Title: Wake Me Up (wake me up inside ~ oooh save meeee)
Summary: Something goes wrong, and Colonnello's sleeping pod wakes him up almost a century away from the new planet. He wakes up Lal, of course, but she doesn't know how to fix it either…so they keep waking people up.
Background: Passengers AU.
.
Large pillars extend down from the ceiling of the massive pod bay, branching out into cold white pods splayed like flower petals, housing all the people on the ship currently in cryo-sleep until they reach the planet. Five people stand around the unopened pod they decided on this time. Hardly a unanimous vote but they could all acknowledge that nothing was getting done otherwise.
Lal run a hand through her short dark blue hair, deep red eyes locking onto Colonnello's baby blue before peering across the loose and shaky semi-circle of unsure people.
Colonnello is in the same military uniform that Lal is and tilts his head at the pod like that will give him a new view of the man sleeping inside, making his blond hair flop. Mammon looks to be gritting their teeth and maybe glaring from under their hooded cloak, indigo hair just poking out from their collar.
A bored Verde stands to the left in his rumpled lab coat – his green eyes half-lidded and green hair still in disarray from sleeping on a table while rereading the manuals last night. The last is Skull who seems worried and fidgets with the straps on the leather motorcycle suit as royal purple as his hair and eyes.
"This will definitely work," Verde drawls sarcastically.
"It will," Mammon snaps. "You've seen the ridiculous amount of degrees listed in his public profile."
"Then why is he listed as 'home tutor' on the screen here?" Skull wonders, gesturing a gloved hand at the chart beside the pod.
"I don't trust the stupid screens after you were such a disappointment," Colonnello retorts. "Either way, he has to be at least genius level intellect, and highly likely to help us out with the whole 'dying too early' issue."
"Verde's genius didn't help," Skull mutters.
Verde splutters and whips around to glare at Skull. "Excuse me, stuntman-"
"Mechanic," Skull tries.
"-you can hardly talk," Verde finishes. "And I'm an inventor, not a doctor. I fixed Colonnello's broken pod, I can't fix you not being in cryo-sleep."
"Shut up," Lal snaps. "I'm waking the damn home tutor."
Before anyone can back out, she crouches beside the pod, focusing back on the sliding draw that holds the circuits. She reaches out with the jumper cables, tapping the connecting wire she attached beforehand, and the pod glows brighter for a moment before initiating the start-up sequence.
A gush of air filters into the vacuum of the pod before the circular patches over the man's chest glow and feed in electricity, restarting the body. His chest starts to move, easily seen through the skin-tight and pale grey bodysuits everyone wears when they sleep.
The glass cover of the pod lights up and thin streams of light follow the man's vitals, calculating oxygen flow and heartbeat. They all take a step back when the pod cover opens and the man's pitch black eyes flutter open the slightest bit. They all remember the first horrible moments of nausea and dizziness from waking up.
Thin steel arms rise on either side of the pod and a woman's holographic face flickers into view, the same standard recording everyone got when they woke up.
"Welcome," the woman chirps.
The man calmly rips off one of the metal arms and throws it down outside of the pod with a clatter, making the hologram cut out and the audio glitch for a moment before it stops.
The man blinks, eyes locking onto the people around him, flickering from one to the other and somehow focused and calculating despite the grogginess that should be muffling his mind. The pod rises automatically to a half standing – half lying position, but the man steps out with only a bit of a stumble and it rolls off to a cabin room without him.
"Well," the newest passenger awake begins. He pauses for a moment as he registers Mammon floating mid-air but shakes it off surprisingly quickly, rising to his full height and running a hand through his black hair to slick it back. "Someone better explain why every other pod in my area is firmly closed."
"Or what?" Mammon scoffs, because they're not afraid of a man who's barely keeping himself upright.
"Or I rip out one of your ribs and start stabbing people with it."
Reborn is slumped back into the cafeteria chair, still in the uncomfortable bodysuit and barefoot, while the rest are seated around the table. Skull quickly darts back from the breakfast dispenser with another full glass of water and places it beside Reborn.
Reborn manages to control himself this time and sips instead. The thirst is far better than when he first woke up but is still a distracting urge in the back of his mind.
"Eighty-eight years to go before we reach the planet, huh?" Reborn murmurs, staring them down.
However, none of them feel badly about dooming Reborn to a life on a spaceship. Colonnello's pod malfunctioned and he woke up Lal because she's his commanding officer, both of them military escorts for the passengers. They woke Skull who was in their section because his screen read mechanic – turns he's a stuntman who only knows cars and motorbikes.
They decided to try and get back into the pod by waking Mammon, who is listed in the database as having theoretical knowledge with the pods. That fell through because Mammon lied (can't exactly put information broker as their career choice) and then Verde got awoken for his IQ.
"What have you tried?" Reborn demands before taking a few more sips. Ugh, he really wants coffee.
They go through a chronological list, saying the pods were only meant to maintain stasis and they haven't found anything onboard that can put someone back into cryosleep and then into the pod.
There is a procedure in the medical bay to put someone into stasis but there's only one active pod there because the ship is just transport, it shouldn't need to put this many people to sleep. The plan was for everyone to wake up only a month before landing on the planet, there's nothing on the ship except entertainment and whatever people stored themselves.
Even if they did put one person back to sleep, special access is needed to do any medical procedure and they can only get that through a crew member, all of whom are locked away safely in a special cabin which also needs special access.
Oh, and they remember to add that the ship seems to be breaking down slowly – which is actually the most important part but they're all still upset about the waking up thing.
Reborn sighs and crosses his arms. "You're all idiots."
"Then please," Colonnello simpers sarcastically. "Shower us with your brilliance. Do explain how we can possibly fix this clusterfuck."
Reborn hums, eyes narrowing. "No. Just for I that, I won't."
Lal scowls at the man and slams her hands down on the table. "I have been awake for over two years now and-"
"Stop," Reborn interrupts with an eyeroll. "I don't care for a monologuing about your petty problems. Go find a relative of a crew member, someone high on the food chain will be better."
"What if there aren't any relatives?" Skull asks.
"Then I kill you all as I progressively get more bored," Reborn deadpans. "Just go already. I need a nap."
"What was your job again?" Verde mutters.
Reborn raises an eyebrow. "Hitman."
"Wow, this took a sharp turn into thriller territory," Skull laughs. "Do we have to run around a breaking down spaceship dodging a mass murderer?"
Everyone else sees that Reborn actually isn't joking and share cautious glances.
The holograms in the room are spread wide so everyone can read through the most likely candidate they've found.
"Diamond class?" Skull cries. "I thought it only went up to platinum."
"I hate this guy already," Colonnello grumbles. "Just because he's related, he gets literally everything you could possibly be given. I've been eating the same shitty breakfast for two years."
"How is he related anyway?" Mammon wonders. "It doesn't say anywhere on here."
There's a brief pause as the ship tilts noticeably and things start sliding across the room before it stabilises again.
"I'll check the interview," Verde says easily because they've all gotten used to this now and swipes until a video comes up and starts playing.
"Why have you decided to journey with Vongola?" the interviewer off-screen asks.
The man on screen shrugs a bit and slides a long braid of black hair back over his shoulder. His serene smile doesn't leave his face for a moment. "I'm here for Kyouya."
The interviewer seems to pause for a bit, expecting more. "And why are here for the captain?"
"Oh, he gets into…trouble. Quite a bit," Fon explains with a vague wave of a large red sleeve. "I'm afraid that he might be bored without me."
Lal abruptly leans over Verde and pauses the video. "Who cares how he's related. He's here entirely for the captain, and he has diamond class. We've found our target."
Fon wakes blearily to someone sitting on the side of his pod, leaning over him.
"Do you have access to the crew's cabin?" Reborn asks, now dressed in a bespoke slim-cut suit and fedora.
"What?" Fon asks hazily, looking around at the other people standing around him. "What's happening?"
"Do you. Have access. To the crew's cabin?" Reborn repeats, slower this time, mockingly.
"That person is floating," Fon says, blinking a few times at Mammon.
"They do that," Colonnello offers.
"Is the gravity still working?" Fon asks in confusion, still out of it enough that he doesn't realise he isn't floating and neither is anyone else.
"The ship is breaking," Lal admits. "Which is why we need access to the crew cabin, to get more information about the ship."
Fon sighs and just lies back, closing his eyes again. "Yes, I have access. Give me a moment."
The lights flicker and something off in the distance makes a groaning sound.
Fon opens his eyes and sits up. "Alright, never mind, let's go."
Outside the massive black door of the crew cabin, Fon steps barefoot over the scattered tools the others used when they tried to break in and holds his wrist up to the scanner before typing in a code.
Everyone is just a little impressed because not even Reborn could make it all the way to the cafeteria without using Skull as a crutch. Fon just walked across the entire ship after waking up, his stride wobbly at first but has smoothed out.
"We're waking up freaks," Mammon mutters.
Lal turns and stares pointedly at how Mammon's boots are hovering above the ground. Mammon chooses not to notice.
"Kyouya won't like strangers around as he wakes up," Fon warns them. "You should stay outside."
Reborn walks right past and into the cabin, peering through the much smaller windows of the pods, these ones made for efficiency instead of the clean lines of the passenger pods. He finds someone and hums.
"If you're going to kill that one, wait until you're off the ship and not my problem anymore," Lal calls out.
"Bad news for you, I already finished my work," Reborn retorts.
"I'm sorry, who are you again?" Fon asks.
Reborn raises an eyebrow. "Come on, you've heard of me. I'm Reborn."
"Oh," Fon says. "I wasn't aware the Mafia made it onto the ship. A lot of the Triad got filtered out."
Colonnello throws up his arms. Lal sighs heavily because that's going to be a problem.
A muffled explosion comes from somewhere towards the back of the ship. Fon quickly makes his way over to Kyouya's cabin and starts the waking up procedure.
Kyouya sits up from the pod like some cartoon vampire, all irritation and hyper focus with no muscle weakness – or if he feels it he powers through anyway.
The crew cabin doesn't have the annoying hologram so Kyouya just hauls himself out and opens up a compartment on the wall above the pod, pulling out tonfas. "Unauthorised herbivores will be bitten to death-"
Another explosion and everyone staggers.
"What have you done?" Kyouya demands, looking at Fon.
"I just woke up," Fon insists, gesturing to the grey bodysuit all passengers wear that he has yet to change out of.
Kyouya scowls and abandons his tonfas for the main control panel.
They find the problems – of which there are a lot. Lal and Colonnello are sweating as they switch out the circuits in the engine room while the inferno swells past the protective glass. Skull goes on a nice spacewalk outside to manually open the exhaust valve but panics when the door doesn't stay open.
Kyouya turns to the others. "There's a tool, looks a wrench but thicker and attached to wire to hold it steady. It's in the storage crates-"
The giant tool pops into existence and falls to the floor at Mammon's feet.
Verde raises an eyebrow. "Sorry, what do you do again?"
Reborn takes the tool and ducks outside the ship to hurl it over at Skull. The stuntman fumbles but gets the tool set in place and gets out of the way just in time for the engines to be purged, the flames gushing out into the cold vacuum of space.
They fix (mostly) everything and then Kyouya reveals a sub level even deeper into the ship with the proper equipment to put everyone back to sleep.
.
Other story lines within this one:
1. Tsuna wakes up to Reborn already lying inside Tsuna's open crew pod, the hitman propped up on an elbow, head in hand as the rest of the crew also slowly regain awareness around them.
2. Tsuna closes his eyes again with a heavy sigh. "Did I at least make it to the new planet?"
3. "You did," Reborn purrs. "Well done, Dame-Tsuna. I'm so proud of you taking the initiative to open up a new branch of the Vongola."
4. "I kind of need to go back to Earth," Tsuna muses. "Because I'm the captain and all, I kind of need to be on the ship."
5. "Oh?" Reborn says with exaggeratedly wide eyes. "Did you not hear? The ship needs immense repair to make the return trip and-" Reborn sighs. "-we just don't have the parts to fix it. You'd have to wait for the next passenger ship that comes in -oh- three hundred years or so."
6. "Did you…break the ship?"
7. Reborn only smiles. "Amazing what one little bullet hole can do in a hundred and twenty years."
8. Kyouya sits up, three pods over, and narrows his eyes. "What did you just say?"
