Mona had always feared this path she could take. She evaded her doppelganger's strike, Psycho Mona's blindfold being her most distinctive attire. Around it, the attire Mona usually wore was distorted on Psycho Mona, what with notes full of ramblings tacked on and a ragged cape which billowed behind her.
"Oh, Mona," Psycho Mona drawled. "You haven't even begun to decipher this universe's secrets. All that holds you back is your fear."
"Spare me." Mona struck back with Hydro. Even without being told why, Mona knew the divergence point between them.
Reading her own fate.
The question had hung over Mona's head, though the temptation was easy to ignore with research. One recurring fear Mona had imagined was going insane from the act and the knowledge she'd earn at the expense of fate folding in on itself. Now, Psycho Mona showed what she could've been: an unfettered sorceress who attacked Mona with a demented fervor. It shocked Mona to see someone with her face - no, it was her, for better and worse, having fallen so far.
Psycho Mona staggered forward. "You call yourself a seeker of truth, yet you stop one hair away from the complete truth and call it 'prudence.'"
"The power of fate must be respected, and to respect is in part to fear. If the result of not doing so ends with you," Mona's glare roamed over Psycho Mona, "then consider me 'prudent' all you wish."
Psycho Mona snickered. "Touche. Seeing everyone's fortunes and ills, down to their date of death, gets so boring at times. Right now, do you see everyone's fates? The fate written in the stars is now in flux, all thanks to the Prinzessin. This is the most excitement I've felt in a long while!"
Mona shivered.
What Psycho Mona uncovered had driven her over the edge; her exhilarated voice took joy in this abandon. Of restraint, reason and conviction.
Psycho Mona's hand reached for her face. Mona tensed, but it wasn't an attack.
She lifted her blindfold. "Would you like me to tell you your fate?"
Oh, gods.
Mona whipped away, but it was too late. Those hollow pits stared back at Mona even behind closed eyelids, and the sight twisted her gut in revulsion. Even while she threw up, Mona knew she was leaving herself open, but Psycho Mona seemed content to watch her squirm while she slid her blindfold back down.
"You," Mona spat, "you monster."
Psycho Mona shrugged. "Monster? That's all relative. I'm just ahead of the curve."
Mona called forth Hydro in violent rejection of Psycho Mona, everything she was not. Not in the semantic sense of 'they were both Mona,' but this self-mutilation served as a slap to the face. Now and forever, Mona rejected the temptation which would lead her down this path to madness. Such rejection was followed by a strange alacrity at realizing there were limits on the 'truth' she pursued.
If there was even the slightest chance she'd end up like this, never would Mona read her own fate. Mona punctuated this conviction with her Elemental Burst.
"Written in the stars!"
'Layla the Useless' searched for her doppelganger.
She called herself that after sleeping throughout an entire massacre and failing to do much to the Kaiserin. Waking up to a silent Akademiya marked the worst day of her life. Marks of struggle carved up the corridors, and outside, Sumeru City had become a hellscape. Difficult emotions churned within Layla at having evaded the massacre by sleeping in her secret sleeping spot.
Genius like Alhaitham and Cyno? They survived through wit, not luck. Though they'd reassured her surviving was more important than how they survived, Layla was still nagged by insecurity.
It also felt wrong to work less because her colleagues died. The Akademiya was a rough place, but it wasn't as though Layla bore a grudge against any of the scholars. Especially not after seeing them hang from…
No, Layla told herself. Her doppelganger was out there. Judging from the fights all around her, these invaders were on a mission. It'd taken days of clearing the debris to carve out the streets they once knew, which allowed Layla to make her way.
She screeched to a halt at the Grand Bazaar.
There was her doppelganger.
Sleep had done wonders for Layla's attention. Though 'Layla' was outwardly alike to her, everything sublime within belonged to another. Gait, posture and stresses in each muscle rearranged Layla's body into that of a possessed stranger.
"Who - What are you?"
"Hehe. What do you mean? I'm Layla too." Layla refused to drop her guard. 'Layla' eventually relented, "Busted ~ You call me 'The Stars' Blessing,' but I really am the you which takes over at night to write your papers."
Layla shuddered at her doppelganger's voice. She'd heard folks say decent things about her sleepwalking self, and residual clues pointed to a pleasant, if elusive alter ego.
This was not it, Layla's intuition screamed.
Like music played out of tune, there was something about 'Layla' which stood out in her mind as insidious, playfully so.
"So I have you to thank for all those finished papers. Thank you for your hard work," Layla bowed and received a bow in return. "I must ask: how?"
'Layla' shrugged. "Two things. One, I'm free of your fetters: self-doubt, depressive moods and your pressures." Layla was stung by her every word, but it was true. A multitude of factors weighed on her in every waking hour.
"The second thing?"
"Our subconscious, which I'm privy to as your alter ego. Impulses, nonsensical in their drives and harmonious in their contradictions. It serves as the key to deriving insight to the inexplicable universe. You chip away at it with rationality, but the inexplicable is best deciphered with the nonsensical. You find the dots, I connect them."
"So what changed?"
'Layla' bubbled up. "You know, one time, you went three days without sleep! I was so worried about you, but since I took over your work longer than usual, did you know what I discovered? Intelligence… is a sin."
Layla recoiled.
Psycho Layla, as she now labeled, emanated an aura which set off every alarm in the primal part of Layla's mind. Her doppelganger's visage had morphed again, casting off a mask to reveal the black blasphemy within.
"Between the inexplicable and contradictory lies the corset of rationality, where you exist. Trying to fit everything in labeled little boxes. You asked me what I am. I am awake. And I shall awaken this world too from the prison called 'rationality'!" Psycho Layla slouched intensely in a villainous caricature. But caricatures remained safely in fiction, unlike Psycho Layla who staggered on, moved by powers unaccustomed to the weakness of flesh.
In the face of such madness, Layla's sword seemed laughably inadequate. Its blade quivered, a result of her own tremor at facing something she failed to understand.
"Wait, 'too'?" Layla froze. The thought of anyone else being 'infected' by madness, for lack of a better term, struck her cold.
"All of Teyvat in my world has been touched by madness." Psycho Layla's grin was a slash across her face. "When we're done here, I'll proselytize in this world. Spread the word of revelation to free them from the need to make sense of things."
"I won't let you." Layla braced herself. She wasn't a fighter, but the mountainous weight of duty fell upon her shoulders. Whatever Psycho Layla had become, it was her onus to take this doppelganger down.
Psycho Layla Vision glowed. "Mona Megistus: I know you recognize the name. She helped improve our Elemental Skill, all the while raving about the incomprehensibilities of the stars. Oh how we talked…"
Layla tried to interrupt the attack, but was betrayed by hesitation.
Psycho Layla clapped her hands together above her head. Ice spread beneath her, and two dozen stars rose upon fine, icy stalks from this 'mirror.'
The constellation of Shooting Stars rained upon Layla.
"My guiding stars!" She threw up her shield. Even then, Layla staggered as though charged by a Shroomboar.
Psycho Layla's beams had hurt, but 'hurt' was better than 'dead.' Her doppelganger wasn't kidding: the Elemental Skill had abandoned its shield but made up with its Shooting Star barrage. Her shield fired its Shooting Stars at the doppelganger. But Psycho Layla's sword slid through these projectiles in a rending slice.
"Ooh! Majestic! Now, let us dream for evermore!" Psycho Layla began to float.
"Stars, shine for me!" Her summoned Dreamsphere fired off Starlight Slugs.
Despite eating damage from Slugs, Psycho Layla grinned as though privy to a secret. Fractals of light weaved around Psycho Layla in the form of a moon. Not a big moon, just large enough to fit Psycho Layla. But Layla gawked at the sight, so terrific in its oncoming danger.
"T - The night is cold!"
Layla prayed her shield would hold against a full moon launched at her.
Heizou didn't want to believe it.
He stood outside his old home, the destination envisioned by his intuition. Heizou had searched for his doppelganger in vain. When he stopped to think, it was as though he'd grasped the air itself; that was symbolic of his intuition at work. Such hints had guided Heizou home, and the closer he got, the more he chafed at the truth.
Footprints identical to his own had come before him.
Servants and students laid knocked out.
Scrawled graffiti along Heizou's path, drawn as giant arrows.
The discomfiting thought of playing into someone's hand screamed at Heizou to do something, but all he could do was stare at his own handwriting on the door:
welcome home :-)
A note to the pursuing authorities. Heizou had seen something like this once, in a case against a serial robber. But nothing so brazen. Nothing so… personal.
He entered.
The uncanniness struck Heizou like a slap to the face. The defilement of crime left a stain on places, murders most of all, but this was insidious. As though someone had invaded Heizou's memory of home and replaced everything with a replica.
A silence which hinted at nervousness, as opposed to resting quiet.
The shifted table. A broken vase. A jarred door, and the backyard beyond it.
His father had likely been knocked out outside, then dragged in. If the fight happened indoors, there'd be more signs of a struggle.
Again, graffiti pointed the way. Heizou did not really do the action of following; rather, the action of following did him while his mind raced. He did the usual: empty his mind and try to grasp the air, harnessing his intuition. But concern muddied Heizou's mind and left him in a blind rut, all while he descended into the basement.
Explosives. Heizou's heart seized at the sight of these things in his house. Affixed to them were strange, blinking mechanisms not of this world.
His parents laid amidst these barrels.
"Father! Mother!" He rushed to their side. His father bore the brunt of a struggle, but his mother was unhurt. Both of them were bound, gagged, and their eyes gleamed with fear. At Heizou. He raised his hands to pacify them.
"It's me, Heizou. Your son. I didn't do this to you, but - "
"Oh, Detective ~ " A singsong whistle reached Heizou's ear. Playfulness, touched by malicious glee. Footsteps, heavy with destiny.
Heizou turned to find his doppelganger on the stairs. Dressed differently but identical otherwise. His smile was alight with that flame of intelligence.
"The 'consulting Detective,'" he drawled.
"And you? The 'consulting criminal'?" The emphasis was not lost on him.
Psycho Heizou raised an eyebrow in answer. He jerked his thumb back upstairs. "Shogi. Best of five? Win your parents' lives back from me." He started up the stairs, but turned back. "Oh, don't bother looking for the detonator. You know I'd never have approached you without preparing everything."
Heizou spared his parents a glance he hoped was reassuring, then followed Psycho Heizou out. There, a shogi board had been laid out on the table, and both Heizous took their seats opposite each other. Shogi, a game of strategy, offered a window into an opponent's inner workings. Be it recklessness or patience, straightforward or convoluted, he could see it all.
Psycho Heizou was unlike any other opponent he'd faced. Careful, yet with a sense of twisted playfulness. Triple bluffs and a neverending shuffle of plans, lies mixed in with the truth, all seemingly effortless on his part to keep Heizou on his toes.
"You're curious, aren't you?" Psycho Heizou called out to him. "About my world, and what would've caused me - well, you, to succumb to sin?"
"It crossed my mind." Not a lie, though Heizou juggled several topics in his mind.
"Well, I'm feeling generous, and the witch that brought us here let me see your past. I saw it, you know, that moment you devoted yourself to a cause like the climax of a stage play." He shrugged. "Utterly boring. Not to mention your taste in clothes.
"In my world, the boring folks came together to form a System. The Raiden Shogun uses her Electro power to read her citizens' minds. A new Commission was created to parse these readings, aggregated into a criminal coefficient. Let it grow too high, and these persons of interest are arrested before the crime is committed."
Heizou blinked. The thought of being able to nip evil in the bud uplifted his spirit, only to be cut down by his own sense of reason.
He asked, "It didn't work?"
"Well, that's up to you to solve, 'Detective.' Go off then, do your thing."
Though he never liked to be goaded, Heizou obliged. "This new Commission must have the Kanjou's logistical might, the Tenryou's manpower and the Yashiro's social dimension. After all, it must be a big sell to the people to let the Archon be privy to their thoughts."
"Good."
"They're overstretched. Bureaucracy begets bureaucracy, the current Commissions have their fair share of paperwork already; it's why I hardly check in." The shogi game was set aside for now. "And where there is such oppression people seek loopholes and workarounds, not unlike the Vision Hunt of our world. Escape from the country, or fake Visions the Naganohara lass was giving out."
"You knew, yet you didn't bring her in?" Psycho Heizou raised an eyebrow.
"I had a feeling. If the Tenryou Commission tasked me, I would've busted her. I just left things as they were otherwise; she wasn't hurting anybody, and the Visions came flowing in anyway. She was a blip, not an obstacle."
Psycho Heizou nodded, then moved another piece on the board. "What's the worst that goes on around here? Your universe, I mean?"
"Murder. Well, there was that one serial robbery case…" Heizou moved his piece.
"Absolute trouts. In my world, there's no shortage of morbid news: wives who carve up their husbands to be eaten as mystery meat. Crazed men wanting to go into town to stab the happy women, cooks cut down over the wrong condiment added, and so on. Not to mention the secret societies and serial killers."
"And then there's you."
"Taking down the System. It was the only game in down. See, intimidation goes so far in a culture of fear. It creates a greater breed of criminals to survive and challenge the system. Poetic, that a stronger light creates a stronger darkness.
"I know how much the fact you can't nip evil in the bud eats away at you, But what you deny is that this bud sits within the heart of every man, woman and child. You quash it as best you can, I help it bloom. I erode good, and cast them down into the abyss. When they fall…" Psycho Heizou whistled in onomatopoeia of someone's fall which ended with an explosion. Despite the childishness of it all, Heizou was stricken by how some points hit home, moreso when it was his doppelganger.
Heizou moved his shogi piece. "Is that your big speech? An attempt to demoralize me and get me to give up my quest? You'll have to do better than that."
Psycho Heizou shrugged. "Oh, that's not it. It's not what you seek, but what you shall cause that I'll try to avert with some advice. Inspiration." That word caused Heizou to blink. "See, being the enemy of 'Sin' is commendable and all, but it it's not enough to combat the darkness, but to enable the light to grow and flourish."
Heizou blinked. "You're helping me. Why?" Confusion plagued him like an unsolved question at night.
"Pity, mostly. What you do has been attempted in my world, in another form. Be careful that in your haste to cast your name upon the world like a great light of justice, that you do not create a greater darkness in turn."
"So you would ask me to be lax in my quest? That, I cannot do. Also, who's to say you're not working me like a mark right now?" He moved his piece, and it irked him that worry and fear clouded his thoughts. He reached out to his intuition, yet found only wisps of suspicion.
Psycho Heizou, on the other hand, was content to observe him. He rested his cheek on a fist, armed with a foxy grin.
He eventually spoke, "Shogi is like life, isn't it? I try to reach out to you with sincerity," he gestured to his Dragon tile, "and in your attempt to cynically escape it you arrive at your own doom." He moved his Promoted Knight tile, and Heizou's heart stopped.
He'd lost.
Heizou stared at the gameboard. It wasn't the loss that stung. Rather, everything on the line hung over him, the sight of his frightened parents burned into his mind.
Psycho Heizou's smirk haunted him all the while. "Maybe I'm being sincere and you take advice from a criminal to bring about the best ending. Maybe I'm trying to cause the worst timeline, where you disregard my advice and create a neverending crusade for yourself.
"In the end, it all depends on the choice you can live with. Now then, shall we move onto the next game?"
Hu Tao faced down her own doppelganger. Whoever she expected, it hadn't been this.
A 'Hu Tao' dressed in flowing robes, having descended on the back of a crane whilst holding a lotus flower and musical instrument. Something in her face was untouched by age. So transcendent and ethereal a visage like Shenhe, it made one want to fall down on their knees and beg these sages for the secrets to enlightenment.
And it shamed Hu Tao to admit that her doppelganger was almost unrecognizable without the hat.
Hu Tao knew, somehow, that this was no deception. In fact, this sagely 'Hu Tao' so clearly embodied the Way which elevated her above others. 'Hu Tao' set her feet on the grass, yet her robes practically floated over them.
"So," her doppelganger began, "you're Hu Tao too."
Hu Tao trembled at hearing herself sound so refined. Still, she recovered her wits. "Yep, that's me! 77th Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, Hu Tao!'"
'Hu Tao' nodded. "I'm Hu Tao, member of the Eight Immortals. I attained immortality by eating pills made from powdered mica. Pleasure to make your acquaintance." She bowed, the living portrait of manners and etiquette.
Hu Tao blinked. Her values as a funeral parlor director chafed at the revelation. Immortality had always been a touchy subject, and while she had her misgivings about Baizhu, at least the fellow was still mortal.
Before her, was a doppelganger more ethereal than Shenhe and untouched by the specter of death. The freedom from such a universal fear separated 'Hu Tao' from mankind, for an impassable wall existed between those touched by death and those who weren't.
It wasn't 'Hu Tao's' fault, of course, and her halo of magnanimity shined true.
Outwardly, Hu Tao gushed. "I never imagined I'd be able to look so elegant and pristine! Gosh, I don't want to be punished in my next life for striking down a sage - "
"No, this is fine." Hu Tao's eyelids flew open in surprise. "You watch over the order governing life and death. I've transcended it. We are each other's antithesis, so us coming to blows is only natural. You fight with righteousness, protecting your world from me, though I do not intend harm. There is no karmic harm in such an action."
"But, you're such a nice person! I wouldn't want to hurt you…" Her voice faltered. It was true, despite her gnawing concerns as funeral director.
"Then let me put it in simpler terms. If I walked the land, giving out immortality pills so the people may forever devote themselves to attaining the Way, could you live with it?"
The question cut to the core of Hu Tao's being. Though there was merit in 'Hu Tao' spreading immortality, the suggestion violated the principles she lived by on a level which necessitated action. She held no malice towards her doppelganger, but if Hu Tao was transported to her doppelganger's universe of peaceful immortals, intending to lay everyone to rest and restore the natural order, 'Hu Tao' would likewise fight to protect her world from Hu Tao.
In hindsight, Hu Tao really had been silly to twiddle her thumbs in indecision.
"No." Hu Tao's answer was terse, laced with convictions uncharacteristic of her to reveal to anyone except, well, herself.
The sage before her was no longer 'Hu Tao,' but Psycho Hu Tao. This wasn't an insult, merely an acceptance of how they opposed each other on a level no debate could avert. Seeing Psycho Hu Tao calmly accept what had to come of this encounter filled Hu Tao with guilt, but in a way, they had both made their peace.
She summoned her ghost and spear. "Don't hold a grudge, OK ~ "
"I won't," Psycho Hu Tao wore a serene smile. "Then, let us begin." Psycho Hu Tao waved, and a specter was summoned to her side. "I summon specters of my fellow Immortals to aid me in battle." This specter, a wanderer with half a head of hair and flute in hand, played a tune. A wall of water sprung forth and barreled towards Hu Tao in a tidal wave.
"Pyre pyre, pants on fire!" she answered in kind.
"Paimon can eat this pie faster than you can!"
"Nuh uh," Paimon shut her doppelganger down, "nobody can outeat Paimon! Not even Paimon!"
Psycho Paimon was identical to Paimon in every way, and the only way she was 'Psycho' was because she was eating Paimon's food! All the food in this world was Paimon's, and she wouldn't stand for another Paimon hogging it!
"Well," Psycho Paimon was on Paimon's wavelength, "the only way to deal with this is an eating contest! Paimon won't lose to a doppelganger!"
Paimon seethed. "Urgh! How dare you! Paimon's the real Paimon here! You're the Psycho who invaded this world!"
"So? Paimon's Paimon, and there's no way Paimon will ever be a doppelganger! Paimon will prove Paimon's the most Paimon-est once and for all!"
"You're on!" Paimon couldn't stand Psycho Paimon anymore! Paimon was Paimon, and Paimon wasn't going to let a doppelganger steal her name and food!
Cyno faced down his doppelganger. Identical in every way, Psycho Cyno came at him with methodical strikes he expected of himself. Yet these strikes hid an undertone of brutality Cyno couldn't reconcile with, and he struggled to fend off Psycho Cyno.
He didn't have time for this. "You uphold justice as my doppelganger, do you not? Can't you see the unrighteousness of this invasion when there is a nation that has to be rebuilt?"
"And this was caused in part due to your negligence." Cyno blinked at those words. He was the Mahamatra who preserved the rule of law. He didn't - "In my world, the Akademiya tried to resurrect Rukkhadevata. I assume they wanted to do the same in your world." Psycho Cyno's expression soured. "They succeeded, in a way that was all too horrific. Upon this field of corpses, I swore I would uphold 'justice' no matter what. And in the end, I meted out justice to those sages."
Cyno didn't like the sound of that. "What happened in your world was unfortunate. But right now, the Akademiya has been decimated. Whatever means they would've used to trap the Archon was destroyed, and we must rebuild this nation."
"And yet the capacity for decimation by those sages existed, until that witch began her multiversal phenomenon." Psycho Cyno leered. "Do you know what the problem with Sumeru is? Too many scholars. Bookworms, with more theories than common sense in their head, who decide how things should be."
"And you're going to decide instead? We uphold and enforce the law." Cyno put his foot down. "Our justice is corrective, not preventive. We guide and keep the scholars in line - "
"Look at all the good that did us!" Psycho Cyno snarled. It struck Cyno to see himself so emotive. Almost vulnerable. "We correct scholars where they stray, but therein lies the problem. We were too passive in our enforcement. We should've been able to avert such a catastrophe, had we the temerity to go beyond our boundaries. Now, we shall. For we are the sword that hangs over every scholar before their errors can ever become mistakes."
"So you would force scholars to toe the line on threat of death?" Cyno snarled.
"Who said anything about threats?"
Cyno blinked. He'd always known Psycho Cyno was different, but he could never put his finger on why. Now he knew. Something about Psycho Cyno had changed after becoming judge, jury and executioner. Something Cyno was not, at least, not in this timeline. Though they were both Cyno, as much as he disliked to admit it, right now that alternate lifepath was irreconcilable with who he was now.
Psycho Cyno tensed, and no words were needed between them.
Cyno rushed in, his vigor fueled by a rejection of who he could've been.