A small break from Guizhong and Zhongli. This time, featuring the OG electro mommy.
Beidou has been called many things.
A child.
A peasant.
A thief.
A conman.
A brute.
A follower.
A Queen.
But not once, had anyone ever called Beidou weak.
She carved her own path in life, breaking the expectations of anyone who had ever doubted her, clawing her way out of the muck and filth she was born in and crushed any challenge that had faced her. Many see her now as the indominatable captain of the crux, the woman whose wit could rival Ninguang, the Qixing's Tianquan, completely forgetting her past as a street rat.
But few people knew that it was not her unshakeable will and tenacity that made her into the woman she was today.
It was her family.
The strongest woman in the world breaks sometimes. But the truth is, strength is not in never breaking; it is gathering the pieces and standing once more.
So when Haishan, the monster of the deep, took the lives of two of her family, leaving an infant behind in the cruel world that gave her such a fate, she immediately set plans to slay the beast.
-0-
Whether or not it was a monster, born from demons, or some spawn that was made while mother nature wasn't looking, Haishan of the deep was still an animal with animal instincts. If it escaped deep underwater, she wouldn't be able to chase it.
That was its true strength.
While scholars would dither and panic over the logistics of slaying a beast over water where it was in its element, the calibration of harpoons and cannons to fire at any tentacles that surfaced before they could dive, Beidou looked at the challenge and decided she couldn't bring the monster to land, she would bring the land to the monster.
She went and bought a company's worth of Cryo Vision holders, three hundred barrels of Cyro enhanced explosive barrels, and twenty catapults made in the image of the historical relic named Guizhong ballista.
When asked how she could possibly protect that many people for the time to aim and hit the beast, she laughed and pointed at the ocean itself.
-0-
The gods spared a glance at Beidou, the captain and Haishan exchanging blows faster than the eye could see. Lightning flashed as they applauded the fine mortal, muscles, sinew and grit chiseled by the hardships that it had faced long ago.
It was truly a sight to behold, the woman looking as if she had stepped out of a myth to play at being human. The duo fought with reckless abandon, as the shockwaves from mere contact caused the rain droplets to fly off them. The mighty swing of Beidous' claymore caused the very air to tremble, while Haishan was like a wraith, its' tentacles no more than blurs of black and blue, darting back and forth before slamming down with unparalleled speed and strength.
It was impossible to judge who had the upper hand.
Beidou did not fight like a woman who knew how to fight. She fought like she intrinsically knew how to kill.
Her family would have been shocked by the expression had they seen it, a far cry from the sly grin and rambunctious laughter that usually adorned her face.
As of now, she was the destroyer.
The same destroyer who turned in the middle of the sea to face the creature who had killed her family. It was the destroyer whose hair waved in the sea breeze as she rode into the home of the beast; taunting it to show itself before her. It was the destroyer whose back the crew of the Alcor stared at as though a legend was being written before their very eyes.
The creature shifted; a momentary lapse in their battle as the seas pulled back to allow a single yellow slit to peer at the intruder who had dared entered its fray without perishing.
Beidou raised a hand, beckoning it closer in a clear act of challenge.
"Careful," she warned the beast.
Lightning flashed, and she was gone.
Warriors are taught a way to run to conserve strength, in the way they are taught how to breathe to fill their muscles with strength the moment they struck. There is a logic to fighting, very much due to the limit of a human in a world filled with gods and monsters alike.
But Beidou did not fight in the same way as the Millelith, whose guards were trained to strike as a group, one, a formidable opponent whose strikes meant to pierce through another's guard; a group, a unrelating storm of blows that few could parry. The shogun army, who were strictly concerned with the economy of motion, seeking to slay opponents with a single strike, dashing away when failing to do so, only to try once again.
No, Beidou did not fight in the conventional sense of humans.
She moved swiftly, just as her instincts guided her hundreds of times, the cries of her family behind her fueling her every step. Like water, flowing easily from moment to moment.
She came in low against the first blow, arms pulled tightly against her diaphragm. The tentacle came down, swinging for the ice instead of Beidou, and Beidou brought up her hands up, palms open to catch the hit. She didn't stop it- she couldn't- but she redirected it, using the force of the downward strike to launch herself upwards and forwards, unsheathing her great sword to slice off the appendage in one, clean, cut.
Flow like water.
The creature swung another tentacle, this time aiming to break Beidou in a single blow, using all of its' monstrous strength. Beidou twisted in the air, twisted into the blow so that it brushed beneath her torso, robbing it of its' essential force. She drove her claymore into the tentacle, and when the creature reeled back in pain, she sent herself flying onto the creatures head.
Swift like the tides.
Haishan had a carapace around its head, a final gift that the demons gave it; for the strength and number of its limbs weren't enough to call it a true monster. It was the final bastion of defense it had. Haishan, if it could smile, would have grinned victoriously. Nothing had penetrate it since it had grown to a size rivaling mountains. Arrows fell like light rain upon it. Spears and harpoons left hardly a scratch. Even massive conveys ramming full speed in a desperate attempt to pierce through had failed to slay it.
But Beidou cared not for petty logic. Should anyone raise a hand to her or her men, she will avenge it tenfold with sword and fury.
She used her legs, the power rising from the flight, to smash down and leave a crater on the creatures head. But it did not pierce it. Catching the momentum before it could dissipate, her fists came crashing down, using each rebound to drive her fists deeper and deeper into the shell. Her fists hit so hard she felt something crunch, but she'd already drawn back to strike again and didn't bother to abort.
Unrelenting like a storm.
She showed no sign of easing her attack.
Her hands might as well have been shouting their death cries. Inside her gauntlets, her fingers had been pulverized by the force of her own blows. Pain was the only sense she had left. She felt blood sloshing around noisily inside her armor. Lesser (and wiser) men would have stopped long ago, for no mortal could possibly pierce through this indomitable barrier.
Beidou did not stop.
Instead, she grasped a piece of carapace that had splintered off, hooked one arm around it and slammed it back into its mother. Summoning all her strength, she drew breath and raised her arms above her head, letting the explosive force of her core carve the path to victory.
She pummelled the shard into oblivion.
The shock of it traveled back up her arm, dislocating one of her shoulders, the bones of her left hand shattered, and the carapace that had protected Haishan for decades since its inception cracked open like the shell of an egg tapped firmly on a countertop.
Undying like the ocean.
-0-
Haishan was frustrated.
It thought that if it put one of those empty ships on the water, more ships would follow.
And they had. Dozens of them. But something was different this time.
The ships were supposed to have humans on them. They would swing poles that cut nothing but air, arrows would splinter on its tentacles, and harpoons were too slow to hit it. In the water, They were slower than fish, bigger than them, and had much more flesh on them. They had no scales nor shells, just soft, soft skin.
Nothing gave the Haishan more joy than eating them.
Yet this time, none of the ships came into battle.
Keeping the ships afloat took a lot of energy, and made it too tired to swim. They slowly drifted apart, and Haishan growled as they still did not approach it.
How dare those weak creatures force it to work this hard!
It would make them pay for this. Insolent prey such as them needed to be taught who was the ruler of these seas. Never once had the Haishan tasted defeat. So it had nothing to fear.
Until it met that human.
The human that dared to fight back.
Haishan howled in pain, and sent a tentacle flying at her. This time, the human could not dodge in time, and was sent hurtling onto a patch of ice directly below the monster. The monster sent blows after blows on the insignificant creature that had dared to wound it so, as something unfamiliar reared their ugly head inside of Haishan.
The woman did not fall.
No matter how many blows the monster rained upon the woman, she did not collapse.
Between swings, the monster realized it was a fruitless task. Instead, it would consume the woman whole.
But had it known anything but taste of blood and victory, Haishan would have understood what that spark of emotion was.
Fear.
-0-
The blood vessels beneath her fingernails and her forearms ruptured, huge bruises popping into existence as something broke inside her. This was nothing like she had felt before. Pressure pushed at the inside of her eyeballs, and she squeezed them shut in fear of them bursting out of their sockets. Her joints screamed as she did, as tendons frayed and connective tissues tore at the seams. Her shoulders started to bend; shaking with the pain and fear of them snapping cleanly in two.
But she held on.
Her muscles were shredding. She was dying. The stories of people standing in defiance to death were nothing but lies. She was dying on her feet and she'd only been holding her sword for seconds, the pain no more but an awareness that was lost in the race of thoughts that sped past her eyes.
She tried to flex something, but her muscles were so swollen and discolored she could barely move them. The rain had stopped long ago, yet something was dripping from her nose. Had her eyes started to bleed as well?
It would be all too easy to give in now.
She had done enough, right?
Cutting off damn near all the limbs of this monster, shattering the shell that it had hid behind for so long, revealing nothing but a coward who only preyed on the weak who could not fight for themselves. Someone else could finish it off, right?
No. It wasn't.
This was still not enough.
She still had a family to avenge.
Still, the monster thrashed. Still, the monster lived. And the next time it struck, it would make sure to strike without a way to retaliate, having learned from these tactics she herself had used.
One moment, she prayed. One single moment was all she need to do to win. One strike, and she would take back the all lives that were taken too early, from a monster who knew naught of pain and suffering, and only knew to satisfy its own greed.
Maybe the gods heard her prayer. Maybe they didn't even care.
It matters not.
When Haishan rose above the sea to consume her whole, intending to crush her body so completely that nothing would remain; the sight that engulfed the horizon was merely its head. The sheer sight of which would have broken spirits stronger than hers.
But all Beidou did was smile.
Revealing its whole form, it had closed off all escape routes. The only way out was through her.
And she met this challenge head-on.
As the end came crashing down, Beidou called upon the tides and fury of the dead who had been unjustly slain. She called upon her own strength, her determination, and all the rage she had buried long ago. She called upon the love she had been given all her life, and the lives of those that had been taken to give her even more, a tsunami of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her more efficiently than any monster could.
The seas rose to answer its child, and when she caught the blows of a rampaging monster on the broadside of her sword, she swung.
The monster shrieked, but Beidou roared, and when the claymore hit its face, it brooked no argument.
-0-
And when the fight was over, when all was said and done, the gods showered thunderous applause, igniting the sea with a show of lightning that put shame to the light of day.
I just arrived in Inazuma and I'll say this and take any backlash with pride. We were robbed by that cutscene. They show off electro mommy with 2 chapters saying that 'OooOOH InZumA has StOrMS and wE Can'T Go ThErE yEt' and when we get on the ship, we immediately fade to black and wake up there?
Not even a single cutscene showing how badass Beidou is? Really Mihiyo?
I'm malding.