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“Don’t worry, little man. We’ll carry you through abyss twelve,” Tartaglia said gleefully. The glowing ‘Lvl. 90’ above his head seemed to become brighter at the words as if supporting his statement.
“Exactly!” Beidou said, swinging around her claymore to warm up. “You got me, Kazuha, and Childe in your team. All maxed out. No need to worry, Scara.”
“It’s Scaramouche,” the new addition to their team practically hissed. “And call me a little man one more time and see yourself dying first.”
A bright ‘Lvl. 62’ shined above Scaramouche’s head, indicating that he was still being built by the traveler. Kazuha supposed he knew the Harbinger from the story quests, but after meeting him since he became playable, he was actually stingier than Kazuha thought. It also made him do a double-take when Scaramouche announced he was a healer and a main-DPS as he stole Raiden’s artifacts.
“You haven’t told us your skills,” Kazuha pointed out, interrupting a brewing argument between Scaramouche and Tartaglia. “We know you are a healer, but what are your DPS capabilities?”
At that, Scaramouche turned to him, assessing. After a beat, he said, “You don’t need to know.”
“Um. Yes, we do,” Kazuha replied. “Beidou begins the rotation with her ultimate, and then I come in to conduct swirl and give additional elemental damage. After that, Childe enters to finish the job. We need to know your skills so we can plan a way to synergize.”
“That’s the problem; the damn traveler doesn’t know what kind of team I need,” Scaramouche’s eyes glazed over all of them in disdain. “This composition ruins my damage.”
“Our apologies, your majesty,” Kazuha deadpanned, eyes staring back at him impassively. “Maybe after this abyss run, we can assess your skills to match you with better-suited teammates. And since you refuse to disclose anything about yourself, can we at least trust you to heal us?”
“Oh, trust me,” an unsettling grin grew on Scaramouche’s lips. “None of you will die on my watch.”
Not once did Scaramouche heal anyone in the team on floor twelve-one.
The healer just stood in the corner, arms crossed, as the rest of the team fought for their lives. Not once did he use his skill or his ultimate. Occasionally, he would shout for Kazuha to kill off a slime or a hilichurl running after him, offhandedly saying how his basic attacks wouldn’t do the team any good. When they cleared the floor, Tartaglia’s health bar was red, Kazuha was about sixty percent healthy, and Beidou barely had a scratch on her.
“My health bar is on red!” Tartaglia yelled as they reached the waiting room, the second abyss team leaving to clear part two of the chamber. The small space didn’t consist of much, just plain white walls, four chairs, and a coffee table with glasses and a pitcher of water. These condiments were ignored, though.
Kazuha held the Eleventh Harbinger back from lunging at the Sixth, and Beidou watched the scene unfold with an amused glint in her eyes; drinking from the bottle she snuck into the spiral abyss.
“I need healing!” Tartaglia repeated.
Scaramouche snapped, irritated, “Are you dead? No.”
Tartaglia sputtered, rising again to lunge at their healer, but Kazuha was quick to grip his collar. “I literally have two thousand HP left?! One more hit, and I’ll die!”
“That sounds like a you problem. You should learn how to dodge.”
“You-!”
“And you call yourself a DPS?” Scaramouche raised a brow at Tartaglia before shifting his gaze toward Kazuha. “Your supports do more damage than you.”
“You did not just-”
“Scara,” Kazuha interrupted. “We would greatly appreciate your healing. So please, cooperate with us.”
Scaramouche’s eyes narrowed on him, and Kazuha stared back evenly. After a beat, the healer scoffed, adverting his gaze elsewhere. He grumbled, “Fine. Since you asked so nicely.”
Kazuha let a smile lace his lips. “Thank you.”
“Whatever. Just-” Scaramouche glared at all of them, his gaze only softening a tad bit when his eyes met vermillion ones. “Don’t panic. Trust me when I say no one fucking dies on my watch.”
The team did as Scaramouche had asked- demanded of them. When they were released back into the arena, ready to clear floor twelve chamber two, they attacked as they would normally. Although Childe was more tense than usual, focusing more on dodging instead of attacking, meaning they lacked on offense.
Kazuha tried to compensate for it by swirling hydro, hoping to help Tartaglia, but it was too dangerous. At two thousand health, a single hit could eliminate him, and losing their primary damage dealer would be a loss. So he settled on gathering the enemies together in hopes that they would be staggering too much to hit any of them. It was also a relief when Beidou joined their corner, focusing on steering enemies away from Tartaglia, who began using his bow form in cautiousness.
Automatically, his eyes searched for Scaramouche, who was lingering at the corner of the arena, eyes zeroed on the health bars above their heads.
But Kazuha had no time to call for him, as the ruin guard they were fighting leaned back, its gears churning to make the sound of metal scratching against each other. It was getting ready to shoot out missiles. In a rush, Kazuha whirled around to see the giant mark on Tartaglia, who was too busy fighting another ruin guard to notice.
Kazuha looked around. Tartaglia had less than a hundred health left, Beidou had nine hundred, Kazuha had two thousand, and Scaramouche was perfectly healthy.
He called out, and luckily, Beidou heard in time and was able to counter the ruin guard’s missiles, efficiently protecting Tartaglia. She shouted, “Hey, resident healer! If you’re going to heal, now would be a good time!”
“Not yet!” Scaramouche shouted back, eyes shifting rapidly between their health bars.
The timer above the arena showed twenty seconds had passed since starting, and to three-star this chamber, they would need to spare two minutes for the second team to clear part two.
Kazuha sucked in a breath as an arrow hit him square on the chest, taking away a thousand health. He looked to the side to see a lone hilichurl, but it wasn’t too far. The four ruin guards on the arena were huddling together in the middle, surrounding Beidou and Tartaglia. Looking up, he saw everyone’s ultimates were ready.
With quick thinking, Kazuha ran toward the space in between the ruin guards and the scattered hilichurls, casting his skill to gather them all up in one place. Tartaglia’s eyes lit up at this, and Beidou grinned, all of them getting ready to simultaneously cast their ultimates but-
Kazuha frowned.
He just lost half of his health, and he looked up to see Tartaglia and Beidou’s health had also been halved. But what was more offputting was the fact he couldn’t use his abilities at all. They were locked.
The three of them just stood there, surrounded by enemies.
A loud cackle sounded behind Kazuha. He turned, seeing Scaramouche with one arm up, hand raised as if he were collecting electricity from the air. His palm was enclosed with so much electro that the hairs on Kazuha’s skin rose. He watched, in what seemed like slow motion, as the electro in Scaramouche’s palm blew up, enclosing the entire arena in blinding light.
“Floor twelve, chamber two, part one cleared. Team one may now exit the arena,” a voice boomed across the abyss.
“What the hell was that ?” Tartaglia and Beidou asked at the same time, bewildered. The team had just entered the waiting room again, and only now did Kazuha realize everyone was in full health.
“I believe,” Kazuha turned, facing the person in question, “that was our healer’s doing.”
The corners of Scaramouche’s lips curled up. He said, with barely concealed pride, “Told you I’m a fucking main DPS.”
“So you heal everyone to full health while dealing burst damage?” Kazuha asked with genuine curiosity. “That’s quite powerful.”
“No,” Scaramouche leaned on the wall, crossing his arms. He still had the smug smile on his face when he continued, “My basic attacks take away health from you all. My skill takes away fifty percent from all of your health bars too.”
Kazuha held back a smile. “That’s… quite fitting.”
“Shut up,” Scaramouche said, but it had no malice to it. He still looked proud of himself. “For every point of health I take away from you, it converts to heal me.”
Beidou snorted.
“That’s so you,” Tartaglia commented.
“Shut the fuck up,” Scaramouche said with malice. “Anyway, my ultimate has my DPS potential. It’s just one big burst to all surrounding little shits, and its damage increases by every point of HP my team doesn’t fuckin’ have. And the damage equals the amount of healing I do.”
“So your healing relies on your ultimate?” Kazuha tilted his head, taking in the way Scaramouche grinned even wider, ego inflating.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. My energy cost is sixty,” he bragged. “I can spam this shit and kill everything in my way while healing the whole team.”
“Oh!” Kazuha’s eyes widened in realization. “So you’d need a team full of people built like tanks, right? So you have more damage, and you can be protected while you don’t have your ultimate.”
The healer nodded. “Exactly, Kaedehara. But a team full of tanks would only give me diminishing returns so...” they made eye contact, and Scaramouche looked away, pink dusting his cheeks. “An anemo support would be great too, I guess.”
Kazuha felt himself smile. He ignored Beidou and Tartaglia’s snickering in the background and headed toward Scaramouche, taking the healer’s hand between his own. “I look forward to working with you.”
“Get a damn room!” Beidou called from behind them, waving her bottle of wine wildly as Tartaglia whooped.
“I looked through the records before entering the waiting room,” Kazuha continued as if two hooligans weren’t making fools of themselves behind him. “You did about a hundred thousand a while ago-”
“One hundred fifty thousand,” Scaramouche corrected.
“-yes, and maybe if you electro swirled with my ultimate, it could rise to two hundred thousand and- oh! If Bennett and Zhongli were here, maybe it could even reach three-”
“Slow down, Kaedehara.” Scaramouche barely contained his own smile. “I’m only level sixty-two, idiot.”