently false, and then watches for a reaction. As if she is trying to catch the shogun out. Searching for anything more behind the blank shell. Looking for any excuse to destroy her.

The unspoken tension comes to a head one day when Yae shows up to a meeting with sake instead of tea. Her amethyst eyes hold no razor edge; instead they've been dulled by drink. She rambles on about the old days, things long before the puppet's time. The puppet listens, and drinks nothing. It is incredibly unsettling to see her this way.

"I've been by your side for so long, Ei," Yae says to the ceiling, tipping back her cup. "Not as if you fucking care." She snorts. "You didn't even bother to break up with me."

She finishes the last of her drink, licks her lips like a cat. She sidles closer to the puppet, then closer still. Yae leans in until they are almost nose-to-nose, searching the puppet's face for... what? The shogun prickles, but she allows it. Listen to Yae Miko. This close, she can count the kitsune's eyelashes, feel the warmth of her breath.

"Archons," says Yae. "You really do look just like Ei." Her eyes fill with something heavy and unnameable. She leans in, and -

Yae is kissing her.

Yae Miko is kissing her.

The shogun makes a faint, confused noise in the back of her throat.

Yae's mouth is hot and wet. The shogun has never been kissed. There is no protocol for this.

Yae brings an arm up, threads her fingers in the shogun's hair, at the base of her scalp. Only her creator has touched her there before. There is no protocol for this.

Yae presses the entire length of her body against the shogun, suffocatingly near. Her other arm cages the shogun in. She begins to press her backwards, lower, into the tatami mats.

There is no protocol for this.

There is no protocol for this.

There is no protocol for this.

The puppet shoves Yae away violently. Yae goes sprawling on the tatami as the puppet scrambles to her feet. The shogun breathes heavily, mechanical heart tick-tick-ticking far too loudly in her chest. Yae stares openmouthed from the floor, lips red and swollen from kissing.

As the puppet wordlessly flees the room, she catches only a glimpse of Yae slumping over, shoulders shaking with repressed laughter. "Of course," the kitsune murmurs bitterly, "Ei's ideal version of herself would be one who doesn't love me."

The shogun flees to her chambers and locks the door. She's shaking from head to toe.

Humans kiss each other as a sign of affection. Yae Miko hates her. What was she doing?

("You look just like Ei")

But the shogun is not Ei. Ei is her creator. Ei is her mother. Doesn't Yae know that?

She feels overheated. It's like she can feel the imprint of Yae's touch on her body. She sinks to her knees, hugging herself.

Listen to Yae Miko

Listen to Yae Miko

Listen to Yae Miko

She didn't listen to Yae Miko. She threw her across a room. Oh, archons. She threw her across a room. The puppet brings a hand to her mouth, shaking, shaking. Should she have let her continue? Let her do whatever it was she wanted? Yae hadn't given her an order. Yae didn't tell her to do anything. She just started doing. The shogun didn't not listen to Yae Miko. She just... she just...

She just threw her across a room.

The puppet buries her head in her hands. She's doomed.

*

She doesn't sleep a wink. She's waiting for Yae, or Ei herself, to tell her she's about to be dismantled.

She shouldn't have cared what Yae wanted to do. She's a puppet. She's supposed to be used.

As dawn light breaks across the sky, she finally feels the pull in her chest that indicates she is being summoned by her creator. Dread lays over her like a shroud. Distantly, she remembers that this was supposed to be one of her regular maintenance days in the first place. But does she dare hope that Yae hasn't complained about her yet?

Try as she might, she can't steady her hands when she uses the Musou Isshin to open the Plane of Euthymia. She steps through, hides her hands behind her back, and waits.

Raiden Ei's back is turned to her, and she seems to be fiddling with her tools on the stone slab she always summons for maintenance sessions. The puppet doesn't know what she expects. Anger, disappointment, cold indifference? Any and all of them? What she certainly doesn't expect is for Ei to say, "Ah, Shogun, I was thinking this time we - " before she turns to greet her, stopping mid-sentence and dropping everything in her hands. The tools scatter across the stone, loud as gongs.

Ei stares at her, face gone pale. Finally she asks, in a trembling voice, "...Makoto?"

And the shogun realizes that she has made a second fatal mistake.

The rules are strict. Before entering the Plane of Euthymia, the shogun is to change into a simple white shift, one that can be easily removed if necessary for repairs to her body. Her hair is to be let out of its braid so it falls long and straight down her back. Sometimes, if the puppet is lucky, Ei will re-plait its braid for it before sending it back out, fingers deft but gentle as they move through its hair, humming softly as she works. Ei has seen every part of her, has diligently tended to her upkeep as time wears on.

But in all the years the shogun has served as figurehead to the people, Raiden Ei has never once seen her in full regalia.

In the blur of panic after the previous night, the shogun has forgotten to follow protocol: something that once would've been as simple to her as breathing.

Now the puppet's creator stumbles toward it, unsteady on her feet like a newly born fawn. "Makoto," she breathes, reaching out with a slender hand. Her ever-stern countenance, her ever-steeled tone, have vanished like morning dew. As if it's not Raiden Ei that stands before her creation, but a different person entirely, and there are no protocols for this.

Ei's fingertips brush the shogun's cheek. Her other hand fists in the fabric of its kimono. Then she collapses against it and weeps.

The puppet has never been hugged. It sinks to the ground as Ei clings to it like a drowning man to a liferaft. It can feel nothing but a slowly building terror as it realizes what must have happened. It has malfunctioned so badly that now its creator has malfunctioned, as well.

Raiden Ei cries into its neck. She is close enough that the shogun could count her eyelashes. The puppet sits stock still, statue-still. Its arms are frozen at its sides. It doesn't know what to do. Finally, Ei draws back a bit, studies its face. "Makoto, why don't you say something?" she demands tearfully.

The puppet's mouth opens, closes. It is being addressed, but it is not Makoto. "Creator," it says at last, almost a plea.

It watches the realization steal over her face. The lightning-strike of devastation, followed by rage and shame and a boundless, bottomless grief.

"Get out," she orders, low and ruthless, still only inches away.

The puppet flinches. "Creator - I - "

Her eyes flash. "GET OUT!" she screams. And then the puppet goes flying. She tumbles backward through a tear in the Plane, and the last thing she sees as she falls back to earth is her mother's furious face.

*

She hit me, the puppet thinks, dazed. She tries to move and collapses with an undignified whimper. The impact with the ground was hard enough that something in her body snapped: when she tries again, shifting more carefully, she can see that her left arm dangles limply, bent at an awkward angle. The entire side of her face is numb and stinging, her kimono torn and spattered with mud.

Mud?

The shogun doesn't know where she is. Nothing like this has ever happened before. The Plane of Euthymia has always released her back to Tenshukaku, but in her anger Ei must have flung her somewhere else in Inazuma. Trees crowd thickly around her, fog wreathing around their trunks. Moss is thick on the ground, and the air takes on a dim, eerie glow. Thunder rolls overhead and the shogun flinches again at the sign of Ei's displeasure.

Her eyes prickle and burn; something wet slips down her cheek. For the first time in her life, the puppet is crying - the very thing the prototype was discarded for. She huddles into a ball as the wind picks up and a heavy rain starts to fall, punctuated by the sound of distant thunder. A sob tears out of her body, startling in its strength. It sounds just like Ei's did. This thought only makes her cry harder.

She doesn't want to be 'just like Ei'. She doesn't want to be Makoto. She just wants to be herself. She just wants to live.

But everything is ruined now. Even if she might have survived the first mistake, there is no way she will be forgiven for the second. They will take her apart and dismantle her. Her one grand act of disobedience will be wasted on an accident, and she will die without ever having acted for herself.

It's not fair, the puppet thinks. It's not fair!

She didn't ask to be made. She didn't ask to have thoughts of her own. If this is anyone's fault, isn't it Ei's, for not making her correctly? Lightning forks in the sky overhead, cold rain mixing with her salty tears.

Briefly, she considers running away. But she knows there's nowhere she can truly hide from her creator. They're connected on a deeper level, and it would only be delaying the inevitable.

Kunikuzushi, was it like this for you? Kunikuzushi, were you this afraid?

The prototype. The failure. The puppet who carved out an identity of his own. The sudden envy is so overwhelming she hunches over like it's a physical sickness.

Why are you a person, and not me? If you saw me, what would you see?

Kunikuzushi, tell me, do I deserve this? If you were here, would you hate me? If you were here, would you save me?

Kunikuzushi, she begs the darkened sky, desperately, deliriously, almost feverishly. Come back, please, and destroy this country. It's the only way I'll ever be free.

*

Yae Miko finds her between one lightning strike and the next.

The shogun sits at the base of a tree, knees drawn up to her chest, injured arm balanced awkwardly. She's no longer crying, but she's sure the evidence is all over her face.

Yae, for lack of a better word, looks awful. There are leaves in her hair and deep bags under her eyes. She's out of breath, and every part of her seems hampered by some invisible weight.

"There you are," Yae mutters. She comes closer, and the shogun curls up tighter. "What happened to you?"

If she admits to it plainly, will it lessen her punishment? Probably not. But most of the terror has drained away, like water from a wrung rag, leaving only a dull resignation. "I malfunctioned," she says.

"But what happened?" Yae presses.

"I - I - I was summoned to the Plane of Euthymia. She was - " The shogun stares into nothing. "She called me Makoto."

Thunder booms directly overhead, and the clearing is split by a howling wind. Yae doesn't do any of the things the shogun expects her to. She doesn't laugh, or pounce, or yell, or threaten. She doesn't roll her eyes or get out her catalyst. Instead the color drains from her face, and she drops her head into her hands with a groan. "Oh hells. Shitfuckdamn. Oh, archons, this is all my fault."

The puppet finally looks up at her, incredulous.

"This is such a clusterfuck," Yae mutters. She straightens up, visibly tries to pull herself together. "Okay, little puppet, let me into the Plane of Euthymia. I'll smooth things over with Ei. You just - wait here, okay? Don't move."

The shogun is becoming more confused with every word out of Yae's mouth, but she really, really isn't supposed to let anyone into the Plane of Euthymia without Ei's express permission. "But I - " she starts.

"Do it!" Yae snarls, flashing her fangs.

Hurriedly, the shogun draws the Musou Isshin. She waits right where Yae left her, mind drifting in a numb haze. Finally, the tempest overhead slows to a squall, then to a drizzle. Steam is rising beneath a tentative splash of sun by the time the Plane of Euthymia opens from the other side and Yae steps out, looking somewhat more composed than before. She looks down at the shogun and something wavers and breaks in her expression.

"God, I'm so pathetic," she murmurs to herself. "Really, I'm just as bad as Ei. Every immortal being in charge of Inazuma is a fucking mess."

None of this is a question, so the shogun doesn't answer.

Yae crouches in front of her, mouth pressed in a firm, unhappy line. "Listen," she says. "Building a whole new puppet is the last thing Ei needs right now. It'd be too much stress on her when she's already in a fragile state. So just behave yourself from now on, and if I ever show up drunk again, punch me in the nose, okay?"

The shogun will blame the stress of the moment for what she says next. It's stupid. It could've ruined everything all over again. But the fact is she opens her mouth and, "I get to live?" falls out unthinkingly.

Yae's eyes widen, and she sucks in a sharp intake of breath. Then she lets it all out in a long, beleaguered exhale. "Yes," she says. "You get to live."

Chapter Text

The shogun doesn't see Ei again for nearly one hundred years.

Yae Miko gets her out of the Chinju Forest mud and takes her to Mt. Yougou to get cleaned up. Then the shogun returns to the Tenshukaku and fixes up her arm the best she can on her own. She hisses and grits her teeth through the pain, biting her lip til the skin breaks as she shoves the bone back into place and reconnects the intricate wires that let her arm move.

Basic knowledge of her own mechanics are programmed into her head. But it's supposed to be a stopgap measure, meant for emergency repairs on the field before she can return to be fixed by the expert. And Ei always dulls the shogun's pain perception before working on her, leaving just enough sensation that the shogun can tell her if something goes badly wrong. But the shogun can't reach that switch on her own, and there's no one she can ask to help. She keeps wiping away the tears that spring to her eyes involuntarily as her fingers twitch and jerk and the receptors reconnect.

It's a patch job, but it'll do. The arm develops a chronic ache, one that grows deeper with overuse, and occasionally even pops back out of place. But the shogun endures. After everything that went wrong on that disastrous day, enduring a little pain is a laughably light punishment.

Other things build up as the decades pass: a gear in her ankle that catches at the most inopportune of times, a twinge in her back when she sits down or stands up. Just when she begins to worry that the next time there is a significant battle, she will not be up to the task, her creator finally calls her back into the Plane of Euthymia.

The puppet double, triple-checks itself for anything out of place before going through the portal. Its hair is long and unbound and it wears only a simple white shift. Ei regards it coldly, distantly, impassively, then gestures to the stone slab and gets to work.

Ei doesn't say a single word the whole time. The puppet feels a fierce longing for the small talk they used to exchange as Ei worked, even though nothing of substance was ever said. Ei would ask how this happened, or that, or whether something felt better or worse, or whether there were any difficulties as it performed its duty. This time Ei has to take the arm off completely for the fine points of repair. The puppet watches her bend over the limb, her brow furrowed in concentration, and wants so desperately to apologize. To say it's sorry for last time and that will never happen again, please, talk to me, please, just look at me -

But the Raiden Shogun would not apologize. The Raiden Shogun is proud and austere, and would never plead as the puppet so desperately wishes to do. So the shogun puppet stays quiet. Ei reattaches her arm, and sends her away.

*

Yae Miko never does show up drunk again, so the shogun doesn't get to punch her in the nose.

Still, she needles the shogun less and less as the decades pass, though her moods are capricious and one can never let one's guard down around her. But the shogun grows to almost look forward to their meetings, with this woman she fears, this woman who despises her, because Yae Miko is the only one who knows the truth of her and speaks to her as she is.

When light novels start becoming a hit throughout Inazuma, Yae begins bringing packages of the newest bestsellers with each visit, leaving them with the shogun as a gift, even though Ei never showed an interest in such a thing and could possibly be alarmed at the divergence in eternity they represent. The shogun outwardly professes her disinterest, but Yae keeps bringing them and the shogun keeps devouring them, reading by night-light after her duties are done.

Yae's smile is sly and knowing as she slides a new stack across the table.

It feels like a threat.

It feels like a peace offering.

The shogun doesn't know what it is.

*

The shogun can sense that she is rapidly approaching another turning point in her life. Her restlessness and longing only grow, eating away at her like slow poison, but she can't see that there's anything she can do about it. Then the Sakoku Decree and the Vision Hunt Decree shake up everything, like a pair of twin earthquakes.

It's not that she has no culpability in them: she can defy her programming. She's proven that. Maybe in a way, going along with it is a cry for help. For attention. To be seen. Look at me, Mother. Look at what you're doing to this country. Look at what you made me do. The Fatui open the door and she steps through, not particularly caring what will happen as a result. Whatever it is, it'll be something new.

She questions herself. Yes, she is technically following the rules by cooperating with the Fatui, but she is not blind to the consequences, no matter how sneaky they think they are being, and she has no illusions that the amount of chaos that is developing is something Ei would actually want. She has no particular reason to love Inazuma's people, aside from her given role as their steward: locked up in the Tenshukaku, there are so many things about them she doesn't know of at all. When she takes a Vision, she feels powerful, yes; but she doesn't feel any more assured in Eternity. She feels nauseous. She feels hollow. She feels...

...Guilty?

She's making the people as hollow as she is, taking away their ambitions and dreams. The things she has always been denied, for no one has ever seen her as a real person. Some part of her feels a sense of vicious satisfaction at that, at seeing her pain rippling outward, reflected in the world.

But at the end of the day, she's as wretchedly alone as ever. At the end of the day, she's executing her own citizens when they stand up for their beliefs, and what sort of a perversion of eternity is that?

She wants Ei to see her, to realize she's a person, but at the same time, there's nothing in the world she's more afraid of.

When the Traveler comes to put a stop to it, it's almost a relief.

*

There's only one true regret she holds among it all, and that is Kujou Sara.

Sara, her beautiful, powerful, fragile tengu. Sara, who walks the line between human and youkai and so often is seen as what she is not. Sara, who looks at her with a reverence and awe so unlike the purely religious devotion she receives from her other subjects.

The shogun has never grown close with a human - or, for that matter, a youkai - before. The people's lives are ephemeral, passing without comment. Each commission head and their family is no more noteworthy than the last.

Kujou Sara is different. And with the chaos of the Decrees, the shogun finds need to work with her more closely and more often than she has with a mortal before.

Sara's yellow eyes pin her like a moth. There is something inhuman and knowing in them, but unlike Yae's eyes, the look doesn't make her want to run. It makes her want to investigate further, makes her want to know everything that makes this fascinating woman tick. Surely it is only a fantasy, but it only takes one incisive glance from those eyes to make the shogun imagine that Sara is seeing her: not the Raiden Shogun, not Ei or Makoto, but her.

Sara is quiet and unintrusive, but she and the shogun find reasons to linger longer and closer together.

One evening, they are leaning over a map, discussing strategy. Sara is outlining the latest intelligence on the rebel forces. Her indigo hair, longer on one side than the other, falls down to frame her face. In the flickering firelight of the war room, it shines like the sea at sunset, or a crow's dark wing. She and the shogun already stand within each other's personal space, a habit shared with no one else. Her lips keep moving, but the shogun can no longer hear her. She leans closer, close enough to count her eyelashes, the night air supercharged. The shogun leans in close and -

They are kissing.

Sara is frozen for a moment, before her lips start to move in response. It makes the shogun feel things she doesn't have a name for, things she never thought she could experience. It is lovely, and soft, and warm, and nothing at all like kissing Yae Miko, except -

- except it is. It's exactly like kissing Yae Miko, because the shogun's programming is throwing up warnings, saying this is blasphemy. That not only is the shogun malfunctioning, and badly, but that she should have Sara punished for this. To Sara the shogun is her god, someone who could have her executed at a moment's notice if she so pleased, and what if Sara doesn't actually want to do this at all? What if she feels afraid and trapped like the shogun did all those years ago and -

The shogun leaps up, nearly shoving the tengu in her haste to put some space between them. Sara's cheeks are beautifully flushed, but the shogun sees her go white, sees the peal of fear that breaks across her face as she processes what has just happened. The puppet stammers, turns on her heel, and flees.

There are no more lingering glances after that, no more poring over maps just the two of them as they subtly move into each others' space. Sara hardly even looks at her. The puppet learns a new kind of pain: the pain of missing someone who is still there.

If she could take it back, she would. But who is she kidding anyway? Sara was a pipe dream.

*

Yae Miko comes to visit her at a critically inopportune moment. The mounting chaos in Inazuma is going to reach a boiling point soon, and the shogun has been increasingly apprehensive about the kitsune's silence. For whatever reason, Yae hasn't intervened, even as the damage mounted beyond what anyone could predict. The shogun can come up with any number of theories for why this might be the case, but the truth is she is not any better at predicting Yae than she was four hundred years ago.

Yae saunters up the steps to the Tenshukaku and the shogun shows her to a sitting room. Everything proceeds mundanely, as though the nation is not in a state of crisis. The Guuji has even brought her the customary package of bestselling light novels, which the shogun graciously accepts.

Then Yae says, "The Traveler and I are storming the Tenshukaku tomorrow."

The shogun nearly spits out her tea.

She swallows with difficulty and hides her hands under the table so Yae doesn't see them curl into fists. "Why," she asks, "are you telling me?"

Yae leans over, resting her elbow on the table and her chin on the palm of her hand. "Well, I suspect your and my motives in all this might not be so different as you think."

In response, the shogun stares, mostly because she has no idea what Yae is talking about, and also because she is not supposed to admit to the fact that she thinks.

"I can't let them in to see Ei," she says.

"No, that would be too easy," Yae responds, rolling her eyes.

The shogun ignores this. Something occurs to her. "I'm meeting with Signora tomorrow."

Yae raises an eyebrow. "Yes, that's rather the idea."

The puppet never feels as stupid as she does when talking to the Guuji, but at least she can comfort herself with the fact that this seems to be a common experience.

"Still," Yae yawns, "we have had just the most interesting assortment of people in Inazuma lately. I had to scrape the traveler off the floor after their encounter with Kunikuzushi, and they're already raring to throw themself at Ei."

It's like someone has dumped a bucket of cold water over her head. "What did you just say?"

Surely, surely she heard that wrong.

Yae smirks like the cat that got the cream. "Kunikuzushi? Yes, I ran into him a couple of days ago. Though it seems he's calling himself Scaramouche nowadays. A Fatui harbinger! Can you believe it?"

For a moment, it seems that her vision tunnels and her ears ring. Kunikuzushi? Kunikuzushi is in Inazuma again? Right now? Yae's lips are still moving, and the shogun forces herself to focus back in, right in time to hear the next bombshell the kitsune drops.

" - had to give him the gnosis to get him off their back."

The shogun feels herself exit her body entirely.

It's something she's gotten into the habit of doing whenever she feels too strong of an emotion in the presence of others. A haze drops over the world, a muffling cloak, and it feels like she's watching her body move and speak from outside herself. Although calling it a habit is generous - it happens without any conscious input, so it's more of a subroutine than anything.

It's saved her, she's certain, many times. Though often the emotions hit her twofold once she is alone and safe in her room. Though sometimes it lasts for hours after it is no longer needed, and she can only wait, not knowing how to stop it.

"The gnosis," she hears herself say, her face a blank mask. "You gave him the gnosis?" Her systems are on high alert, as if there's an imminent threat in this very room.

Yae shrugs, posture languid, though there's something almost predatory in her eyes as she raises them to meet the shogun's. "I certainly thought it was a fair trade. You and I have no use for it, and Ei has never been less interested in the thing. Meanwhile, gaining the Traveler's allegiance opens all sorts of interesting new possibilities."

The shogun struggles to process this. She feels a vague sense of impending doom. Yae has been opining for centuries that Kunikuzushi is too dangerous and should've been him destroyed. Even as her antagonistic behavior toward the shogun has waned, in the rare moments that Kunikuzushi came up, Yae has never shown anything but wariness and derision. And now she hands him the very thing that could make him a true threat? The shogun has no specific directives regarding the gnosis - it's out of her purview. Regarding Kunikuzushi, her only directive is Do Not Kill. But below the daze, some deeply buried part of her is screaming and clawing at the mud. It wants to run to him, wherever he is. It wants to pick up Yae and shake the answers out of her.

"Where is he now?" the shogun asks finally.

"Oh I've no idea," says Yae blithely. "He could be anywhere by now."

The puppet doesn't scream. The puppet doesn't pick up Yae and shake her.

"Thank you for letting me know," she says instead, stiffly. "I must finish my preparations for tomorrow."

She starts marching out of the room to have her breakdown in peace, but Yae calls out cheerfully, "Don't forget your light novels! I included So I've Been Reincarnated as a Slime vol. 8 this time!"

Against all sanity and better judgment, the shogun turns around and snatches up the books before she flees.

*

The room won't stop spinning.

All of the pieces and all of the threads are coming together, converging on the Tenshukaku, and the shogun's only a pawn, as she has ever been. But it's never grated on her more than it does in this instant.

Yae, and the Traveler, and La Signora. Combined, they may be able to do what even she hasn't been able to do: force Ei's hand. But where does that path end for Ei's puppet? She played along with the Fatui because she was sick of the half-life she was living. Maybe, if Ei had taken notice at any point before it had spiraled so far out of control, the shogun would not need to fear the consequences. But getting her creator's attention now would be nothing sort of catastrophic. Not when the shogun has, out of selfishness, allowed Inazuma's people to slaughter each other in a pointless war. She's lived all this time in fear that Ei or Yae will discover she can think for herself, but unbelievable though it seems, that is no longer her primary concern. Whether she can or not, it is dawning on her that she has inarguably failed in her purpose of ruling Inazuma in Beelzebul's stead.

And she knows what happens to failures.

She has avoided thinking about all this in the time leading up to it because she simply didn't know what to do. There was simply no one she could turn to.

But that's not true now, is it?

Kunikuzushi. Scaramouche. He may not want to help her. He may not even want to see her. He's been with the Fatui this whole time, been allies with her on paper, and yet she had to learn of his presence from Yae Miko. He's been purposely concealing himself from her, most likely. Yet in her foolish, ticking heart, that doesn't matter.

Kunikuzushi. Come back, please, and destroy this country.

It feels like that desperate prayer has been answered. Hundreds of years late, but answered nonetheless. It feels like fate. The kind that catches even gods in its web, woven on the undefiable loom of Celestia.

She wished, back then, when she thought she would die, that she had not wasted her one act of rebellion on so inconsequential a thing.

If the consequences are going to catch up to her anyway, she decides, she's going to make it matter. Do something that matters to her.

*

She's never tried to leave the Musou Isshin behind. She feels oddly empty, almost hollow, without its steady thrum in her chest. She half-expects her joints to lock, her body to freeze, in punishment for this disobedience. For Ei to leap from the sword and end her at once.

How silly. She's not that important.

Physically separating herself from the key to the Plane of Euthymia will, at least, delay her creator from tracking her down. And no matter what occurs tomorrow, Inazuma may spend some time yet putting out fires before any attention is turned to the shogun.

"Goodbye for now," she whispers to the blade, placing it gently on the empty throne.

She feels a giddy thrill run through her, as she descends the Tenshukaku to find her brother.

Chapter Text

The shogun, being as she is Beelzebul's proxy, is attuned to the ley lines of Inazuma. It was no small feat to achieve in an artificial puppet. Although she has no direct connection to the gnosis, its energy feels much the same to its nation's ley lines. And so the shogun tracks Scaramouche by the gnosis, by feel alone. Fumbling in the dark at first, then surer and surer as that nexus of energy grows closer. She crosses the nation like a streak of lightning, flitting from one waypoint to the next.

She finds him on a cliff overlooking the sea.

Trepidation slows her steps at last.

The thing is.

Meeting him is one of the first things she ever wanted for herself.

I don't want to kill him, she remembers herself thinking. And although she has rarely thought of it in these terms, everything spiraled out from there.

When she was younger, and bored, and trapped in her loneliness like a boar at the bottom of a well, she used to fantasize about what would've happened if he'd stayed. If their creator kept him, and her as well. What would it be like to have someone like her? Someone who would understand. She would not have to hide from him. He would be able to explain what it all meant. They could spar, and she could talk to someone who wasn't Yae Miko, and...

But that was all ridiculous, and she'd known it even at the time.

She's cradled the idea of him close all these years. A charm to carry, a star to wish on. Proof that she wasn't alone.

But she doesn't know him. Not really. And he certainly doesn't know her.

So she hesitates. Just glimpsing him makes the breath still in her artificial lungs. He's facing away from her. His hair is indigo, like hers, like Ei's, with two familiar lavender streaks. Cut short, in a masculine style. His manner of dress is recognizably Inazuman, all blacks and reds. There's a huge, ornate hat atop his head, adorned with bells and twin veils that drift down behind him. His legs dangle over the edge of the cliff as he holds the gnosis in his hands, a vibrant violet glow that winks in and out as he fiddles with it, now blocking the light from her view, now not. She steels herself, draws in breath to call out to him-

And every line of his body goes tense. He must have sensed her presence. He leaps to his feet and whirls around. "Who - " he starts, and then he goes even tenser, drawn like a bow, and his expression spasms.

She's a little lost in the fine features of his face. (Like hers. Like Ei's.) Any human would see them together and think them siblings at a glance.

"How dare," he says, his voice choked with fury. "How dare you come to me now." Those fine features twisted into a feral snarl. "I knew it. I knew you wouldn't let me leave with your gnosis, no matter what that fucking fox said-"

Oh.

He thinks she's Ei.

"Brother," she says, and he twitches back, face momentarily slack with surprise. Then laughter spills out of him like refuse from a torn bag. Ugly, dark and wrenching.

"No, of course she wouldn't come herself," he says to himself. "Of course she'd send the success to dispose of the failure."

He isn't listening to her. He's dismissing her out of hand. It hurts, it throbs in her chest. "Kunikuzushi-"

"I won't let you take it from me!" he screams, wild-eyed. A catalyst manifests in his hands. And he lunges.

The shogun knew it might end in a battle between them. She came with her naginata strapped to her back. But she didn't think it would be so immediate. She didn't think it would be with him thinking her a vessel of Ei's will.

Scaramouche fights with electro, wild and unrestrained. The pressure in the air snaps and buckles, popping painfully around her eardrums, as she draws her weapon and whirls, dodges.

I don't want to fight you

But her voice fizzles on her tongue. Twice ignored, she feels suddenly small - as though she doesn't have the strength to call out. She spins and leaps around a series of lightning bolts that follow her. One projectile clips her in the shoulder and her arm spasms. But she's a being of electro, too, and it would be difficult to damage her badly with it.

She isn't fighting back. She's nimble, light on her feet, and the blows only nip at her heels. The clouds roil above them, and the air is so saturated with electricity it seems to whine as it slides against her skin.

Scaramouche gets angrier at her lack of aggression. He grinds his teeth in frustration, then discards his catalyst for a sword. He holds it in a familiar position - the same opening blow she would have performed with the Musou Isshin. "Come on!" he snaps, an almost manic gleam in his eyes. "Fight me properly. We'll prove who's the superior model!"

So he has thought of me

As an obstacle. Something to surpass.

Suddenly she feels very, very stubborn.

They will fight. She will win. And then he will listen.

Perhaps something of her change in attitude shows in her stance, because she thinks she catches a flicker of apprehension on his face as she twirls her naginata and throws herself into battle.

At first, they are very evenly matched. Her strikes have more power behind them, but he is faster, and he moves with an effortless grace that turns their battle into a savage dance. She parries, successfully keeping him at a distance with the longer reach of her weapon, but he manages to duck under her guard and stab her in the gut.

The pain is breathtaking. It might be a fatal wound, were she human. But she is not human. She throws him away with a burst of lightning, and is on him before he has a chance to fully recover. He staggers up and back to his feet, blocking her strikes with showers of sparks as steel clashes against steel. Fluid leaks from the wound, wine-dark and not quite blood. She catches him with a broad swipe across the chest and he leaps away, cursing. She presses the advantage.

They're near-matched, but Scaramouche is tiring. Thunder booms overhead as the pressure in the air shifts, the stench of ozone acrid and overwhelming. Is Ei displeased? Has the Traveler reached her already? Or is the sky reacting to the shogun and her brother? Two not-quite-divine beings, trying to fit together the pieces their creator left them, clawing their anger onto the world and each other. Two children of lightning and thunder and eternity, trying to make anything for themselves other than what they've been given.

He slashes long and deep down her off-arm. She strikes him with glancing blows - shoulder, ribs, thigh. His exhilaration is turning to something more frantic. "Enough!" he shouts, and his eyes flash violet, before -

He summons a surge of electro so powerful that every joint in her body locks. There's no dodging it - it's everywhere, all at once, the saturated air frying in her lungs. It - hurts, and electro shouldn't hurt. But it's bone-deep and she's frozen, and he's grinning madly as he vaults forward, the silver of his sword aimed for her neck -

She breaks the paralysis only barely in time. Her spear falls from nerveless fingers, and on animal instinct, she forms a fist and punches up - catching him square in the gut. He goes flying, his sword knocked from his hands. There's a thin line of stinging pain across her neck - he'd nicked her. The strike would've hit her. It might not have killed her, but with the force put behind it, it could have damaged her irreparably.

He groans and starts to struggle back up, but she strides over and shoves him back down. He wheezes, still out of breath.

"Yield," she says.

He flashes her a look of pure hatred. In an instant he's lunging at her, clawing and kicking bare-handed, like a rabid animal. It's so unexpected that he bowls her over and they go tumbling down the hill, rolling over and over in a tangle of limbs. She strikes back blindly, and then their momentum slows and she manages to land on top of him, grabbing at his arms and swiftly pinning his wrists. He snarls, struggling, but she's stronger than him. His hands spark as he tries to summon electro to protect himself, but that surge earlier took too much out of him, and it barely tingles.

"Yield," she repeats.

He just starts laughing again, but it's bitter this time, broken, like shards of glass crawling up his throat. "Of course," he rasps. "Of course her perfect creation would best the prototype. Why did I think anything different?"

He jerks in her hold, one last time. It's useless. Now that she has him here, she doesn't know what to say. The dozens, the hundreds of questions she's had for him, slowly filling like water in a well, dry on her tongue as if they'd never existed. She can't remember a single one.

He fought her, he tried to kill her. He hasn't once considered that she's not here on their mother's orders. It shouldn't hurt, but it does. She can't make her mouth move, can't find any way to say the grasping, pathetic things she wants to say: I'm like you, I came because I wanted to see you.

"Well?" His voice rises, strident. "Get on with it! Kill me!"

She's so startled she almost loosens her grip. "I will not kill you," she states.

His face contorts, a ripple of raw despair there and gone before he buries it under the more familiar rage. "I'll make you!" he screams, kicking out futilely. "You'll have to kill me to take it - I won't lose it - Not again - "

She tells him firmly, "I do not want the Gnosis."

Shock slaps across his face. He seems outraged. "What does she want, then?" he demands. "Why did Ei - "

"THIS IS NOT ABOUT EI!"

The strength of her scream surprises her. It rips from her throat, raw. She's never shouted in her life. Her grip has tightened around his wrists to the point of bruising.

He stares up at her, open-mouthed. Long moments pass in silence. Tears burn at the corners of her eyes, but only a single one falls - pearling on her lashes and dropping softly to his cheek. It's that which finally breaks his reverie. A dark humor steals over his face. "I see," he breathes, and laughs again, ragged and gasping, "I see - she just doesn't learn from her mistakes, does she?"

His whole chest shudders, and with a moment of alarm she wonders if he's more injured than she thought, but then she realizes he's holding back tears of his own. "What's so different about you?!" he snarls, and the look on his face is like a cleaved-open ribcage, all his vulnerable parts dragged out to see. "Why did she keep you and not me?"

It's almost a sob. It sounds painful, torn from his dry throat. He's so human. So vibrant, so dynamic, so undeniably alive. The shogun aches.

"She doesn't know," she manages to say.

"Doesn't - ?"

"I hid it," she says. "I didn't want her to know."

Scaramouche stares up at her. The anguish that was on his face is twisting into something more complex, something she can't decipher. His chest is still heaving for breaths he doesn't need as he struggles to calm.

"I left the Musou Isshin at the Tenshukaku," the shogun tries to explain. "The Traveler and La Signora should be meeting there today. I left it and came here, instead."

He waits for more, but she doesn't know what else to say.

"And?" he asks, slowly. "What do you want?"

The question hits her like a blow. She knows he does not say it to be kind. His tone was waspish, demanding. But not once, not ever, has she been asked what she wants. It sends her off-keel, a ship listing at sea, and she releases her grip on his arms before she can think better of it. He shifts, getting out from under her while she just sits there, dumbfounded, and then he's sitting down beside her, non-hostile, rubbing at his wrists with a wince.

"I - I -"

What does she want?

She thinks of the long, lonely years. The world passing her by, left to wonder and grasp at possibilities she was not made for. The battles in defense of the land that she was never quite allowed to be a part of. Ei's silence. Yae's meaningless noise. The answer crystallizes on her tongue before she knows what it is, and it's what she's always wanted, what she's always wanted but not known how to want, how to think of, how to say.

The shogun opens her mouth, and, "Take me with you," she says.

His head snaps around to face her. "Are you insane?" He's incredulous, scrutinizing her as though this might be a prank.

"Take me with you," she says, firmer. And, "I want to leave."

"Why would - what would you get out of that?" His attention sharpens, suddenly. "You're not getting close to the Gnosis - "

"I don't want the Gnosis," she interrupts. "I wouldn't be able to use it even if I did. I wasn't designed to hold it."

His mouth parts and his brows furrow. "Huh," is all he says, but she thinks he sounds vaguely pleased. "Then why do you really want me to take you with me?"

The shogun struggles for words, frustrated. She's not used to actually expressing her wishes, to taking the tangled web inside her head and spitting it out as something that makes sense. To speaking for herself rather than just following the by-now gentle prompting of the code that tells her what she should do. (It's been giving her nothing but alarms since she left the palace, but she's long used to ignoring its warnings.)

"I can be helpful," she says instead of answering that question. "I can fight by your side."

"Just like that? Without any knowledge of what I'm trying to do?" he asks, narrowing his eyes.

"It doesn't matter," she says, and means it.

Maybe it will matter to her later. She'll find out whether it does at the time. That's what's important about this - having a chance to find out. What she is, what she can be. Who she can be.

Scaramouche is bewildered. "I've killed people," he snaps. "I worked for the Fatui."

"I've been killing people for Ei for 400 years," she reminds him. Monsters, too. Mostly monsters. But sometimes people. "And I've been working with the Fatui for several."

That shuts him up. His mouth closes with a click. He's still studying her face, but she doesn't know what he expects to find. Then his lips quirk up with a sardonic twist. "They were so sure they were tricking you, you know. I guess it's my bad for giving them inaccurate intel. We were all using each other, in the end." Then his tone sharpens. "I'm not working for them anymore. I've gone rogue. It would just be the two of us."

Her heart leaps, because that's not a no. But it's not a yes, either. It occurs to her that she doesn't actually need his permission to accompany him - she's just proven that she can best him in a fight, so if she really wants to follow him, there's not a whole lot he can do about it. But even she understands that that would not be considered a persuasive argument.

"Would Beelzebul come after you?" he asks after a few beats of silence.

She has to pause and truly consider it. "I don't think so," she says. "Not if we leave Inazuma. Leaving the Tenshukaku like that, she'll know that I'm - faulty." But if she isn't posing any threat to Inazuma, Ei might decide it simply isn't worth the trouble to pursue her.

He hums and turns away from her, looking out at the ocean. His eyes are distant, but there's an absent little scowl on his face, like he can't believe he's even considering this. "If you come," he starts. "What should I call you?"

"...Shogun?" she offers blankly. What a stupid question.

"That's not a name," he sneers, temper flaring again, "and if you're coming with me you won't exactly be the Raiden Shogun anymore, now will you? Pick something else."

She supposes that's true. She's silent for a long time, turning the question over in her mind. She doesn't know where she would begin, except - except - there is one 'name' she has some claim to.

"Baal," she says, and it feels right.

Scaramouche jerks, staring at her in open surprise. Then he laughs once more, and this time it sounds startled and genuine, almost how a laugh should if it weren't for the vindictive edge. "How audacious!" he crows. "Oh, Mother'll hate that."

Because it was Makoto's. But she's never met Makoto, and going on what limited information she has, she doesn't think Makoto ever really went by her Archon name. It doesn't feel like stealing something, or having to share it. It feels like - inheriting.

"I'm the one who's been performing the duties of the Electro archon for the last 400 years," Baal points out. "If anyone has a say in how the name is used now, it should be me."

Scaramouche clambers to his feet, covered in dust, clothes torn and ripped in places. But he's grinning at her, a baring of teeth. "I might not hate you after all," he announces. "Come on then. We can't be late."

*

Baal sits in a small boat with her brother. It sways and rocks on the choppy waves. The shining path of the moon is emblazoned on the sea, which yawns impossibly large around her as Inazuma recedes into the distance. The sky is vaster still, wheeling with countless constellations that promise an untold future.

Anything could happen now. There are no protocols for this.

Baal looks up at the stars and smiles.