"No way…"
Sai could not believe his luck. After that tense and exhausting day, he happened to have been summoned by the player again? How absurd!
"Hehe… there he is…"
Looking around, Sai could see both Kaeya and a translucent Aether. He also found the place he was in rather familiar.
"This is… a Statue of the Seven? I'm in Liyue. Given where he was at last time, this should be one of the mountains to the north of the city." A gust of wind blew, and Sai started trembling from the cold.
Before he could finish his deduction, Kaeya ran to the edge of the cliff and jumped, the Traveler following close behind. Although he was scared of falling, Sai made up his mind to check on them.
Laying down on the ground, he went closer and closer to the edge where those two jumped from, the wind almost throwing him down a couple of times. Once there, he saw that the mountain was the height of the in-game Dragonspine, but much more steep. Clouds floated next to him.
"There they are!" He managed to see some sort of winged being falling at an extremely high speed, and quickly connected the dots.
Regardless of his advantageous position, Sai still didn't know where he was. He could barely see the ground, and everything changed so much from the game. There was nothing he could do.
"If I am near Jueyun Karst then I'm probably safe, given how the adepti don't normally kill humans left and right for no reason, specially the Traveler. But if it's not the adepti… Oh god please just not the Primo Geovishap."
Backing up from the cliff, Sai made his way back to the statue to better analyse it. Nonetheless, before he could take a third look at it, his sight changed again, and he felt like he fell to the ground from a short height. In front of him, Kaeya launched ice spikes at his enemies and entered combat.
"Oh, no…"
A Cryogunner Legionnaire pointed his weapon and threw ice vapor at Kaeya, who had hurriedly side-stepped (dashed) a hammer smash from the Electrohammer Vanguard.
"Let's end this quickly!" A hoarse voice resounded.
The player swapped Kaeya after a skill use, and Noelle appeared on the field. She created a shield and gave a few hits before being swapped herself.
At this moment, Sai finally realized that he was in Dunyu Ruins, a famous loot spot near a body of water that had a spawn of Fatui enemies.
"Get a load of this!" Someone voiced from behind him, and Sai immediately knew who it was.
Sai instinctively tried to jump to ground, but weirdly enough, he dashed away instead. It seemed that his real movements were beings transformed into game-like movements.
He then materialised a sword in his hand and proceeded to hack at the Pyro Bracer who shot at him from behind. Of course, although he managed to get a few hits in, the fire shielded his enemy from any actual damage.
Contrary to his intention, Sai kept pursuing the sniper, clumsily slashing left and right.
"I'm being controlled again!" He said through gritted teeth.
Meanwhile, the battle on the other side was progressing slowly. Lisa got switched in and started eating away at the ice shield, all the while dodging the huge hammer. From a glimpse, Sai managed to see something that thoroughly shocked him: Lumine swapped in and wielded her elemental skill, shredding the two shields at the same time.
"Hahaha! Taste my second secret weapon!" Rick mocked, he was also surprised at how effective Anemo was against those shields. He didn't actually know it was because of the elemental swirl.
"Lumine? Didn't he choose Aether?! What is going on??" Despite his thoughts, Sai was relentless on his attacks.
After some time, control was slowly coming back to him. He managed to stay somewhat far away from the fight, despite not being able to outright leave the area. Behind him was a road, his escape route.
On the other side, Rick didn't manage to take half of the enemies' health before they restored their shield, greatly threatening the low HP player. Eventually, the player felt the added pressure from the fire sniper and all his characters except one died, leaving only Sai and Lisa on that place.
"GAaaaahh! I'll be back to have my revenge! You better believe it!!" Rick was furious after the series of losses.
Following that, the world slightly lost its colour, and everything looked as if time stopped, including the Fatui. No sounds could be heard.
Sai felt his heart beating really hard for some reason, so he nervously looked for the source of his terror. The fact that he was the only one who could move didn't register at that moment. He managed to catch a glimpse of a white flying thing before it vanished, together with Lisa. And then time smoothly resumed flowing.
The Fatui could move again. The three of them looked at each other and then at Sai, who was standing some forty meters away. They looked back at each other, and back at him.
Sai immediately dropped his sword and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, which caused it to disperse into some yellowish particles. Two guns were lifted in his direction.
"I surrender! I don't want to fight! In fact, I was obligated to fight by that guy just now. Or rather, I will join the Fatui! Just let me talk to Tartaglia or Signora and I can prove my worth…" Sai kept trying to talk to them, but the dude with the hammer kept walking towards him without flinching.
"I– I know the Tsarita?"
Fire-coloured light started to shine in the muzzle of the sniper, and this time Sai was not confident in dodging it, so he turned tail and ran away as fast as he could. It didn't take a genius to notice that the Electrohammer was closing in though, given the cackling of the electricity. Bullets streaked past him, and one even burned his shoulder slightly.
Sai ran for his life. Never had he run so fast, or for so long. But he was quickly getting tired: it wouldn't be long before he was caught by the persistent Fatui.
Suddenly, he heard a very peculiar noise echoing from a path to the left. He realized it was his only hope of survival, so he shifted his sprint in that direction.
When he turned the corner, he saw it right there, slowly getting up. A huge and bulky piece of machinery. The protector of a once immensely prosperous nation. A Ruin Guard.