Six Degrees of Freedom [Kiribaku]

Six Degrees of Freedom

A/N: Phew. It's been a while. And let me tell ya, it's good to be back.

This fic was written for the Lionheart Kiribaku Zine. I had such a wonderful time working on this project with so many other talented authors and artists. They really inspired me and helped me get back into the swing of writing again!

Rated M for various mental health crises. T/W: isolation, depression, panic attacks, suicidal ideation. Our boy Kirishima is really going through it D:

As always, I look forward to reading your comments!

Enjoy!!

･*✧*･

Eijirou breathed in. He breathed out. Again and again, each deep inhalation and exhalation washing relief over him. He was alive. Somehow, he'd survived.

After prying shaky fingers away from the pilot yoke, Eijirou brought his hands to his head and groaned. Waking up from cryosleep was always nasty business, but he'd gotten used to it after being put under a few dozen times. Back home, it had been a controlled process, with a whole crew of scientists monitoring him as the cryochamber systematically thawed him and woke him up in stages.

But this time, the ship had overridden that process, thawing him much too quickly. He was forced awake to flashing lights, a blaring alarm, and the words " HYDRAULICS SYSTEM FAILURE'' blinking red on the piloting screen. He'd had no choice but to pilot the ship to the nearest planet, through an unfamiliar atmosphere, before crashing and stuttering to a halt on rocky terrain.

Hopefully, this was the right planet. A nice, habitable planet. One with air and water and optimal atmospheric conditions.

As the dust settled around his spacecraft, Eijirou let out one last groan before lowering his hands from his head to examine the terrain outside the flight deck window. Orange and dusty, like his trips to Mars but somehow more... eerie, made almost sinister by a harsh glow emanating from the horizon, please don't be lava, please don't be lava, the briefing said nothing about lava...

Eijirou swiveled his seat over to the piloting screen — cracked from one side to the other, not a single pixel lit.

"No, no, no," he muttered, smacking the edge of the monitor. A flurry of light danced across the screen before fizzling out entirely. "Come on, come on, come on, atmosphere scan, environment test, give me something to work with here—" he smacked it again.

In a flicker came a scroll of text:

ATMOSPHERIC SCAN COMPLETE

OXYGEN CONCENTRATION: CRITICAL

TOXINS: PRESENT

ATMOSPHERE NOT SUITABLE FOR RESPIRATION

Then, the screen fizzled to black.

So. Probably not the right planet, then.

Great.

Just then, the glowing buttons and switches on the control panel blinked off in clusters, and Eijirou could only sit with wide, horrified eyes as the gentle thrumming around him dwindled to a deafening silence. His ship had lost power.

Eijirou took a deep breath, then another. That was the first lesson in his training — he had to stay calm. Calm and rational. He had to work the problem.

Emergency landing on an uninhabitable planet with no power, three months' worth of food and water, three months' oxygen supply, and a pistol he'd sworn he would never use? That wasn't exactly the best place to start. He had to re-frame this in his head. A planet orbiting a star? Eijirou nodded to himself. He could work with that.