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It has been three months since the Raiden Shogun issued the Vision Hunt Decree. After the decree was enforced, the Tenryou Commission hardly waited a day before going from door to door, seizing Visions from every Inazuman citizen without fail even if it took force. Every citizen, except for a certain crimson oni.
What Arataki Itto lacked in book smarts, he made up for in a heavy club spiked enough to kebab a seasoned warrior and season them for lunch instead. When a fight failed against the strongest of the Tenryou Commission’s soldiers, through the age-old martial art of “Running Away”, he’d managed to slip his way out of their hands every single time they came to harass himself and the Arataki Gang for his Geo Vision.
As head honcho of the Arataki Gang, Itto was a busy man, you know! Compared to his principal responsibilities, such as rigorously training his Onikabuto Crimson Staff for his gang’s first ever Almighty Arataki Extraordinary and Exhilarating Beetle Battle Brawl, fighting the Tenryou Commission to keep his Vision out of the Raiden Shogun’s grubby hands was nothing, nada, not-a-big-deal.
But naturally, when you were the one and oni brave citizen in the nation who hasn’t given up his Vision to the law, you attracted attention. Two entire months went by without news of Itto’s surrender. Bitter by the Tenryou Commission’s heavyhanded enforcement methods, Inazuman citizens began to mock the military ability of their soldiers in hushed whispers over the steam of Aisa bathhouse’s hot springs. With the mounting pressure to act, by the command of the Raiden Shogun, the Tenryou Commission finally sent their leader, Kujou Sara, to deal with him.
Surely, that should have been the end of the line for him. Except someone must have messed with the Ley Lines underlying Teyvat and rewritten his story, because with a final fastball throw of Ushi at the woman, Itto miraculously emerged triumphant from their grueling duel.
Skipping away from a worn down Kujou Sara with his Geo Vision dangled between his fingers—lower eyelid pulled down and tongue stuck out—had felt so good. Because if the Tenryou Commission’s top warrior couldn’t take his Vision, who could possibly come after him next? Surely, the Raiden Shogun herself wouldn’t care enough about her stupid decree or whatever to come after this oni for a single Vision, right? And even if she did, well, Itto could take a fight! He could take her in a hundred fights, if she so chose! After months and months of torment from the Tenryou Commission, nothing even the Archon could do would make Arataki Itto crack.
… Right?
~
It has been three months since the Raiden Shogun issued the Vision Hunt Decree—and one day since Arataki Itto’s life has been made a living hell.
Itto stares listlessly at the ground. It’s finally the first day of the Almighty Arataki Extraordinary and Exhilarating Beetle Battle Brawl. He’d spent months training Crimson Staff for this moment. Spent months working odd jobs to earn enough money for their beautiful wooden stage and the crayons for the promo flyers hand-drawn by yours truly.
All of those efforts culminated into today: a cancelled beetle battle brawl, on account of the heavy downpour that the sky has decided to grace them with today. Thanks to the rain, no one showed up to their tournament. Kuki, who handled the logistics, had no choice but to officially call it quits.
Itto’s hair droops in front of his face like a sopping wet, dirty mop as he continues to mope while his gang members try to comfort him amidst the cold rain and thunder. To the side, Kuki stands under an umbrella, tapping her pen on her bottom lip as she sorts out when to reschedule the event, given their ruined flyers and other supplies.
Anyone who looks at Arataki Itto would think that he was simply sulking like a child who didn’t get what he wanted. Oh no, Arataki Itto does not sulk—but once in a while, Arataki Itto does think. And the gears in his head are turning. He knows that rain is no rare occurrence in Inazuma. But they’ve had clear skies all week. For a sudden torrent of rain and thunder to come out of nowhere, just as he and his gang have finished setting up their beetle brawl stage? This feels targeted.
There’s only one person in all of Inazuma who could ruin his day like this.
“Boss…” Mamoru places a gentle hand on Itto’s back. He immediately backs up as Itto’s shoulders begin to tremble.
No. That’s it. Itto is fed up. As the first and greatest head of the Arataki Gang, Arataki Itto cannot, will not—shan’t not let this slide! Never, for the honor of the crimson Oni bloodline! It’s time to Break! His! Silence!
“HEY! Raiden Shogun, is that you?!” Itto shouts to the sky, jumpscaring everyone out of their wits. He declares his challenge to the sky, shaking his fist for emphasis. Thunder booms above their heads as if in answer.
“Yeah?! Well guess what—you’re not the boss of me. Uh-huh, that’s right, you heard me! Go ahead, STRIKE ME DOWN!”
Kuki just about snaps her neck in her haste to look at him like he’s lost his mind.
“What in the Archon’s name are you doing—”
CRACK!
Itto leaps ten feet back as a searing lightning bolt promptly splits the sky in two, striking the ground beneath their feet and narrowly missing Itto’s toes. His momentum sends him crashing into poor Akira, and the two of them go spinning backwards faster than their neighborhood tanuki ninja. They crash into the side of the stage, and wood chips go flying everywhere as they smash an Arataki-shaped hole in it.
“B-boss! Are you okay?!” Mamoru instantly goes to run after them. To the side, Kuki facepalms. What a travesty this tournament has been before it could even start.
“Strike you down? Is that what you wish for?”
Kuki’s pupils shrink as she recognizes the voice that rings out above them instantly. Having already crawled partway out of the hole to give the sky another piece of his mind, Itto freezes, eyes as wide as dinner plates as he processes what he’s seeing.
Above their heads, an imposing figure haloed by a brilliant purple ring descends upon them, her long, violet braid whipping in the wind. In her right arm, she wields a lethal-looking naginata that Itto has the feeling his club couldn’t begin to hold a candle to. Her cold eyes, which glow with the power of raw Electro, sharpen with terrifying intensity as she and Itto make direct eye contact.
Itto snaps out of his stunned state as Kuki frantically tugs at his arm, pulling Itto out of the hole in the stage. Behind him, Akira begins to cough uncontrollably as he crawls out himself, gasping for air. Around Itto, the remaining two Arataki members have gotten down on one knee with their heads respectfully bowed.
“The loss of your life would not fulfill my promise of eternity,” the Raiden Shogun says. Her voice carries across the wind, exuding a sense of authority that demands submission.
Itto breathes a sigh of relief. He doesn’t even get the chance to relax before the Raiden Shogun’s eyes shift down towards his neck. She raises her hand as if reaching for something, and suddenly, Itto knows exactly what the Raiden Shogun herself has come here for.
“As long as you hold ambition… that, by far, is the greater threat that I will not hesitate to eliminate.”
Itto cries out in pain, stumbling forward and dropping to his knees when his Geo Vision grows hot and begins to spark with electricity.
“Boss!” Kuki immediately runs to his side and clutches onto his shoulder with both of her hands to pull him back before he can be tugged any further. When the Raiden Shogun clenches her fist and makes a pulling motion, the Vision harshly yanks him forward harder than Kuki can pull him back. Itto coughs as it chokes him, trying its hardest to break free from its place on his choker.
In the face of the Raiden Shogun herself, Itto should feel fear. Yet, as his Vision is about to be taken away, Itto only has one thought on his mind.
The Raiden Shogun wants this smoke? She wants this Vision that bad? Itto’s ready to take her on, and more than ready to win.
“Heh… heheh…”
With a grin, Itto digs his fingers into the dirt to keep himself anchored. Behind him, Kuki lets out a battle cry as she pulls back on his shoulder, expending her reserves of strength to protect her boss as his loyal second-in-command.
“You want this Vision? I’ll give it to you—but if, and ONLY if, you strike me down…”
He slams a foot into the ground and slowly pulls himself to his feet, heaving as he levels the Raiden Shogun with a gaze fierce enough to move mountains.
Itto’s eyes sharpen with vigor, and he declares his final challenge to the Shogun.
“... in a BEETLE BATTLE BRAWL TO THE DEATH!”
Everything goes silent, save for the sound of the rain pitter pattering around them. Kuki stops yelling and tugging on his arm to stare at him in disbelief. His gang members remain kneeling, not daring to make a sound for fear of their lives.
The Raiden Shogun continues to summon his Vision, and for a moment, Itto thinks she didn’t hear him. But eventually, he feels the heat in his vision die down, and the sparks stop. Above him, the intense glow in the Raiden Shogun’s eyes subsides, and she lowers her hand.
“... Very well. I accept your challenge.”
Ha! He knew the Archon would never—wait, what?
~
It has been three months since the Raiden Shogun issued the Vision Hunt Decree—and one hour since Itto learned that the Raiden Shogun will stoop to any level in order to preserve her so-called “eternity”.
“Let’s go, boss!”
“You got this! Show her the might of the one and oni!”
“Kick her off our turf!!!”
The Arataki Gang’s three members jump and holler a racket in the audience section beneath the stage, waving around broken wooden planks with Itto’s ruined hand-drawn flyers taped to them. The angry, bold brows he gave himself now look more like a melted unibrow, but it was all they could manage to scrape together from the drenched supplies. Thankfully, at Itto’s insistence that it would “make the competition unsafe for the Onikabutos”, the Raiden Shogun was gracious enough to send away the rain, so as to create a fair battlefield. The stage is still damp, but they’ll have to make do.
“—oss. Boss! I need you to focus on the enemy!”
Kuki’s voice over his shoulder rips into his thoughts. Itto gulps, and tears his nervous gaze away from his gang members to take a gander at his opponent across from him: the Raiden Shogun, whom Itto would have never imagined in a million years would actually accept his challenge. She floats above the stage in a half criss-cross apple-sauce position, her eyes closed in contemplative thought. In front of her, an ordinary-looking purple Onikabuto stands perfectly still even as Crimson Staff gnashes his pincers and stomps his legs threateningly at her.
There is no way the Raiden Shogun could possibly know the art of the beetle brawl better than Itto does—especially not with that Onikabuto that anyone could have picked off of a tree. Despite himself, Itto turns to Kuki with a pleading look.
“Kuki. Kuki, you need to save me. I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
“I can’t.”
“I didn’t think she’d actually accept—god, she’s freaking meditating to prepare for a beetle brawl, Kuki—” Kuki shoots him with one of her looks that could kill, and Itto immediately shuts his trap.
“You issued your challenge, and the Shogun decided to humor you; you were reckless, and stupid, and bullheaded, and all of the above—and these are the consequences. I can’t help you here. All I can do is play referee.”
Damn it. Itto hates it when she’s right.
“Enough waiting. Let us commence our brawl.” Itto jumps out of his skin when the Raiden Shogun speaks. As if in tune with her, her Onikabuto begins to stretch her legs and click her pincers together.
Kuki shoots Itto one last look, as if to say, good luck, you’ll need it. She walks to the side of the stage and stands in the middle of the two Onikabuto.
“Ahem,” she begins in a monotone voice. “I hereby announce the first and final match of the Arataki Gang’s first annual Almighty Arataki Extraordinary and Exhilarating Beetle Battle Brawl, to take place between Arataki Itto and the ‘Invincible’ Crimson Staff versus…”
Kuki clears her throat again. If Itto didn’t know any better, he’d think she were trying to hide a laugh.
“The Raiden Shogun… and Eien-ni-Kabuto.”
Eternally Kabuto. Itto closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and lets it out very, very slowly, trying his best not to let it come out too shaky lest he incur the Raiden Shogun’s wrath. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Across from him, the Raiden Shogun’s face remains neutral, unaware of or ignoring the little giggles that are bubbling from Akira’s lips below them while Genta smacks him in the shoulder repeatedly to shush him.
Whether the Raiden Shogun knows it or not, her unexpected sense of humor—or, the even funnier possibility, that this is her being entirely serious—has made Itto a lot braver for this match. Itto grins, and puts his hands on his knees in anticipation. Vision Hunt Decree or not, he wants to give the Raiden Shogun a real battle to remember.
“I won’t go easy on you, Shogun!”
Kuki raises her arm in the air to signal the beginning of her countdown. “3… 2… 1… Start!”
“AAAAAAAAAGHHH!” Itto screams out his signature battle cry, and points a finger straight at his Archon. “Crimson Staff, CHARGEEEEE!!!”
Crimson Staff shoots forward on his beefy little legs, scuttling straight towards Eien-ni-Kabuto and slamming her straight on. Not expecting the attack, the poor thing flies backwards, hitting the Raiden Shogun’s left ankle with a sickening crunch.
“Ha, ha, ha! A crit hit!” Itto laughs boisterously with his hands on his hips.
“KO!”
“Paint the stage with crimson!”
The Arataki gang—or, more accurately, the Arataki peanut gallery—oooohs and aaaahhs dramatically for maximum effect, while Crimson Staff triumphantly hops up and down in place. But Onikabutos are resilient creatures, and it isn’t long before Eien-ni-Kabuto has gotten back on her feet.
Itto keeps his eyes on the Raiden Shogun, waiting to see what she will do to retaliate. To his shock, she doesn’t say a word. She taps her finger on her knee. At her silent command, Eien-ni-Kabuto rears her head back and clicks her pincers together, summoning a little orb of Electro power. Itto smirks when he sees it, because any standard Onikabuto could summon an orb twice that size.
Apparently, the Raiden Shogun is set on defying all of Itto’s expectations today. Itto gasps when she shoots it at Crimson Staff, for while the orb itself is quite small, it moves at twice the speed as a normal Onikabuto’s! While Crimson Staff’s raw physical power cannot be matched, he is nowhere near nimble enough to dodge such a surprise attack. The orb hits Crimson Staff right on the tip of his pincers, sending him reeling back on his hind legs.
What kind of telepathy do these two have going on?! I can’t predict what they’re gonna do next! And what is with the speed of that thing’s Electro orbs?!
No. Itto doesn’t have time to be shocked! This is his game, his turf. He is the master of adapting to the unexpected!
“Crimson Staff, go left and STEAMROLL!!” Crimson Staff hops to his left and scuttles rapidly toward Eien-ni-Kabuto again. When Eien-ni-Kabuto shoots another Electro orb at him, he clumsily rolls his entire body to the right, dodging her attack entirely. Before he can stop rolling, however, Eien-ni-Kabuto leaps into the air, and shoots a second orb right at his exposed stomach with perfect timing!
“HAHAHA! Not bad, Shogun!”
Itto laughs with glee. Forget the Beetle Battle Brawl—this once-in-a-lifetime experience is even more thrilling than the tournament they originally came here for!
The rest of the battle persists in this way, with Crimson Staff landing a few more brutal hits on Eien-ni-Kabuto, while taking quite a few light but sharp blows from her Electro orbs. Both Onikabutos put up an impressive fight. Throughout the entire match, the Raiden Shogun remains silent, commanding her Onikabuto simply with taps on her knee with a communication system that Itto, unfortunately, never managed to figure out.
By the time the battle is nearing its end, with both beetles a little more than worn down for wear, Crimson Staff is running out of steam. Although his body is in better shape than his opponent, all of his efforts to dodge her fastballs have left the poor thing exhausted. He’s visibly stumbling on his legs as he strokes his leg against the ground, revving up his engine to charge one last time. Eien-ni-Kabuto, while her outer armor sports quite a few scratches and bruises, still has more energy left in her.
Finally, after spending the entire battle in silence, the Raiden Shogun speaks.
“Hmph. Such insolence. Your eternity is flawed, for all you have is simply an illusion carved of theatrical displays of strength, with no grounded strategy to sustain their long-term use.”
Keeping her eyes closed, she flicks her finger up: a gesture Itto hasn’t seen her use before. Itto watches as Eien-ni-Kabuto bends all her little legs in a crouch and begins to quake. Purple sparks begin to pop and crackle along her back as she charges up her attack.
“Eternity… lies in the balance between fantasy and reality. Fantasy can only survive with an underlying reality.”
Uh oh. “Crimson Staff, dodge!” Unfortunately, Itto took a little too long to process the Raiden Shogun’s new move. His warning comes just a little too late, and this delay is enough to forsake his chances of winning the battle entirely.
Itto watches with horror as, without lifting a finger, Eien-ni-Kabuto summons three massive, bright lavender lightning bolts that all strike Crimson Staff in succession, sending him flying across the stage and leaving a deep, black burn mark in the wood where they struck.
“Reality is the stillness buried deep within the illusion. The silent, unchanging calculation that lends truth to your fantasy.”
Crimson Staff harshly lands on his back, waving his legs in the air as he tries and fails to right himself back up.
For the first time since she took her place on the stage, the Raiden Shogun opens her eyes, and looks directly at Itto. Despite there being no rain, lightning strikes behind her back, shadowing her silhouette so that all Itto can see is her eyes. They bore into him as if, in the time period it took for her Onikabuto to defeat his, she’s figured out the essence of his entire soul.
“This is eternity.”
In the face of a crushing defeat, Itto’s face breaks out into a huge grin.
Well played, Shogun. Well played.
~
“And that, my bros, is the story behind how I lost my Vision.”
Across the table on the balcony of Wangshu Inn, Ifa raises an eyebrow as Itto finishes his grand tale. To Ifa’s left, Ayato hums and takes a sip of his tea, eyes closed as he savors the floral fragrance.
“Uh… is that really what happened, bro?” Ifa crosses his arms. “I know you Inazumans went through some crazy stuff back then, but…”
A beetle brawl battle with your dictator Archon for your Vision? Really? goes unsaid.
“Do you even hear yourself, bro?” Cacucu enthusiastically jumps in, voicing Ifa’s thoughts for him. Ifa rewards him with a treat from his palm.
“Are you doubting the words of the great Arataki Itto?!” Itto takes an aggressive chomp out of his Eight-Treasure duck that’s gone cold during his story, and continues to rage with his mouth full. “My dude. My bro. My dudebro. We’ve known each other for two whole hours! I wouldn’t lie to you. Ayato, back me up here, man!”
Itto and Ifa wait with bated breath as Ayato sets his teacup down and hums again. His serene smile as he contemplates his answer is as unreadable as ever.
“... Itto is a man of great character,” he eventually says.
“Ha, see? What’d I tell ya? A real bro just knows, and Ayato here is the realest of them all!” Itto holds out his fist, and Ifa watches with disbelief as Ayato delicately taps their fists together in the most prim and proper fistbump he’s ever bore witness to. Cacucu flits excitedly from side to side, trilling up a storm with his new vocabulary.
“A bro just knows! A bro just knows!”
After they’ve exchanged addresses to send letters, Itto and Ayato part ways with their new bros with a promise to host a special edition of the Almighty Arataki Extraordinary and Exhilarating Beetle Battle Brawl at the Flower Feather Clan one day. Ayato lets out a small laugh as Itto raises himself on his tiptoes and sways his whole body back and forth like a palm tree to wave goodbye to Ifa and Cacucu in the distance.
Now, does he know the real unfortunate manner in which Itto lost his Vision during the Vision Hunt Decree? Yes. Should Itto’s tale have ended right at the part where the Raiden Shogun sent Kujou Sara to duel him for his Vision? Alas, yes. In Ayato’s opinion, being defeated in a duel against the Tenryou Commission’s military leader was an honorable way to lose one’s Vision—more honorable than most people were given the chance to during the Vision Hunt Decree. The true story would have done just as well for a lunchtime tale.
But Itto is a man with boundless imagination who simply wanted a more… unique story to entertain their new Natlanese friend with. And after Ayato himself hid—ah, his apologies, simply never mentioned—his real identity to Itto to ensure his unrestrained friendship, who is he to expose the truth and ruin Itto’s whimsy?
“Ayato, dude, you coming? The Lantern Rite Festival only happens once a year, you know. It’s gonna miss us if we don’t go see it right now!” Ayato laughs as Itto, who’s grown quite familiar with him, throws an arm around his shoulders and affectionately noogies him.
Most people wouldn’t dare lay a finger on me, you know.
“Why, of course… bro.”
Of course, whether it’s in his stories, his battles, or his friendships, Arataki Itto is not and never will be “most people.”