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1. We’re still in ancient fantasy!China, except there are Pokemon. However, while they are fascinating, generally cultivators do not befriend pokemons. They will sometimes be called to fight the more aggresive types or assist in clearing out some of the more stubbornly annoying sorts, but - it’s more like a cultivator might be asked to help in a tiger hunt? It’s not really their things and if duels are to be fought, they are perfectly capable of fighting them themselves.

2. Despite all this, Wei Wuxian makes friends with each and every ghost pokemon that hangs around the Burial Mounds, because of course he does. When the Yiling Laozu emerges in all his horrifying splendour, he’s followed everywhere by an honour guard of ghastlys and litwicks and misdreavus, shuppets and duskulls and drifloons. (Also fierce corpses and regular ghosts, of course - he is still a necromancer. But also the mons. They like him.) Sometimes, when he plays, the spare necromantic energies make them evolve.

3. The ghost pokemon start showing up again a couple of days after Wei Wuxian’s resurrection. One or two, just sneakily gathering because their favourite person is back. He keeps trying to wave them away, because if Lan Zhan sees them, he’ll realize that it’s not Mo Xuanyu he’s dragged back to Gusu with him.

4. Of course, Lan Wangji already knows that Wei Ying is Wei Ying, and is determined to make friends with the pokemons that was one of many things the cultivation world disliked about his love the last time round. The litwicks take to him instantly and will dance around him if he plays Inquiry, or just hover over his shoulder if he wants to sit and read.

5. As for the rest of the cultivation world: Yunmeng has a truly ridiculous amount of Farfetch’ds and Magikarps. Nightless City is infested with Magcargos, and the Unclean Realm has Honedges just randomly occuring. Also Smeargles, except they mostly randomly occur in NHS’ quarters, trying to help paint his latest fans.

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1. The good ship Høvding (or however they spell it in the show, but that’s how I want to spell it) stopped in Shanghai on the route from Norway to New Zealand back in the day. But that is another story involving different incarnations. (The Thor of the day totally got in a very random fight with Jiang Cheng.)

2. Grandpa Olaf has many strange friends, some of them dating back decades. The black-clad Chinese guy wandering into Mike’s bar and asking what he recommends turns out to be one of them.

3. At some point, with someone - possibly one of the brothers, possibly Colin (because Colin is an asshole and will appear at some point), Olaf has to tell them: “Don’t threaten Wei Wuxian.”
“Why not? Can’t stand up for himself?”
“First of all, the guy invented necromancy, he can make the entire fucking cemetery stand up for him if need be, and second, he doesn’t need to, because his husband will slice you in half.”
“What husband?”
“The one standing right behind you looking very pissed off. Hello, Lan Wangji!”

4. The possibility of the God spirits actually being reincarnations of some sort of ancient Scandinavian cultivators bound in an epic generation spanning curse will come up.

5. Somehow Mike gets involved in a duel with somebody. Of course, technically, a duel is a form of contest, a game…

6. Wen Ning: *is around*
Zeb: *decides to make friends with the most unimposing and obviously mortal sidekick to these probably Chinese god avatars*
Zeb: *reads up on Chinese mythology and starts asking Wen Ning about which gods they might be*
Wen Ning: *somehow ends up on the floor laughing because everything is too ridiculous even for an ancient fierce corpse*
WWX: *stops whatever he’s doing to get a video of Wen Ning laughing and posts it to the immortal group chat*

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1. For reasons that need not be explored at this junction, Mick Rory ends up stranded in ancient China without his heat gun. (Though at least he’s got a translator so he can talk the talk). Specifically, he ends up somewhere the locals call Qinghe. (He is greatly disappointed that it isn’t ancient Japan - not nearly enough ninjas).

2. Having determined that the local criminal underworld already has all the muscle it needs and is not about to let some random foreigner muscle his way in (and anyway, the local authorities are far too fond of corporeal punishments for his taste), Mick decides to fall back on his other skill set to make a living until the Legends manage to track him down: writing porn erotica spring books.

3. This unexpectedly leads him to meet the current leader of the local cultivation sect, Nie Huaisang, known as the Head-Shaker among the civilians. Mick ends up getting invited for tea, because acquiring a random foreign spring book author seems a nice, harmless amusement that won’t alarm anybody, even if said author looks like a wrestler or highwayman.

4. Of course, NHS is missing a few facts about Mick Rory, namely a) that he spent decades being partners with the sneakiest guy around, b) he is intimately familiar with the concept of obfuscating stupidity, and c) Mick’s the sort of guy to notice that even if everybody outside the sect act like NHS is useless, the Nie cultivators themselves? Never hesitate or question, and seriously, he knows how gangs work, okay? If a leader is really useless, they either get ousted or somebody else runs the show behind the scenes, and yet NHS is still here and still giving the orders.

5. Oh, and then there’s the fact that Mick thinks Nie Huaisang is pretty.

6. The cultivation world thrives on gossip. That the Head-Shaker has taken a big, scary, porn-writing foreigner as his consort causes a stir. LXC shows up and ends up leaving with a vague impression of a somewhat uncouth (well, foreigners - where would he have learned proper manners?), but mostly harmless fellow. JGY shows up and leaves with the impression that NHS is still a useless good-for-nothing and this stranger is no threat to anybody.

After he leaves.

Mick: “So. That’s the guy?”

NHS: “Yes.”

7. Wei Wuxian still returns from the dead, because both I and LWJ would be sad if he didn’t. Of course, this all leads to some long, complicated conversations involving Inquiry and necromancy and the raising of people who died outside of time and space.

“You can’t use the sacrifice summoning array! It’s utterly amoral!”

NHS, later, in private: “So, I believe we have these criteria in mind: male, with some cultivation skill to allow them to learn the array, has done something horrible enough to warrant the death sentence, but also has sufficient connections to this world to be willing to trade their comfort and safe keeping for any hope of reincarnation.”

Mick: “You realize I was married to him, right?”

NHS: “As your husband, it is my duty to give you nice things - and I figure this will suit you better than fans.”

Mick: “I like my fan with the fire motif. And the magic sword you got me that bursts into flame. And that talisman you used to give me Fabio hair and make it fire proof.”

NHS: “Still.”

Mick: “Just saying - giving your spouse his resurrected ex is a bit weird.”

NHS: “I fully expect you to share him.”

8. The Legends finally locate Mick after he and Len has spent years as the pampered, foreign consorts / scary enforcers / co-rulers of Chief Cultivator Nie Huaisang (because we all know he’ll get the job eventually - WWX will look at his Lans and Jiangs and Jins and decide that nope, too much stress, this will be your penance NHS!)

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1. There is a certain Incense Burner. Of course, it has certain uses, but let’s be honest: nobody would create such a magical artifact just to allow people to witness one another’s wet dreams (though the Lan sect healers definitely use it for couple’s therapy and just never thought to mention it to LWJ and WWX, because it’s not like they need help with that aspect of their sex life)

2. There is an Emperor. He is old and dying and his son - his son and most likely heir has, for reasons, decided that he really does not like the cultivation sects. In fact, there is good reason to suppose that, if he comes to power - and frankly, the other potential emperor-to-bes are each terrible in different, possibly even worse ways in general - he might crack down hard on the sects, even attempt to wipe them out. And, while the cultivators are powerful, in the end, they are few.

3. Of course, the task to protect the cultivation sects fall on the Chief Cultivator. In the words of Sect Leader Yao: “What else do we have a Chief Cultivator for?”

4. The plan: to change his mind. Which has been attempted with envoys, but the incidents causing the distrust are deeply entrenched. Clearly, they need to go deeper, and they need to do so without him noticing. And somebody among the Lans remember the incense burner and how it can access people’s subconsciousness (and there is brief panic as it’s not in the treasury and possibly LWJ has pink ears when he hands it over).

5. The heist: kidnap Prince Whatever and have an elite team of cultivators (NHS: “What am I doing here?! I am a terrible cultivator!” WWX: “And the sneakiest person we’ve got left!”) go through a series of dream scenarios trying to repair/recast/fix things to turn him into an Emperor, who will continue the mostly-indifference approach to the sects that the last many Emperors have had.

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1. His name is Methos and he first came to China - well, the first time was a hell of a long time ago, and the first time isn’t important, truth be told. But he came to China this time as part of the Roman embassy to the Emperor Huan in 166 AD. He decided to stick around for a while

2. Being himself Immortal, he grew curious about the rising phenomenon - not yet nearly as big as deal as in MDZS’ time period, a few centuries later - of the cultivation sects. He was somewhat shocked when he met a few actual cultivation immortals after some searching - quite different from his natural-born type, but definitely immortal - they even really like swords as well - and decided to investigate even further. By joining a sect.

3. Don’t forget - this was centuries ago. The Nie were still just a butcher clan, and the Wen - the Wen were not quite as power hungry and grasping as they’d become, but they already had the skill at identifying promising disciples to be adopted in. Wen Methos was, admittedly, fairly old to start his training, though it was less regimented in those days, and he proved an able student.

4. He lived in Qishan for a few decades, cultivating, night hunting - the fun stuff. He never did cultivate to immortality - he had all the time in the world, but his golden core, while perfectly powerful, was simply not quite that powerful. Not that it really mattered to him, for obvious reasons, but eventually, he decided to leave. The conflict between his Immortality and his not-immortality was becoming too obvious.

5. Which doesn’t keep him from eventually deciding, a few centuries later, that really, it’s time to go visit the martial family again. See if anybody’s still around, get some refresher courses on sword flying (a very handy trick, albeit one he rarely uses - quite some time later a Highlander will comment on the parachute he finds in Methos’ car), see if anybody’s invented any new talismans.

6. He finds the Wen sect extinct and very rapidly realizes that he really shouldn’t introduce himself by that name. He’s - well, maybe somewhat surprised, because the Wens of his day were still the righteous cultivators with members who wrote those precepts that their descendants would use to lord over the other sects while not bothering to adhere to. But the ancient world has some truly, truly vicious wars, and Methos himself did horrible things - genocides happened long before anybody invented the word.

7. He still sticks around for a bit and suddenly rumours are flying that the Yiling Laozu - whoever that might - has returned from the dead. So he goes, assuming that maybe one of his sort has happened among the cultivation sects for maximum confusion, except nope, that’s not it.

8. But he does, rather surprisingly, find his last surviving shidi.

9. For a given value of surviving shidi.

10. The Nightless City having conveniently been destroyed, Wen Ning having never been the sort to really get into the finer details of the main family branch’s history and the records of guest disciples and adopted family members, and anyway, the entire cultivation world is sick and tired of killing at this point. Meaning the mysterious reappearance of an ancient, weird foreigner who claims to have cultivated to immortality with the Wen sect nearly half a millennium earlier? And has spent the time until now travelling distant foreign parts, seeing as he is a foreigner? A little suspicious, but he doesn’t seem about to cause any trouble, and Wen Ning is so ridiculously happy to have found another relative.

11. The only one to get really suspicious about him is Nie Huaisang, but, well, NHS doesn’t tend to share other people’s secrets, as long as they are no threat to him and his. Well - suspicious at that time. Things will happen. Things always happen. And Immortals, whatever the sort, will drift in and out of each other’s lives. As you do.

12. Some night in the 20th century Methos will be minding his own business, quietly drinking a beer at Joe’s bar, when two men sit down, one on each side of him. “So, Wen-gongzi,” the slightly shorter of them greets him, “what do you recommend of this place’s alcohol? And does it serve any tea for my husband?”

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1. They are all ducks. Just roll with it. The ducks are basically humans anyway, it’s not like anybody actually acts the animal they are.

2. Lan Sizhui was totally involved with the foundation of the Junior Woodchucks. Specifically, he got involved when the Gusu Lan library got added to the collection of books that would one day become the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook. Of course, this means that the guidebook - in addition to all the wisdom of the ancient and modern world - contains the wisdom, secrets and history of cultivation.

3. Which comes in handy when Uncle Scrooge drags his nephews along on a treasure hunt to China, because supposedly there is a huge golden treasure guarded by hordes of the undead (probably local superstition) and a dragon (probably dead of old age).

4. Possibly this treasure hunt comes with a competitor, because naturally Magica De Spell is also involved here, as we are talking fantasy. I mean, she won’t object to the gold, but this time, she’s in the market for the secrets of cultivation immortality. (She and the Scrooge-and-nephews team end up teaming up and betraying one another at least twice).

5. Of course, this being Disney comics, they find a mystical lost country in the middle of China, hidden behind heavy magical wards. And it is guarded by the roaming undead - well, Wen Ning. He helpfully saves them from drowning and takes them home to dry out.

6. There is also a dragon. It’s actually a problem, because the dragon has somehow managed to keep Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji trapped in the Demon Slaughtering Cave 7.0 for the last 100 years. Huey, Dewey, and Louie conveniently check the Guidebook and read about a secret entrance to the cave, which turns into a mini adventure with puzzle solving related to Chinese myth, just because.

7. Of course, the cave WWX and LWJ are trapped in also contains the golden treasure. It probably used to belong to the Jins.

8. And of course there is a cave-in at a dramatic moment, and everybody is saved, but the treasure is sealed forever and ever, except a nice treasure souvenir of some sort for Uncle Scrooge’s collection back home.

9. Possibly somebody also learns a little ditty from WWX that is handy at turning traditional zombies around and going away. I mean, Uncle Scrooge could use that. Not that he deserves to get out of that particular trouble, but he could use it.

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1. The target of the week is some sort of big hotel owner asshole. I have absolutely no idea what a capitalist hotel owner of bad repute, possibly in Las Vegas, might have done to earn the ire of Leverage. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter.

2. What matters is that there is a big conference - private event, lasts several days, workshops and shared meals and networking time - scheduled at the hotel and the Leverage crew decide that this “Bidecennial Cultivation Conference” is the perfect infiltration spot. So, Hardison hacks the hotel and inserts an extra “sect” - farmers really have some weird organization concepts these days - in the list.

3. A few details become very apparent very quickly when they actually arrive at the conference. Like the fact that whatever these guys are, farmers are - probably not it (though there is this fellow, Mr. Wei, who will happily chat with Elliot about radishes and potatoes for half an hour). Or the fact that, while it’s not like they are the only white or black faces, about 80% of the attendants are definitely of Asian extraction. Dress code leans toward very old school, and Hardison is convinced they’ve stumbled upon an hitherto unknown to him nerd subculture (he - is not entirely wrong?)

4. They soldier on, because they are good at improvising when required. The conference is very varied, and some of the lectures are downright - weird? And the hotel gym, which has martial arts facilities, is getting used for demonstration sword fighting like something out of certain Chinese monasteries (Elliot: “It’s a very distinctive style, but I can’t put my finger on it.”), and the food is delicious, even if Elliot’s new friend Mr. Wei complains that it’s too bland and talks a waiter into bringing an entire bowl of extra chili sauce.

5. The musical entertainment of the evening is a Chinese gentleman in white playing an antique string instrument and Parker might be about to choke, because a guqin in that condiition? Extremely valuable.

6. Of course, then there’s the detail the Leverage crew miss: that the cultivation world knows its own and nobody’s really fooled by this “Portland sect”. They are curious, though, and not particularly threatened, especially as several Immortals - including the famous Hanguang-Jun, the notorious Yiling Laozu, why even the Ghost General and Sandu Shengshou and others - have decided to attend this particular conference.

7. I am not saying that said Immortal cultivators deduce that the Leverage crew are Robin Hood conmen and decide to help them out. Okay, so NHS is still around somehow and deduce it. Everybody knows that that Nie is the sneakiest person anywhere he goes.

8. Wei Wuxian somehow makes friends with Elliot, despite his atrocious, downright offensive opinions about spices. Lan Wangji allows Parker to approach him, while Jiang Cheng pulls a “very important sect leader” to have Sophie attach herself to his arm, while Wen Ning sits down next to Hardison and asks about whatever nerdy merchandise he brought along, because you know. NHS, of course, is an utterly useless good-for-nothing spilling his drink all over Nate.

9. The cultivators observe and deduce and eventually realize the team’s actual target. They might even help out a little or let themselves get conveniently distracted.

10. Alas, the target of the week turns out to have considerably more resources and wherewithal than most targets, and possibly extremely unpleasant friends. As in, he turns the tables on the Leverage crew for real and things are looking very bleak - for them and the couple of poor, innocent cultivators that’s gotten stuck in the middle. There are guns and probably somebody has already died - some poor third party people.

11. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jiang Cheng interrupts halfway through the villain monologuing his way towards a gangster style mass execution, because one massive hostage situation with a pscyho is enough for several millennia, thank you. And then Zidian comes out, and sweet, harmless, nerdy Wen Ning’s eyes go black and he roars to freeze the blood in everybody’s veins.

12. A bit later, a couple of Lans - don’t you just love those nice, strong arms - rip a door off its hinges, and in walks the Yiling Laozu, lowering Chenqing and blinking sheepishly. “What took you so long?” Jiang Cheng barks as he sweeps out.

13. (Wei Wuxian had been making out with his husband in a cupboard, on the general principle that a hotel conference requires at least one round of making out in a cupboard. He is not the least bit embarrassed about that, but he still gets stuck with clean-up duty.)

14. Clean-up duty mostly involves the bad guys getting back up and walking out to a cheery tune. Possibly a Disney tune.

15. Leverage crew are - mildly put shocked and definitely not used to their cases devolving into quite as much bloodshed. Also Elliot is standing in front of the lot of them in defensive posture, because he just saw Wen Ning take an unknown number of bullets without even slowing down and throw a desk that should have taken four men to lift, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to let these people - who obviously have secrets, big secrets, and no hesitation in killing - get to his friends without a fight.

16. “So,” says Nie Huaisang, walking in and daintily sidestepping a blood pool, “this is an awful mess, isn’t it?”

“Yes…”

(Possibly, very politely phrased mutual blackmail ensues. Well, mostly NHS basically threatening to have the entire mess pinned on the group of known felons hanging around at the hotel, infiltrating a cultural conference, and oh, he’s got this particular Interpol fellow on speed dial, funny that. Unless, that is, I mean, we’re all friends here, and it’s already such a terrible mess, nobody’d want any of this to get messier, would they? What happens in Vegas and all that, yes?)

Chapter Text

Well, there’s an obvious starting point in the Vikings character Yidu, the alleged princess who very conveniently somehow managed to bring mysterious drugs all the way from China to Norway as she was abducted and enslaved. (Very credible story - not. Anyway).

(Please note: I stopped watching this show after season 4, because I had no interest in watching Vikings the Next Generation, and neither Rollo nor Lagertha nor Floki had felt like themselves for ages).

1. For the sake of the crossover, let’s pretend that her story is not just something she made up, and that she actually is a daughter of an Emperor. Let’s also, for the sake of the crossover, assume that said Emperor, upon learning that one of his daughters have been abducted in distant foreign parts, decides that this is an insult to the throne and cannot stand. And furthermore, let’s assume that this Emperor decides that clearly, the people best suited for travelling to distant and potentially dangerous parts of the world succesfully must be people who can fly on swords and do magic stunts.

2. One lovely morning an envoy from the Emperor arrives at the Cloud Recesses, bearing an Imperial Command to the Chief Cultivator (so very convenient of the cultivation sects to provide him with somebody specific to order around): the cultivation sects are to send a force to retrieve the lost princess Yidu, to bring her home safely where she can be put away in the comforting confines of a monastery.

3. The cultivation world sends some of their finest: Hanguang-Jun and the Yiling Laozu, the Ghost General and a couple of young Lan disciples. (All of them powerful - well, the younger Lans are going on an adventure for the experience and possibly a couple of other youngsters sneak along, because of course they do. WWX is torn between brimming with pride and yelling at Jin Ling, and then Jiang Cheng shows up and does yell at length, so the group ends up about twice as big as their journey begins.)

4. The bad guys have a head start, since Yidu had to travel some distance before getting abducted, and then the news had to travel back, so she’s already close to Scandinavia by the time the group heads out. As they use some fancy tracking talismans WWX is basically inventing as they go along, that means they’ve got a compass pointing in a North-Western direction. Aka they go overland, and probably north through parts of what is now Russia, before hitting the Caspian sea and following the Volga north and west. It’s neither the most hospitable nor the most civilized of routes, but, well - they encounter no trouble they cannot handle.

5. And then they finally arrive in Scandinavia, in Norway, to find the Emperor’s daughter a simple bed slave to some random petty chieftain who would not be considered a king back home, in a strange place where people can barely write and certainly not beautifully, where entire robes of silk will make people stop and gawk, and where the locals are - well, fairly tall (several taller than even NMJ ever was) and broad and lacking in many social graces. They don’t even worship the proper gods, just either a bunch of local petty deities that owe no allegiance to the Jade Emperor or some possibly-a-Buddha from the southern lands.

6. Anyway, let’s be honest: the characters of Vikings are fierce warriors and a serious military threat to a European late-iron-age/medieval battlefield. To a bunch of extremely powerful cultivators, including one who can literally make the dead stand up and fight for him? Yeah, no. I believe the term is curbstomp battle?

7. Before it gets that bad, Ragnar Lothbrok manages to shake off enough of his drugged haze to realize that these weird foreigners seem to be able to bring the dead back and to talk to them. Powerful sorcerers and seiðmaðrs, obviously, and not to be trifled with. Besides, it’s not like Yidu is someone he grows that attached to.

8. So, a bargain is offered: the cultivators can take Yidu, can take her medicines, can even take a nice big bunch of supplies and trade goods they’ve got lying around, and a nice ship as well. All they need to give him in return is Athelstan.

9. Very conveniently, the place he buried Athelstan? Actually a bit boggy. I mean, we’re not talking quite bog mummification, but for someone who has been dead for quite a while, there’s still enough left of Athelstan for Wei Wuxian to call him back, to make him rise from his grave and stand and “Wake up! Remember yourself!”

10. Ragnar getting followed around by a draugr does change quite a few things. Possibly the Paris conquest goes different, Possibly Ragnar just throws aside his position, grabs his undead boyfriend and goes off to see the world with him.

11. The cultivators, having achieved the first half of their mission - acquire Princess Yidu - proceed to get started on the second half, namely getting her home to her father. Which, having listened to her story, they decide to do by following a southern route, taking a ship west from Norway, down through Gibraltar, to Constantinople, and from there they journey through Muslim lands (with a stop in Baghdad) before following the Silk Road home.

12. Even for cultivators this is not a fast trip. A few years have gone by, who knows if the Emperor is even still Emperor. The Jiang Sect is still perfectly well behaved and have missed their sect leader, the Jin Sect needs some serious intimidation to remember that oh, yeah, that Jin Rulan fellow - handsome young man, and is that a lion skin he’s wearing these days? - is the sect leader, and hello sect leader Jin Rulan’s scary uncles.

13. As for Yidu? The new Emperor, her brother, is - less than thrilled to be reunited with his half-sister by a minor concubine, and she’s not even well-behaved enough to keep her mouth shut and be married off to some minor noble or something. So, I suspect she spends the rest of her life in some Buddhist monastery.

Chapter Text

1. So, as it turned out - Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui are not entirely the last of the Wen sect. As they learn, when they journey to Qishan to set up a memorial for their lost relatives. A few Wens had hidden among common folk, a few had married out, children had been stashed, some had been travelling. It’s not a large number of people, but just enough that, while never again a sect, a Wen family line remains.

2. Maybe Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian cultivate to immortality and move to the Heavens. Maybe they don’t and die of old age. Others certainly do. But Wen Ning does not age and already died - and as others fall by the wayside, one by one, he moves forward with the family that is his, still, through invasions and dynasties and wars and the arrival of so many foreigners.

3. He still follows his family - the slightly distant Uncle Wen Ning, not often seen, never seems to age, always helpful if help is needed, and their village strangely never gets sacked by invaders. And his family still follows his sister’s path, counting many famous doctors and healers, both of the traditional school and eventually learning Western medicine as well. Though we won’t quite get to that point.

4. In the year of 1910 Wen Ning is visiting with one of his many, many “nephews” as the rains pours in the back of beyond bit of China his village is in, when a man arrives, telling of a Western woman and a terribly sick child having taken shelter at a poor farm nearby. Wen Ning, being Wen Ning, is the one to make sure his nephew, Dr. Wen Chiu, makes it safely to the farm, and watches over the place through the night as his younger relative calls upon certain of his family’s old cultivation techniques to cure the young Indy Jones of typhoid.

5. Possibly cultivation is not used very often anymore, so when used, it tends to - attract attention. Wen Ning standing guard is not merely courtesy - fierce corpses move through the night, things howl in the distance, but none get past the Ghost General.

6. I am not saying that Wen Ning is also the one, once his nephew relays the story of how the Westerners came to be stuck in this place, to follow the river for miles and bring back the lost luggage, leaving it far closer where the hired local coachman can find them. Or that he follows that cart as it leaves, trailing behind until he sees them safely arrived back in more civilized parts - perhaps as much because dead Westerners, even dead Westerners who just got sick, can cause trouble. Or perhaps because he is ever kind.

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1. So, this is what happens when post-canon Wei Wuxian gets - not bored with married life, but he does need something to do with his days. And he always did like inventing and experiment. So - he starts experimenting with teleportation talismans and - accidentally make one that not only lands him and a couple of others on the other side of the planet, but in another alternate universe and a millennia out of time.

2. This random bunch of Chinese people popping up in Age of Napoleon England confuse quite a few people. I mean, they are definitely Chinese, but they seem to have lost their translator, and frankly? They gawk. You’d think they’d never seen a dragon before.

3. Still, as long as you don’t try to take their swords away they are very calm (well, they one in purple and the one in yellow shouts a lot, but mostly at the others) and polite and bow a lot. They even manage to stop gawking fairly quickly to have conversation with Temeraire, who can report that they do speak Chinese, albeit a somewhat archaic dialect.

4. Meanwhile Jiang Cheng is spending a lot of time yelling at his idiot brother, because seriously? He has a sect to run and it’s a little hard to do that in this weird place, where the people look strange and there are huge flying lizards everywhere.

5. And then someone decides to arrest the visitors, because clearly they must be spies, and even if they are Chinese and thus under the protection of the Emperor of China, well - he’s a long way away.

6. The flying swords are a surprise.

7. Somebody: “Well, we still have gunpowder weapons”. Wen Ning: *utterly immune to such things and fast enough to jump in front of the rest*

8. Not entirely sure how it goes from there, but I kinda want Wei Wuxian to meet and befriend Perscitia, because he’s a nerd and so is she. Possibly, he offers to trade her assistance in researching how to make an array to take them home (clearly, his mathematical formulas are off somewhere) for cultivation lessons. I mean, yes, she’s a bit older and scalier than they generally start them, but really, she’d make a lovely cultivator.

9. I also suspect that at some point there will be a fierce corpse of the draconic persuasion, and there will be a lot of running away very, very fast by people we don’t like.

10. Perscitia follows them home and ends up somehow laying claim to Lan Qiren, because who knows the way the heart of a dragon works.

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1. During Blair’s childhood, Naomi Sandburg travelled a lot, carrying him along with her. They lived in hippie communes and alternative communities and some places that might charitably have been called cults, and they travelled abroad as well. They went to Europe and Naomi, being Naomi, proceeded to drag her small child along on the overland journey to India, along the so-called Hippie Trail - she was probably one of the last who got through before the wars closed that route.

2. So, they went to India and they went from India to China, despite China having its own turbulent period. Still, there were quiet places, and Naomi somehow wrangled a guest house for them for a few months at this lovely mountain religious retreat in an area called Gusu.

3. Blair’s actual memories of the Cloud Recesses are few and faint - he wasn’t even ten years old at the time. He remembers getting lost in the bamboo forest and being found as he sat crying and carried home by a strangely quiet man with cold hands. He remembers playing with the rabbits and eating food that was either too bland or way, way too spicy. He remembers a little Chinese. Oh, and he remembers Uncle Wei, who insisted on being Uncle, and his tall, scary, taciturn husband. He remembers Naomi insisting on giving him a one-on-one lecture on how that sort of thing was perfectly natural and modern Western society had destroyed many countries old cultures and replaced them with their own homophobia, and this was beautiful, and Blair didn’t get a word in sideways to point out that he was her son and she had definitely already raised him well, so that wasn’t what he had meant about Uncle Wei and Hangunag-Jun being weird.

4. He had been talking about sneaking out one night, because he couldn’t sleep, sneaking out, following the sound of a flute and found Uncle Wei at the end of the trail, eyes sparking red, and Hanguang-Jun with him, with a sword, and something that wasn’t properly alive fighting them. (Uncle Wei noticed him afterwards, and they carried him back and gave him tea and got him settled down, though the next morning he still asked his mom about Uncle Wei being weird.).

5. Now he’s an adult and an academic and a police observer, and if he once in a rare while dreams of that night, well, he dismisses it as clearly something was happening, something perfectly natural - probably a local traditional ceremony he wasn’t supposed to have seen in the first place and didn’t have the context for - and goes on with his life. After all, he’s got a busy life - he found a Sentinel and people keep trying to kill him.

6. Mind you, he still writes Uncle Wei and Hanguang-Jun, and they write him. Sometimes they travel - he gets letters with stamps from all sorts of places - and sometimes they don’t and the letters come covered in whatever official stamps and hold-ups the Chinese authorities enforce at any given moment. They write him when he is a teenager, when he starts college, when he finds his Sentinel - and when his academic career falls into ruins.

7. When he finishes at the Academy, they send him a gift that he’s pretty sure is some form of antique that probably shouldn’t have left China in the first place.

8. It’s a couple of years after he stopped being a police observer and formally became Jim Ellison’s partner that they finally come to Cascade to visit, looking no older than they do in his memories (and man, does Blair spends some time talking very sternly to himself about racism and exotizicing, because no, they are not mystically, ageless beings, they are just his weird Uncle Wei and Hanguang-Jun, in town for the cultural festival the Chinese Embassy is sponsoring, and his memory is playing tricks on him, that’s all.).

9. I suspect demonic cultivation has a scent.

10. So does everyday, which also has a lot of noise (especially the way WWX does it), so Jim doesn’t really notice that other scent, because he’s a good host and a good customer at the place that sells ear plugs and that mint stuff to put under your nose.

11. I am not saying somebody ends up in a hostage situation and somebody had a sword hidden in his sleeve all along (because no, LWJ, you can’t carry a bladed weapon around in a modern US city, they frown on that) and somebody might have conjured the very angry ghost of a murder victim to scare the bad guys half to death.

12. Jim: “Chief - do you have any normal friends? At all?”

Chapter Text

1. So - supposedly, Middle-Earth is our world in the very distant past, and supposedly, MDZS is set in fantasy!medieval China. So, same universe, somewhere in between the Fall of Sauron and our modern times.

2. I am not saying that cultivators are the result of yet another - or possibly several others - human/elf romances before the last of the elves travelled west. Absolutely not. Nor that Baoshan Sanren is the last remaining half-elf and not so much immortal as just very long-lived.

3. So - about Melkor/Morgoth. He couldn’t really create stuff himself. Corrupted elves into orcs, corrupted ents into trolls. Corrupted mithril into Yin Iron.

4. They say that the evil held sway over the East, even the lands beyond Mordor, and sadly that was so. The influence remains to this day (as in MDZS’ time) as resentful energies, as the power that calls forth dark and unpleasant things. Eventually, it’ll fade entirely, like all magic fades, but for now it’s just as well that the cultivators are still around to contain the worst of it.

5. There is an ent asleep in the Cloud Recesses. Mostly people assume that its just an old pine tree. A few are aware of it - certainly the sect leader and a few of the elders - but assume it’s a yao of some sort. Anyway, it’s not like it’s bothered anybody these last several centuries. Doesn’t even mind random rascally guest disciples climbing its branches and drinking forbidden liquids.

6. Of course, then Wen Xu arrive and order the Cloud Recesses burnt...

7. I mean, a considerable part of the Cloud Recesses still burn. But it ends with most of the Wen dead or running scared, Wen Xu with both his legs broken and taken captive by the Lans, and a somewhat singed ent sitting in the Cold Pond, grumbling to itself.

Chapter Text

1. Long before the Men of Letters - and let’s be frank, I don’t care what they say, that organization screams cheap Freemason rip-off - every culture under the sun has had their own hunters of the bad things. And in China, well, in China they had cultivators.

2. Eventually the great sects fell, one by one. But some had cultivated to immortality before then, and had refrained from the Heavens, for many reasons, and besides, new sects rose, new styles - and old reverence for those who came before. Sometimes.

3. The first time WWX and LWJ visit the Americas is in the early 15th century, sailing the oceans aboard the gigantic ships of Zheng He’s fleet (yes, the America visit is pseudohistory, the man was busy visiting Asia and Africa and acquiring souvenir giraffes, but this is fantasy, so hell, they get to America - besides, I am convinced the cultivators of old had secret connections (see: potatoes)). But this is not about that time.

4. Cultivators in general reach the Americas in the 19th century alongside their ordinary fellow man. It’s a new world, full of strange new ghosts and yao, as well as the ones they bring along with them simply by following their beliefs and living and dying and - occasionally not resting quietly. But the world is also growing modern at a rapid pace - a world that scoffs at cultivation as superstition and anyway, the powers of cultivators are strongly linked to just the right locations. You can use the power anywhere, once you got it, but to cultivate a golden core in the first place? Far easier in the locations where the old sects lived. Why do you think they lived there in the first place.

5. Which means that by the 21st century proper powerful cultivators are a very rare sight in the Americas. Certainly there are locations that could have been suitable, but those places are claimed by others. Cultivators are still trained, but they are more hunters with a few tricks up their sleeves - and every once in a while, others will visit.

6. WWX and LWJ travelled to the US in the 60s, and they - well, they didn’t stay, they still travel, but they find themselves coming back, if not quite as often as they go back to China, then quite often. They go, as always, where the chaos is, and, well - let’s be honest. The US has a lot of chaos.

7. Incidentally, this also means that a certain amount of people in the US know how to reach them. If needed. Mostly rumours passed through families, but there are ways - and when a child or three go missing one dark night, someone makes the call that goes straight to voicemail. (WWX loves cell phones. He is busy inventing array apps in his spare time).

8. Sam and Dean are still young hunters at this point. Maybe they’ve met an angel, maybe not, - probably not. They are still at the stage of hunting werewolves and wendigos, following a trail of police reports to a case of what is obviously some regular sort of monster, easily beaten by silver and salt and latin.

9. It’s a fierce corpse and couldn’t care less about any of it. Actually, it’s several fierce corpses and oh, will you look at that, they’ve got Sam and Dean surrounded and are about to end their monster hunting careers quite thoroughly.

10. That’s when there’s the sound of some sort of flute from the tree above them, and the corpses just - stop. They don’t crumble, they don’t fall - they just stop advancing and look up - at this random Chinese guy lounging on a branch of the tree Sam and Dean backed up against, playing a flute of some sort.

11. There’s probably an argument along the way, because “they’re monsters” don’t get much traction against “nonsense, they’re just dead, and some idiot neonazis desecrated the graveyard - it’s all gotten swept and cleansed and they’ll be back asleep in no time”.

12. Sam and Dean encounter the very annoying Wuxian guy a few more times. The next time he’s accompanied by another guy, tall, quiet, with a fucking sword that he can fly on, because that’s a thing - and the pair of them save S&D again, because seriouosly, who ever heard of a Chinese duck demon with a fatal quack?

13. It takes several encounters before they even find out that the two guys are married. And every encounter, the pair of them display such power that it’s ridiculous.

14. They try to ask around about them, and all their contacts (ie. Bobby Singer) can dig up is that they are older than they look and usually don’t get involved with other hunters, though rumour has it that the Wuxian guy once upon a time claimed that he’d grant a boon of somebody’s choice to any who could defeat him in a drinking contest.

15. This is Supernatural and eventually either Sam or Dean dies in such a way that the survivor becomes convinced that these Chinese hunters can fix it. Probably Sam dies. So, Dean goes to try to outdrink the Yiling Laozu and fails utterly. Still, Wei Wuxian decides to give him extra points for trying. Also, it’s no like he doesn’t know what it feels like to want to do anything for siblings.

16. Not sure where it goes from there, except I kinda want a showdown between some of the entire Apocalyptic angels & demons crew on one side and a very unimpressed collection of ancient Chinese cultivators, who are technically gods, you know, and some of them probably made friends along the way (yes, I am thinking Wei Wuxian regularly hangs out with Sun Wukong and maybe Jiang Cheng has befriended Nezha?), and the entire celestial bureaucracy did not sign on for this end of the world nonsense.

Chapter Text

1. It’s neither Morticia and Gomez Addams first or second or third honeymoon that brings them to China. It’s a lovely, carefully planned out vacation. Rooms booked at haunted hotels only, and of course once one of their lovely local guides mention the quaint local area called the Burial Mounds? Why, how could they not visit such a scenic location?

2. The Lan sect still exists. Whether the others do is less vital, but the Lan do, and since the Burial Mounds is still a location heavy in resentful energy they still keep a guard there. Usually they have to handle the occasional straying fierce corpse. Trying to shoo away some hopelessly clueless American tourists? Not so much (in later decades, as China opens more, yes, but assuming this is the original Addams series - definitely not so much.)

3. Said Americans are surprisingly resistant to shooing. The language barrier doesn’t help, so eventually the Lan disciple calls for back up. And since we’re talking the Burial Mounds, said back-up is the Gusu Lan’s two resident immortals.

4. Wei Wuxian somehow gets talked into giving the Addams couple a private tour of his old haunts. They take pictures and Morticia takes saplings of black bamboo and discuss horticulture with him.

5. Gomez talks LWJ into a sword fight. I don’t know how, it’s Gomez.

6. Everybody parts happily, the Addams couple with memories and souvenirs and the cultivators with a standing invite to drop by anytime, they’re always welcome.

7. A few months later Morticia’s letters start to arrive, chatty and friendly and if possibly Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian come to agree that Americans are obviously weird, well - it’s not like they are the first to reach that conclusion.

8. Writing back to advice on how to handle a freely roaming hand - musical scores included, and fortunately Morticia and Gomez are of a cultured background, even if cultivation is not their scene - is unexpected.

9. Getting a letter back about the nice new family member, complete with a photo of a hand giving them a thumbs up? Americans are weird.

10. They do end up visiting the Addams household some years later, after the children have been born. They have - other errands to run in the US, and, well, Morticia has invited them so many times, it’d be rude. And she so wants to show them her bamboo and her carefully cultivated lotus pond, and she promised to cook nice, vegetarian meals for Lan Wangji.

11. At some point they are given a tour of the playroom.

12. Possibly, they are initially a little discomforted by the playroom’s similarity to Wen Ruohan’s Fire Palace. Mind you, Morticia and Gomez are very happy to explain exactly what they use the various instruments for and they do know what a normal human’s limits are for the various instruments. And they do kindly offer their guests the free use of the playroom at any time. They even offer to have Lurch clean the entire place up first.

13. (Wei Wuxian spends some time with Chenqing and Lurch before determining that whatever he is, it’s neither fierce corpse nor ghoul nor anything in urgent need of being put to rest.)

14. Possibly WWX and LWJ accept their kind hosts’ hospitable offer before their stay ends.

15. Possibly Wednesday keeps a tally of which couple is more sappy - her parents or the nice Chinese gentlemen.

16. When they return to China, WWX and LWJ might each have a few - interesting toys in their luggage. Fortunately, the Chinese government long ago learned to stay hands off with cultivators, otherwise they might have had to answer some interesting questions.

Chapter Text

1. I don’t know if JKR has done any China related worldbuilding, or if she limited herself to making a mess of Europe and America. Nor do I care. For the purposes of this crossover, China has cultivators and they use swords, not wands. Of course, magical UK being insular and barely able to deal with magical traditions just a little bit different from their own has just dropped all of that in a box called “weird foreign and probably suspicious magic”.

2. In line with this the class History of Magic is mostly focused on British and occasionally a little bit European magical history. But at least at one point in - year 3? - there’s an assignment. Each student is given a powerful foreign witch or wizard from history and has to write an independent assignment on them, and for whatever reason Ron needs a good grade for this. So he’s going to do his best to research the “Yelling Lazy? Did he use shouting magic, then?”

3. The Hogwarts library proves mostly unhelpful. Oh, there’s some old books and scrolls in Chinese, but a) language barrier and b) they’re mostly in the restricted section anyway. In the general section of the library, alas, what little information is available can basically be summed up as “The Yiling Laozu was the most notorious and powerful Dark Lord of Ancient China”.

4. How do you research an ancient dead wizard from foreign parts? Why, you and your two best friends come across an ill-advised spell to summon him, which has to happen exactly at midnight of course, so one late night Ron, Harry and Hermione sneak out and end up performing a spell so old that it’s not even officially Dark, possibly in the Room of Requirement.

5. The spell is supposed to function like a ouija board or, well, Inquiry. It’s supposed to attract the departed spirit so you can ask it questions. (Hermione, who has long since finished her paper on legendary Inuit witch Sedna, has helpfully prepared a list of questions).

6. The spell does not work.

7. The funny thing about the Room of Requirement is, of course, that it provides anything you require. So, if you are a panicked boy who really needs a decent grade for this paper - it provides the necessary adjustments. In this case, adjustments to account for the fact that the subject of the spell - is not dead.

8. Possibly it helps that he did die, once upon a long time ago, but he got better.

9. And is currently fairly confused about standing in the middle of a strange room, three British kids gawking at him, because he was just enjoying a nice day playing silly little tunes for his husband and their heirloom rabbits at the Cloud Recesses.

10. Said three British kids might be panicking because they are in so much trouble and now they got two Dark Lords to worry about?!

11. Halfway around the globe, a certain suddenly abandoned husband is also panicking. Mind you, he’s a cultivator powerful enough to have joined the Heavens except he and WWX chose not to, he’s got 1000+ years of experience and a golden core equal to none. He’s got ways to find his husband. (He’s also got tracking magic on him.)

12. Not sure how it goes from there - I suspect Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, when he shows up (fairly soon, with Wen Ning (le gasp! a Dark and Undead creature!) in tow) are going to be very unimpressed with many things, including local Dark Lords.

13. And locals raising random people to the height of heroes and then tearing them down. And imprisoning people in horror story prisons without a trial. And possibly the fact that a couple of those Chinese language scrolls in the restricted section were stolen from the CR by a Western witch 200 years ago.

14. At some point there’s going to be a sword vs. broomstick race. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules.

15. Somebody gets to bond with Remus Lupin. Probably Wen Ning, one monster to another.

16. There might or might not be a diplomatic crisis between magical UK and the Cultivation World.

17. Wei Wuxian does not like Remus Lupin or Sirius Black. At all. He’s not sure why, they seem nice enough, and yet every instinct in him starts screaming in their presence.

Chapter Text

1. More than a thousand years ago the System Lords did their usual thing of snatching a viable population of humans from Earth - mostly from China, in this case - and settled them along with some Jaffa and some ruling Goa’uld on a nice empty planet. They let the humans do what humans do, including naming bits of the planet after the places back home they were familiar with, and mostly carried on a standard Goa’uld planet existence.

2. In addition to a not always human-friendly local fauna, the planet seemed to produce a peculiar sort of energy. The Goa’uld found it mostly unimportant, but the humans discovered that they could manipulate it by following certain Taoist practices, and thus the first proto-cultivators happened, slowly, oh so slowly, using talismans and minor magics and fighting the monsters that tried to eat people.

3. And then - oh, then - a particularly powerful proto-cultivator was claimed as a Goa’uld host.

4. Ask yourself: what is a golden core?

5. A couple of centuries later the Goa’uld cut all contact to the planet, declared it under interdict. In short: they fled. Leaving the humans to develop a society quite unlike any seen before.

6. What is a golden core? It is not grown - at least, not by the cultivator themself. Instead, what the wannabe cultivator does is practice, develop their qi, grow their strength - until one fine day their sect leader and elders determine that they are strong enough for the ultimate test, which some does not survive: the implantation of a full-grown Goa’uld parasite, which, if all goes well, will be subjugated by the “host’s” qi and cultivation powers. Instead of taking control, it will be the one controlled, supplying its host with the usual healing, physical powers and endurance of the Goa’uld while also acting as an internal qi powerbank, allowing cultivators to perform powerful magical feats like, for instance, flying.

7. A qi deviation is no more and no less than a cultivator losing control of the Goa’uld inside. Ghost calming rituals, by the way, are actually a failsafe system specifically designed to kill the Goa’uld when the cultivator dies. Alas, it also steps in if the cultivator loses control completely, and kills them both.

8. Even if the cultivator is in control, there is some bleed-over. In some people it’s worse than in others, resulting in extremely temperamental or even sociopathic cultivators. There’s a reason the Lan have all those rules. Cultivator emotions run hot, no matter what they are.

9. In addition to cultivators every sect also has Jaffa - servants. (I have no idea if Jaffa and normal humans are genetically compatible, but let’s say they are.) Wei Wuxian’s father, for instance, was a Jaffa. Hence the stigma against him. As are most of the Dafan Wen branch family. (Yuan was from the core line and just ended up with them at the camp).

10. Baoshan Sanren hosts a queen. Half the reason she isolates herself is the extra risk involved if that thing ever gets out of her control.

11. As the number of humans grew on the planet, so did the number of people who died, and another feature of the planet unveiled itself: resentful, dark energies, a dark mirror to the bright energy used to bind golden cores. Fierce corpses and hungry ghosts started to roam.

12. Eventually, a bright young cultivator whose Goa’uld core had been experimentally transferred into another who had lost his own discovered how to properly harness and control the dark energy. His name, of course, was Wei Wuxian.

13. Wen Ning was a Jaffa. The Ghost General is not one, but two fierce corpses - the undead Goa’uld larva inside him is what boosts his strength beyond even standard fierce corpse levels.

14. Mo Xuanyu was a mess. Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang rushed his training and preparation, only focusing on the parts that mattered to them. The result was a cultivator unable to properly control the Goa’uld within, though it never quite rose to power. Poor alien horror story had quite the nasty shock when the soul sacrifice ritual worked and a spirit with all the necessary mental discipline and power slammed down around it. Possibly, the shock sent it into partial torpor, which is why Wei Wuxian 2.0′s cultivation is still weak. It’ll get stronger.

15. A few years after the death of Jin Guangyao and the ascension of Lan Wangji to the post of Chief Cultivator - a mysterious stone ring in the Nightless City opens and SG1 steps out.

16. Actually, screw it - cultivators are working towards ascension. They rarely get there - life is full of distractions - but once in a rare while one of them does ascend.

17. Anyway, it’s not the first unusual world the Stargate people encounter. Or the first not-automatically-enemies carrying Goa’uld. There’s still going to be a number of misunderstandings and tensions, especially since the cultivators can’t access the Goa’uld genetic memory and most of them don’t actually know that much about their history. Hell, lower level cultivators might not even know they are carrying scary alien worms inside.

18. The Tok’ra are going to be very, very scared of this place. Also intrigued by the fact that there is a living queen, but mostly scared.

19. Cultivators can carry their qi and/or resentful energy with them away from the planet, but once away, they can’t gather new supplies. In short, if someone were to visit, say, a certain airforce base on Earth, they would need to return home before their qi ran so low that the Goa’uld would be free and the failsafe system would activate. This is probably not something anybody realizes before going to visit.

Chapter Text

1. Hoshino and his new girlfriend are very happy together, and Hoshino’s mother seems to be resting peacefully, happy that her son is no longer alone. And then their home is burgled and the erotic shunga prints that were passed down in the family through several generations are stolen.

2. Cue pissed off old lady ghost haunting a couple of idiot burglars, until they go crying to a local low-level Yakuza, who turns right around when pissed off old lady ghosts starts spookily haunting him and goes crying to his big brother Ryu Kenzaki.

3. Problem: Ryu is a big, scary Yakuza - and very, very superstitious. And now he’s also haunted. Eventually, probably from Kosuzu, he learns the proper owner of the shunga and returns them, making a sacrifice at the temple, doing all the proper things.

4. It does not work.

5. Going about his awful criminal lifestyle Ryu is now haunted by a little old lady ghost. He is very traumatized, you must understand.

6. It is, of course, Kosuzu who ends up sharing these sad facts with the Master and some of the regulars at the diner one night.

7. Coincidentally - quite coincidentally, truly, absolutely - a couple of Chinese men - old friends on a shared vacation to Japan, because sometimes it’s nice to hang out with a friend with common interests, and sometimes a man needs distracting while his husband has to spend a few months meditating in utter isolation for health reasons - have found their way into the diner that night.

8. The one dressed to the nines like some wannabe mugging victim and carrying a fan like some Western tourist, except he knows exactly how to use it, looks up from his Butadon to ask: “What is this I hear about haunted porn?” The regulars relate the backstory to him.

9. “Ah. Good sirs, I believe I might know a solution to your friend’s troubles.”

“You know your ghosts, then?”

“Oh no, not me. I really don’t know anything about such matters. My good friend Wei-xiong here, on the other hand...”

10. His companion, who had asked the Master for “the spiciest thing you can cook, thank you” and has been utterly distracted weeping happy tears of blissful torture, looks up at a sharp poke from the pointed end of Nie Huaisang’s fan.

11. Wei Wuxian ends up taking payment in food. (Nie Huaisang probably makes sure they get paid quite well in a more mundane fashion. He does pout a bit upon learning that the haunted porn is not, in fact, an option.)

12. A few months later a tall Chinese gentleman dressed in white shows up, bows politely and requests private lessons from the Master. (It was either that or murder him in a jealous rage. Wei Wuxian hasn’t stopped waxing poetic about the Master’s spicy food since poor Lan Wangji came out of his temporary seclusion and asked how he’d been.)

Chapter Text

1. Mazikeen is a bounty hunter. She is a very, very good bounty hunter.

2. Her latest case is a body snatcher. A serial body snatcher. As in, this person has a type - his victims are always male, ethnically Chinese or at least unspecified Asian, and always unidentified. There’s actually a concern that this body snatcher is actually a serial killer collecting his entire victims as trophies.

3. Nobody ever sees them steal the corpses. Hell, it’s almost as if the body just got up and walked away, except surveillance equipment is left suspiciously blank and any guard on the premises has to shamefully admit to having slept on their shift.

4. The mysterious corpse thief has been suspected in many, many cases, but three specifically in LA during the last year or so, which is where Mazikeen comes in - and when Dan hands over a stack of folders with this week’s John Doe’s at the city morgue, and one of them - entirely fresh, brought in this very day - matches the Body Thief’s profile to a t. Male Han Chinese, perfect in every way. Cause of death: probably impaled, possibly by a spear? Weird, but hey - it’s LA.

5. Mazikeen decides that clearly the best plan is the simplest: she’ll be spending the night at the morgue.

6. The night starts very, very boringly. Her victim-to-be is dead and in the freezer, the book she borrowed from Linda has turned out to be boring, everything is boring. And then, sometime past midnight, an eerie tune starts playing, encouraging her to sleep.

7. Mazikeen being a demon and somewhat grumpy right around now does not sleep. She does have the presence of mind to hide behind the nearest large object.

8. The man who walks in is also Chinese. In fact, he’d fit the victim profile just as perfectly as the body in freezer 7.

9. “Wen Ning?” he calls and Mazikeen startles - not at the voice, but at the responding knocking from inside the freezer. Wei Wuxian just heads straight over, passing so close she could reach out and touch him if she wanted to, and opens the freezer, helping his poor naked friend out.

10. Well, what do you know. The corpse - naked and with a great, big wound in his chest, but apart from that very attractive and quite well-endowed - is in fact about to walk right out of the morgue on his own.

11. I mean, first he’s about to put on some clothes that the living guy pulled out of a way too tiny purse. Now, that just won’t do.

12. “Care to explain what’s happening here?” leads to the corpse annoyingly squeaking and covering the interesting bits with the jeans he hasn’t had time to put on, while the living guy puts a flute to his lips and his eyes turn red as he starts playing a tune to bend the world to his will.

13. Except the Lilim are not so easily bent. They take after their mother that way.

14. The man stops playing, frowning, because that particular bit of magic should have put any human to sleep in 2 seconds flat. Hell, it should have put an elephant to sleep.

15. “Oh,” he says, face clearing and lips parting in a smile. “You’re a yao!”

16. “Explain,” she repeats, unsheathing one of her knives. She does not appreciate anybody thinking they’ve got her figured out and finding her non-threatening.

17. “Wei-gongzi’s just helping me out,” the corpse answers. “I’ve been having these narcoleptic episodes the last couple of decades - usually it’s fine, it’s not like falling asleep in awkward places will kill me. But sometimes people stumble across me, and I can’t exactly get up and leave in the middle of the poor paramedics trying to save me from dying, you know?”

18. Mazikeen involuntarily lowers her dagger again. It’s very hard to want to be threatening in the face of a slightly stuttering corpse.

19. She ends up inviting the two of them out for drinks - fortunately WWX fixed WN’s digestive system ages ago - and after winning a drinking contest with WWX and watching a very scary man in white clothes collect him, frowning at her in a manner she translates as a warning, she drags the very pretty not-technically-dead-guy home with her.

20. The next day Mazikeen sadly tells anybody who asks that, nope, she’s got no clue where the corpse went, didn’t see anything, the fucking morgue was so dull that she fell asleep. (She did fall asleep. After the third round. Even she has her limits. Wen Ning brought her breakfast in bed before round four.)