The ship is a beauty. Passed down from his mother, she has wings like the curve of the moon's crescent, a sleek nose like a needlepoint, and triple engines that growl, purr, and roar at an easing of a lever. Heavy gun barrels hang off its sides, menacing in their size. Painted a dark grey accented by orange trimmings, the ship blends into the blackness of the stars with the stealth of a panther.

Uraraka's eyes take in the beauty of the ship, and she smiles with fondness. Bakugou is about to bristle to an argument at her lack of a compliment but realizes that she must've seen the Black Explosion from his mind's eye, seeing as she gazes upon it with the same joy that he feels when he comes aboard after a successful heist.

"You can bunk with Mina." Kirishima is rattling off eagerly to Uraraka, his contagious energy and enthusiasm affecting the shape of her smile. "She's kinda our engineer, though Sero is the real whiz at mechanics. She's mostly our weapons specialist, and Kaminari is our monitoring man. He's real good at electronics and the such…"

Uraraka laughs, and her eyes flash unearthly. "They sound lovely. I can't wait to meet them!"

That freaky Sight's gonna take some getting used to. Bakugou thinks to himself, stiffly yanking out his comm. "Oi, Raccoon Eyes, we're back. Get the doors open."

The ship's ramp unlatches with a familiar hiss, and a pink flailing of limbs erupts from the steam. Mina all but falls out of the ship in her urgency. "Captain! Captain! The Galactic Fleet just…oh!" She skids to a stop, blinking at the slight figure smiling back at her. "You must be…"

"The fortune teller. Uraraka Ochako." Uraraka waves, her other hand clutching her bundle of things. For such a renowned fortune teller, she only has a small satchel of possessions to her name. "Nice to meet you!"

"Introductions later." Bakugou growls, his boots clattering onto the ramp way imperiously. "What about the Galactic Fleet?"

"They just sent out a broadcast to all four galaxies." Mina hands him a tablet as Kirishima closes the ramp behind them. Uraraka tiptoes to peer at the screen as well. "The Galactic Fleet just sent out two of their best captains to track and bring back Midoriya. There's even a whopping price on his head now."

"Damn, look at all those zeros." Kirishima mutters. "They must really want to bring Midoriya to justice."

Bakugou swears under his breath. He knows these two captains. Everyone in the academy knows that split of red and white hair, those cold eyes that so closely mirror his father's. And the girl's…that giant ponytail can't actually fit in a space helmet, can it?

"Todoroki Shouto and Yaoyorozu Momo." Uraraka reads off the screen. "Oh yes, the Rising Duo. Prodigies, I've heard. Graduated top of their class and have been putting away stars ever since."

I had more stars than them. Bakugou's head screamed. I could've gotten more if Midoriya hadn't gotten his sorry ass expelled.

Uraraka looks up, her eyes wide, and the bounty hunter curses under his breath. It's not the Sight she's got, it's freaky supersonic hearing.

"Let's get off this planet." He says sharply, shoving the insecurities into some faraway corner of his mind. "Head for…." Bakugou turns to her. "Where should we go, Uraraka?"

She perks up, shaking away the supernatural muddiness in her eyes. "Um…" She glances at Kirishima. "Do you have a map you can pull up?"

"Sure! Lemme show you!" Kirishima beckons her over to a monitor as Bakugou's foot taps impatiently. "See, this panel is mostly for navigation. This screen's for the map, and these buttons can manipulate it at will. Here…" His first mate's fingers fly over the controls, and within seconds a huge diagram flickers into view.

Uraraka takes in the blinking meteorites, the round planets, jagged coastlines, intergalactic border stations and more with only a perfunctory sweep of her gaze. Bakugou frowns at the almost bored-air she emanates as the fortune teller carefully selects a quadrant and enlarges it. Shouldn't a stranded fortune teller be utterly helpless when it comes to things like this?

"Our two prodigies will be trying to discreet, so let's avoid the usual shady cantinas." Uraraka finds the toolbar and drags giant red X's over Y-14 Zone, X'thollor, and Ares Ground. "Midoriya will be avoiding them as well. We'll have to travel along either the government mandated starways or planet jump along as many 'haunted' planets as possible."

"Haunted….like ghosts?" Mina asks. "Is the Galactic Fleet superstitious?"

Uraraka shrugs. "Haunted is used by the fearful, but the Galactic Fleet would rather use the word 'irradiated'." She glances back at Bakugou, whose patience is fraying by the minute. "Isn't that right, cadet?"

His heart jumps into his throat. Kirishima casts him a worried glance.

When he speaks again, his timbre in his voice is crackling with rage. "If you don't find me a destination in three seconds I'm going to call the nearest Galactic Station and turn you in."

Uraraka's eyes are muddy with the Sight again. "You won't do that." She turns to the monitor and taps a bright blue planet, swamped with green. "The water planet Rana. There is your best choice."

"Will Midoriya be there?" He demands to know.

The fortune teller looks away, and for a moment her shoulders draw together, as if in pain. "Yes. Let's hurry. He'll try to leave before the two suns cross."

Bakugou smiles, a deadly grin that shows off all his teeth. "That's the stuff that'll have you raking in silver, girl." He barks at Kirishima, "Set a course for Rana, and be quick about it!"

"How many engines, sir?" Kirishima asks dutifully, and Bakugou snarls with savage joy.

"Use all three."

He thinks he hears Uraraka sigh.

O.O

It isn't long before the little fortune teller's got the crew practically wrapped around her delicate fuckin' finger.

She perches on the spiraling stairs that lead to the pilot's bridge, kicking her bare feet and watching the crew busy themselves with the equipment below. She calls to Kirishima every now and then to guide or correct their course, her eyes muddying with the Sight as her voice echoes with an eerie reverb.

Bakugou walks tentatively around her. No being should posses this sort of power, supernatural or not.

My boy, we make our own fate, his mother would say as she guides his hands to the controls. No one's ever going to strap us down.

And yet, here is a girl who can see fate unspooling in front of her like an unraveling carpet.

It aint' natural. She's like a sticky stardust, Bakugou thinks irritably as Uraraka reads Mina's palm for the umpteenth time with no more than a laugh, the kind that clings to the cockpit and never comes off, and you can't see through it for shit.

But she does cheer the crew up. And Bakugou knows how much they need cheer these days, with their mug shots being broadcasted to every sentient planet every single cycle with the words CRIMINAL and WANTED blared out beneath them.

They need the levity she exudes as easily as breathing.

"How far can you see into the future, Uraraka?" Even Kirishima is rapid-firing questions at her with a fanboyish curiosity.

The fortune teller rubs her bare neck, bashfully. Though it's cold on the ship with the heating systems going through maintenance, she's still wearing those gauzy scarves of hers. "Hah, I can see at least a few years ahead…but it just gets murkier from there. It really depends on each person…"

"Can you see your own future?" Sero pipes, hanging upside down from the piping in the ceiling like some grinning spider suspended on ironweave webs.

"No, I can't."

Kaminari bursts in like an adrenaline-fueled rocket, clutching a tablet open to a dating site, "Is it true that you can predict a person's love life?!"

Uraraka outright laughs, but suddenly her voice cracks brittle and her eyes turn muddy and he wonders why she's turning white as a sheet-

"They're here."

Bakugou is already leaping for the stairs when he sees the reflection of silvery blue of Galactic colors flashing behind them in a whirl of portal-exit residual dust. Kaminari only has enough time to shriek "SHOTS INCOMING!" before a massive explosion rocks the whole ship violently.

Bakugou nearly falls off the bridge and bellows to his crew, gripping the bent railing, "GET TO YOUR ACTION STATIONS YOU BLITHERING IDIOTS!"

"Ooh! Ooh!" Mina all but slides down the floor in her eagerness. "Boss, can I man the guns this time? I wanna test out the rotators!"

"Fine!" Bakugou's yanking on a pair of dark safety glasses as the space around the ship turns an ominous shade of frizzly white. "But if the guns jam I'll throw you out the ship!"

"Aye aye, Captain!" Mina scrambles back up, her delighted squeal trailing off as she tucks herself into the cockpit upstairs.

The ship's frame suddenly gives out a frightening CRUNCH as the metal buckles inward, and from the floor Kirishima lets out a yelp as pipes burst above him with a hiss of white steam. "Goddammit, they're using that new inverting tech!"

"Those filthy rich Blues…" Sero complains as he sets about frantically taping the dents and dings in the Black Explosion's infrastructure with ironweave. "We gotta dodge those cannons quickly, sir."

Uraraka stands poised on the bridge, her eyes murky dark. As Bakugou slides into the pilot's seat, flicking switches and punching buttons, she speaks.

"Ground Zero." Her voice is stern, and echoing with Sight. "In a few seconds, follow my instructions exactly."

Bakugou smirks uneasily as he grips the acceleration lever and plants his feet on the brakes. "This better work, Uraraka."

The intercom speakers crackle harshly, and Kaminari lets out a startled noise as the communications systems is overridden. Galactic blue lights sweep across the previous rainbow of colors on the consoles, and a cool voice speaks over the hacked system. "Criminals, stand down. If you resist you will be fired upon. This is Galactic Fleet Captain Todoroki speaking, I repeat, stand down."

Bakugou snarls. Dimly he hears Mina calling to him for permission to fire.

"Wait." He growls. "Wait for Uraraka's signal."

The fortune teller's knuckles are white as they grip the railing. She stares into the spacious beyond, her eyes swirling with a thousand possibilities, her teeth gritted, and then suddenly-!

She screams, "BRAKE!"

Bakugou slams his feet down on the brake pedals with a yell, and the Black Explosion snaps to a stop, lurching backwards as a sudden beam of concentrated light from the left skims the nose of the ship.

Another ship, a silver-sleek Galactic spacecraft, rises out of the smoke and dust like a blade from the dark. Even from this distance, he can see a woman in captain's colors standing on the pilot's bridge, hands on her hips and a dark ponytail swirling around her head.

"God fuckin' dammit." Bakugou says eloquently.

"This is Captain Yaoyorozu." Her silk-in-steel voice joins the crackling satisfaction of Todoroki's feed on their hacked systems, cool with triumph. "You are surrounded, criminals. I advise that you come with us quietly."

Sweat beads on his neck. We can't outmaneuver two Galactic ships at once.

A small hand touches his shoulder epaulets, making him jump in his seat. Above him, Uraraka speaks. "Ground Zero?" Her calm soothes his frazzled nerves.

Uraraka clears her throat, shifting nervously on her feet. "I need to cover your eyes, okay?" Reaching around him, she spreads her fingers over his eyes, and he stiffens.

"H-Hey!" He sputters, reaching up blindly to try to tear off her fingers, squinting between the cracks, "I can't fuckin' see! Are you trying to crash us?!"

"This is going to feel really weird, sorry." Uraraka breathes beside his ear, and before Bakugou could make a retort his world blanks, muddying-

Bank left. Sharply.

His hands jerk the levers left, and the Black Explosion rolls neatly to the side. Mina's shrieking somewhere above him and Kaminari is cursing the hackers with every foul word he knows, but all Bakugou can do is react to the visions in his head, flooding through him like water-

Caught off guard, Yaoyorozu will try to swing her ship around to keep facing us. There will be an opening to her right.

His hand finds the acceleration lever and snaps it forward. All three of Black Explosion's engines flare with a roar of sound and for a millisecond the ship crouches…and then pounces. The tip of Black Explosion's left wing skims narrowly by Yaoyorozu's ship, and a smattering of sparks fly up from where the metal rips against metal. Then the screeching cuts off, and there is blissful silence.

We will escape.

"What the-?" Todoroki's voice snaps, only to be cut off with an abrupt crash of static, and Kirishima pops up from behind the consoles, proudly holding a cut and sparking wire in his fist. "Can't hack a dead system!" He says with fierce triumph to a horrified Kaminari.

But we will be pursued.

The flash of Galactic blue lights blinks angrily behind them, and Bakugou reels backwards in his seat with a harsh gasp as Uraraka lets go of his face.

"Okay, you need to floor it, Bakugou." She says, panting. "I will trust your piloting skills from here."

"We've got bogies behind us, Boss!" Sero calls as he unwinds from the ceiling. "And judging from their charging cannons, they're pretty pissed!"

His fingers fly across the control panel. The ship responds to him like a great cat curling around its master's legs, purring fit to burst.

This cat wants to play.

Bakugou flicks switches, eases his seat backward. "Get yourself strapped in." He barks at Uraraka, who is shaking off traces of Sight. "It's going to get bumpy."

And as the ship races forward, cheering through space awash with blue, he laughs.

For this is his element.