Chapter Text
to most of the fbi agents of the country of teyvat, shikanoin heizou was at the top. he had solved so many cases in his time there with only a few injuries here and there, so many of them being so complicated not even the agents that had been around much longer than him could figure them out. even the newer agents who were just hearing of him knew how amazing he was.
talking to him yourself would lead you to seeing him as.. less than amazing, though. it wasn’t that he was a bad person, he was just.. annoying, to say the least. kujou sara, the head of his department, had gotten used to groaning every time he entered the station. he had only been there about two years and she already knew he’d be the biggest thorn in her side for however long she had to put up with him.
and there was the man in question, walking up to the station with a slight hop in his step and that usual grin on his face. he always came into work in the morning like this, and he always seemed to stay like this for most of the day. it was as if nothing could get rid of that aura of bullshittery that always seemed to follow him.
did all of this take away from the fact he was good at what he did? not really, but it sure did make most people who worked with him a little more than frustrated with him most of the time.
take his partner, sango, for example. the woman couldn’t stand him for his personality, but she could never help but admit that he got the job done, even if he was a little more than reckless at times and overly insufferable at all times. he seemed to always be able to solve cases just before sango could figure them out, if she did at all. he relied on his intuition all the time, but that never seemed to fail him somehow.
“shikanoin! archons, it took you long enough!”
sango stormed over to the man who had quite literally just walked through the door, grabbing his wrist. he simply blinked, allowing her to drag him all the way to her desk.
“we have a new case, and guess what? it’s about those stupid ‘fatui’ that have been popping up all over the place.” she paused, watching heizou for a reaction before she continued. he was simply listening intently for the time being. “turns out, the cops are too incompetent to deal with just a few petty criminals, so they need us involved.”
heizou furrowed his brow, looking at sango with a look of bewilderment.
“wait, what are these fatui even doing then? if they’re just petty criminals then the cops should be able to handle this themselves.”
sango simply gave him a look that said ‘are you even listening?’ before she continued with explaining the case.
“ anyways , because the cops are so incompetent, we have to chase after this guy calling himself a ‘harbinger.’ no clue what he’s on about, but i think he’s just delusional, honestly.” a light punch to her shoulder got her to shut up on that real quick. “his name is supposedly childe, but we’ve also got reports of him going by.. tartaglia? what kind of code name is that?”
heizou reached his hand out to allow sango to hand him the case file and after a moment of hesitation, she did. with a hum the agent opened up the file, looking over the same information the woman in front of him had just been relaying to him. just like she said, there was some ‘fatui harbinger’ that called himself tartaglia running around that for some the reason regular cops were heavily struggling in capturing. his actual name appeared to be childe and he looked to be some ginger with a death wish. so far the only crimes he had on his name were theft in bulk and evasion of the police, but nothing overly serious.
he took a second to glance through the case file a little more, seeing mention of regular fatui members rather than ones like childe who called themselves harbingers. there had been multiple arrests on these regular fatui, almost all of them for aiding childe in either his escapes or in his theft. just like this tartaglia fellow, none of them seemed to be very dangerous and instead just appeared to be petty criminals.
heizou had a feeling that could change in a heartbeat if something wasn’t done to capture the harbinger and as many of his helpers as possible.
this was his usual day at the agency, though this type of case was a bit odd for them. nonetheless, he felt like it would be a good thing that it was given to himself. something about the lack of light in that man’s eyes just didn’t sit right with him. if they weren’t quick to track down childe and immediately put him behind bars, heizou was afraid he would do much worse than he had so far.
and heizou was nothing if not sure that they would succeed in doing just that as quickly as possible.
—
eleven people, varying between genders and appearances and the like, all sat at a meeting table. one in particular sat back with a grin, knowing his existence was getting out there. he was the first of these eleven who would get a chance to really be known, and boy did he seem happy about it.
“so? did the case get to the fbi?”
“we have little helpers saying that it did. insiders, if you will.”
a soft giggle left one of the girls, one who seemed rather relaxed. the other nine all nodded to the one who had relayed the information, a couple of them giving the giggling girl a look or two.
the one particular man that had that grin nodded, ginger hair falling over his eyes for a moment. in one swift move he stood up, excusing himself from the meeting table. he made his way just outside of the room with the others, pulling out his phone with a hum. he could only glare at the text message that was staring right at him as if it felt it had the right to patronise him. after a moment his gaze softened, another message popping up but this time from a different contact. teucer.
hearing the door open again the man quickly shoved his phone back in the pocket he dug it out of, looking to his side to see who had joined him and was met with a light blue haired man who was only a couple inches taller than him. they simply stared at each other for a moment before the ginger rose his eyebrows for a moment and looked away.
“what, already have experiments to get back to?”
“of course. duty calls, after all.”
the look and tone combined from the man gave the ginger chills. he was so glad he wasn’t looking at him, cause if the way he ever so slightly rolled his eyes had been seen by the other, well.. he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what the reaction would’ve been. he was quite content leaving this place in one piece.
after a moment he simply gave the man a nod before they parted ways, the blue haired man going towards one exit while the ginger headed towards the opposite one. he pulled his phone back out as he walked, glancing up to catch his surroundings every now and then as he attempted to walk and reply to the most recent message at the same time. he managed just fine, not running into any of the seemingly ordinary people walking around. then again, it would be fine to run into any of them on his way out either way.
after all, not a single person in this building was even relatively ordinary.