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Midori-4 was what the humans called the planet.
They wouldn't have been able to pronounce its name in the native tongue, not that any of them had ever asked a native what it was called. Most likely, only a handful of humans were ever aware that there had been a dominant, sentient lifeform on Midori-4, and those humans had kept the rest of the Earth country Japan in the dark regarding the matter as they waged their war and conquered the planet.
It made the idea palpable; to Earth, it was never a war—it was an extermination of the substance they called the Green, a species termed "invasive" as they dug it out of its rooted homes, slashed apart its colonies and hives, burned every last scrap of resistance until the planet was, at last, habitable to human life, and a ruined wasteland for the ones who had once called it home.
The Green was a highly adaptable species. It mutated faster than the humans could keep up with, used every method at its disposal to survive, and this is what had spurred on their fear and violence. But it had no natural defenses against their fire, or their hatred; the humans had won, and now it was as near to extinction as a species could be.
But nearly didn't mean completely.
Now the last remnant of the Green, the sole surviving mold, had found its way to one of Earth's strongholds. This was a military base on the outskirts of an imposing jungle, with trees that would have dwarfed most Earth skyscrapers. The Green had feared it as one of the biggest hives the humans had built on the planet.
The Green were all gone now. The last Green had been powerless to stop the humans when they razed its hive to the ground, as young as it was. It was only centuries old—the oldest Green the humans had burned away had existed for millennia, evolving alongside the planet itself. It was small and soft and underdeveloped, with none of its kind left to teach it the defensive mechanisms they had used on the humans. These had worked, at first, and had nearly driven humanity to abandon the planet before they had learned the effectiveness of fire—but Earth needed space to expand, and Japan had yet to secure a planet of its own, unlike other nations, and the humans were relentless. In the end, it had proved futile.
The last Green hadn't come to attack the base or exact any kind of vengeance, because it knew it was useless. It only wanted to see for itself the ones who had destroyed its home to build a new one on top.
And because its intentions were wholly innocent, it was caught off guard when it was almost immediately discovered.
"What the fuck is that?! Shit!"
During the decades of war, the hives had dedicated many spores to learning the Earth language, knowledge they had passed through the shared consciousness of the Green. That space was now an echoing, silent space for the lone little mold, but the knowledge remained.
It was slow to comprehend at first, but as it focused, two things became clear. The first was that this was indeed human speech, from a real live human, the kind that had wiped out its own.
The second was that the human had spotted it.
The Green spasmed on the rock it was perched on, bulging then flattening gelatinously across the surface, but it was too late. The human had come from the opposite direction of where its attention was focused. And things were even worse than it had thought. As its awareness shifted, it "saw" (it didn't have eyes, but the fine microscopic hairs all over its body sensed impressions that formed something like pictures in its mind) that there were two humans watching it.
It froze, terrified.
One of the humans was very spiky looking, and he was closer to the mold—the one who had spotted it. The other was taller and smoother, and fast approaching, drawn by the spiky one's shout.
Spike pointed an enraged finger at the mold. "Is that what I think it is?"
"Oh," said Smooth. He sounded surprised in a very mild sort of way. "It's Green."
"All you have to say is 'oh'?!" Spike half-shouted. "Never mind, I'll take care of it—"
He aimed something—a "gun," supplied the Green consciousness—at the mold, but the Smooth one put a hand on his arm.
"That won't work on it," he said. "Only fire will."
"Then I guess we better find a match," Spike snarled. The mold trembled.
"It looks harmless," said Smooth.
"Are you insane," Spike hissed. "That's only because it's not infesting anyone right now."
"I think it's a juvenile." Smooth crouched in front of the Green, leaning in for a closer look. Spike yanked him backwards.
"Don't touch it!"
"I'm not," Smooth reassured him. "But I don't think it's a threat. And it's not like we have a flamethrower on hand."
"We still need to do something!" Spike said. "It can't be here. These fuckers were supposed to be wiped out, we need to cut the patrol short and report this to—"
"I'll handle it," Smooth told him.
Spike stopped and stared at him. "You hate talking to Command."
"I hate patrolling more." Smooth shrugged. "You finish the perimeter scan. I'll take care of this."
A huff. "Fine." The mold sensed him walking away, getting farther, vibrations from his voice lessening even as he called out, "Don't do anything stupid!"
Stupid like what, the mold wondered fearfully, as Smooth moved close again. Did he want to burn it? Experiment on it? Torture it?
Stupid like what?
Smooth just stared at it.
*
The answer, apparently, was stupid like harboring the mold like a fugitive, which lasted all of three days before Spike discovered the secret.
He achieved this accidentally, by dropping a bananapple (not an apple, and not a banana, but the closest approximation the humans had for the fruit native to Midori-4) in the shared bedroom. It rolled, Spike giving chase all the way, and when he got on his knees to retrieve it from under his roommate's bed, he came face to face (face to amorphous blob?) with the Green mold, where it was being kept in a glass vivarium stuffed with vegetation.
The mold was roused to awareness by a sound it soon identified as a human screaming. It was different from the screams in its collective consciousness, though; those mostly seemed to be noises of fear or pain. This scream, the mold realized, was pure, unfiltered rage.
"TODOROKI! WHAT THE FUCK?!"
"Oh," said Todoroki (formerly Smooth, but he'd told the mold his name on the first day he'd brought it home), "You found Izuku."
This was how he'd introduced the mold to Spike, who was actually called Bakugou. He didn't appear to have much interest in further introductions.
"Why the hell did you name it?!" Bakugou shouted.
"What else am I supposed to call it?"
"Nothing! You aren't supposed to call it anything because you said you'd take care of it!"
"And I am."
"NOT LIKE A PET."
Izuku was jostled in his glass cage as Bakugou dragged him into the open.
"What are you doing?" Todoroki asked. The vibrations of his footprints mingled with Bakugou's as he followed him out of the room.
"I'm torching it," Bakugou snapped. Izuku quivered inside the cage and Bakugou held it up to eye level. "Yeah, you heard that, you moldy little shit? It's over for you."
"Wait—" Todoroki tried to say.
"If you didn't know what to do with it, you should've told me," Bakugou scolded him. "Knew leaving it to you was a mistake—"
"I do know what to do," Todoroki said.
"Making it a little garden under your bed is not following procedure," Bakugou said.
"Neither is an unauthorized burn," Todoroki said.
"Nobody has to know!"
"Exactly," Todoroki said. "That's why I brought it back here. I wanted to study it to figure out what it is first, before people start trying to set fire to it."
The long silence spoke to how highly Bakugou thought of that plan. "And you think you're the best person to do this?"
"I learned some things from my mother," Todoroki said with a shrug. "Besides… finders keepers."
"Consider this instead," Bakugou said, sounding greatly exasperated. "I've had to cover your ass with command for enough stupid shit over the past few years, right? I can't do that at all if you get yourself turned into a damn Fleshwalker." He shook the cage. "Do you get that, Todoroki? The problem isn't so much that this is against regulation—although, to be clear, I'm pretty sure we could be executed for this, which isn't exactly thrilling—it's that I have a mild aversion to this thing fucking eating you from the inside out and wearing your skin!"
"Bakugou," Todoroki said, "I didn't know you cared."
"I will care if I have to re-kill you and clean up the mess afterwards!"
"That won't happen," Todoroki said. "I'm not going to hurt it." This was a source of great relief to the mold. "It won't need to defend itself."
"It'll eat your pretty face off for fun, you naive idiot!" Bakugou thundered, back to shouting.
Todoroki urgently shushed him. "Someone could hear you."
"That's it," Bakugou said, "I'm taking it in."
He turned away, and Todoroki made an aborted move towards him before stopping himself. "Alright."
Bakugou paused. "Alright?"
"Alright," Todoroki repeated. "As long as you're ready to deal with Command afterwards."
"What do you—"
"Because once you take it in, they'll learn that you found Green in the wild without reporting it immediately," Todoroki said, "and that you've been living with it hidden in your bedroom for three whole days."
Bakugou gaped at him. "Oh, you bastard. You colossal motherfucker."
"It would have been hard to overlook," Todoroki continued, "and you know how suspicious they are."
"I can't believe you have the nerve to say that with a straight face," Bakugou hissed, "only I can believe it, because you are a pile of fecal matter."
"The Green is supposed to be extinct," Todoroki said imploringly, ignoring this barrage of admittedly deserved insults. "It has been for years. Nobody will ever suspect it's here if we don't tell them."
They both looked into the cage, at the mold named Izuku.
"Yeah," Bakugou said grimly, "with any luck it'll murder us long before they think to indict us for treason."
*
Izuku harbored no murderous intent. The Green never had; it had only wanted to survive. For now, as the only one of the species that had managed to do so, Izuku moved on to the next primary objective.
"I already told you, not on the kitchen table," Bakugou said. "It's oozing all over where we eat!"
"No, he's not," Todoroki replied. "The membrane is perfectly dry. It's soft, too, here—"
"I am not touching it," Bakugou said, voice tinged with horror. "And—why are you calling it a he?"
"Didn't I mention?" Todoroki held out a piece of bluish vegetation, about a foot away from Izuku. It was meal time, but first Izuku would have to work for it. "Watch this."
With cautious effort, Izuku extended first one, then two long tendrils towards the food Todoroki dangled just out of reach. They had been doing this, day after day, small exercises that encouraged Izuku to find new ways to complete each challenge Todoroki would present. The tentacles were a new development, but one Izuku knew and welcomed naturally. Evolving—learning, mutating. Growth was the goal of the Green, before it was stamped out.
"That," Bakugou said, "is disgusting."
"That's evolution," Todoroki said, looking pleased when Izuku grabbed the food with the tentacles, withdrawing it back to the membrane to absorb it. "And it's how I know he's male. Sort of. Technically, the Green has—had—over 104,000 sexes, but if I were to generalize, the ones with the feelers were male."
"Ugh," Bakugou said, "ugh ugh ugh. I hate those tentacles. Gives me the fuckin' creeps."
Bakugou didn't like it—didn't like Izuku. That much the mold knew. Todoroki, however, seemed increasingly fond of him, and something within Izuku mirrored the sentiment.
"I learned most of this from my mom," Todoroki informed Izuku. His mother was a government scientist; her area of study was the Green. Izuku liked when Todoroki told him things like that—talked like they were having a real conversation. Izuku patted his cheeks with his tentacles. "Still hungry?"
He held up another object, a piece of fruit. It was a flavor the humans identified as sweet, and often Todoroki ate them between meals. Izuku entwined the fruit in a tentacle, but this one he pressed to Todoroki's lips instead of absorbing it himself.
"Oh," said Todoroki. His voice vibrated with the tones of surprise. He opened his mouth, and Izuku deposited the fruit on his tongue.
"Hey!" Bakugou snapped. "Get away from him!"
Izuku found himself rising from the table as the other man snatched him away from Todoroki. Todoroki held out a hand.
"Bakugou—"
"What the hell are you trying to do to him, you slimeball?!" Bakugou shook Izuku, who wobbled limply, squeezing through Bakugou's fingers like particularly thick sludge.
"Stop it." Todoroki stood from the table. His normally even voice had gone sharp. "You're scaring him."
"Scaring—are you insane?" Bakugou spluttered. "I saw him trying to get—get in your mouth—"
"He was giving me a pearange," Todoroki said, opening his mouth where the fruit still sat, unchewed. "He knows they're my favorite."
Bakugou shook his head. "You're spending too much time with this thing. It can't know what fruit you like—it isn't capable. Green only knows how to do two things: adapt, and kill."
Todoroki sighed. "What if humans taught it that in order to adapt, it had to kill?"
"Right," Bakugou scoffed. "We taught the killer plant how to do what it does best. What does it even matter—it's gone."
Todoroki looked pointedly at Izuku. Bakugou blinked down at the mold, before seeming to realize he was still holding him.
"Yeuch," he said, splatting Izuku back down onto the table. "Stop letting it put its… feelers… in your mouth, dumbass."
"You have to admit though—he's pretty soft, right?" Todoroki called after Bakugou as he stormed from the room.
*
It was clear that Izuku would need to become better at communicating with the humans in order to avoid such misunderstandings.
Fortunately, he had been practicing mutating enough with Todoroki that he thought he had a pretty good grasp on things. The process took him several weeks, and was conducted in secret—not out of any real need for stealth, but, well. Izuku was shy.
For all that Todoroki seemed to enjoy his experiments and spending time studying Izuku, he was employed as a soldier, first and foremost. His and Bakugou's patrols often took them away for days at a time. Bakugou was, at first, apoplectic at the thought of leaving Izuku in the apartment alone—but what else could they do? They couldn't exactly hire a sitter.
So they left Izuku to his own devices, and Izuku set about the task of evolving what he hoped would be the best method of communication. From his experience with the humans so far he knew that they took a lot of visual cues from each others' body language and facial expressions. This was where he decided to start.
It was upon the two soldiers' return home from patrol one week that Izuku finally felt confident enough to show them the fruits of his labor. As they stood in the apartment hall, setting down all their equipment, he scurried into the corridor with his hearts full of hope.
Bakugou took one glance at him and let out what could only be described as a bloodcurdling shriek, jumping fully behind Todoroki in horror.
Later on, after everything had calmed down, Bakugou would deny doing either of these things.
"And even if I did," he raged at Todoroki, "I can't really be blamed after that thing crept up on me looking like—like that! It's like someone stitched a baby's head onto an octopus's body!"
"I don't think he was creeping," Todoroki said. He was crouched in the corner where Izuku had scuttled in dismay and fright, trying to comfort him. "Although, that is an accurate description of what you look like, Izuku, and it is pretty unsettling, but don't take it personally."
For his part, Izuku hadn't taken into account what would happen if he burst out of the shadows of their apartment on a mass of tentacles, with a male human head sprouted on top. He'd just thought it would be nice to smile back at Todoroki for once.
"No, you should definitely take it personally!" Bakugou called from across the room. He refused to come any closer. "You fungal abomination!"
Todoroki frowned. "You're upsetting Izuku."
Bakugou's scoff could have shaken the apartment walls. "You expect me to believe that thing has feelings?"
Before Izuku could flee the room in shame, Todoroki scooped him up into his arms and stomped over to where Bakugou was glaring accusatorily at them. Todoroki held Izuku out, practically shoving him towards the other man, and Bakugou recoiled. But Todoroki only said, "Look. Look."
Bakugou stared at Izuku, lip curled in a sneer, and Izuku stared back. I'm sorry, he wanted to say, but mimicking their speech was one of the more difficult skills the Green had had to master, and even that had usually only amounted to the occasional scream or cry of pain. Actual speech was even harder, and never sounded quite right. Most of the mimics the Green had attempted to use for investigation had been found out in the end, one of the crucial factors in the humans eventually winning the war.
But if they'd had longer, more time to adapt, conditions conducive to learning and not survival, Izuku is sure they would have been able to manage it. Very early on, the Green had hoped it would be able to communicate with the humans in an attempt to broker peace—but their attempts had only provoked more fear, more revulsion, more fire and destruction.
Now only Izuku was left to try. Only he was already failing.
Izuku felt moisture covering the membrane that made up his human-like eyes. It wasn't exactly like human tears—they were more viscous, stickier, but the function was the same. It was a simple neuronal-emotional link in one of Izuku's brains, evolved over the past few weeks precisely for this purpose: to communicate Izuku's feelings.
The look of disgust on Bakugou's face faded. He blinked, and then the glare returned, but it wasn't the same. "It could just be doing that to trick us."
"He's not trying to trick us," Todoroki said, a note of frustration in his normally even tone. "He's trying to help us understand him." He looked down at Izuku. "Did you do this for us?"
And because Izuku now had a head, he could nod properly. And when Todoroki gave him that familiar ghost of a smile, Izuku could beam back at him, even through his tears. He wondered if that was wrong, two conflicting emotions occurring simultaneously, but Todoroki didn't seem bothered.
Bakugou took a deep breath. "Whatever," he said. "That's still alarming as hell, so…"
"He can probably revert to his previous form," Todoroki said, and Izuku nodded again. But Bakugou waved a hand dismissively.
"Just… explain to him what limbs are. Ugh." He shoved his hands in his pockets and slouched out of the room, irritably.
Izuku stared after him with wide eyes. His attention was only brought back around to Todoroki when the other human waved a hand in front of his face.
"You heard him," Todoroki said. "Feel like learning about extremities?"
*
The head had been the hardest part. After that, Izuku focused on his arms and legs, undergoing several fairly awkward stages of too-short limbs, and one occasion where he swapped his hands and feet (it had been Bakugou, shockingly, who informed him of his mistake, in the voice of a man who was trying very hard not to scream). Before long, Izuku could pass for a human male about Todoroki or Bakugou's age, though he was a little on the shorter side (and still slightly see-through).
Having a head was nice, for all the expressions he could make. But having limbs was excellent, when it came to communicating—and movement. The Green had no real need for range of motion; its thoughts and wishes were communicated effortlessly and immediately through the hivemind that had spanned the entire planet. But alone, Izuku didn't have that luxury—if he wanted something, trying to get it (or get to it) was cumbersome and slow as a lone mold. It had taken him the better part of several years to reach the base where Todoroki and Bakugou had discovered him. Even his tentacles couldn't move him very fast; at the apartment, he mainly relied on Todoroki carrying him around.
By contrast, legs were amazing. And hands, to pick things up and inspect them with. He was still getting used to them, still shaky as he learned to maneuver faster, but Todoroki was always there to steady him—and then with more and more frequency, Bakugou was, too, with a sour expression and sturdy hands.
At first, it was less like he'd learned to accept Izuku, and more that he was resigned to the fact that Todoroki's pet project was there to stay. But the more time Izuku spent learning how to be human, the more Bakugou seemed unable to ignore how hard he was trying. It was a slow change, and Izuku didn't realize at first how far they'd come.
Until a knock sounded at the apartment door on an otherwise normal evening.
The apartment didn't see many visitors—and whenever it did, they were always expected, and Todoroki had been able to hide Izuku well in advance. The knock came out of nowhere; sudden, and forceful, a loud banging that spoke of authority.
A voice boomed out, "This is Command! Open up!"
Todoroki and Bakugou exchanged startled glances at each other across their small kitchen. They were in the middle of preparing dinner—them, and Izuku, who had taken to helping out wherever he could. Now he stood motionless over the sink, frightened.
"Hide," Bakugou hissed—and even with the chill edge of fear creeping in, Izuku was surprised to hear a note of worry there. But he didn't dwell on it. As silently as he could, he slipped out of the kitchen and back to the bedroom.
The banging came again, and Todoroki hurried to the door to pull it open. Inside the dark bedroom, Izuku peered out through a crack in the door as several soldiers swept into the apartment, fully armed.
"What's the meaning of this?" Todoroki asked, somewhat aggressively considering he was one man facing down multiple armed guards. Bakugou shot him a disbelieving look.
"This unit has been scheduled for routine inspection," one of the soldiers informed him. His uniform was a different color—a captain of some sort.
"If it's routine, why haven't we heard about it until now?"
"Because," the captain said, "we got a tip from a neighbor that you might be hiding some contraband in this shithole. And we didn't feel like giving you the chance to get rid of it."
At a sharp gesture, his soldiers fanned out through the apartment. Two of them beelined straight for the bedroom and Izuku reeled backwards—and his shaky human legs chose that moment to give out on him. He fell heavily, the loud thump unmistakable.
The soldiers swarmed him instantly. They threw open the door to the room, all guns trained on him, shouting, threatening. The sounds became too much for him to process, his senses ringing with them as he shielded his face with his arms. One of them grabbed him, hand closing around his constructed forearm, but Izuku hadn't perfected the weight and solidity of muscle and bone yet, only the casing that housed them. In the man's tight grip, his arm squeezed and flattened unnaturally, startling the soldier into letting go. He trained the flashlight clipped to his gun on Izuku and the light revealed the lingering translucence of Izuku's skin.
Izuku couldn't see anything but the eyes through the soldiers' visors—but he saw the moment recognition dawned… then fear.
"Fuck—fuck, is that what I think it is?!"
"Kill it! Kill it NOW!"
"Stop!" Todoroki shouted, but his voice was swallowed by gunfire.
The brutal impact was nullified as soon as the bullets hit, sinking through Izuku's membrane where they would either be expelled or gradually absorbed and broken down. But even if they wouldn't kill him, they still hurt. He cowered, curling in on himself. He couldn't fight back. Not in front of Todoroki and Bakugou. The instant he did, he would become just another monster.
"Izuku!"
Todoroki was shouting his name, and Izuku tried to look for him—his friend was being restrained, struggling to get to him, and one of the guards slammed the butt of his gun into Todoroki's stomach. Bakugou snapped—he let fly with a punch that caught the guard on the side of the head, and immediately found himself with several weapons trained on him.
"Just kill him," someone shouted. "Kill them both! They're traitors!"
And as Bakugou stared them down, teeth bared like a hunted animal, it looked like no one would stop them.
And Izuku couldn't let that happen. No matter what his humans thought of him afterward.
When he grew, expanded, swelled, it wasn't with the slow care of his mutations—it was all at once, an explosion of matter and mass that overcame the shell of his human form and engulfed everything it touched. It was simple cell replication, but to the humans it was a horror they couldn't conceive of, one they had fought to wipe out forever. But they had missed one.
And now they'd made it angry.
Nobody had had to fight the Green in years—they were out of practice, unprepared. The soldiers tried to run, scrambling away from the room as the bloated mass burst forth, but as soon as it touched them they were overwhelmed, trapped helpless and screaming as it consumed them not with teeth but with sheer presence, until their shrieks were devoured and silenced.
And then they were within it, dark, hazy silhouettes that writhed and thrashed and eventually—grew still. The bodies would be broken down like the steel they had fired from their guns, only much, much quicker.
The mass went suddenly dormant after the violence that had scythed through the room, slouching to a creeping stop just in front of Bakugou, who had pressed up against the far wall to avoid it.
Ashamedly, Izuku formed the familiar face he'd been wearing for the past few weeks. It was much faster than before—the organic matter he was digesting sped up the mutation process. He knew if the sight of his head on that small mass of tentacles had unnerved Bakugou all those weeks ago, then the horror of seeing it emerge from his formless bulk now must be unspeakable. But he did it anyway, because he had to.
Bakugou stared into his eyes, unblinking, chest rising and falling rapidly, like he was only a few breaths from hyperventilating.
Izuku's eyes filled with tears. He opened his mouth—Bakugou flinched.
"S—" The sound was thick and choked and inhuman. It was painful. Izuku forced it out. "S…orry…"
Bakugou's eyes snapped back to him, widening. He swallowed. Izuku prepared for the fury, the disgust, the fear.
But Bakugou shook his head.
"They… were going to kill me," he said hoarsely. "Me and Shouto."
Izuku could sense the other human at the edges of his reach, but Todoroki appeared to be quite calm.
"They always attack without listening," he said mildly. "We need to—"
A sound from the kitchen cut him off, a thin, high whine—and Izuku shifted focus in time to see he had missed one, the captain, and to his horror he recognized in the man's hands a flamethrower, the same kind that had been employed to end the Green once and for all—and bullets couldn't harm Izuku but fire would burn him to nothing.
"No!" Bakugou yelled, already moving, but he was too slow.
Todoroki got there first.
Or rather, a part of him did—an elongated flesh-colored tendril that Izuku realized a moment later had been his arm. It struck with lightning speed and deadly precision, slithering inside the captain's mouth before he could pull the trigger that would douse Izuku in flames.
The man's eyes went glassy, bugging from his skull, as he stood frozen. He might have been trying to scream, but the only sound that came out was a long, choked gurgling—until even that, too, stopped. The flamethrower fell to the floor. Todoroki withdrew his tendril from the man's mouth with a quiet sucking noise and the captain's body collapsed with a thump. Then the entire apartment was still.
After a long moment of stunned silence, Izuku slowly began to shrink back to his human-sized proportions. Neither he nor Bakugou took their eyes off Todoroki.
"What," Bakugou eventually wheezed.
Todoroki just shrugged. "I didn't know how to tell you." He darted a glance at Izuku. "Either of you."
Izuku could not process. All this time, he thought he'd been alone. All this time…
"But—how?" Bakugou asked.
"My mother…" Todoroki said. "The scientist. She—"
"She wasn't really your mother," Bakugou said.
"Well, she did raise me," Todoroki replied. "And eventually, when I had mutated enough… when the end of the war was close, she set me free. She knew they'd destroy me otherwise."
"And so—you thought you'd come work for the exact people who'd try to kill you if they found out what you really are?" Bakugou demanded. "Are you stupid?"
"I thought it might be the best way to find out if I was really the last one," Todoroki said. He looked at Izuku. Izuku, who had mostly assumed his human form once more, stared back. "Izuku… I didn't know if—it took me so long to find you, and I've been working for humans for years, and—"
Izuku leapt toward him and threw his arms around Todoroki. Hugging was a distinctly human concept—but he had arms now, why waste them?
Todoroki looked stunned. "You don't hate me?" Izuku shook his head, and then found himself equally as surprised when Todoroki hugged him back.
The noise of Bakugou thudding his head against the wall drew their attention. "This is all very touching, assholes," he said tiredly, "but what the hell are we supposed to do now?"
It was a valid question. The apartment was in shambles, bloody and bullet-riddled, and the air around them seemed to be one long, shuddering, held breath—they might have cleared out the first wave of soldiers, but more would be on the way.
"We might… have to run…" Todoroki said. Bakugou heaved a sigh.
"I told you—"
"I know."
"I told you this would go bad, and that I wasn't gonna cover for you again," Bakugou snapped.
"Just… give us a head start and then you can point them in our direction," Todoroki said. A flash of something like sadness flickered over his face—fascinating now, for Izuku, to see Todoroki display such subtle emotions. It was something Izuku had wondered if he'd ever be able to do. "That way they won't suspect you."
But Bakugou looked furious at the suggestion. "I said I wasn't going to cover for you. Now I have to come with you."
Todoroki stared at him. "Come with us?"
"Obviously, or you two are going to get yourselves killed," Bakugou hissed. "We need to grab our things and go. Off the continent—probably off the planet, fuck, this is such a pain—"
"Bakugou," Todoroki interrupted, "why?"
"Don't make me say it," Bakugou said, eyes rolling back in his head. When Todoroki and Izuku continued to stare at him, he sighed. "We've been partners for years, Todoroki. And now there's—" He waved a hand at Izuku— "this, and you're—you're right, okay? People should have listened." He crossed his arms. "But I'm not an idiot, unlike most people."
He jutted his jaw out, as though daring either of them to argue.
"You know, you're handling this better than I'd hoped," Todoroki said.
"Shut up," Bakugou told him.
"Okay."
After that, they had very little time to gather very little of their life together before they fled. They had no plan and no real idea of where they were going, only that they'd go together. But that was alright, Izuku thought, because for a long time before meeting them, he'd had nothing.
Now he had them, and he wasn't alone anymore.