Of Calm Calamities

The Meeting

Hey guys! It's me again. Someone asked me to write how Zhongli and Childe met, so I thought, why not make it a 10K special? So here it is! The famed meeting that Zhongli used as blackmail material! I hope you enjoy!

Shit, shit, shit. Of all days for there to be some weird festival, today really wasn't the best. It was bad enough that he was already late, he didn't need crowded streets and loud mobs blocking his path, too. He could blame La Signora for it, though. It was all her fault. Childe had voiced his desire to take on the mission from the very start, but of course she just had to insist that she was the better person for the job, and naturally, the dear Tsaritsa gave it to La Signora. Talk about picking favorites. And how did that end up? With La Signora backing out at the last possible second and giving the mission over to Childe instead.

Childe would've been grateful for it, he really would have, if it weren't for the fact that she told him about the mission literally two nights ago, followed by her stating that she had already organized a meeting with the Qixing of Liyue in two day's time. Naturally, Childe had taken the mission head-on - he wasn't about to back out of a chance to not only explore the land of Liyue, but to potentially fight the oldest god in all of Teyvat, too. The offer had been far too tempting to pass on to the other Harbingers, especially since he'd been interested in the job in the first place. Still, some warning in advance would've been nice.

He'd caught a ship from Snezhnaya to Liyue as soon as La Signora handed the mission over to him in fear that he wouldn't make it to the meeting on time, and of course everything had to go wrong. The journey, which usually would've taken no more than twenty hours, dragged on for much longer. First, there was some unexpected storm that delayed the ship's course, then, the captain, being the incapable dolt that he was, managed to get lost on the very same waters that he'd sailed thousands of times, not to mention that several of the oars broke as they were sailing. Really, the quality of the ship was beyond disappointing - even so, Childe was just grateful that a ship was available at such short notice.

Stupid La Signora. She must've done it on purpose. She'd always had a thing out for Childe, as if the two had some old grudge that he didn't know about. Then again, all Harbingers hated one another's guts, so it probably wasn't anything special. Still, even for her, this was beyond bitchy. She stole the mission right from under his nose, and where was she now? Out buying some fancy dresses in Mondstat because she no longer felt like stealing a god's gnosis? He could almost hear her laughing at him now. He'd been expecting the mission to be one full of action, but of course she just had to mention that the plan she came up with needed him to be as calm and peaceful as possible - something about befriending the people of Liyue so that the task of taking the geo archon's gnosis was easier, which meant that he wouldn't even be allowed to pick any fights during his stay. All he was stuck with was boring meetings with the bratty higher-ups of Liyue Harbor.

If he even got to them, that is. With all the delays that his ship had gone through, he was genuinely surprised that he'd even managed to arrive on the date of the meeting. Granted, he only had about ten minutes to find his way to the - what was it called, Yuehai Pavilion? - to arrive on time, which meant he had exactly ten minutes to find his way through an unfamiliar city that was crowded with hundreds of loud merchants and passer-bys, all seemingly doing their best to make Childe even more lost. Great. This was just great. He was lost, completely and utterly lost in an unknown city with only a handful of agents who were also scattered through the crowd, and desperately in need of getting to Yuehai Pavilion even though he had no clue what the building even looked like. Oh, and not to mention that he absolutely needed to get there on time. Apparently, the Qixing were very strict with their rules, and if he was even a minute late, then the meeting would get called off.