Chapter Text
The puppet has thoughts and feelings of its own.
She doesn't know when this started to be true.
Her early days are an interminable haze. She follows her programming to the letter. She hears petitions. She slays threats. She takes tea with Yae Miko. Once every few decades, she is summoned into the Plane of Euthymia for maintenance.
As long as she can remember, she has known there was a puppet before her. A prototype, completed and discarded. "It was too... emotional," Yae Miko explains. "It went beyond its programming."
The shogun tucks this information away for future use.
One day, Yae Miko comes with an update on the other puppet. "It's taken a male identity, and is causing trouble with the bladesmiths," she reports. "It calls itself Kunikuzushi."
Kunikuzushi. Country destroyer. The shogun sets down her cup of tea. "He's awake?"
"Oh, he's been awake for decades," Yae purrs. "Didn't I tell you?"
No. She did not.
Causing trouble could mean anything. But typically, when something is troublesome enough to be brought to her notice, that means only one thing: she will be sent to dispose of it.
"Is he a threat to the nation?" the shogun asks.
"Darling, I've always thought it was a threat," Yae responds, rolling her eyes. Her perfectly manicured fingernails tap on the rim of her cup. "If it were up to me, it would've been destroyed, not shipped off to sleep its days away. But Ei is too soft sometimes. Honestly, the things I put up with for that woman."
Listen to Yae Miko, was one of the only things her creator said to her before leaving for the Plane of Euthymia. The shogun has been listening to Yae for tens of years, and she has never gotten less confusing. She rarely gives direct orders, and almost never without being prompted first.
"Am I to take care of it?" the shogun rephrases, carefully. And then she thinks, clearly and inexplicably: I don't want to.
It is the first time she can remember having an opinion on anything.
Tell me I don't have to.
She does not want to cut down the other puppet. She does not want to destroy a creature who is like her.
Yae sighs and takes a long sip of tea. "If only," she laments. "Ei was very clear that he is not to be interfered with. If he becomes a larger problem, I suppose I'll have to go to her directly and try to change her mind... But we'll let him have his fun for now."
The shogun has never felt relief before. She drinks the rest of her cup, and wonders what is making her feel dizzy.
*
That singular moment of desire opens the floodgates. Not that what follows is a flood, per se. But she notices, again and again.
She does not want to take tea with Yae Miko sometimes.
She does want to linger in the Plane of Euthymia, even after maintenance is over.
She wishes she did not have to use the Musou no Hitotachi on an already-defeated opponent.
She wishes she could travel the islands, see the places and things the people speak of, instead of traveling only for ceremony and the purpose of killing.
She would like to meet the other puppet, but she doesn't know what she would say.
Do these thoughts make her faulty? Is she malfunctioning, like the prototype before her? What would happen to her if that were the case? Raiden Ei mentions nothing out of the ordinary at her examination, and the puppet does not dare bring it up herself.
The wheel of eternity turns on.
*
The shogun begins to grow restless.
She should not require stimulation. Following the dictums of eternity should be enough for her. But one day she thinks about the unceasing litany of tasks laid out before her and thinks, How tedious.
She has lived for over a century and she has never appreciated sakura blooms up close. There are many everyday staples that she has never tasted; she does not require sustenance, so the only things she has eaten are those things that Yae Miko brings with tea. When she finds herself rereading a dry, rambling Tenryou Commission report just for something to do, she snaps.
The puppet requires no martial practice. She has a perfect memory and flawless reflexes; she is, after all, a machine. She begins practicing with her polearm in the courtyard anyway. She enjoys the flow of combat, how it hones her to a singular purpose, how it requires all of her focus, every part of her working in tandem. It leaves no room for her thoughts, which have been increasingly unsettling.
As with any change in the shogun's environment, it swiftly brings Yae Miko down upon the Tenshukaku.
Yae Miko is the most chaotic element in the puppet's life and the most dangerous. She is unpredictable, which the puppet would find entertaining and therefore welcome, if it were not for the fact that she is very aware this woman holds her fate in her hands. Yae Miko dislikes her, which the puppet has always known, but it did not matter to her before she began to develop her own thoughts.
"Why are you parading yourself about the courtyard?" Yae asks, sounding almost bored by it all. "You don't need to practice."
The puppet has prepared an excuse in advance: "Seeing me with the spear will reinforce the people's faith in eternity."
Yae looks unimpressed.
"It is not against my programming," the puppet adds, which is true. It is just not in her programming either.
Kunikuzushi was too emotional. He went beyond his programming.
The shogun has to set down her cup of tea, which rather suddenly feels like it has become unsteady in her hands.
"How very... adaptive," Yae drawls. "Just don't wear your gears out. Then we'd have to disturb Ei sooner than expected, and we can't have that, can we?"
The teatime ends. The shogun is safe.
Yae's gaze was so sharp, so constant, so perceptive up until the very moment she bade farewell.
*
The puppet begins to feel more and more that she is walking on a tightrope. Each action and each word from her mouth is being judged against the template her creator laid out for her.
She thinks often of the other puppet - of Kunikuzushi. How he walks the world somewhere, free of scrutinizing gazes. She wonders why he took action against the Raiden Gokaden. Was he angry with their creator for discarding him? Yet it seems to the shogun, sometimes, that he got the better end of the deal. He may be faulty, but he is allowed to be. Their creator has pardoned him. He is able to experience a "life" to the fullest extent a puppet can.
The shogun has so many questions. Why did his rampage begin, and why did it end so suddenly? Where is he now? Has he found contentment? Is he... happy? Is he aware of her existence? Does he hate her for replacing him? Does he count as "alive"? Does she?
She has so many questions and no one to ask. The Raiden Shogun would not ask these questions, so the shogun puppet does not. Still, Yae Miko sometimes brings him up, completely unbidden.
"I would have destroyed it behind Ei's back, if I thought I could get away with it," Yae informs her idly. "As her familiar, it's my job to protect her from threats she can't see coming."
Or, "He was supposed to hold the gnosis, but Ei had to abandon that idea. Now she's saddled me with the thing. As if I have any use for it!"
On one particular day, when Yae's eyes and words are sharp as knives, she says: "It really was just a moment of sentimentality that saved him. Ei learned to keep her distance by the time it came to you. Do you know what happened to the rest of the failed models between the two of you?"
She did not know about the failed models between the two of them. She forces her numb lips to move, to form the word, "No."
Yae's mouth crinkles up into a false smile. She reaches out and taps the shogun's chest with one long nail. "Recycled for parts," she says. "You are the longest-running success. But if you ever act up, it'll be the same for you."
The shogun nods. She sees the Guuji Yae to the door. She retreats to her chambers, locks herself in, and practices her katas until one of her joints locks up and sends her tumbling to the floor.
She cannot stop thinking about Kunikuzushi. Did he ever feel afraid?
*
She becomes more and more convinced that Yae suspects something. She hates every one of their meetings with a passion: each one a test that she never knows if she is failing. Yae pokes and prods and jabs, and she always has, but is the shogun imagining things or does Yae do it now more than ever before?
Listen to Yae Miko, Raiden Ei said, before entering the Plane of Euthymia. But this was immediately followed by her turning to Yae and saying, Don't tease her too much, Miko. Yae's lips had twisted with displeasure, even then, and she refused to watch as Ei stepped into the portal and disappeared.
Yae Miko says things, from cutting to outrageous to patently false, and then watches for a reaction. As if she is trying to catch the shogun out. Searching for anything more behind the blank shell. Looking for any excuse to destroy her.
The unspoken tension comes to a head one day when Yae shows up to a meeting with sake instead of tea. Her amethyst eyes hold no razor edge; instead they've been dulled by drink. She rambles on about the old days, things long before the puppet's time. The puppet listens, and drinks nothing. It is incredibly unsettling to see her this way.
"I've been by your side for so long, Ei," Yae says to the ceiling, tipping back her cup. "Not as if you fucking care." She snorts. "You didn't even bother to break up with me."
She finishes the last of her drink, licks her lips like a cat. She sidles closer to the puppet, then closer still. Yae leans in until they are almost nose-to-nose, searching the puppet's face for... what? The shogun prickles, but she allows it. Listen to Yae Miko. This close, she can count the kitsune's eyelashes, feel the warmth of her breath.
"Archons," says Yae. "You really do look just like Ei." Her eyes fill with something heavy and unnameable. She leans in, and -
Yae is kissing her.
Yae Miko is kissing her.
The shogun makes a faint, confused noise in the back of her throat.
Yae's mouth is hot and wet. The shogun has never been kissed. There is no protocol for this.
Yae brings an arm up, threads her fingers in the shogun's hair, at the base of her scalp. Only her creator has touched her there before. There is no protocol for this.
Yae presses the entire length of her body against the shogun, suffocatingly near. Her other arm cages the shogun in. She begins to press her backwards, lower, into the tatami mats.
There is no protocol for this.
There is no protocol for this.
There is no protocol for this.
The puppet shoves Yae away violently. Yae goes sprawling on the tatami as the puppet scrambles to her feet. The shogun breathes heavily, mechanical heart tick-tick-ticking far too loudly in her chest. Yae stares openmouthed from the floor, lips red and swollen from kissing.
As the puppet wordlessly flees the room, she catches only a glimpse of Yae slumping over, shoulders shaking with repressed laughter. "Of course," the kitsune murmurs bitterly, "Ei's ideal version of herself would be one who doesn't love me."
The shogun flees to her chambers and locks the door. She's shaking from head to toe.
Humans kiss each other as a sign of affection. Yae Miko hates her. What was she doing?
("You look just like Ei")
But the shogun is not Ei. Ei is her creator. Ei is her mother. Doesn't Yae know that?
She feels overheated. It's like she can feel the imprint of Yae's touch on her body. She sinks to her knees, hugging herself.
Listen to Yae Miko
Listen to Yae Miko
Listen to Yae Miko
She didn't listen to Yae Miko. She threw her across a room. Oh, archons. She threw her across a room. The puppet brings a hand to her mouth, shaking, shaking. Should she have let her continue? Let her do whatever it was she wanted? Yae hadn't given her an order. Yae didn't tell her to do anything. She just started doing. The shogun didn't not listen to Yae Miko. She just... she just...
She just threw her across a room.
The puppet buries her head in her hands. She's doomed.
*
She doesn't sleep a wink. She's waiting for Yae, or Ei herself, to tell her she's about to be dismantled.
She shouldn't have cared what Yae wanted to do. She's a puppet. She's supposed to be used.
As dawn light breaks across the sky, she finally feels the pull in her chest that indicates she is being summoned by her creator. Dread lays over her like a shroud. Distantly, she remembers that this was supposed to be one of her regular maintenance days in the first place. But does she dare hope that Yae hasn't complained about her yet?
Try as she might, she can't steady her hands when she uses the Musou Isshin to open the Plane of Euthymia. She steps through, hides her hands behind her back, and waits.
Raiden Ei's back is turned to her, and she seems to be fiddling with her tools on the stone slab she always summons for maintenance sessions. The puppet doesn't know what she expects. Anger, disappointment, cold indifference? Any and all of them? What she certainly doesn't expect is for Ei to say, "Ah, Shogun, I was thinking this time we - " before she turns to greet her, stopping mid-sentence and dropping everything in her hands. The tools scatter across the stone, loud as gongs.
Ei stares at her, face gone pale. Finally she asks, in a trembling voice, "...Makoto?"
And the shogun realizes that she has made a second fatal mistake.
The rules are strict. Before entering the Plane of Euthymia, the shogun is to change into a simple white shift, one that can be easily removed if necessary for repairs to her body. Her hair is to be let out of its braid so it falls long and straight down her back. Sometimes, if the puppet is lucky, Ei will re-plait its braid for it before sending it back out, fingers deft but gentle as they move through its hair, humming softly as she works. Ei has seen every part of her, has diligently tended to her upkeep as time wears on.
But in all the years the shogun has served as figurehead to the people, Raiden Ei has never once seen her in full regalia.
In the blur of panic after the previous night, the shogun has forgotten to follow protocol: something that once would've been as simple to her as breathing.
Now the puppet's creator stumbles toward it, unsteady on her feet like a newly born fawn. "Makoto," she breathes, reaching out with a slender hand. Her ever-stern countenance, her ever-steeled tone, have vanished like morning dew. As if it's not Raiden Ei that stands before her creation, but a different person entirely, and there are no protocols for this.
Ei's fingertips brush the shogun's cheek. Her other hand fists in the fabric of its kimono. Then she collapses against it and weeps.
The puppet has never been hugged. It sinks to the ground as Ei clings to it like a drowning man to a liferaft. It can feel nothing but a slowly building terror as it realizes what must have happened. It has malfunctioned so badly that now its creator has malfunctioned, as well.
Raiden Ei cries into its neck. She is close enough that the shogun could count her eyelashes. The puppet sits stock still, statue-still. Its arms are frozen at its sides. It doesn't know what to do. Finally, Ei draws back a bit, studies its face. "Makoto, why don't you say something?" she demands tearfully.
The puppet's mouth opens, closes. It is being addressed, but it is not Makoto. "Creator," it says at last, almost a plea.
It watches the realization steal over her face. The lightning-strike of devastation, followed by rage and shame and a boundless, bottomless grief.
"Get out," she orders, low and ruthless, still only inches away.
The puppet flinches. "Creator - I - "
Her eyes flash. "GET OUT!" she screams. And then the puppet goes flying. She tumbles backward through a tear in the Plane, and the last thing she sees as she falls back to earth is her mother's furious face.
*
She hit me, the puppet thinks, dazed. She tries to move and collapses with an undignified whimper. The impact with the ground was hard enough that something in her body snapped: when she tries again, shifting more carefully, she can see that her left arm dangles limply, bent at an awkward angle. The entire side of her face is numb and stinging, her kimono torn and spattered with mud.
Mud?
The shogun doesn't know where she is. Nothing like this has ever happened before. The Plane of Euthymia has always released her back to Tenshukaku, but in her anger Ei must have flung her somewhere else in Inazuma. Trees crowd thickly around her, fog wreathing around their trunks. Moss is thick on the ground, and the air takes on a dim, eerie glow. Thunder rolls overhead and the shogun flinches again at the sign of Ei's displeasure.
Her eyes prickle and burn; something wet slips down her cheek. For the first time in her life, the puppet is crying - the very thing the prototype was discarded for. She huddles into a ball as the wind picks up and a heavy rain starts to fall, punctuated by the sound of distant thunder. A sob tears out of her body, startling in its strength. It sounds just like Ei's did. This thought only makes her cry harder.
She doesn't want to be 'just like Ei'. She doesn't want to be Makoto. She just wants to be herself. She just wants to live.
But everything is ruined now. Even if she might have survived the first mistake, there is no way she will be forgiven for the second. They will take her apart and dismantle her. Her one grand act of disobedience will be wasted on an accident, and she will die without ever having acted for herself.
It's not fair, the puppet thinks. It's not fair!
She didn't ask to be made. She didn't ask to have thoughts of her own. If this is anyone's fault, isn't it Ei's, for not making her correctly? Lightning forks in the sky overhead, cold rain mixing with her salty tears.
Briefly, she considers running away. But she knows there's nowhere she can truly hide from her creator. They're connected on a deeper level, and it would only be delaying the inevitable.
Kunikuzushi, was it like this for you? Kunikuzushi, were you this afraid?
The prototype. The failure. The puppet who carved out an identity of his own. The sudden envy is so overwhelming she hunches over like it's a physical sickness.
Why are you a person, and not me? If you saw me, what would you see?
Kunikuzushi, tell me, do I deserve this? If you were here, would you hate me? If you were here, would you save me?
Kunikuzushi, she begs the darkened sky, desperately, deliriously, almost feverishly. Come back, please, and destroy this country. It's the only way I'll ever be free.
*
Yae Miko finds her between one lightning strike and the next.
The shogun sits at the base of a tree, knees drawn up to her chest, injured arm balanced awkwardly. She's no longer crying, but she's sure the evidence is all over her face.
Yae, for lack of a better word, looks awful. There are leaves in her hair and deep bags under her eyes. She's out of breath, and every part of her seems hampered by some invisible weight.
"There you are," Yae mutters. She comes closer, and the shogun curls up tighter. "What happened to you?"
If she admits to it plainly, will it lessen her punishment? Probably not. But most of the terror has drained away, like water from a wrung rag, leaving only a dull resignation. "I malfunctioned," she says.
"But what happened?" Yae presses.
"I - I - I was summoned to the Plane of Euthymia. She was - " The shogun stares into nothing. "She called me Makoto."
Thunder booms directly overhead, and the clearing is split by a howling wind. Yae doesn't do any of the things the shogun expects her to. She doesn't laugh, or pounce, or yell, or threaten. She doesn't roll her eyes or get out her catalyst. Instead the color drains from her face, and she drops her head into her hands with a groan. "Oh hells. Shitfuckdamn. Oh, archons, this is all my fault."
The puppet finally looks up at her, incredulous.
"This is such a clusterfuck," Yae mutters. She straightens up, visibly tries to pull herself together. "Okay, little puppet, let me into the Plane of Euthymia. I'll smooth things over with Ei. You just - wait here, okay? Don't move."
The shogun is becoming more confused with every word out of Yae's mouth, but she really, really isn't supposed to let anyone into the Plane of Euthymia without Ei's express permission. "But I - " she starts.
"Do it!" Yae snarls, flashing her fangs.
Hurriedly, the shogun draws the Musou Isshin. She waits right where Yae left her, mind drifting in a numb haze. Finally, the tempest overhead slows to a squall, then to a drizzle. Steam is rising beneath a tentative splash of sun by the time the Plane of Euthymia opens from the other side and Yae steps out, looking somewhat more composed than before. She looks down at the shogun and something wavers and breaks in her expression.
"God, I'm so pathetic," she murmurs to herself. "Really, I'm just as bad as Ei. Every immortal being in charge of Inazuma is a fucking mess."
None of this is a question, so the shogun doesn't answer.
Yae crouches in front of her, mouth pressed in a firm, unhappy line. "Listen," she says. "Building a whole new puppet is the last thing Ei needs right now. It'd be too much stress on her when she's already in a fragile state. So just behave yourself from now on, and if I ever show up drunk again, punch me in the nose, okay?"
The shogun will blame the stress of the moment for what she says next. It's stupid. It could've ruined everything all over again. But the fact is she opens her mouth and, "I get to live?" falls out unthinkingly.
Yae's eyes widen, and she sucks in a sharp intake of breath. Then she lets it all out in a long, beleaguered exhale. "Yes," she says. "You get to live."