"Welcome, welcome, welcome!" Venti called out to his fellow archons. "Ei, been a while! How's your sexy girlfriend? Hi Focalors, still obsessed with Law & Order? Tsaritsa! I hear you're still living it up with a bunch of hot guys in IKEA's ice castle. OHMERGERD HI MURATA it's been sooooo long! Can I cook marshmallows over your hair again? Wassup Zhongli. NAHIDA MY LITTLE GENIUS DOOK DOOK FRIEND COME IN! You all made it!"

"And I only get a 'wassup'?" Zhongli sighs.

"Sorry, you're just the broski, ya know? I see you and your fiancé all the time," Venti shrugged. "Oh yeah, have you decided who your best man is gonna be yet?"

"Definitely not you," Zhongli glared at the shorter.

"So long as it's not Xiao, it's fine. Don't want him experiencing anything romantic unless it's with me, amiright bro?" Venti nudged his geo friend.

"I am no 'bro'" Zhongli deadpanned.

"Man, sounds like Ayato around Itto," Venti chuckled. "Anyway, shall we get started?"

The archons were all silent.

"Sounds great," Venti threw out a thumbs up.

"...you do know I'm hosting this event, right, Venti?" Xiangling interrupts.

"Oh yeah," Venti contemplated. "Take us away, then."

"Alright, we all know how this works!" Xiangling doesn't need to be told twice. "Today, Zhongli, Venti, Ei, and Nahida will be teaching this cooking class with dishes from their respective countries."

"Uh," Focalors muttered. "Raiden Ei, Barbatos, and Lesser Lord Kusanali are probably the worst cooks here."

"Well, how else are we gonna learn recipes from their countries?" Xiangling smiled. "Just because you can make a perfect croissant in 24.1 seconds doesn't mean the others are useless!"

Focalors only huffed in response.

"Anyway, worst goes first, so Ei, get over here!" Xiangling giggled at her rhyme.

The room was silent as they watched Ei strut over to one of the kitchens. Xiangling had hosted the event in Wanmin restaurant, so there were many large stations for each cook. However, for the first part of the session, only one archon needed to cook, so the others gathered around to watch.

Ei knew, of course, that she couldn't cook. Her son, her son's boyfriend, her son's boyfriend's moms, and her girlfriend reminded her constantly to stay away from the stove, even going as far as putting signs up that say 'oven this way, turn around, Ei!' in the kitchen. So, being wise 'n shit, Ei chose a basic recipe.

Taking out some milk, sticky rice powder, tofu (Xiao can smell it from here), sugar, green tea powder, and finally some food coloring, she was already ready. Yae Miko suggested this recipe because Ei loved it, plus it required no oven, with only calling for boiling water, which Ei was good at bc ramen.

The archons watched as Ei made dango with practiced perfection. After rolling out the dough, it was time to boil them. Unfortunately, Ei forgot to turn the stove on, so the archons had to wait a while for it to heat up.

In this small down time, Nahida decided to bring entertainment.

"Why can't the electro archon cook?" Cyno asked.

"This feels targeted," Ei muttered.

"Because she spent all of Ei-ternity avoiding the kitchen," Cyno said.

Crickets sounded, with a distant 'SHUT UP' in the background because Tighnari could hear all the way from Sumeru with those giant ears.

"I just killed over 200 vampires, but I'm disappointed. Want to know why?" Cyno started another one.

No response.

"They didn't fight back, and they all had candy," Cyno finished.

"Nahida, I beg you," Tsaritsa complained. "Execute him immediately."

"GUYS thE WATER Is BOILING!" Venti gasped.

"FINALLY," Tsaritsa banged her head against the wall.

Ei plopped the dango balls into the boiling water and watched them sizzle until the perfect temperature was done. Afterwards, it was time to lift the dango from the boiling pot of water. Unfortunately, Raiden forgot to put gloves on or think of a logical way to do such a thing, and dipped her raw hand directly into the water.

She screamed, flailed her arms to catch herself from falling, but unfortunately fell anyway. She hit her head on the floor and got a minor concussion. But that wasn't the worst of it! Her foot flew up as she fell and kicked the pot of boiling water, which flung through the sky.

It sprinkled water on top of every single person there, and eventually landed on Cyno, where the dango, pot, and majority of the water collided with his head.

Nahida had to leave to take him to the emergency room, and Raiden went with to fix her concussion and hand.

"Well, that was honestly expected, so I don't know what to say," Murata shrugged.

"Welp, onto the next!" Xiangling pumped a fist in the air. "Now we have to try her recipe out for ourselves!"

And so the archons began cooking at their individual kitchens. Murata decided to start the stove with their vision, which ended up accidentally spreading fire onto the counter and cabinets. Focalors ran over to put it out.

"Do that again and I'll have Barbatos swirl your fire down your ass," Focalors hissed. "Imbécile."

"Ehe, sounds fun!" Venti yelled across the room, having overheard.

Thus the cooking continued until everyone was done. Nahida managed to get back in time to finish her dango at lightning speed.

"Hmmm," Xiangling walked around the kitchens, glaring at the dango.

Many archons forgot they were supposed to make dango milk, and instead just made dango, so Xiangling took points off from everyone because of that.

"Too salty," Xiangling noted while trying Tsaritsa's. "Which is strange because there is no salt in the recipe."

She went to every station like this, acting as if she were Gordon Ramsay.

"Venti, what is this," Xiangling twiddled her mustache and scrunched her nose at the sight.

A few burnt globs at the bottom of a cup of milk... where was the dango again?

"Well, you see," Venti began. "Inazuman cuisine is wack af, so I added some Mondstadt flavoring to it! I put it in the fryer and stuffed it with chicken stuffing! Then I realized that's not how it works and accidentally set the fryer to 1220 degrees and uhh yeah."

Xiangling face palmed and moved on.

"Nahida, this looks fabulous," Xiangling tasted her dango milk. "But it tastes like air. Remove your illusion."

Nahida sighed and got rid of the dango milk illusion, revealing water in a glass. Xiangling tsked and gave Nahida a disappointed sigh.

"Anyway. Venti loses, Nahida's second to last, let's continue! Zhongli, your turn to cook your regional recipe!" Xiangling smiled at her archon.

Zhongli started boiling water, and Cyno started having PTSD from the hospital room.

Carefully grinding a few herbs together, Zhongli prepared tea. He grabbed a teapot from his bag and started pouring in 0.000000023rds of the tea per second. Tsaritsa got pissed, ran over, dumped all of the tea into the teapot, and then walked away again.

"Now I must start over," Zhongli sighed.

"No no no it's fine, let's all try making this tea, shall we?" Xiangling was quick to take action.

Everyone made tea pretty well, especially Nahida and Focalors. Unespecially Venti, who somehow made wine?

Anyway, Murata was trying to find a teapot to put their tea in, so they rummaged through their bag and found one. They poured the tea in, and heard screaming from the teapot.

"Uhhh," they said.

"What," Tsaritsa deadpanned.

"Is tea supposed to sound like people running from inevitable doom?" Murata questioned.

"It does depend on the thoughts curated during the creation of the liquid," Zhongli responded. "But not usually."

Everyone ran over to Murata and heard the screams.

"Heyyy I know that tea pot!" Venti smiled. "That's the one Aether stuck me in with a bunch of cats! It was horrid."

"Oh, it must be the Serenitea pot," Zhongli nodded.

—

After saving Kazuha, Scaramouche, Ei, Yae, Beidou, Ningguang, Thoma, Ayato, Ayaka and Noelle from the Serenitea pot, the archons continued with their day. At least they had an audience now! Oh, by the way, Paimon was in there too but they left her lmao deserved.

Why was this group of people in the Serenitea pot? Bc it's Kazuha's family and Scara's family all gathered for the Kazuscara wedding. They invited Thoma and Noelle to clean but Thoma brought his boyfriend who brought his sister. Yeah, it was a full house. Paimon was going to be the cake.

Anyway,

"I'll be making wine, ehe!" Venti exclaimed.

"...Barbatos, as the wine professional, even I must say this is rather stupid. It takes decades," Focalors noted.

"Well, we're all immortal, right? No problem for us!" Venti thumbs upped.

"Rex Lapis isn't a god anymore," Tsaritsa pointed out.

"Venti, what if you made honey roast instead?" Xiangling suggested.

"Ugghgghhuh fine," Venti complained.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and pulled out a live chicken.

"So first we have to defeather it-"

"OKAY OKAY what if we just made grilled fish skewers?" Xiangling interrupted. "I don't need blood on my floor, and you know how Nahida is with animal death after she watched Bambi."

"Kk I'll just make a skewer," Venti sighed. "Party poopers."

Yeah so Venti tried sticking the skewer stick up his nose and accidentally pushed his brain out through his ear in the process.

"So this is how the Egyptians did it!" were his last words.

—

"I'll be making Pita Pockets," Nahida announced, already cooking.

Unfortunately she's a child and never learned to cook, so she just created dreams and illusions and plant magic and whatnot to make it look like food when she was really just playing around with powdered sugar.

"Amazing!" Xiangling gasped. "The only actually okay-looking food here!"

The archons started copying her expert moves, but because Nahida was faking it, they ended up with messes of crap. Murata set their kitchen on fire again, and this time Focalors kept the promise of neutrality.

Venti rose from the dead to swirl the fire around for funsies, and Scaramouche and Kazuha joined in because they all love arson and their fellow 6ay 6oy.

The archons all proceeded to unequip their chef hats and run for their lives. Tsaritsa was the only one who could possibly put the fire out, but unfortunately, her pita pockets sprang up and ate her pointer fingers, so she could no longer use Cryo powers.

She just shrugged and called her Fatui agents to protect her from the flames.

"This seems kind of stupid," Childe commented, his body woven with the other Fatui to create a dome over the Tsaritsa while she snacked on Goulash.

"My ass kind of hurts," Arlecchino complained, her butt literally on fire.

"Suckers, I'm at the top," laughed emo Baizhou from the top of the dome.

"Heat rises, idiot," Pierro hissed, also on fire, as he deserves.

"Oh shit," Pantalone realized he was burning alive.

Columbina was meanwhile playing sticks with Pierro but that's irrelevant (Pierro was losing).

Zhongli, Focalors, and Murata all escaped through different means (plus all of the Kazuscara wedding crew excluding the actual Kazuscara) while Venti continued to Swirl, Tsaritsa continued to eat Goulash, Xiangling teleported Klee and Yoimiya over to make marshmallows, and Nahida burned peacefully.

All was well in the Archon kitchen. Until Ei showed up again.

"I appologize for missing the end of our session due to my hospital visit, but I have regained my strength and come back," she said as she came across the survivors in the lobby. "What did I miss?"

A scream sounded in the back as a small explosion blew up the kitchen area of the restaurant.

"That was probably Klee," Albedo noted.

"Who are you?" Ei asked.

"I am an internationally known probably not human psycho who likes snow as much as Xiao and loves to experiment and have ridiculously long quests, all for the purpose of alchemy," Albedo explained.

So while they engaged in polite conversation, the fire department showed up.

This consisted of Xingqiu, Kokomi, Chongyun, Gorou, Barbara, Mona (really bad at her job, but she needs the money), and Nilou. They put out the fire and saved everyone except for Nahida because dendro, short legs, and stupidity + exploding kitchen = burning.

Two days later, all of the archons plus Xiangling met up again. They decided that after such a traumatic event, they all needed to cool off and play a friendly, nice, simple, easy, bond-building, amazingly easy, peaceful game of Monopoly.

Of course that went completely out of hand.

"I OWN DOWNTOWN MONDSTADT, BITCH!" Venti screamed.

"HAHAHA MONOPOLYYYYY!" Murata laughed, finally purchasing all of Inazuma City.

"You DARE take my city," Ei seethed, having only bought one thing, which was the international railroad line between Sumeru and Fontaine.

Zhongli was pissed because he really wanted to buy Liyue Harbor, but Tsaritsa snatched it along with uptown Mondstadt. She also bought all of Snezhnaya's landmarks and an additional three railroad companies. She was incredibly mad that Ei would not let go of that last railroad place.

Focalors bought all of Natlan while Murata was focused on Inazuma. Venti was bargaining with wine and mora here and there in the shadows so he could purchase the whole world and make them "free peoples" once again under his "freedom of leadership". More like god of dictatorships, sheesh.

Nahida was rolling in her grave at the fact that Zhongli purchased the Akademiya and said he was going to repurpose it as a trading scenter for Liyueans. Of course, you can't actually do that in Monopoly, but let the old man have fun.

In the end, the board was on fire and the only surviving nation was Snezhnaya bc it was bought at the very beginning by Tsaritsa and never touched again (bitch, she had every single piece of land covered in hotels).

Xiangling, who had been preparing the kitchen while the game was going on, banged her head on a pan and locked herself in the fridge while calling Ningguang to nuke the restaurant.

Ningguang obliged, but Zhongli saw it coming, and he summoned a meteor into the nuke. He underestimated the power of nukes and ended up blowing up the entirety of the sky, Liyue, Sumeru, Mondstadt, and the tip of Narukami shrine's sakura tree.

Thus, the kitchen archon lessons were disbanded, and all archons were forbidden from entering Liyue harbor again. Including Zhongli, but he's teeechnicalllyyy not an archon anymore, so he bent the rules and came back.

The world was doomed, history was made, the harbingers were crying, the sky was purple, and Nahida was burned alive.

This is why the archons don't cook.