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Yōzō
❝A mysterious man with a Cheshire cat’s smile. Despite the many knives tucked between the folds of his clothing, he is an expert long-distance marksman and is often called upon for quiet deaths.❞
Hibiki, code name Yōzō, is a senior member of the Fatui. While he usually bounces between regions, going wherever his services are needed, he is currently stuck in Liyue due to causing an unspeakably large amount of damage during the last mission he was sent on.
Faraway Knife
DPS/Support > Bow
Crit DMG > Crit Rate > Atk % > Energy
Team With:
A cheerful smile is always on Yōzō's face. Don't let his innocent face fool you; he's far more devious than he appears.
There is a knife hanging from around his neck and two more strapped to his right leg. ...those long sleeves of his appear to be concealing many things, however.
An Inazuman cryo vision. Hangs at Yōzō's right and glows when he uses skills.
A wide hairtie. The stitching looks worn and faded as if it has seen years of use.
The edge of Yōzō's sheer capelet-esque covering. He insists on using the same pattern and will travel to Fontaine just to purchase it.
A bow that shimmers as if starlight was folded into its cold metal with every strike of the blacksmith's hammer. There is no accompanying quiver; he creates the arrows out of ice every time he shoots.
Traditional geta with a sharp blade as the base. As the blade gets dull quickly, Yōzō keeps several replacements on hand.
Story 1
When Fatui soldiers are asked if they have any preferences regarding squad assignments, their immediate response is “not Yōzō, please.” They can tiptoe around Azazello’s fanatical devotion. They can dodge Korovyev’s poisonous invitations. But they cannot escape Yōzō’s spartan pace.
“Wake up, darlings,” he says with a wide grin at six in the morning, callously ripping off his subordinates’ covers. “It’s time to work. Also, get better locks. I barely had to pick them before they opened.”
After a week of being dragged around from sunrise to sunset — with no breaks, because if you have time to rest then you have time to work — they find themselves wishing that they were at one of Korovyev’s tea parties instead. At least they’d be dead instead of simply hoping that they were.
The sole silver lining in this living hell is that Yōzō has one of the highest completion rates in the organization. Even so-called impossible tasks are neatly delivered by him through a combination of reckless luck, long hours of preparation, and a healthy dose of sheer stubbornness. So his subordinates bear with the punishing hours in return for a better track record, and leave at the first opportunity they can find.
As such, Yōzō also has one of the highest turnover rates, but that’s no concern of his. If they can’t keep up, then he doesn’t want them.
Story 2
All Fatui recruits are required to undergo strict training before they are regarded as full-fledged soldiers. So when Yōzō appeared out of the blue one day, having skipped all the steps and wearing Signora’s name like a medal, they were understandably pissed.
Maybe if he addressed his seniors with respect, it would have ended there, but instead he offered them nothing but backhanded compliments and mocking laughs. Going to the Harbingers would be useless, so they decided to teach the brat a lesson themselves. A short fight later, Yōzō sheathed his knives and smiled, ignoring the pain as it pulled against the blooming bruises on his face.
“Three against one is a little unfair, isn’t it?” he asked with a smug little laugh. “You should have at least brought five.”
They seethed and consoled themselves with the knowledge that Yōzō would get what’s coming to him when he started going on missions. He never did. One success turned into two and two turned into ten. People came back shaking their heads and muttering about “so many snakes” and “either a ghost or teleportation” and “where the fuck did he get a cactus from.”
It wasn't long before people stopped talking about favoritism and started arguing about whether or not Yōzō was human.
Story 3
A nameless Inazuman child and a Harbinger met under a cloudless sky. There’s a body between them.
A senior Fatui member — one who had proven his worth, one who had been brought up in talks about granting delusions — slain by a child half his age. A child who was currently rummaging through the corpse’s pockets, brazenly ignoring the cold eyes looking down on him.
When Signora asked what happened, caught between disbelief and amusement, she was answered with a blunt “he called me short.”
“You killed him for telling the truth?” she said with a curl of her lip.
The air froze. “I’ll kill you too.” His hand twitched towards the bow at his side.
She raised an eyebrow. “You think you can kill me?” and that was definitely amusement in her voice.
“No,” he said honestly, “but I’ll try.”
Two cryo vision holders stared at each other. An invitation hung in the air. When he agreed, the smile on his face didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Story 4
Before Yōzō joined the Fatui, there was a rash of deaths in Inazuma. Soldiers died all the time, so just that wasn’t strange, but a delusion holder was among them and that was worrying.
Then, all of a sudden, all of it stopped. The strange deaths faded from people’s minds.
But footprints stood out clearly on freshly fallen snow, and one day, Signora called Yōzō into her office and asked: “are you enjoying your anemo delusion?”
He froze. An easy smile slid across his face, and he brushed aside the bomb that she just dropped. “Haven’t you heard? I’m not human. You can’t restrain me with something as simple as bells.”
“The only thing inhuman about you is your shamelessness,” she retorted, slamming shut any doors Yōzō could use to escape. “So? Who did we kill? Your parents? Your siblings? It’s all of them, isn’t it,” she said, eyes piercing through the teenager standing in front of her. “Must be, since you’re so desperate to die.”
“Will you have me join them?” Yōzō asked, smile turning feral at the edges.
Scoffing, Signora waved her hand dismissively, and shooed him out.
What she wants, he still does not quite know, but if she was going to keep silent about it...well, Yōzō would gladly take advantage of that.
Story 5
Before Yōzō existed, there was a child who lived in a quiet village. There were no heroes and no monsters, just laughter under maple trees and gentle warmth that flooded each and every day.
Unlike his current self, he was a shy child, preferring to wander through forests alone instead of playing with other children. He was deep into one of his trips when he raised his head and saw billowing smoke.
It was spring. All the snow had melted. There was no reason to light so many fires.
When he arrived at his village, hands and knees scraped from falling, there was no one left. Just footprints of monsters on charred earth.
Where were the heroes? The people who would protect our laughter and gentle warmth? Oh, Archons, where were the heroes that would slay the monsters you sent?
Hibiki Satou died that day. A bitter knife was forged in his place.
「如何にいます 父母」
Father, Mother, are you doing well?
「恙無しや 友がき」
Are my friends living peacefully?
「雨に風に つけても」
When the rain falls, when the wind blows.
「思い出づる 故郷」
I stop and remember my hometown.
Character Details
Recently, the Fatui have adopted a game where they send new recruits on a late night errand and listen for their screams. For no matter what hour it is, Hibiki will always appear behind them, a smirk on his face and a playful taunt on his tongue.
Rumors say that he’s not entirely human, for what human has glowing blue eyes and footsteps so quiet he was made to wear bells — and he still manages to sneak up on people nine out of ten times.
Really, Hibiki had to be a monster. That or insane. Or quite possibly both, because what sort of person works thirty hours a day? While he insists that he absolutely does sleep, the odd hours that he keeps only fuel the rumors.
Vision
Hibiki doesn’t remember receiving a vision.
What he does remember is coming home to a hollowed out village.
He remembers breathing in smoke and blinking away tears blackened by ash and praying that he wasn’t the only one left. He remembers digging graves until the sun had set and rose again, until his arms burned with exhaustion and his nails were broken and bleeding.
He remembers sitting there hours later and staring at the cold vision in his hand.
“Okay,” Hibiki whispered through cracked lips.
“Okay,” he repeated, a little louder, a little stronger, and gripped it so tightly it bit into his palm.
To own a cryo vision is to carry around a symbol of loss.
That day, surrounded by ghosts, Hibiki promised to deliver it.
Tsaritsa’s dog. Rocks for brains. Hotheaded moron.
Yōzō calls Azazello many things, but in the eyes of the Fatui, they are simply: partners. Or, to be more specific, they are two terribly difficult coworkers who have been shuffled onto the same team so that no one else needs to deal with them.
And, to be fair, he absolutely delights in taunting his partner. But beneath that smug smile lies a turmoil of clashing emotions, full of anger and cloying envy, disgust and genuine care. Which one is real? Not even Yōzō knows.
Once, on an expedition in Liyue, Yōzō found a young girl stuck in a tree. He rescued her, then. Then she attached herself to him, and now he regrets everything.
Haiyan is a rapidly changing bundle of energy that Yōzō is ill-equipped to deal with. The few times he sets down his work to wander around Liyue Harbor, he’s often caught by one small girl and — literally and metaphorically — shaken for tales of adventure and battle.
“I wish she’d just leave me alone,” he complains, but the small smile that tugs at his lips says otherwise.
In Yōzō’s (admittedly very biased) opinion, Korovyev is good for one and only one thing: annoying the ever living shit out of Azazello. It doesn’t matter how good he is with poisons; there are others out there who are far less irritating than he is. So the least he could do was irritate Azazello instead. Fortunately, he is exceedingly adept at doing that, and Yōzō manages to gain some entertainment in exchange for the loss of sanity he suffers in Korovyev’s presence.
When Yōzō first joined the Fatui, his openly antagonistic attitude made enemies out of everyone. Everyone except for one man. Rulan looked at his smug smile and deliberately disrespectful jibes and saw them for what they actually were: the mask of a frightened child. So he took him in (well, as much as a Fatui can) and acted as his mentor for the short years before he left the organization.
Recently, the two happened to reunite at a street stall in Liyue. They are still in the process of getting to know the person that other has become.
When Yōzō suffers a lethal strike, he will not fall as a result of the DMG sustained and instead enter the Poisoned Plate state.
Poisoned Plate
No DMG will be taken during the duration of this state. Additionally, his physical and cryo DMG is increased by 100%.
If Yōzō receives no healing before the state ends, his HP will fall to zero.
Can only occur once every 300 seconds.
When poisoned, one might as well swallow the plate.
Wrath devours all.
The countless glowing eyes staring from within Yōzō's shadow transfix the enemy, dealing a wave of cryo DMG in a wide arc. All enemies hit will be given the slow effect for a period of time.
Hold
Dashes back quickly as he fires the wave of cryo.
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