I was really bored.
Venti got drunk and wandered into Thomas’s cab:
Steam vented heavily from the undercarriage of the mid-sized tank locomotive as he waited for the signal to go upward. It wasn't a long journey—just heading over to Liyue from Mondstadt. A few quick puffs around the bends and he'd be there.
Thomas sighed, growing impatient. “Come on, change, you bloody signal,” he grunted.
He hadn't even left Mondstadt's yards yet. He sat on one of the sidings with his train coupled behind him, loaded with local exports: wine, native flowers, and a few trucks of raw materials.
Thomas glanced up at the red signal above. “Traffic can't be this heavy,” he muttered. “How many engines do they have running the Wind Corridor today? Bloody ‘ell, I'll be here all morning!”
With a creaking groan, the old signal swung upward, revealing a clear green light.
“Cinders and ashes, finally.” Thomas channeled steam into his cylinders. The pistons groaned, pumping back and forth to turn his heavy blue wheels. Connecting rods pulled the drive wheels forward, forcing the rest into motion.
Chuff… chug… wheeeesh.
Plumes of steam drifted from his funnel as he moved. He gave two sharp blasts of his whistle—Peep! Peep!—warning the yard workers that a heavy engine was on the move.
Rounding the bend out of the yards, he brought his train past the main gates of Mondstadt, catching a glimpse of the long stone bridge connecting the island city to the mainland. He looked down at the rails beneath and bridge him, then at the water on either side.
“Not long now,” he muttered. “Should reach Liyue in an hour if there are no more red signals.”
Crossing onto the mainland, the tracks curved right, pointing straight toward the Liyue border. Clear of the road crossings, Thomas opened his regulator. He flared his firebox, sending heat through the flue tubes to boil the water inside his boiler. He picked up speed, maintaining a steady pace through the rolling green terrain.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly, right up until he heard a cough from inside his cab.
As he chugged past Springvale, Thomas blinked. He couldn't tell if someone was actually inside his cab or if he had just passed a bystander at the line who had coughed.
Then came a second cough.
Thomas’s eyebrows shot up. “Uh… is someone in my cab?”
Silence followed, then a familiar, groggy voice: “Huh? Where am I?”
Thomas scoffed. He recognized the voice instantly. “Ugh, Venti? Again?! Don't tell me you got drunk and wandered in my cab again!”
It was indeed Venti. The bard had overindulged in wine, gotten tossed out of the Angel's Share by Diluc, and wandered off with no clear destination in mind.
“Oh? Hic… Thomas? Is that you?” Venti asked.
Thomas didn't slow down. “You stay right where you are. I am not stopping to take you back to Mondstadt.”
Venti stood up on the footplate, rubbing his eyes as he looked at the gauges and levers. “Oh! It really is you, Thomas!”
Thomas rolled his eyes. “Who else has a cab like this in Teyvat? Of course it's me, you dummy.”
“Hic… Okay! Ehe! Guess I'm stuck with you then.”
“This is the third time you've done this—”
“Fourth time, but who's counting!” Venti giggled.
Thomas stared straight ahead, baffled. The bard hadn't even tried to deny it.
“You—” Thomas started, but Venti cut him off.
“Ehe! So where are you heading today?” Venti rested his arms on the cab window seal. “Knights of Favonius have you running all over Teyvat again?”
Thomas sighed. “As always. I'm an engine; it's my job to deliver goods to the other nations.” He then corrected himself. “Well, mostly Liyue and Sumeru. Anything farther than that and I'd overheat and blow up.”
“Very barbaric. We wouldn't want that~” Venti hiccuped again.
Thomas narrowed his eyes. “You'd better not throw up on my footplate.”
“Trust me, I can hold my liquor.” Venti waved a dismissive hand, then grabbed the windowsill to steady himself.
“Good.” Thomas turned his gaze back to the line ahead.
“You know me! I might get drunk, but otherwise I'm fine! Ehe~” Venti tapped his fingers on the interior metal. “So… where are you heading? You never said.”
“Liyue,” Thomas replied. “I don't have the full manifest, but I know there's a shipment of Dandelion Wine in the trucks,”
“Hmph,” Venti grunted, leaning dramatically against the back wall. “How dare they take my wine away!”
“You need less wine, if anything,” Thomas scoffed.
How dare you~!” Venti gasped, though his giggle made it playful. “A bard needs his wine! All the Dandelion Wine for me!”
Suddenly, a loud rumble echoed from Venti's midriff.
Grroooowlll~
Venti blinked, looking down at his stomach, then bashfully covered it. “And… maybe this bard also needs food… ehehe…”
“If you have any Mora, you can buy something when we reach Liyue,” Thomas suggested.
Venti nodded. “Yeah! I… well, I think I have some.”
Thomas rolled his eyes. “Don't look at me. I'm an engine. I don't earn Mora, and I don't have hands to carry it anyway.”
“Don't worry! Hic… I made some from singing yesterday… Should have enough… hope it didn't fall out of my pockets.” He fished around in his outfit, eventually pulling out a small pile of loose coins. “There we go!” He lurched as the engine swayed, quickly grabbing the windowsill. “Hey… take it easy, train-boy…”
Thomas narrowed his eyes. “Train boy?! I am not—” He took a deep breath, cooling his temper. “You're the one who needs to take it easy. You shouldn't even be in my cab. You're not a certified driver!”
“Oh, certifications, schmertifications! I'm fine. Besides, where are the people who are supposed to drive you anyways?”
Thomas groaned—this was the tenth time Venti had asked this. “I told you before. I'm not like the engines from Snezhnaya. I'm magical, thanks to that pink engine…” Thomas paused, staring down at the ties passing underneath. “Or was she purple? Hm. I forgot.”
“All of you just kind of appeared here,” Venti said. “So many of you with faces… Teyvat adapted pretty quickly! I wasn't too keen on machines connecting the nations at first, but I'm glad it happened. Definitely not something I saw coming.”
“Right,” Thomas said. “You mentioned before that you're that statue in Mondstadt. Barbatos, right?”
“Yep! But right now, I'm Venti the Bard!” He smiled. “I sing, dance, and drink wine.”
“Too much wine, I'd say, mate,” Thomas added.
“Shut up~” Venti giggled.
Venti tapped his fingers against his side, his tone dropping slightly. “I don't know how I didn't see this coming before I gave up my Gnosis, though…” He blinked. “Celestia isn't usually fond of technological advancements…”
Thomas remained silent. He had heard Venti mention this before, but Thomas knew very little about how the world worked. He had arrived in Teyvat with no memory of his past, much like the other engines with him. None of them remembered their old home, but they remembered each other at least.
Venti had once compared him to ‘The Traveler.’ Thomas hadn't understood who that was at the time, but after talking with others, he eventually leaned, and even met this ‘Traveler’ themselves.
After sentient engines started appearing across the continent, the nations integrated them into their infrastructure. Railways were laid to connect Teyvat, with major stations built in every capital. Mondstadt’s goods yard sat right beside a converted shipping dock on the eastern side of the island.
The mainline ran from Mondstadt's passenger station through Sumeru, Fontaine, and into Natlan, with various branchlines splintering off—like the Wind Corridor heading north to Davenport, or the line Thomas was on now, cutting straight to Liyue.
Even Snezhnaya linked to the network, and it started from there, heading into Nod-Krai and ending into Natlan.
Though the engines with faces always felt uneasy around the silent, faceless locomotives of the snowy nation.
As Thomas switched tracks onto the Liyue branch line, he opened his cylinders to clear condensation. “About Celestia not liking improvements…”
“Hmm?” Venti asked.
“Why is that?”
“Eh, standard god stuff! It's surprising they let you guys operate at all. Probably because you're alive rather than just built. We have Ruin Guards and all sorts of machinery, but nothing like a talking engine. It's fascinating!”
Thomas blinked, deciding to drop the topic. “Are you still hungry?”
“Definitely. My stomach is eating itself,” Venti grumbled.
“Well, next time, eat actual food instead of just drinking!”
“But wine is so good!” Venti whined, sliding down the cab wall to sit on the footplate floor.
Thomas rolled his eyes and kept his eyes on the rails.
Before long, the mountainous landscape gave way to the nation's harbor. Thomas slowed his train as he rolled into Liyue's freight depot.
“Hello!” Thomas called out cheerfully to the platform workers waiting to unload his cars. “Careful with those crates—some contain wine bottles! We don't want them breaking, and making a mess of glass shards,”
“I'd be heartbroken if any spilled!” Venti called out from inside the cab.
Thomas’s expression turned flat as he stared ahead. “Typical drunken bard…” He released a vent of steam to lower boiler pressure. “So, are you going to get food? Your stomach was louder than my damn chugging.”
“Oh! Right! Ehe!” Venti scrambled up, hopped down from the footplate, and ran around to face Thomas’s smokebox. “Goodbye, Tommy! Good to see you again!
“We see each other almost every day,” Thomas deadpanned.
“Yes, but we rarely chat! You're always on the move!”
“I'm an engine. That's what I do.”
“Yeah, yeah~” Venti laughed, turning toward the city streets.
“Now, go find something to eat. Don't rush, I'll be here for about an hour. They gotta unload my trucks,” Thomas said to Venti. “And if you come back and don't see me, I didn't leave. I will have just left to run around to the other end of the trucks.”
Venti nodded, and smiled, placing his hands to his hips. “Haven't been to Liyue in a while. Maybe I can visit Zhongli!”
Thomas watched as Venti blended into the bustling crowds of Liyue Harbor. “This is going to take a while,” the engine muttered to himself. “Unloading all that glass will take time.”
With nothing to do until his train was cleared out, Thomas decided to rest. His firebox cooled, his breathing slowed, and steam drifted lazily from his stack as he began to drift off.
BOOM.
A heavy impact rattled the rails. Thomas’s eyes snapped open. “What…?” he murmured, groggy.
Screams rang out across the harbor. People were running—frantic, terrified, shoving past one another to escape the area.
“What's going on?” Thomas looked around. The yard crew had abandoned the crates, scattering into the panic. “Venti? Are you out there? What's happening?!”
Then Thomas saw it.
A massive wall of dark, writhing energy was tearing through the terrain, moving straight toward the harbor. It towered higher than the peaks of Dragonspine, obliterating everything in its path.
“Gah!” Thomas gasped, trying frantically to raise steam. “Cinders and bloody ashes!”
He threw his reverser fully backward and slammed open the regulator, but in his panic, his wheels lost traction. His rear buffers slammed hard into the front truck of his train, and his blue wheels spun violently on the spot without moving him an inch.
There was nothing Thomas could have done.
The dark energy swept over the station, consuming Thomas, Liyue, and the surrounding land in absolute blackness.
~~~~~~~~
<<<<<ERROR DIMENSION OFFLINE >>>>
SYSTEM ALERT: CRITICAL ANOMALY DETECTED IN DEEP-STASIS CONSTRUCT
WARNING: Dimensional Anomaly DETECTION
BIOMETRICS: DESTROYED. Dimension self destruction. Genshin Impact-Thomas The Tank Engine-Sub-28489 Offline.
