Scaramouche didn’t look up. He gave the club a final, loving wipe. “Injured? No. Enlightened? Yes.” He hefted the massive weapon onto his shoulder with a casualness that defied physics. The timber groaned. The rivets strained. He looked ridiculous. He looked terrifying.
“It is a time-honored tradition,” she squeaked.
He laughed. It was a short, sharp sound like a knife being drawn. “Debate resolution. Let me guess. Two parties disagree. They each take turns swinging this… architectural disaster… at the other’s skull until one side forgets their argument.”
One Nobushi was embedded upside-down in a rice paddy, his hat spinning in slow motion. Another had left a perfect silhouette through a wooden storehouse wall. A third was tied in a bow using his own haori. scaramouche x debate club image
“Lord Balladeer,” the lead agent stammered. “We came to assist. Are you… injured?”
They had been sent to clear a Nobushi encampment. By the time they arrived, the camp was a crime scene. Not of stealthy assassinations or arcane Electro overloads. It was a scene of profound, cartoonish, and absolute demolition.
The air in the Grand Narukami Shrine’s back archive was thick with the scent of ancient vellum, dust, and impending violence. Scaramouche didn’t look up
“From now on,” he said, his voice as light as a summer breeze, yet cold enough to freeze the agent’s spine, “all diplomatic negotiations with the Shogun’s forces will be handled by me. Bring your reports to my tent. Bring your concerns to my tent. Bring any dissent to my tent.”
And for the first time in centuries, he felt understood.
The weight was stupid. Obscene. It would ruin the drape of his kimono. It would make him look like a common street thug. He imagined himself, the lofty Balladeer, reduced to swinging a glorified fence post at a hilichurl. The indignity should have made him incinerate it on the spot. The timber groaned
The next day, on a remote island in Inazuma, a Fatui recon team found something they could not file in a standard report.
“This,” he said, his voice a silken whisper that could curdle milk, “is what the Grand Narukami Shrine entrusts to its guardians?”
The shrine maiden cowered behind a broken omamori stand. “Please, Lord Harbinger, that is a sacred relic of debate resolution!”
But then he remembered the Doctor’s smug face. Dottore, that preening collection of scarves and scalpels, always going on about “efficiency” and “clinical precision.” He remembered Signora’s cold, condescending smile. He remembered the Raiden Shogun— her —and her immutable, divine perfection.