Chapter 14: The Arrival of Scaramouche
Tn: This chapter is re-written at 5 / 19 / 2025
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Bai Luo's attitude toward the Fatui Harbingers varied wildly from one to the next.
There were some he barely saw at all, always out on missions too far to cross paths with.
As for Childe—well, Bai Luo would actively avoid him if they ever ran into each other.
Not out of fear. No. But this battle lunatic had dared to challenge him to a duel right in front of the Tsaritsa on Bai Luo's first day as a Harbinger.
Thankfully, Snezhnaya wasn't a place where duels before royalty were a thing.
It wasn't that Bai Luo couldn't take him—it was just… a hassle.
Then there was La Signora. Short-tempered, sure. A little too fond of putting the world in its place.
But she wasn't unreasonable. As long as you didn't piss her off, she was mostly tolerable.
Pulcinella and Pantalone? Former superiors.
Even though Bai Luo now stood shoulder to shoulder with them, it still felt weird addressing them as equals.
Dottore? A complete enigma.
Even though Bai Luo had name-dropped him on multiple occasions to pull strings, the man had never come after him for it.
Rumors painted him as cruel and sadistic—but strangely, Bai Luo had never seen that side.
He had some idea of where most of them stood.
Except Scaramouche.
The one Harbinger that remained a complete mystery.
Bai Luo had barely ever seen him. Scaramouche rarely showed up to formal gatherings.
Even during high-level ceremonies where all Harbingers were expected to return, he remained conspicuously absent.
If Pulcinella and Pantalone were once his commanding officers, and he still carried a shred of respectful habit when speaking to them…
Then Scaramouche was the class president from another school.
You could acknowledge his strength, sure.
But Bai Luo had no need to defer to him.
And when it came to his connection with Inazuma—things got complicated.
In the world of Teyvat, there existed a truth that none could escape: erosion.
Even the most powerful—the Geo Archon, Morax himself—could not completely resist the slow wear of time.
The Raiden Shogun was no exception.
To combat erosion, the Electro Archon devised a solution.
That solution… was Scaramouche.
Where she'd gotten the technology to construct a human-like puppet was still unknown, but she had managed to forge the first intelligent automaton—a prototype capable of wielding immense power.
Back then, he didn't go by that name.
The Shogun's original intention was to implant a Gnosis into the puppet's chest and have it serve as her eternal regent—one who could rule Inazuma in her stead.
But when the prototype was complete, she discovered something unexpected.
It cried.
Tears, emotion… human weakness.
The Raiden Shogun judged it unfit to bear the Gnosis, believing its humanity to be a flaw.
And so, she abandoned it.
She sealed the puppet deep within Tatarasuna, in a place known as the Shakkei Pavilion.
For the second attempt, she stripped away all potential for emotion or instability.
She forged a new automaton—one devoid of heart, devoid of spirit.
A perfect puppet, incapable of weeping.
But in doing so, she created a being so rigid and unyielding that she would spend the next several millennia locked in an endless battle of logic and will within her own plane of consciousness, just to keep it in check.
As for the Gnosis?
She entrusted it to her most loyal companion, Yae Miko, to safeguard.
And as for herself—Raiden Ei withdrew from the mortal world, into her inner realm, meditating endlessly to stave off erosion, emerging only in moments of true crisis.
And thus, centuries passed in the blink of an eye.
Until one day, the puppet sealed within the Shakkei Pavilion awoke.
How Scaramouche went from that abandoned vessel to a Fatui Harbinger, Bai Luo had no idea.
But one thing he did know is that the place in Scaramouche's chest where the Gnosis was meant to be now housed something else.
He had learned this during a mission for Dottore, who had—half-absentmindedly—let it slip.
What was in there, exactly?
Dottore called it a "filthy heart."
If nothing else, this little episode proved one thing:
Scaramouche was not someone easily manipulated.
If Bai Luo had any hope of getting something useful out of him, he'd have to play it smart.
For now, the priority was figuring out why Scaramouche had come to Inazuma in the first place.
His arrival had been… abrupt.
To Bai Luo, even if he didn't expect the Harbinger to make a flashy entrance, he figured there'd at least be a boat involved.
But according to the agents stationed at the docks, Scaramouche had quite literally just appeared.
No grand entrance, no fanfare, not even a ripple on the surface of the water.
It had taken the Fatui welcoming party several moments to even register that he was standing among them.
And apparently, he hadn't planned on meeting Bai Luo at all.
Then again, not all Harbingers got along—some barely tolerated each other.
So Bai Luo sought him out instead.
"What do you want?"
Setting down his teacup, the boyish-looking Harbinger raised his head to meet Bai Luo's gaze.
Despite never meeting the Raiden Shogun in person since arriving in Inazuma, Bai Luo had seen enough portraits and paintings to get a general sense of her appearance.
Compared to her in-game depiction, she felt colder here—more imposing.
But then again, she is a god who ruled a nation with iron stillness.
And the resemblance between her and Scaramouche was unmistakable.
Even if the puppet tried to hide it beneath that oversized kasa hat, the trace of Raiden Ei was there—in his brows, his eyes, in the arrogance that clung to his every word.
"Did the Tsaritsa send you to replace me?"
Bai Luo asked, casually sipping the tea handed to him by Ah Qi.
He hadn't received a single word of warning about Scaramouche's arrival, and now the guy just dropped in out of nowhere.
"I've got other orders. They don't conflict with yours."
Scaramouche's gaze flicked to the Delusion at Bai Luo's waist—a brief, subtle glance, but one that didn't go unnoticed.
It was easy to guess what Bai Luo was thinking.
He'd been given jurisdiction over Inazuma. The Tsaritsa herself had said so.
And now, before he'd even warmed his seat, another Harbinger had arrived—one who was notoriously hard to read.
Scaramouche knew exactly what that looked like.
Had it been him, he wouldn't have bothered explaining anything.
Wouldn't have sat here calmly drinking tea either.
He might not have raised a hand—but that would've been purely out of respect for the Tsaritsa.
But Bai Luo wasn't your average Harbinger, either.
He caught the flicker of Scaramouche's eyes on his Delusion.
"The Delusion factory, huh?"
The question landed, casual in tone—but sharp as a blade.
To understand this, we must speak of the giant serpent's remains on Yashiori Island.
In this land called Teyvat, there was little camaraderie among gods.
The Archon War had left no shortage of casualties, and Orobashi had been one of the defeated.
Driven into exile, the great serpent had fled to a place known as the Dark Sea.
In that alien domain, Orobashi became the guardian deity of the locals.
He was worshipped as Watatsumi Omikami, or Furumiyahito no Mikoto, and eventually led his people back to Inazuma's shores.
There, they founded an independent regime on Watatsumi Island, outside the reach of the Shogunate's authority.
The border was drawn at the Western Barrier, and the two sides coexisted in an uneasy peace.
So far so good.
Even the Raiden Shogun had tacitly accepted the arrangement, allowing Watatsumi to exist as a sovereign entity within her domain.
But one day—for reasons still unknown—Orobashi suddenly went mad.
He launched an all-out invasion of Narukami Island.
The war that followed was catastrophic.
Both sides suffered heavy losses, and even the Shogun's beloved general, the tengu warrior Sasayuri, fell in battle.
In the end, it was Raiden Shogun herself—Beelzebul—who struck the final blow.
She cleaved Orobashi in half, slaying the serpent god on the battlefield of Yashiori Island.
Even now, Orobashi's white bones lay scattered across the island, bleached under the burning sun—a grim reminder of the past.
The aftermath of that war changed Yashiori Island forever.
Even the landscape bore its scars.
Raiden's final strike had carved open a great canyon—a deep, rift-like wound now known as the Musoujin Gorge.