oh god there's over 40 of you now

15

Aether wakes up to a pillow on his face.

He yelps, scrambling to grab the pillow and chucking it to the side, where he does not, in fact, hear it hit the wall, but instead it hits something very close by. Aether groggily turns his head and sees ombré red hair falling on his face. His vision clears and he sees the mischievous faces of Hu Tao and Lumine.

"Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty, we're moving to Mondstadt and blasting 2010 pop songs along the way!" Lumine yells, just as Aether sees Beidou and Lisa haul in a stereo already turned on, playing a song on repeat at max volume. It was especially loud and jarring to his ears, so Aether grabbed the thrown pillow and pulls it over him along with the blanket, to no avail. The music still reached his ears and it still made them almost bleed.

It did wake up almost everyone else in the room, though. Xiao looked about ready to kill someone, Chongyun bolted up almost instantly, and Zhongli and Xingqiu somehow slept through it all. Ganyu wasn't affected either; apparently pulling all-nighters for five consecutive days organizing this thing was enough to knock her out for the next three, not even the loudest blowhorn could wake her up now.  Childe, who had fallen asleep again after 5 AM, groggily lifted his head like it's a normal day, while Xiangling and Yanfei decided it's not even worth it to look at what's going on. And don't get me started on the other three.

What in the hell did they do? Well, you see, Xinyan was instantly awake and wanted to join in on music-blasting, Keqing had this vibe of "one more peep and we're turning this car around", and Ningguang had full-body pounced on Beidou to get her to stop the music. By the time the music did stop, however, it managed to bring the rest of the Mond-native students into the room, shouting the lyrics to some random rock song, and this interests Yanfei and Xinyan instantly, who both get out of bed and start singing with them, with Xinyan brandishing her guitar that she pulled out of who knows where. Barbara, Jean, Noelle, Diluc, Albedo, Rosaria, and Eula stand there awkwardly, some in bewilderment and some in exasperation. The morning karaoke session starts up again with Beidou, Xinyan, Yanfei, and Childe (who popped awake when he heard familiar singing) joining in with everyone to sing as off-key as possible at 7 AM.

Lumine pulls out cymbals for her and Hu Tao, and they start banging them together, finally waking Zhongli. Zhongli shoots Hu Tao a look that says "stop it this instant" and Hu Tao throws the cymbals in a random direction, which happens to hit a snoring Xingqiu square on the forehead. Despite the growing bruise between his eyes, he stays asleep, but notably did stop snoring. Chongyun had to gently wake him up to a throbbing headache.

The last one asleep is now Ganyu. No one had any idea how to really wake her, so amongst the commotion, Keqing tiptoes over, leans into Ganyu's ear, and whispers, "We have 500 packets to type and print out by the end of the week."

This gets Ganyu to shoot upright, looks around the room trying to figure out where she is, and then relaxes her posture. She pouts at Keqing, who has a deadpan look on her face despite having woken up her friend in the most traumatizing way possible.

Now that everyone was awake, Venti pulls out an actual blowhorn and plays it, getting everyone's attention.

"In 10 minutes, we are going to get on the bus to Mondstadt. Get on the buses via single file line, if you don't I won't hesitate to make your ears bleed!" Venti speaks through a megaphone, waving the blowhorn around. That got even some of the rowdier students to comply.

Once it was time for them to leave, the students trudged up the bus steps into the vehicle and, after doing a head count and confirming on both buses, they left for Mondstadt.

----

On the road to Mondstadt, they continued blasting pop songs using the aux cord, holding impromptu karaoke sessions along with it...again. This time, a lot more people were into it, with Noelle and Barbara being encouraged to sing one of the more popular songs from Mondstadt as a duet. Everyone clapped enthusiastically when it was over. Jean did make sure nobody jumped from their seat or tried waving out the window at the other bus, though. Same with Zhongli's bus, where they sang meme songs one after another. Hu Tao and Yanfei were singing this one song called "All Star" with Xiao clapping along to it with a deadpan expression and Ganyu sleeping on top of Keqing, having been propped on her shoulder when she dozed off. Ningguang helped Zhongli make sure they don't manage to topple the bus over with all the moving around and loud singing. Actually, Mondstadt's bus was probably louder. Aether and Lumine actually video called each other while Lumine's bus got especially loud, tormenting Aether's eardrums for the second time that day.