The Stringless Puppet 3 (Genshin Impact, Wanderer/Scaramouche!SI)
Tatarasuna Island was a bit of a double-edged knife in terms of defensible position.
On the one hand, it was sharply framed to be a staging point for a potential attack on Watatsumi Island, but it was also considered a crucial minerary source due to the metal produced by the Furnace. With its importance, it took me very little to convince the garrison's chief to establish a tighter checkup on all workers, old and new.
Mostly those of foreign descent, and my excuse was the attempted infiltration from Dottore. It was both surprising and annoying how I ended up facing the guy so early on, and I can easily say one thing: Dottore was not a heavy hitter, but he was a cockroach with how much he endured during that fight.
Sure, I may not have a Vision to supplant my own abilities, but I was already above human and able to commit some outrageous physical deeds with limited stress over my faux body. The encounter was intense, but it failed to see the Fatui killed and... I had my own worries on the matter.
The current garrison was equipped to handle the Watatsumi troops, which at this point were far from proper infantry, and the Fatui were... not exactly common militia.
Considering the many interests Dottore had on Tatarasuna, I started to experiment some more with the steel and find ways to make better weapons. I was assisted by Mikoshi Nagamasa in producing stronger blades, and one of the resulting products was the Daitatara Nagamasa which the man personally gifted me for self defense.
The big Claymore-type sword was elegant, powerful and ideal for me to use at its fullest. I thanked the man for the gift, but we were soon back to find models that could be mass produced. The blade was just too heavy for the common trooper, and I intended to create something 'close but very far' to the HF Blade. Something that could cut through most materials with lesser resistance compared to the common blades.
It was a labor, but the effort put into it yielded some promise. And... then that project was put to the side when a series of attacks caught Tatarasuna in a grip of fear.
First, some of the cargo that was being shipped to the garrison was struck and the survivors mentioned a wild beast behind the assault, then the patrols sent by the garrison started to suffer injuries as the monster didn't seem to be conquerable with the numbers that could be mustered by the current garrison.
As a week passed with unease spreading through the island, I took the personal decision to get some tools prepared and actually capture the monster. It wasn't just a matter of 'studying' what had caused this much hassle, but rather a genuine worry I may not be strong enough to kill it.
I had a list of possible or probable entities behind those attacks, and none was of the kind that I wished to challenge at this very point of my existence. I thought about this being a Fatui ploy, but the Doctor didn't have some biological monster that could stand that description. Maybe it was something new altogether but... something about the soldiers' depiction suggested a specific candidate.
So, I took precautions to be ready to suppress and ultimately contain the threat before it could get close to kill me. I spoke with the chief of the garrison before taking on the nightly patrol (the beast preferring the nighttime to strike), and I managed to get the garrison to prepare a large room with a table together with a few reliable men to help with containing the monster once I had it brought to their care.
Still, I had to still go through the hard bit: finding the beast and putting it to sleep.
The stroll started a little before dinnertime, and I wandered off with a large bag on my back and no lantern to shed light all around. It would have been a cumbersome and unneeded tool, especially since my eyes were adapting well with the darkness and... I needed to have my sight free of distractions.
I had Daitatara Nagamasa at ready, same for my trusty Dull Blade, and a lot of confidence that I could get enough of a chance to use the 'Elephant Snoring' sleep pills I had prepped for the occasions. I am not sure how effective those were going to be, and it all depended if my worst worry was true or not.
As things would go, it was indeed the worst case scenario unfolding before my own eyes. No one had gone out for today, so I was keen in knowing I was the only prey available for the monster. And...
She didn't wait too long to thread the same path I was taking, except coming towards me.
Carrying her heavy spiked club by the ground, her throat coercing growls out of her lips and with blood red eyes showing barely any smart thought left in her mind, Mikoshi Chiyo looked as haunting as possible. To think that a friend of my mom would become akin to a creepypasta here in Pseudo-Japan was downright hilarious. And scary. Especially scary.
Chiyo was once an easygoing oni. Now? She was what many would fear of most short-tempered Oni: a creature led by wrath and anger, keen to kill and devour all those in front of them. All of that was not caused by a normal issue: the Abyss Pollution is a serious problem, one that eroded minds and that clearly had done more than just ruin the psyche of the woman.
Her arm - the one that Ei had cut in their last skirmish - had grown back.
Despite that, Chiyo paused and her growling softened. Her blood-red eyes widened as she looked at me as if she had seen a ghost.
"E-Eiiiii...-chaaaaaan?"
I frowned - no way she was confusing me for mom.
"Close enough. I am Kabukimono, Ei is my mom."
...
"Eiiiiii... moooom?"
Do I hear disbelief in her silly talking? I couldn't blame her, Ei was hardly a talker and a flirter (actually she is neither of those things even now), so I could see why this is shocking.
"Yeah, she made me as a puppet. No naughty bed time made me and... I suppose you are Aunty Chiyo, right?"
She readied her sword, and I frowned at that reaction.
"A-Auntyyyy!?"
Oh gosh, that makes her feel old or something?!
"Dangit, Chiyo. I am trying to be honest here. But you know what? How about I just beat the corruption out of you?"
Chiyo grinned maliciously as I offered that and... she attacked. One thing to say is that Chiyo is not an Archon, but her skills in physical combat were close to one.
As much as I wanted to say Ei could curbstomp her old friend if she went all out, I could now tell mom had a tough time to face Chiyo's ruthless and unpredictable stance.
The way she effortlessly used that reinforced club further made me glad I wasn't planning to kill her due to the efforts needed to kill that tiny-sized monster. She was swift, thoughtless and, worst of all, lacking any reaction to pain as I noticed that a few cuts I landed on her legs to slow her down did nothing to achieve any result.
As I was clashing and struggling against her, I knew I had to rely on something that could stop her for just long enough for me to slam those pills down her throat. And as I was considering the memories I had through my current body, I thought of something that 'made sense'.
"Aunty Chiyo!" I yelled, clashing sword with sword for a moment as she snarled back at me. "Do you remember the day you mocked Ei because she was looking at your abs?!"
There was a brief confused pause, then a flash of remembrance. The event may not sound like much, but Chiyo had always prodded at Ei for liking both men and women. One of those events seeing Ei actually sharing a bath with Chiyo and commenting on her muscles and-
"She was actually into that!"
And there may be a chance Chiyo had been looking for this very question for a very long time. No amount of corruption can erase a monumental aspect of her life: the teasing behind the friendship she had with Ei.
Chiyo fully froze, a giddy smile on her face which looked both cute and scary... right before I slammed the pills through her teeth and onto her mouth. She gulped those down instinctively, but while she readied to keep fighting, the Oni's eyes widened and... she fell on the ground.
...
"That is why I wanted those to be instantaneous, Hisahide..." I mumbled to myself, thinking back on stressing Niwa about needing insta-use sleeping pills rather than slow-application ones.
Nonetheless, Chiyo was fully asleep and I have a feeling this was going to keep her slumbering for less than a hour. I got my bag out and I first applied the reinforced steel-made chains and wrapped those around Chiyo's body several times.
As I was doing so, I took notice of a few gashes on her back that I didn't land on her. Someone else attacked her and... it wasn't any of the patrols she faced. The Doctor may be indeed involved but... why? Was this a test or something to just distract me?
I had a lot of chain kept in my bag, enough to give issues to someone like my Imouto if she dared to do something worthy of that punishment, but I had also one last thing needed to avoid any unwarranted biting: a hard-use heavy-grade 'pacifier'. It was designed to be impossible for the user to remove it on their own, the resilient rubber having been tested and was able to resist a lot of pressure from some of the sharpest tools.
Soon, I could be called Tanjiro as I carried my 'Nezuko' on my back through my adaptive bag. I made it back to the garrison and... it was an awkward development to find out that Nagamasa was there too. I doubt the guy was planning to have a meeting with his adoptive mother in such a situation but... I didn't get the chance to 'say sorry' as Chiyo woke up and started to struggle against the chains.
The soldiers rapidly moved at the barking of their officers, assisting me in getting Chiyo in the quarantined room as I started to pick up stuff from the boxes I had put in there. Each was filled with material needed to handle whatever kind of threat I was trying to 'deal with', and Chiyo was of the kind that required some heavy handling of the talisman kind.
To make it simple: the Narukami Shrine had shipped so many of those talismans that are meant to purge away Abyssal Corruption. It was something that was allowed by Yae Miko following one of her first edicts as chief of the shrine.
It sounded ridiculous, but there's a reason why the corruption had been tempered and then pushed back at an earlier time when it struck Inazuma. And these talismans were part of that solution.
Chiyo started to struggle more as we started to place talismans over her chains' cocoon. The talismans were glowing as the corruption was slowly getting purged out of her body. I had seen some exorcism-related scenes in movies, but I was genuinely awed by the sight of dark goo suddenly trickling through the chains and harmlessly stain the floor. I thought it would have retained its polluting power once expelled, but the talismans were actually depleting their potency to the point it was downright harmless dark goo.
I am not sure how long the process took, but even as the effort finished and Chiyo looked a bit healthier after the exorcism, I just sat beside the table she was lying on, while I spoke with her adopted son. Nagamasa was indeed shocked, pleased, and overall worried of how things would go with this development.
I was definitely worried on how Ei was going to react to Chiyo's return. Would she be forgiving? I have a feeling mom was going to pardon her out of the fact she hated being lonely. Yae was a friend, but Chiyo had been around for longer and had been relatively closer than Yae in terms of intimacy.
And as we waited for her to get out of that temporary coma she got stuck into after suddenly falling asleep mid-procedure, I found my peaceful sitting rattled as a loud explosion-like noise echoed through the military camp. I got out of the room and I felt my jaw hit the floor as I saw something that I had feared in my worst calculations.
Tatarasuna was emitting a purplish glow, akin to the Furnace overheating and overcharging. The only way this could be happening so suddenly is if-
"Kabukimono!"
I turned and I saw the entire local settlement of Tatarasuna marching into the camp, some worse to wear, others relatively fine but depleted on a moral level. The one I noticed was Niwa as he was using a wooden branch to walk.
Rushing up to him, I helped him sit somewhere to rest. "What happened, Hisahide?"
"I-I had to activate the failsafe. The Fatui- they attacked us with the help of Watatsumi troops. They were about to overwhelm us, but the troops there gave us time to set up the furnace to go into 'Overheat 1' and render it useless to them."
I slowly nodded at his explanation, remembering that I had personally established this 'Emergency Plan' in the eventuality that something of the kind happened. And it all finally connected on how th Doctor came close to achieve the capture of Tatarasuna: he had sent Chiyo to weaken the garrison and draw my attention elsewhere, while also getting the help of disgruntled Watatsumi troops to assist him.
I doubted the electric blast killed Dottore, but I know it definitely killed off a lot of invaders and warded off anyone from entering the area for... years. Tatarasuna was no longer a place anyone could live for a very long time now.
"I-I am sorry-"
"No, I..." I muttered, eyes lowering to the ground. "It's my fault. I should have seen this coming and-"
"You took care of the beast. You helped us prosper and we have the material to rebuild here," Niwa assured with a tired smile. "But... Tatarasuna. The failure is on..."
"The Fatui," Another voice remarked and we turned to see Nagamasa standing ebside us. "And I will personally petition for an investigation to be launched on the matter."
I slowly nodded at this but I already knew that they had no bases in Inazuma just yet. Instead, Dottore... I knew where his closest base was: he had an operative factory somewhere in Liyue.
And I guess it is a good time to go back to Narukami to ask permission to visit Rex Lapis' fief for answers.
AN
The puppet is back and he is wandering the land. Next up... Liyue!