AN: Time to get to work on chapter seven! Y'know, it's strange… the two fics I'm most invested in right now are both BNHA fics, but they're so freaking different from one another… well, I'm mean to Bakugou in both, so there's that. XD
Also… I don't wanna ask too much, but would you guys mind reviewing a little more, please? I really want to know what you liked and disliked, but it also gives me motivation to keep writing in general. To those of you who already review, I'm extremely grateful. It really means a lot.
Recap time! Ashido and Tokoyami have finally escaped the room they were in, but Ashido accidentally horrifically mutilated Rodney on the way out, and now they're running through a pastel-y jungle, possible being chased by an angry immortal serial killer. Awase, Kaminari, and Hagakure are stuck in a place where everything is made out of cheese; however, it keeps shifting around them, so they're basically hopelessly lost. Midoriya, Kendou, and LeVance are still in that weird video area with the asshole narrator, but now it's raining because apparently the clouds are also assholes (to be fair, it's not like Kendou said 'please'). Bakugou is still Dabi's prisoner in a land filled with hungry monsters, and now they're about to make a run for it while the sun's still up (which gives them around an hour, assuming Dabi wasn't wrong in his assessment of time and/or lying).
And now… on with the story!
Edit: I made an enormous, very stupid, very result-of-being-in-a-car-for-seven-hours mistake, but Pen_Name_Noyb pointed it out, so it's been fixed. Thanks!
Chapter Seven: Sweet Dreams Are Made of Something Else Entirely
The marketplace that the four Class 1-B students and prehistoric companion had stumbled upon was filled with, as Rin put it, "some real weird shit". There were all sorts of strange beings walking around, buying and selling even stranger things.
"We're lost," Kamakiri grumbled. Tokage shrugged.
"We've been lost the whole time," she pointed out. "Maybe someone here has seen someone we know!"
"Like who?" Rin asked. "We don't know if anyone else ended up here."
"It's quite likely," Shiozaki spoke up. She was scratching the underside of Lavi's chin, looking quite fascinated at how similar the purring velociraptor was to a cat. "None of us were anywhere near one another, were we?" They all shook their heads. "The biggest thing we have in common is that we're all from Class 1-B. I suggest asking someone for directions."
"How about her?" Rin jerked his chin towards a young woman sitting on a box at the entrance to what appeared to be a back alley of some kind. She was very sad and pale, with stringy waist-length hair, a torn dress, and watery eyes. Still, she didn't seem lost, so Tokage shrugged and began to head over to her.
"Excuse me–" she began, but then a hand covered her mouth and yanked her back. Rin, Shiozaki, and Kamakiri all steeled themselves for a fight, and Lavi let out a warning growl.
"Are you out of your mind?" the boy who'd grabbed Tokage hissed. He looked like a normal human, but his eyes were a little too wide and his ears a little too pointed.
"You're the one who grabbed her!" Kamakiri snapped angrily.
"She was trying to talk to her!" the boy exclaimed, jerking his head toward the pale girl, who had turned to look at them. "She's a Denizen. Don't you know anything?"
"We're kinda new around here," Rin explained. "Er, this might sound strange, but we're from a–"
"Different dimension?" the kid sniffed. "Yeah, well, welcome to the club. Just about everyone here got yanked out of their own dimensions and ended up here. I bet you're trying to go home, so I'll just tell you now to give up. It's not gonna happen."
"What exactly is a Denizen?" Shiozaki asked, glancing at the pale girl. "And why is it bad to talk to one?"
"Denizens are what we call people like her," a female voice said. The speaker hopped forward, and the 1-B students started at the sound of a human voice coming from a kangaroo. "They've been here longer than anyone else. Most people think they actually are from this place."
"Seems like a good person to ask for directions, then," Kamakiri pointed out. The kangaroo shook her head.
"There's not a great way to explain this, so I'll just put it like this: without looking at her, tell me what color her hair is." The kangaroo looked directly at Tokage.
"Sure," the hero-in-training shrugged. "Easy enough. It's… pale."
"That's not a color," the pointy-eared boy said. Tokage turned to look at the pale-haired girl. Try as she might, she couldn't find a color to describe the Denizen's hair.
"If you start thinking about them in detail, you'll notice things about them that don't quite add up," the kangaroo explained. "Talk to them too much, and you'll start forgetting things. You'll end up like them, except you'll disappear soon."
"We call the people who forget things the Lost," the boy added. He looked sad for a moment. "My granny was one. They don't stick around for long. Not more than a couple days, at most."
"That's awful," Shiozaki murmured, looking forlornly at the Denizen girl. "It must be very lonely for them, though."
"I don't think they feel stuff like that," the boy said bluntly. Rin stepped forward.
"We're looking for people like us," he changed the subject. "Have you heard anything about kids with special powers?"
"Is that a trick question?" the pointy-eared boy asked, raising an eyebrow. "There are people like that everywhere."
"Okay," Kamakiri said, trying not to sound afraid. "Um, anyone who's mentioned a school called Yuuei?" the boy shook his head, but the kangaroo seemed thoughtful.
"Y'know, I think there was," she spoke slowly as she tried to recall the person she was remembering. "He passed through here some time ago; can't remember when. He had green hair and freckles, I believe, and his eyes were a lovely green. Or was it blue?" She nodded. "Yes, he certainly mentioned a place called 'Yuuei'. What was his name again…?" she trailed off, eyes glazing over as she struggled to jog her memory.
"That sounds a bit like Midoriya from Class 1-A," Shiozaki murmured. The kangaroo's claws made a clacking noise as they crashed together in a clap.
"Midoriya!" she exclaimed. "Yes, that was it. Midoriya. Very kind, too." The boy's face lit up.
"I know him!" he piped up. The four students exchanged gleeful glances. "He's staying in a house on the edge of town! There are some others there too!"
"Which way?" Rin demanded. The boy grinned.
"Follow me!" he yelled over his shoulder as he began to run off. Shiozaki, Tokage, Rin, Kamakiri, and Lavi raced after him.
"Be safe!" the kangaroo called. She smiled. "Ah, to be young again…"
The spy curled their lip as they watched their companions waste time. They needed to get back as soon as possible – every moment they were gone was a minute the school had to figure out their identity. Of course, they wouldn't be the only suspect, but it wouldn't be nearly as hard to narrow down the options once the school realized that the spy had to be one of the people that had vanished. On top of that, their room could be searched at any moment. They were fairly confident in their ability to hide things, but some risks just weren't necessary.
They would need to be ready to flee on a moment's notice once they returned.
The sun was dark blue and stood out against the pale gray horizon. It rose into the air with a grumble and prepared to make it's way across the sky, hoping to get back to bed as quickly as possible. It did not move in a straight line, because it had no time for that sort of thing, and because that wasn't the way its bed was anyway. It would make a circle around the sky, with as small a radius as it could get away with, and then it would go back home and let the moon take over from there.
There was no moon in this particular area, something the sun was fully aware of, but it did not consider that to be its business or its problem. Getting a moon was someone else's job, and the sun couldn't care less if light only shone for one hour a day. It saw two people – humans, probably, but who could be sure – begin to make their way out of a cave and stopped to watch. The two did not seem to be friends. In fact, one appeared to be the other's prisoner.
Drama, the sun thought, both disgusted and intrigued. It was officially against drama, especially the human variety, but it hadn't seen very few interesting things since getting ripped out of its home sky – where it had only been expected to show up for half an hour before some other sun's shift would begin – and ending up in this place, and watching rather phallic monsters eat people alive had gotten boring fairly quickly. It thought that perhaps the humans might provide some entertainment, and made the decision that, should they provide adequate amusement, it would hang around a little longer than it normally would have and give them some extra light. Or perhaps it would turn off without warning at see how they dealt with the creatures they would almost immediately be surrounded by.
The sun sank as low as it dared to watch, and wondered how long it would take them to figure out the joke.
The instant Dabi saw the sun fully rise, he untied his Bakugou's (keeping the rope, of course, because he wasn't a moron) and pushed him out of the cave. Bakugou stumbled and fell, but managed to push himself back to his feet. Even with his hands bound, he still managed to flip Dabi off.
"I said it was time to go," Dabi pointed out.
"Die," was all Bakugou said in response. Dabi poked him in the shoulder with a finger that was slightly warmer than it needed to be – not quite a warning, but not exactly not a warning. The two began to walk, quickly, but without ever breaking into anything faster than a walk. Every now and again, Bakugou turned his head to make sure they weren't being followed, and the village had quickly faded into the distance. And then Dabi stopped and Bakugou walked right into him, barely managing to stop himself from falling again. "What the fuck?" he yelled, and then went quite when he saw what Dabi was looking at.
They had been walking in a straight line, away from the village, but now it was coming back into view in front of them. The sun had begun to sink lower into the sky, and it was making a strange sound that Bakugou thought might have been laughter. One hour, he realized, was up. Dabi seemed to have become very aware of this as well, and he glanced over his shoulder to see if he could make out the village that should have been behind them, but he was met only with rock. The cave they had been in was nowhere in sight. Dabi swore.
The sun's light faded, and the shadows began to move.
The Cyclops was large and angry, but it wasn't smart or fast or agile. This became readily apparent when the three girls fled past a pool of water and the Cyclops saw its own reflection and decided that it was apparently being challenged for its therapy. Toga and Uraraka both looked confused as to what to do, but Asui had no time for the Cyclops's problems and grabbed her companions' hands, dragging them after her as she ran. Eventually, they all ran out of breath and collapsed beneath the shade of a rock jutting out from a cliff that hadn't been there until fairly recently and was quite clearly the wrong shade of grayish brown.
"We're alive," Toga panted. "We're alive."
"Good observation," Asui said flatly. She was not pleased that the villain had accompanied them, despite having made the offer to begin with, and she wasn't the type to hide that. Uraraka glanced between the two.
"Any idea what to do know?" she asked. For a moment no one said anything.
"No cell phone service," Toga said, disappointed. She hadn't expected there to be, but there was no reason not to check.
"Damn," Uraraka muttered. "Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn." Asui stood up, ignoring her protesting muscles.
"I'm gonna climb up," she said. "Maybe I'll see something useful, ribbit." She gave Toga a warning look. "If you try anything–"
"I won't, I won't," Toga waved her off, whining a little. "Yeesh. I promised, didn't I?" Uraraka rolled her eyes.
"You aren't trustworthy, though," she pointed out. "Don't worry, Tsu-hon, I'll be on guard." Asui nodded, and then hopped out, leaping up onto the rock that was currently sheltering them from the sun. Or, at least, would have been had the sun actually been there. It wasn't that there was no sunlight – the area they were in at the moment looked like a relatively normal sunny day on a mountainside, except that the sun wasn't in the sky. The light shining down around them wasn't actually coming from anything. It was simply there, hoping they wouldn't notice that it probably shouldn't be.
Asui jumped up the rocks with ease, looking around for– well, anything, really. It wasn't like there was a lot to see. Most of the surrounding area was cliff and rock, mostly the right colors, but with splashes of wrongness here and there. The Cyclops was nowhere in sight, which Asui thought was probably a good thing. In the distance, to her left, she saw dark orange. It was the only thing she could see that wasn't rock, and it was the opposite direction where they'd last seen the Cyclops, so that was where they should probably go.
She hopped back down to see that Toga had indeed refrained from doing anything aside from sitting up and leaning against a chunk of chalky pink rock. Both she and Uraraka looked exhausted, and Asui probably did as well. The other two looked at her, as though waiting for her directions, as though she'd become their leader – and, she realized, she kind of had.
"Let's get some rest," Asui decided. "Then we head out. I saw something that wasn't a rock, so maybe we'll find something there, ribbit."
"Sounds good to me," Uraraka nodded. Toga shrugged, offering no objection.
"Knife," Asui said, sticking out her hand. Toga frowned, glanced between the two of them, and grudgingly handed one knife to each of them. Asui did not press the point any further – a truce meant compromises, and she wasn't about to force Toga to give up what was, as far as they knew, her only means of defense. But that didn't mean she was going to leave herself and Uraraka undefended, especially since she was completely sure that Toga had more than two knives on her.
Uraraka put her knife down next to her, on the side of her body furthest from Toga. Asui pretended to put her own in one pocket, and then sneakily slipped it into the other – at least this way she'd have a good fighting chance if Toga tried to get them back.
"Anyone got any pillows?" she asked. The other two shook their heads, and the three exhausted girls went to sleep on the rocks.
Walking around was, Sero felt, basically pointless, since they didn't know where they were currently or where they were going or if they were going anywhere at all, but they'd all agreed that staying put was unlikely to accomplish anything, and as long as they stuck together they'd probably be fine. Of course, the instant Kirishima had said that, the fire had abruptly died out and would not start again no matter what Hatsume did. So walking and looking for an idea of what to do was really the only thing they could do.
And then it had started to snow. None of them were in any way dressed for cold weather, since it had been summer back home, and all three were acutely aware that finding shelter and warmth was a key point of survival, and the sooner the better. As they walked, the snow fell harder and faster, and the three huddled together. It slowed down the walk, but it kept them warm and alive.
By the time the snowstorm had turned into an all-out blizzard, none of the three could feel their faces or hands or feet. Hatsume was a strong girl, but she wasn't a hero and she hadn't had the training the other two had had, and when she could no longer keep moving, Kirishima carried her. He was stronger than Sero, but Hatsume was heavy and exhaustion weighed on him as well. One misstep sent him – and Hatsume, by default – to the ground, and Sero could neither pick them up nor carry on without them. Freezing to death was not the way he wanted to go, and he felt like Todoroki would probably be annoyed if he died like this, and that was funny, somehow.
As Sero gave up trying to hold onto consciousness, he heard a voice in the distance, rather guiltily, say, "oops".
AN: THIS TOOK WAY TOO LONG TO FINISH I'M SO SORRY. Well, anyway, it's done now, though I don't know when I'll be able to post it (I've been on the road for a little under two hours, and I've got somewhere between five and seven hours left to go, but hopefully I'll find a spot of Internet to post this so y'all don't have to wait any longer than necessary), and maybe by the time I get home someone will have left a review, which is always nice. Well, anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I'll see you next time! Kitty out.
