Whew, that was quite the gap between updates. Back to back safety inspections at work mean long hours, dammit. That said, I have no predetermined schedule of any kind, but I'd like to update at least once a month. Like I mentioned before, the entire story is planned out, just not written, which is of course the hard part. No promises on regularity, though.
On another topic, as one review mentioned, Warframe/Genshin crossovers aren't particularly common. I'm primarily a Warframe player from loooooong ago, about update 2 or 3, back when we had (gasp!) stamina bars, abilities were mods, and we had FOUR FUCKING REVIVES PER DAY, and you had to PAY to get more. I started Genshin a while back, mostly dropped it as I was playing ultra-casual and had no idea what I was doing, then got back in when the Sumeru update dropped, guided by my Warframe clannies who also played Genshin and helped me level up from scrub to...slightly more educated scrub. I'm now quite invested in the world and the story (less so in the relic farming and upgrading).
Warframe to me is a game with amazing gameplay, movement, and combat with vast variety in frames and weapons, along with probably the premier example of a fair free-to-play monetization model. It's not perfect, and it's certainly grindy, but if you put in the time, you can have anything in the game for free. You can even farm items, trade for premium currency, and get premium stuff for free. It's story, music, voice acting, and writing are better than a f2p game has any right to be. One can certainly criticize the storytelling, as the fragmented quests, old events that contained story elements, major story points hidden behind obscure codex entries and scanning targets, and the weird and somewhat directionless progression through the starchart makes actually experiencing the story for someone who doesn't already know where to look quite obnoxious at times.
Genshin also has a great story, (mostly) awesome and likable characters, a beautiful open world, fantastic music (seriously, randomly seeing a video on youtube of the Genshin main menu theme was what brought me back; the music is just so good)...and your typical trashy Chinese gacha mechanics. A truly sour point, but if you ignore that, it's a pretty great game, really.
So, question: what brought you to this story? I'm truly flattered by the number of followers and favorites I've received, and it is far more than I would have ever expected for such a niche crossover fandom. So what led you here to find it? Are you a Warframe player looking for crossovers? Genshin player looking for crossovers? Do you play both? Or perhaps neither, and you just found this by chance? I'm really quite curious, so if you feel so inclined to leave a review, I'd love if you'd mention what made you look this way. I appreciate every one.
With all the rambling out of the way, on with the show:
Jean's Office, Knights of Favonius Headquarters
It was probably too much to expect someone like Barbatos, or Venti as he preferred to go by these days, to politely knock on the door and walk in like a proper citizen. No, of course he had to hop through the window in a whirlwind, and while he no doubt figured it made him seem charmingly rouge-ish, all Jean could think of was how much time she would waste picking up and re-sorting all the paperwork he blew all over the room.
Undeterred by Jean's tired glare, he grinned ear to ear and bowed like the troubadour he claimed to be.
"Hail and well met, Acting Grand Master! 'Tis a fine night for…" he procured a wine bottle out of seemingly thin air like a magician, "...conversation! What, did you think I was going to say drinking? It's ALWAYS a good time for that, day or night!"
Jean smiled slightly in spite of herself. She placed a hand on her heart and bowed. "Hail, Lord Bar—I mean, Venti. Thank you for coming. But please, use the door next time."
Venti's face scrunched in an amused smirk, and he waved his hand to dismiss such a preposterous notion. "Ha! As if your oh so vigilant knights would let a drunken bard like me into the Grand Master's office. They'd run me off like a dog stealing sausage from the butcher's! Worse, they'd criticize my singing! I do not have the voice of a drunken alley cat! I have the voice of a drunken angel!"
Speaking of doors, someone knocked on the office door, showing that at least some citizens of Mondstadt understood what doors were for.
Venti smiled again, but with more solemnity this time. "That would be Mr. Grumpy. It's good he's here, honestly."
"Enter," Jean called out.
Wyratt, one of the guards, opened the door. "Acting Grand Master, Mr. Diluc is here to see you. Shall I send him in?"
"Please do, Wyratt."
Moments later, Diluc walked, or perhaps more accurately, stormed into the room, claymore on his back, fire in his eyes, and a scowl on his face. Though he was in the stronghold of his second-most hated organization on Teyvat, he had enough respect for Jean at least to nod somewhat politely in her direction, a gesture she returned.
"I come running all the way from the Dawn Winery having heard tales of flying metal ships, to a city abuzz with rumors of children from the sky, yet I seemed to have missed the excitement. Judging by appearances, I'm assuming the sky people didn't break anything important?"
Jean sighed quietly. She respected Diluc, she really did. She defended her people with love from the forefront, and he defended them with fury from the shadows, but his passion for them burned no dimmer than hers. But while she understood his grievances with the Knights she now led, did he really have to be so...difficult about it? She was trying to do right by everyone, trying harder than any single soul could be expected to try.
"There is much to talk about, Mr. Diluc," She said aloud politely. "Would you like to sit? I'll have Noelle bring something to drink."
"Hey! I brought 'something to drink,' you know!" Venti moaned.
Diluc looked at Venti with an expression of both annoyance and deference. Like Jean, he had rather mixed feelings about the character of the Archon they followed, though unlike Jean, he was far less pious about things like that to begin with. Yet despite how Venti looked, and talked, and sung, and drunk...standing before, and slightly below them was truly one of the Seven, the Archon of Wind and Freedom—goofy smile and all.
"Lord Barbatos," Diluc intoned sternly but respectfully, bowing his head slightly as he did so.
"Hehe, we can drop the formalities as far as I'm concerned," Venti smiled, but his smile quickly faded into a more somber expression. "We really do need to talk. And it may take this whole bottle to get through this conversation."
"He did WHAT?!"
Jean grimaced at Diluc's shocked outburst, though she certainly saw it coming. "So he claims, and given what I've seen, I have no reason not to believe him."
"He told the truth."
Venti—no, Barbatos sat leaning forward in his chair, chin resting on his folded hands, eyes distant, and not the slightest hint of mirth in his face or voice. Jean and Diluc both stared attentively his way. The bard was not present currently; their Archon was talking now.
"As you probably already know, I lost my gnosis. A trinket as far as I'm concerned, but it connected me to the Heavenly Principles in a way. But even without it, I felt it—like a spear piercing the sky, I felt this Tenno force his way into the world, and the Heavens fell silent when he did. I know in my heart, he truly did destroy the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles."
Diluc rubbed his throbbing temples. What a day it had been. But as he sat and painfully pondered what sort of consequences this unprecedented action could have, his day got worse when he figured out at least two of them. His eyes shot open and his hands froze.
"Well...that explains those things, at least."
"Diluc," Jean said quietly, "what things?"
Diluc pulled an envelope out of his coat pocket and handed it to Jean.
"These things. In short, the Fatui—ALL of them—have left and gone home, and the Abyss Order is running in panic mode."
Jean's eyes widened, an action that was probably going to leave wrinkles on her face at some point, so often did it happen today. She quickly read over the reports Elzer had procured for Diluc, confirming what he said.
"Ah, right, this would be quite the wrench in the Tsaritsa's plan…" Barbatos mused.
"Oh? And what can you tell us of her plan?" Diluc queried.
"Not much."
Both Jean and Diluc paused, expecting more, but it seemed Barbatos had no intention of elaborating. As frustrating as this was, they opted to let it go, as prying answers out of him was surely futile.
"You said the Abyss Order is up in arms too, right?" Barbatos asked of Diluc.
"Yes, my sources say they've retreated back into their holes and are highly on the defensive. I'd have to assume this has something to do with this Tenno, but I can't fathom what the connection would be."
Now it was Jean's turn to freeze as she thought of something.
"Actually, I may know something about that."
Two pairs of eyes locked on to her.
"Lisa told me something about him she heard from Razor, the boy from Wolvendom whom she's been teaching; apparently, the Tenno seems to...well, 'smell' of the Abyss. I'm not sure entirely what that means, but I trust Lisa, and Lisa trusts Razor. That said, she also clarified that the Tenno mostly smells like the Traveler. Razor was quite insistent on this, it would seem."
Diluc clenched his jaw, and once again, the room seemed to heat up. "I trust the Traveler implicitly. You mentioned he claimed to be her adopted family, yes? But this connection to the Abyss, whatever it is, I cannot ignore. Until we are certain otherwise, I strongly recommend treating him as a potential threat."
"Master Diluc," Barbatos said quietly, "you are strong. Among the strongest in Mondstadt, to be sure. But what could even you do against the one who felled a god of Celestia?"
Diluc did not reply.
"The good news is, I don't think the Tenno has any ill intentions towards us," Barbatos continued. "I had the chance to observe him briefly when you entered the city. He got away from you for a moment, did he not?"
"...yes. He jumped over the wall like it was a picket fence. We hurried into the city to find him waiting at the doors of our headquarters," Jean said a bit sheepishly.
"While he got ahead of you, I sensed him entering the city. He somehow had gone completely invisible, and I could only detect him through the disturbances in the wind he made in his passing. Which was actually easier than expected, as he was very fast. He had time to scout out every section of the city in the minute or so he had, but when he landed on the roof of the house next to the Angel's Share where I was sitting, he stopped. I couldn't see him, but I certainly could sense him looking at me. I looked back. I don't know what he can see, but I'm convinced he saw right through me, saw me for who I was. It was the only place he stopped, after all. Yet he did nothing. He made no threat, showed no aggression. But he certainly seemed to want me to know he was watching me."
"That still seems a flimsy reason to be trusting of him," Diluc countered. "Just because he didn't attack you on sight? Even Abyss mages know to wait for their moment."
"Understandable, but it's more than just that. The wind that blows from him reeks of blood...but it does not swirl with hostility towards us." Barbatos smiled gently. "Trust in me. I really am watching out for you."
"So...what should we do about him?" Jean asked the question on everyone's mind.
Barbatos sat up straight and looked them both in the eyes.
"I think we should jolly well stay out of his way." He then proceeded to down the rest of the wine bottle in one go.
Tenno Orbiter, currently in orbit around Lua
The Tenno pulled the last item off the foundry as it finished construction. He mentally ran down the checklist of things he had built/upgraded for his possibly extended excursion to Teyvat.
First, deployers modified to work across dimensions:
Archwing deployer, check.
Necramech deployer, check.
K-drive deployer, check. He did stop to wonder if he really needed that one, but went with it anyway.
Archgun deployer, check.
He had opted to leave the Kaithe in Duviri. The people in Teyvat already freaked out enough just looking at him. A skeletal winged horse probably wouldn't help his image. Not to mention his "other self" was weirdly possessive of it. Knowing himself, it wasn't all that surprising.
Second, a few new communication gadgets:
Proper comm lines between him, Ordis, and Cy, check. They would not only allow the Tenno uninhibited communication with his cephalons, but also would allow both of them to monitor his progress, and even project themselves next to him and communicate with the people there, should they desire to do so.
A mod for Helios Prime to come along with him into the conceptual embodiment and scan things for him, check.
Space-time coordinate logger to allow Cy to pinpoint his location across dimensions and bring in the Railjack, should that ever be required, check. He could also use it to have Ordis deliver a new loadout to his location, should he require a change in gear.
And lastly, a special item he had concocted with Ordis that he hoped would dramatically shorten his search, should it work: a very strange looking plugin to an incomplete ayatan, which was then plugged into a vitruvian. When he found out that the world somehow kept a "memory" of everything that ever happened in its "world tree", he brainstormed a piece of tech that would hopefully be able to access this memory from an exposed ley line, should he find one. He wasn't convinced it would work, but if it did, he might be able to literally download the twins' location.
With this, he was ready. Time was of the essence, at least while in the world of Teyvat. His time spent here in the primary world didn't seem to matter much, which he was grateful for as it gave him time to think. But while he was there, he would have to hurry. The walls were breaking down, and he had to get the twins out of there. Due to the long dream, their cognitive dissociation from their normal selves meant they were not ready to face what was coming.
A hologram of a regular octahedron, a crack through its face corrupting its otherwise perfect geometry, flashed to life on the landing craft's console.
"Operator, all systems checked and verified. Reservoir life support handshake protocols authenticated. Life pod will automatically commence resuscitation process upon occupants reawakening. I've also notified the Lotus of your current mission. She will be on standby should you require support, though due to her nature, she will be unable to join you in the embodiment. She sends her best wishes for your recovery of the twins."
"Thanks Ordis. Also, I can hear you worrying again. You've got a big brain; surely you've noticed I always beat the odds?" A small grin crept across the Tenno's face.
"Please do not ask Ordis not to worry. It's either that or g̴̠̥̤̒͑͝o̵̯̾̆ ̵̗̇̄i̵̺͊̉͘n̶͍͕̓͜s̵̜͕̈́̕ả̴̢̜̘͝ņ̷̮͇̈́e̵͉̋ ̸̱͖̋̈͊w̸̮̐ĭ̸̠̱͑^̸̘̼̈́̔ ̸̰̹͕͌̕E̷̝̻͌ͅ#̵̛̟̿͝^̴̡͖̍̄!̵͍̔%̵̫͐̏͜ͅm̴̖̏̒͛)̵͕͎̙͑̈́8̷͓̒c̷̱̀́͝#̶̧̪̓̀̂͜ ̷̛̯$̴͒ —"
"Ooooooookay, alright, alright, I guess you can worry!"
"Oh thank you Operator, my cogitator coil temperature sensors were beginning to melt there for a moment. I'm so glad you are permitting me to worry!"
"Yeesh, Ordis...maybe we need to get you a hobby…"
The Tenno once again activated transference to his Ash Prime. "Welp, time to go talk to some dream people."
"Ordis does find it slightly unusual that you've been so forthright with the denizens of Teyvat. You would usually be more guarded and secretive with those you don't know."
"Yeah, but they're dream people. And not a threat. Also, they know what a Tenno looks like, even if they don't know they've been seeing one for quite a while now. Not really any point in being all covert, and it just makes communicating harder."
"Despite being created from a dream, are not those people in Teyvat as real as anything else? Conceptual embodiments do have an ontological index of 1.000, do they not?"
The Tenno thought for a moment, and clearly wasn't completely happy with where his thoughts were going.
"Yeah...but I really can't deal with complications like that right now. I need to focus on getting the twins out of there before the whole place implodes and He has his way with it. And there is a way to slow down the encroachment, at least a little."
He brought out his Soma Prime Incarnon, an elegant machine gun twisted, tormented, elevated by the void, and inspected it.
"If I find any of those Abyss Order bastards while I'm looking," the Tenno said darkly, "they'll wish they'd never been born."
If Ordis still had a body, he would have shuddered.
Knights of Favonius Headquarters
It says something about the powerful effects of conditioning the brain by repeated stimuli that when Jean awoke to the sound of explosions, despite her brain still being mostly asleep and unable to properly form conscious thought, her body was halfway out of the couch she had fallen asleep on and her mouth was already shouting:
"KLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Now fully awake, she sprang up off the couch and sprinted towards the door. She could still hear the clattering of distant explosions, but now that she was alert, she noticed how unusual they sounded. Rather than the irregular heavy booms that Klee's...creations made, they were rapid, highly rhythmic, and sharp, like someone hammering something at supersonic speeds. They were often punctuated by very heavy hits that seemed to vibrate the ground beneath her feet.
She dashed out of the building in a flurry, accosting every guard she passed and demanding to know where the incorrigible Spark Knight was. No one knew, unfortunately, so Jean continued to follow the sound. Solitary confinement clearly wasn't working, she lamented to herself. She bolted out the door and up the stairs to the plaza on the next level and was met with a disturbing sight—a massive column of smoke rising from the northern slope of Dragonspine.
Wait, DRAGONSPINE? How far out had Klee wandered?! Alice would burn the city to the ground if she found out!
Jean spotted Porthos on the plaza, also riveted by the sight of the destruction in the distance.
"WHERE IS KLEE?!" Jean shouted, not really angry at her subordinate, but definitely freaking out a bit.
To Jean's utter astonishment, Porthos just pointed behind her. Sure enough, there stood the one she was searching for: Klee, the Spark Knight, adorable menace to society, leaning over the railing of the plaza, staring at the catastrophe on the mountainside with stars glittering in her eyes and an unholy amount of joy written on her face.
The flaming panic that had been burning inside Jean's chest instantly turned to stone and dropped right out of her body, leaving her feeling strangely deflated, not to mention confused. So, if it wasn't Klee that was currently blowing up the mountain...then that left only one other real possibility. Honestly—that one was scarier. But at least, Jean thought with a passing twinge of both relief and guilt for feeling the relief, she couldn't be blamed for this one.
Klee was having no such internal conflicts. "It's. So. BEWWWWWWTIFUUUWWW!"
The Slopes of Dragonspine
Reconnaissance Captain Eula was having a very interesting day. She had tracked a coven of Abyss mages to some nameless hole on the freezing northern face of Dragonspine, stalking their trail for days all the way from Springvale. And what did she find when she finally arrived at her quarry's location?
Devastation.
Mangled bodies of Abyss mages, hilichurls, and very concerningly, other strange creatures she did not recognize lay strewn about, blood and viscera staining the white slopes a dark crimson. The ground was pockmarked with craters, rocks and boulders slashed and blasted, terrain blackened by scorch marks, trees shredded to pulp, and the air still seemed to vibrate with the echoes of the apocalyptic noise the attack made. And through it all, Eula never once saw anything more than a flicker, a shadow, a wisp of dark smoke flitting at absurd speed through the veritable small army the Abyss Order had surreptitiously amassed.
She crept toward the entrance of the cave the former coven had laid claim to as a base, claymore drawn and ready, eyes flicking back and forth for any sign of hostility. The enemy of her enemy was by no means guaranteed to be her friend after all, and while it seemed unlikely given the scale of the carnage lying around her, there might still be stragglers left alive. Stepping over the severed limb of a mitachurl who's main body was nowhere to be seen, she approached the entrance and peered into the darkness.
You're from Mondstadt, right?
Eula nearly leapt out of her skin as a voice sounded directly inside her head, ignoring her ears entirely. She whirled around brandishing her weapon with surprising speed given its bulk, and nearly bit her tongue in surprise when she found herself standing face to face with the most alien-looking figure she had ever seen. The figure held up its hand, palm outward in placation.
Easy, you're not my enemy. Just burning out a rat's nest here. I'm sure Acting Grand Master Jean won't mind me exterminating some Abyss rats while on my way.
Eula relaxed her posture slightly, though she kept a tight grip on her claymore. "You know the Acting Grand Master?"
Yeah. If you have questions, ask the knights. They'll tell you all about it.
"Hmp! You seek to dismiss me after stealing my quarry? I have been tracking these vermin for days. Mark my words, vengeance will be mine!"
Eula knew her words usually garnered a rather negative reaction from most people, but when a sword appeared out of thin air in the strange armored figure's hand and a palpable sense of anger and bloodlust radiated from the warrior in front of her, for once in her life she had second thoughts about maintaining her traditional mannerisms out of sheer pride.
I'd rethink that if I were you.
Death. Death was staring her in the soul. Her pride was truly a force to be reckoned with, however, and though she knew she might regret it, her pride won out over her fear. She maintained her stance and brought her sword up.
"I'll have you know, plebeian, that I am the Spindrift Knight and descendant of the Lawrence Clan. I will not bandy words with an assassin without honor. Now, you will explain to me where you have come from and why you have annihilated my target without my authorization, or I will have my ven—"
He didn't even move. As long as she lived, Eula would swear that the warrior in front of her didn't move an inch, yet she found herself looking down at a hole in her stomach. Her claymore slipped from her grasp and her knees buckled, shaking hands desperately trying to stem the alarmingly high flow of blood pouring from the wound as she crumpled to the ground. It was useless, as she realized there was a hole in her back as well, bleeding just as profusely. She had somehow been stabbed in the back.
The alien warrior slowly, deliberately walked towards her trembling, slumped form and kneeled down in front of her. No eyes nor indeed any sort of opening for eyes could be seen on the strange helmet the figure wore, but she could still feel his glare boring into her from inches away.
Had enough yet?
She tried to form words as a reply, but she was only able to cough up blood.
I don't have time for this nonsense. I'm not here to bother you or anyone else from your city. Or any city, for that matter. So can we drop this aggression already?
Pride finally took a backseat to survival, and Eula managed to nod painfully.
The armored warrior returned the nod...then something happened Eula would never forget for the rest of her life. He held out his hand, and from it flowed an energy unlike anything she had seen before. It was certainly no elemental magic. It didn't heal her—it undid her wound. She watched in astonishment as the blood on the ground and her outfit retreated back into her body, her flesh and clothing re-knit themselves, until after no more than a few seconds it was as if she had never been injured. There wasn't even a bloodstain anywhere. Her uniform was as pristine as when she put it on.
The warrior stood up and stepped back.
Now stay out of my way.
His fingers flicked faster than the eye could track, and smoke suddenly blasted from a point on the ground in front of where he was standing. Eula coughed and blinked away the tears while trying to wave away the smoke that was irritating her lungs and eyes. As soon as she could make out anything, she quickly scanned her surrounding environment and came up empty. The warrior had disappeared.
She shakily picked up her claymore and holstered it on her back. She had quite the report to share when she got back to Mondstadt.
Four chapters down, and we're still in Mondstadt. Don't worry, our Tenno will soon arrive in Liyue, and we'll get to see what kind of Chaos he can create in I Can't Believe It's Not China—I mean, the land of Geo.
And yeah...Tenno are not nice people. Nor can they be considered stable. When envisioning a confrontation between the awkward-at-best, antagonistic-at-worst Eula and the shoot-first-ask-questions-never Tenno, I honestly couldn't see it happening without violence. Highly one-sided violence. Fortunately, Tenno do fight for the righteous, though there is nothing righteous about the way they fight, so he's not going to murder someone innocent for trivial reasons. He certainly isn't going to respond well to aggression, though.
Thank you once again for reading, and hopefully we'll see you in the next installment!