Chapter Text
“Oh, not this again,” Midoriya Izuku said, fully exasperated, but still careful not to make any movements with Shigaraki Tomura’s deadly fingers wrapped precariously around his neck, again, at the mall, again. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
“Cheeky,” Shigaraki muttered, directing Izuku down the hallway towards the restrooms and away from the crowds. “You know, I think I liked you better before. You were so much nicer as a poor, defenseless first year.”
“I’ll be nice when you are. What do you want?” Izuku asked, knowing that if Shigaraki wanted him to be dead, he’d already be a pile of dust on the shiny tile floor by now, with just the touch of one last finger left lingering in the air above his throat.
“Just like last time,” Shigaraki said easily, not a twitch of his fingers to betray what he was saying. “To talk.”
Shigaraki led Izuku past the restrooms towards the exit to the mall. Izuku swallowed down his anxiety. He’d dealt with Shigaraki before and made it out alive. Sure, Danger Sense was going off the charts, but without knowing who else in Shigaraki’s ranks was there at the mall, ready to take innocent lives hostage, Izuku wasn’t ready to take the risk that Shigaraki was lying about just wanting to talk this time. At least, not until they were in the clear, away from civilians.
When they exited through the heavy doors, Izuku expected to see daylight, at least the outline of the bright day, the tops of the green trees surrounding the parking lot in the distance, even if the dark swirling vortex of Kurogiri’s warp gate was blocking the majority of the view if Shigaraki’s plans included taking him to a secondary location. If that was the case, Izuku planned to try to negotiate, to convince Shigaraki that their last conversation was productive enough here at the mall, so why couldn’t this one be?
Let’s grab a coffee and talk, Shigaraki. I’ve got all day–all the time in the world for you. But do we really have to leave the inviting atmosphere of the bustling mall? There! The shade under the trees! That’ll be the perfect place to have our talk!
But, as they exited, Izuku’s vision whited out, and Shigaraki’s hand fell away from him. In fact, he felt nothing at all, not even the fabric of the clothes against his skin. Odd , was the last thing he thought before his consciousness fell away from him.
_ _ _ _ _
When Izuku woke again, it was not peacefully, but to the sound of a familiar, angry voice yelling his name. Izuku sat up with a jolt because that voice was not Kacchan’s coming from the other side of his dorm door, yelling at him that he was late for class, or his mother’s, calling him downstairs for breakfast, but the voice of his long-time enemy, Shigaraki, yelling endless expletives. Izuku’s eyes were drawn across the walkway between the two sets of cellblock bars keeping the two humans separate where the yelling, screaming, and swearing was coming from.
Izuku vaguely noticed that his hair was dripping, but his clothes seemed to be drying quickly with whatever he was drenched in. Shigaraki seemed to be faring the same, his own hair darkened to a dark, midnight blue at the ends as it dripped, quickly drying in the air as it regained its usual texture. As Shigaraki yelled at him, Izuku subtly sniffed himself to see if the liquid gave off any scent that gave away what it could be, and he was relieved to find that it wasn’t anything like gasoline or kerosine. It didn’t have a scent at all that Izuku could discern.
“You motherfucker, Midoriya!” Shigaraki was yelling, raging, pressed as tightly against the bars as the space between them would allow. “I’m going to kill you for this! Murder you in cold blood! You’re dead! You hear me?! Wake up, you bastard! You dead motherfucker! Wake up!”
“Uh, and how is this my fault?” Izuku asked as calmly as he could, with Shigaraki adding to the chaos of the unknown situation that was already anxiety-producing, his heart pounding in his chest as he sat up on the metal floor of his own cell as he tried to get his bearings. “You’re the only villain who is persistently out to get me, and I don’t know anyone with any illusion quirks. This must be someone out to get you,” Izuku reasoned.
Izuku stood up and took stock of himself, finding nothing broken or injured, as Shigaraki laughed coldly, obviously unable to be reasoned with and preparing to retort.
“You stupid bastard,” he said. Izuku frowned, finding the endless stream of insults unnecessary. “You stupid motherfucker. How’d you make it into UA? Huh? Are you at the bottom of your class?” Izuku opened his mouth to tell him that the insults were unproductive to effective communication when Shigaraki continued, “Take a look around. This shit is real. This isn’t some illusion quirk we’re stuck in. We’ve been abducted by goddamn aliens, and it’s all your fault.”
Izuku took Shigaraki’s advice and looked around, finding himself in a clean, decently roomy cell, surrounded by metal bars on three sides that buzzed faintly with electricity. Inside his cell, along the back wall, was an oddly-shaped toilet, or what Izuku assumed was a toilet. He hoped to figure it out for sure before he needed to use it. There were also two, large metal boxes filled with what looked to be dead, dry grasses placed on opposite sides of the cell, about a half meter away from the buzzing bars.
He looked to the left and right and found himself among a row of multiple identical cells with many different looking creatures– aliens –inside, all looking at Izuku and Shigaraki (mostly Shigaraki, the louder one who was making a goddamn scene) in open terror-filled wonder and curiosity. It looked like they were watching a plane being piloted right toward where they stood, knowing there was nothing they could do to stop the inevitable destruction, if Izuku was reading their facial expressions and body language correctly.
Standing in the back corner of the same cell as Shigaraki was a dark, possible black feline-looking alien, frozen and not moving a single muscle. Izuku could barely tell if they were breathing. They weren’t even directly looking at either Shigaraki or himself, seemingly keeping an eye on the situation from their peripheral vision.
In the cell with Izuku stood a large bird-like alien with bright yellow, tan, and light blue plumage. Their feathers shook with their terror, and they weren’t even the one in the cell with the yelling human. Izuku wondered if he was already giving off some sort of menacing body language that he was unaware of or something and made a mental note to adjust accordingly as soon as he figured out what it was that seemed to be setting his cellmate off. Maybe it was also Shigaraki’s yelling, Izuku thought, and it very well could have been.
Shigaraki was correct, as far as Izuku could tell. No matter where he looked, there was no waver to his vision, nothing that would give away that it was an illusion as opposed to cold, hard reality staring at him in the face, no matter how improbable it seemed.
“Well,” Izuku said primly, brushing some nonexistent dust off of his shoulder, “I still don’t see how this is my fault that we’re on this spaceship.”
Izuku was actually a little distracted for a moment by how little dust or dirt there was on him; usually he’d be able to see the day’s accumulation, especially when he wore his favorite white shirt shirt. Izuku looked closer at the front of his shirt and realized that the little soy sauce stain was even gone, and he was sure that was permanent–his mother couldn’t even get it out with her best stain remover.
“It’s a planet,” Shigaraki practically whined, grabbing at his hair in pure frustration.
Izuku ignored the interruption. “You were the one who was kidnapping me and took me through that door.”
Shigaraki screamed, reaching through the bars into the space that led into the corridor to make threatening grabby hands towards Izuku.
That’s when Izuku noticed the cuffs glinting in the dim light on Shigarki’s wrists, looking down to find his own quirk-canceling cuffs locked around his own wrists. “Well, shit,” Izuku muttered to himself. “Looks like the aliens did their research.” And that would make sense why his Danger Sense was not warning him about, well, everything.