Begin by identifying the God's weakness.

Destroy it.

•••

Down by the Harbour a certain couple was giggling alone as if they were the only two left on Teyvat.

The two Fatui guards were enjoying their downtime at a humble vendor's store along the wooden docks. The smell of soft perfume was light in the afternoon breeze. Seeing the bouquet of Silk Flowers before her, the woman couldn't help but let out a breathless gasp. Not all the time was she presented with such a romantic gift, one would say it almost brought a tear to her eye.

Taking the flowers into her arms, Nadia was then guided against the wall of the store and cornered between the wooden boards and the man in front of her. From under his mask, she managed to catch a smile forming on his lips.

"I spoke with Andrei," Vlad brought up their manager. "He said both of us can use our vacation days during the next Lantern Rite. What do you think about that?"

"I can't wait..."

"Can't wait to finally be alone, hm?" Vlad teased as he walked his fingers up Nadia's sleeve and eventually made his way just under her jaw, lifting her chin up to his face.

"H-Hey...!" Nadia laughed at the man's antics.

"You're so cute..."

A dark shadow cast over the couple who were leaning into each other for a kiss. Once they noticed the person standing above them, they immediately froze up in fear.

"Vlad, Nadia, I'm glad to see that you two are still together."

Your comedic timing could not have been any better. Seeing you posted up on the wooden staircase with your hands on your hips made it seem like you were a disappointed school teacher in front of misbehaving students. The looks on their faces were a complete contrast to your confident beaming expression.

"W-W-Wh..." Both of them pointed their shaky fingers at you. "Wh... Why are you here... secretary [Y/N]...?!"

"I'm going to need your help with something." You replied bluntly.

You weren't the biggest fan of playing dress-up especially when it involved one of your subordinates pretending to be you. Still, you didn't exactly know why they even agreed to do this for you in the first place.

After spending a good chunk of your time convincing both Shenhe and Yanfei that you weren't going to run away the second they turned their backs on you, and after explaining to Beidou and Kazuha that your trip back to Snezhnaya might have to be scheduled some other time (the party assigned themselves to work on other tasks such as legal matters that you honestly couldn't bother your head with) - you found yourself slipping on Nadia's coat and dawning on her Fatui face mask.

In turn, you gave her the adventurer's clothes that you wore during your stay at the Wangsheng Funeral Parlour. Seeing that they fit her perfectly, you had a good feeling that this little switch-up was bound to trick whatever soldier Scaramouche would be sending out to hunt you down.

Vlad was just as red in the face as Nadia was. He was just awestruck at the sight of his girlfriend in regular civilian clothes instead of her usual uniform. Not to mention, finally seeing the face she was hiding under her mask made Vlad's heart leap with joy. He was almost getting down on his knees to thank the Archons.

"No, you will not have my guns." That was your one-only rule and Nadia was displaying obvious disinterest in even touching your weapons.

Now, although Shenhe and Yanfei proposed to accompany you on this great prison escape, you decided not to involve them with the breakout. Honestly, you came up with different plans where Shenhe and Yanfei were helping you out but you couldn't see a happy ending with any of those scenarios.

It was too risky to bring a crazy aunt and an overbearing lawyer to a Fatui-run bank that was constantly on the lookout for a certain runaway secretary. Not to mention, you couldn't possibly work in a team whose members threatened you the first time you all met. You weren't that much of a self-sabotager. This mission will strictly be a solo one.

So, getting into the Northland Bank was going to be easy. Your plan was to have Vlad escort you to the bank under the guise that you were Nadia preparing for her night shift... It was getting out that was more difficult than you thought.

After all, who thinks about breaking out of their workplace? Haha...

"Absolutely no firing of guns at any time. Do you understand, secretary [Y/N]?" Vlad made it quite clear that he knew that trigger-happy habit of yours. Word must have gone around about how you handled debt collections, now the Fatui members can already make assumptions about your common practices.

You wasted no time launching the plan into full swing.

You just about had the majority of your face covered by both the Fatui mask and Nadia's trench coat. Through the slits of the eyes, you watched your step as you walked up the stairs and made your way toward the bank's entrance.

Vlad was nervous as the two of you approached the front desk, you noticed how tensely he held onto the door's handle and clumsily shut it a bit too loudly. You also didn't want to upstage him or anything by telling him that I should be the one that's nervous - but you knew that this wasn't the appropriate time to be joking around.

"Vlad, isn't it almost time for shift change?"

The sound of Ekaterina's voice soared through the entire hall of the bank and bounced off the walls and into Vlad's ears.

The man beside you became as rigid as a stone statue and turned like a rusty gear towards the receptionist, "It appears to be."

It took all of your strength not to slap your forehead out of disappointment. His response sounded like he had something up his behind - like come on, you knew he could do better than that.

Whatever, you weren't going to complain any further since you got what you wanted anyway. You were at least grateful that Vlad was able to sneak you inside the building. You knew once you could slip away into the darkness, it was time to unravel phase two of the prison breakout plan.

Bail out Chongyun (illegally).

"Comrade Ekaterina,"

"Yes, comrade Vlad?"

You gave him a subtle nod, the good-to-go signal to begin phase two.

With that, Vlad made a startling announcement with a steady voice: "I spotted secretary [Y/N] down by the harbour."

Ekaterina seemed to have dropped the pen from her hand the moment your name echoed through the entire building. The fellow Fatui staff members that were standing idly by the wooden shelves stopped their small conversations to listen in on the exchange. The soldiers who were patrolling the bank stopped dead in their tracks and fully turned toward Vlad, making it quite obvious that all their attention was on his next words.

"She's somewhere in the ports... Alone."

There was an eruption of people charging toward you, only to swerve out of your way to make it out the double doors.

You were pushed to the side and found yourself along the wall of the room as the group of ignorant soldiers rushed outside. You heard a couple of them whooping about the ten million Mora bounty as they marched off with their weapons at hand.

How easy it was to lure these Mora-driven soldiers...

"Is this true, Vlad?"

His voice always manages to pierce through your heart like an archer's arrow to an apple. There was no other way to describe how it felt to hear his voice again, especially in such close proximity. You didn't even dare to trail your eyes up the staircase to get a glimpse of his silhouette.

"Is this true?" He asked again, more desperately this time. "You saw her down the Harbour?"

"Harbinger Scaramouche..." Vlad swallowed the lump in his throat and swayed from side to side. "I... Well..."

He's there. Right there.

Fear kills, you repeated to yourself. No matter how confident you were that you were acting natural, you still couldn't stop your heart rate from reaching well over one hundred beats per minute. You were absolutely terrified, more so that you were fearful you were prolonging tachycardia all the way to the point where you were going to collapse.

You sucked in a sharp breath when you finally laid your eyes on your beloved Lord Scaramouche. His uniform was pressed and cleaned and he was almost shining from the chandelier lights bouncing off of his golden pins. Turns out he was able to function on his own, in your absence after all...

You had an idea as to why you were feeling so disappointed.

"My secretary is in the Harbour? Alone?" Scaramouche drew out every single word with each step he took going down the stairs. "Is she finally free from that Traveller and her teammates?"

"Sir..." Vlad realized that he was now the messenger in this case. He's heard all kinds of horror stories of those messengers who left with a few beatings and verbal threats. Not to mention, that one poor soul who was killed... Would Vlad risk lying to his overseeing Harbinger or rat you out here and now? After all, you were in fact ten million Mora just standing beside him.

"Is my secretary... safe?"

You didn't know why you had tears welling up in your eyes, luckily the mask was able to block anyone from seeing your teary-eyed expression. Hearing how concerned Scaramouche was for your safety made all the memories flood back. Debt collections. Expeditions. All kinds of missions.

Where it was only the two of you watching each other's backs, making sure that your tents were in close proximity, even fighting enemies alongside one another... those memories shone like scattered fragments across your vision. A beautiful past.

Before you knew it, while you were in a daze, Scaramouche left. He walked briskly through the bank's main hall and slipped past the double doors, not before placing an elegant hand against Vlad's shoulder as generous acknowledgement. He was so close, you could reach out and touch him if you really wanted to.

Scaramouche was gone. He moved past you like a swift breeze of cold wind. Unstoppable. As if you were merely a decoration along the bank's emerald walls. Unfettered.

Unperturbed willpower.

Once again, your breath was taken away by the absent sight of him. With Scaramouche gone, your plan can now unfold without any more problems. Yet, why were you stuck where you stood? Why hasn't this paralyzing adoration melted away?

"Are you okay...?" Vlad cautiously reached out and asked out of concern, which he didn't need to do.

•••

After sneaking past the receptionist and making your way up the flight of stairs, you found yourself hiding behind one of the shelves thinking about your next course of action. You thought carefully: if I were to keep someone prisoner, where would I keep them?

You knew about the secret holding cells in the bank but you felt like that was a little bit of an overkill decision to keep a humble, nonthreatening exorcist like Chongyun. If Scaramouche made the decision on where to keep Chongyun... he might have thought of sticking him in one of the storage closets.

Or, perhaps that room at the end of the hallway that has a very obvious sign on it saying: "do not disturb".

Come on, sir, be at least a little creative...

At first, you wondered why there wasn't any sort of lock on the door, but you knew that if the door didn't have any sort of security measure - security was added elsewhere.

Peering into the keyhole, you took into account the three shot glasses and a familiar bottle of Fire-Water sitting on the table inside the room. Now, that was the problem that you were looking for. What you didn't anticipate was the fact that there were three Fatui Agents keeping a close eye on Chongyun - you noted the hanging jackets and Sacrificial knives sticking upright in the table.

You couldn't see any of the agents and assumed that they headed out when they heard about your pseudo appearance in the Harbour. But, why would they disobey Scaramouche's direct orders? Something wasn't adding up. If they weren't anywhere in the bank, where else could they be?

"Hello...?" Chongyun's voice arose when he heard the turning of the doorknob. "Is someone there...?"

The door creaked when you pushed it open. It swung inside and gave you the advantage of hiding behind the wooden barrier, blocking anyone's sight from seeing you. As you situated yourself to shut the door behind you, you emerged from the dark corner of the room with the black coat blending in with the shadows.

Chongyun's face paled as his frightened expression gave away his obvious fears, "Get away! Don't come any closer...!"

"Hey, it's me...!" You grabbed him by the shoulder and lifted the mask from your face, earning a very heavy sigh of relief from Chongyun.

"Fatui girl!" He exclaimed hopefully. "I thought I was never going to see you again...!"

"Now's not the time to be all sappy," You pulled the mask back onto your eyes. "Come on, we've gotta get out of here before the agents come back."

"Ow, don't pull me!"

There was the clank of a heavy chain when you hooked a hand under his arm to lift him to his feet. The exorcist protested out of pain and he ultimately sat back down. Not only were his hands cuffed together, they decided to take it one step further. You looked down at his legs only to find out that he was cuffed by the ankles, linking him to a metal hatch on the floor. Seeing such a restraint made you chuckle a bit.

"Listen, there are three different keys and each of those Fatui Agents has one! I didn't see who got the real key, your boss must have switched them around when I wasn't paying attention. That stupid trick he pulled just made my escape impossible, that's why I didn't even bother trying to break out..." Chongyun trailed off his rambling and fired back. "Why don't you seem worried...?!"

You turned to him and gestured to yourself, "Well, who do you think came up with that idea?"

"Seriously...?!"

"I'm not going to go into detail about the Fatui's methods of handling prisoners, we don't have time for that... I'm just going to remove these by force. We'll have to deal with your wrists later." You kneeled in front of the exorcist and grabbed the chain restraints around his ankles.

"Hold on a second...!" Chongyun argued back. "What are you doing...?! Wait...!"

"Shh..." As you swatted his protesting hands away from the work area, you reached into your jacket to touch your weapon. "Take a deep breath and don't scream."

"Fatui girl- mmph!" Chongyun's words were muffled when you slapped a hand over his mouth.

"I said be quiet."

"Mmh mmh!" His eyes widened and tore from you to focus on what was at the far end of the room - then frantically jumped back to look at you. "Mmh!"

"What?" You whispered.

"Not so fast." A deep voice answered instead.

There was an unusual wave of heat along the nape of your neck. Ironically, it brought shivers down your spine.

As much as you didn't want to, you eventually turned around much to your immediate regret. The flaming tip of a Sacrificial Knife being pointed directly between your eyes, its unnatural hotness from the blade almost melted you from even looking at it.

Your gaze followed the knife, up the hilt, and up the sleeve of a dark jacket. A Fatui Agent, as silent as they were, what a surprise. As if your day couldn't get any worse.

The tip of the blade was brought up to your chin and you tilted your head to avoid contact, ultimately abiding by the agent's actions of lifting your face up for him to see you.

"Comrade, what do you think you're doing to the Balladeer's prisoner?" The man bellowed.

You sucked in a sharp breath when two more Fatui Agents emerged from the door, equally shocked to see you as well. One of them quickly reached into their jacket to retrieve their weapon while the other simply stood there in pure revelation.

The same man holding you at knife-point refused to let you out of his sight, "Lieutenant Kliment, your orders..."

"Let's kill her!" The other man waved his knife in the air.

"I wasn't asking you, Javert..."

"Wait, Alphonso..." Kliment suddenly pushed his fellow agent to the side as he stalked toward you with an outstretched hand. "That coat... that mask... Is that really you, Nadia...?"

Your silence was taken as a response of defiance.

Alphonso let out a long drawn-out sigh and finally turned his head to land back down at you. With a swift flick of the Sacrificial Knife, the edge of the mask was caught on the blade and was ripped away from your face when the Fatui Agent snapped his weapon to the side.

The mask flew in the air and landed on the floor with a plastic thump.

You just about managed to capture the very second all three soldiers recognized that it was in fact the Harbinger's secretary crouching right in front of them. Javert's jaw dropped wide open while Alphonso jumped back at the realization. Kliment simply stood still and let out the shallow breath he was holding in.

Within the next three seconds, you already shoved Chongyun to the floor to get him out of harm's way, earning a very offended grunt from him. At this moment, everything seemed to be going in slow motion, you could feel the slightest shift in the air's temperature as you reached into your jacket.

Amidst the building chaos, you managed to strike Alphonso's wrist the opposite way to disarm him of his weapon - the knife was knocked out of his grasp. You kicked the agent to the side with enough force to have him crash into the wall next to him - disorienting the man in the process.

"Don't engage, Javert! She's dangerous-!"

"The bounty is mine!" Javert ignored Kliment's warning and laughed at the top of his lungs as he charged at you with his knife, the blade aimed to impale you directly in the stomach. Now, if he hadn't shouted like that, you might have missed catching him running after you - then you would have gotten hit. Or worse.

Javert came to a crashing halt when you suddenly yanked Alphonso into his path, grabbing the silent man by the collar. Both soldiers crashed into one another and fell to the floor with a heavy thud. Groans of pain resounded from the two of them and ultimately, they became too sluggish to move. To you, they were merely a pile of meat and idiocy, a sad sight to say the least.

How could they possibly think they could even lay a finger on you? They tripped over their own shoes.

That's what happens when one is most driven by passion... eventual downfall.

"Search their pockets for the keys," You ordered Chongyun, who was still trying to catch his panicked breath from the sudden attack. "Act now or regret taking this chance."

With what little wiggle room he had in his restraints, he was able to have enough slack in his chains to crawl over to the fallen men. Frantically, Chongyun worked as fast as he could to pat down their pockets and feel for the keys. Indeed, he was able to retrieve two keys and wasted no time attempting to unlock his cuffs.

Since your cover was finally blown, you unbuttoned the trench coat and ran your hands inwards to open the jacket. Your uniform, the clothes you were seen in all the time while working under Scaramouche, finally saw the light of day in the heat of a fight. Even your hands naturally slid down your hips to grab a hold of your spray guns... How your weapons glowed under your touch.