Chapter Text
The manufacture of segments was an arduous process - a tedious task that called for utmost precision. It was challenging even with a familiar base - himself - but even more so especially for an unfamiliar one.
Then again, it may not be accurate to call the Balladeer an unfamiliar test subject.
Omega has worked closely enough with - and on - the Balladeer in the past, which is why he now has enough samples and blueprints of his mechanics to construct another one. Roughly. The electro archon’s handicraft is a divine masterpiece of machinery that he cannot replicate just yet.
Not organically, that is. But with the help of leyline memories…
“Ready.” Beta was meticulous, and his work on Theta had proved him a suitable assistant.
Omega slips on his delusion to facilitate the channel of the leylines. “Start… now.”
One second. Two seconds. Three.
Omega releases his delusion.
“...” Beta says, hand over his mouth. “Smells burnt.”
“I’ll tell Scaramouche you said that,” Omega says. But he’s right - the ends of the puppet's hair may be a little singed. Oops.
“Should we check for a heartbeat?” Beta says.
Omega shrugs. “Doesn’t have a heart.” Maybe he should get Beta to observe Balladeer's maintenance checks. Scaramouche won’t like it, but he won’t be conscious enough to protest.
“Oh?” Beta says, curiously leaning over, and then the puppet’s eyes snap open.
Beta straightens up, stiff. Omega watches as the puppet’s gaze jumps between both of them, surprisingly expressive. Not fearful, like his own segments normally would be waking up strapped to a laboratory table, nor jumping to irritation and rage like his original counterpart. Unconcerned over his restraints or lack of modesty. Interesting.
Beta is scribbling something down. Puppet remains silent, but he’s watching Beta’s hands, captivated.
Omega clears his throat. Puppet’s gaze snaps to him.
“Do you know where you are?”
Puppet’s eyes widen, and he looks around the room again. Then shakes his head.
“Do you know who you are?”
Puppet nods. “I am Raiden Prototype one.”
Interesting. “What is the last thing you remember?”
“Mother said I was unsuitable for her needs. She needs to make more trials. She was going to put me away.” Mother should be none other than Raiden Ei.
Beta makes a curious noise, drawing Puppet’s attention again. Beta makes several more notes in his book. “We’re going to perform more tests on you. You’re going to sit still.”
“Okay,” Puppet says immediately. Startlingly agreeable, given how caustic Scaramouche is. Beta’s eyebrows raise.
Omega figures he could wager an ask, “do you know how you’re built?”
Puppet turns large, violet eyes towards him. Oddly disconcerting eyes, like a child’s. “Mother made me.”
How strange to hear an affectionate tone come out from his most abrasive coworker's mouth. He’s afraid he’ll never see Scaramouche the same way again - mommy issues, that boy. Omega clicks his tongue. “ How did she make you?”
“I don’t know,” Puppet says. Then, “sorry.”
Omega would love to record the sound of Scaramouche’s voice apologizing to him and play it at the next Harbinger’s meeting.
“Aww,” Beta bursts into coos. “You’re adorable.”
Puppet looks startled, and then - oh archons, he’s blushing.
Beta ruffles Puppet’s hair. Puppet squirms against his restraints, more out of embarrassment than discomfort.
“You sure we can’t keep this one instead of the current version?” Beta says.
“You’re welcome to pitch it at the next Harbinger’s meeting,” Omega tells him.
“I’m not a babysitter.”
“Good thing we’re not asking you to sit on any babies.”
Theta - the youngest of the segments - snarls at him. It’s infuriating and honestly quite embarrassing to have a version of yourself running around with eternal teenage angst. Omega despises Theta. On the contrary, Beta has a strange sort of fondness for the kid, although Omega supposes it can be attributed to the sort of pride one took in their first successful experiment.
“It’d only be for a short while,” Beta cajoles, one arm on Puppet’s shoulder and the other patting Theta’s head patronizingly. “We need to go over our results. You can show him around.”
Puppet stammers, “I d-don’t want to be a bother.”
Theta opens his mouth, like he’s about to resume his fit, but then… pauses. Stares at Puppet incredulously.
“He’s a lot nicer than our Scaramouche,” Beta says.
“...Yeah,” Theta says. “I can see that.”
Puppet fidgets, plucking at the hem of Beta’s oversized coat around his shoulders.
“You can find him better fitting clothes,” Beta says. “I want my coat back.”
“Oh!” Puppet jumps. “Here you g-”
Beta whacks him on the head with a clipboard. “Not now, keep that on, you’re naked under there.”
Theta’s eyes grow wide. “Are you?”
Omega remains in denial on how to interpret that reaction.
“Um,” says Puppet.
“Come on, we’ll find you something to wear,” Theta says, and promptly turns on his heel. After a bout of hesitation, Puppet hurries after him, coat dragging on the floor.
“Rascals,” Beta says.
“...What’s a Scaramouche?” Omega can hear Puppet ask, to Theta’s insane cackling.
“The Balladeer is going to be so pissed when he finds out,” Beta pipes up, midway flipping through his diagrams.
Omega scowls. “Let him cry about it.”
Scaramouche finds out.
That happens because Theta takes Puppet out on a walk. Well actually that happens because Scaramouche is one of the only other Harbingers who has free access to Il Dottore’s laboratory, on account of first needing regular maintenance, and afterwards Omega slapping a keycard into his hands with explicit instructions to d.i.y. things if he could because he couldn’t drop his work for something as petty as a loose screw, “you know where everything is, just ask one of the segments if you need more hands.”
Scaramouche did not have loose screws, for the record.
“-and Gamma really hates it when I mess with his organizational system but I do it anyway because it’s funny to piss him off.” That’s Theta’s voice, from the other room. It sounds like he’s talking to someone new. Huh, Scaramouche can’t believe any one version of the Dottores is capable of making friends.
“Which one is Gamma again?” A new voice. Scaramouche pauses in his search for a spare part. There was something about it…
“I’ll introduce you later,” Theta says. “Maybe not. He hates kids.”
“...Do all of your, uh, selves, hate kids?” There's something nagging at the back of Scaramouche's mind.
“Segments,” Theta corrects. “Kind of. It’s complicated.”
“But you’re a kid.”
“Hey! I’m almost an adult. How old are you, anyways?”
“I don’t know how long Mother kept me in stasis.”
What?
Scaramouche stalks over. Kicks open the doors. It’s Theta, already on his feet and hissing like a feral cat, and-
His younger self. In Theta’s stupid shirt and jacket - disgusting - gasping in surprise. Scaramouche hates the look on his face. “You look just like me!”
Segments. Scaramouche whirls on Theta. “You.”
Theta bristles. “What?!”
“You cloned me?!” Scaramouche takes a step forward, hands sparking.
“I didn’t do it!” Theta defends, backpedalling. He remembers his false bravado belatedly, and tries to stand straight again, but he’s the youngest. Il Dottore the Omega might be the second Harbinger, but the others don’t even fare close in power to even Tartaglia.
“Wait!” His younger self screams.
Scaramouche stops.
The brat Theta lunges for young-him. Conflicted on using him as a shield, versus pushing him behind. “I’m his babysitter!”
“Babysitter?!” Scaramouche is offended. He doesn’t need a babysitter, young segment or not!
Young-him says, eyes wide, “you can use electro!”
Theta tightens his grip on Young-him’s shoulder.
Young-him continues, “I thought - are you - you look older than me. I thought I was first. Mother said she made me first-”
“Don’t call that wench your mother!” Scaramouche snaps.
Young-him flinches.
Footsteps approach. The door flies open. “I told you not to go into my - uh, what’s going on? Why are there-”
“Go get Omega and Beta!” Theta yells.
Gamma looks quickly between them. “I…” He makes eye contact with Scaramouche. “Right away.”
“Honestly, I thought we’d have a little longer before you found out,” Omega sighs.
“I’ll fucking kill you.”
“You’re welcome to try.” Omega stretches a grin. Scaramouche wants to punch him in his stupid teeth.
There’s no reasoning with him. There’s little that Dottore can be talked out of if he sets his educational curiosity onto something - Scaramouche knows that intimately. But still. “I’m taking him.”
“What?!” Theta says. Beta shushes him.
“He’s my experiment,” Omega says.
“He’s me!” Scaramouche upends a chair. Gamma winces as it goes crashing into a rack of test tubes. Omega looks unconcerned.
Young-him - wrist in Scaramouche’s death grip - looks curiously at him.
Omega looks unimpressed. “Never took you as one for sentimentality.” Beta poorly hides a snicker.
Scaramouche narrows his eyes. “I will break more of your lab equipment.”
There - a twitch of irritation. Omega narrows his eyes. “You’ll need to be back for maintenance anyways.”
Scaramouche hates him. He snarls. “You make another one, and I’ll electrocute every single one of your worthless segments, starting with the brat.” Theta visibly flinches. It’s not going far as a threat, because Omega’s sadism extends to himself, but it will be a waste of resources and time to make new ones and pragmatism appeals more to him than emotion.
Omega rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Get out of here.”
Young-him is quiet as Scaramouche pulls them out of the laboratory. He doesn’t slow his pace until they’re properly out of the second Harbinger’s wing, far from the eyes of the Khaenri’ahn machinery that track them as they leave.
Scaramouche drops his hands. Young-him fidgets with his fingers.
“Ugh, I can’t stand that outfit on you.” Scaramouche unbuttons his coat and wraps Young-him in it.
The boy’s eyes practically shine at the Inazuman attire he reveals doing so. He looks like he has questions, but Scaramouche has no intentions of answering them in the open. They make a sharp right.
They enter his wing. The entrance still retains the original look, but he’s refurbished his private quarters. Young-him makes a happy-sounding noise at the Inazuman decorations.
Scaramouche tosses a spare kimono at him. “Change.”
“Okay.” Scaramouche frowns as young-him begins stripping. There are little marks and notches in the Dottores’ handwriting on his body, but nothing out of the ordinary. Inexplicably, or perhaps expectedly, young-him folds up Theta’s clothes. Scaramouche is going to burn it.
Young-him asks, “where are we?”
“Zapolyarny Palace,” At his confused look, Scaramouche clarifies, “We’re in Snezhnaya.”
Young-him looks alarmed. “What?! Why aren’t we in Inazuma! What if Mother is looking for us-”
“That woman left you to rot!” Scaramouche hisses. Young-him recoils. Poor thing, Scaramouche instinctively thinks, then purges the thought.
“But-”
“Tell me what you last remembered before you woke up here.”
“...Mother said I wasn’t suitable for her goals.”
“And what did she do to you?”
Another flinch. “Put me away.”
“Where? For how long?”
“Um… I don’t know… but-”
“We are one and the same,” Scaramouche says to him. Poor thing. “I have been here for five hundred years. She has never come for me.”
“But, b-but…”
Scaramouche watches young-him sob. It’s impossible to tell exactly how long it’s been locked up in Shakkei Pavilion, since he never ages or changes.
Scaramouche brews tea. Young-him wipes his tears on his sleeves.
“Motherfucking Dottore,” Scaramouche curses. “Thinks he can get away with shit.”
Young-him sniffs. “Why were they experimenting on me? Are they like Mother?”
Scaramouche’s lips curl at the title, but he knows it’s a habit he’s yet to kick, thinking of the wretched archon as Mother. Fucker. “They’re lunatics, that’s what they are. They made you as a segment of me.”
“That’s what Theta said they all were.”
“Little brat,” Scaramouche says. Theta would be the most bearable of them if he wasn’t literally Dottore. “You friends with him? Huh?”
“Yes!” Young-him says, with surprising enthusiasm. Scaramouche is surprised. Then the kid turns red. Oh archons. “I’ve never had a friend before…”
God dammit.
“Can I see him again?”
“I’m going to burn the whole lab down before I let you set foot in that place again.”
“Pleaseeeee?”
“Absolutely not!” Scaramouche scolds. “Drink your tea!”
“So I time traveled?!”
“That’s not-” Scaramouche starts, and then relents. “Yep, you time traveled.” It’s essentially the same thing.
Young-him - Kuni, they’re calling him - looks excited. Scaramouche’s not explaining Kunukuzushi, but Kuni seems like a good enough moniker for the meantime until he picks out a name of his own.
“What’s Inazuma like, now?” Kuni asks. “Have you been back?”
Unfortunately. “The same as ever,” Scaramouche says. “Nothing’s changed.”
Kuni looks a little disappointed. Scaramouche frowns.
“We have a sister,” he offers.
“Really?!”
“Her name is Shogun.”
“What does she look like?!”
“...Exactly like Ei.” They could be twins. Hah! Guess Scaramouche knows why she’s the one that Raiden Ei chose.
“...Does she live in Inazuma?” Kuni asks, fiddling with his thumbs. But Scaramouche knows what he really wants to ask.
“Yes,” Scaramouche says, and promptly decides the kid needs a distraction. “Never mind Inazuma. I’ll give you a Teyvatian history lesson.” 500 years is a lot to cover.
Kuni eagerly sits down. “Should I take notes?”
“Your memory is immaculate,” Scaramouche says. “You’re a machine.”
“Mhm!” Then, “Beta was taking notes!”
Wait a moment. Scaramouche sifts through his memory of the core files that Raiden Ei bothered to install in him. “You can’t write, can you?”
“Nope!”
“Time to practice. Go grab paper.”
There’s another Harbinger’s meeting. Scaramouche is this close to penning a letter to Raiden Ei to Musou no Hitotachi him, if he wasn’t sure that she’ll just throw it out. Hah! That didn’t bother him at all.
“You’re late,” Pierro says to him.
“I had things to take care of,” Scaramouche says. Unrelated: Kuni had been anxious about being left alone.
At his side of their meeting table, Omega rolls his eyes. Scaramouche is going to skewer them.
The same old talk. Tsaritsa’s grand plan, blah blah blah.
Pierro clears his throat. “Another important matter has come to my attention.”
The table perks up. Pierro’s Important Matters that are raised to the table as addendums outside the actual agenda are more petty than anything, but are oftentimes entertaining. Pierro says, “Dottore, how many times have I told you to stop experimenting on one of us without explicit permission?”
“Seriously? Again?” Says Arlecchino. “It better not have been me.”
“You’re not interesting enough for that,” Omega makes a show of yawning. Arlecchino scoffs.
Columbina leans forward. “Hm? What exactly did you do?”
“And how did you hear about it, anyways?” Scaramouche demands. He had sent his subordinates away. If any of them ratted him out...
Pierro gives him an unimpressed look. “Someone was spotted in the hallways outside your wing.” He leaves the witness anonymous. Smart.
Great. Scaramouche sighs. He reminds himself that the first thing he’d done, breaking out of Shakkei, was to go exploring. That also being said, he didn’t quite have the heart to lock the doors.
Eyes turn to him. “Dottore and Scaramouche?” Signora looks bored. “What’s new?”
Pierro ignores her. “What are your plans?”
Scaramouche glares. “What else?”
“You’re going to keep him.”
“Dottore has his segments, Sandrone has her robots, Arlecchino has her orphans. Is that going to be a problem?”
Omega opens his stupid mouth. “What an eclectic mix of all three you have there.”
Scaramouche vows, “I’m going to kill you.”
“Not that this hostility - whatever is going on between you two - isn’t new or anything,” Tartaglia interrupts, waving a hand, “but, what is going on?”
Omega says, “nothing much. I created a younger segment of our dear Balladeer, that’s all.”
There’s a pregnant pause.
“A young Scaramouche?!” Tartaglia yells. Pulcinella pats him on the shoulder.
“You better not have done that for anyone else,” Pierro warns. “Explain your motivations.”
“I wanted to study the makings of a puppet as delicate as he is, that’s all,” Omega drawls. “Scholar’s curiosity, you see. No need to worry - no one else has interesting enough insides to indulge me in.”
“Eh? A young Balladeer?” Arlecchino snorts. “Must be a nightmare. I’ll warn you, don’t think of dumping him in any of my houses once you get bored of him.”
As if. “If we’re done here,” Scaramouche says, annoyed. He hates that everyone knows about Kuni now, but he appreciates the reassurance that Pierro, now aware, won’t let anything else slide.
Tartaglia catches up to him. “Hey, Scara!”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I’m curious about your younger segment! How old is he?”
Right, Tartaglia has younger siblings. “At least a century.” Honestly, Scaramouche has no idea. Raiden Ei had him around for only a few weeks before deciding not to play with him anymore. There’s no memory for the amount of time elapsed in isolation.
“...Right,” Tartaglia says. “Hey, can I meet him?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
Against his best efforts, Tartaglia follows Scaramouche back to his wing.
…It might do good for Kuni to have actual social interaction so he stops asking to meet Theta. Out of all of them, Tartaglia is the most normal.
“Anything to warn me about?” Tartaglia says, practically bouncing on his toes. “Does he bite? Scratch? Have allergies?”
“If you say anything stupid, I’ll kill you,” Scaramouche says. He rounds the corner.
“Big brother! You’re back!”
Next to Scaramouche, Tartaglia makes a choking sound. Scaramouche ignores him and strides forward. “What are you doing?”
“Origami, like you taught me!” Kuni says. “Oh, you have a guest.”
“This is Tartaglia,” Scaramouche says. He eyes the eleventh, who has now collapsed to the ground, mouth gaping open like a fish. Kuni inclines his head.
“Go say hi,” Scaramouche says.
Kuni bounds over. “Hello! My name is Kuni!”
To his credit, Tartaglia recovers. “Hi! You’re… Scaramouche’s younger brother?”
“Yes! We’re actually kind of the same person, but not really…”
“Like Dottore’s segments?”
“Mhm! Have you met them? Have you seen Theta? How is he?”
“Theta? Who?”
“I said go say hi, not bombard him with questions,” Scaramouche says. “Tea, Tartaglia?”
“Um. Is it pois- I mean, uh, no thanks.”
“Hm,” Scaramouche says, taking a slow sip from his cup. Tartaglia eyes him warily, but then Kuni gets antsy and starts bugging him with more questions again and Scaramouche gets to see in real time how Tartaglia’s big-brother instincts give way into letting himself get tugged over to the table to fold paper cranes with Kuni.
Tartaglia has a big mouth. Scaramouche decides to ban him from all playdates henceforth.
“I just had to see it with my own eyes, you know?” Arlecchino says, jingling a bag full of - the audacity of this bitch - children’s toys.
Scaramouche scowls at her. “Leave.”
“Come on, I just want to see the kid.” She tries to crane her head around his hat. “You let Tartaglia see him and not me? I am the caretaker of Snezhnayan’s children, you know. I’m more qualified than he is.”
“No.” Scaramouche slams the door.
“Ow!” Oh, well, he tries to, at least. “My foot! You son of a-”
“Is that Tartaglia?” Footsteps. “He said he’ll come back!”
Scaramouche frowns over his shoulder. “No. I banned him.”
“...Why?”
“Because he’s a gremlin.”
“Can I go see Theta, then?”
“No.”
“Who’s at the door?”
Arlecchino has fallen suspiciously silent. Scaramouche turns to look at her. She’s staring silently at him, expression considering.
Scaramouche tries to shut the door again.
“Wait! Ugh, let me in! I just - I have gifts!”
From inside, an excited voice - “gifts?!”
Arlecchino bears witness to something incredible. A whole spectrum of indescribable emotions filtering over the Balladeer’s face… and then watching him, for the first time since she’s seen him, give in without (much of) a fight.
“If you say anything,” he says, “I’ll gut you.” Same old Scaramouche.
The kid is dressed in Scaramouche’s clothes, but he’s expressive in a way Arlecchino has never seen her colleague. “Hi, I’m Kuni!”
“Call me Arlecchino.” Tartaglia has described him misleadingly - perhaps the toys she’s brought were unsuitable. Ridiculing, even. “How old are you?”
“I don’t know!” Kuni proclaims. Okay then.
“Here.” Scaramouche makes a face at her over Kuni’s shoulder as he pulls out blocks, crayons, and a coloring book. Arlecchino sneers. Tartaglia had said they spent an hour making paper birds. How was she supposed to know the kid was grown?
Kuni says, "wow! I’ve never gotten so many things before.”
Scaramouche’s voice is uncharacteristically soft. “You like them?”
“Mhm!”
“...Go put them in your room.”
They watch the kid scamper away, giggling. Scaramouche is silent for a while, and then he turns to her. “Dottore has a kid.”
What? Arlecchino raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“One of his segments. His name’s Theta. He’s 17.”
“The fu- hell you want me to do?”
Scaramouche inclines his head in the direction that Kuni had disappeared in. “Kids seem to like coloring books.”
“Petty,” Arlecchino says, and then decides that Scaramouche deserves to be so, with Dottore meddling so much in his life.
Beta finds it hilarious, so he keeps a firm hold on the scruff of Theta’s neck as he hisses and spits like a feral cat at Arlecchino’s retreating back.
“I’m not a kid and I hate you all for treating me like one!”
“Relax,” Beta says, and drags him by the collar to go calm down. “That means Kuni was asking after you.”
“Who the fuck is that?”
“Little Scaramouche,” Beta says, and watches Theta’s eyes widen. Predictable, and both parts cute and concerning. “His name is Kuni, now.”
“Is that Inazuman?”
“It’s short for Kunikuzushi, if I recall.” Scaramouche’s original name. Since the puppet had not known it when he’d woken up, it must be a moniker Scaramouche adopted afterwards. “It stands for, nation destroyer.”
“Cool.” The damn brat practically had stars in his eyes. Doomed, the whole lot of them. Then, “how did you know he asked after me?”
“None of the other Harbingers know about you,” Beta points out. Everyone knows about the segments, but not any of their ages. “Arlecchino runs the orphanages. She must have gone to see Kuni.”
“Oh,” Theta says. He’s stopped wriggling, so Beta lets him go. The kid scampers off.
Epsilon's silently watching from his perch in the corner, sipping a drink. “How revolting,” he says. “That any version of us likes any version of the Balladeer.”
Beta snorts. “Are you joking? Omega’s obsessed with Scaramouche.”
Tartaglia gets his playdate privileges reinstated, because Kuni’s started asking more about him instead of Theta and Scaramouche is going to take that win. That is, until Tartaglia says he wants to take him ice fishing.
“What the fuck is that?”
“Shush! Don’t swear!” Tartaglia looks genuinely panicked. “It’s fishing! You’ve gone fishing before, right?”
Scaramouche stares at him.
“You know, you find a good spot on the lake, cut out a hole in a chunk of ice, cast your rod and wait for something to bite!”
“...”
“It’s a kid friendly sport, I promise! I used to go ice fishing as a kid with my Dad all the time!”
“And look how you turned out.”
“Haha, well, I mean… that was the Abyss’s fault, okay?”
“What’s fishing?” Kuni pipes up. “Can I go? Please, please, please, please-”
Tartaglia has joined in. Childe is such a fitting codename for him. “Please-”
“Fine! Get out of my sight, the both of you!”
“I’ll bring back tons of fish, big brother!” Kuni says.
Tartaglia is beaming. “I can teach you some cool recipes to cook them with, too!”