#fatui au.

Snow drifts passed in silvery sprays through the cabin windows, the chugging of the train and clacking along the tracks through the deep midnight that reduced the view of Kozel to a tapestry of stars set within the velvety darkness. The din of muted conversation passed between the masked Fatui who congregated like a murder of crows roosting in the tree while the red eagle they served under stood out like a blot of blood staining the snow. Il Cavaliere, this Harbinger was called. A new face, not that Shinobu would know. Her involvement in their ranks was hardly voluntary, but indentured. Not that she could really defy in a den of lions.

That didn’t mean she didn’t fit their old entirely. A few dorms of her tenuous compatriots had been subject to hauntings by vengeful spirits, though no one could trace their doings back to her. Kuki was good at covering her tracks, especially with her expansive repertoire the Fatui weren’t entirely privy to, and she intended to keep it that way. To be a token of little misfortunes despite being the opposite for herself. 

Scaramouche’s disappearance was something that had occurred before her involuntary conscription, but the mere fact that a certain astrologian had been one of the primary suspects, well--good thing it was just idle gossip in the barracks she could give less than a shit about. Her task was far divorced, but-- Gods, talk about an untimely meeting.

In the frigid night during her first watch, it had been the scream of a rabbit, then the panicked and pained bugling of an elk. Those were haunting sounds with one’s back to a tree trunk, silhouette outlined by the dimming embers of the troupe’s campfire while facing the velvety gloam of the cool, quiet night. If Shinobu failed to move, the cold would make her limbs feel brittle and leaden, as if she’d frozen suddenly. The disembodied sound of footfalls crunching through the snow seemed to echo in the endless pine forest, a chill wind seeming to usher something towards them.

She could admit that, yes, she was pissed. It was enough that information about her once being a regular lecturer for the Tenryo Commission had been leaked to some slightly higher-ranking contemporaries, but it worse that such information was weaponized to ask her to train the new recruits despite her only being there as a body guard. Meanwhile, the trio of captains were utterly shitfaced and incoherently singing shanties around the campfires, swaying exaggeratedly and drunkenly. 

Lighting the cloth of the Molotov Cocktail she’d stolen from their store of spirits, she waited in the fringes of the campground.

Sometimes, it was easy to forget that the person she served under technically answered to someone else. Branks had been nervous at the notion of presenting his findings, the gaunt, waxy man champing on his grotesque mask like it was a bit while Shinobu simply watched the hunched, gangly scientist with overt indifference. That didn’t mean she didn’t similarly feel a bicker of nerves, even if there would be a bit of schadenfreude in seeing him raked over coals for once. 

As they entered Il Dottore’s labs, the skittish researcher fumbled into a bow while Shinobu pocketed her hands and lingered back, letting him take the heat. 

“Il D-Dottore, my lord, it is good to see you in good spirits. Perhaps you had wish to see this month’s findings, yes?”

Blue as a sapphire, pristine as a pearl. These were the descriptors often ascribed to Fontaine, though it seemed more of an inflated lie once she stood upon the brink where Fontaine dwelt in a cradle encompassed by waterfalls, smog belching from refineries and other industrial centers while even the mists seemed tainted and befouled. It was beautiful if one didn’t look too closely. Shinobu gazed at the Harbinger sidelong, knowing that this had been her home... once. Though she doubted she thought that now, it wasn’t Kuki’s place to guess or care.

A perimeter of fire had been erected without their knowing, the encampment’s scouts shouting warnings and rousing the sleepy morass of Fatui that were driven into a chaotic frenzy. Anyone who wielded Cryo or Hydro was ordered to immediately combat the blaze tearing through the camp, other frantic to move valuable freight as hastily as they could. Tarp was immediately devoured in the growing inferno and Shinobu, who’d found a tree to roost in, was already away in flight with the firelight glowing along her back. 

Rumors had propagated of an unknown killer targeting Fatui for weeks now, scores dying while anticipation and fear grew among their ranks. For the kunoichi, though, it was an opportunity to finally escape.

If there was one thing to be grateful for regarding the Fatui's base of operations, it was that Zapolyarny Palace drowned in its own enormity to the extent that whole wings that were forgotten and abandoned that could become a forlorn recruit's favorite new haunt and no one would notice so long as she wasn't on duty. And the times she wasn't on duty were constant, blitzing through mundane archival work so quickly that no one cared so long as work for the day was completed.

Rays of bright, pale moonlight glossed the marble floors as Shinobu idly strode along and studied the moth-bitten oil paintings of past and unremarkable nobility, their eyes blank and soulless even through the sooty, stained varnish that had discolored through the years.