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“This thing won’t fucking listen to me!” Scaramouche’s stretchy anemo fungus shot out a small teal wave of anemo at its supposed owner. It wasn’t even his fungus to begin with, Kazuha had been the one to catch it because Scaramouche didn’t have any patience to be able to catch any fungi.
“You need to build trust between yourself and the fungi, Scara, the wisdom orb only helps you communicate with your fungi, but it doesn’t mean they’ll listen to you.” Kazuha’s whirling anemo fungus seemed to nod along in a way doing a little dance in the air before playfully bouncing on Kazuha’s palm.
“They’re literally just mushrooms, Kazuha, it’s not like they have any semblance of trust. It’s just that you got lucky with catching a tamer one.” Kazuha sighed, Scaramouche always made excuses.
“Scara! Don’t say things like that, the fungi have feelings too.” Kazuha’s fungi hid behind him, only the little tip of its hat-like appendage sticking out.
Scaramouche rolled his eyes and sighed, he supposed Kazuha was right. “Fine, what do I need to do first then to build trust with this motherfucker.”
It was almost like Scaramouche’s fungus had copied his personality as it scoffed its face away to look at the wall instead of its captor, but eventually it was coaxed out of it by Kazuha’s fungus who wanted to play with little whirlwinds. Kazuha chuckled a bit, it reminded him of when he first met Scaramouche as a commanding harbinger.
“How about you start by giving your fungus a name, mine is named Shroomterror! Like the dragon from Mondstadt!”
As Kazuha announced his fungi’s name it flew up behind him and seemingly opened its mouth to let out a roar, but nothing more than a pillowed peep came out.
Scaramouche rolled his eyes at the display, “Well mine can’t do anything like that. All it does is fucking annoy me by launching itself at my ankles or blowing my fucking hat off.” As if on cue, his stretchy anemo fungus sent a gust of anemo straight for Scaramouche’s hat knocking it into the wind. “See!”
Kazuha laughed a bit as Scaramouche ran to retrieve his hat. “Yours seems to have quite the personality, Scara. It’s just like you!”
“Hey!”
“Regardless, I think you should name yours Winderer, like wanderer because it's like you!”
“That’s stupid.”
“Do you have anything better?”
Scaramouche stayed silent and bared his teeth before his fungus shot out another blast of anemo at his hat again. This was going to be a long day.
“Before we enter the tournament, we need to train our fungi here!” Kazuha had led the two of them across Sumeru to a little stall in Port Ormos.
“The young man is correct,” The vendor said, “train all of your fungi for the tournament here!”
“How is moving some stupid jellies around going to help?” Scaramouche rolled his eyes.
“These aren’t just any jellies, they’re special floral jellies! Now then step right up! Which one of you wants to go first?”
“I can go first!” Kazuha stepped to the center of the booth where an array of brightly colored jellies were placed.
After rotating and switching them around a bit, he finally got the desired pattern for his fungi, who hungrily ate all of the jellies up before doing a little happy dance swimming in the air.
“Your turn Scara!”
Scaramouche scoffed, this was going to be easy.
Quite the line had formed behind them in the time it took Scaramouche to figure out how to reach the pattern his fungi wanted.
“Maybe you’ll get it in the next few moves,” The vendor weakly encouraged, checking his pocketwatch. Archons this man had been here for an hour already.
“Keep it up, Scara!” Despite Kazuha’s words, his nervous smile said otherwise as he looked at the line of annoyed customers snaking behind them. Scaramouche’s fungus wasn’t helping either, casually assaulting his ankles as it waited for an array of floral jellies that would probably never come.
“Yeah, keep it up, dumbass, we have all the time in the world.” One of the customers in the line rudely yelled from somewhere in the back.
Angrily, Scaramouche turned back, rage written over his face, yelling to the crowd of customers, “Shut the fuck up! You don’t know who the fuck you’re talking to!”
“Scara-” Kazuha embarrassingly kept his smile up trying to coax his boyfriend away from the stall now, but he wouldn’t budge. Actually come to think of it, he wasn’t moving at all.
Before he knew it, Scaramouche felt his eyelids drooping and his consciousness wavering as he collapsed and fell asleep, only caught by Kazuha’s arms. A shower of green sparkles surrounded him.
Lesser Lord Kusanali appeared as the crowd parted for her to walk through to reach Kazuha and Scaramouche.
She smiled to Kazuha, “Thank you for taking care of him, Kaedehara Kazuha, but I want to talk to him a bit right now. I’ll have him back to you by the time the tournament starts.”
Before Kazuha could reply to anything, Scaramouche and her seemingly vanished into particles of dendro leaving Kazuha all alone with Shroomterror and Winderer.
He sighed before thanking the vendor and walking away from the crowd to save face, the two fungi following as they bounced off each other in play.
“Fuck you!”
“That was the reaction I expected.” Kusanali shrugged.
She had taken both of them into the Shrine of Surastana. Scaramouche lay on a small bed made from a few pillows along the ground while Nahida sat in a chair beside his head, her legs dangling by his eyes. The amount of times they’d done these little therapy sessions since his little overthrow Sumeru plot was innumerable.
“I didn’t think me yelling in public would send me off to therapy jail with you again.” Scaramouche rolled his eyes staring up at the blank arched ceilings above, as much as he didn’t want to admit it after talking things out with Kusanali it made him feel better.
“Actually, I’ve mostly been wanting to talk to you again recently, your little tantrum was simply just the catalyst for me to go out and seek you.”
Scaramouche rolled his eyes again, “Today was supposed to be my free day out with Kazuha doing something actually fun for once instead of that stupid ass community service.”
“I can bring him here too, if you’d like.” To be honest Nahida didn’t really understand human relationships all too well, Scaramouche had told her that they were boyfriends, or rather that's what she got from his dreams. Scaramouche had told her Kazuha was the annoying little bitch that kept pestering him while he did his service, but that he was also a tolerable traveling companion. Still, Nahida didn’t really know what being boyfriends meant. Nonetheless it wasn’t important for this session.
Scaramouche sighed, “No, no it’s fine, I don’t want to bother him anymore.”
Well that was another can of worms Nahida would have to unpack again sometime else. Though, if she didn’t know human relations very well, she didn’t know how good she’d be at doing group therapy.
“I see. I heard you were participating in the fungi tournament, how’s that been?” She had read in a book that opening things up with questions would make the other person more receptive than jumping straight into things.
“Great.” Scaramouche rolled his eyes.
“Really?”
Sometimes Scaramouche forgot that Nahida wasn’t the best at picking up on tone cues, “No.”
“Oh, that was sarcastic, I see.”
“Yep.” Scaramouche would’ve made some witty insulting comeback if it was anyone, but Nahida, the girl was just too nice to be mean to.
“Anyway, I wanted to ask how you’ve been doing.”
“I’m fine.”
“Fine, is not an emotion, Scaramouche, we’ve gone over this before.”
“You asked how I’m doing, not how I’m feeling.”
She sighed, it wasn’t unusual for Scaramouche to do this though, “By colloquial phrasing, those two are basically synonymous, but regardless, how are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
Sometimes Nahida herself wondered how she could hold so much patience, maybe it was because she knew what Scaramouche had gone through, “We already went over this, fine is not an emotion.”
“Fine,” Scaramouche huffed. “I’m feeling happy, angry, I don’t know.”
“Do you feel each at the same time, or do they come in waves?”
Scaramouche shrugged as he lay down, “I don’t know, I guess I feel happy with Kazuha, but he wanted to enter the fungi tournament and my fungus won’t fucking listen to me.”
“I see, so is not having control over your fungus making you angry?”
“No, it’s just that my fungus can’t do fucking anything, while Kazuha can do all this other stuff.”
“So are you jealous of Kazuha’s fungus?”
Scaramouche shook his head, “No, it’s just that mine can’t do any fucking shit.”
“Ah. I see. So do you think your fungus is weak?”
Scaramouche snorted, “Yeah, I guess, I don’t know why it can’t just fucking do something and make it easy.”
“So do you not like weakness then?”
“Yeah, you can say that.”
Nahida stayed silent for a moment, “I think you may be projecting a bit, Scaramouche.”
This was always how their sessions went, Scaramouche was always projecting something whether it be his hatred for human weakness or his parental issues. He didn’t say anything.
“I think you need to accept that not everything is not focused solely on power and utility, Scaramouche. Everything has its own beauty.”
“You sound like Kazuha.”
“Well, maybe you should listen to him more. I think he’s a very good…boyfriend?”
“He’s an annoying brat.”
“But you said he was tolerable.”
Scaramouche didn’t reply.
“I think you need to accept that not everything is focused on power, Scaramouche, you’ve come a long way from when we had our first talk. After all, you were entering the fungi tournament for fun, weren’t you? So just have some fun with Kazuha competing in it. Anyway it's about time for the tournament to start and I told Kazuha you’d be there for it, so say goodbye for now!”
“Scaramouche isn’t all that bad now, he can just be a little…difficult sometimes.”
Kazuha didn’t know why he was talking to Scaramouche’s fungus, but he was. He felt bad for the both of them. It took two to build trust and he had first hand experience that Scaramouche didn’t build trust very easily.
Scaramouche’s fungus didn’t seem to want to listen to Kazuha’s words though as it began to hobble away, but Kazuha followed. He had to take care of both fungi right now until the tournament started.
“I know he’s not the nicest, but he’s just the biggest softy once you get to know him. Just please give him a chance, I know he’s sad and you’re probably sad that you can’t compete right now.”
Scaramouche’s fungus stopped in its tracks as if considering the option, but began hopping away again.
Kazuha sighed, but his own fungus seemed to go ahead and talk to Scaramouche’s fungus and a matter of minutes later they both returned to him, enthusiastic as if they’d just been aggravated by electro.
“You’re going to give him a chance?”
Scaramouche’s fungus wobbled with uncertainty, but eventually reluctantly nodded its cap.
Kazuha smiled, “Great! He’ll be back any time now.”
Only a second later, Scaramouche popped out of thin air and fell back first onto the ground in front of them as sparkly green dendro particles dissipated into the air.
“I’m…back.” He croaked, getting up and feeling his back. It’d definitely be hurting more tomorrow morning.
“Great! I already trained your fungus, so we can participate when the tournament begins!”
Scaramouche half smiled, “I don’t know if I should participate, my fungus and I don’t exactly have a great relationship.”
“You need to have trust in each other, Scara! Now c’mon it’ll be fun, just play one round at least!”
Scaramouche sighed, “Fine, I’ll only do it if my fungus wants to though.”
Despite what he thought, his fungus actually nodded its cap instead of hopping away.
Kazuha chuckled a little, “We had a little talk while you were out.”
Scaramouche rolled his eyes as the announcer called for the first round to begin.
“Everyone please check the brackets to see who your opponent is! The first round will be starting shortly!”
Of course it was just Scaramouche’s luck that his opponent was Yae Miko. Why the hell was she even in Sumeru right now anyway?
“My, my Kuni, it was quite a surprise to see you here participating in this tournament.” Her electro fungus almost seemed to sneer at Scaramouche as it spun around her.
“Shut up!”
“Well I suppose we should be getting started anyway. Blitzara attack!”
“Winderer charge!”
The two fungi battled it out as each of them continued to cheer on their respective fungi, but in the end Yae Miko came out on top. It had been a close match though and Scaramouche accepted his defeat willingly.
“You did your best didn’t you winderer? That’s really all I could ask from you. It was a close match though, maybe next time we’ll win!” Scaramouche’s fungus seemed surprised at his encouraging words as it peeked up its cap to look at him. As he realized what he said, Scaramouche grimaced, those words felt weird coming out of his mouth. Regardless, they slipped out.
It wasn’t long before Kazuha approached them.
“Did you lose your first match too?” Kazuha asked, shroomterror wandering close behind him doing little dances in the air.
Scaramouche nodded.
Kazuha scratched the back of his neck nervously, “Yeah…maybe picking out anemo fungi weren’t the best. Swirling an element the opponent is resistant to isn’t the most effective, but it was fun! Shroomterror and I had quite an enjoyable time! What about you two?”
“I had fun, I guess and I think Winderer did too.” As Scaramouche said that his fungus charged at his legs not to assault his ankles but instead wrap around one of them as if to hug him.
“Aww you bonded with your shroom buddy!”
“Shut up Kazuha!”
“Fine, fine, I’ll stop.” Kazuha continued to laugh at Scaramouche over exaggerated frowns. “Anyway Lesser Lord Kusanali approached me after my round ended and asked if I would be open to helping her understand human relations more. I heard you told her that I was your boyfriend.”
“Shut up! Please tell me you said no!”
“I told her I was fine with it and our first session starts tomorrow, looking forward to it, Scara!”
“You motherfucker!”
Kazuha rolled his eyes and shook his head before leaning forward and giving Scaramouche a little kiss on the cheek to shut him up. It always worked, getting him all red and flustered in public.
“So who else have you told that I’m your boyfriend because I thought you said you wanted to keep our relationship private?”
“Shut up!”