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The pitter-patter of footsteps echoed through the village, signalling the end to the week. Swordsmiths packed up for the day, forged weapons all securely kept in each store. The cacophony of shopkeepers and merchants stirred the wanderer from his meditation. Right on cue, the door to his simple hut slid open, revealing a smith's apprentice, no older than eighteen. He grinned, bouncing lightly on his heels.
"Hey, you ready to go out?"
The wanderer smiled.
"Yes, Katsuragi. Let us go now."
—----———
Scaramouche was glad he threw the ginger brat off his scent. He had stayed around Inazuma, after obtaining the electro Gnosis. He wasn't dumb, so obviously he did not use it immediately. That would undoubtedly alert both Ei and the Shogun. However, when he caught wind of "I heard that Snezhnayan Harbinger had arrived in Inazuma!" from gossip and rumours that floated around the elderly citizens of the suburbs of the city.
He had taken the first ever boat that set off to Liyue ever since the Shogun had stopped the Vision Hunt Decree. He had toyed around with Tartaglia's men for a while, until he was bored and discarded them. He made sure to plant small traces of electro around the so-called 'debt collection area'.
He had heard a pyro Fatui agent mutter out," Our Lord will return to Liyue… soon…" as his dying words before Scaramouche snapped his neck. Under yet another disguise, he returned to his rightful homeland — Inazuma.
Did he even have a choice?
It was likely that he was dying in a ditch, where no one could find him or save him. Yes, that seemed appropriate. He was clutching his chest, wheezing in shallow, short puffs. Ah, so this was the power of the Almighty Shogun's gnosis, hmm? The balladeer thought numbly, his mind going blank.
Tears stung his eyes, and he blinked them back curiously. When was the last time he cried? He was clinging onto his dead friend's limp body, furious tears cascading down his pale cheeks, as he swore revenge on those who did him wrong.
Maybe he should have given the gnosis back to the Tsaritsa.
But then the problem would arise. He had waited at least 400 years for this moment. He had dreamt of it, ever since the Kitsune had told him of his purpose. But where the victorious feeling should have been was replaced by a cold, cruel aching in his chest cavity, for a puppet was not meant to have a heart.
The archon-forsaken Electro Gnosis was the root of all his problems.
He had waited for the most opportune moment, where no Harbinger was there to stop him, where the traveller could not meddle in his plans, and far away from the all-seeing eye of the Archon herself.
He had imagined slotting the Gnosis into his empty heart, being a missing puzzle piece that would fit perfectly making him while again. He predicted a surge of electro energy within himself, possibly enhancing him until he was as powerful as, or even more than, Beelzubub herself.
He felt none of those things.
Instead, a crash of regret, fear and loss all swarmed around him from the moment the Gnosis entered his chest. He tried to claw past the misery, searching for joy, triumph, anything other than the flood of pain and suffering Ei had kept stasis in the Gnosis. It was no wonder that the puppet was so good at manipulation, for his creator had been riddled with lies as well, was she not?
He felt his eyes prickling, his vision going blurry. Two fat droplets of gold, for he was the creation of a God and all gods cried golden years, trickled down his pale cheeks, and it all broke like a dam. He wept freely, no longer clinging onto the past that he oh-so wished to keep.
In those moments, he built himself anew, just like he did three hundred years ago, when Ei casted him aside as a useless prototype puppet—
"I am not a puppet." He whispered to himself, voice hoarse and dry, since he had no one to speak to anyways.
"I am not a puppet." He staggered up, louder than before. He repeated it like a mantra.
"I am not a puppet to the electro Archon. Neither am I the Balladeer of the Cryo Archon." He clutched his shiny, brass insignia of Inazuma that hung on his chest. "I am not someone the gods can just use and discard whenever they like."
"I am Kunikunzushi. And I do whatever I want."