Chapter Text
Keqing had never once faltered in her assignments. She was one of the IMC’s deadliest assets, and numerous opponents had fallen beneath her. She was unquestioning and unfeeling, a high-caliber killing machine unfailingly loyal to the cause of her superiors.
And yet today, her blade wavered at the throat of her target, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to shed blood as it had once done so eagerly.
Confusion was not one of the rare feelings she allowed herself. However, the cause of this strange paralysis eluded her. It was not battle damage, her simulacrum chassis allowed her to continue functioning through trauma that would have left mere humans in catatonic pain. Even now, there were sparks and trailing wires spewing from her left arm socket, the front of her torso marred with dark burns seared across shaped composite armor. How inconvenient. Her target would pay for that. Well, once she had dispelled this meddlesome...error. She considered corruption in her programming to be a cause, perhaps she had lost motor function due to some buggy software? Quizzically, her head tilted to give her ocular sensors a better angle of the target’s face. His eyes seemed far older than the rest of his face, which wore a tired stubble around the chin and a mane of red hair. Most notably, he did not seem scared. Even the bravest men cower before death, the light in their eyes clinging desperately to foolish hope before it is quickly extinguished. The dull acceptance in this man’s gaze was that of a man that had lost the light a long time ago. Keqing wondered if killing him would be a favor.
A flick of her mechanical wrist, and a single strand of crimson drifts from his forehead. Good to know that was still working. The man flinches, and unconsciously tries to shuffle away from her. So he is not entirely catatonic. Cold metal nips his neck before he can get too far.
“Attempting escape is futile. Do not resist.”
“You know...for someone who was trying very hard to kill me earlier, you’re certainly wasting a lot of time standing here.”
“Silence. You are in no position to make jokes.”
“I’m not joking, merely stating the facts as the-”
His quip is cut off as the tip of her sword neatly skims his chin. It brings Keqing immense satisfaction to see every muscle in his body freeze up instinctively. Unfortunately, despite the weapon very clearly pointed at him, it is not long before his insolence resumes.
“If you were going to kill me,” he wheezes through gnashed teeth, “you would have done so long ago. Therefore, I can assume that you want something from me, or you’re going to try to take me alive so your friends can get it out of me later.”
“Incorrect on both accounts. I have been ordered to-what are you doing?”
“Escaping.”
It was a very poor attempt, all things considered. Keqing was almost never taken by surprise, and yet the sheer audacity of this man astounded her. What did he hope to achieve by weakly shuffling away from her like that?
“You won’t get very far doing that.”
“You aren’t doing a lot to stop me, aren’t you? Well come on then, take a swing at me! See what that gets you.”
A flash of anger darted across her mind. Her grip on the blade tightened unnecessarily, servos whirring as electricity leapt through copper veins.
“I told you. Resistance is futile.”
Quick as lightning, her sword swept through the air, the flat end of the blade tapping the man across the forehead and knocking him out, cold.
Keqing was beginning to think there might be an issue with her software, after all. For perhaps the first time in her life as a simulacrum, she let out a groan of frustration. She would find whatever strange malfunction plagued her systems, and purge it completely. Nothing would stand in the way of her mission.
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Diluc Ragnvindr was not used to losing. Then again, in a career as dangerous as a Pilot, defeat often meant death. And as a high-profile IMC defector, the list of people who wanted him dead grew longer by the day. For better or for worse, he had a lot more practice fighting off assassins than the average billionaire's son. And while his growing combat skill had made the price on his head grow all the more higher, the young man had found a strange solace in the mayhem of combat. There was none of the double-talk and fake smiles he was used to as the son of a billionaire, no false promises or twisted words. Violence was the language of battle, and it was nothing if not honest. With enthusiasm came aptitude, and Diluc sometimes wondered if perhaps he had a little too much of both. It never did him good to let those thoughts linger, however, so he threw himself into the fray all the more furiously, desperately trying to push that festering regret far, far away.
Today, it seemed his recklessness had gotten the better of him.
A one-one-one with a Ronin. Not exactly a pushover, but well within his limits. That was what he had thought, before the machine had swept forward like a bolt from the blue and ripped the armour clean off his Titan. And now here he was, a metal shoulder digging into his stomach as he was carried away like a sack of potatoes.
“You’re awake. It would do you well not to struggle. Balance is difficult with only one arm.”
He instinctively tries to wriggle his arms, his efforts met with the harsh bite of metal around his wrists.
“Not my fault it’s so uncomfortable up here.”
“Your comfort is not my primary concern.”
Diluc sighs quietly and watches the ground slowly scrolling backwards beneath him. He sees the shattered remnants of his helmet and radio clipped to her belt. She must have tried to use them.
“That’s fair, I suppose. I did try to kill you.”
“I didn’t take it personally. Now, please be quiet.”
“Well, I’m assuming this is my last friendly conversation for a while, so let me enjo-”
“Silence.”
Diluc notes a new tone in his captors voice. Authority, spurred on by concern. Something has caught her attention, for the worse. His suspicions are confirmed when she suddenly stops and unceremoniously dumps him on the ground.
“Wait here. You are still mildly concussed. Any attempts to escape would be foolish.”
As he blinks away the late afternoon sun from his eyes, he sees his captor draw her blade from a back-mounted scabbard. Her simulacrum chassis is unusually plain, almost completely devoid of any personalization or identification. No scarves, not even a bushel of synthetic hair. The most striking parts of her were the lilac highlights streaking her armor and the chipped pair of triangular antennae on her head. He couldn’t help thinking they looked like cat ears.
A distant growl snatches his attention away from her.
“Prowlers. Running would be foolish now. I will have to deal with them, and if they happen to finish you off, that’s a bonus.”
Diluc would have shot back with a witty, well-thought reply about how backing away slowly was a better course of action, but another growl, much closer this time, dispelled that idea. Too late to run now. While the simulacrum in front of him adopted a defensive stance, he began fiddling with the cuffs around his wrists. Prowlers were likely to go for the moving target first, but once they realized he was the one with more meat on his bones, they were likely to start chewing on him. Sweat pools on the back of his neck as he rummages through the pockets of his utility belt.
“Wait,” he thinks, “what was that rustling sound from that bu-”
He does not hear the reptilian quadruped leaping from the undergrowth, his brain not registering the savage roar of the pouncing animal leaping towards him. He does not even flinch as wads of spittle fly from open jaws, about to close around his neck. His reactions, perhaps dulled by the blow from earlier, are almost painfully slow to Keqing. She watches the creature slowly tumbling through the air as if it were water, the frills around it’s collar unfurling like a primitive umbrella. She doesn't even acknowledge her grip tightening around the hilt of her blade, does not even feel the dull sensation of metal connecting with the creature's skull. What she does notice, however, is her captive spluttering as he is suddenly drenched in blood from a newly-bisected Prowler.
“Wh-wh...how…”
She is almost as surprised as him. Her head tilts downward curiously, staring at her sword-arm as if it had grown a mind of its own. For all she knew, it probably had.
“Why? Why are you so determined to protect this fool?” she finds herself thinking angrily.
She almost drops her blade when her mind answers. Not in words, but in a memory, a distant splinter of a dream racing across her thoughts like a flash of lightning. A hand of flesh and bone, a sweat-soaked palm, blades of grass dancing in the wind, and a wordless promise passing from her lips.
Alas, the Prowlers did not take kindly to her introspection, and after cautiously circling her and the twitching corpse of their fellow, one takes the opportunity to rush towards Diluc. He gulps, his mind desperately trying to recall his wilderness survival training.
“Don’t panic. Aim for the snout.”
He squeezes shut his eyes and brings both fists down onto the creature’s face, his throat echoing with a guttural battle cry. The ear-piercing sound is enough to snap his captor out of her brief daydream, and she quickly dispatches the creature with a clean cut through the neck.
“You seem to be doing well enough.”
“No thanks to you!”
“No thanks to be given. Your safety is not my concern.”
“You know, if you want to kill me this badly, there are far more effecie-behind you!”
Keqing would have dismissed his shout as a weak attempt to distract her and escape, were it not for a third Prowler going for her ankle and savagely yanking her off her feet, tossing her into the undergrowth with a casual flick of the head. Lines of static danced across her vision as she heard severed power lines crackling with electricity.
“Mobility systems compromised. Not ideal.”
She couldn’t see her captive from her prone position, the heavy leaves shading her sensors. However, she could hear the creatures quietly snarling at him as they closed in for the kill. Black lines were dancing across her vision, and steadily widening. Her systems must be more damaged than she thought.
“He’ll die, he’ll die. Just lie here and let it happen. Finish the job.”
Even as the thought blinked across her mind, she felt her arm fumbling in the grass for her sword. Her fingers brushed against the hilt, then closed around the grip. Before she could even question her rebellious limb, she felt her arm rotating in it’s socket, servos grinding against shattered bits of plastic and metal. The tip of the blade pointed itself towards the nearest animal, and then she felt her sword leave her fingers as it flew through the air. A moment of silence that seemed to stretch into hours, before she heard the dull thump of metal connecting with flesh, followed by a hurt yelp and scampering paws retreating into the forest.
She couldn’t even bring herself to feel frustrated at this point, although that might be her non-essential systems shutting down to conserve power. Her arm fell to her side with a loud thump, it’s purpose done.
In the distance, she heard the grinding sound of metal being ground against metal, and the distinctive snap of a cuff-chain being broken. Wonderful. Now her prisoner was free. She could already hear his footsteps echoing in the dirt. It was decidedly unfortunate that her sensory apparatus would be some of the last to shut down. It mean she had to see his ragged, red-haired face smirking down at her as Prowler blood dripped from his soaked clothes.
“Come to…gloat?”
“No. Just wanted to thank you, for that excellent throw. Saved my life.”
While his smile seemed quite restrained, Keqing could see a smug glimmer in those annoyingly red eyes of his. It was so infuriating that she found herself blurting out something decidedly illogical before her auditory systems shut down, followed by all her cognitive systems.
“Oh, shut the fuck u-”