It's a Plan(et)

by Caelan94

Midoriya Izuku used to laugh when asked that thought-provoking icebreaker question in middle school: Would you rather be stranded on an island alone or with your worst enemy? He used to imagine being stranded on an island with Kacchan-not being abducted by aliens with Shigaraki Tomura. With Shigaraki yelling in the next cell over, he thinks he might rather be alone.

5. Chapter 5

A/N: Just a reminder that time is measured in "clicks" where one click = one second.

Therefore…

Hectoclick = 100 seconds

Kiloclick = 16 minutes, 40 seconds

Megaclick = 11.6 days

Gigaclick = 31.7 years

Teraclick = 31,700 years

"If the aliens don't kill me, the boredom might," Shigaraki complained as he lied on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. "I'm not a reader, but damn, if I had a book right now…"

"I was actually at the mall to get a book!" Izuku chimed. "All Might's Greatest Rescues: Golden Age Edition."

There was a noticeable pause where Shigaraki didn't move or say anything, just took some deep breaths as he contemplated his options. "Did you manage to buy it before I got to you?"

"No," Izuku said. "But I'm surprised that you'd actually consider it."

Shigaraki screamed at the ceiling. His long, drawn-out scream turned into a groan, which turned into a whine, and that turned almost into a sob.

"Besides," Izuku continued like Shigaraki didn't just have a mental breakdown, "it's not like I'm hoarding it over here in the cell with me. I don't think the aliens would have let me keep it even if I did have it on me when they took us. And I think you would have noticed if I had a book over here by now."

When Izuku didn't get a scathing response, he tried a different tactic.

"Want to have a push-up competition?"

"What?" Shigaraki asked, voice hoarse from screaming.

"I know you're in shape," Izuku said. "Probably not enough to hold your own against me in a push-up competition," he baited, "but it will still be something to ease the boredom."

"Oh, I know exactly what you're doing," Shigaraki said. "But fuck if it's not working anyway," he grunted as he flipped over into push-up position.

They started their competition with both of them counting as they went.

Once they were about 35 in, Shigaraki heard A'zawa yelling something with his name in the mix.

"Ha!" Shigaraki bragged as Izuku continued the count. "Cat-Face is cheering me on! He's saying, "Go, Shigaraki, Go!" Where's Bird-Face at? Not cheering for you?"

Shigaraki rejoined the counting just in time to hear H'zashi start squawking something with Midoriya's name mixed in.

"What was that?" Midoriya asked. "I couldn't hear you over my cellmate's support!"

The cellblock erupted with all the aliens in the cells next to theirs yelling as well.

"Oh! Looks like we're the entertainment for the whole cellblock today!" Shigaraki exclaimed.

"If they're smart, they'll be placing their bets on me!" Izuku huffed. "Feeling the burn, yet, Shigaraki?"

"In your dreams, Midor–" Next thing Shigaraki knew, A'zawa was on his back. "Oh this is not fair! I have extra weight now, so–"

But when Shigaraki looked up, Izuku also had his cellmate on his back.

"Huh," Shigaraki huffed out as Izuku continued the counting, smiling at him all the while. "I bet Cat-Face weighs more."

"I don't know how to ask about weights, yet," Izuku said as Shigaraki took over the counting. "Do you?"

"No," Shigaraki huffed, feeling the effort through his whole body now that the extra weight was really taking a toll on him. "But don't birds have hollow bones or some shit?"

"Usually, yeah," Izuku said. "But these are aliens, so their anatomy might not follow the same rules as on Earth. They might have evolved differently."

"Well, when we find a way to go back to Earth, we're bringing these fuckers with us so we can see which one weighs more."

Izuku huffed out a laugh and almost toppled over, wobbling with the effort to stay in the competition. "I don't know if they'll agree to that."

Shigaraki took a few deep breaths before he responded. "They haven't argued against anything else so far."

The dolluns running around outside their cells were easy to ignore until they opened up their cell slots and started rolling bottles of water at them. That was weird enough for them to abandon their competition without a winner being decided as bottle after bottle was rolled at them and started to pile up.

"Do they not think that I've hoarded enough of them?" Shigaraki asked, gaining his breath back as A'zawa flitted around him, opening a bottle of water and shoving it at his face. "Oh, fuck. I think Cat-Face is worried about me."

Shigaraki looked over to see Izuku being given the same treatment with H'zashi holding the bottle of water at an angle in Izuku's mouth so that Izuku is forced to drink or drown. Izuku made eye contact with Shigaraki and offered him a shrug.

"Well, that was weird," Izuku said, once H'zashi finally gave him a moment to breathe.

"I'm so full," Shigaraki complained, holding his stomach as A'zawa tried to hand him another bottle of water.

They were watched closely by their cellmates for the rest of the cycle. They usually were, but it was like their cellmates wouldn't leave within an arms' reach of them this time instead of just often finding them watching from across the cell, and they were regularly given bottles of water like clockwork and just stared at as they drank them.

"We must have worried them somehow," Izuku said.

"I'd suggest doing it again," Shigaraki said, "just for fun and to fuck with them, but I think I might drown if I have to drink one more bottle of water."

"The guard rotation has increased as well," Izuku noted as he watched the fourth dollun walk past since the water incident. "I wonder if that's a permanent thing or just until they're sure we're okay."

"I'm going to start scaring 'em again if it's permanent," Shigaraki warned, watching the retreating form of the dollun going down the corridor.

It was not permanent; it only lasted until the end of the cycle.

Izuku smiled when he handed over his empty water bottles as he heard the tell-tale arguing of the dollun, knowing without even looking that Shigaraki added his bottles to his hoard pile.

"I wonder if it would purr if I scratched under its chin," Shigaraki said as he woke up four cycles after their abduction, still not having slept in his own metal box of freaky grasses.

"I hope they bite you," Izuku said.

"I didn't say I was actually going to do it," Shigaraki said, turning onto his back to stretch. "Just that I was curious."

"I hope they bite you anyway," Izuku said. "I'm surprised they haven't with how you aren't leaving them alone. Why aren't you sleeping in your own box?"

Shigaraki sat up and shrugged, not looking over at Izuku as he answered. "I haven't slept alone in years. The League all sleep together in one room, just in case of attacks. So there would be immediate notification and help, you know? I haven't gone a single night without having Toga kicking me in her sleep or having Dabi draped over me."

"That's actually kind of nice," Izuku commented.

"It started out as a survival tactic, nothing more," Shigaraki explained, rolling out of the box of grasses and onto the metal floor. He didn't make a move from there to stand up, just lied there on the floor next to the box. "We made a lot of enemies, and it was safer for us all to be together so no one attacking would be able to divide and conquer. Even after we went so long without anyone trying anything, we never got out of the habit of everyone sleeping in one room."

"Even the more… distinguished villains, like Mr. Compress?" Izuku asked. "He agreed with all that?"

"I think he might have been the one who suggested it in the first place," Shigaraki said. "He's at least the one who fought for it the hardest. When I said no, he started going on, something about there being more teamwork and trust in the heists he's done that required less skill and had fewer stakes than what we were trying to do at the League, and we all just agreed to sleep in the same room together to get the lecture to be over."

Izuku laughed, and Shigaraki laughed, too, finally sitting up and heaving himself off the floor. "Yeah," Shigaraki said, "it's funny now looking back on it, but I was so pissed at the time. What I wouldn't give to be back with them right now. Do you miss anyone specific?"

Izuku grinned warily. "Depends. Are you going to use this information against me when we get back?"

Shigaraki didn't smile. "Are we ever getting back?"

Izuku didn't have an answer for that. So, instead, he said, "I miss my mom. I'm sure she's stressed that I'm missing, and it probably doesn't help that I was last seen with you at the mall. The League didn't have to worry about other villains breaking in, but you continued to sleep together in the same room. I hope they would keep that up after we were abducted, because they need to be prepared when the fearsome Mrs. Midoriya breaks down the door in search of her son."

That got Shigaraki smiling again.

"If she can find the base," Shigaraki challenged.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," Izuku said. "And I think there's a multiplier when that woman is a mother."

"You're lucky," Shigaraki said, "to have her in your corner. Not every mother has that fury."

Izuku was taking a wild guess when he said, "yours didn't."

"Maybe deep down she did," Shigaraki said with this far off look in his eyes. "But it wasn't enough to protect me." He shook his head as if to physically rid himself of his memories. "But that was a long time ago."

There was a long pause, long enough to become awkward before Shigaraki spoke again.

"Anyone else you miss?" Shigaraki asked. "So I can exploit the information later, of course. Not because I'm interested or anything."

"Of course," Izuku said, scrunching his nose and nodding, like he totally believed Shigaraki's comment. Shigaraki flipped him off for his effort, and Izuku laughed. "I miss Kacchan," Izuku said. "Good luck using that against me."

"Bakugou Katsuki?" Shigaraki asked, voice laced with disbelief. "Yeah, I'm not trying to recruit that one again," Shigaraki said. "You can keep him." After a short pause, "Why Bakugou of all people? I could never figure out if you two were actually friends or not, and I landed on not, actually."

Izuku laughed and found that he was actually enjoying the conversation. "He's been my best friend since we were little kids," Izuku said. "We've had some rough patches… some really rough patches, but we're good now. You kind of remind me of him," Izuku said. Then, he quickly added, "But don't tell him I said that; he would hate to be compared to a villain, even if that's not what I meant."

"I'm nothing like him," Shigaraki protested.

"You both curse like it's going out of style. You both give people terrible nicknames instead of using their actual names. You both even call yourselves "God!" You, here, with your introductions, and Kacchan with the whole Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight mouthfull of a hero alias he chose," Izuku said, listing the similarities on his fingers as he went. "I don't know how much more evidence you want, Shigaraki!"

"I do none of those things!" Shigaraki protested.

"Oh, so now we're just lying?!" Izuku asked, throwing his hands up.

"I don't swear that much!" Shigaraki said, derailing the conversation to just one of Izuku's points.

"Okay," Izuku said. "We'll see."

"What do you mean by that?" Shigaraki asked. When he got no answer, he repeated, "Midoriya? What do you mean by that?!"

Shigaraki found out what Izuku meant when the meal cart came a little while later.

"Thank fuck!" Shigaraki exclaimed. "I'm starving! Withering away to nothing over here!"

"Thank fuck, indeed," Izuku said, smug smile on his face, eyes fully on Shigaraki and not on the cart being pushed down the corridor.

Shigaraki looked at him strangely, but was distracted by the dollun putting his and A'zawa's trays into their cell.

"How much do you want to bet that everything on this fucking tray is sweet?" Shigaraki asked, frowning down at his meal.

"Not a fucking thing," Izuku responded, narrowing his eyes to see if Shigaraki would catch on. "We've been having all different kinds of foods for the past three days, and everything has been sweet so far, so I'm not taking that bet."

Shigaraki, already frowning at Izuku's antics, took a bite out of the turquoise steak and frowned deeper as he chewed. "It's sweet, too," he informed, tossing it back onto his tray. "I'd kill for something savory, or even salty," he complained.

"You've killed for less," Izuku chimed with a nod and a shrug.

Shigaraki leveled Izuku with a dead stare through the two sets of cell bars that separated them. "I'd give high-quality CPR to All Might for something savory right now," Shigaraki deadpanned, his voice level with the determination and truthfulness to his words. "I wouldn't stop until I saved that man's life. I'd assign Dabi to do compressions–he's quite good for how lanky he looks–and I'd give that fucker mouth to mouth, even if I didn't have a barrier around to keep his gross germs off me. I'd send Compress to go get that sparky friend of yours to zap All Might's heart back into rhythm, and if he wouldn't do it for us, then Toga could after a little blood transfusion. That motherfucker would live, and he would take his broken ribs and go get me a real steak for the effort."

Izuku stared at Shigaraki for a long moment.

"What?" Shigaraki snapped.

"I just didn't know you knew how to give CPR," Izuku said. "Since fuckin' when, and who's the motherfucker that taught you and the rest of the League?"

Shigaraki scoffed. "I'm a villain, not an idiot."

"That explains nothing and answers none of my questions," Izuku muttered under his breath, rubbing the spot between his eyes to smother the oncoming headache.

"Hey! If you have anything that is not sweet over there, you better fucking share it with me!" Izuku then heard Shigaraki muttering to himself, under his breath, "never thought I'd see the day I was sick of candy. Kurogiri's going to think I'm the alien when I get back and ask for vegetables. Where is the real Shigaraki Tomura? What have you done with him, you alien scum? Would Kurogiri say that? Alien scum? Alien gentleman? Alien sir?"

Izuku, flabbergasted at what he was overhearing, looked over to see Shigaraki talking to himself, eyes narrowed in concentration as he tried to imitate the League member, hands absentmindedly squeezing and releasing the cell bars over and over again like his quirk might somehow magically activate despite the quirk-canceling cuffs around his wrists.

"Yeah," Izuku hedged, watching Shigaraki out of the corner of his eye as he focused on his food. "I wouldn't fucking dream of keeping it to myself."

That got his attention.

"I get it! Okay?! I swear a fuckton!" Shigaraki screeched. "You can cut it the fuck out now! You've made your damn point!"

Izuku shrugged. "It's kind of fucking fun," he said, trying to tamp down the urge to smile at Shigaraki's expense. "You and Kacchan have the right idea. I should've started this cursing all the time thing ages ago."

Shigaraki rolled his eyes and seemingly decided to change the subject, with food the more pressing matter on his mind than Izuku's shenanigans. "Hey! Cat-Face has meat, too, but it's like.. shredded. It's probably sweet and gross. What does Bird-Face have?" Shigaraki asked.

"Why don't you use their names?" Izuku asked.

"You think they use ours?" Shigaraki asked. "I'd bet anything that they talk about us constantly, but they can't use our names when they're doing it or it would give them away," Shigaraki explained.

Izuku looked between A'zawa and H'zashi, who were conversing at that very moment, and he did wonder what they were talking about. He figured that they did probably talk about them. Not all the time, but at least some of the time, so it would make sense that they were calling them something else other than their names so they wouldn't recognize when they were talking about them.

"Okay," Izuku said. "You might have a point."

"Yeah, I do!"

"I just didn't think you were one to care if people knew you were talking about them or not," Izuku said nonchalantly.

Shigaraki's jaw dropped. "I don't!" he protested immediately.

"It sure seems like you do!" Izuku sang.

"Well, I don't!" Shigaraki insisted. "Are you going to tell me what H'zashi is eating or not?!"

H'zashi looked up at the sound of his name.

"H'zashi food?" Izuku questioned in Standard while pointing to the nuts on H'zashi's tray.

"Crocknets," H'zashi said, feathers splayed over his bowl of nuts.

"Midoriya and Shigaraki try crocknets?" Izuku asked, pointing to himself, to Shigaraki, and then to his mouth to mime eating, before pointing to the nuts again.

"Midoriya and Shigaraki try crocknets," H'zashi said, handing over two of the nuts.

"One, two," Izuku tried, placing one at a time in his palm until H'zashi humored him and taught him how to count, using all of the nuts in the bowl until he got up to fourteen.

"If you're done playing teacher-student, I'm dying to try that thing!" Shigaraki shouted.

"It's a crocknet," Izuku said, putting his hand through the bars to accurately toss one over to Shigaraki. "And who knows! We might die trying these things! We don't know if they're safe for us to eat!"

"I'll take my chances, thank you very much!" Shigaraki snapped. Then, after a pause, a genuine, "Thank you, Midoriya."

"You're welcome, Shigaraki," he said, beaming. "It was a good idea. I'm tired of all the sweet stuff, too."

Shigaraki bit into the nut with his teeth, not bothering to use his hoard of trays to crack the shell. Without further ceremony, he ate the center of the nut and groaned. "It's salty!" he yelled in celebration. "It's delicious! It reminds me of a cashew!"

Izuku had to agree.

"Hey! Hey you! No hard feelings about before, right?" Shigaraki was yelling when the dolluns came to collect their meal trays, even as he continued to refuse to give his meal trays back. "Can you give us humans some of these next time?" Shigaraki asked, holding out the shell of the nut with one hand and frantically pointing to it with the other.

The dollun looked at what Shigaraki was holding before looking away again, seemingly uninterested. Then that dollun did a double-take, and even stepped closer to make sure they were seeing correctly what Shigaraki held in his hand.

The dollun turned to H'zashi and started questioning him.

"Oh, no," Izuku fretted. "I hope we didn't get H'zashi in trouble for sharing his food. Maybe that's not allowed."

Shigaraki hummed as he watched the conversation. "They don't seem as heated as usual. Is H'zashi miming how you threw the nut to me?"

Izuku looked over to see that that was indeed what was happening. H'zashi then turned 180 degrees to act as Shigaraki, catching the nut for the dollun.

They didn't even have to wait for the next meal to get their nuts, but the dolluns only brought a bowl of nuts to Izuku, and not to Shigaraki.

"What in the actual fuck?!" Shigaraki complained. "They're playing favorites now?!"

"You know I'll share with you!" Izuku soothed. "Something about us sharing with each other must have interested them. I've never seen that species before. H'zashi?" he asked, pointing to the new species that resembled moths with delicate, flimsy wings fluttering behind them as they came to observe.

"Dreto," H'zashi supplied.

The dretos looked even more interested by that short interaction, but rather than being allowed to dwell on it, Shigaraki commanded Izuku's attention.

"Well? Are you going to share or not, hero?"

"I don't know," Izuku teased. "Would you have shared if they had given you the bowl instead?"

Shigaraki scowled. "Of course I would have!"

"I believe you," Izuku said, reaching into the bowl to grab a crocknet.

"What? You're not going to make me grovel and beg?" Shigaraki asked as Izuku tossed him the first nut of many. "I would have at least made you do that."

Izuku laughed, entertained and not in the least bit surprised. "Well, it's still early," Izuku taunted, tilting the bowl to show Shigaraki how many more crocknets there were to go. "I have only given you one so far!"

"That sounds like a threat," Shigaraki said after swallowing the first bite of his reward. "I think I'm a bad influence on you, hero."

"Maybe I'm just learning new skills all the time," Izuku said with a smile and a shrug. "Plus Ultra?"

Shigaraki snickered at that and held his hands outside of the cell bars for another crocknet, which Izuku threw to him without hesitation.

"See?" Shigaraki said, bringing the nut to his mouth to crack open with his teeth. "You make threats, but you don't make good on them. I guess I have more to teach you."

"Like I said before," Izuku said after swallowing his own bite. "We're allies as long as we're here. As far as I'm concerned, what's mine is yours. I'm going to share every advantage I have with you until we're both home." Shigaraki raised an unconvinced eyebrow at that. "Put me in this same position with the alien that orchestrated our capture, and I would eat all these myself, laughing all the while!"

"Doubtful."

"Seriously!" Izuku insisted. "Maybe I'd toss them the shells afterwards, just to be a dick!"

Shigaraki laughed. "Now that, I'd like to see!"

So, Izuku tossed him an empty shell instead of a full crocknet.

"Not to me, you asshole!"

Izuku laughed as he tossed Shigaraki three more crocknets to make it up to him.

He noticed the dretos conversing among themselves, looking first at Izuku, then Shigaraki, then back at Izuku again. Despite not having access to his quirk, despite not having access to Danger Sense in particular, he had a bad feeling about them and what their conversation might consist of.

"It's weird that we haven't seen the moth-like aliens before, until now. Right?" Izuku asked Shigaraki, trying to brainstorm and work out if his feeling was nothing to be concerned about.

Shigaraki, more focused on opening his latest crocknet than what was happening with the dretos down the corridor hummed.

"Shigaraki," Izuku insisted, thrusting his head in the dretos' direction when Shigaraki finally looked up. "It's weird that we haven't seen them before until now, right?" Izuku repeated. "I have this bad feeling about them…"

That got Shigaraki's attention.

"Danger Sense?" Shigaraki asked. "You think these stupid things," Shigaraki banged one of the metal bracelets encasing his wrists against the bars of his cell in demonstration, "have a time limit or something?"

"It's not Danger Sense," Izuku said, trying to tamp down his frustration that Shigaraki would not stay on topic. "It's just a regular, old bad feeling. I don't like the way they're watching us. I wish I knew what they were saying."

Shigaraki seemed to be taking Izuku's concern seriously as his eyes glanced around the area, not lingering on the dretos to not allow them to know that they were being watched back. As he was doing so, his shoulders seemed to droop, getting heavy with some sort of realization.

"Our cellmates don't seem to like what they're discussing, whatever it is," Shigaraki said, tone wary.

Izuku took a moment to observe their cellmates, and saw them tuned into the dretos' conversation without even trying to disguise that they were listening in. They were outright staring at the moth-like creatures as they had their discourse.

H'zashi's feathers were splayed out from their body, but they did not look relaxed and puffed out. Their feathers looked sharp under the artificial lights coming from the ceiling, and Izuku wanted to touch them to see, if only doing so wouldn't startle and confuse H'zashi. They were standing as close to the electrified bars as Izuku had ever seen them get, sometimes sparing a glance in Izuku's direction and then shifting, as if they were– were they trying to shield Izuku from the dretos' sight?

A'zawa didn't seem to be faring much better, also in the corner of the cell close to the electrified bars, tail lashing, claws digging into the metal floor, ears twitching as they spun to gather more information about the conversation and pick up the sounds of the other alien captives next to them.

Izuku probably logged their cellmates' odd behavior in his subconscious, which added to his weird feeling. It wasn't Danger Sense, but something entirely human that picked up on signs around him that gave him a bad feeling of what was to come.

He wasn't entirely surprised when a dreto came back a few hours later, followed by a dollun on either side, but this time the dolluns were carrying long sticks instead of meal trays. The dreto carried something big that looked like a weapon, and Izuku wondered where he was going to be escorted by force when they stopped in front of his cell. H'zashi immediately started talking, seemingly trying to reason with them about something, talking fast and loud, but the dreto responded calmly, simply.. H'zashi seemed to deflate at whatever they were told, feathers falling limply against their body.

The dreto must have shot H'zashi down easily. Figuratively.

And then the dreto shot Izuku down. Literally.

It happened quickly. The dreto aimed whatever weapon they had at Izuku between the cell bars and fired without hesitation, not giving Izuku a moment to think, to react, to dodge out of the way.

The force from which the thing attached itself to Izuku's face had his head snapping backwards and almost took him off of his feet, causing him to stumble a few steps. From what Izuku could see and feel, it was a clear material, resembling glass, sealing over his nose and mouth. There were arms that came out from it that went around his head, clamping tightly around. He was unable to pry it off no matter how hard he tried and how immediately he set to work trying to get his fingers under the arms of it that seemed embedded in his hair; whatever the thing was, it set in place fast, and he was unable to remove it.

At first, he thought the glass was fogging due to his increasingly panicked breaths, but then he realized that the arms are thick for a reason and must carry some time of gas. He realized this as his vision started narrowing.

He laughed, though he wasn't sure why. He didn't find it humorous, really.

"Shigaraki!" he yelled as his vision turned to pinpoints, and all he could see was his human companion surrounded by bright white on all sides. "This is how they drug us! Not through the food!"

That was the last thing he remembered in the cell before waking up again, hearing unfamiliar voices in an unfamiliar language that he could somehow understand.

He decided to keep his eyes closed.

"It was the correct decision taking this green-furred Terran over the blue-furred one for the first attempt," one voice insisted.

"I still disagree," another said. "Sure, this one seems more cooperative, but if this attempt does not work, we should have saved him for the next attempt that might be more successful. It would have been smarter to use the less cooperative Terran for our first attempt in case it is a failure."

"I don't think it will be a failure," the first voice contested calmly. "We have had first-time successes for multiple species. It's been five gigaclicks since we've had a failure."

"But this is the first time we're implanting a Universal Translation Device into the brain of a deathworlder. There might be some unforeseen difficulties. I mean, look at the technology we had to revert to using! It's not even a complete implant! It sticks out so grotesquely!"

"All in the name of science. Improvements can be made once we are sure it is a success. Then we can improve our deathworlder specific technology before we implant into the blue-furred Terran."

Izuku decided that he had heard enough.

It was time to open his eyes and do what he does best.