Fanfic / Kaedehara Kazuhas Foolproof Guide

Kaedehara Kazuha's Foolproof Guide to Accidentally Kidnapping the Failed Shogun Puppet is a What If? Genshin Impact fanfic written by thegreatestsun on Archive of Our Own.

Instead of abandoning her prototype puppet in the Shakkei Pavilion, the Electro Archon decides to put them in an unused room of her palace and completely forgets about their existence.

Five hundreds years later, a quite particular samurai climbs through said room's window and decides to rescue the unfortunate prisoner he found inside, without the slightest idea of who he just found.

Kunikuzushi doesn't actually complain about the kidnapping. That's the greatest thing that ever happened to them.

Contains the following tropes

• Abusive Parents: When she realized her puppet actually was self-aware, the Electro Archon refused to interact with them further, locked them in an empty room and didn't bother to do more than sending servants that would abuse them for cleaning. The Traveler's party is aghast when Kunikuzushi reveals his mother outright forgot about his existence.
• Adaptational Gender Identity: Scaramouche in the source material identified as male and always was treated as such. Kunikuzushi is more gender-ambiguous, having ankle-length hair and a feminine kimono, and being confused about pronouns before picking the male option in spite of having being created as a girl, making him transmasculine.
• Adaptational Name Change: As he never joined the Fatui courtesy of being locked away his whole life, Kunikuzushi never got the title of Scaramouche there. And since the story takes place before Chapter III of the game, this also means he doesn't adopt the title of The Wanderer.
• Adaptational Villainy: In the game, Yae is the Big Good of the Inazuma arc. Due to Scaramouche never existing, the confrontation in the Delusion factory that led to her recruiting Traveler didn't happen. Here, her dehumanization of Kunikuzushi is ramped up and she's hellbent on tearing him away from Kazuha so she can have him locked away again.
• Cartwright Curse: Kazuha was in love with his best friend Tomo, but couldn't bring himself to confess before Tomo went to duel the Raiden Shogun and was slaughtered for his daring. The ronin was left struggling to mourn the lost opportunity, and when he finds another love that would allow to move on, said love is the son of Tomo's murderess and not able to meaningfully consent to a romantic relationship. Ouch.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Subverted — when Kokomi asks if Kunikuzushi would agree to join the Resistance against the Vision Hunt Decree and the Shogunate, the puppet has no qualms whatsoever about warring with his mother.
• Didn't Think This Through: Kunikuzushi believes he can make Yae Miko stop chasing him by disguising himself as a ghost, because shrine maidens are supposed to be superstitious, right? Yae is incredulous that he actually went through it, easily disables him with a command and almost forces him to jump into the sea and go back to the palace — he's only saved because Kazuha was watching for him.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Yoimiya has a prothetic leg, courtesy of the author believing she has one in canon before it was jossed.
• Dramatic Irony: Kunikuzushi was deemed a failure because he couldn't replace the Electro Archon as the Raiden Shogun. Not only Kazuha finds himself entertaining the idea of toppling the Shogun to replace her by Kunikuzushi, he calls Kunikuzushi a god of fleeting moments — in other words, he failed to embody Ei's ideal of "eternity" but he is a successor to the ideal of "impermanence" that Makoto, Ei's beloved twin sister, claimed for herself.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Kazuha believes the Long-Haired Pretty Boy he found secluded in a dusty, locked room has been imprisoned for having a Vision. Kunikuzushi was created long before the Vision Hunt Decree came to pass.
• Girl in the Tower: Kunikuzushi spent five centuries trapped in a small room, only able to glimpse the outside world through a window. He's ecstatic when Kazuha steals him away and allows him to experience the outside.
• Godzilla Threshold: Kazuha is horrified by the idea of ordering Kunikuzushi around, but he has no other choice when Yae Miko commands the puppet to go back to the palace. It causes a month-long tension between them.
• Gorgeous Period Dress: When Kazuha breaks into his room and abducts him, Kunikuzushi is wearing a pristine white silk kimono, in a fashion from five centuries ago. When they sell it for money and more discreet clothes, the buyer rhapsodizes over the garment's beauty and admits she didn't have gold enough in her shop to pay the price it was truly worth.
• Hearing Voices: After losing his best friend Tomo, Kazuha suffers from post-traumatic stress leading him to hear his late friend voicing his inner dark thoughts. It quieted down when he was travelling with Beidou, only to flare up when he met Kunikuzushi courtesy of his link to the Raiden Shogun.
• Hidden Backup Prince: The very idea of the Shogun having a child — biological or artificial — stuns every Inazuman who learns of Kunikuzushi's existence. Kazuha quickly finds himself pondering the possibility of making the puppet Inazuma's new ruler, finding him a god more in tune with the world than a tyrant obsessed by Eternity.
• Ignored Epiphany: Yae Miko found herself unsettled by the puppet's crying and screaming, but stubbornly refused to acknowledge them as more than a failed prototype to discard in a forgotten room.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Yae Miko constantly calls the prototype puppet "it". Note that people unfamiliar with Kunikuzushi will use female pronouns, while Kazuha and the Traveler's party treat him as male.
• The Kindnapper: Kazuha abducts Kunikuzushi from the palace after seeing him locked in an empty, dusty room and assuming they were imprisoned for having a Vision. Even after learning the truth, he still has rescued someone who had been neglected and abused for five hundred years.
• LGBT Awakening: Yoimiya first mistakes Kunikuzushi for a girl, and when informed they're not female politely asks for their pronouns. After being reassured that being created to be a woman doesn't mean having to be a woman, the puppet declares himself a man.
• Like a God to Me: In spite of being with the Resistance and opposing the Raiden Shogun, Kazuha is extremely flustered by Kunikuzushi to the point that he couches his infatuation in terms of worship, praising the puppet's beauty as divine and calling himself a devotee.
• Living MacGuffin: Kunikuzushi fleeing causes a lot of storm in Inazuma — Yae Miko hunts him because she frets about someone using the puppet against the Shogun, the Fatui are interested to hear about an Electro Archon lookalike walking around, and the Resistance could potentially prop him as Inazuma's new ruler.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Kunikuzushi has ankle-length purple hair and is so ethereally beautiful that a star-struck Kazuha declares him divine.
• Meaningful Name: The prototype puppet named themselves Kunikuzushi, country destroyer, out of spite and resentment for being locked up and forgotten, something that first alarms Kazuha because that's not the kind of name hinting at endless compassion and mercy. However, after getting to experience The World Is Just Awesome, Kunikuzushi starts to reflect on his name and wish for his meaning to be symbolical — as he wants for the old Inazuma to be destroyed in such a way that a new, beautiful country will rise from the ashes.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When Kunikuzushi confesses he has to follow any order given to him, Kazuha is stricken by the realization that he accidentally commanded the puppet several times before. He does a point of averting sentences that could be understood as orders after that.
• Questionable Consent: Having been isolated from human society for five hundred years and his only experience of sexuality being male servants abusing his inability to disobey an order to grope him, Kunikuzushi doesn't understand why kissing Kazuha on the mouth or stripping naked in front of the samurai would be perceived as seductive. Kazuha is aware of that and this is part of the reason why he refuses to admit he's growing infatuated with the puppet who's unable to meaningfully consent under these circumstances.
• Rape as Backstory: Being uncannily beautiful and unable to resist any command given to him, Kunikuzushi endured unwanted groping from male servants when they came to clean his room.
• Rescue Romance: Kazuha and Kunikuzushi grow extremely close after the samurai took the puppet away from the palace. However, Kazuha is pretty hesitant about making the relationship official, since Kunikuzushi is related to the woman who slaughtered his best friend Tomo and is unable to say no.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Kazuha sells the pristine white, elegant kimono worn by Kunikuzushi and gives him a dark hakama instead. Not only it aims to disguise his identity, it also shows that Kunikuzushi isn't a prisoner anymore.
• Spotting the Thread:
  • Kazuha first brushes off the rescued prisoner's eccentricity as them going cuckoo from losing their Vision and getting locked up in isolation. Then Kunikuzushi defends themselves from a bandit with an Electro attack without a Vision.
  • Yae Miko attempts to gather sympathy from Beidou by claiming she's looking for her missing stepdaughter. Kazuka finds it very suspect because shrine maidens are not allowed to stay at their temple when they get married.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Kunikuzushi identifies as the Electro Archon's child and has been created to be almost a perfect carbon copy of her. It gets mainly used against him, since the Fatui are intrigued by the Shogun having a lookalike and the Resistance almost panics when Kazuha introduces him.
• Talking to the Dead: Kazuha hallucinates his late friend Tomo and often has conversations with him, allowing the samurai to vent his inner conflicts and showing how traumatized he still is by the loss.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: On one hand, Yae Miko doesn't care about the puppet being self-aware, casually ordering him around, calling him "it" and being content to let him rot in isolation because he gives her a bad case of Uncanny Valley. On the other hand, Kazuha, the Traveler's party and the Resistance respect Kunikuzushi identifying as male, ask for his opinions and refer to him as the Shogun's son.
• When He Smiles: Kazuha already was stunned by Kunikuzushi's divine beauty, but seeing him laugh for the first time pushes him onto another level entirely.
• Whole-Plot Reference: For Tangled, since someone opposing the country's law steals a Living MacGuffin who can be considered royalty and has very long hair from a life in isolation, and starts having romantic feelings for their rescuee.
• The World Is Just Awesome: After five hundred years locked in an empty room, Kunikuzushi relishes the sky when it's blue and when it's starry, the feeling of dewy grass under his feet and sunrise on his skin, the wind in his hair and the bugs on his hands and how alive the outside is.