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originally pitched 26 december 2021.

so a fun fact abt this au is that i came up with it on the same plane ride as the ganqing cowherd and weaver girl au . like, these two were like back2back palz to me. i even pitched them both to star at the same time once i got my wifi back that day.

originally, i had wanted to title the fic smoke gets in your eyes (after the memoir by caitlyn doughty of ask a mortician on youtube, which is a really good book btw), because i had this kind of serious tone in mind when first writing it out, but then when i was pitching it to star, she was like, "THEY'RE ON THE HIGHWAY TO HELL????"

and i mean like. she's not wrong!!!!! that is also a possible vibe!!!!!!! and if highway to hell gets chosen as the title, this fic would Legally have to be an Incredibly morbid romcom lol.

anyway, the main relationship in this fic would be BESTIES HU TAO N XIAO, with side/minor yantao, xiaoven, and ganqing (holy triangle) going on too, in this modified canon setting where everyone with a Vision has something unique given to them in this sort of "with great power comes great responsibility" kind of way.

the pitch therefore goeth thusly:

so ever since hu tao got her Vision, she's been able to see a timer that counts down to people's death day. but the one day, her beloved yanfei dies (and her body vanishes?) way way earlier than she's supposed to, so she journeys into the afterlife in search of her and find out what malicious things might be happening underneath the surface.

along the way, the other adepti get involved. keqing vanishes much like yanfei, which draws ganyu's attention. xiao gets involved bc adepti business (visiting zhongli when ganyu n hu tao are talking abt this stuff?), and hu tao makes him let her see his death timer (bc out of respect, she doesn't check mortals' timers w/o their permission, and the adepti are able to hide theirs from her regardless), at which point she realizes he was supposed to die centuries ago (bc haha dihua flute incident :^)) and she's like, “all right. something's going on where someone's targeting the adepti, probably because SOMEONE is not dead when they are OVERDUE.”

…which i'm realizing also kind of implies that qiqi should get involved, so who knows, maybe it's not that xiao was supposed to die centuries ago but qiqi stuff instead and they target the adepti anyway bc they were the ones who killed her in the first place?

either way, the powers that be decided to prey on the youngest (and so therefore presumably the weakest) of the adepti: yanfei.

now, xiao isn't close at ALL w/yanfei, but once they realize he's tied up in all this, he gets involved in the rescue and puts in his all. (and i mean, if this is gonna be post-2.7 chasm quest, then maybe he's familiar with yanfei and appreciates her as like his little cousin or smth, but wouldn't have thought of her first if he was gonna try to kidnap someone close to him for ransom.)

anyway, ganyu stays behind in the harbor to keep watch as hu tao n xiao head into the underworld to find whoever the fuck is trying to mess with the adepti.

they have a LOT of close calls, but hu tao's experience and xiao's adeptal nature save them time and time again. they see horrors beyond mortal comprehension, face their greatest fears, see people who have long since died like guizhong and hu tao's grandpa, and also the nameless bard at some point so that xiao can have a jolt of deathly cold shock at the sight of him, which hu tao then will ask about during their fireside chats that they start having after a few days of this, where they also try to piece together what's going on. (blah blah blah insert xv here bc i am a measly worm.)

but hu tao is hopeful by nature and xiao is already traumatized as hell, so they weather the storm together and become besties. the closer they get to the depths of hell, the more vulnerable they get in their heart-to-hearts. hu tao finds out who venti is to xiao, who also comes to accept his feelings for venti and is talked into doing smth abt it when they return by hu tao.

i'd like to think that xiao brings his flute w/him into the afterlife bc hu tao told him to bring smth that would ground him to the land of the living.

they survive off of burnt offerings from ganyu and zhongli, since they can't eat down there but still need to live. hu tao uses her knowledge of The Rituals™ to set a number of their obstacles to rest. she understands The Rituals™ and all, but smth abt seeing them play out so literally hits different. i think this sort of journey through ungrieved souls and such would also allow hu tao to mature out of her current style of funeral director, where it shifts away from “YEAH PARTY!! SALES!!!” to smth more down-to-earth but still jokey, like ask a mortician caitlyn doughty.

meanwhile, what's happened to keqing and yanfei is that they've been kidnapped by the demon king of hell. they try to escape together, but realize that while yanfei has a bit of knowledge she's picked up from hu tao, they still don't have anywhere near enough knowledge of the bowels of hell to actually do that, so they're kind of stuck where they are lest they Die For Real.

however, that doesn't stop them from being proactive abt their capture bc now yanfei can see the final judgements of the souls they meet, and so they start piecing together the story of the demon king of hell and what the fuck is going on. the demon king of hell is actually just remnants of an old god xiao conquered forever ago and it seeks vengeance on him bc xiao did not submit to his karmic debt.

anyway epic final battle probably, and then everyone returns to the harbor safe and sound in the end and recovers from their incredible trauma the end.

yeah adding on to the modified canon thing, hu tao can see people's death timers, yanfei can feel the weight of a person's guilt upon her shoulders. i wanna say that xiao can hear the regrets of the damned n dying, but that's already basically canon. keqing might be able to see a little ways into the future so that she can optimize her plans, or have it such that when she plans things out in her head, she can project how they'll play out as she's modifying them, essentially seeing the butterfly effect play out. who knows!!

i kind of want each person's Thing to be a thing where they learn abt other people in this potentially invasive way (so maybe w/xiao it's everyone's regrets, not just the karmic debt, that he hears, n perhaps he struggles to control this, he prefers to stay away from people. hu tao has no regrets, so she's easy to talk to n actually pretty fun to be around).

otherwise… yeah, that's kind of it! just a fun pitch hehe :3

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