Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Izuku could hardly believe the day had finally come.

He’d barely slept the night before, his brain running like a frenzied hyperdrive powered by nerves and anticipation. Even while awake, his dreams were filled with starfields stretching endlessly before him, the bridge of a starship bathed in the soft glow of console lights, and his own hands gripping the armrests of a captain’s chair. He had yearned for this moment for as long as he could remember. 

Now, he was here.

The docking bay of the commission's Solara Prime Spaceport stretched out before him, a dizzying sprawl of gleaming starships, neon-lit terminals, and a restless tide of beings from every corner of the galaxy. The air smelled of synthetic ozone and coolant, the tang of recycled oxygen mixing with the distinct, burnt-metal scent of thruster fuel. The steady thrum of activity reverberated through the metallic flooring beneath Izuku's boots—pilots barking preflight checks, the sizzle of maintenance drones using arc welders to patch hulls, the distant wail of a docking siren announcing another incoming vessel.

Izuku forced himself to focus, even as the sheer magnitude of it all threatened to sweep him away. His heart pounded in sync with the rhythmic pulse of the spaceport’s overhead lighting, an electric sort of anticipation winding through his limbs. He scanned the crowd, searching for other cadets clad in the same sleek black jumpsuit as him.

The uniform for U.A. Space Academy third-year cadets was pristine—for now, at least. The snug material flexed with every movement, engineered for both comfort and durability, with reinforced armored plating along the shoulders and forearms. The emerald-green piping that denoted Izuku’s role as part of the bridge crew traced along the uniform’s seams, catching the artificial light as he moved. The U.A. insignia was emblazoned proudly on his chest—a clever hybrid of the letters that were the academy's namesake overlaid atop a gleaming star.

His mother had cried when he first donned the uniform. Izuku had nearly done the same.

Now, as he stood in the midst of the bustling spaceport, gripping the straps of his backpack tight enough to leave red imprints in his palms, he could scarcely believe it was real. This was the start of his final year at the Academy—the first step toward becoming everything he had ever wanted to be.

With his head held high, Izuku took that first step.

Or tried to, at least.

His foot caught—on what, he wasn’t even sure. One moment, he was standing tall, shoulders squared with determination. The next, the world tilted as his body pitched forward. A sharp jolt of pain lanced up his wrists as his palms smacked the cold metal deck, the impact rattling through his bones.

For a few mortifying seconds, he lay there, his breath caught in his throat and his heartbeat hammering against his ribs. The cold floor pressed against his palms, the sting of embarrassment blooming hotter than the pain itself. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself not to flush.

For a moment, he imagined a hand reaching out, with fingers that were warm and steady. It'd be accompanied by a voice soft with concern, asking him if he was alright. He imagined kindness and understanding—someone helping him up and sending him off with a grin.

But when he lifted his head, there was no outstretched hand waiting.

Instead, quiet laughter rippled through the crowd, a cruel undercurrent in the station’s endless noise. Passersby barely spared him a glance before moving on. Others snickered and whispered behind cupped hands, their smirks as stinging as laser fire before they disappeared into the chaos.

A sharp announcement rang through the air: "Attention, all U.A. cadets, report to Docking Bay 12 for transport briefing. Repeat—Docking Bay 12."

Izuku exhaled slowly, curling his fingers into fists against the floor before pushing himself up. His uniform—still gleaming under the harsh lights—now bore faint scuffs where he’d hit the ground. They were small, inconsequential marks, yet they felt heavier than they should.

He forced his feet forward, each step deliberate. He would not let this moment define him, nor would he let it dampen the incredible journey he was about to embark on.

As he walked towards Docking Bay 12, he took in more of the spaceport. It was more than just a hub of commerce; it was a crossroads of countless lives, each moving toward an uncertain future.

To his right, a customs officer argued with a merchant attempting to smuggle exotic, sentient fauna, the creature inside the crate letting out a low, warbling trill. Overhead, the station’s control tower blinked with urgent red alerts, incoming transmissions flashing across holographic screens. Beyond the docking platforms, a sleek silver transport ship hissed as it prepared for departure, its ramp withdrawing with a mechanical whirr.

To Izuku's left, a squad of armored soldiers marched in formation, their visors reflecting the stark white lights of the terminal. Their boots struck the deck in perfect unison, their magnetic soles clanking against the flooring. Their rifles, magnetically locked to their backs, hummed softly with latent energy.

Nearby, a young girl clung to her father’s leg, tears streaking her cheeks as she sobbed into his uniform. He knelt, whispering something soothing and brushing a hand through her hair before pressing a final kiss to her forehead. A mother stood beside them, silent but composed, gripping the handle of a floating suitcase with knuckles turned white. She didn't cry like her daughter did, but her eyes were hollow, as if she'd already glimpsed a future where her husband didn’t come home.

All around Izuku, similar scenes played out—farewells between parents and children, between lovers, and between comrades who might never see each other again. The air was thick with unsaid words and restrained emotions, the weight of thousands of sacrifices pressing down on him.

The lump in Izuku’s throat thickened.

Would that be him one day? Standing at a docking bay, saying goodbye to his mother before shipping out to some distant battlefield? Would she cry? Would she try to be strong for him, the way this mother was now?

He shook the thought aside. He wasn’t a soldier. Not yet.

And he might never be, though he knew the chances of that were slim if he passed his final examination. Though he sought a Certificate of Competence in Space Exploration, the skills he would exhibit in earning that merit would make him more than valuable for the war effort. 

At this point, he knew the only way to avoid being drafted was if the war was somehow won in the next three months. But that was a fantasy, a child's hope in a universe that had already moved on from peace.

Izuku exhaled slowly.

Despite it all—despite the likelihood that this dream would likely see him standing on the front lines—he had decided. His dream was worth it, even if it meant war.

And so, he stepped forward.

Docking Bay 12 loomed ahead, its entrance flanked by two Academy officers. Cadets in uniforms identical to his own lined up before the towering metal doors, stepping forward one by one to present their identification chips.

Izuku wanted to take in the faces of the cadets around him. They were his future crew, the people he would be training beside for the next several months. But his fingers fumbled with the latch of his belt, his focus entirely consumed by the desperate need to retrieve his holopad without making a mistake. His pulse roared in his ears, drowning out the conversations around him. By the time he finally got the holopad free, he had missed the chance to say anything at all.

With his turn upon him, Izuku pressed his thumb against the scanner of his holopad. A green light blinked in response.

"Midoriya, Izuku. U.A. Space Academy, third-year cadet."

One of the officers, an older man with a face carved by years of experience, barely spared him a glance before nodding. "Step forward for biometric scan."

A soft blue light swept over Izuku, scanning for weapons, implants, and unauthorized modifications. He received another green light, and another nod.

"Proceed."

The massive doors to the docking bay slid open as he approached, revealing the ship he and his classmates would be serving on for their final examination. 

It was hardly the majestic warship he'd imagined. If it were a ship to be used for anything other than training, it might have been given a more personalized and proud moniker. But for now, it would simply be known as Starship 1-A. Its dull gray hull bore the marks of years of use, its structure lacking the sleek, predatory design of a true combat vessel. The twin thruster ports at its rear were outdated, their plating scuffed from countless training exercises. Even its name—or lack thereof—spoke to its purpose. It was a ship meant for learning, not for glory. No one would make history aboard the 1-A.

And yet, for the next few months, this ship would be their home.

As Izuku stepped onto the docking platform, he noticed something else.

The other cadets were already forming groups across the platform. Small clusters of students were gathered together, exchanging excited murmurs, some laughing, others discussing what missions they might be given to test their strengths. Friends who had spent years training side by side fell into easy formations.

Izuku, however, stood alone. There was someone amongst the crowd he already knew, someone he'd always known. But by now, Izuku had learned well that he was supposed to act as if their eighteen years of growing together, attending school together, and training together hadn't happened. 

Izuku adjusted the cuffs of his uniform, trying not to let the feeling of isolation sink too deep. He had hoped things would be different this year. That being placed into a real crew, even one that was only meant for training, would mean the start of something new.

But maybe some things didn’t change.

Still, he squared his shoulders, dusted the scuffs from his uniform, and stepped forward.

This was still his dream. And he would not let a fall, or the weight of solitude, keep him from reaching it.

Ten minutes later, the hum of quiet conversation still filled the docking bay. 

Izuku stood on the outskirts of the gathered cadets, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he scanned the crowd. Excitement and nerves intermingled in the air like charged particles before a storm. Some cadets still whispered to their neighbors, their voices hushed but urgent, while others had begun fidgeting with the cuffs of their uniforms, hands clenching and unclenching. The tension coiled tighter with every passing second. This was it—the beginning of their final test, the culmination of years of training at U.A. Space Academy.

Izuku tried to steady himself, glancing from face to face, cross-referencing the crew manifest he had practically memorized. The colored accents on their uniforms denoted their roles—command, bridge, engineering, security, research, medical, operations, and stewarding—and he instinctively cataloged them, a nervous habit that helped anchor him. Just as he started piecing together a few names and faces, the docking ramp of the 1-A extended with a mechanical hiss, its descent punctuated by a final, decisive thud against the platform.

The conversations died in an instant. Silence settled over the group, heavy and expectant.

Two figures emerged from the ship’s interior, their silhouettes framed by the soft glow of the open hatch.

The first moved with a measured, almost languid gait. His dark uniform was slightly disheveled, his long coat swaying as he stepped forward. His black hair fell past his shoulders in unruly strands, and his tired eyes, sharp despite their apparent exhaustion, swept over the cadets with quiet precision. Though his posture suggested indifference, there was something about him—an unspoken authority that demanded respect.

Beside him stood a stark contrast. The second man was gaunt, almost frail, his wispy blond hair and sunken features that made him appear startlingly out of place among the gathered cadets, brimming with youth.

Yet, Izuku’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of him.

Toshinori Yagi.

All Might.

Even in the Galactic Commission, where countless legends had been carved into the vastness of space, there were few as revered as All Might. He had once been a beacon of the Commission’s military prowess, a hero whose victories had turned the tide of entire battles. And then, without warning, he had disappeared. Rumors had spread like wildfire—whispers of his demise, exile, or worse.

Now, Izuku knew that those rumors were false. Here All Might was, standing before them, a shadow of the titan he had once been. Even with his appearance so changed, his presence was unmistakable. 

The disheveled man spoke first, his voice flat but carrying across the hangar with ease. “I'm Commander Aizawa Shouta. For the next three months, I’ll be your supervising officer. Ultimately, I’ll be the one to decide if each of you passes or fails.”

The statement landed with weight, a few cadets stiffening in response.

Izuku felt a prickle of apprehension at the absolute finality in Aizawa’s tone.

Aizawa gestured toward All Might. “This is Toshinori Yagi. He’ll be assisting me in ensuring you’re all supervised and instructed properly.”

There were murmurs now, subtle but undeniable. Some cadets exchanged sidelong glances, recognition flickering across their faces. If they knew who Yagi was, they had the sense to keep their reactions muted.

Aizawa continued, unbothered. “We understand that many of you have different aspirations. Some of you intend to serve in combat divisions, others in diplomacy, research, or exploration. Normally, you’d receive specialized training in your fields. But this is wartime.”

There was a shift in the air as he briefly paused. 

“The Commission’s resources are stretched thin. We don’t have the luxury of personalized instruction. Regardless of your intended path, you will complete the tasks you’re assigned. Any refusal to comply or internal disputes will result in immediate expulsion.”

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Izuku’s stomach twisted. The stakes were clearer than ever—there would be no leniency. No second chances.

Aizawa’s eyes swept over them, unreadable. “To ensure efficiency, command structure is as follows: Iida Tenya has been designated as your acting captain. Yaoyorozu Momo will serve as vice-captain. You are to follow their orders as you would any superior officer.”

There was no reaction time, no room for applause or acknowledgment of who Iida and Yaoyorozu were amongst the crowd. Just the information, delivered with the same unyielding directness.

“The rest of you can get acquainted later,” Aizawa said curtly. “For now, pay attention.”

Something in his stance shifted, a subtle darkening of his expression. “I won’t sugarcoat this. The situation is far from ideal. All our experienced crews are out fighting this war. We can’t afford to pull them from the front lines just to train you. That means we’re the only instructors you’re going to get, and this training is going to be fast, direct, and most likely uncomfortable.”

A few cadets stiffened once more, eyes darting to one another. 

Izuku’s throat was dry, his fingers strangling the straps of his backpack. He'd known how dire the situation was since he'd received the news that he'd be placed in a crew of other cadets for his final exam rather than the usual internship with an actual, more seasoned and experienced crew that previous third-years from the academy had completed. But to hear an actual commander speak of the realities of war made the situation sink in even deeper. 

After a beat of silence, Aizawa added, “That said, you will be safe. Starship 1-A will remain within Commission territory, well away from active conflict. Your mission is to learn, not to fight. Understand that and act accordingly.”

His tone left no room for debate.

Izuku risked another glance at All Might. The older man stood quietly, hands clasped behind his back, observing. There was a solemnity in his posture, a quiet understanding of what lay ahead for them. And yet, beneath the gaunt features and weary frame, the fire in his eyes remained.

Izuku stood a little straighter.

This was real. The war, the responsibility, the future they were training for—it was closer than ever. If he wanted to stand among the best and make a difference, he couldn’t afford to falter.

Aizawa’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Any questions?”

The silence was thick, the weight of reality settling over the cadets.

Aizawa gave a satisfied nod. “Then get on board. We launch in half an hour.”

Izuku exhaled slowly, forcing the breath through his lips as the ramp loomed before them—a threshold between what they were and what they were about to become.

One by one, the cadets stepped forward, crossing into the unknown.

Izuku had imagined this moment countless times. But as he stepped onto the 1-A for the first time, he found himself overcome with a fresh bout of excitement and anticipation. On his way to his post, his mind raced to identify every part of the ship and match it to the designs and functions he'd been memorizing since he was a kid. 

The walls of the ship were a cool, cluttered gray, lined with consoles that flickered with data and controls. Soft blue and white lights bathed the corridors, their glow casting long shadows as they reflected off the smooth metal surfaces. There was a certain coldness to it all, a stark contrast to the warmth that was filling Izuku’s chest as he took it all in.

Despite the ship’s unassuming exterior, its high-tech interior was undeniably impressive. 

Izuku walked slowly, analyzing every detail as he moved through the ship. The hum of the engines, low and steady, vibrated through the walls, carrying up from the engine room on one of the lower levels. A few steps ahead, the corridor opened up slightly, revealing a central hub where several crew members were already making their final checks. A few cadets adjusted their harnesses, securing themselves for the upcoming launch. The atmosphere was filled with quiet murmurs, last-minute confirmations, and the occasional beep of a recalibrating system.

In another area, a garden stretched out beneath a massive dome, the glass surface clear and unbroken. Izuku knew the dome collected starlight, channeling it down into the room, allowing the plants to thrive even in the cold depths of space. He couldn't help but pause for a moment, watching delicate tendrils of ivy twist and reach toward the light. It felt oddly calming in the midst of the cold, mechanical corridors.

A few crew members brushed past Izuku as he stood there, most too focused on their tasks to really notice him. But a boy in an engineering uniform, detailed in a red that matched his spiky hair, gave Izuku a brief nod of acknowledgment and a warm grin before loading onto the elevator with the rest of the engineering crew. Izuku did his best to return the gesture before the doors slid shut, feeling an odd mixture of excitement and nerves twisting in his stomach at the brief interaction. 

The medical lab was next, and it was exactly what he had imagined. Sleek, with all the expected equipment—advanced detection systems and diagnostic machines. No doubt, with a proper medical officer in charge of its facilities, it would be capable of administering state-of-the-art treatments for diseases and injuries that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. It felt comforting to know that the crew would be well taken care of, no matter what dangers they might face in the coming months.

But as incredible as all these features were, with even more hidden away on the lower levels of the ship, nothing compared to the bridge.

Finally, Izuku stepped into the center of the ship’s foremost space, his breath catching in his throat. This was where it all happened. The brain of the ship. The room hummed with energy, the array of consoles and glowing panels making it feel like a living, breathing organism. Everything was sleek, streamlined, and efficient. The walls curved gracefully, housing massive screens and holographic displays that seemed to stretch infinitely before him.

At the center and front of it all was the pilot’s seat. Izuku’s eyes were drawn to it instantly. To him, it was the most important seat on the entire ship.

It was where All Might had sat.

It was where Izuku yearned to sit. 

But the seat was not for him. 

Katsuki Bakugo brushed past him, knocking their shoulders together in a move that made Izuku stumble. 

Immediately, the warmth in Izuku’s chest faded. 

As he watched Bakugo take his place in the pilot’s seat without so much as sparing him a glance, Izuku felt something heavier and nastier grow in his chest. The air between them was thick with years of history—years of bullying, belittling, and rivalry that had left its scars.

Bakugo had always been the loud, explosive presence in Izuku's life, the one who’d never let him forget his weaknesses. Izuku had never understood why Katsuki had always been so angry, so eager to crush him at every turn. He had a feeling that being assigned to the same temporary crew for their final exam wouldn't change any of that. 

Izuku couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy as he watched Bakugo begin to prepare for launch. The role of pilot had slipped from his grasp, but just as devastating was that Izuku hadn’t even qualified to be the relief pilot. Instead, the position had assigned to some guy named Tokoyami Fumikage. As the other cadet entered the bridge, it was impossible for Izuku not to notice that he wasn't human, his head more like that of a bird. With a slight purse in his lips, Izuku silently postulated that maybe Tokoyami’s bird-like features made him more suited for flight—for piloting.  

Izuku sighed, his deflation palpable as he moved to the station to the right of the pilot’s controls—the navigation console. Even if he hadn't been awarded the position he'd truly desired, he was grateful that he'd at least managed to earn a spot on the bridge. He figured that over the course of the next three months, he could still learn more than a few things about piloting a spacecraft while watching Bakugo fulfill the role.

At the console opposite Izuku’s, Jiro Kyouka took her position, her fingers moving quickly over the screen as she adjusted the communications systems. She glanced over at Izuku for a moment and gave a brief nod, her face neutral, but her eyes warm.

Izuku blinked, momentarily caught off guard by the small gesture—the second acknowledgement he’d received from one of the strangers that were now his crew mates. It was nothing more than a passing nod, yet it felt like an anchor in the sea of his uncertainty. He straightened slightly, the tension in his chest loosening just a bit. Maybe he didn’t belong in the pilot’s seat—but he wasn’t completely alone here either.

As Izuku checked over the information on the navigation console—ensuring everything matched the course he'd charted prior to their voyage—Iida Tenya and Yaoyorozu Momo made their way onto the bridge. Instead of sitting in his own chair—which was slightly elevated and centered behind the pilot’s—Iida chose to instead stand between Bakugo’s and Izuku’s seats, his posture rigid. Yaoyorozu moved to the tactical console, her expression focused and determined. 

Together, the six of them—Izuku, Bakugo, Jiro, Tokoyami, Iida, and Yaoyorozu—would be tasked with staffing the bridge. Iida and Yaoyorozu would make the final calls while the rest of them followed through, ensuring the 1-A and its crew traversed the stars safely. 

After a few minutes of checking over consoles and running diagnostics of the ship, Aizawa and All Might stepped onto the bridge, their presence commanding immediate attention. Aizawa’s sharp eyes swept across the crew, ensuring every cadet was in place, while All Might stood tall, his usual broad grin replaced with a look of quiet pride.

“Everyone’s at their post,” Aizawa muttered, satisfied. “Jiro, status?”

Jiro’s fingers danced over the communications console, adjusting frequencies as she listened to the steady stream of reports. “Engineering has given us the go-ahead for launch,” she confirmed, her voice steady despite the tension thick in the air.

With a few quick taps, she opened a secure channel to the spaceport. “Spaceport Command, this is Starship 1-A. Requesting final departure clearance.”

A brief silence, then a response. “1-A, you are clear for departure.”

Jiro turned to Aizawa and nodded. “Confirmation received.”

Aizawa’s gaze flickered to Iida. “Give the final command.”

Iida straightened, his movements precise as Jiro opened a channel for him so that his voice was heard across the entire ship. “All hands, prepare for departure. Launch sequence commencing in one minute.”

At the navigation console, Izuku’s hands hovered over the holographic display, his mind working at lightning speed. Star maps flickered in the air before him, lines of coordinates updating in real-time. He recalibrated their trajectory, ensuring an optimal path for their exit while monitoring gravitational shifts and potential obstacles. “Navigation locked in,” he called out. “All systems aligned for launch.”

In the pilot’s seat, Bakugou gripped the controls, his expression one of laser focus. He muttered under his breath, fingers flexing as he prepared for the raw power of the ship’s thrusters. “Engines primed,” he announced, voice edged with impatience. “We’re green across the board.”

Yaoyorozu checked the tactical readouts, ensuring the ship’s shields and emergency countermeasures were online. “Defensive systems operational,” she reported. “All security protocols engaged.”

Jiro listened intently to external frequencies, ensuring no last-minute communications could disrupt their takeoff. “No incoming alerts. Launch space is clear.”

Iida’s voice rang out one last time. “All systems are go.”

Aizawa exchanged a look with All Might, who gave a small nod.

And then, Jiro began the countdown.

"Ten…Nine…Eight…"

Izuku’s hands gripped the edges of his console, his heart hammering in his chest.

"Seven…Six…Five…"

Bakugou exhaled sharply, shifting his grip. The ship vibrated as the engines built up power, a deep thrumming that resonated through the floor.

"Four…Three…Two…"

The entire crew braced themselves.

"One."

With a deafening roar, the thrusters ignited, and the 1-A surged forward. Izuku felt the press of acceleration as they broke free from the docking bay, the artificial gravity compensating as best it could. The view beyond the bridge windows shifted from the metal expanse of the station to the boundless stretch of the cosmos.

They were in open space.

A moment of silence followed—an unspoken acknowledgment of the milestone they had just crossed.

Then Jiro’s voice sounded through the bridge. “Solar Prime Spacesport has confirmed successful departure. We’re officially on our way.”

Izuku exhaled, barely aware of the grin spreading across his face. Around him, the crew began adjusting to the ship’s movement, settling into their new reality.

This was only the beginning.

For as cold as the rest of the ship felt, the dining hall was a surprise. Instead of the sterile, tech-focused aesthetics that seemed to dominate the rest of the ship, this room had an unexpected touch of warmth. Rich wood paneling lined the walls, and the long tables seemed like they could belong in a cozy family home rather than a starship. It was a place where the crew could come together and unwind, sharing meals and stories.

Izuku stood alone at it's entrance with his tray of food in hand, overwhelmed by the hum of activity around him. The room was already lively with the chatter of cadets who had already taken their seats, groups of them gathered together, talking and laughing as they enjoyed their first meal on board the 1-A. The scent of food mixed with the metallic tang of the ship’s atmosphere, but despite the homeliness, Izuku felt a little out of place.

A group of girls sat in the corner, including Jiro and Yaoyorozu, already deep in conversation. They made the occasional glance at their tablets to monitor their posts, but their chatter filled the room, light and easy. 

Across the room, Bakugo was surrounded by a trio of boys in engineering uniforms, though it didn't appear as if he'd joined them by choice. It was clear the group had formed without any attempt at blending into their surroundings, the engineers all excitedly discussing something Izuku couldn’t catch. Bakugo was his usual self—loud and opinionated, his explosive personality working overtime. 

But it wasn’t the groupings that drew his eye the most. It was the two boys sitting alone. 

One had purple hair and a medical uniform marked with purple accents, his tired eyes downcast as he poked at his food. The other had split-colored hair and a light blue-accented uniform, his hands still as he stared out the window and into space, his meal forgotten. 

For a moment, Izuku thought about joining them. But something in his gut told him that he might just end up intruding on their quiet. Though he could be wrong, he thought they looked like they preferred solitude.

With a sigh, Izuku headed for a table on the far end of the room, choosing a corner by himself. He sat down, staring out at the dark expanse of space just like that other boy. The stars shimmered, distant and unreachable. He could lose himself in their light if he let himself.

As he began to eat, he decided to keep his anxious mind busy. He pulled his tablet from his bag, switching it on and navigating to the crew manifest. Though he'd familiarized himself with the bridge crew before boarding, he still had a lot of names and roles to memorize. The sooner he learned everyone’s responsibilities, the better. Knowing the people he would be working with was vital, not just for efficiency, but for also navigating his interactions with them. He wasn’t great at anything social, but he figured that if he knew the basics about each person, maybe he could avoid embarrassing himself.

The ship had eight main designations—Command, Bridge, Medical, Research, Engineering, Security, Operations, and Stewarding. Each crew member had their assigned role, their specialty. Izuku skimmed through the entries, trying to match the nineteen names on the list—excluding his own—with the faces he saw around him.

When he came to the Research and Development section, he paused. There was no one listed as the Head of Physics and Astronomy. Izuku frowned, his brow furrowing. It was strange. He had expected someone to be in charge of these fields, especially with the ship’s advanced systems—artificial gravity, orbital navigation, and the delicate maneuvering required to land on planets with different gravity fields. He was supposed to be working closely with them to plan the ship’s courses past stars and through solar systems. 

Maybe the ship’s systems handled all that instead? It wasn’t out of the question, but it still felt odd. He made a mental note to keep an eye on the system's functionality, just in case.

His focus was broken when a voice interrupted him.

"Midoriya."

Izuku looked up in surprise to find Iida standing across from him, the captain's uniform immaculately crisp and his posture perfectly rigid. The overhead lights glinted off the insignia at his collar, casting a sharp line across the edge of his jaw. He looked like he’d stepped straight out of a recruitment poster.

“Ah, Captain. I wasn’t expecting you…” Izuku stammered, suddenly aware of how hunched over he’d been. He straightened instinctively, unsure whether he should stand or stay seated.

“Please, just call me ‘Iida.’” He took a seat across from Izuku, gently depositing his tray of food and folding his hands neatly on the table. “Though I may be acting as captain for our exam, I haven't officially earned the title just yet.”

As Iida unfolded his napkin with robotic precision, Izuku caught himself watching a little too closely. Iida’s movements were fluid but practiced and calculated. For a moment, Izuku wondered if he could be an android. His mannerisms were so unnervingly crisp, his voice so evenly clipped it lacked the hesitation or warmth of casual speech.

“Am I interrupting?” Iida asked, his gaze fixed intently on Izuku.

“No, no, of course not,” Izuku said quickly. "I was just going through the crew manifest." He glanced at the tablet in his hands and nervously set it down. "Uh…How can I help you?"

Iida nodded, as if everything were in perfect order. Then, without missing a beat, he picked up his fork and knife and began cutting into a freshly seared cutlet—real meat, not the synthetic slabs they’d soon rely on. Steam still curled off the plate, carrying a savory scent that made Izuku’s stomach rumble. 

"I wanted to learn more about your responsibilities, Midoriya. You're in charge of navigation, correct?"

Izuku felt a jolt in his chest. Of course the captain knew that. He’d probably memorized everyone’s file down to their blood type. Still, being called out made it feel real.

“Yes, that’s right,” Izuku said, trying to steady his voice. He paused to take a bite of his own meal—roasted vegetables, actual root-grown and lightly seasoned. The warmth filled his mouth, rich and earthy, and for a second it grounded him. “I map out the most efficient and safest routes for the ship. Once we have our final destination and the planets or stations we need to stop at along the way, I check for any astronomical anomalies that could affect the journey, like solar flares or asteroid fields, and plot our course accordingly.”

Iida nodded while chewing, then carefully dabbed the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “Ah, yes. ‘The Passage Plan.’”

“That’s right,” Izuku said between bites. “And I maintain the ship’s navigational equipment. I make sure we’re always up-to-date with the latest maps and safety protocols.” He paused, sighing as he pushed a roasted carrot across his plate. “That's it, really.”

“You speak of your role as if it is an unimportant one.” Iida’s expression remained serious, but he didn’t seem disinterested. His tone was firm, but not scolding. “Let me reassure you that your role is essential, Midoriya. Without you, I’m afraid that snappy pilot of ours might steer us straight into a red supergiant star.”

Despite himself, Izuku snorted mid-chew and nearly choked. He covered his mouth with a hand, coughing, then laughed “Kacchan’s more competent than that.” 

“I’m sure,” Iida said with a slight nod, slicing another piece of his cutlet with surgical precision. “Nevertheless, what you do is vital. You provide a foundation that allows us to stay on course, both literally and figuratively.”

Izuku glanced down at his plate. The food really was good—flavorful, real—but the compliment made his appetite falter for a moment. Praise always left him a little squirmy. He picked at a soft roll, tearing off a piece and popping it into his mouth as he replied, “Thanks. But, I mean, it's not like being the captain or the pilot…”

“Perhaps not,” Iida agreed, setting his utensils down momentarily. “But it is crucial to the ship’s success, nevertheless. You provide the knowledge and direction, and without that, we’d be lost.”

Izuku swallowed hard—not from the food, but from the sincerity in Iida’s voice. The idea that someone like him, someone so...perfect, thought Izuku’s work mattered—it lit something warm in his chest. He lowered his head slightly, thankful for the encouragement. “Thanks. You’ve made me see it in a bit of a new light, I guess. I didn't think anyone would be so interested in it.”

There was a pause. Iida took another bite, his voice a little less formal when he spoke again. “Well, you know what they say—a good captain knows how to do the job of every person on his ship.”

Izuku raised an eyebrow, lifting his drink pouch and sipping from the straw. “Do they really say that? Seems like a lot for one person to know.”

Iida smiled faintly. “Well, no. But my brother said something like that once. He said that a good captain knows what his crew does, and he trusts them to do their job well.”

“Your brother?” Izuku asked, curious. “Is he a captain, too?”

“Yes,” Iida replied with a sense of pride, his chest puffing out slightly. “He captains the Ingenium.”

Izuku’s eyes widened. He nearly dropped his fork. “The Ingenium? Your brother is the captain of the Ingenium?”

Iida nodded firmly, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “He’s one of the very best. If you ask me, there’s no better.”

Izuku leaned back slightly, digesting the new information. Of course Iida’s brother captained one of the most prestigious ships in the fleet. It made sense now—the posture, the discipline, the need to live up to something bigger. And yet, sitting here, eating warm food and swapping stories, Iida felt human, like more than his uniform or his title. Suddenly, Izuku felt a bit more connected to the ambitious, perfect captain sitting across from him.

"He sounds like someone I’d like to meet one day," Izuku said with a small smile.

Iida’s smile widened. "Maybe one day, Midoriya."

Their conversation settled into a comfortable lull. Around them, the murmur of other cadets swelled—metal utensils scraping plates, laughter bubbling here and there, and the occasional sharp hiss of steam from a kitchen valve. 

Izuku picked up another bite and chewed slowly. For the first time since boarding, the future didn’t seem quite so daunting. He felt a little lighter—like he might just be starting to find his place among all the unknowns.

That night, Izuku sat cross-legged in the middle of the ship's garden, his eyes locked on the vast expanse of stars through the clear dome overhead. He’d discovered that the garden was a rare pocket of tranquility amidst the sterile, utilitarian walls of the ship. The circular room was filled to the brim with soft, vibrant greenery. Lush plants thrived under the starlight, their leaves rustling gently in the quiet hum of the air circulation systems. The scent of earth and growing foliage mixed with the metallic tang of the ship, the fragrance both calming and foreign. 

The stars beyond the dome seemed impossibly bright tonight, their light shimmering like diamonds scattered across an endless black ocean. 

Izuku leaned backwards, his fingertips tangling in the smooth surface of the grass he'd settled upon, lost in the beauty of it all. The vastness of space, the journey ahead—everything felt surreal. His thoughts swirled like the constellations overhead, some flickering with excitement, others with the gnawing tension of what was to come.

Everyone else had long since retreated to their rooms, or so he had thought. 

"Can't sleep?"

Izuku's heart jumped in his chest at the unexpected voice. He whirled around, his eyes wide. He hadn't heard the soft footsteps approaching, but now, standing just behind him, was All Might. His tall figure, even more imposing in the dim light of the garden, cast a long shadow over the grass.

His features were gentle, a slight grin on his features as he asked, “Are your quarters not to your liking?”

“I—They’re fine, sir,” Izuku stammered, scrambling to his feet and straightening up quickly. His pulse raced, partly from the shock of being caught off guard, partly from being face to face with the war hero he'd admired since he was just a kid. “The room’s great. Really. It’s just...Well, there’s a lot on my mind, I guess. Maybe it’s the excitement...or just...nerves? I don’t really know.”

Izuku nearly smacked himself upside the head at his own stuttering. 

All Might stood before him, his figure framed against the stars. The soft glow from the dome cast him in a light that almost made him look like one of those distant celestial bodies. Izuku was meeting the man that'd put him on this path and given him the motivation to be what he wanted to be, yet he could hardly form a single intelligible sentence. 

All Might stepped closer. His voice was soft, yet full of a quiet strength that seemed to fill the space. “I can understand your nervousness.”

He turned his gaze to the stars overhead. “That nervous excitement never really fades; not for me, at least. No matter how many times I’ve ventured into the stars, I never tire of the view. Every time, it feels like the first. There’s something about it—the way the stars seem to stretch on forever. It’s the great unknown, but it’s also...home.”

Izuku turned his gaze upward once more, his heart lifting at the thought. The hum of the ship—which was quickly growing as familiar to him as his own breathing—faded into the background as he took in the vast sea of stars. Each one was a distant world, a possible future. And yet, they began to feel closer—so reachable, like they were just waiting for someone to step forward and claim them.

“Is this your first time out of atmosphere?” All Might’s voice cut through his thoughts, calm and curious.

“No, but...it’ll be my first long voyage.” Izuku cleared his throat, his hands nervously fidgeting with the hem of his sleeve. “The exam...it’s so much bigger than anything I’ve done before. I mean, I’ve been to space before—short trips, but nothing like this. This...This is different.”

All Might studied him for a moment, his eyes soft but sharp. “I see. Well, I’m sure you’re feeling the weight of it. But that’s good, Young Midoriya.”

Izuku jolted as his greatest hero said his name. 

“It means you care,” All Might finished. His voice dropped lower, almost like a secret shared between them. “The stars have a way of showing you just how small you are. But they also remind you how far you can go if you’re willing to reach.”

Izuku's throat tightened, the words sinking deep into his chest. He wanted to ask so much—about All Might's travels, the challenges he'd faced, what it was really like out there—but his nerves held him back, a tight knot tangling in his stomach.

"You’ll do well." All Might placed a hand on Izuku’s shoulder, the gesture warm and firm. “This is what you've trained for. So keep pushing forward. You might be surprised at what you can do.”

Izuku closed his eyes for a moment, taking in the words, feeling the weight of them settle inside him, solidifying his resolve. The steady thrum of the ship beneath him felt like a heartbeat, syncing with his own. He had always dreamed of this, of being out in space, of proving his worth. 

“I’ll do my best,” Izuku said, his voice stronger now, a little less uncertain. His shoulders squared, his chest lifting with newfound determination. “I won’t let anyone down.”

All Might gave a knowing nod, his smile never wavering. “Then you better get some rest. Tomorrow won’t be easy. Aizawa was right—it’ll be intense, right from the second day. But you’ve prepared for this.”

Izuku nodded, the weight of the journey ahead no longer feeling as heavy. It was a challenge, yes, but one he felt a little more prepared for. All Might’s words rang in his ears as he watched his instructor turn to leave, his steps quiet on the garden’s soft earth.

As All Might disappeared into the shadows of the ship, Izuku lingered a moment longer, watching the stars—his future waiting in the vastness of space. The specks of light seemed even brighter now, the space between them no longer so vast. 

Izuku now knew one thing for certain: the path ahead was his to carve.

With that thought, he turned to head toward his room. His steps were lighter, his heart steadier, the quiet promise of the stars guiding him forward.

Chapter Text

Almost a week had passed since the crew of third-year U.A. Space Academy cadets had boarded Starship 1-A.

Izuku still felt like he was constantly playing catch-up. The missions piled up fast, one after another, with little downtime in between. Though the constant pressure was exhausting, it also felt exhilarating in its own strange way. 

Each assignment was different—planetary recon, rescue and recovery operations, docking system repairs, first contact missions—and always with team combinations that felt deliberately chaotic. Some days it felt like the exam board had drawn names from a hat and laughed at the results. Izuku wasn’t sure if the combinations were meant to test adaptability or everyone’s sanity.

Today, Izuku was stationed in the transport room, alone at the console as he monitored the duplicator pods. His fingers tapped out a nervous rhythm on the panel’s edge, each beat echoing in the otherwise quiet space as he waited for two of his crewmates to return.

It was Bakugo and Todoroki—the boy with the split-colored hair who Izuku had seen alone in the mess hall on that first day and later learned was their Chief of Staff. Though Izuku hadn't interacted with Todoroki much, the title still surprised him sometimes. Todoroki seemed to carry himself with a kind of quiet, restrained intensity, like someone constantly trying to keep his emotions on a short leash. In some ways, that made him even more dangerous than Bakugo, Izuku thought.

Izuku could still remember the look on Aizawa’s face when he'd given the three of them their assignment: equal parts dry and grim amusement, like he knew it would be a disaster. Izuku had thought the same. Bakugo and Todoroki, working together on a first-contact mission? That was like strapping explosives to both ends of a seesaw and hoping for balance.

He'd thought for a long while about what benefits pairing two of the most emotionally allergic cadets together might have. Izuku knew the instability of Kacchan’s temper like the back of his own hand, and it’d only taken overhearing two mission reports for him to learn that Todoroki’s disposition could be just as volatile. Pairing them up for a mission had to be a stress test. That, or some kind of sick joke.

The duplicator pods sat idle on the other side of the console, lights slowly pulsing like sleeping heartbeats.

Izuku stared at the status screen, checking the inhabitant’s vitals and connection readings every few seconds. The idea of the duplicator pods had always fascinated him—transmitting consciousness and waking up in a clone of your own body somewhere else. It was equal parts terrifying and brilliant. But the real kicker was the memory sync: if the clone died or took otherwise substantial damage before making it back to the pod for a memory sync, the real person would never know what had happened while they ran around in a clone of their own body.

A shiver ran down his spine. Just thinking about it made his chest tight. What if something happened out there? What if they came back with no recollection of the last two hours?

Now that Izuku thought about it, making it back with their memories intact was probably part of whatever test Aizawa had designed for Bakugo and Todoroki. It wasn't just about surviving. It was about remembering, reflecting, and learning.

The screen before him flickered.

Pod Return Signal: INCOMING.

The console beeped twice. Izuku’s heart gave a jolt, and he straightened instantly in his chair.

"Pod status, Midoriya," came a voice over the comm—his commanding officer and lead examiner, Aizawa.

Izuku jumped slightly, fumbling for the comm. “Yes, sorry! Uh—they’re back. Both pods incoming, sir.”

He hit the switch and watched, breath held, as the hatches hissed open with a burst of steam and the low whine of decompression.

The first to sit up was Todoroki. His face was tight, brow furrowed as he swung his legs over the edge of the pod. He looked dazed, but also pissed, like someone holding back a monsoon behind a thin sheet of glass.

Seconds later, Bakugo shoved the hatch of his pod open like it had personally offended him and climbed out, already muttering curses under his breath.

It took less than five seconds for the yelling to start.

“You absolute imbecile,” Todoroki hissed, venom practically dripping from his tone. “It takes a very special kind of idiot to pull off what you just did.”

Bakugo barked a humorless laugh. “Nobody died, Half and Half. Chill the hell out.”

Todoroki stood so fast the pod shook. “So what? Do you want a fucking gold star? Is this some kind of joke to you?”

Izuku glanced toward the door, debating escape. 

But it was too late for that. A familiar soft shuffle of boots echoed from the corridor, and in came Aizawa. Like always, his eyes were tired. He wore the usual expression of someone who hadn’t had coffee or patience in days.

“Spill it,” he ordered, voice like gravel. “What the hell happened down there?”

Bakugo rolled his neck. “Don’t look at me. I told you I hate this diplomacy shit. If you didn't want to start a war, you should've sent someone else.”

“That’s precisely why you were sent,” Aizawa snapped. “As the ship’s primary pilot, you’re going to be in charge of more than just steering. You’ll be representing the crew more often than you think. You need to learn when to use your mouth for words instead of detonation.”

Izuku felt his stomach twist. He wasn’t even involved in the mission beyond monitoring the pods, but second hand dread coiled in his chest. If he ever screwed up in front of Aizawa like this, he’d combust on the spot.

Todoroki’s voice was level, but it carried an underlying heat. “We were invited into the central complex. Everything went smoothly until we were separated. Ten minutes later, this lunatic comes sprinting out of the forest with half a legion of those things on his ass.”

Izuku’s eyes widened. He didn’t even want to ask what “those things” meant.

Bakugo crossed his arms, clearly insulted. “I handled it.”

“You blew up their embassy,” Todoroki snapped.

“It wasn’t their fucking embassy!”

“Their main structure, then,” Todoroki corrected, not missing a beat. “It doesn’t really matter what we call it if it’s a crater now.”

Aizawa looked like he aged ten years on the spot. “You blew it up?”

“It was controlled demolition,” Bakugo corrected with a straight face. "Didn't take anything more than a well-placed shot to one of their systems."

“Oh my god,” Izuku whispered under his breath.

“Bakugo,” Aizawa growled, “I swear to every star in this galaxy…”

“They were going to imprison us!” Bakugo barked. “I saw it! The doors were sealing off one by one and they had weapons ready—”

Todoroki shook his head. “I talked them down. That was their security protocol, not an ambush. You panicked and made it worse.”

“I didn't panic. I don't panic. I saw what they were really up to and did what I needed to get us out. Better a blast than a cage,” Bakugo muttered, then added, almost smugly, “And hey, it worked.”

Izuku could barely breathe. The atmosphere was so thick with tension, it felt like the ship might tilt from it.

Aizawa held up a hand. “Enough. You’re both grounded from mission command until further notice. Your next assignment will be together. Again. And the next and the next, until you learn how to work as a team. I'll even make you sleep in the same quarters if I have to. I'm sure that will make you learn the virtues of patience.”

Todoroki paled.

Bakugo grimaced. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

Izuku didn’t speak. He just watched—wide-eyed and frozen—as two of the supposedly ‘most capable’ cadets on the ship stormed out in opposite directions. The room fell quiet again, save for the low hum of the transport console and the soft hiss of sterilizers kicking in.

He looked down at his trembling fingers. If they couldn't keep it together, what chance did he have?

His first off-ship mission was tomorrow. Until now, his missions had involved a lot of sitting at consoles and plotting routes for other cadets.

He didn’t know who he’d be grouped with yet. And right now, all he could imagine was failure—loud, burning failure like a star collapsing in on itself.

‘Get it together,’ he told himself, swallowing the rising anxiety.

But the truth sat heavy in his chest: he wasn’t sure if he could.

Izuku had been dismissed from the post-mission debrief—if that shouting march could even be called that—with a vague order from Aizawa to “go familiarize yourself with the rest of the ship.” He wasn’t sure if that was simply a less direct way for Aizawa to tell him to go away, or if it was an actual assignment. Either way, he intended to follow through.

Though, if he was being honest, he had a motive of his own for venturing deeper into the ship.

He had been to every wing since launch: command, transport, medical, recreation. He'd even been to the storage decks when a shipment got jammed and a dozen crates of emergency rations had nearly crushed someone. But there was one place he hadn’t dared to visit yet—engineering. He'd kept his distance not because it was restricted, but because it had a reputation. Even after just a week aboard, everyone knew: the engineering bay was where the chaos lived.

The moment he stepped through the bulkhead door, that reputation greeted him like a slap to the face.

“Kaminari, that is literally the opposite of grounding the surge!”

A blast of static cracked through the air, rattling Izuku’s eardrums. The unmistakable scent of ozone and scorched metal flooded his nose. Lights overhead flickered from open access panels, some sparking like trapped lightning. Toolkits lay scattered like breadcrumbs across the floor, forming an impromptu obstacle course of wrenches, stripped wire, and unspooled coupling coils.

The room thrummed with kinetic life—hydraulics hissed, vents hummed, and somewhere, the rhythmic clang of metal on metal echoed as someone wrestled a stubborn part into place. It was less a workspace and more like a warzone where the enemy was entropy.

At the far end, a fountain of sparks cascaded from an open ceiling panel. A figure balanced on a ladder—half-swallowed by the wall—shouted over the noise with cheerful exasperation. “Yo, Kaminari, I told you not to crosswire the flux cap! That’s how we get spontaneous combustion in the hallway!”

A voice replied from somewhere behind a glowing console, laughing like this was all perfectly normal. “Relax! It’s not combustion—just an exciting light show!”

Izuku hovered in the doorway, rigid as a reinforced bulkhead. His boots squeaked faintly against the polished steel floor as he adjusted his grip on the datapad clutched to his chest. He’d come down here with a half-official mission, and a personal request for suit calibration before his first off-world assignment.

But he hadn’t expected it to feel like stepping into a storm.

A console nearby let out a protesting beep, and a singed head popped up from behind it with grease-streaked cheeks, frizzled eyebrows, and an easy, sheepish grin.

Izuku instantly matched the face to a name, recalling the crew manifest he’d spent nights memorizing.

“Oh, hey! You’re Midoriya, right?” Kaminari Denki waved him over. “Come on in! Ignore the smell—it’s just melted wiring.”

Izuku choked, the acrid stench of overheated plastic curling up his nose. “I—what?”

“Don’t worry,” another voice offered from somewhere within the walls, slightly muffled. “We’ve got it under control. Mostly.”

“That’s not true,” someone else added helpfully.

Izuku looked up, tracking the voice until he spotted Sero Hanta balanced with casual ease on a steel rafter near the ceiling, tightening something with a large wrench. He looked entirely too comfortable up there.

“Kaminari just zapped the entire forward relay, and now half the ship thinks it’s midnight.”

Kaminari snorted, utterly unfazed by the growing look of horror on Izuku’s face. “Come on, we don’t bite. Well, Kirishima probably could, but he’s more of a headbutt guy.”

“I heard that!” a voice barked from behind a bulkhead, gravelly and amused. A loud clang followed, then the unmistakable sound of a wrench bouncing off a wall. “And I only headbutt people who deserve it!”

“Great,” Izuku muttered under his breath, then cleared his throat. “Uh—yeah. That’s me. Midoriya. I was told you could help recalibrate my field gear? My external sensors are picking up too much interference.”

Sero rolled his eyes in good-natured exasperation. With the grace of someone who'd done it a thousand times, he slid down a vertical support beam and landed beside Izuku with a soft thud that reverberated through the grating beneath their feet.

“Classic academy issue,” he said, clapping a solid hand on Izuku’s shoulder. “They load our EVA suits with top-tier tech, then forget to account for electromagnetic bleed on real missions. Let’s get you sorted.”

They wove deeper into the bay, stepping over cables and ducking beneath a low-hanging propulsion manifold that loomed overhead like the skeletal remains of some dormant, mechanical beast. The hum of auxiliary systems vibrated faintly through the floor, like the ship itself was breathing.

Sero gestured toward the organized chaos around them, wires and sparks and shouted corrections flying in every direction. “This is home. I handle propulsion—fuel flow, grav-drives, thruster diagnostics, and the like. Kirishima’s our combat and shielding guy. And Kaminari—”

“Is an electrical liability,” Kirishima Eijirou cut in as he emerged from behind a bulkhead, grease on his jaw and a datapad under one arm. “But he’s a genius when he focuses. He’s the one who rerouted half the ship’s power during that solar flare yesterday.”

Kaminari puffed up with pride, grinning. “You’re welcome for that, by the way. Saved all your asses and didn’t even fry myself. Much.”

He swept his sweaty hair from his face and gave Izuku a nod. “Hey, Midoriya. You’re the guy that ran that jump-seat simulation on the second day, right? The one where you modded your console mid-flight and still landed under the impact threshold? That was sick.”

Izuku blinked, caught off guard. “Oh—uh. Thanks. That was just…I mean, the auto-nav was lagging, so I figured I could isolate the vector inputs and—”

“You don’t hafta explain it.” Kaminari waved him off with a grin. “Just know it was awesome.”

Izuku smiled, shy but genuinely touched. It was the first time someone had described his work as ‘sick’ without any sarcasm.

Kirishima strode forward and clapped him on the back—firm but not punishing. “Welcome to the best department on board,” he said, grinning wide. “Engineering’s the backbone of every ship. Guys like Bakugo and Todoroki might get all the glory during post-mission conversations in the mess hall, but when something breaks? They’re just dudes in spacesuits, yelling at buttons.”

Sero laughed. “And we fix the buttons. And the suits. And the yelling, sometimes.”

Kirishima peeled a panel off a nearby diagnostic station and nodded toward a platform ringed in holo-sensors. “Alright, Midoriya. Let’s get those sensors calibrated. Suit up and hop on the scanner pad.”

As Izuku pulled on his EVA suit, still stiff from recharging, Kaminari buzzed around him with a handheld scanner. “You getting any weird feedback? Ghost signals? Duplicate reads?”

“A few, yeah.” Izuku stepped onto the platform as his suit sealed with a soft hiss. “Yesterday, I got a signal from orbit that turned out to be my own vitals bouncing off the nearest moon.”

Kaminari let out a low whistle. “Okay, that’s janky even by academy standards. We’ll strip the software and do a clean reinstall. Sero, get the override chip.”

The scanner spun to life, sweeping Izuku in a soft blue glow. He stood still, HUD flickering as readings recalibrated line by line.

He’d expected engineering to feel overwhelming—loud, messy, erratic. And it was. But beneath the surface-level chaos was rhythm, a cadence of gears turning, voices syncing, problems being solved in real time. The three of them moved like a living circuit—sparking, adapting, correcting.

And somehow, within all the noise, Izuku felt a strange sense of calm.

Kirishima leaned casually against a crate, arms crossed. “Your first off-world mission is tomorrow, right? Got the jitters?”

Izuku nodded. “Yeah. A bit.”

Kaminari shot him a confident thumbs-up. “You’re gonna kill it. You’ve already got the instincts—the jump-seat sim proved that. Once you learn to trust them, everything else falls into place.”

The scanner beeped twice and powered down, indicating that the calibration was complete.

Sero handed Izuku a fresh interface chip with a grin. “All set. Suit’s running cleaner than a dorm room ten minutes before inspection.”

Izuku stepped down, flexing his fingers. The system felt different—clearer, more responsive. Like someone had tuned the static out of his thoughts.

“Thanks,” he said, bowing slightly. “Really. I wasn’t sure what to expect down here.”

“You expected tech goblins, didn’t you?” Kaminari teased, eyes gleaming.

“…A little.”

“Fair,” Kirishima shrugged. “So, was it just the suit? Or did someone finally figure out this is the coolest place on the ship?”

“Aizawa told me to explore more of the ship. I figured it wouldn't hurt to understand how things work down here.”

Sero gave an approving nod. “We’d be more than happy to sate a curious mind.”

“You’re not about to make him run diagnostics, are you?” Kaminari said, mock-scandalized. “At least give the guy a snack first.”

Kirishima pointed toward a small side table cluttered with half-eaten ration bars and a cracked thermos. “That’s the snack station. Beware the gray ones. We think they’re ration bars from like…two generations ago.”

Izuku chuckled, amused despite himself. “Thanks. I’ll pass on the…mystery bricks.”

Kirishima clapped him on the shoulder again—Izuku was beginning to figure out that they had a habit of doing that—gentler this time. “You’re welcome down here anytime, man. It's nice to have someone interested in how the place actually works instead of just yelling when it breaks.”

The tightness in Izuku’s chest eased. He hadn’t expected to find something like this—something that felt, just a little, like belonging.

“Thanks,” he said, voice soft but sincere. “I think I will be spending more time here.”

“Hell yeah you will,” Kaminari grinned. “Just bring more snacks. And maybe a fire extinguisher. Y’know. Just in case.”

Izuku laughed—really laughed—for the first time in hours, the sound rising above the hum of machinery and sparking lights.

He still didn’t know what that upcoming mission would throw at him. But right now, surrounded by chaos, camaraderie, and the low hum of shared purpose, he felt a little more ready than he had before.

The planet seemed hollow and empty.

Barren dust stretched in all directions, the ground cracked like old parchment beneath Izuku's boots. Each step released a faint puff of powdered grit into the thin air. Dry gusts of wind swept across the plains, whispering through jagged stone formations in the distance. Even the horizon looked weary—blurred by heat and shadow. Pale sunlight hung in the washed-out sky, filtered through a weak atmosphere, casting long, skeletal shadows as he and two other cadets made their way toward the designated coordinates.

Izuku glanced sideways at his partners. Sero’s easy smile had faded into a tight, focused expression, while Yaoyorozu’s eyes swept the terrain methodically, one hand on the device strapped to her wrist. Both of them moved like professionals, precise and composed, and for the first time in hours, Izuku felt a breath of relief.

“I’m glad we got grouped together,” he said before he could really stop himself, voice low but sincere. “It’s nice working with people who make things easier.”

Sero looked over his shoulder with a chuckle. “Right? Better than Bakugo blowing up the desert for fun.”

Yaoyorozu smiled, brushing her bangs aside. “Agreed. A calm environment helps with focus. And it’s nice knowing we can rely on each other.”

Izuku adjusted the strap of his field pack and trudged forward, boots crunching softly with every step. The sound echoed faintly across the empty wasteland.

“You’d think for a final exam they’d at least send us somewhere with a view.” Sero kicked a rock lazily, sending it skittering down a slight incline. “I was hoping for floating crystal forests or something cool. This place is like the moon’s dead cousin.”

Yaoyorozu laughed softly. “It’s not aesthetically pleasing, I’ll admit that. But the terrain is stable, and there’s no atmospheric toxicity, so it’s ideal for training.”

“I mean, yeah, I’m glad I’m not choking,” Sero mock-rolled his eyes. “But still. If I trip on another rock, I’m declaring mutiny.”

Izuku smiled at the back-and-forth. It felt normal, even here in the middle of nowhere. There was something easy about being with Yaoyorozu and Sero—no posturing, no explosions, no power struggles. Just teamwork.

Yaoyorozu raised her arm, tapping at her wristband scanner. “We’re close. Just over that ridge.”

They climbed slowly, the slope steep and brittle underfoot. Small rocks crumbled and skidded beneath them with each movement. Izuku’s breathing quickened—not from exertion, but anticipation. Their briefing had been vague: Retrieve a package. No further details provided. That wasn’t uncommon for mission assignments, but it had certainly left him feeling unprepared.

At the top of the ridge, they finally saw it.

“Whoa…” Sero breathed, stopping in his tracks.

A twisted, scorched hulk of metal lay half-buried in the sand, barely recognizable as a small starship. The hull was jagged and blackened, gouged open like a wound. A few small fires had clearly raged inside at some point, but now only soot and silence remained.

“Well…This certainly wasn't what I expected,” Sero muttered.

Yaoyorozu’s brows furrowed. “Could it be a test? It's nearly right on top of the coordinates we were given. Maybe the commission left it here for our examination?”

Izuku shook his head slowly, stepping closer to the wreck with his face pinched in concentration. “I don't see a Commission or academy insignia anywhere. And the design is too intricate. Look at the curvature of the exterior plating—it’s modular, but with custom overlays. It’s way too detailed for a fake wreck meant just for training.”

“Creepy,” Sero added. “So then there’s no way this is part of the test, right?”

Izuku crouched by a section of the hull, brushing his fingers across the surface. It was cool to the touch, pitted with tiny craters like it had been through a micro-meteor storm. “This wasn’t staged. This really crashed. Someone was flying this.” In a whisper, he finished, “And not long ago…”

There was a half-open hatch nearby, its edges warped. Sero pulled a small crowbar from his belt and pried it open wider. It screeched in protest, the sound sharp in the silence.

The interior beyond was pitch dark.

Izuku flicked on the light on the chest of his suit and ducked inside first. The corridor was narrow, built for utility, with panels torn from the walls and wiring hanging in clusters like vines. A burst pipe had scorched part of the ceiling. Dust drifted in the beam of his light like tadpoles in water.

The three of them moved slowly through the wreck, methodically checking each section. Most of the rooms were empty or charred beyond recognition—storage, what might have once been a galley, and a navigation bay all reduced to melted consoles.

Sero found a flickering control panel on the ship’s tiny bridge. “Midoriya, over here.”

Izuku crossed the room and studied the readouts. The symbols were unrecognizable, the language foreign. But the structure of the panel was similar to a standard layout. He navigated it instinctively—guessing from form rather than text. A map appeared, displaying the ship’s schematics. One room still had a faint energy signature.

“There.” He pointed. “That section still has some power.”

They followed the schematic deeper into the ship, down onto the second level. The air felt tighter there, the weight of silence pressing harder with every step. The metal creaked occasionally beneath their feet, the groan of a dying thing. Eventually, they reached a sealed door. A panel blinked dimly beside it—still functional, but just barely.

Izuku touched it. The door hissed, then slid halfway open with a clunk, jamming partway. Sero pulled out his slim pry bar once more and wedged it in the gap, straining until the door scraped open wide enough for them to squeeze through. Sand had piled in from a breech somewhere they couldn't see, the room almost completely obscured by it.

Then something shimmered in the dust.

Izuku paused, mid-step, staring at the faint glint half-buried in the sand about five meters away. It was small and metallic, but something about the angle, the way it caught the beam of his light, made his stomach twist.

Without a word, he dropped to his knees and scrambled forward, fingers digging into the grit.

“What is it?” Sero asked behind him, voice low and tense.

Izuku didn’t answer. His hands were already brushing sand away, faster and more frantic. The wind outside howled against the warped hull as he uncovered a sleek, dark curve. It was smooth to the touch, but not part of the ship. It was a suit, not wreckage.

It was a body.

His heart stuttered, hands flying faster.

Izuku unearthed more. The exosuit was skintight, carbon-lined, and clearly advanced. It had been scorched in places—one of the sleeves nearly burned through at the elbow—but the structure of it was mostly intact. A strange fuchsia insignia he didn't recognize marked the shoulder, faded and cracked with age or damage.

Then he reached the helmet.

Izuku hesitated, chest tight. He brushed dust from the visor slowly, his fingers trembling.

A face greeted him.

He recoiled instinctively, gasping. The girl inside the suit wasn’t moving. Blood streaked down from her temple, her brown hair clinging to her face, matted and slick. Her skin was too pale, her lips tinged with blue.

“Midoriya?” Sero called out, sharp now. “What is it?”

“It’s a person,” Izuku whispered. “She’s alive—I think…I hope.”

Sero was next to him in seconds, his eyes widening. “Holy shit…”

Yaoyorozu didn’t speak. She was already beside them, producing a medscanner from her belt with a swift motion. The scanner’s light flickered over the girl’s chest, then her neck.

“Her pulse is weak,” Yaoyorozu reported, voice clipped and precise. “Oxygen levels are dangerously low. We don’t have long.”

Izuku nodded quickly. “We need to get her out of here. Now.”

Sero dropped into a crouch on the girl's other side, carefully hooking an arm beneath her shoulders. Izuku supported her limp body with a similar grip. The moment they lifted her from the sand, the damaged rebreather on her back sparked and hissed before going dark completely.

Her body sagged between them, one of her limp arms draped across Izuku’s shoulder.

She looked young. Their age, or maybe younger. And entirely unfamiliar.

“No academy ID,” Yaoyorozu stated, already scanning the girl’s suit. “This technology isn’t registered in any student files, or even with the Commission database.”

“Which means she’s not part of the test,” Sero muttered. “She’s not part of…anything.”

Izuku stared at her face—still slack, still unmoving—and felt a jolt of fear. “We’ll figure out who she is later. She’s going to die if we don’t move.”

“Right.” Yaoyorozu tapped her communicator. “Commander, this is Yaoyorozu. We’ve reached the coordinates, but there’s a complication. We’ve found a crashed ship—a real crash, not simulated—and a survivor.”

Static crackled briefly before Aizawa’s voice came through, low and tight with concern. “Repeat.”

“We found a teenage girl in a wrecked ship of unknown origin. She’s unconscious and badly injured.”

Aizawa’s voice was sharp. “Are you under threat?”

Izuku answered, his voice steady despite the chaos in his chest. “As far as we know, there are no hostiles. But something’s not right, sir.”

A beat passed. “Get her and yourselves out. Immediately. You are not to investigate further. Do not engage with any systems or objects inside that wreck. It’s not part of your assignment. Consider it hostile until proven otherwise.”

“Copy that,” Yaoyorozu replied.

Izuku adjusted the girl’s weight on his shoulder and took a breath. She was so light, like all the life had already leaked out of her.

As they made it into the corridor once more, the lights above them flickered—just once. Then again.

A soft whir echoed from somewhere behind them, mechanical and strange. A system rebooting? A sensor waking up?

Izuku looked back.

Everything was still.

They moved faster after that, out of the dark corridors and past scorched doors and the smell of burnt metal. The daylight beyond the breach felt sharp, almost blinding as they emerged from the ship. The wind howled louder now, a storm swelling in the distance. Static crackled in the upper atmosphere, distant lightning flashing against the haze.

But Izuku didn’t look back at it.

He just held the girl tighter and kept moving.

You don’t belong here, he thought. So why are you the only thing we found?

The girl’s weight barely registered between Izuku and Sero, like carrying a whisper or a ghost. Her body was slack, her breaths coming in shallow, irregular gasps. Every so often, Izuku’s eyes flicked to her helmet, watching the condensation of her faint breath fog the inside of the visor. The glass blurred slightly with each exhale, then cleared again, like a heartbeat trying to be heard.

She was alive. She was still breathing. That was all that mattered.

But how light and fragile she was felt wrong, like she was just a shell of a person. Her limbs didn’t respond to gravity the way they should. There was no tension, no resistance, no will. It was like carrying the echo of someone long gone.

Izuku’s thoughts spiraled—emergency protocols, oxygen deprivation symptoms, dehydration estimates. Numbers and procedures clashed in his head, blurring into useless static. Nothing he knew felt fast enough, smart enough, or worthwhile enough to help her, not when time pressed in on them like a vice.

As they neared the 1-A, its hatch hissed open with a burst of compressed air, and the ship’s light bathed them in gold. It was an artificial and sterile light, warmth painted onto steel. The familiar corridor beyond was a storm of motion. Cadets clustered around them as they climbed the ramp, faces shifting between curiosity and dread.

“Who is that?”

“Is she alive?”

“Where did you find her?”

“Is she one of ours?”

“Is she from another training crew?”

The voices came all at once, a crashing wave of noise that rattled Izuku’s nerves. His grip on the girl faltered for half a heartbeat. His pulse spiked. She didn’t stir, not even with all the shouting. That scared him more than the volume. Even a startled animal would have flinched.

“Everyone stand down,” Aizawa’s voice sliced through the chaos—cool, precise, and commanding.

The crowd froze like they'd been struck by static.

“Back to your stations. Medical priority override.”

“But sir—”

“Now.”

The weight of authority in his voice left no room for argument. The cadets parted like water, reluctant but obedient. Their boots echoed into the walls as they scattered, the tension in the air dragging behind them like smoke.

Aizawa’s eyes locked on the trio at the top of the ramp. His gaze lingered on the girl, scanning her from head to toe, assessing damage, danger, and the unknown. “Get her to the medbay.”

The corridor felt too long. The lights too white. The silence too loud. The air felt charged, like the pause before a detonation. Izuku felt each step like it was made of lead.

When they reached the med bay, the doors hissed open. A burst of cool, antiseptic air greeted them. Lights gleamed off polished instruments and idle diagnostics hummed in the sterile stillness. It smelled like sterilized metal, plastic, and electricity.

All Might appeared silently behind them, his looming figure filling the hall. He didn’t speak. He just walked with them, his expression unreadable but alert.

The moment they stepped inside, Aizawa keyed the door panel.

Shhkk—

The doors sealed behind them with a finality that made Izuku’s stomach twist. The voices from the corridor faded into a vague murmur, like echoes underwater.

Ojiro, their medical officer, had already been waiting inside the medbay. He glanced over his shoulder at them as he finished up the last of what had surely been hurried preparations as he received his first patient of the voyage. 

“Bed one,” he said firmly. “Let’s stabilize her.”

Sero and Izuku gently lowered the girl onto the table. Her limbs flopped limply into place, a slight twitch in her fingers the only movement she gave. Her breathing wheezed under the helmet, a sound like tearing cloth.

“She’s overheating,” Ojiro muttered, eyes glued to a vitals display that had started gathering data the moment she'd been laid on the table. “Oxygen saturation’s at forty-two percent—her tank’s nearly gone.”

Izuku’s stomach dropped. His hands hovered over her helmet, fingers trembling. “Then why the hell didn’t I take it off?”

He winced at his own voice, like the guilt physically hurt.

You were scared. You thought the atmosphere might compromise her system. But you should’ve—

“Do it,” Ojiro said quickly, glancing up.

Izuku popped the seals, the locks releasing with a muted hiss. He slipped the helmet off of her head, the staleness of recycled oxygen hitting him—a sign of a tank long past its safety margin.

The girl gasped—a wet, desperate breath, like she was surfacing from deep underwater. Her back arched as her lungs expanded, and her mouth opened wide as if her body didn’t remember how to breathe. Color flushed weakly into her cheeks.

Izuku froze. She had been suffocating the whole time. And he'd let her.

Ojiro was at her side, scanning her form again with steady hands despite the pressure. “Better. Still shallow. We need to remove her suit. The compression is worsening the trauma.”

Yaoyorozu stepped in to help, her face tight with concern. Together, she and Ojiro cut and peeled the suit away in jagged, warped pieces. Beneath, the girl’s skin was littered with bruises and abrasions—some deep and angry, others older and faded yellow-green. Her legs were a map of lacerations. Every inch of her looked like she'd been through hell.

And inside the suit, the lining was wrong. It wasn't just foreign—it was alive, or at least it looked like it had been. The material appeared like it had once pulsed, muscle-like, and Izuku shivered.

“Do we have any information on her at all?” All Might asked, breaking his silence. His voice was low, like he didn’t want to disturb something fragile.

“None,” Yaoyorozu said, shaking her head. “She doesn’t match any of the cadet records. No ID tag, no Commission-linked biosignature. Nothing.”

Aizawa’s gaze snapped to Izuku. “And she said nothing? Gave no indication of origin?”

Izuku shook his head slowly. “Nothing. She was unconscious the whole time.”

All Might crossed his arms, his expression tightening. “So who is she?”

Izuku looked down at the girl, watching her chest rise and fall. Her face was gaunt beneath the grime, her cheekbones too sharp. A thin cut across her temple had dried but still looked angry. Her mouth twitched.

Then her eyes snapped open.

And she screamed.

It was raw and guttural—pain, panic, and terror fused into a single shattering sound.

She convulsed, thrashing off the table. Her fist lashed out, catching Sero in the jaw with a crack that had him stumbling backwards. “No! Get away from me! Don’t touch me!”

“Hold her!” Ojiro yelled, grabbing a restraint band.

Izuku surger forward just as the girl’s fist hit the edge of the IV line Ojiro had been prepping, sending the tube whipping sideways. He caught her wrist, gripping tightly as she kicked out, her heel slamming into his thigh with bruising force.

Her eyes darted wildly, pupils blown, focus scattered. She wasn’t seeing them. To Izuku, it looked more like she was reliving something.

Ojiro moved in from the opposite side. “We need to restrain her—carefully!”

She fought like an animal cornered, her legs jerking and back arched off the bed. Her breath came in ragged sobs.

“Where am I?” she gasped, clawing at her chest. “What did you do to me?!”

“Easy,” Izuku said, voice straining. “You’re safe! We’re with the U.A.—”

“I don’t know you!” she shrieked, eyes full of terror. Her elbow smashed into his ribs. He gasped, falling back.

She clawed the remnants of her suit off in a frenzy, ripping away what was left until she was down to thin, sweat-soaked undergarments. She tumbled off the bed and hit the floor hard, limbs scrambling as she crawled backward into the corner.

“Where’s my ship? Where’s my crew?” her voice broke into sobs, raw and aching.

Ojiro approached, hands open in an attempt to appear non-threatening. “You crashed. You were alone. We’re here to help—”

“No, no, this isn’t right,” she whispered, shaking violently. “I saw them! I was with them!”

She curled into the corner like a kicked animal, eyes huge, fingers clawing at the wall.

Aizawa’s voice came low and dangerous. “Ojiro. Sedate her. Now.”

Izuku’s heart kicked against his chest. “Wait! She might—!”

“She’s going to hurt herself—or someone else.”

Ojiro moved quickly.

The girl screamed again, her voice hoarse now. “No! Don’t touch me! Don’t make me forget again!”

The syringe bit into her arm mid-swing. She kept struggling—one second, two, three.

Then her body folded.

Silence fell like a dropped curtain.

Ojiro backed away, chest rising and falling. “She’s down.”

Izuku clutched his aching ribs, sweat dripping from his brow. He stared at the girl, collapsed and trembling, breath ghosting weakly in and out.

“She was terrified of us,” he whispered. “Like we were the ones who hurt her.”

Aizawa looked at her, his expression unreadable. “Run every scan we’ve got. DNA. Neural mapping. Cross-reference the Commission archives—hell, even the interstellar prisoner registry if you have to.”

Yaoyorozu hesitated. “Sir, if she’s not registered anywhere…”

“Then we find out why,” Aizawa said. “She didn’t just survive a crash. She survived something else, and I need to know what.”

Izuku looked down at her still form—battered, unconscious, but full of a story clawing to get out.

Whatever happened to her…it wasn’t over.

This wasn’t just a rescue.

This was a beginning.

Chapter Text

The walls of the 1-A’s briefing room hummed faintly with the steady pulse of ship systems, a soft vibration that settled deep into the bones. Overhead, cool-white light panels buzzed in a constant rhythm, lending the room a sterile, clinical edge. A circular table dominated the center, sleek and metallic, surrounded by high-backed chairs already occupied by some of the ship’s most essential personnel and those directly involved in the mission that had led them to this moment.

A quiet tension coiled through the air, unspoken but mutual. Everyone felt it.

Aizawa stood at the head of the table, arms crossed, shoulders rigid, and his expression carved from stone.

Beside him, All Might offered a more open posture. His frame was at ease, his arms loosely folded behind his back. But Izuku could see through it. The sharp set of his jaw, the faint crease between his brows. He was masking worry. He’d been doing it ever since they brought the survivor aboard and saw her fear.

At the other end of the table, Iida sat ramrod straight, posture textbook-perfect and jaw clenched tight. His mind was clearly racing—calculating logistics, contingencies, and schedules. It seemed duty gave him direction, and right now, direction was the only thing holding the unease at bay.

Yaoyorozu sat next to him, her poise impeccable but betrayed by the tension in her fingers, laced tightly on the table. 

To Aizawa’s left, Ojiro wore the calm of a medic used to triage and trauma. But his tail, which was normally still, twitched with faint agitation behind his chair, a subtle tell he couldn’t quite suppress. The situation clearly bothered him, though he didn't say so.

Sero lounged back in his chair, arms crossed in a casual posture, but the easygoing smirk he usually wore was gone. His face was unreadable. He wasn’t joking, and the absence of humor from him was more telling than any expression.

Todoroki sat with quiet stillness, gaze flicking from one person to the next with cool precision. 

And then there was Izuku.

He sat slightly apart from the rest, a slim datapad clutched tightly in both hands. His fingers gripped the edges hard enough to make his knuckles pale. His ribs still throbbed, an echo of the pain he'd been given from the survivor's elbow, a parting gift from her panic. But more than the pain in his ribs, it was her eyes he couldn’t shake. Wide. Wild. Terrified. She’d looked at them like they were monsters.

She hadn’t said much—nothing coherent, at least. She'd just struggled and fought like a wounded animal. Izuku kept replaying that moment in his head, searching for what he could’ve done differently, like a better word or a gentler tone. Anything that might’ve made her feel safe.

But he hadn’t, and it was eating away at him.

He was worried. About the girl. About her wrecked ship. About what it meant for their exam. About all of it. The pieces weren’t fitting together, and it felt as if that meant something bigger was coming.

“Let’s begin,” Aizawa said, his voice cutting cleanly through the silence. It drew every eye in the room. “What’s the survivor’s status, Ojiro?”

The medic sat forward slightly, folding his hands atop the table with practiced calm. “She hasn’t regained consciousness since being stabilized after we brought her into the medbay. Her vitals are steady, though irregular neural activity indicates she may be in a post-traumatic fugue.”

Yaoyorozu leaned in, concern flashing across her face. “Is she in any immediate danger?”

“Not currently,” Ojiro replied. His tone was steady, but not detached. “But until she wakes up, there’s no way to know exactly what she experienced…or what she remembers.” He turned toward Aizawa. “When she does regain consciousness, I think we should have Shinso speak with her.”

“Agreed,” Aizawa said with a nod.

Izuku’s stomach clenched. He didn’t voice the discomfort rising in his chest, but it sat heavy in his gut. Shinso? He understood the logic. As their crew’s psychologist, he'd been trained for something like this. He’d be able to handle whatever trauma or mental fragmentation the girl might wake up with. But Shinso could be…distant, and somewhat intimidating, even when he didn’t mean to be. He was cold in a way that made sense for his job but felt wrong for a moment like this.

Izuku didn’t even know him well. They hadn't talked beyond quick nods in the hall and short data exchanges on mission logs. Shinso always seemed to be ten steps ahead and unreadable, not the kind of person a scared, broken girl needed to see first when she opened her eyes.

“Did the scans show anything anomalous?” Iida asked, voice low but steady, his sharp gaze fixed on Ojiro.

“None of the scans detected cybernetic implants, embedded trackers, or anything like that. But I’ve had Asui help me go over her blood samples. Her cell composition…” Ojiro shifted uncomfortably in his seat, “...it suggests she’s not from any known colony within the Commission’s registered systems.”

A ripple went through the room, with quiet murmurs and shifting bodies. 

Izuku clutched his datapad tighter. It'd been a long, long time since any sort of new species had been discovered within the galaxy. For her to be found on a planet that was known to be uninhabited and well within the Commission's documented space territory—for her to look so much like a human, but to biologically not be...Izuku wasn't sure what it all meant. 

All Might raised a hand, his voice calm but firm. “Let’s not jump to conclusions about what that means. We can’t confirm her origin, or her intentions, until we speak with her.”

Izuku shifted in his seat, quietly sharing what he'd been able to piece together so far. “I don't think the ship was shot down during combat. There was structural damage, but no signs of a weapons discharge.” He swallowed, thinking back to what he'd seen. “I think it crashed because of something internal. The consoles were all melted, like they'd been overloaded all at once.”

Todoroki’s brows lowered, his gaze sharpening. “Was it some sort of sabotage from a crew member, then?”

“Could be,” Sero said. “The hull stress looked off, too, like the ship jumped to FTL during a pressure shift. I’ve never seen signature scars like that.”

“Which is why,” Aizawa interjected, reclaiming the flow of conversation, “we’re sending a team back for a full sweep. Yaoyorozu. Midoriya. Sero. You’re already familiar with the site. You’ll lead the investigation.”

Iida nodded sharply, already moving into planning mode. “I’ll authorize deployment of a recon rover.”

“I’ll handle gear requisition,” Sero added. “And I’ll double check the EVA suits. No offense, but the last thing we need is a surprise signal bounce mid-mission.”

Aizawa gave a slight nod of approval, then looked to Ojiro again. “Notify Shinso. Make sure he’s ready when she wakes. I want an immediate debrief if she says anything useful—or concerning.”

“Yes, sir,” Ojiro replied.

All Might stepped forward, his tone calm but filled with quiet intensity. “Whatever happened on that ship, we owe it to her to find out. We don’t leave questions like this floating in deep space.”

Silence settled across the table like a drawn curtain.

Then Aizawa spoke again, his tone final. “Gear up. Be ready in an hour. Dismissed.”

Chairs scraped softly against the metal floor as the others began to stand and disperse to fulfill their duties. The briefing room slowly emptied, boots echoing off the walls in soft, purposeful strides.

Izuku lingered, still seated and staring at the datapad in his hands like it might offer a missing answer if he looked long enough. The lights along the wall flickered softly, turning green to indicate mission readiness.

But Izuku wasn’t ready.

Not yet.

This wasn’t just the aftermath of a failed flight. The girl’s panicked cries, her terrified eyes, the defensive bruises that painted her body. They all told a different story.

Whatever they were about to find back on that wreck…it wasn’t just a space mishap. It was something bigger, a mystery with teeth, and it had already sunk them in.

The rover’s rear hatch groaned as it lowered, pistons hissing in protest against the gritty Delta-43 air. Dust scraped along the hull in soft, grating whispers, stirred by the planet’s dry wind. The ground itself seemed to sigh under the weight of their presence.

Izuku stepped down first, boots crunching into the sand. His skin quickly grew flushed beneath the twin suns overhead, but he barely registered the light. His gaze was locked on the ruin ahead.

The wreck lay like a corpse half-consumed by the desert. Jagged metal, carbon-scored plating, and exposed conduit jutted out like broken bones from sun-bleached flesh. What had once been a vessel of flight now sat as a monument to failure, its final moments frozen in ruin.

How the hell had that girl survived this?

Izuku tightened his grip on the straps of his pack and stepped forward, pulse quickening. 

Behind him, the others disembarked, Yaoyorozu with a diagnostic pad already flickering with data, Sero stretching his arms as he scanned the wreckage warily, and Shoji gliding silently toward the perimeter like a shadow with purpose. As the security officer aboard, it was his duty to ensure the crew’s safety, even when it seemed as if they were the only living things on the planet. 

Kirishima was the last to exit the rover, the driver-side door latching closed behind him. He cracked his knuckles, his voice low and steady, but tinged with unease. “Man, this place is a mess. Let’s get started.”

The team moved fast, slipping into different tasks with practiced ease. 

Yaoyorozu took point on structural mapping, her portable mainframe already generating a 3D schematic of the twisted hull. 

Sero crouched beside a collapsed intake port and tapped a length of alloy with his knuckles, his eyes narrowing. “This plating…Yeah, definitely not Commission-grade. Looks more like civilian salvage—maybe freighter class, but someone retrofitted the hell out of it.”

“It definitely came from something old,” Kirishima said, examining a jagged seam with a frown. “Look at the welds. They’re uneven. Clearly hand-done. Like…Like someone patched this together in a junkyard with nothing but a blowtorch and a prayer.”

Izuku moved between them, scanning fractured panels, loose wiring, and broken cross beams. The longer he looked, the more his stomach churned. This ship wasn’t built. It was cobbled together in a hurry, made to fly, maybe, but not to last.

Sero hummed. “Just like we thought. There’s no serial tags anywhere. No origin stamps. Nothing traceable.” He stood up slowly. “That’s not just weird. It’s deliberate.”

Yaoyorozu approached from the far side, eyes fixed on a half-melted support brace. “There are traces of chemical bonding. too, not just welds, This section was fused with synthetic adhesives. High-temp stuff, but unstable. It wouldn’t hold under even basic FTL stress.”

Izuku’s brow furrowed. “Which means it wasn’t meant to go far…” His voice dropped. “Or maybe it wasn’t meant to go at all.”

“Could’ve been a last-ditch escape,” Kirishima said. “No one builds a ship this unstable unless they don’t have a choice.”

Shoji’s voice crackled through the comms. “Perimeter secure. No active signals, no movement. But I’m picking up strange energy residues. Their faint, like old decay trails. The kind you’d see after a partial core overload.”

Izuku looked up sharply. “Is it localized?”

Shoji confirmed, “Most of its concentrated around the aft section. I’m guessing it's what’s left of the drive core.”

Sero, who had been hunched over his handheld analyzer, suddenly straightened. His voice came low and thoughtful, but edged with unease. “Something’s….off. The energy signature around the hull…I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Yaoyorozu’s fingers paused over her pad. “Do you think the ship came from another system?”

He shook his head slowly. “Not another system. Another...somewhere else. The readings aren’t just off. They’re foreign, completely incompatible with everything we know.” 

With his breath held in his lungs, Izuku tried to figure out what it all meant. A ship with energy signatures unlike anything ever documented before, carrying a girl with a cell-composition that didn't match anything in the wide range of species in their databases. Where the hell had she come from?

Kirishima lips pressed into a grim line. “I’ll head to the engine room. If there’s any answers to be found about those energy signatures, they’ll probably be there.”

“Don’t go alone,” Yaoyorozu requested, her brows pinched in worry. “We’re still not sure exactly where this ship came from. It would be best to exercise caution.”

“I’ll go with him,” Izuku offered, eager to explore more of whatever it was they’d just become entangled with.

He and Kirishima broke off, entering the wreck through the same hatch Sero had pried open earlier and threading deeper into it than Izuku, Sero, and Yaoyorozu had gone before. The lower corridor twisted into a tight passage, sometimes narrowing to crawl space where the structure had caved in. 

When they reached the engine room, they stopped in silence. The place was a blackened cavity, its walls scorched and machinery torn open from within. Bulkheads had burst outward, though not from an external hit. This was an internal detonation, a core rupture, just like Shoji had predicted. 

“Damn,” Kirishima whispered, eyes sweeping the devastation. “You were right. This wasn’t just a normal crash. This was a failure. Something in the core blew.”

Izuku stepped carefully across the warped floor, scanning the wreckage with mounting dread. “What do you think? An overload? Or sabotage?”

Kirishima crouched beside a gutted containment manifold. The inner lining had split like overcooked metal, charred wiring twisted into brittle tendrils. Something glinted faintly from inside the scorched recess.

“Wait a sec…” he muttered, reaching into the narrow gap with a grunt. With a careful tug, he pulled something loose from where it’d been wedged between melted control lines and the manifold’s ruptured shielding.

It was some sort of chip. It was sleek and small, no bigger than the palm of his hand. Its surface shimmered faintly, like it was absorbing light rather than reflecting it. There was no branding or interface pins, and its edges were wrong, curved like bone, seamless and strange.

Kirishima held it up. “Found this wedged in the core housing. It wasn’t just lying around. It was inserted like part of the system.”

Izuku stepped closer, his eyes narrowing. He took it and turned it over in his hands. “No standard ports. No power feed. No way to communicate with anything normal. This isn’t from the Commission. It’s not even from any tech base I’ve studied.”

The pit in his stomach turned icy. Just like the girl and the rest of this ship, it didn't feel like this piece of tech was meant to be here, that it wasn't supposed to exist.

“Could be a regulator,” Kirishima offered. “Or maybe a failsafe component?”

“Or…” Izuku looked at the shattered remains of the drive core. “It could be the thing that caused the failure.”

They sat in silence for a breath, surrounded by the hollow moan of the wind slipping through twisted metal. The wreck groaned faintly, a haunting sound like it remembered something terrible.

Kirishima stood, brushing dust from his gloves. “Let’s take it back and let Aizawa see it. Hatsume, too. If anyone can figure this thing out, it’s her.”

Izuku hesitated, staring down at the chip in his hand. “This…This doesn’t feel right. It’s like it doesn’t belong in this world.”

Kirishima glanced at him. “The wreck or the chip?”

“Both,” Izuku murmured. “And her. The girl we found. She survived somehow...but how?”

The thought gnawed at him. 

He slipped the chip into a secure pouch on his belt, feeling the weight of it like an anchor pulling him toward something he couldn’t quite see.

They made their way back toward the entrance, the charred wreck groaning softly behind them like something breathing its last breath. 

Shoji met them near the outer hull. “Find anything?”

“Something strange,” Izuku answered. “We’re bringing it back.”

Shoji’s eyes narrowed slightly. “If you're all done, we’d better move. This place feels…wrong.”

Izuku nodded, and with a confirmation from Yaoyorozu and Sero that their tasks were complete, they climbed aboard the rover once more. 

As the hatch sealed behind them with a hydraulic hiss, Izuku took one last look through the rear viewport.

The wreck didn't just feel wrong. It felt impossible, like a door had been opened where none should have existed and deposited the girl and her ship.

He placed a hand over the pocket that held the chip. 

There was something—or someone—else at play here. Something beyond him and his crew and their examination. Something he needed to understand.

Izuku had always hated hospitals. It wasn't because of the smell or the sterile walls or the too-quiet hum of machinery. It was the waiting. The helplessness. The thought of sitting beside someone while monitors beeped out a song he couldn't understand, while someone’s entire fate hung in numbers on a screen. 

And right now, the girl in the bed wasn’t just another patient.

She was a mystery; a question without an answer, and answers were something Izuku needed like oxygen.

He glanced up at the monitors. Stable vitals. Steady breathing. Minimal neural activity, but climbing slowly. Ojiro estimated she’d wake soon, but he’d been saying that for hours.

She looked younger in her sleep. Ordinary, even. Soft brown hair, pale skin, bruises blooming across her collarbone where the restraints rested. She didn’t look like someone who’d nearly broken Sero’s jaw during a half-conscious panic when she first came to, and she definitely didn’t look like someone who belonged to no existing registry in the entire Commission database.

That part still bothered him.

How could a person just…not exist?

Ojiro had done everything he could—scans, bloodwork, trauma stabilization. But it was hard to treat someone that he wasn't sure was even a part of the same species. She was humanoid, an oxygen-breather, with human-adjacent DNA. But there was no one like her in any Commission database. Not in the active cadet logs. Not in planetary records. Not even in the long-range missing persons files. She was just a girl in a wreck, on a planet no one should’ve been on. No transponder. No ID.

And she hadn’t exactly been friendly when she first woke up.

Izuku’s eyes flicked to the restraint cuffs around her wrists. They were light and padded, meant primarily for patient safety, not imprisonment. Still, they were there for a reason. Izuku was still favoring a bruise across his ribs from the last time she’d opened her eyes.

Izuku had offered to stay with her when Shinso requested to be relieved of waiting by her bedside so he could get a few hours of shut eye. Izuku had offered not because he thought he was good at calming people—he wasn’t—but because something about her stuck with him. The wreck. The silence. The sheer wrongness of the crash site.

Izuku sat up straighter as her eyelids fluttered. He froze, though not out of fear. He just didn’t want to startle her. 

Her vitals jumped, her heart rate spiking and breath coming fast. It didn't seem to be out of panic, but more so out of confusion, the kind that hit hard and deep in the chest.

She woke like a diver surfacing, her breathing heavy, eyes wide, spine going rigid as she took in the ceiling, the lights, and the sterile white walls.

Her eyes locked on his.

Izuku’s breath caught in his throat. He stood slowly, hands open at his sides.

“Hey,” he said softly, careful not to spook her. “It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re on a starship, in the medbay.”

She looked down, her disoriented gaze sharpening into focus as she caught sight of the cuffs locking her wrists to the sides of the bed. There was instant tension, her body snapping tight, shoulders braced like a cornered animal.

“You attacked…” he rushed to say, “...before. When we first brought you here. You were hurt, and scared, and you lashed out. The restraints are temporary. Just until…Just until we know you’re okay.”

She gave him no answer, and the tension in her body didn’t leave. But she didn’t move either. She just watched him like someone trying to decide if the creature in front of her had fangs.

Ojiro stepped up to the side of the bed, voice calm and low. “Her vitals are spiking. She’s fully conscious. I’m notifying Commander Aizawa.”

Izuku could practically feel the air change.

The girl’s attention shifted. She studied Ojiro like she was trying to decide if he was a threat. Then her gaze snapped back to Izuku, scanning him—his jacket, his boots, and the insignia on the chest of his uniform. 

Her voice was hoarse when she finally spoke. “Where am I?”

“Starship 1-A,” Izuku answered. “It’s a U.A Space Academy vessel. We found you unconscious in a wreck on Delta-43. You were the only person on board.”

That made her flinch, just slightly, like the words hit something raw.

The medbay doors hissed open.

Izuku turned as Aizawa entered first, his coat loose over his shoulders. Iida was behind him, ever-formal and wide-eyed with concern. Then came All Might, quieter than the legends ever said he was, though his presence still filled the room like starlight.

The girl stiffened. Izuku saw her eyes track each of them, evaluating, cataloging, and bracing. Fear wasn't the most prominent expression on her face. Instead, she wore a look of calculation. It unsettled Izuku more than a scream would have.

Aizawa didn’t waste time.

“We don’t know who you are,” he said, stepping up to the foot of the bed. “You weren’t in any of our systems. No ID. No match to known registries. Your DNA is untagged.”

She gave no response.

“You were found inside a hybrid ship,” Iida added gently. “It was cobbled together from at least five different classes. Our cadets were unable to find any logs or flight data.”

Still nothing.

Izuku couldn’t take his eyes off her. The girl wasn’t just scared, she was guarded, like every word she didn’t say was armor.

Aizawa stepped closer, his gaze steady. “Look, kid. I can tell you're scared and confused. I don't mean to interrogate you, but there are twenty U.A. cadets on board, under my protection. I need to know if you're a threat to this ship and its crew.”

At that, something flickered in her expression. Izuku saw it. It was fear, but deeper. It wasn't just fear of them, it was fear of what she might say. Fear of what might happen if she said too much.

Her voice, when it came, was just as quiet and raspy as it had been the first time. “Are you with the Commission?”

“No,” Aizawa answered simply. “This ship is an advanced training vessel under Commission jurisdiction, but we operate independently. Most of the people aboard this ship are U.A. Cadets.”

That made her pause. Then she looked at the insignia emblazoned on each of their chests again, her eyes narrowing.

“I don’t recognize that symbol,” she said.

All Might stepped closer. “That’s not unusual. There are dozens of affiliated academies—”

“No,” she said sharply, cutting him off. “I mean I don’t recognize any of it. Not your uniforms. Not any of the scanners in this room. Not your ship class.”

Silence settled over the room like a dropped curtain.

She looked back down at her cuffed wrists. Her next words were softer, almost to herself. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here.”

Izuku's breath caught. Something cold settled behind his ribs, a thought he hadn’t wanted to voice, not even to himself.

They’d scoured every inch of that wreck. He’d seen the twisted metal and the technology that didn’t make sense. And now here she was, a girl with no records, no origin, and no place.

A voice that whispered that maybe, somehow, she didn’t belong in this galaxy at all.

The door slid shut behind them with a soft hiss. Everyone else dispersed, but Izuku still stood there, arms crossed tightly over his chest, watching the medbay’s indicator light blink from green to amber, marking it occupied, monitored, and secure. Through the thick glass, he could still see her. She was sitting up now as Ojiro examined her more closely, her eyes darting restlessly as she tracked the room like she expected it to turn on her. Every slight movement she made seemed deliberate and cautious, as though she expected to be punished for simply existing in the space. Her body was tense, coiled as if prepared to flee at the slightest provocation.

Izuku’s heart tightened as he observed her. How had she ended up here? Why was she so terrified?

Aizawa’s voice cut through his thoughts from behind him, breaking his focus. “You’re going to talk to her.”

Izuku blinked, turning to look at his commanding officer with disbelief flashing across his face. “Me?”

Aizawa’s expression didn’t change. His usual dry, inscrutable gaze remained fixed on Izuku, but there was something else there, too, an unreadable weight and a quiet trust. “You already started,” he said, his tone even, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “She didn’t scream when she saw you. That’s progress.”

Izuku shifted uncomfortably, his mind spinning as the words sank in. He ran a hand through his hair, trying to collect his thoughts. “Wasn’t Shinso supposed to be the one she talked to first? And…and doesn’t this fall under Shoji’s duties? He’s the security officer, not me.”

Aizawa gave him a look. Dry. Knowing. He stepped closer, his presence steady and unshakable. “She’s already scared and untrusting. Shoji means well, but he’s massive and covered in extra limbs. Shinso’s colder than the medbay floor. That girl’s terrified. She doesn’t need someone efficient. She needs someone kind.”

Izuku opened his mouth, then closed it again, unsure of what to say. His fingers flexed restlessly at his sides. 

‘Kind.’

He didn’t feel kind. He felt awkward and overwhelmed, and completely out of his depth. He was a navigator, not a negotiator. He’d barely passed his interpersonal conflict courses. He’d never been good with delicate conversations, only with the cold, technical stuff, like breaking down enemy tactics, calculating the angles of escape routes, and making sure no one got left behind in the chaos.

Finally, Aizawa spoke again, his voice calm but steady. “You may not be aware of this, but as part of her own examination, Yaoyorozu submits evaluations of the cadets she oversees on missions.”

Izuku blinked, his heart skipping a beat. Yaoyorozu was evaluating them, too? It made sense, he supposed. On an actual ship, there were no outside evaluators, like Aizawa and All Might. Instead, keeping track of the crew was the responsibility of those in command positions, like Iida and Yaoyorozu. With that being the case, it wasn't surprising to learn that part of Yaoyorozu's exam would be to demonstrate her ability to monitor those under her command. 

But Izuku hadn’t thought much about it before, and on Delta-43, he'd been too focused on the mission itself, and on the wreck and the girl. He swallowed, trying to push down the slight discomfort bubbling up in his chest.

Aizawa continued, not noticing Izuku’s shifting unease. “After you found the wreck and brought back the survivor, she sent me a report. She noted your initiative and determination to save the girl.”

Izuku’s fingers flexed involuntarily at his sides. Yaoyorozu had thought that? He felt his pulse quicken. He hadn’t thought of his actions as anything special. He’d simply done what he thought was right. But hearing that Yaoyorozu, who was so sharp and analytical, had noted his drive made him feel oddly exposed.

Izuku shifted on his feet, feeling a knot form in his stomach. “I just did what needed to be done,” he murmured, his voice quieter than he meant. “I didn’t think it was anything extraordinary.”

Aizawa’s gaze softened slightly, his expression otherwise unchanged as he agreed, “It wasn’t extraordinary. But it was what she needed, and that’s what matters. Yaoyorozu noticed that, and it stood out to me.”

Izuku felt his throat tighten. Aizawa wasn’t the kind of person to sugarcoat things, and hearing this from him—hearing that something he'd done had actually been noticed and valued—made him feel something he wasn’t sure how to process.

“Missions aren’t necessarily designed to help cadets demonstrate their kindness,” Aizawa added. “But you made it clear that you weren’t just focused on completing some objective. You cared about her.”

Izuku glanced back at the girl through the glass, his chest tightening as he thought about it. He saw someone who was in need, someone who had seemingly been through something that no one should have to endure. 

Aizawa gave him a moment before adding, “That’s why I’m picking you for this. I trust your instincts.”

The weight of his responsibility, of the trust Aizawa was placing on him, made Izuku’s head spin.

He swallowed again, trying to steady his thoughts. “And...you think I’m the right person to help her?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. His nerves were on edge, but there was something else, too—a flicker of determination starting to burn brighter.

Aizawa nodded, his eyes steady. “You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be there for her.”

“What do you want me to find out?” Izuku asked, his voice quiet, almost hesitant, as though he were asking for permission, even though he knew Aizawa had already given it.

Aizawa’s gaze softened just a fraction. “Start with her name. No pressure. Just get her talking. Let her know we don't mean her any harm.”

Izuku’s throat tightened. It was a simple request, but it felt like more. He was supposed to break through the walls she’d built. He was supposed to make her trust him, to make her feel safe again, even when everything around her seemed unfamiliar and hostile.

He looked back at the glass. The girl had stopped looking at Ojiro, her eyes now fixed on the ceiling. Her jaw was tight, her body coiled. It looked like she was trying to hold herself together.

But she was breaking. Izuku could see it. Her tension was palpable, like a string pulled too tight, ready to snap at any moment.

Izuku took a breath, his heart pounding a little harder now. The weight of the task settled heavily on his shoulders, but there was something else too—a flicker of something warm, something small but bright inside him. 

This wasn’t just about his examination anymore. And it was about more than just finding answers, too. It was about helping someone who was lost, scared, and alone. And for some reason, he felt a deep, undeniable pull to make sure she wasn’t alone any longer

“Okay,” he said, his voice steadier now, though the uncertainty still lingered like an itch at the back of his mind. “I’ll try.”

“Remember,” Aizawa said quietly, “she’s not a mission. She’s a person. Start there.”

Izuku nodded, swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat. He didn’t think Aizawa had meant for the words to carry so much weight, but they settled inside him like an anchor, heavy and grounding.

Izuku turned back to the medbay door, his hand hovering just inches from the control pad. His breath was shallow. There was no going back. It wasn’t just about his examination anymore—it was about her. It was about her life and how she'd ended up here. 

The door slid open with a soft hiss, and Izuku stepped inside, his heart pounding in his chest as he crossed the threshold, unsure of what awaited him on the other side.

Izuku eased into the room with his hands visible, his steps light. 

Ojiro was still monitoring her from his console but gave Izuku a quiet nod before turning back to his readouts. He’d stay close in case anything went wrong, but not so close that it felt like surveillance.

The girl didn’t look at him. But her eyes flicked toward his reflection in the glass panel at her bedside as he approached.

He pulled a chair closer to her bed and sat down, resting his elbows on his knees. He didn’t speak right away. He let the silence stretch for a moment. It wasn't awkward, just calm and gentle.

After a minute, he finally said, “I’m Izuku. Izuku Midoriya. Navigation cadet, class 1-A. This is my final exam rotation.”

She didn't respond. 

“You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. I just thought…maybe I could tell you a few things, and you could decide if you want to respond.”

She finally looked at him. Not hard or hostile, just cautious.

“I’ve, um....I've always liked maps,” he continued. “Star charts, to be more precise. Even as a kid. They made the galaxy feel smaller. More understandable."

He wasn't sure where the words he was saying were coming from, or why he'd decided to talk about maps of all things. Maybe it was because he was the navigation officer, and the last few months of his life had been completely consumed by them. It'd just felt like the thing to talk about, and now that he'd started, the words just kept coming. 

"I've always wanted to see as much of the galaxy as I could, and to understand it all more. That's why I'm here, taking this exam to get certified to be part of a space crew. Because if you're part of a crew, and you have a spaceship…you can just look at a star chart and choose anywhere to go. ”

She blinked, her mouth pressed into a tight line.

“I don’t think you got to choose where you ended up,” he said gently. “And I think that really sucks.”

She was still quiet, but her eyes didn’t leave his now.

“I don’t need to know everything,” he said. “But maybe…could I know your name?”

She didn’t speak right away.

But after a long moment, she shifted her gaze down, toward the white sheet curled in her lap. Her fingers tensed, one of them twitching against the cuff at her wrist.

When she finally spoke, it was almost too soft to hear.

“…Uraraka.”

Izuku felt his breath catch.

Not just because she said it, but because she said it like it cost her something, like even giving him that much was a risk.

He smiled, small and sincere.

“Hi, Uraraka,” he said.

This time, she didn’t look away.

Chapter Text

The briefing room was quiet, save for the faint hum of the ship’s engine system reverberating through the walls. The light was dim, casting long shadows across the polished table.

Izuku sat across from Aizawa and Iida with his hands clasped tightly in his lap, still feeling the weight of his mostly one-sided conversation with Uraraka hanging over him like residual gravity from a dead star.

Aizawa’s gaze was sharp as ever, his eyes locked on Izuku as he leaned forward in his seat.

“Did you get her to talk?” he asked, his voice steady, but with an undercurrent of something more, something that spoke to the gravity of what was happening.

Izuku nodded, his fingers tapping nervously against the table. “I did. Her name’s Uraraka. She didn't say anything else. I think she’s trying to protect herself, and she’s not trusting the fact that we’re trying to help her.”

“Learning her name is a start, at least,” Aizawa muttered. "It’s apparent that she’s been through more than just the wreck.”

His tone was matter-of-fact, but Izuku could see the flicker of concern in the lines beneath his eyes. They were all thinking it. Something about this wasn’t right.

Iida shifted in his seat, his hands folded neatly on the table despite his obvious discomfort. “What are we missing here? We know that she doesn’t match any known records. She’s from a wreck, but...why was she out there in the first place?”

Izuku bit his lip, unease coiling in his chest like static building under his skin. He leaned forward, his voice low. "There's not a single inhabited planet or moon in this system. They're only used as training grounds. Not even traders pass through here. The only reason for someone to be flying close enough to Delta-43 to crash on it was if she was forced to fly there. Like if her ship's navigation malfunctioned, or...if she was trying to escape something."

The room fell into a beat of silence, the implications sinking in like frost creeping across metal.

“We need to keep an eye on her,” Iida said, still processing everything. “If she’s running from something, we could be in even more danger than we realize.”

Aizawa’s voice was cold and clinical. “That’s why we need to learn everything we can. But it won’t be easy. If she’s keeping something from us, it’s because she believes we can’t be trusted." Aizawa's gaze shifted to Izuku. "Your job is to make her understand that we can be.”

Izuku nodded slowly, his throat dry. “I’ll do my best. But she’s really scared. She doesn’t want to tell us anything. Not yet.”

“I know,” Aizawa said softly. “But that’s why you’re the one who’s going to do it. She’s not going to trust a strategist or a soldier.”

Izuku felt a lump form in his throat.

He didn’t know if he could get her to trust him enough to open up. She'd barely looked at him when he spoke. Every breath she took seemed calculated, like she was waiting for it all to come crashing down again.

Still, he had to try. For her. For everyone.

Izuku squared his shoulders and nodded, a small, determined smile tugging at his lips. “I won’t let her down. I’ll get her to trust me.”

Aizawa gave him a sharp nod. “I’m counting on you. But we'll still proceed with caution. Whatever she’s running from...” He paused, the edge in his voice deepening. “It’s not just her we’re dealing with.”

Izuku swallowed, a chill crawling across his spine as he glanced toward the sealed door at the far end of the corridor—the one that led back to the medbay.

Something had driven her to that desolate planet. W hatever it was, i t might already be coming after her.

The silence stretched for a few heartbeats longer before Aizawa leaned back slightly, his voice low but steady.

“You’re both doing well,” he said, glancing between Izuku and Iida. “Given the circumstances, you're fulfilling your roles better than anyone could’ve expected.”

Izuku blinked, caught off-guard by the rare praise.

“No one could’ve predicted this would happen in the middle of your exam,” Aizawa continued. “Much less only a week in.”

His eyes sharpened again, but there was something quieter beneath it, like an unspoken acknowledgment of the weight they were carrying. “Keep going. Stay sharp. And remember: this isn’t just a test anymore.”

Izuku nodded once, a quiet surge of resolve filling his chest.

Iida straightened in his seat, his face serious.

They weren’t just students now. In truth, they might be the first line of defense for something they didn’t even understand yet, and they couldn’t afford to fail.

The mess hall buzzed with the usual end-of-the-day energy: forks clinking against trays, chairs scraping against the polished floor, and clusters of cadets talking so loudly that their voices carried through the bulkhead door like ocean waves. It was the familiar noise of routine. It should have been comforting, but to Izuku, it felt almost unbearably distant.

He paused just outside the threshold, his fingers still curled tight around the edge of his tablet, not quite ready. The day’s events glowed faintly in the corner of his screen, as if daring him to forget. Uraraka. Slight genomic deviation. No matching record in any database. A girl who shouldn’t exist here. And yet, she did.

Izuku’s heart thudded once, hard enough that he felt it echo in his ribs. A part of him still hoped that if he stood there long enough, it would all make sense, that someone else would step forward and explain it for him. Still, the doors hissed open on their own, obedient to his presence. Before he could second-guess himself, he stepped into the mess hall.

It was like someone had flipped a switch.

“Midoriya!” The first voice to ring out, high and eager, belonged to Ashido, the Head of Chemistry in their crew’s Research and Development Team. Her pink hand waved so frantically it blurred. 

Others were already turning their heads, their trays abandoned and conversations pausing mid-sentence. In the span of a heartbeat, the entire room’s attention locked onto him.

Izuku didn’t even get the chance to decide where he was going. They came to him instead, a tidal surge of uniforms and half-finished meals. He was surrounded within seconds, voices piling over one another in a clamor of questions. They clustered around him like gravitational satellites drawn to a newly discovered star, eager, curious, and pulling tighter with every breath. Jirou leaned in close, sharp-eyed and silent; Kaminari practically bounced on his toes as he talked over her; and Ashido tilted her head slightly, her wide, unblinking eyes studying him.

Izuku’s grip tightened on his tablet.

“Midoriya, what happened with the girl?” Kirishima’s voice boomed over the others, full of restless energy. “You found out her name, right?”

“Could she be a League asset? Some kind of sleeper agent?” Tokoyami asked, his voice low and thoughtful, his sharp eyes gleaming under the mess hall lights.

“She didn’t feel like a threat,” Yaoyorozu said quietly, stepping closer. She stood beside Shoji, who had one pair of arms crossed while another gently lowered a tray with surprising gentleness despite the heavy tension vibrating in the room. “She just seemed…scared.”

“Everyone, give Midoriya some space,” Iida said as he stepped through the bulkhead door behind Izuku, raising a hand in a futile attempt to restore order. His voice was loud and commanding, but even he was unable to hide the edge of concern in his movements.

Izuku blinked. He was still trying to catch up. His mouth felt dry.

“She’s…not from here,” he said finally, his voice quieter than he meant, but somehow sharper for it.

The room fell silent, like a vacuum sucking the sound out of the air. It swallowed the hum of conversation, the scrape of utensils, and even the steady beat of the ship’s systems filtering through the walls. 

Izuku could feel everyone’s eyes on him, their gazes curious, wary, and expectant.

“What does that mean?” Jirou asked, her voice slicing cleanly through the stillness.

Izuku’s hands itched. He wished Ojiro or Asui were here to help him explain, but both the Medical Officer and Head of Biology were absent. He wanted to pull up the scans, to show the rest of the crew the data, the reports, and the numbers that didn’t make sense. But none of that would capture the way Uraraka had looked at him in the medbay: wide-eyed, lost, and holding onto her own name like it was the last rope tying her to reality.

“It means…” he began, voice thick, “her physiology has differences. Her DNA doesn’t match human standards.”

There was a confused beat.

“Wait, so, like...an alien?” Kaminari leaned in, squinting like he might spot the answer on Izuku’s face. “That’s not that crazy, right? Half our crew isn’t fully human.”

“No,” Izuku said, shaking his head. “Not quite. She’s human. Just...not our kind of human.”

The room seemed to tilt slightly, as if they were all collectively holding their breath. The metallic clink of someone’s fork dropping onto a tray echoed across the space.

Sato, their crew’s cook, stared at him, a furrow deepening between his brows. “You’re saying she’s...a different kind of human? One never seen before?”

Izuku’s fingers twitched at his side. He exhaled slowly, feeling the shape of it settle into the room like a stone dropped into still water.

“I’m saying she isn’t in any existing database,” he said steadily, “and that we found her in a wreck powered by energy signatures that don’t even exist here.”

A shiver ran through the gathered crowd.

“She has a name,” Yaoyorozu said softly. There was a fragile hope in her voice, a quiet insistence that names still mattered.

Izuku’s throat tightened.

“Uraraka,” he said. The name felt strange coming out of his mouth, heavy with unfamiliar gravity.

Ashido bit her lip, folding her arms over her chest. “So...what are we supposed to do?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Izuku hesitated. Part of him wanted to stay silent to protect the fragile, flickering trust he’d seen in Uraraka’s eyes, but he knew he couldn’t. Having Uraraka on their ship could impact everyone on board, from their exam to the way they went about their daily tasks to their safety. “She’s scared. Alone. I don’t think she wants to be a threat to anyone.”

Bakugo scoffed from the back of the room, his arms crossed tight over his chest. “You better be right, nerd. Otherwise we’re babysitting a bomb.”

For a moment, Izuku almost let it slide. Almost. But then something in him—the part that had looked Uraraka in the eyes and seen the raw, shaking fear there—stiffened into something harder.

“No,” Izuku said, quiet but certain. His green eyes lifted to meet Bakugo’s, his gaze unflinching. “I think she’s something else. Something lost.”

The words hung there, resonating in the hush.

The room shifted again, not physically, but emotionally. It was an almost imperceptible tilt, like gravity pulling in a new direction. In an instant, they weren’t cadets anymore. They weren’t soldiers or students preparing for exams. They were just kids standing at the edge of something vast and terrifying and unknown.

A girl who shouldn’t exist. A broken drive. A fracture in the fabric of reality, bleeding into their hands.

Izuku’s gaze drifted instinctively toward the viewport across the mess hall. Beyond the reinforced glass, the galaxy stretched out in slow, endless spirals, uncaring and cold. A thousand billion worlds spun through a darkness so deep it almost swallowed thought itself. 

The infiniteness of it struck him at this moment. Infinite wars, infinite losses, infinite conversations playing out on different ships, in different skies.

Somewhere out there, the truth of where Uraraka had come from still existed, and somewhere even further beyond that, maybe something worse.

He stared into the stars until the noise around him faded into nothing, a heavy feeling settling into his chest. They had found her by accident. But fate, Izuku knew, didn’t make accidents like this, not without a reason.

Izuku tightened his grip on his tablet, feeling the pulse of the ship thrumming faintly through the deck under his boots, and made a silent vow.

Uraraka wasn’t going to stay lost. Not if he had anything to say about it.

After a fitful rest, Izuku found himself in the briefing room once more. This time, it was packed tight with every member of Command and Engineering. Every chair was occupied, and every surface was littered with readouts and diagrams that Hatsume had been throwing onto the central table like playing cards. The lights overhead flickered once—the ship’s systems obviously overworked from the constant drain of Hatsume’s diagnostic runs—but no one seemed to notice.

The chipped drive Izuku and Kirishima had recovered from the wreck rested between them all like a blackened stone, its casing cracked and delicate.

At one end of the table, Hatsume bounced slightly on her toes, her goggles pushed high onto her forehead and her eyes practically glowing with excitement.

“Alright!” she chirped, clapping her hands together. “So, first things first: it’s not a standard component. Not Commission-issue. Not even black-market.”

Aizawa leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed, watching the chip with the unblinking patience of a predator. Beside him, All Might sat stiffly, his large frame crammed awkwardly into a seat obviously not designed for someone of his height.

“And?” Aizawa prompted, voice flat.

Hatsume, unbothered, grinned as she lowered her goggles over her eyes. “I’m gonna poke it a little. Just a low-frequency magnetic pulse to show you how it reacts.”

“You gave it power?” Aizawa spat incredulously. “We don’t know if this thing’s a bomb, a beacon, or a black hole in a box.”

“Pfft. I know how to not blow up the lab. Anymore.” Hatsume rolled her eyes, still grinning widely. “Of course I had to give it a little energy to see what it could do. And I do know what it is, at least a little. It’s brilliant. Crazy. Completely reckless. I love it.”

She tapped the cracked chip with a small tool, causing it to buzz softly under her touch. “As far as I can tell, it’s designed to modify a ship’s engine mid-flight. It’ll alter its transport capabilities, letting it shift across distances in a way that doesn't follow standard FTL physics. It’s not just jumping through space—it’s more like it’s rewriting the space around the ship. Tearing a path through it, kinda."

The room was silent except for the faint hum of the ventilation system.

Yaoyorozu leaned in, her brow furrowed. “You’re saying it creates...a different kind of jump?”

“Different rules entirely.” Hatsume nodded eagerly. “The energy signatures don’t match anything we know. Whatever this tech is, it’s way beyond us. At least a generation ahead—maybe two.”

Sero let out a low whistle from the far side of the room. “No wonder that pieces of junk ship crashed.”

Hatsume’s smile faded, just slightly. She tapped a few keys on her datapad, projecting a rough schematic above the table: a holographic outline of Uraraka’s ship created from the scans Yaoyorozu had taken, its engine core spiked with jagged red warnings.

“If I had to guess,” Hatsume said, “this drive wasn’t supposed to be installed in something that small, or something so cobbled together like that. The ship’s frame couldn’t handle the stress. Whatever system that girl was using to stabilize the jump failed mid-activation. The engine tried to follow the drive’s instructions, and well…it tore itself apart.”

Izuku stared at the projection, his heart sinking. He could almost imagine it: the ship shuddering under forces it was never built to endure, plates shearing, alarms screaming, and Uraraka alone in the chaos, fighting just to survive.

“So…she was trying to run,” Kirishima said, his voice low.

Everyone turned to look at him.

“I don’t think she’d have a reason to risk using this if she was just traveling,” he went on, his shoulders tense. “I think she was escaping something.”

Hatsume nodded. “That would make sense. There's signs of manual overrides all over the ship. All those melted consoles could be the aftermath of emergency maneuvers, reroutes, and shield boosts. She was pushing that little ship way past its limits.” Her eyes gleamed. “Honestly? She’s lucky she made it as far as she did.”

Iida adjusted his glasses, the light catching the lenses. “If this technology doesn’t belong to any known faction, then we have to assume it poses a potential threat. Either whoever created it...or whoever she was running from.”

Kaminari shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “You think they could come looking for her?”

Izuku’s hands tightened in his lap.

“They might," he said finally, voice steady even as his stomach twisted. "If this drive is that valuable and advanced...they won’t just let it go.”

Hatsume clicked off the hologram, the room falling into half-shadow again.

For a moment, no one spoke.

They were no longer dealing with a lost girl and a broken ship. They were staring down a storm they barely understood, one that might already be coming for them.

Izuku felt it settle in his chest, cold and certain.

Before the silence could stretch too long, Iida shifted in his seat again, clearing his throat.

“If I may,” he said, glancing between Aizawa and All Might, “Yaoyorozu and I have been discussing a concern. One we felt needed to be raised sooner rather than later.”

Aizawa gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod. “Go ahead.”

Iida straightened, formal as ever despite the tension coiling through the room. “Given the nature of what we have uncovered—the unidentified technology and the potential danger to this ship and its crew—would it not be standard procedure to report this situation immediately to the Commission?”

The question hung in the air like a blade, sharp and heavy.

Iida pressed on, his voice steady but earnest. “With all due respect, sir, is it not policy to notify them of anomalies of this magnitude? Should we not transfer Uraraka and the drive to their jurisdiction and resume the exam as normal? Surely this matter exceeds the parameters of a training exercise.”

Across the table, Yaoyorozu nodded, her expression grave.

All Might and Aizawa exchanged a look, brief, but heavy enough to send a ripple through the gathered students.

When Aizawa finally spoke, his voice was low and sure. “You’re not wrong.” He let the words settle for a beat before continuing, “But I made the call not to report it. Not yet.”

Iida blinked, clearly thrown. “Sir?”

Aizawa leaned forward slightly, his shadow stretching long across the table. “If we notify the Commission now, we lose control of the situation. They’ll take Uraraka and the drive, and take command the ship if they have to. And whatever she's running from?” His mouth tightened into a grim line. “We’ll be left blind when it comes for her, and for us.”

The room was utterly still, every student locked on him.

“If we hand her off without understanding what we’re dealing with first,” Aizawa said, his voice quieter now, but no less sharp, “we lose the only advantage we have.

“And…” He exhaled slowly through his nose, a rare flicker of something almost like anger flashing across his face. “If we give Uraraka to the Commission, they’ll treat her like a threat, an asset to be interrogated and dissected, if necessary. They won’t see the girl who fought to survive a crash, just the danger she represents.”

His voice hardened, the words dropping like iron weights.

“And the drive?” He shook his head. “If they get their hands on this tech before we understand it, they’ll weaponize it. They’ll fold it into the next battle in their war before we know what it was even built for.”

“There’s too much we don’t know.” All Might shifted, his expression unusually grim. “We’re walking a narrow line. But for now…we protect her. We learn what we can. We prepare for whatever’s coming.”

Aizawa's gaze swept across the room, hard and unyielding. “We’ll finish what we started. And we do it on our terms, because no one else is going to do it the right way.”

Izuku sat still, the voices around him fading into a low hum.

Aizawa’s words echoed in his mind: We’re not handing her over. We’re protecting her.

He looked down at the table, at the scattered schematics and damaged chip, and thought of Uraraka, curled in the medbay, alone, afraid, and holding herself together like the last fragile piece of a broken world. He didn’t know why she had ended up here, battered and half-broken, clutching a piece of technology that could tear holes through space itself.

Izuku felt something tighten in his chest. It wasn’t just about Uraraka anymore, or the exam or survival. It was about choosing who they were going to be in the face of it.

He straightened slightly in his seat, his hands curling into fists against his thighs, not in fear but in quiet resolve.

The storm could come.

They would be ready.

The medbay was dim when Izuku slipped inside, a tray of food balanced carefully in his hands.  

He paused by the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the low light and listening to the soft, rhythmic hum of the ship’s systems. It felt somehow heavier here, like even the air itself knew something was wrong.

Uraraka was sitting up now, unrestrained. Someone—Yaoyorozu, probably—had helped her into a clean set of clothes: a loose, long-sleeved shirt and soft gray pants, both hanging a little too big on her frame. Her hair was tied back into a low, messy ponytail, but strands clung to the curve of her jaw in the places where sweat or tears had dried and left her raw. Her legs were drawn beneath her like she was still bracing for impact that never seemed to come. A faint, washed-out flush colored her cheeks, a ghost of life against the hollow exhaustion in her eyes.

She looked...smaller somehow, less like a captive and more like a castaway pulled half-drowned from a sea no one else could see.

Still, when she noticed him standing there, her shoulders stiffened, and that wary, guarded look flickered back into her eyes.

Izuku hesitated in the doorway, every instinct screaming at him to tread carefully.

“I, uh...” His voice cracked, suddenly aware of how loud he sounded in the quiet room. He shifted the tray slightly in his hands as he cleared his throat and tried again, softer this time. “I brought you something to eat. If you’re hungry.”

For a moment, she didn’t move. Then, after a breath too long, she gave a small nod.

Izuku stepped forward, slow and deliberate, placing the tray on the small side table near her bed. He pulled up a chair but stayed a respectful distance away, his hands resting visibly on his knees.

Don’t crowd her. Don’t scare her. You’re not here to get answers. You’re here to help.

Uraraka reached for the food with cautious, deliberate movements, her fingers hovering above it like she half-expected it to vanish. She picked at the food in slow, measured bites. There was no rush or urgency. It was as if her body was moving on autopilot while her mind was somewhere far away, caught between holding herself together and bracing for whatever would come next.

Izuku kept silent, pressing his hands into his knees and willing himself to stay still even as questions burned in the back of his mind—the drive, the crash, and the wild, desperate way she had fought them—but he swallowed them down.

Minutes passed like that, marked only by the soft clink of utensils.  

Finally, her voice broke the silence, soft, wary, and hoarse. “The academy you’re part of...what’s it for?”

Izuku blinked, caught off-guard. “U.A.? It’s a training academy, mostly for leadership, exploration, and piloting. Some of us will go on to work for the Commission, some for research stations, or colonies...It depends.”

She frowned faintly, lowering her gaze to the tray as if studying it could help her make sense of what she was hearing. Her voice was even quieter when she asked, “Are the Commission and the League still at war?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah. They have been...for a long time.” He wasn't sure how anyone in the galaxy could not know that the war was still raging. The mystery around her only got deeper and deeper with every word she said. 

Uraraka’s hand stilled completely. Then, she lifted her eyes to him, sharp and clear, pinning him in place. “And you’re on the Commission’s side?”

Izuku shifted, feeling the invisible weight of the question settle heavy across his shoulders.  

“I...” he hesitated. “I’m not a soldier. But I was born on a planet inside Commission territory. That’s...just where I’m from.”

Uraraka didn’t move, not even to blink. “You were...born on a planet?” she repeated slowly, like he had said something absurd.

“Yeah.” Izuku tried to smile, offering something light to ease the tension twisting between them. “Earth. Like most humans.”

For a moment, he thought maybe she hadn’t heard him properly. But then her fork slipped from her fingers with a soft metallic clatter onto the tray. A tremor ran through her body, small, but visible.

“Earth?” she echoed, her voice barely a whisper. Her hands curled into the fabric of her pants, her knuckles white. Something cracked behind her eyes, a ripple of something—maybe fear or confusion—that she fought to keep hidden.  

“Uraraka...” he said gently, the words almost catching in his throat, “...where were you born?”

Her breath hitched a little, a tiny, sharp intake of air like she’d been stabbed somewhere he couldn’t see.

“I...I was born on a ship,” she said carefully, her voice soft but brittle at the edges. “Like most humans. Like most living things.”

A chill skated down Izuku’s spine. He knew births happened aboard ships sometimes, but they were rare. Most species clung to their planets, to the homes where they had evolved into what they were now.  

But Uraraka said it like it was fact, like it was the only truth she knew.

Desperately needing to anchor them both to something real, Izuku pulled out his datapad. Wordlessly, he opened up a navigational star chart. A holographic map shimmered to life between them, a delicate lattice of stars and gates and interstellar lanes casting a soft, false starlight across the room.

Izuku pointed to the familiar blue marble near the center. “This is Earth,” he said. “My homeworld.” He touched the planet twice to zoom in on it, and then traced a path eastward. “Here’s Japan. That’s where I’m from.”

Uraraka leaned in, studying the map, her face unreadable. With hands that trembled, she reached forward, touching the map with two fingers before squeezing them together to zoom back out. She used her fingertips to shift the map around, exploring the many stars and routes recorded within it. Her gaze darted across the mapped sectors and the charted driftways. 

At first, she said nothing.  

Then, she shook her head, slow and certain. “The map’s wrong.”

Izuku frowned, tension creeping up the back of his neck.  

“It’s not,” he said carefully. “I’m a navigation officer. I’ve studied these charts for years. Everyone uses them. They’re standard, and they have been for centuries.”

But she wasn’t arguing with him. She was whispering now, almost to herself, her gaze skimming across the projections like she was searching for something that wasn’t there.  

“I know these stars,” she murmured. “I’ve traveled this corridor. I’ve drifted along these trade routes. But...the patterns are wrong. They're rotated and twisted.” Her hand lifted slowly, tracing the faint blue lines with her fingertips. She moved to the central cluster, to a tight formation near the Orion Gate.

“This,” she said, voice tightening, “is supposed to be the Orion Gate. But it’s...mirrored. Completely inverted.”

Izuku stepped closer despite himself, peering at the cluster. It looked right to him. Perfect, even, and precise.

“That’s not possible,” he whispered. “Our drift calculations—our jump coordinates—they’re exact. They're universal—”

But Uraraka wasn’t finished. She pointed again, this time to a faint misty swirl near the outer edges.  

“And there...” she whispered, her hand trembling stronger now. “That nebula isn't supposed to be there. There isn't one anywhere along The Celestial Spine.”

Izuku's heart hammered against his ribs. The Hoshino Nebula had been used in navigation for centuries. It was a cosmic lighthouse, brighter than the stars around it and visible for lightyears around. If it was missing from her skies...

He shook his head slowly. “That’s…not the name of that route. It’s the Axis Gateway, and that nebula—”

He stopped, because she was already shaking her head, pulling back from the map as if it might burn her. Her breath hitched, small panicked gasps she couldn’t hide anymore.

“No," she breathed. Her voice cracked so violently it sounded like it tore her throat raw.

Izuku reached for her instinctively, but stopped short, his hand hovering uselessly. He swallowed hard, his heart pounding in his chest. “Uraraka...”

She scrambled closer to the map again, hands swiping through stars, panic rising off her in waves so strong Izuku could feel it like static on his skin.

"The Obsidian Straits, and the Eclipse Arch," she said, pointing. Her shoulders hunched forward, a quiet shudder rippling through her as she stared at the empty stretch of space where something should have been. "It’s wrong. All wrong. The drift lanes. The anchor points. This isn’t...this isn’t right! "

Izuku stared at her. "That’s not possible. This is the standard star map. It’s based on...it’s based on physical constants, Uraraka. Drift happens, but not like this."

But she wasn't listening. Or maybe she had already known, deep down.

She spun toward him, her face naked with horror. "I’ve been there. I’ve lived there. And this—" Her hand slashed through the air, cutting across the projected stars. "This isn’t my galaxy. It’s not my universe."

The realization hit him like a physical blow. The datapad slipped from his hands and crashed to the floor, the hologram flickering and warping before solidifying once more.

Before he could say anything, before he could even think , Uraraka’s body convulsed forward. She gagged, once, twice, and then vomited violently onto the floor, her whole frame shuddering with the force of it.

"I—" Izuku surged closer but froze, helpless, his hand hovering uselessly in the air. He didn’t know whether to help her, to touch her, or to back away and give her space.

She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, trembling so badly she could barely sit upright. Tears tracked down her cheeks, thick and silent. Her breath hitched, and a soft, choked sound escaped her lips—a sound too raw to be anything but pain. Her arms tightened around herself, her entire body shaking as she pressed her face into her knees.

"We thought this might happen..." Her voice was barely audible from where her mouth was buried in the valley between her knees. "But I…I don’t know how to go back. I don’t even know if there is a back—"

Izuku stared as she broke, something twisting painfully in his chest.

The medbay seemed to tilt sideways around him, the air growing colder, heavier, and thicker. The stars from the fallen map still floated in front of them. It was a sky Izuku knew so well, but one that was alien to the girl in the cot beside him.

His own body began to tremble alongside hers. It wasn’t from exhaustion, but from the slow, dawning horror of realizing she was not just lost in space.

She was lost in reality.

Somehow, impossibly, she had fallen into theirs.

Chapter Text

Hours had passed since Uraraka had whispered the words that shattered the foundation of everything: "This isn’t my galaxy. It’s not my universe."

She hadn’t spoken since.

Neither had Izuku.

He sat on the floor a few feet from her bed, legs pulled into his chest and back against the wall. His legs had long since gone numb, but he didn’t move. He didn’t want to. If he moved, something might shift inside him, something fragile and suspended in the stillness between them.

Stillness was all he had to offer.

The tray of food he’d brought for her remained half-eaten on the side table, untouched since she’d pushed it away. The only sounds in the room were the low hum of the medbay’s systems and the occasional shift of fabric as one of them moved slightly, restless but silent.

At some point, Izuku had cleaned up the vomit. He'd grabbed a sanitation kit from the medbay’s cabinet, kneeled on the tile, and scrubbed the floor without speaking a word.

It had felt like the only thing he could do.

He knew he should’ve gone to get someone. That was what protocol said. He should’ve run to Aizawa and All Might with a report of what Uraraka had said, that she thought she was from another universe entirely. He probably should’ve called Ojiro as well, to run another medical scan or to properly sanitize the space after she’d lost the contents of her stomach across it.

But he hadn’t. Izuku hadn’t seen this as a case file or an anomaly. Uraraka wasn’t just a mystery to be solved or a threat to be neutralized. She was someone grieving something too big to name, someone untethered from everything she'd known. And right now, she needed to be seen and heard, not studied or interrogated. 

Izuku didn’t think getting more people involved was the right thing to do right now, not when Uraraka was unraveling like this. Not when the air was still tight with shock and disbelief. 

When Aizawa had tasked Izuku with being the one to talk to Uraraka, he’d put his faith in Izuku’s judgment. Not his intelligence or his strength, but his heart.

So Izuku stayed. Even when every cadet instinct in him screamed to escalate, to organize, and to report, he stayed.

He would tell Aizawa and All Might about what Uraraka thought had happened later. He would tell Ojiro, too. The medical officer needed to know so he could make sure the space was properly sterilized, and log her condition for future checkups. But not yet. Not while Uraraka was still curled on the edge of the bed, arms around her knees, eyes wide and unfocused like she was waiting to wake up from a dream she hadn’t chosen; like if she stared into space hard enough, she could undo the distance between here and her home.

Izuku had sat with grief before. With shock, and with the stunned, dead-silent kind of fear that didn’t look like screaming, just like stillness.

This was that.

And all he could do, for now, was be here for it.

Eventually, after the quiet had stretched long enough to dull the edges of his thoughts, Uraraka shifted. Her arms loosened around her knees. Her gaze, still distant, slid toward him.

“Midoriya,” she said, voice rough from hours of being unused.

He straightened at once, heartbeat quickening as he waited for her to give him an indication of what she wanted or needed him to do or say next. “Yeah?”

She wasn’t looking at him anymore. She spoke to the floor instead as she quietly asked, “What’s it like here?”

He blinked. “Here?” 

“In this universe,” she clarified, her voice still small. “This version of it. I just…” Her voice cracked. “I need to know what’s real.”

He blinked again. Her request landed softly, but something in it carried weight. She asked her question like his answer would be a lifeline. Her words were a quiet plea for something she could hold onto.

Izuku’s throat worked around the lump there before he answered honestly, “It’s…complicated.”

He exhaled slowly, running his hand through his hair. “There’s this…underlying tension. Always. The League and the Commission have been in conflict for so long everyone’s just learned to live with it. It’s quiet on most days, but there’s always something simmering under the surface.”

He glanced down at his hands, resting atop his knees. He flexed his fingers slightly, just enough to remind himself this moment was real.

“But…it’s not all fear. It’s not all bad,” he said with a small smile. “There’s still joy. Still love. People go to concerts, eat dinner on city rooftops, and grow gardens on starliners. They open bakeries and fix satellites and name their children after stars they’ve never seen. Kids play games in low-grav domes and race homemade droids.”

He swallowed, his next words leaving him in a hush, “Even when it hurts, even when things are broken...they keep going.”

He paused, thinking he might've already said enough.

But when he glanced up again, Uraraka was looking at him. Really looking at him, her eyes finally coming back into focus. 

Her face was still pale and drawn, her shoulders still curled inward like she was trying to take up less space in a universe she no longer recognized. But her eyes…her eyes held something else that flickered faintly, almost too fragile to name. But it was there.

Hope. It was buried deep under the desolation, nearly drowned by the storm she was weathering. But it was still alive, burning quietly like an ember.

Izuku’s breath caught.

Maybe he should’ve stopped talking. He should’ve let her rest, and let the silence settle again. But that look undid something in him. That hope. That trust. That need.

So he kept going.

“I grew up in a small colony on Earth,” Izuku said, his voice softening, the words pulling up from somewhere tender and half-forgotten. He wasn’t sure why he was saying this—not exactly. It was just that her eyes had asked for something real, and this was the truest thing he knew how to give.

“It wasn't a rich one, but that was alright with me. Even if we didn't have much, we still had each other.”

As he spoke, a warmth curled inside his chest, bittersweet and familiar. He could almost feel the gravity-shift hum of home beneath his feet, the distant rattle of cargo trolleys through worn streets, the low call of shopkeepers greeting neighbors they’d known for decades. His world had been small, but it had been theirs. And for all its cracks and compromises, he had never once doubted that he was loved there.

“My mom’s a nurse. She works at a small med station in the coastal district,” he continued, eyes flickering to the floor like the memory was too sacred to hold someone else’s gaze. “We lived in this tiny apartment, but it had a window that looked out over the sunrise. You could see the rings of the space station beyond the atmosphere, all golden when the light hit just right. I used to think it looked like a halo.”

He smiled faintly, and for a moment, his features softened with the glow of nostalgia. “My mom used to pack me these bentō boxes for school, and they were always too big, like she thought I might forget to eat if I didn’t have six options.”

He chuckled softly, though the sound barely broke the hush between them. He could see it now: his mother fussing in the kitchen before dawn, sealing lids and stacking compartments with practiced hands. Love in its quietest, fiercest form.

“And I’d complain,” he added, a flicker of guilt passing over his face. “But I always ate every bite.”

Because he’d known, even then, what it meant. That lunchbox wasn’t just food. It was love. It was a promise tucked between rice and pickled radish that someone was waiting for him to come home.

And now, sitting across from Uraraka—someone ripped from her own world, from everything she knew—he realized why those memories were surfacing. He wanted her to feel, if only for a moment, what it was like to be held together by something. Even if it was just a story. Even if it was just him.

“My best friend lived two doors down and used to drag me out to watch supply ships dock. We’d make up stories about who was on board, what worlds they’d seen…”

Izuku stopped.

He hadn’t meant to say all that.

The words hung in the air, fragile and unguarded. He blinked, suddenly aware of how far he’d wandered from the mission and the moment. He’d peeled back layers of himself he usually kept hidden, tucked away behind reports and strategy briefings and the urgency of his exam.

Talking about his mom…about Kacchan.

His throat tightened, his fingers curling against his leg. 

He looked back at Uraraka, unsure if he’d gone too far, if he was making this worse or he'd lost her interest.

But Uraraka was still watching him. Her gaze wasn't hollow now, but instead she was listening quietly.

“I just…” he said, voice low now. “Even with the war, people still find ways to live. That’s what I’m trying to say. There’s pain. But there’s still life.” He paused, then added, almost in a whisper, “Maybe that’s not so different from where you came from.”

Her eyes flickered, just for a second—a crack in the stillness. Then she looked away again, curling slightly tighter.

Her voice, when it came, was soft and almost empty. 

“That sounds…like a dream,” she murmured.

He looked up.

She didn’t meet his gaze. Her eyes were fixed on the far wall again, on something he couldn’t see. A memory. A loss. A ghost.

“Where I come from…Earth isn’t a place you can point to on a map,” she said. “It’s a story. A myth. The homeworld of humans, before they poisoned it. Before they stripped it bare and left it to die.”

Izuku said nothing. Instead, he thought of the soil beneath his feet as a child, the summer air thick with the smell of leaves and sun-warmed concrete. He had taken it all for granted. He’d never imagined a universe where such memories were legends, not facts.

“Some say it was beautiful, that it had blue oceans, trees that grew from soil, and air you could breathe without filters. But if it ever existed like that, it doesn’t anymore. People left it millennia ago. The ones who could, anyway.” 

Millennia? The word echoed in Izuku’s mind like a bell tolling through fog. How many generations had passed since her people last stood on the ground of their home world? He pictured a great exodus—ships fleeing a dying world—and felt a pang of guilt for the Earth soil still matted in the cracks of his boots.

Her hands clenched loosely around her knees. “Now we live on ships. Cities stitched together in orbit. Old stations and scavenged hulls. We move from system to system, looking for scraps. Habitable planets? Gone. Stripped clean. Humanity broke every world it touched.”

He swallowed. The way she spoke wasn’t just anger. It was weariness and marrow-deep exhaustion. He wondered how long she had carried that truth; how often she’d had to look at stars and think of all the worlds that could never be home.

Her voice caught. She blinked hard, but didn’t stop. “Most of us don’t belong to any major fleet. We survive by trading what we can, and praying we don’t cross paths with the Commission or the League.” 

She laughed, dry and without humor. “They’re not governments. They’re giants. Federations of ships big enough to cast shadows over moons. They take what they want, whether it be recruits or resources. If they let you in, it’s because they see value in you. If they don’t…”

She didn’t finish the sentence.

Izuku shifted forward, silent and listening.

“I was on a ship with a few other families,” she said. “We were small. Quiet. We took odd jobs, and kept to the edges of the corridors.”

Her voice trembled then, just slightly. “I wasn’t happy. Not really. But I wasn’t alone. And it was home.”

The words lingered between them like dust in starlight, soft, aching, and unresolved.

She turned her head, just enough that he could see the shimmer of unshed tears.

Izuku didn’t know what to say.

So he didn’t speak. He just sat there, breathing in the shape of her grief, holding the silence steady so it wouldn’t break her, because maybe she needed it to carry her a little longer.

The room settled into stillness again. No alarms. No chatter over the intercom. Just the low hum of the medbay systems and the occasional beep from the monitor still tracking her vitals, though no one was really watching them anymore.

Izuku sat with his elbows on his knees, his fingers laced together and his eyes on the floor. Her story sat heavy on his chest, not just because it was horrifying, but because of the way she told it. Like it was just the way things were. Like hope was something you outgrew.

He swallowed.

She shifted slightly on the bed, knees drawn up to her chest now. She hadn’t looked at him once since she started speaking. He wondered if she even remembered he was still here.

“I’m sorry,” Izuku said finally, quietly. “About your ship. About…everything.”

Uraraka didn’t answer.

A beat passed. Then another.

Her voice, when it came, was faint. “You don’t have to be sorry.”

Izuku looked up.

She was staring at the floor, her eyes distant. “You didn’t do anything. You didn’t cause any of it. And this universe...” her voice thinned to a whisper, “...you make it sound beautiful. It’s broken too, I can feel that. But it still has food and music and love.”

She sniffled, swallowing around the tightness in her throat as a tear finally slipped free. “I’m not supposed to be here. I know that. But if I’d had a choice…I think I still would’ve wanted to see it.”

Izuku felt something twist in his chest. He didn’t know what to say. No heroic line or plan or offer could undo what had happened to her.

So he leaned his head back against the wall again. Not away. Just enough to make room. Enough to give her space to breathe without the weight of his pity.

She didn't shed any more tears. He thought maybe she’d already done enough of that in the hours before, when she hadn’t said a word and he’d just quietly cleaned the mess and stayed close without speaking.

Now, all that was left was the quiet, the kind that comes after something has broken and nothing is rushing in to fix it.

And in that silence, two strangers from two different universes sat still together, the glow of the medbay lights soft against the walls, the sound of a world still spinning faint through steel.

Uraraka looked away again, blinking hard. “I don’t know what to do now.”

Izuku answered with the only truth he had. “You don’t have to know. Not yet.”

Uraraka let out a breath. It wasn’t quite a sigh, nor a breath of relief, but something in her shoulders loosened.

“I don’t want to go back,” she said, just barely audible.

Izuku didn’t answer right away. He didn’t know if she meant her world, or the ship, or the version of herself that had only known fear and scarcity.

But he nodded. Just once. “Then we’ll figure it out from here.”

And she didn’t argue.

A long pause stretched between them.

“I’m scared,” she admitted, her voice barely a whisper.

“I know,” Izuku said gently. “Me too.”

He hesitated, then reached out slowly with an open palm, not quite touching her yet, but just offering.

Uraraka stared at his hand. Seconds passed like years.

Then, finally, she moved. Her fingers, cold and tentative, slipped into his.

Neither of them said anything.

There was nothing to say.

But her hand stayed in his. She didn’t let go, and that was something.

Uraraka had fallen asleep, curled in on herself beneath a folded blanket. Her hand had slipped from Izuku's somewhere along the way, resting limply against the mattress. Izuku watched the steady rise and fall of her breathing for a moment longer before standing. The room was still, humming with the quiet life support systems and soft lights.

He stepped out into the corridor, the door whispering shut behind him, and exhaled. Then he turned, heading toward where he knew he could find Aizawa and All Might.

The atmosphere in the briefing room was stark and quiet.

Izuku had found himself in this room far too much over the span of the past two days. Every time, it felt a little colder than the last, like the walls had absorbed the gravity of everything that had been said in here and were echoing it back at him.

Aizawa stood beside the holodisplay table, his arms folded tightly across his chest, posture rigid but tired. There was a tension in the lines of his shoulders, like his body hadn't fully relaxed in days.

All Might sat across from him, hunched slightly forward, his brows furrowed in uncharacteristic stillness. The light caught in the deepened lines on his face, and the faint gleam in his eyes looked more like worry than the kind of fire Izuku would've expected to see in the gaze of one of the greatest war heroes of all time.

Their silence reminded Izuku that this was no ordinary problem they were facing—as if he needed the reminder. This wasn’t about an enemy or battle simulations or their exam. This was something bigger and stranger, something even the strongest man Izuku knew didn’t yet understand.

A few beats passed after Izuku entered and came to a halt before them.

“You were in the medbay all night,” Aizawa said at last, his voice low and dry. He wasn’t accusatory, just stating a fact.

“I…didn’t want to leave Uraraka alone,” Izuku admitted softly. “She’s asleep now.”

Her breathing had finally evened out. He’d felt the way her fingers twitched in her sleep, like they were still reaching for something in a dream she couldn’t hold. It'd been hard to walk away from her after that.

Aizawa gave a small nod, his expression unreadable. “What did she tell you?”

Izuku drew a slow breath, trying to focus his thoughts. Saying it out loud would make it feel more real, and it already felt like too much.

“She thinks…she’s not from this universe,” he said. “Her star charts didn’t match ours. When I showed her my map, she recognized some things, but said they were mirrored—inverted drift patterns.”

He shook his head slightly, voice tightening. “And she wasn’t just confused. She was certain.”

Aizawa’s brow twitched ever so slightly, but he didn’t interrupt. 

All Might’s eyes narrowed, his hands folding together in front of him as if bracing for something heavy.

“As outrageous as it sounds…” Izuku went on, “it would explain the foreign energy patterns we detected around her ship, and the mild genomic deviation Ojiro and Asui found in her samples. If I understand it correctly, it was enough to suggest she comes from an altered human baseline…like one from another universe.”

Even now, the words felt alien in his mouth. Another universe. Not just another system or species. Not just alien, but displaced, fallen through the seams of existence like a thread tugged loose from a garment.

All Might’s expression darkened. “So…her being here is a result of multiversal bleed?”

His voice was grave in a way Izuku hadn't yet heard. Hearing it now made Izuku feel the weight of what he was saying press harder on his chest.

“I believe her,” he said, nodding once. “I think it’s real. Or something like it.”

And it wasn’t just because the evidence made sense. It was the look in Uraraka's eyes, the way her voice wavered, not with panic, but with the kind of grief that carved hollows in the soul.

Aizawa’s eyes narrowed, his gaze shifting slightly as if aligning puzzle pieces in his head. “The drive must be part of it.

“I think so, too,” Izuku echoed quickly. “It was installed in the ship’s engine housing. Hatsume said it created a jump that was different from FTL. She said it…warped space.”

He paused, running a hand through his hair. He knew they’d heard all this before. But he needed to say it again. Saying it out loud helped him string it all together.

“Maybe the drive was meant to create a corridor or fold between points in the universe,” he continued, “but something went wrong. Instead of a fold, she fell out of her universe entirely.”

That thought lingered, pulsing in the room like a low-frequency hum.

Aizawa didn’t move, his jaw tight, his stare fixed somewhere just past Izuku’s shoulder. 

All Might leaned back slowly in his chair, a hand rising to rub at his chin. 

Neither man said a word, but the silence between them said plenty.

Izuku let it settle so they could feel and grapple with the enormity of it, and also because he couldn’t stop seeing it: her ship spiraling through an uncharted void, crashing through dimensions like glass.

“Did she confirm any of yours or Hatsume’s hypotheses about the functions of the drive?” Aizawa finally asked, his voice quieter now, and more cautious.

Izuku shook his head. “No. I didn’t ask. But based on how wrecked the ship was, I don’t think she meant to activate it that way.”

Aizawa exhaled slowly, his arms unfolding just enough for one hand to rub tiredly at his eyes. “We’ll need to find out more. If there’s even the slightest possibility that it could trigger another interdimensional event, we need to know.”

Izuku hesitated. The words in his mouth weren’t mission-critical or at all tactical, but they were important just the same.

“Before we question her…” he said carefully, “I want to take her somewhere.”

All Might tilted his head slightly. “Where?”

“The garden,” Izuku said. “The real one, on the biosphere deck.”

It sounded almost foolish aloud, like a child’s wish. But it felt right.

There was a small beat of silence before Aizawa blinked, his brows raising just a fraction. “You want to give her a tour?”

“Not exactly,” Izuku said. He shifted his weight, eyes flicking from one man to the other. “I…I want her to see that this universe still has green things. That's still alive, and not everything is synthetic and dying. That this place isn’t just war and data and cold metal.”

His voice cracked slightly at the edges. He didn’t care. He meant it.

He swallowed and looked Aizawa squarely in the eye. “You asked me to gain her trust. To do that…she needs to see this universe. And maybe believe in it, even if it’s just a little.”

He thought of her voice, of the sorrow she spoke with, and the quiet, unyielding way she said she hadn’t been happy wherever she'd come from, but at least she was home.

Now she had nothing familiar. Nothing real.

A long silence followed. All Might was the first to move. Slowly, his lips pulled into the faintest, saddest smile, one touched with hope. His gaze met Izuku’s and lingered.

Aizawa, after a breath, gave a single nod.

“Permission granted,” he said. “But don’t wander far. I’ll order the other cadets to give you space.”

Izuku gave a sharp, grateful nod. “Thank you.”

He turned, already planning the best time to wake her, and already thinking about how to show her that this universe was still alive, and that that was something worth staying for and believing in. 

The hallway lights were dimmed for the night cycle, casting a soft blue glow across the floor. The ship had settled into its usual low thrum, quieter now, as if even the steel bones of it knew its crew was sleeping.

Uraraka walked beside Izuku in silence. Her steps were slow and careful, not from weakness, but from something more uncertain. It was like she was afraid the floor beneath her might shift, or vanish entirely, and she’d fall back into that hollow, starless space that had stolen everything.

Izuku glanced at her from the corner of his eye, then looked ahead. “We’re almost there,” he said gently.

She didn’t respond at first. Her eyes were fixed forward and glassy with thought. But after a few more steps, her voice came, quiet and raw. “Where’s the rest of your crew?”

“They were asked to give us some space.” He hesitated, then offered a wry smile. “That said, half of them are probably watching through access vents or the security cams.”

Uraraka stopped walking. She turned toward him with a flicker of alarm, her eyes wide in the dim light. “They’re watching?”

Izuku froze, guilt flickering across his face. He held up his hands quickly, palms forward. “Not in a weird way! I swear! It’s just—they’re worried. Since we found your ship, everyone’s been...tense. I think watching is their way of feeling like they’re doing something.”

Her eyes dropped to the floor, shoulders drawing inward slightly, as if the weight of causing others concern was too much.

“I’m sorry,” Izuku added, his voice low. “I shouldn’t have said it like that. I didn’t mean to make you feel pressured. We’re alone, I promise. No one’s going to bother us. And if you want to go back to the medbay, just say the word.”

There was a pause. He thought she might turn around and slip away from all of this. He’d let her, even if every part of him ached to keep her close and show her something she could believe in.

Then she looked up at him.

Her expression had changed. There was a faint curve to her mouth. It wasn't quite a smile, but it was something that had the shape of one, worn by grief and exhaustion. “Okay.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence, but it was different now. It wasn't the tense, brittle quiet from before. It was softer, and shared. It was a silence with room in it for something else to grow.

As they reached the doorway of the garden biosphere, the motion sensors triggered with a soft hiss, and the heavy door slid open.

Warm light spilled out around them like water.

The air shifted.

Gone was the recycled dryness of the ship’s corridors. The biosphere’s garden greeted them with cooler, richer air—a breath stolen from a world light-years away, touched with the scent of damp earth and faint floral sweetness. 

Above them, the biosphere’s dome arched wide, transparent and vast. Beyond it, the stars wheeled in perfect silence. They were sharp and endless against the velvet-black canvas of space, shimmering down in clusters and constellations and painting the garden in pale starlight.

Green spread out before them. They were real plants, cultivated carefully over years. Vines trailed across arching trellises, moss clung to carved stone, and patches of soft soil were spread underfoot instead of steel. Broad-leaved ferns rustled faintly in a programmed breeze. Pale blossoms had unfurled under the dome, their petals bioluminescent with soft hues of indigo, moonlight-white, and faint violet. A soft blue glow pulsed from mushrooms along the garden’s winding paths, like someone had scattered pieces of a galaxy across the mossy floor.

Uraraka stopped dead just inside the threshold. Her breath hitched.

She took a step forward. Then another. Her hand reached out slowly, as if she didn’t quite believe the scene in front of her was real. Her fingers grazed the edge of a broad leaf, trembling slightly. Her gaze swept upward, then across the glowing foliage as she whispered, “It looks like...a place the stars made.”

Izuku stayed back, leaning against the frame of the door, letting her take it in. He’d seen this place a dozen times, using it to clear his mind and train his focus. But right now, it felt new, and different. It was like seeing it through her eyes made it something sacred.

“I thought maybe you’d want to see it,” he said softly. “Just to know this universe still has things worth looking at.”

Uraraka stepped farther in, her eyes wide as they traced the swaying leaves, the curling petals of unfamiliar flowers. She blinked hard, tears gathering despite herself. Her voice came again, thinner now. “It’s beautiful.” 

For the first time since waking, something in her shoulders eased. Her fingers trailed across a cluster of flowers shaped like tiny stars, each one pulsing faintly as if echoing her heartbeat.

Izuku watched her, unmoving. He wanted to say something. He wanted to reach into the silence and offer her something more than just the garden, but the words tangled in his throat. It felt like speaking too loudly might shatter whatever fragile magic had taken hold between them.

She hadn’t said much either, but her body said enough. The way she knelt, the way her breath trembled, the way her eyes darted like someone trying not to look too long at something precious they might lose.

After a moment, she said quietly, “I don’t know if I deserve to see this.”

Izuku blinked. “What do you mean?”

She was still staring at the flowers. Her voice cracked. “I left them behind. Everyone. My crew, my friends…I didn’t know what I was doing when I initiated the jump that brought me here. I didn’t know it would…end everything.”

He stepped toward her, slower this time.

“I shouldn’t get this.” She paused to take in a slow breath, her eyes drifting up to the stars that were so familiar to him, and so alien to her. “I shouldn’t get peace when they didn’t. They never saw anything like this. They never had the chance.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full of everything she wasn’t ready to say. Grief, guilt, and longing. The weight of survival. And the question beneath it all: Why me?

Her shoulders shook, but she didn’t cry. She’d already wept everything dry long ago. What was left was worse. It was grief turned inward, sharp and steady like a knife that never dulled.

Izuku’s chest ached watching her. The way she moved was almost reverent, like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to be here. Like the peace was too good for her. Like the stars above were only meant to belong to those who hadn’t run, who hadn’t survived.

But the stars didn’t care. They shone anyway.

Izuku knelt beside her.

“I don’t think it’s about who deserves peace,” he said gently. “I think it’s about what we do with it when we find it. If we can protect it, carry it forward. Maybe even carry it for the ones who can’t anymore.”

He looked at her, searching for her eyes. “You’re not stealing peace from anyone. You’re surviving. That matters too.”

She looked at him then. Her eyes were rimmed in red, but her expression was soft, caught between gratitude and guilt.

“I didn’t know if I was going to make it when I initiated that jump,” she admitted. “When I realized what had happened, I didn’t know if anything here would be worth living for. But this...” She looked around the garden again, and something fragile in her face began to loosen. “This almost makes me believe I didn’t fall into a nightmare.”

Izuku smiled, just barely. “You didn’t. You’re still here. And maybe that means something.”

A silence stretched between them again, not empty this time, but full of something unspoken.

Then, her hand brushed his, not quite holding, just touching.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Izuku nodded. “Of course.”

They sat like that, side by side in the light of the stars as they spun in their silent dance up above. Around them, the garden shimmered in soft, impossible light. And between them, a thread began to form. It wasn't one of understanding, but of quiet defiance in the face of despair. A promise made not in words, but in stillness: You’re not alone.

The mess hall was quiet.

It was the kind of silence that stretched too long and pulled at the nerves. It was the kind that made Katsuki’s skin itch. 

Only a handful of the cadets aboard 1-A remained clustered at one of the corner tables, their trays barely touched. The usual hum of the ship’s systems filled the space like background tension, but no one seemed willing to be the first to speak.

Katsuki sat rigidly, elbows planted on the table, fists curled tight around a half-eaten tray of rations he hadn’t tasted. His jaw worked, slow and tense. His eyes kept flicking toward the door. 

No one moved. No one said a word.

So he did what he always did when the pressure got too high.

He blew up.

“This is a load of bullshit,” he muttered, loud enough to carry. His voice cut through the silence like a knife. “We don’t know who the hell she is. And now we have to stay confined so fucking Deku can take her on a shitty date. Everyone’s acting like she’s some sort of victim that needs to be coddled.”

Kirishima shifted across from him, fingers rubbing the back of his neck in that way he always did when he didn’t want to pick a side. “Midoriya's just following Aizawa’s orders, man. He's trying to earn her trust. And, I mean...you saw her when they first brought her aboard. She’s hurt. Whatever happened to her, she didn’t exactly walk in here with a plan.”

Katsuki scoffed, low and bitter. “Exactly. That’s what I’m talking about. She shows up outta nowhere and won’t say shit to explain that thing you pulled from the wreck. How the hell is that not suspicious?”

He hadn't seen her yet beyond when Sero and Deku had dragged her unconscious form through the ship. But he'd heard rumors from those who had been in the medbay when she'd woken, of how hollow her eyes were and how they filled with fear when anyone got too close. He didn’t buy it. Not for a second.

Ashido, sitting hunched over her drink, finally looked up. Her voice was quiet but clear. “She’s all alone, Bakugo. She’s not fighting. She’s not trying to manipulate us.”

“She almost broke Sero’s jaw and cracked Deku’s ribs,” he snapped, sharper this time.

Ashido didn’t flinch. She just shook her head, slow and tired. “She was afraid and panicked, like anyone would be after a crash like that. I think she’s just…lost.”

Katsuki leaned forward, eyes narrowing, voice like ice. “Yeah? That’s what they always look like. The desperate ones. The ones you don’t see coming until it's too late.” 

Across the table, Kaminari tried for levity, though it didn’t land. “Well, if she is secretly a League assassin like you seem to think, she’s doing a terrible job of it. She hasn’t even asked where the weapons are.”

Bakugo turned his glare on him. “Shut it, Dunce Face. You think this is funny? There’s a war raging outside this hull. If we let our guard down for anything—anyone—people could die.”

Kaminari held up his hands in surrender, but the smirk had already vanished.

Iida leaned forward slightly. Ever the diplomat, his hands were folded neatly like that would keep the rest of the ship from falling apart. “Bakugo isn’t wrong to be cautious. Many good people have been lost to stranger things.” He let out a heavy sigh. “But I also agree with Kirishima. Fear alone shouldn’t dictate how we treat someone, especially when she’s shown no aggression beyond waking in a panic. We don’t have enough information either way.”

Information. That was the problem.

Katsuki didn’t trust unknowns, and she was all unknown.

Ashido’s brows were drawn together. “But…from the looks of her, and that ship, she’s been through hell. We've all seen trauma victims—those poor souls who get shipped back to Earth from the war. That’s what she looks like to me.”

Katsuki bit back his first response. His gut twisted. Yeah, he’d seen trauma victims. But he’d also seen survivors turn into monsters.

“It could be a cover story,” he said instead. “A good one. Maybe too good.”

Kirishima’s frown deepened. His voice was quieter now, like he didn’t really want to admit it. “I don’t think she’s lying. But I do think she’s hiding something.”

Katsuki didn’t need to be told that. He’d felt it the moment she stepped onto the ship.

He stood suddenly, the metal legs of his chair scraping loud against the floor. His tray rattled as he shoved it aside, half-eaten food sliding across the surface.

“Until we know what that is,” he said, voice low and clipped, “I’m not letting my guard down. Not for her. Not for anyone. If she turns out to be a threat, I’m not gonna be the idiot who let it happen.”

He turned without waiting for a response, boots hitting the deck with steady, echoing thuds. He didn’t care if they watched him leave. Let them think he was paranoid. Let them think he was heartless. He’d rather be hated than blindsided, because if she was dangerous, no one else here was ready to stop her.

Kirishima rubbed a hand down his face, slumping back in his chair. “He’s got a point, even if he says it like a punch to the teeth.”

Ashido stared at the door Bakugo had vanished through, her fingers tightening slightly around her cup. “He’s scared. He just doesn’t know how to say it without setting the room on fire.”

“I think we’re all a little scared,” Iida said quietly. “Of her. Of what this might mean.”

They fell silent again.

The hum of the mess hall continued, soft and omnipresent. The lights buzzed faintly overhead, too bright for the mood that had settled in. The metal table felt cold beneath their arms. Their half-finished meals sat untouched, cooling with the passage of time they were too tense to notice. Around them, the room felt too big for so few voices, too empty for the weight they carried.

And in that moment, they weren’t soldiers or cadets.

They were just kids, holding their breath as the universe shifted around them.

Chapter Text

The hum of the overhead lights was the only sound for a long while, their glow low, fluorescent, and sterile. Four figures sat around the main table of the briefing room, dwarfed by the empty chairs and the wide, pulsing screen behind them.

Aizawa sat at the head, like usual. His expression was unreadable, but Izuku could sense something coiled tight behind his eyes. It wasn’t suspicion, exactly, but something more like readiness, as if he was preparing for the worst and hoping to be wrong.

All Might was to his right, his thin hands clasped tighter than usual on the table, his tall, old frame cast half in shadow. He looked like he was bracing for something, an impact, a revelation, or maybe both.

Across from them sat Uraraka, her shoulders hunched like she was trying to disappear into herself. She didn’t fidget. That alone told Izuku how much she was still reeling.

Izuku sat beside her, close enough to feel the quiet tremble of her breath. Every now and then her arm would barely graze his. Each time it did, it felt like a pulse of static, a reminder that, as insane as the whole situation was, she was real and suffering.

Izuku tried to keep his eyes forward, but he still watched her from the corner of his gaze, resisting the urge to reach out. She hadn’t even looked at him since they sat down, like she was afraid that if she did, something in her would crack.

Behind Aizawa, a screen flickered with readouts from the scavenged drive and the wrecked ship, strings of code, heat maps, and energy burst signatures. 

Izuku wasn’t paying enough attention to make sense of it at the moment, but that wasn’t really what they were here for anyway.

All eyes were on Uraraka.

Her own gaze, meanwhile, was distant. It was fixed on the table, like the grain in the cold metal surface might offer her answers or courage.

It had been Uraraka’s idea to talk to his superiors. She’d told Izuku in a low, brittle voice that she wanted them to know the truth about what had happened to her ship, and about why she was really here.

Izuku wasn't sure she was ready. Her eyes still flinched from sudden noise, and she’d barely eaten since being brought on board. But there’d been something steely beneath her exhaustion, something that didn’t ask for permission. So he’d set up the meeting, telling Aizawa she had something important to say. He sat beside her now with every intention of staying, no matter what came next.

Aizawa’s voice broke the silence like a dropped knife. “Midoriya said there was something you wanted to tell us.”

Uraraka didn’t move at first. Then, slowly, she lifted her chin. Her eyes were rimmed red, the skin under them bruised from lack of sleep. Her voice came thin and gravel-edged.

Izuku was beginning to wonder if he’d ever hear how she actually sounded, without the weight of traversing entire universes turning her voice into something rough and broken. 

“Midoriya told me you pulled a device from my ship’s engine…” She hesitated, then pushed through the rest. “It’s an Instantaneous Displacement Module. We called it an IDM for short.”

She paused to swallow, her knuckles whitening on her lap. “It…wasn’t supposed to bring me here.”

Izuku felt the air shift around the table.

Instantaneous displacement?

Izuku’s mind tumbled through the implications. That kind of technology was supposed to be physically impossible. Every known method of faster-than-light travel had limits: energy thresholds, gravitational interference, relativistic drift. But what she was describing sidestepped all of that. There would be no traversal or time lag. Just here, then there. Theoretical physics called it a violation of causality. Engineering manuals called it a death sentence. 

His brain buzzed with half-recalled papers and diagrams, but none of them could explain what she was saying. And none of them mattered, because she was here somehow, and that meant so long as she was telling the truth, which Izuku believed she was, the impossible had already happened.

Izuku glanced toward Aizawa and caught the faintest shift in his expression. There was a small furrow between his brows, and a slight tightening at the corner of his mouth. It was subtle, but there. Aizawa rarely let his emotions show, but Izuku had been watching him long enough to recognize when something didn’t sit right. And clearly, this—the idea of teleportation without motion, of sidestepping space itself—was brushing hard against his sense of logic. 

Aizawa tilted his head slightly. “Go on.”

“We were still prototyping it and testing in isolated zones.” Uraraka didn’t look up. Her hands clenched tighter.

“It was made to help people escape,” she said, quieter now. Each word sounded heavier than the last, like it cost her something to say them aloud.

All Might leaned in, the lines of his frown looking deeper in the dim light. “Escape from what?”

“From everything,” she whispered.

Her eyes still didn’t meet theirs, but her words came steadier now, like momentum carried her forward. “The League started conquering and wiping out independent fleets. The Commission turned the most powerful ships in the galaxy into weapons. If you weren’t one of them, you were prey. My crew tried to hold on…but we couldn’t stop what was coming.”

Izuku’s chest tightened. He could hear the echoes of it in his own universe. 

“That’s why we built the IDM.” She kept going, her voice steady even as her eyes shimmered, though no tears fell. “We developed it in secret. My version of the Commission…they had eyes everywhere. Satellites, drones, implants you couldn’t even feel beneath your own skin. If you tried to leave a system, they’d know before your engines even spun up.”

Her hand hovered near the table like she wanted to touch it to ground herself, but she didn’t. “The IDM bypassed all that. No FTL signatures. No heat trails. No sonic booms in vacuum. You could go from here, to the other edge of the galaxy, in less than a blink.”

A sick knot formed in Izuku’s gut. He wasn’t sure if it was awe or horror.

“We weren’t supposed to use it yet.” Her voice cracked like frost underfoot. “It wasn’t ready. But we were being hunted, and we didn’t have time. The League had found us out. So…we ran.”

She stopped. Her breath caught. 

Izuku could see the memory hit her like shrapnel.

The room felt colder suddenly, the shadows longer.

Aizawa’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes narrowed slightly, like he was tracking something between the lines of her words. “And?”

Uraraka’s shoulders curled inward. “The moment we activated it, it…glitched. Something went wrong. The displacement wasn’t just across distance.”

She took a breath, barely audible.

“I woke up here…in a universe that’s not mine.”

The weight of it landed like a closing bulkhead.

Though he’d heard it before, hearing of it in more detail made Izuku’s thoughts reel once more. She wasn't just lost. She was displaced, in a completely different reality.

All Might leaned forward slowly, as if not to spook her. “You think your module didn’t just malfunction…but fractured reality?”

Uraraka nodded once in a shallow tilt. “I think it tore a hole between universes.”

The lights overhead buzzed louder, as if the room itself was reacting.

Izuku stared at the table, his eyes mindlessly tracing the faint, crisscrossing scratches in its alloy surface. He could feel his heartbeat behind his eyes, a thrum of disbelief and dawning understanding.

No FTL. No signature. No trace. And now, no way back.

He turned to look at Uraraka. She sat hollow-eyed and trembling, her voice almost gone, her story laid bare in front of people she didn't know.

And still, she'd told it.

Right then, Izuku saw more clearly than ever before the immense weight she bore. The trauma of survival, the fracture of universes, and the terrible knowledge of a device that could unmake borders and break reality in half. She hadn't just stumbled into their world. She'd torn through it.

And now that weight was no longer hers alone. It had shifted, quietly but undeniably, onto all of them.

They just hadn’t realized it yet.

Aizawa Shouta had quickly grown to hate the briefing room.

He’d been sick of it before the last exam cycle ended, and now, after days of nearly back-to-back meetings, he couldn’t look at the place without feeling like he needed an hour of silence and a gravity-regulated nap. It was a cold room, sterile by design and meant for clean decisions and clean orders. But there was nothing clean about what they were dealing with now. It was an existence-altering innovation in technology that could shape the future of the universe, with a bunch children caught in its center.

When Yagi followed him back to his quarters, he didn’t bother offering an apology for the state of disarray.

With a heavy sigh, he slumped into the chair behind his desk. His shoulders ached, the stiffness biting into the edge of his spine. “I’m done pretending the chairs in there are comfortable.”

Yagi chuckled lightly, the door sliding shut behind him. “Comfort’s not really the point of a briefing room, is it?”

“No,” Shouta muttered flatly, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He could feel a new headache blooming behind his eyes. “But we’ve used it more in the last forty-eight hours than most crews do in a month. And we still don’t have answers. We just have a girl with trauma and a piece of tech that shouldn’t exist.”

And worse, he was starting to suspect there were no answers coming. Just more choices no one was ready to make.

Yagi leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. His tall silhouette loomed, but the softness in his deep voice made him feel smaller. “Do you believe her?”

Shouta exhaled slowly, letting the breath drain from his chest like old air from a cracked seal. “I believe that she believes it. And Hatsume’s report matches her descriptions. The internal layout of the device isn’t just advanced, it’s…impossible. There’s no known science for it, which means she wasn’t lying.”

He would never admit it, but that scared him more than if she had been.

Yagi nodded once. “Young Midoriya believes her.”

“Of course he does,” Shouta replied, eyes narrowing faintly. “It seems he has a blind spot for people in pain.”

Not that Shouta could fault him. Maybe that was why he’d chosen the boy to handle the conversations with Uraraka in the first place. Empathy wasn’t a liability, not with the way the universe looked now. But it was dangerous, especially when the truth could break you.

“That’s not a flaw,” Yagi said. “That’s part of why you asked him to be the one to talk to her, if I’m not mistaken.”

Shouta didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. He’d trusted Midoriya with her because, deep down, he knew the kid would reach her when no one else could, and because Shouta didn’t know if he had it in him to be kind anymore, not with the weight of this ship on his back and a galaxy collapsing in on itself.

A beat of silence stretched between them, heavy with implication. Outside his quarters, the low hum of the ship’s systems provided the only sense of movement.

Shouta turned his chair, facing the small terminal built into the wall, but not turning it on. He just stared at it and its dead light, like waiting for another message he couldn't answer to come. “Do we tell the Commission?”

Yagi’s frown was immediate. “You know my answer.”

“I do. I just needed to hear you say it.”

“We can’t risk this technology spreading.” Yagi stepped forward, his voice low now. “If any part of what she said is true—if the League or the Commission get their hands on a working instantaneous transportation device—then the war’s over. It’d be the end for the entire galaxy, regardless of what side won. Instantaneous travel means no safe ports, no secure bases, no warning. You wouldn’t even see them coming. That’s not an enemy that can be protected against.”

Shouta nodded grimly. His mouth was dry. “Which means we sit on it. For now.”

He was tired, far more tired than he let show. Command wasn’t supposed to be easy, and he had accepted that a long time ago. But this wasn’t the kind of burden he could train for. There was no tactical scenario or combat sim that prepared you for the idea that your students might be the only barrier between the stars and collapse, and no simulation that made you ready to lie to them for their own protection.

But he’d do it. He always did what needed to be done. That was the job. That was what it meant to keep them safe.

Yagi was quiet for a long moment before he asked, “What about the students?”

Shouta considered the thought. “We’ll inform Iida and Yaoyorozu of Uraraka's statement. They're in command. They’re already involved, and they’ve earned some measure of the truth.”

Even if it cost them sleep, like it was already costing him.

Yagi smiled, dry and knowing. “You’re forgetting something.”

“What?”

“They’re still teenagers.” Yagi turned to glance at the door. “There’s no such thing as confidentiality with them. You tell one, you tell twenty. The whole ship will know before morning.”

Shouta scowled. “I expect better from command officers.”

“They’re good kids,” Yagi replied with a shrug. “But they’re still kids, and I’m sure you’ve noticed just how quickly this crew is growing close.”

Of course Shouta had noticed. It’d only been a week, but some of the kids were seemingly already best friends. They were bound by doing, not by training. In their missions, he’d seen the way they leaned on each other in ways even seasoned soldiers might envy. But that kind of closeness also meant that secrets weren’t going to stay secrets long. 

Still, he couldn't protect them if they didn’t understand the risks.

Before Shouta could argue, the door chimed.

He arched a brow, rose, and stepped over. His legs were stiff. He didn’t want to open it, but being a commanding officer meant he always had to answer when his crew called. 

The door hissed open.

Waiting in the corridor were half the members of the 1-A’s crew, awkwardly milling around like one of them hadn’t just rung the chime to their commanding officer’s quarters and they’d just happened to wander by at the same time.

Iida stood at the front, his posture ramrod straight. He was clearly trying not to eavesdrop, though he was doing a horrible job of it.

Next to him, Yaoyorozu had her hands clasped behind her back, her eyes alert and curious.

Kirishima looked like he wanted to ask something but was holding himself back by sheer force of will.

Even Jirou and Kaminari were pretending not to loiter while very obviously loitering.

Yagi didn’t miss a beat. He stepped up beside Aizawa, peered out at the assembled faces, and said with a faint, amused smile, “Told you.”

Iida cleared his throat. “We…We noticed that Midoriya took the girl back to the medbay. We wondered if that meant…she’d told you something.”

Shouta sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Of course they’d been watching. Of course they were here, wide-eyed and hoping. He didn’t have the heart to blame them.

“Everyone, back to your quarters.”

“Does this mean we can’t ask about what's going on with her yet?” Kirishima called hopefully.

Yagi raised a hand. “Give us five minutes.”

The door hissed shut again.

Shouta turned back toward the desk, already regretting everything.

“I swear, the damn plant in the mess hall is more trustworthy than these kids,” he muttered.

Yagi laughed.

And for a moment, the weight of what they were facing didn’t feel quite so heavy.

The mess hall was quiet when Aizawa and All Might stepped inside, but not for long.

The moment the doors hissed open, nineteen heads turned in unison. The crew of the 1-A had gathered at the long tables, murmuring in tight knots, all clearly waiting for their commanding officer. The last few days had stretched them thin, both emotionally and mentally, but they were still sharp and present. 

Aizawa hated how proud that made him. But moreso, he hated that they were in this situation at all.

He’d instructed Midoriya to stay in the medbay with Uraraka on purpose. The kid would’ve insisted on being here, and would’ve stood up and vouched for the girl loudly, emotionally, and possibly recklessly. He had no doubt Midoriya would’ve meant every word, but Aizawa didn’t trust what might come spilling out if someone pressed the wrong button. Midoriya’s heart was usually a strength, but right now, it was a liability.

And the truth wasn’t safe in full. Not yet.

Aizawa crossed to the front of the room and stood with his arms folded, the dim glow of the overhead lights cutting a stark line across his features. All Might flanked him on the right, tall and quiet for once.

The room fell into silence, everyone sitting a little straighter. No one even pretended to eat. Kaminari set his protein bar down mid-bite. Jirou nudged him, whispering something under her breath that made him wince and look forward. Yaoyorozu sat poised, her hands folded, already keyed into whatever command posture she'd been practicing.

Aizawa let his gaze sweep the room again as he began without preamble, “What you're about to hear doesn’t leave this ship. That includes family communications. Your messages home will be screened from this point forward.”

A faint murmur of discontent rippled through the room. 

“Screened?” Kaminari asked, half-raising a hand. “Like…monitored monitored?”

“Yes,” Aizawa said. “You won’t leak what we can’t yet explain.”

Sero blew out a breath. “Well. That’s not ominous at all.”

No one challenged Aizawa’s orders further. It seemed that even as cadets, they understood that sometimes, operational security outweighed the need for privacy. 

“Forty-seven hours ago, three of your crewmen discovered a wrecked starship on a routine retrieval mission,” Aizawa continued, scanning their faces. “On board, they found a survivor, a girl not too far in age from your own. She was stranded, disoriented, and injured, but from what we can tell, she’s not hostile. She’ll be staying aboard for the foreseeable future. For all intents and purposes, she’s now a passenger.”

A rustle moved through the room. A few glances were exchanged. 

Then, Bakugo stood.

“The hell does that mean for our exam?” he snapped. “Is she part of it now? Because that’s bullshit.”

Aizawa didn’t blink. “No. She isn’t part of the exam, and she won’t interfere with it. We’re putting measures in place to ensure the integrity of your examination remains intact.”

Bakugo’s scowl deepened. “So what, we’re a taxi now? We’re hauling random civilians mid-mission? Would've thought you’d flunk us for that.”

A murmur of agreement buzzed around the room. Even Todoroki, impassive as he looked, narrowed his eyes. Asui raised one hand slightly, then lowered it again, her lips pressed in a firm line.

“It’s not up for debate,” Aizawa said, his tone brooking no argument. “We’re her only current lifeline, and we don’t abandon people, not even in the middle of our own problems.”

Bakugo sat back down, though not quietly.

Aizawa let the silence hang there, heavy and sharp.

He felt it then, the weariness curling at the back of his skull. It clung to his shoulders, settling into the bones of his spine. He’d commanded a room and held the line a thousand times before. But this wasn’t another lecture or discipline review. This was murky and grey, and every second they sat on this secret made the floor feel thinner beneath his feet.

He exhaled slowly. “You may have heard rumors about a device Midoriya and Kirishima recovered from the engine of her ship. From her own statement, we’ve determined that this device played a role in the event that caused her ship to crash. Hatsume confirmed that its architecture is beyond current known tech. That means this isn’t just a lost traveler. It’s a security risk.”

He didn’t mention what Uraraka believed. He said nothing of her conclusion that she was from a different universe, or that the drive wasn’t just dangerous, but potentially dimensionally unstable. All Might had agreed: they couldn’t risk that kind of truth spiraling out into raw speculation or fear.

Yaoyorozu’s brow furrowed deeply. She leaned toward Iida, whispering something, and he nodded with a quiet intensity. Kirishima’s shoulders tensed. Jirou looked straight at Aizawa, her hand tightening around a half-empty drink pouch.

“To that end,” he continued, “all research and testing on the drive are to halt immediately. I don’t care what level of clearance you think you have. Until we understand its mechanics and where it came from, that thing stays locked down.”

Kirishima hesitantly raised a hand halfway. “Uh, so…we’re just sitting on it? Hatsume said it could be capable of creating a different kind of jump, one with even greater transport capabilities than FTL. That’s groundbreaking, and you want us to just do nothing with it?”

Aizawa tensed. Kirisihima didn’t know the truth of it, that the device would change not only the fate of the war, but the fate of the galaxy entirely. 

He kept his expression neutral. “Putting its possible innovative potential aside, deep space isn’t the place for us to analyze it. It’s unstable, and I will not risk replicating the failure that caused her ship to crash. I’d rather keep this ship in one piece.”

That sobered the room immediately.

“I don’t mean to pry,” Yaoyorozu started carefully, “but…will we be given more details about her origin? Her affiliations?”

“When it becomes relevant,” Aizawa said. “For now, assume she’s a civilian in need. Anything more is speculation. We don’t act on speculation.”

A few heads nodded.

All Might stepped forward then, the humor in his tone faint but intentional. “I’d recommend patience, young cadets. Some truths are too big for a single conversation.” He swept a glance across the crew, his usual presence softer now, weathered but warm. “And I trust this crew to carry the weight of silence, especially if it means protecting someone who didn’t ask for any of this.”

That earned a few quiet exhales. Ashido relaxed slightly. Tokoyami nodded once, solemn. Kaminari gave a half-hearted thumbs up, then retracted it awkwardly.

“We depart Delta-43 in three hours,” Aizawa finished. “The exam will resume as scheduled. You’ve all proven you can adapt. I expect you to do so now.”

He turned to leave, then paused at the threshold.

“One more thing,” he added. “You will show her the same respect you’d show anyone in distress. This ship doesn’t tolerate cruelty. Clear?”

A series of affirmations met his ears, some firm, some reluctant, but none defiant.

Aizawa stepped out into the hall and let the doors hiss shut behind him, All Might at his side. He closed his eyes for a long moment, exhausted down to the marrow.

“Think they follow through?” All Might asked, not smiling.

“For now,” Aizawa muttered. “But not for long.”

He was in too deep. They all were.

But protecting his students—training them, shielding them from the worst of this galaxy while still preparing them for it—had always been his job.

And he wasn’t about to stop now.

The wind stirred low across the dunes as the rover rumbled to a stop beside the crumpled remains of Uraraka’s ship.

Delta-43’s atmosphere had grown heavier in the rising heat of the day, and the ship lay like a carcass half-swallowed by the planet. Sand coated the hull in thick layers. The broken edge of a stabilizer jutted skyward like a fractured rib. 

Izuku hadn’t thought that seeing the wreck would be any different now that he knew the truth of how it’d ended up here, carrying a sole passenger. But somehow, it looked smaller now, and sadder. It was a monument of the life Uraraka had been ripped from, and of the friends she could never go back to. 

Shoji killed the engine with a soft click. “I’ll wait here,” he said, glancing back at them from the pilot’s seat. His many arms rested calmly at his sides, but his voice was gentle. “Take what time you need.”

Uraraka didn’t react at first. She stared through the rover’s side viewport, unmoving. Then she nodded.

Izuku climbed out first, the sand crunching beneath his boots. He offered a steadying hand as Uraraka followed, not quite touching her yet, but there if she needed him. She didn’t take it. She didn’t need to.

They walked the last few paces in silence, the desert wind picking up again, whistling low through the fractured metal. When Uraraka stepped through the ruined hatch, her entire posture shifted, like the pressure of gravity had changed again. She slowed. Her fingers skimmed the walls as she moved, brushing gently across scorched panels and bent frames.

Izuku lingered a step behind.

He didn’t want to hover, but he couldn’t walk away either.

On his first venture into the ship, Izuku had found it eerie.

On his second, it’d been more like a puzzle of coiled metal that demanded solving.

Now, it was deeply sorrowful to walk its warped corridors. The wrecked ship still held traces of what had been Uraraka’s home. Charred insulation. A snapped monitor. A slanted hallway lit only by the handheld lamp clipped to the belt on Izuku’s hip. 

Uraraka moved through it all like a ghost retracing her own life. She didn’t say anything as she entered what must have once been her quarters. 

Izuku paused at the threshold. 

The walls here were cracked but still mostly intact. A lopsided cot was stuck beneath a half-collapsed shelf lined with books, their spines curled with heat. A folded pink blanket, miraculously untouched and tucked in the corner, was the only splash of color in the otherwise soot-covered room.

Izuku watched Uraraka cross to the shelf and gently pull down a small satchel. Her fingers hesitated over a thick, worn book, then two. They were journals, maybe. She packed them in carefully, one at a time.

Izuku looked away then to give her a moment.

She was saying goodbye. He could feel it in the air. This was her farewell not just to this place, but to whoever she’d been before the crash, the person who’d read those books, written in those journals, and laughed and slept here.

He glanced back to find her standing still again, clutching the bag to her chest.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice low.

“I don’t know,” she replied, and smiled faintly. “But I think I’m glad I came.”

He nodded. “You should be. It…matters. Holding on to what you can, I mean.”

She looked around the tiny room once more. Her eyes shimmered, not from tears exactly, but from something quieter and softer

“It feels like I’m walking through a dream I can’t wake up from,” she said. “Like everyone I love is still just…waiting for me to come back.”

Izuku’s chest tightened. He didn’t say what he was thinking, that if she’d been the only one to make the jump with her ship, the rest of her crew might not have made it anywhere.

Instead, he said what he thought she needed to hear. “They’re probably wondering what happened to you. Just like we would if it had been one of us.”

She smiled again, small and tired. “You sound like you’ve thought about that.”

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “When you go through something big…it makes you realize how fragile things are, and how much you want to hold on.”

They stood like that for a moment longer, quiet between walls that had once meant safety and now only held memory.

Then, Uraraka squared her shoulders, slung the bag over her back, and stepped past him into the corridor. “Okay,” she said softly. “I’m ready.”

They made their way out under the weight of sun and sand. Shoji had the rover running by the time they climbed back in.

On their way back, Uraraka didn’t speak. She didn’t look at Izuku, either. Her gaze stayed fixed behind them, on the wreck slowly shrinking in the rover’s side mirror.

Izuku sat across from her, watching her watch it.

The ship grew smaller, swallowed by the dunes until only the tip of a twisted wing remained visible, an artifact of a life that no longer existed.

Her old life was behind her, completely out of reach.

Her new life, uncertain and unexpected, waited ahead.

Izuku didn’t know what that would mean for her. But as the rover sped back toward the 1-A, he made a quiet promise to himself: Whatever came next, she wouldn’t face it alone.

Chapter Text

The broken hull of a battlecruiser loomed in the void of space like the bones of a forgotten celestial beast. Once the pride of a bygone fleet, the Eidolon had been torn open by war centuries ago. Its superstructure was cracked, its engines gutted, and its command decks burned hollow. Now, it drifted through the asteroid-strewn silence like a monument to tragedy, repurposed into a training ground for the cadets who hoped to avoid its crew’s fate.

Izuku hovered in open space just beyond its shadow, his breath fogging the inside of his helmet for a brief moment before his EVA suit’s filtration cleared it. His body was cradled by vacuum, his consciousness tethered to it only by his will and the thrumming symphony of HUD data blinking across his visor. Every readout was green. Suit stable. Oxygen optimal. Magnetic soles online. Heart rate high, but steady.

His EVA suit was matte black with thin lines of emerald green tracing his limbs in a way that echoed his usual uniform, and it clung to him like a second skin. The reinforced joints flexed fluidly with every shift, adapting to microgravity stress. Small pulses of red light flared along his forearms each time he engaged the microthrusters, nudging his trajectory by degrees. The suit’s internal systems whispered in his ears with constant updates, recalibrating balance and inertia second by second.

“We’re near the outer hull breach on Deck 3,” he reported, placing his fists at his hips and pulling his elbows back to rotate himself slightly with a pulse from his right forearm. The stars wheeled around him through the curved glass of his helmet. “Coordinates match the mission briefing.”

“Copy, Midoriya,” came Jiro’s voice through the comm in his helmet, calm and focused as always. “Telemetry shows all five of you are on course. You’ve got forty-two minutes left to complete the extraction and return to the airlock. Keep chatter to a minimum unless it's vital.”

Kaminari’s voice crackled through next, muttering in mock despair, “That was targeted at me, wasn’t it?”

“Understood,” Iida replied sharply, dutiful as always. “Maintain formation. Midoriya, take point with me. Todoroki and Kaminari, cover our flanks.”

The debris field surrounding the Eidolon shimmered pale gold in the light from a nearby star, its fractured hull plating glinting like broken glass. Twisted beams drifted, half-lost in shadow, half-lit with eerie brilliance. The wreck's gravity had long since bled away. Only the cadets’ training and microthrusters kept them moving in coordinated arcs.

Izuku adjusted his wrist module and fired a short, clean burst from his forearm thruster. He coasted through the silence, watching the others move with practiced ease. Iida, all precision and posture, led just ahead of him like a lance piercing toward the breach. His EVA suit bore the royal blue stripes of command, every movement deliberate, every maneuver clean. Todoroki trailed to the right, his silhouette cutting through the dark like ice through water, utterly graceful and eerily composed. His suit flared only once in a long glide, using barely any thrust at all. Then there was Kaminari, more of a comet than a cadet, drifting with bursts of over-corrected propulsion, limbs flaring for balance. 

“We’re all gonna look cool as hell if we survive this,” he quipped, twisting mid-drift to avoid a jagged support beam. “Assuming Midoriya doesn’t plow headfirst into a panel again.”

Izuku’s boot tapped a passing girder. He bounced lightly off a stabilizing strut, pinwheeling slightly.

“Whoa there, green bean,” Kaminari teased. “You’re gonna knock yourself out if you keep pinballing like that.”

“Sorry!” Izuku grunted, using a short burst to reorient himself. “Still adjusting. There’s less resistance than I expected in the upper debris layer…”

“Try engaging counter-thrust in short pulses,” Todoroki said, cool and monotone. “You’re overcorrecting.”

Izuku scowled behind his visor. Of course Todoroki was moving like he was born in a vacuum. His zero-G movements were almost surgical, with no wasted motion or nervous flinching. There was just silent, effortless control.

“Is there anything he isn’t good at?” Izuku muttered without realizing.

Kaminari snorted. “Getting along with others?”

Realizing he’d spoken aloud, Izuku flushed hot, the heat prickling along the back of his neck. If Todoroki heard, he didn’t respond, but guilt still curdled in Izuku's chest.

Ahead, the breach yawned wide in an ancient, charred wound in the Eidolon's side. The metal was blackened and jagged, warped by plasma fire and decades of impact scarring.

Iida moved ahead, his form outlined by the glowing burn of his suit’s thrusters. He fired a final burst and floated toward the hull, his arms outstretched. He secured a tether clamp and turned back to the group. “Midoriya. You're up. Use your scanner to verify integrity.”

“On it,” Izuku replied, drifting closer. As his boots neared the scorched metal, he activated the magnetic soles. A soft click-thump echoed in his helmet as the soles latched onto the scorched plating. He felt the familiar jolt up his calves, the closest thing to gravity out here.

He dropped to a knee beside the breach and tapped his navigation module. A pulse of blue light rippled outward, crawling across the surface like lightning frozen in slow motion. Readings poured in through his visor.

“No atmospheric pressure,” he confirmed, checking oxygen reserves for the tenth time to ensure their suits carried enough for them to complete their mission. “The structure’s stable, but twisted. Entry’s viable, but it’ll be a tight fit. We’ll have to go in one at a time.”

“Understood,” Iida said. “Kaminari, you’re on doors. Let’s move.”

They entered single file, slipping through the breach like ghosts.

Inside, the silence beyond their suits seemed to deepen somehow.

Gone was the shipboard hum of Starship 1-A, the comfort of its systems, its artificial gravity, and its warmth. In here, there was nothing. No light. No sound. Even the huff of his own breath felt too loud to Izuku.

Beams of light shone from the thin strips along their visors, cutting into the dark. The corridor they entered was scorched and warped, its ribs of steel curled inward like a ship trying to protect itself in its final moments. Debris floated lazily in the thin pockets of residual inertia, and frayed cables drifted like kelp in a sunken ruin.

Despite himself, Izuku imagined what it must’ve felt like in those last seconds: the alarms blaring, the breach tearing open, the vacuum ripping everything away. What had the crew thought as they spun helplessly into space, their last breaths swallowed by silence?

He remembered Delta-43. The desolate desert. The eerie quiet. He, Yaoyorozu, and Sero had gone expecting to find and salvage some sort of data core or an old comms relay, like their mission briefing had indicated. 

Instead, they’d found a wrecked vessel with Uraraka inside, unconscious and pale, but alive. Even now, the image of her wrecked ship haunted him, and the way her lashes had trembled, the fear that flickered in her eyes when she woke. While Izuku could only imagine what it must be like to experience a wreck like this, she’d actually been through it. 

“Creepy,” Kaminari muttered. His voice yanked Izuku back to the present.

“Ambient radiation is spiking,” Jiro said through the comms. “Still safe, but don’t linger longer than necessary.”

They reached a sealed blast door. Its control panel blinked red, the circuitry dim and sparking. Izuku was surprised to find that anything in this wreck still had power.

“This one’s sealed tight,” Kaminari noted, already kneeling beside it. “And that, my friends, means it’s probably hiding the good stuff.” He retrieved his toolkit from his thigh strap with practiced ease. “Let’s crack this bad boy open.”

Izuku watched as Kaminari got to work, grinning behind his visor, muttering half-jokes and faux-dramatic monologues.

“Alright, old friend, let’s see what secrets you’re keeping...Oh! That’s not supposed to spark.” He jammed a connector into the access port and rerouted energy with swift, precise movements. “Midoriya, your scanner might have to sweet-talk this thing if it starts giving me attitude.”

“I’ll get it ready,” Izuku said, though he knew he probably wouldn’t be needed. For all his jesting, Sero and Kirishima had been right when Izuku had first met them in the engine room: Kaminari was a genius.

The panel blinked yellow.

“One more second...Aaand boom.” Kaminari grinned as the light turned green. “Well, not literally boom. That would be bad.”

The door creaked open with a shudder that vibrated through the metal beneath their feet like a warning from the dead.

Regardless, they pressed deeper into the ship.

Eventually, they reached what had once been a storage bay. The ceiling had partially collapsed, the support beams all mangled and twisted. The remains of cargo crates floated among ash and dust, some broken, others half-vaporized.

There, nestled beneath a fallen girder, glinting faintly in the half-light, was a silver canister. A faded U.A. insignia was still visible on the surface.

“That's our target,” Todoroki said.

“I’ll get it,” Izuku said, his voice quiet.

He stepped carefully over the debris and knelt beside the canister, hand reaching out. His fingers curled around the cool metal, and for a moment, he remembered Uraraka again. The flicker of her fingers. The blood on her forehead. The way her lips had parted as she’d gasped for breath when he’d removed her helmet.

So many wrecks. So many ghosts.

“Mission complete,” he murmured, not entirely to anyone but himself.

Iida’s voice came through, calm but resolute. “All cadets, extract to the outer breach. Jiro, prepare the airlock. We’ll be back in fifteen.”

They turned, one by one, leaving the chamber behind. Izuku walked last.

As he passed through the broken halls once more, he cast one final glance over his shoulder.

The Eidolon sat in silence, burned and hollow.

For the first time, he wondered—not in fear, but with something heavier—if one day, someone would drift through a wreck with his name on the manifest.

He turned away and floated after his team, the canister secured in the pouch on his thigh, and the weight of memory anchoring him as much as gravity ever could.

After drifting in open space for an hour, even the quiet hiss of the automatic door to the medbay seemed loud to Izuku.

He stepped inside cautiously, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the dimmed lights. The medbay had switched to its standard energy-saving mode, with gentle blues and whites filtering down from the ceiling panels like starlight through water. It was peaceful in a way, but also eerily quiet compared to the hum of activity that usually filled the 1-A.

He stepped in quietly, expecting the room to be empty save for its sole patient, and maybe Ojiro.

But then he heard voices.

Uraraka was sitting upright on her bed, her brown hair tucked messily behind one ear. She still wore the plain gray clothes someone had loaned her, and Izuku was beginning to think they were much too thin for the cold of the ship. Her legs were folded beneath her, her posture calm but slightly withdrawn. From a distance, she looked better than she had a few days ago. She was less pale, and looked less like someone who might fade out of existence if you blinked. But there was still a faint hollowness beneath her eyes, like sleep still wasn’t coming easy.

In a chair at her bedside, Ashido Mina was talking animatedly, hands dancing in the air to emphasize a point Izuku couldn’t quite catch. 

Asui Tsuyu sat quietly at the foot of the bed, her legs dangling off the side, observing with her usual calm.

Ashido, for her part, looked like she was holding court, bright and bold in her white-accented uniform, her energy impossible to ignore. 

Uraraka smiled politely and nodded at the right places, but her eyes gave her away. She was wary, her focus flicking between the girls and the doorway like a cornered animal trying its best not to flinch. Her fingers gripped the hem of her sleeve, hidden in her lap.

Izuku’s chest tightened.

She was trying, but she was obviously overwhelmed.

The moment Ashido noticed him, her eyes lit up and she chirped, “Hey, Midoriya! We were just visiting our newest gal! Figured we’d give her the Grand Tour of Crew Gossip, courtesy of yours truly.”

“Don’t say we,” Asui stated, deadpan. “You did most of the talking.”

“True,” Ashido replied breezily. “And it was all quality content.”

Izuku gave a small wave, trying not to startle Uraraka. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Oh no, perfect timing!” Ashido leapt to her feet with her usual bounce. “We were just wrapping up anyway. Right, Tsu?”

Asui slid off the bed with a light hop. “Mm-hmm.”

Ashido turned back to Uraraka, leaning over slightly with a toothy grin. “See? Told you! Everyone here’s nice. Mostly. Except Bakugo, but you’ll figure that out soon enough.”

Izuku winced despite himself.

Uraraka nodded as she quietly said, “Thanks for visiting.”

“Anytime!” Ashido gave her a two-finger salute, then turned and practically skipped out the door, her voice already picking up a new story before it had fully closed behind her and Asui.

Izuku stayed where he was for a beat, hand absently rubbing the back of his neck.

“Sorry about that,” he said, stepping closer. “Ashido can be…a lot. But she means well.”

Uraraka exhaled softly, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly. “She’s…enthusiastic.”

“That’s one word for it,” Izuku huffed, easing into the chair Ashido had just vacated. “Has anyone else come to visit?”

She looked down at her hands, twisting them together. “A blond boy came in to help me change my sheets. I didn’t talk to him much because he kept saying a bunch of words in a language I didn’t know…”

Izuku blinked, then chuckled. “Oh, that was probably Aoyama. I think he’s over Stewarding, or something.” He tilted his head, amused. “And, yeah…no one really knows what’s up with him. He speaks in French a lot. I think it’s for flair.”

She nodded faintly, but Izuku caught the flicker of confusion that passed through her eyes before it vanished. In her universe, maybe the country of France had faded into obscurity with Earth’s destruction, or maybe it’d never existed at all. In truth, now that he thought about it, it was a miracle they even spoke the same language at all. 

The medbay settled back into silence. The monitors beeped gently beside her, and the low hum of the ship’s systems vibrated faintly beneath their feet. After the vacuum quiet of space, Izuku found himself appreciating the noises that usually faded into the background.

Izuku glanced at Uraraka again. Her shoulders were hunched in slightly, as if trying to take up less space, and her gaze stayed fixed somewhere near her knees. Her thumb rubbed a small circle into the cloth of her pants, like she was trying to ground herself.

He didn’t want to push, but he also didn’t want to leave her floating in uncertainty.

“Has Aizawa come to talk to you?” he asked. “About...what’s next?”

She nodded, her lips parting before she spoke. Her voice was quieter now, and raspier at the edges. “He came by this morning. I’m being cleared to leave the medbay. They’re assigning me temporary quarters, and I’ll have access to the common areas…but I’m supposed to stay out of the way during missions.”

Izuku nodded slowly. “That makes sense. Just until we can figure some more things out, or come up with a better plan.”

“He said I’ll have an information console in my room. Nothing sensitive or confidential. Just…basic stuff so I can learn how things work here.”

“That’s good,” Izuku said gently, and meant it. “It’ll help. I imagine…it's a lot to take in.”

She didn’t reply right away. Her posture shifted slightly, her arms folding over her middle like she was trying to keep herself from shaking. “It is. And it happened so fast. It’s like I blinked and the entire universe changed. I still don’t…” She trailed off, fingers curling. “I don’t feel like I’ve landed yet.”

Izuku’s heart tugged. He wished he had something to say to make her feel better, but the situation was so unfathomable and fresh that he found himself floundering. 

“I was wondering…” he said after a moment, “do you maybe want to go grab something to eat? It’s just about time for dinner.”

Uraraka blinked. “You mean…in the mess hall? If it’s dinnertime…won’t everyone else be there?”

He nodded, speaking cautiously. “Probably. Just…if you feel up to it. No pressure at all.”

She shifted, her gaze darting toward the floor. “I don’t know. I still feel like I’m intruding. Like I shouldn’t be here.”

“You’re not,” he said quickly, maybe too quickly. Then he softened his voice. “I mean, you’re not intruding. None of us have really known each other that long. We’ve only been aboard the 1-A for ten days. Ashido and Kirishima knew each other before, I think. Maybe Iida and Yaoyorozu too, but the rest of us? We’re still figuring each other out.”

He made a conscious choice not to mention Bakugo. That history—his and Kacchan’s—felt too messy and jagged to explain.

He hesitated, continuing carefully, “You’re not crashing anything. You’d just be sitting with a bunch of people trying to do the same thing as you. Trying to find their place.”

Uraraka looked at him for a long time, like she was trying to decide whether to believe him. Her lips parted once like she might say no, but then she stopped, thought again, and nodded slowly.

“…Okay. I’ll go.”

Izuku smiled. It was small, but it reached his eyes. “Good.”

He stood, offering a hand without thinking. But just as quickly, he pulled it back, unsure if she wanted to be touched. She hadn’t moved from the bed.

“I think you’ll like some of the food,” he added, reaching instead to grab an extra cardigan from a hook on the wall and offering it to her. “Most of it’s nutritionally efficient, but every once in a while, Sato manages to sneak in something sweet.”

That earned the smallest flicker of amusement. Not quite a laugh, but her mouth quirked up just a little at the corners.

It was enough.

Izuku exhaled, holding the cardigan out with both hands like a peace offering. “Here. It's warmer than what you’re wearing, and the rest of the ship can get kind of chilly.”

Uraraka hesitated, then took it gently, as if it might disappear. “…Thanks.”

She stood slowly, her movements stiff, like every muscle was remembering gravity again. But when she stepped toward him, it was with purpose.

“I’m ready,” she said quietly.

And Izuku, heart lighter than it had been all day, nodded. “Let’s go.”

Uraraka walked just half a step behind Izuku with her arms folded loosely in front of her, her fingers tangled in the hem of her borrowed sleeve. Her eyes flicked upward, tracking the slow shift of the overhead lights as they transitioned to the ship’s evening setting: cooler hues that mimicked dusk.

Izuku slowed his pace just enough that they walked side by side. He tried not to stare, even though he could feel how tense she was, like a wire pulled too tight.

“It’s not too bad in the mess,” he said quietly, aiming for casual. His voice came out a little too fast and a little too light, but he kept going. “It gets a little loud sometimes. Sato and Kirishima get into weird debates about protein powder almost on the daily.”

Uraraka tilted her head, a strand of hair falling into her face. “That…sounds like a fairly harmless fight.”

He chuckled, and it came easier than he expected. “You’d think that, but somehow it always ends with someone having to clean the ceiling.”

That drew the faintest puff of air from her nose, and Izuku clung to it like a lifeline.

The doors to the mess hall slid open with a soft hiss, and the moment they stepped inside, Uraraka flinched. A wave of sound and light rolled over them: chatter bouncing off metal walls, utensils scraping against trays, and boots thudding faintly against the floor. The air smelled faintly of salt, reheated starch, and something sweet and yeasty that hinted at dessert. Steam curled from the kitchen vents, warm and sharp.

Uraraka hesitated on the threshold.

Izuku didn’t push. He just nodded toward an empty spot on the left side of the room and started walking, slow and steady.

He’d barely taken five steps before Ashido spotted them. “She came!”

In a blur of pink, Ashido darted across the mess and wrapped both arms around Uraraka in a swift, but surprisingly careful hug. “I told everyone you’d make it! Welcome to the mess!”

Izuku wasn’t sure whether her use of the word ‘mess’ referred to the name of the place, or just the general chaos that sometimes occurred inside. Either worked, he figured. 

“I—um—thank you?” Uraraka replied, breath catching just slightly as she blinked at the force of the welcome.

Asui was right behind, her tone mild but warm as she joked, “Long time no see.”

Then came Kirishima, all teeth and charm, his red hair sticking up like he’d wrestled with a plasma conduit and lost. “Hey, Uraraka, right? Feeling okay? You really clocked Sero, huh?”

A loud “Hey!” echoed from two tables over.

Sero shot to his feet and flung an arm into the air like a betrayed stage actor. “I was trying to help!”

“She was half-conscious,” Yaoyorozu added gently, her voice calm from where she sat. “She reacted instinctively.”

“She reacted with force,” Kaminari chimed in as he slid onto a bench, grinning wide. “We’ve decided she’s officially got the strongest right hook on the ship.”

“Second strongest,” Kirishima corrected, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. “Shoji still exists.”

Izuku glanced at Uraraka, bracing for her to fold inward. But she didn’t.

To his surprise, she was smiling. It was small and tentative, but real. Her eyes still held that haunted glint from the medbay, but something about the noise and ridiculousness seemed to cut through it.

She sat beside him without being prompted, hands still folded tightly but her shoulders just a bit looser.

The voices rose again. Questions were tossed between bites of food and bursts of laughter. How old was she? What role had she held on her ship? Did she have a call sign? 

Though Uraraka could hardly answer a question before more were shot her way, at the very least, she wasn’t completely pulling away from their eagerness. The warmth the crew was exuding was real, welcome, and curious.

And then it fractured.

“Why are you all acting like this is normal?”

The voice hit the air like a thunderclap. Bakugo sat near the back of the mess with his arms crossed, a scowl carved into his face like stone. His tray sat untouched in front of him, steam still curling off the food.

“She’s not a cadet. She’s not crew. She’s a stranger, and we’re just letting her hang out like it’s some damn social club?”

Izuku’s chair scraped sharply against the floor as he stood. “Kacchan—”

“No.” Bakugo’s voice snapped across the room like a whip. His eyes burned into Izuku’s. “I get that you’ve got this weird complex about saving people, Deku, but some of us are actually aiming to make rank. We’re not here to babysit.”

Izuku opened his mouth, but stopped short.

Uraraka had gone still beside him. She didn’t shrink or fold, but she didn’t speak either. Not at first.

Until she did.

“I won’t be a burden,” she said quietly, but with clarity that cut clean through the room, which had gone silent. She stood too, her gaze locked on Bakugo. She didn’t look angry, just solid and steady. Her voice remained calm, but it carried weight, every syllable laced with control. “I know I’m not part of this crew. I’m not trying to be. But that doesn’t mean I’m useless.” 

Bakugo stared at her, his jaw tight.

No one moved. Even the usual clatter of trays and utensils had stopped. The silence was heavy. 

Izuku looked at her, his chest swelling slightly. There was strength in the way she stood. Even if her knees wobbled slightly, she didn’t waver.

And when he looked back at Bakugo, though he seemed not entirely convinced, he was at least quieted.

“Tch,” Bakugo muttered, kicking his chair back. “Whatever. Just don’t expect me to play nice.”

The doors hissed shut behind him.

Ashido sighed, collapsing dramatically into her seat. “He’s really bad at icebreakers.”

“I thought that was him trying,” Sero muttered.

Before anyone else could crack another joke or launch back into throwing questions at Uraraka, Iida stood from his place along the perimeter of the room, adjusting his collar with mechanical precision. When he spoke, his voice was sharp and clear. “Following the debrief Aizawa held with us regarding Uraraka’s presence on this ship, I feel it necessary to report Bakugo’s words and actions to our commanding officer. Let anyone else who feels they have something to say about our new passenger be warned: I’ll take the same course of action for any future incursions.”

He paused, swallowing. His next words were quieter, but no less firm. “Though I hope the threat of consequences from our superior officer isn’t your only motivation for treating our guest kindly. Our actions in these next few months…they will define what we become in the future. We cannot afford to fail one another here.”

As Iida left to fulfill his duties, Izuku let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Hearing Iida say it, clearly and publicly, relieved something that had been wound tight in his chest. When he looked at Uraraka, she was watching Iida too, her expression softening into something like gratitude.

Izuku looked around his crewmates, some of them whispering to each other and nodding in agreement with Iida’s words. He took advantage of the lull in the usual rambunctious chatter of the mess hall to ask, “Can Uraraka have some space for today?”

The crew got the message. One by one, they backed off. There was no resentment in their gazes, just understanding. The noise slowly returned to its usual background buzz, the way a tide returns to shore.

Izuku sat again, and Uraraka followed his lead silently. 

“You okay?” he asked quietly, voice low so only she could hear.

Uraraka nodded once. “I’ve had worse dinners.”

He grinned, eyes crinkling. “Well…welcome to the chaos.”

Her smile was a touch bigger this time. “Thanks, Midoriya.”

Later that night, the hallway was quiet.

It wasn’t the kind of silence that came with solitude, but more of a low, ambient hum that whispered of life behind closed doors, footsteps muffled by metal, and air systems breathing gently through the walls. It was a ship’s version of stillness, and after days in the medbay, it felt new. 

Ochako walked between Aizawa and Midoriya, her arms wrapped around the small satchel that she’d filled with belongings from the wreck. The fabric bag held the last remnants of her world. Two journals filled with written memories. A chipped navigation charm. A hand knitted headband from her mother.

Aizawa didn’t say much, and neither did Midoriya. But she could feel the kindness in the way the boy walked slightly ahead of her, as if shielding her from whatever came next.

Aizawa came to a stop in front of a door marked with no insignia. He pressed his hand to the panel and it slid open with a gentle hiss.

“Here,” he said simply. “Your temporary quarters.”

The room was small but clean. It had soft gray walls, adjustable lighting, and a single narrow bed nestled against the far wall. A console desk sat beneath the viewport, the starscape beyond bathing the surface of the desk in a soft glow. There was a closet unit, a hygiene station tucked to the side, and a small shelf already loaded with a spare blanket, sealed ration packs, and a reusable water bottle.

“The bed adjusts for temperature and firmness,” Aizawa said, stepping inside. “The controls are embedded in the wall console. There’s also a map of the ship preloaded onto your personal display. Study it when you can. This crew has tasks to complete, so you’ll need to navigate on your own.”

Ochako nodded silently, clutching her satchel tighter.

“If you need anything, Asui’s quarters are next door. She volunteered to check in on you from time to time.” His voice softened, just slightly. “Remember, you won’t be allowed to participate in crew functions unless authorized, but you have access to communal areas and dining.”

“I understand,” she said, her voice just barely above a whisper.

Aizawa gave a nod and turned toward the door. “Midoriya,” he said without looking back.

“Coming,” Midoriya replied, but his eyes lingered on her.

Ochako turned to place her bag gently on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped just slightly under the weight.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

“I will be,” she said after a breath. “Thank you, Midoriya.”

He hesitated, then offered a soft smile, the kind that wasn’t forced or polite, but genuine and warm in its quietness. “Good night, Uraraka.”

“Good night.”

And then he was gone, the door sliding shut behind him with a gentle hiss.

The quiet that followed was…total.

Ochako exhaled and sank onto the bed. The mattress was softer than she expected, and the temperature adjusted automatically with her body heat, warming the sheets to a comfortable degree. But even as the comfort surrounded her, it felt distant, and wrong.

She didn’t unpack. The bag sat by her side, still buckled shut, sealed like a vault of memories she wasn’t ready to face. Not yet.

Instead, she lay back, arms folded over her stomach, staring up at the blank ceiling.

It was a nice room. It was clean and safe. She knew that.

But it wasn’t hers.

The hum of the ship vibrated gently through the walls, a lullaby made of gravity drives and recycled air. But it didn’t soothe her.

She thought of Midoriya, and the way he smiled at her and spoke to her like she belonged, even when she didn’t. She thought of Ashido’s infectious welcome, Asui’s calm presence, and the rest of the crew’s easy laughter. Most of them seemed kind, and gentle, even, beneath the awkwardness.

But she hadn’t forgotten the boy Midoriya called Kacchan. His voice had sliced through the mess hall like a blade, suspicious and angry. His words still echoed at the edges of her thoughts.

“She’s not a cadet. She’s not crew.”

He’d voiced what she was already afraid of: that she didn’t belong here, and that her presence, even quiet and compliant, was a disruption.

And if he thought that…who else did? Who was just staying quiet, watching and waiting for her to step out of line?

Ochako turned onto her side, curling her hands beneath her chin. She stared at the starscape through the window, faint purple clouds drifting endlessly across the expansive dark.

This wasn’t her universe. It wasn’t her crew, and no matter how nice they were, or how soft the bed was, or how gentle Izuku’s voice had been when he asked if she was okay…

She still didn’t know if she ever would be. Would she ever belong here? Among them? Would this ever stop feeling like a dream she hadn’t agreed to?

She closed her eyes, and for a long time, just listened to the low hum of a ship that wasn’t hers.

Chapter Text

Like so many others, the next planet Izuku found himself on didn’t have a proper name. Instead, it had been granted the uninspiring designation of E-4576, just another string of letters and numbers that told the crew nothing about the sky they were breathing or the earth beneath their feet.

In the mission briefing files, it was labeled ‘potentially viable for limited resource harvesting’ and flagged for its unusual atmospheric composition and rare surface mineral formations. Its orbit rested just inside the edge of a sun’s habitable zone, meaning there were no advanced life forms, just scattered microflora, algae mats, and the possibility of chemically useful compounds embedded in the crust. 

For the crew of the 1-A, it was a low-risk assignment. There were no expected hostile engagements, or high-stakes diplomacy. It was solely about research and exploration. After days of running shipboard drills and long-range simulations in the vacuum of space, stepping out under an open sky, even an alien one, felt like a relief. 

Izuku was grateful for the change of pace. There were no immediate threats and no one barking orders through comms. There was just data, and data was what Izuku handled best. 

He moved steadily across the uneven terrain, his boots pressing into the brittle crust with a muted crunch. The ground felt almost like pulverized chalk, though every few meters it gave way to streaks of glittering crystal or strange, almost metallic moss that clung to the rocks like frozen fire. Overhead, the sky was a soft, chalky gray, mottled with pale pink cloud bands that drifted like rivers across the atmosphere. At two-thirds of Earth standard, the gravity made every step feel slightly buoyant, but it wasn’t enough to be disorienting. In fact, his pack, heavy with equipment, didn’t strain his shoulders the way it usually did. It felt good.

His datapad pinged softly with each new annotation he made on the map of the planet. “Sector G-3…microclimate anomaly confirmed,” he muttered, voice activating the interface. “Adjusting temperature gradient by 3.7 degrees…map sync initiated…”

The map on his datapad blinked as it updated with his highlights of terrain anomalies and soil density zones. The topography they’d been given for this region was rough at best, just a patchwork of orbital scans, stitched together with wide safety margins. It was barely enough to plot a safe descent.

He was here to fix that. As navigation officer, it was his job to update the maps for ground use, ensuring there were accurate elevation markers, real soil data, and visibility ranges. If another crew landed here weeks from now, they’d be walking on data he collected today. That thought always gave him a strange kind of satisfaction.

Nearby, the rest of the team moved in a loose formation across the landscape.

Asui was knee-deep in a marshy patch, its water tinged blue-green with microbial film. She moved with deliberate precision, scooping up translucent algae into a bio-stasis vial. Her gloves were slick, but her grip didn’t waver. Every motion was clean and efficient.

Beside her, Sato knelt next to a patch of thick, curling vines. He was humming to himself, his portable scanner whirring as he analyzed the small red fruits dotting the stems. With a grin, he said, “If this turns out to be edible, I’m making a syrup out of it.”

“We’ll need to verify the neurotoxin levels first,” Asui replied without looking up, labeling her vial with practiced ease.

Not far off, Ashido was crouched beside a jagged outcrop of green crystal. Her suit shimmered faintly in the dusty light as she chipped away with a sensor pick, muttering to herself, “pH levels are weird. Could be useful for filtration or insulation, maybe…if it doesn’t melt our boots.”

Further uphill, Shoji stood watch on a ridge, his silhouette framed by the horizon. His form was still as stone, his peripheral arms tucked in while his eyes scanned slowly left to right. 

Izuku exhaled slowly through his nose, letting himself settle. This kind of mission, all quiet and data-heavy, allowed his brain to slow down. He didn’t need to worry himself with combat pacing or adrenaline spikes. There was just the hum of scanners, the whisper of his boots on stone, and the quiet focus of being useful.

He crouched beside a ridge and opened a new annotation tab. The slope here was shallower than the satellite map suggested. If left uncorrected, that discrepancy could affect landing calibrations or emergency evac protocols. He adjusted the terrain’s elevation profile and flagged an unexpected moisture pocket as well, slick and unseen beneath a thin crust of dry soil. 

He was just finishing the update when a shadow crossed over his shoulder.

“Midoriya.”

He jumped a little, twisting around to figure out who was blocking the light. 

Ashido stood behind him, her cheeks slightly flushed and her eyes bright and curious. The pink strands of her hair were slightly damp with sweat, and her suit bore smudges of mineral dust. She looked like she was having a good time.

“Hey,” Izuku said, brushing his glove off on his pant leg. “Find something weird?”

“Nah. My crystal’s just suuuper boring.” With a grin, she nudged his shoulder with her elbow as he stood. “I came over to ask about something else.”

He tilted his head. “What’s up?” 

She folded her arms and leaned in slightly. “How’s our ghost girl doing?”

“You mean Uraraka?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Izuku dropped his gaze to his datapad, his fingers brushing the edge of the display. “She’s…settling in. Slowly.”

Though she still spent most of her time in her quarters, she’d told him that she’d started to venture out more, and he’d even seen her out and about a few times himself to confirm it. It was mostly during off-hours, when the corridors were quieter and less crowded. Asui had also mentioned Uraraka had come by to ask questions about the environmental biology logs.

She was trying. That much was clear. But still, there was always hesitation in the way she moved and talked, like she hadn’t quite convinced herself that she was safe.

Ashido gave him a sideways glance. “What if we all helped her out a little?”

He looked up, his brows drawing together. “Did you have something in mind?”

“I was thinking we could throw her a welcome dinner,” she announced proudly, her grin already forming. “Something casual and low-stress. We can make sure Sato has something sweet on the menu, and maybe Jirou could figure out how to play music over the ship’s intercom system.”

Izuku’s gut tensed. He shook his head almost immediately. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. The last time she was in the mess hall, it didn’t exactly go well.”

He knew Ashido meant well, but another dinner with the crew might be too much after the debacle Bakugo had caused.

“Okay, if not dinner,” she said with a shrug, “then maybe she could come to Rec Night?”

Izuku blinked. “Is that this week?”

Ashido nodded. “Yep. Two days from now, while the ship’s docked for maintenance and refueling.” Her smile grew, her voice becoming slightly dreamy. “Two whole hours with no duty assignments, no drills, no reports. Just…people being people.”

Izuku hesitated. “She…might still say no.”

“Then we let her,” Ashido countered easily. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t invite her anyway. We’ll make sure there’s no pressure and no spotlight. It’ll just be a chance to see we’re not all walking uniforms or Bakugo-brand assholes.”

Izuku let out a soft laugh, caught off guard. “You really don’t let up, do you?”

Ashido’s smile turned proud. “Not when I think someone needs a hand.” 

He looked out across the quiet field. Sato and Asui worked in tandem beneath the violet glow of the clouds. Shoji remained a still shadow on the hill. The world was calm, and safe. 

“Something like that…something simple, with no expectations or duties…” He nodded. “I’ll ask her.”

“Atta boy!” Ashido lit up like a sunflare. She clapped him on the back before bouncing back toward her half-finished scan, calling over her shoulder, “Let me know if she says yes! I’ll start planning snacks!”

Izuku smiled, lifting his datapad again as the map interface resumed quietly beneath his fingers.

He wondered what Uraraka would say, and if she’d finally smile again.

Ochako’s quarters were dim, lit only by the soft glow of the viewport and the wall console where a rolling display of room schematics flickered faintly, displaying temperature, oxygen levels, and air circulation stats. The starscape above her desk crawled by slowly, displaying the lazy drift of a distant nebula through the viewport. Its shifting colors of muted violets and scattered gold were beautiful in a quiet, surreal way.

She had started to get used to it all, at least a little. Everything was brighter here, and louder. Back home, there hadn’t been enough light to shine so bright or people left to make so much noise. 

The gentle chime of the door pulled her from her thoughts.

“Come in,” she called softly, setting aside the tablet in her hands, her fingers lingering over the smooth surface.

The door hissed open and Izuku stepped inside. His posture was easy, but his hands were twitching like they didn’t know what to do with themselves. That small, awkward fidgeting made her feel oddly calmer. She wasn’t the only one still figuring things out here.

“Hey, Uraraka,” Izuku said with a small, genuine smile. “Hope I’m not interrupting.”

She straightened instinctively on the edge of her bed. “It’s fine…um, hi.” Her eyes flickered to the wall clock, realizing how much time had slipped by. “You’re back already?”

“Yeah, the mission wrapped up a couple of hours ago.” He leaned slightly against the bulkhead. “It was…mellow. Just survey work, with no close calls or surprises. Honestly, after everything the last few weeks have thrown at us, it felt weird not being on edge.”

Ochako was fairly certain he wasn’t supposed to be telling her anything about the missions he was completing, even ones as harmless as this. But she wasn’t about to tell him to stop, or tattle on him. With the information binge she’d been on since arriving, she’d take all the details she could get, especially when it concerned actually stepping onto a planet that hadn’t been drained of all its resources. 

She pulled her legs beneath her, settling more comfortably. “So…just gathering data?”

“Pretty much,” Izuku replied with a shrug. “Map corrections, mineral scans…Asui found a type of algae that might work for oxygen filtration. Sato’s already trying to figure out how to turn it into syrup. Ashido found some strange crystal deposits, and Shoji mostly stood on a rock looking intimidating.” His grin widened, soft and infectious. “It was nice to get something a little more tranquil for a change.”

Ochako smiled back faintly, surprised at how easy the expression came to her tonight. “That sounds…nice.”

It really did. It seemed quiet, and purposeful. Here, people were exploring instead of fighting, and learning instead of scrambling to survive.

“Yeah,” Izuku agreed, glancing down at the tablet beside her curiously. “What about you? What’ve you been up to?”

“Oh,” she said, her fingers brushing the corner of her sleeve. Her daily activities seemed so boring compared to his. “Reading, mostly. The databases have been really interesting.”

That was putting it lightly. She’d gotten lost in them more than once: hundreds of files about planets she’d never heard of, entire ecosystems cataloged with care, plant life that glowed beneath twin moons, creatures that floated instead of walked, and lush green worlds where the wind moved like liquid. She’d grown up knowing only the walls of one ship, one small slice of life, and now, there were hundreds of worlds waiting just outside this ship’s hull. There were entire living systems beyond anything she’d ever imagined.

Her lips tugged upward, almost shy. “I’ve…almost got everyone’s names memorized from the crew manifest, too.”

It’d taken a while to learn so many unfamiliar names and faces from just their pictures, but with little else to do, she’d devoted herself to the task. It felt better to have names for the group of strangers she’d fallen in with. It felt safer, somehow. 

“Really?” Izuku’s eyes lit up, his grin widening. “That’s great!”

“It…keeps my mind busy,” she admitted, her shoulders loosening a little. 

He nodded, then tapped his knuckles lightly against the desk, a boyish sort of nervousness in the gesture. “Actually…I came by to ask if you wanted to join us for Rec Night.”

Ochako blinked. “Rec Night?”

“Yeah. Short for ‘recreation,’” he said, his voice warm and a little hopeful. “Every so often, when we’re docked for maintenance and refueling, there’s not much for the crew to do while the station workers do their thing. So we get about two hours off-duty. No drills, no work, and no reports. Just downtime. This’ll be the first one we’ve had since launch. People will probably hang out together, maybe play games, or just nap.”

He scratched the back of his neck. “It’s not part of exams or formal training. It’s just…fun, for whoever wants to come.”

Ochako’s hands tensed slightly in her lap. The last time she’d sat in a room with half the crew, Bakugo’s glare had made her skin crawl, his words lodging sharp and cold in her chest. Did she really want to put herself back in that scenario?

“I already checked with Aizawa,” Izuku added quickly, reading her hesitation. “You’re welcome to be there. And there’s no pressure to do anything in particular. It’s just a chance to be around people without worrying about status or duties.”

Ochako hesitated, her thumb drawing slow circles along the fabric of her pants. Her chest tightened with old nerves, but at the same time, she remembered Tsuyu’s calm smile, Mina’s contagious energy, and everyone else’s loud, earnest chatter. Her interaction with Bakugo aside, she knew from the moments before he’d interrupted that not everyone was hostile. Most of them actually seemed decent and genuine. 

She glanced at her tablet again, which was still open to a catalog of ecosystems on a distant jungle world with orange oceans, and realized something she hadn’t admitted to herself yet: she wanted to belong somewhere. She wanted a chance to be a part of something like that, and to find a rhythm in this strange universe.

Izuku’s smile nervously tugged wider, her lack of response pushing him to pull out all the stops. “The engineering guys are putting together some weird game, too. Apparently, they want to test out some kind of contraption they’ve been working on in their spare time. And I heard Sato’s planning on sneaking in extra desserts.” His tone turned playfully conspiratorial. “Might be total chaos.”

A quiet, unguarded laugh escaped her, surprising her with how natural it felt. Her fingers eased their nervous fidgeting. Softer this time, she asked again, “Is it really okay for me to be there? I don’t want to…intrude, or anything.”

“More than okay,” Izuku affirmed with gentle conviction. “We’d be happy to have you there.”

Ochako looked at him, at his eager smile and honest eyes, and slowly nodded. “…Alright. I’ll come. I’d…like that.”

Izuku’s smile stretched wider, bright and sincere. “Awesome! It’s in two days, at 1500. I’ll stop by before, in case you want someone to walk with.”

For the first time in a while, the constant weight pressing on Ochako’s chest lightened just a little. Softly, she said, “Okay. Thanks, Midoriya.”

“Anytime.” 

She thought he might leave, heading off to fulfill another task or spend time with the people who were actually part of his crew. But instead, he plopped himself into the chair by her desk, his curiosity flickering across his face. “You said you’ve been going through the databases, right? Found any new, cool planets?”

Ochako blinked, a little caught off guard, then smiled, shy but growing warmer. She hesitated for only a second before tilting the screen toward him. 

She launched into a rundown of all the new planets she’d discovered in the depths of the planetary catalogues, showing him the pictures she’d bookmarked of planets with oceanic geysers, bioluminescent organisms, and floating forests. They were places she’d always dreamed of, but never thought could actually exist. There were planets that resembled the ones Izuku had seen on missions and during training, and even ones he’d never heard of before. 

He’d been right when he’d taken her to the ship’s garden. It helped to know that there was so much more out there, so much life. It made everything feel less overwhelming. 

For a while, they just sat there, scrolling through alien landscapes and distant stars—two strangers in the middle of unknown space, finding something simple and steady to share.

By the time Izuku stepped into one of the ship’s storage hangars on Rec Night with Uraraka walking beside him, the place was already buzzing with energy. It always surprised him how different the ship could feel when it wasn’t in mission mode. The hangar, which was normally packed with cargo crates or prepped equipment, had been completely cleared out thanks to the offload during refueling and maintenance. Now, the wide expanse of metal floor gleamed under bright overhead lights, echoing with laughter and idle chatter instead of boots-on-the-ground orders.

Izuku’s gaze swept the room, taking quick note of who was already there. Ashido and Asui were by the far wall, dragging seats together for the people who didn’t want to play. Jirou was at a console on the wall, cycling through music tracks. Near the middle, a knot of engineering troublemakers—Kaminari, Kirishima, and Sero—were gathered around something that looked like a half-finished science fair project wired with questionable enthusiasm.

Along the wall, a few others had set up a makeshift lounge with the chairs Ashido and Asui had dragged together. Iida, Tokoyami, Aoyama, Kouda, and Ojiro sat near a long table, already eyeing Sato’s fresh desserts. The smell of warm pastries drifted across the hangar, sugary and sharp enough to make Izuku’s stomach rumble.

His steps slowed when his gaze caught on the last figure. Not far from the engineering trio, Bakugo was leaning against a support pillar with his arms crossed, a sour look stamped across his face like he was counting down the minutes until he could leave. Judging by the way Sero and Kirishima kept smirking in his direction, Bakugo hadn’t come willingly.

Beside Izuku, Uraraka’s shoulders tensed. She shrank in just a little, her cheerful energy from earlier dimming when she spotted Bakugo.

Izuku dropped his voice, leaning slightly toward her. “Don’t worry. I won’t let him say anything to you again.”

Uraraka blinked, then smiled, smaller but sharper than before. “Thanks, Midoriya.” She paused briefly, then with an edge of dry humor, she whispered, “But honestly…if he does, I might do more than just say a quick comeback this time.”

Izuku snorted, his grin slipping out before he could stop it. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

They moved further inside, joining the growing circle. 

Ashido was the first to wave them over, beaming. “Hey, you made it!”

Uraraka smiled shyly but gave a small wave in return, falling into step just behind Izuku as they crossed the hangar.

Asui gave her usual quiet nod from where she was helping Ashido stack a few extra seats. “It’s good to see you again, Uraraka.”

“Hope you’re ready,” Kaminari piped up from the center of the room, tapping the odd-looking device beside him. “Because tonight’s a full test run.”

Jirou glanced over her shoulder from the console, a smirk on her face. “Don’t let them scare you. They’re mostly harmless.”

“Mostly,” Tokoyami echoed in his usual solemn tone, which only made Jirou roll her eyes.

Izuku watched as Uraraka’s posture slowly eased, her hands unclenching at her sides. Her gaze flickered from one person to the next, and for the first time, she didn’t look like she was waiting for someone to challenge her presence.

“Come on, come on,” Kirishima called, motioning them over. Then, loud enough for everyone to hear, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder and stated, “We even dragged grumpy old man Bakugo out of his bunk for this!”

A few snickers rippled through the group.

Bakugo shot him a death glare from where he stood by the pillar. “I’m not an old man, you damn hair gel reject.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Kirishima grinned. “You should’ve heard him earlier. ‘Why would I waste my time on this crap when I could be sleeping?' Pure old man energy.”

“I said it because this shit’s gonna be a disaster,” Bakugo growled, pushing off the pillar with a sharp step forward.

Even after a lifetime of knowing Kacchan, Izuku couldn’t tell whether the twitch in the corner of his mouth meant he was holding back a grin or getting ready to bite Kirishima’s head off. 

Ashido clapped her hands together. “Come on, Party Pooper Extraordinaire, join the rest of us. No lurking in the corners tonight.”

“Don’t lump me in with your nonsense,” Bakugo snapped, but he didn’t retreat. He stayed right where he was, his arms crossed, scowling as Kirishima and Sero beamed in his direction.

Izuku leaned toward Uraraka, whispering, “That’s… basically Bakugo-speak for, ‘I’ll tolerate it.’”

It felt weird to say ‘Bakugo’ instead of ‘Kacchan,’ but Izuku hadn’t quite talked about his and Bakugo’s rocky relationship with Uraraka, or any of the crew, yet. 

She covered a soft laugh with her hand, her eyes glinting with amusement.

“Trust me,” Izuku said, grinning, “if he really didn’t want to be here, we’d all know.”

“Everyone who wants to play, gather ‘round! Last call!” Sero’s voice rang out, pulling everyone's attention to the strange contraption in front of them. It was a squat, clunky-looking device with coils and blinking lights strapped to a portable frame. It looked like someone had ripped apart three pieces of equipment and slammed them together with duct tape and reckless optimism.

Izuku eyed it warily.

“Let me present…the Zero-G Field Disruptor 2.0!” Sero announced proudly.

“Patent pending,” Kaminari whispered loudly, throwing a wink to no one in particular.

“Built from mostly safe components,” Kirishima added, flexing with a grin.

Izuku felt a vein in his forehead tighten. That didn’t sound promising.

Asui gave a slow blink. “Mostly safe?”

“Very safe,” Sero backtracked, waving his hands, “with limited catastrophic potential.”

Jirou snorted from where she was lounging. “You guys are the worst salesmen.”

“That’s why we became engineers instead!”

Izuku crossed his arms uneasily, his brow furrowing. “Okay…What’s it supposed to do?”

Kaminari perked up. “Glad you asked! This beauty generates a zero-gravity field within a localized range. Flip the switch and everything inside the field floats.”

“Everything?” Uraraka echoed, sounding more intrigued than alarmed.

“Yup! Everything that’s not bolted down, at least,” Kirishima confirmed. “The field is contained to this hangar, so there’ll be no risk to ship operations.”

“And,” Sero chimed in, practically vibrating with excitement, “we’re gonna use it to play zero-G capture the flag.”

Izuku groaned before he could stop himself. Great, he thought, more zero-G maneuvering…

“Come on, Midoriya, it’ll be fun!” Ashido nudged his arm.

“Besides,” Asui added with a soft shrug, “zero-G training’s useful. We’ve already had a few missions where it was necessary, and you never know when the ship’s artificial gravity could fail.”

Off to the side, Izuku caught Iida adjusting his glasses. “I will supervise.”

“Same here,” Ojiro agreed, his tail swishing lightly behind him. “You know, in case anyone gets injured.” 

“I shall spectate fashionably,” Aoyama declared, already reaching for a cream-filled pastry.

“I’ll be at the snack table!” Sato called cheerfully, his arms crossed proudly as he stood over his latest dessert batch.

Izuku was three seconds away from stating he'd join them in their bolted down, seatbelt-equipped chairs when Kirishima clapped him on the back. “C’mon, man! It'll be good for team morale.”

Yeah, team morale. Izuku had heard that one before.

He glanced toward Uraraka, who was watching with cautious curiosity. Despite himself, his resolve wavered when he found that she actually looked excited, which was an emotion he hadn't seen from her yet. 

That left him no choice, really.

“Fine,” Izuku relented with a small grin. “Guess we’re playing.”

Ashido clapped her hands together. “Alright, teams! Let’s get this sorted.”

Before she could even start pointing, Sero raised a hand. “Hold up. Kiri, Kami, and I probably shouldn’t all be on the same team.”

Kaminari nodded in exaggerated seriousness. “Yeah, yeah. Agreed. Engineering power imbalance, and all that.”

“Right?” Kirishima grinned. “It wouldn’t be fair. We built this thing.”

“And besides,” Sero added, “if it blows up, at least it won’t take all three of us out at once.”

“Such faith in your craftsmanship,” Jirou said dryly from the side.

“Realistic expectations,” Sero quipped back, unbothered.

Kirishima rolled his shoulders, looking around. “Okay, so me on one side, Sero and Kaminari on the other?”

“Wait, why do I get lumped with Sero?” Kaminari asked, eyes widening in mock offense.

“Because you’re the only one who might make us worse,” Sero said with a grin. “You’ve crashed into a ceiling every time we’ve tested this.”

“That’s called experimental piloting! It was a necessary sacrafice!” Kaminari protested, pointing dramatically at himself.

Izuku laughed quietly before speaking up. “Uraraka and I’ll be on the same team.”

He hadn't asked Uraraka how she felt about that, but when among so many strangers, he had a feeling she would appreciate being with him rather than against him. 

True to his hunch, Uraraka blinked, but her smile pulled wider and her posture straightened every so slightly. It seemed like she liked the sound of that.

Kaminari snapped his fingers. “Then I’m on the opposite team from Midoriya. We can’t have both zero-G disasters on one side, it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Hey,” Izuku muttered, but he couldn’t exactly argue. He’d already been mentally preparing to be a human ping-pong ball.

Bakugo’s arms crossed tighter, his tone sharp and inevitable. “I’m on whatever team Deku’s not on.”

“Oh come on, man,” Kirishima groaned, “we just said we’re balancing this out, not fueling your rivalry.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bakugo snapped. “Somebody’s gotta kick his ass.”

Izuku just shrugged, not rising to it. “Sure, Kacchan. Looking forward to it.” 

The nickname slipped out naturally, though Izuku didn’t realize until he caught the curious look Uraraka was casting him. There wasn’t any time to address it, though. 

“Okay, then!” Ashido chirped. “Let’s make these teams official.” She paced across the room, pointing as she went. “Team Alpha: Bakugo, Sero, Kaminari, me, and Asui. Team Delta: Midoriya, Uraraka, Kirishima, Jirou, and Tokoyami. Any objections?”

“Wait, wait,” Kaminari said, throwing a hand up. “You put me and Bakugo on the same team? I'm definitely not surviving this.”

“Consider it a character-building exercise,” Jirou replied without missing a beat.

“Oh great,” Kaminari muttered, “I signed up for Rec Night, not life lessons.”

“Too bad, Sparky,” Sero patted him on the shoulder.

Kirishima chuckled, pointing at Bakugo. “And you. Old Man Boomstick. Try not to yell at your own team, okay?”

Bakugo growled, “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Izuku turned toward Uraraka with a grin. “Guess it’s us versus them.”

She returned it, her grin just shy of mischievous. “I like our odds.”

“Perfect!” Ashido called out. “Then let’s get airborne!”

Bakugo’s annoyed grumble rumbled across the room.

Izuku met it with a calm, unbothered stare, then leaned toward Uraraka. “Let’s make sure they regret dragging us into this.”

Uraraka’s grin, though shy, turned just a little sharper. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Here we go!”

The moment Kaminari flipped the switch, the gravity evaporated beneath Izuku’s feet. One instant, his boots were solid on the hangar floor. The next, he was airborne, hovering weightlessly while delighted cheers and startled yelps rippled through the space.

“Gravity field is stable!” Sero whooped from mid-air, kicking off a support pillar in a lazy backflip, his arms stretched like he was performing acrobatics.

Izuku inhaled deeply, his fingers curling around the nearest support pillar to anchor himself. The cool metal pressed against his palm, giving him just enough control to counteract his awkward, drifting momentum. Zero-G still wasn’t his forte, but tonight, he was determined not to end up somersaulting into a wall.

Across the hangar, every player positioned themselves by a support strut, overhead rail, or girder, finding every available surface that could be used to launch and redirect momentum. That was the key to surviving in zero-G: precision movement, avoiding reckless collisions, and using the environment as leverage.

Above them, colorful holographic banners marked the two team zones, and floating near the back of each side hovered the flag: spherical orbs gently pulsing with team colors.

“The first team to grab the opposing flag and make it back wins!” Kaminari called. 

“Winner gets bragging rights and first pick of Sato’s cinnamon rolls!” Kirishima added as he drifted in a slow spin.

Iida, their ever-diligent captain and now referee, gave them their countdown. “Starting in three…two…one…GO!”

Izuku kicked off the pillar hard, soaring forward. His body cut low across the hangar as he twisted mid-air to dodge a drifting Kaminari. His breath hitched when Uraraka zipped past him, her toes grazing the struts only long enough to propel herself to the next vector. Her body rotated effortlessly through turns, every motion deliberate and sharp, like she’d been doing this her whole life. She looked like she belonged up here, gliding silently and timing each burst of momentum perfectly.

Izuku blinked, startled. She wasn’t just comfortable, she was good. He stored that observation away, quietly impressed. He definitely needed to ask her about that later.

Bakugo streaked past him like a comet, shoving off a girder with explosive force. “Haven’t come up with one of your lame strategies yet, nerd?”

Izuku caught the edge of a crossbeam and used it to change trajectory, shooting back a grin. “Maybe.”

Bakugo rocketed toward the centerline, only to get intercepted by Kirishima with a grinning shoulder-check, both of them bouncing off each other like pinballs.

“Don’t think I won’t wreck you, shitty hair!” Bakugo roared.

“Love you too, bro!” Kirishima laughed, cartwheeling backward before correcting with a quick tap off a nearby girder.

Overhead, Sero moved with more subtlety, threading through the top rafters, while Jirou and Tokoyami tracked him from below, using precise boosts off the wall.

Asui’s even voice drifted calmly through the space. “Uraraka is flanking.”

Bakugo launched himself off the wall he’d bumped against after colliding with Kirishima, redirecting himself toward Uraraka’s path.

No you don’t, Izuku thought firmly. He tucked his knees in, using a lower rail to sling himself diagonally across the playing field and straight into Bakugo’s line of approach. He braced for impact, their shoulders colliding mid-air, breaking each other’s momentum. The impact was jarring, both of them grunting as they were sent spinning.

“Watch it, Deku!” Bakugo snapped as he latched onto a crossbeam, though there was less venom, more heat-of-the-game energy.

“Taking one for the team,” Izuku shot back through gritted teeth, using a nearby pipe to stabilize himself.

Uraraka, sleek and focused, sailed above them, dodging a lazy swipe from Kaminari who floated in a slow, spinning somersault.

“Like a dancer!” Aoyama called dramatically from the sidelines, throwing glitter confetti into the air from who-knows-where. “Volez, Mademoiselle Uraraka, volez!”

Izuku couldn’t help grinning. He definitely needed to ask her where she learned to fly like that.

From the far side, Ashido glided like a fairy toward the Delta flag, only to be intercepted mid-leap by Kirishima, both of them thudding into a side wall and bouncing back toward the centerline.

“Victory means cinnamon rolls!” Sato reminded cheerfully from the sidelines. “Play with your hearts!”

“I don’t care about your damn pastries!” Bakugo snapped, swerving aggressively to avoid a beam. “Victory means I get to go back to my bunk faster!” 

“Screw sleep! I wanna win and eat pastries!” Kaminari called out, only to slam into a wall with a loud “oof” a second later.

Uraraka tucked into a roll, narrowly avoiding Asui’s wild lunge, then kicked off a ceiling beam, speeding toward the pulsing flag.

Izuku twisted his body to block Sero’s last-minute intercept and watched from a distance, his heart racing in excitement.

She was nearly there, her fingers outstretched, when a shrill beep sounded, a piercing tone that turned every head.

“Uh oh,” Sero said warily.

Too late, Izuku realized it was a warning.

His heart lurched. There was half a second more of eerie weightlessness before the Zero-G Disruptor gave out another ominous chirp. The device’s field collapsed and gravity yanked everyone down like a hook pulling taut. In an instant, the playful drift turned into a gut-dropping plummet.

With a collective chorus of thuds, everyone slammed toward the floor, limbs flailing as bodies ricocheted off walls and pillars in the chaotic descent.

Izuku managed to twist mid-fall, catching himself just enough to land in a graceless sprawl.

A chorus of crashes, yelps, and laughter echoed across the hangar as the players peeled themselves off the floor.

“Gravity reengaged!” Kaminari wheezed from somewhere near the center, still face-down. “Ten out of ten landing, you guys. Graceful as,” he groaned, his next word leaving him a painful wheeze, “...always.”

“Ugh…our landings definitely still need work,” Kirishima groaned.

Ojiro and Iida were already in motion, boots thudding across the floor. Iida’s movements were precise as he moved from player to player, checking for injuries. Ojiro helped Tokoyami to his feet, steadying him as the blond swayed.

“Everyone, confirm your status,” Iida called crisply, scanning each person. “No broken limbs?”

“Bruised pride, maybe,” Jirou muttered, shaking out her wrist.

Ashido groaned. "My butt hurts!"

“I’m fine,” Asui said, already back on her feet.

“Minor elbow trauma.” Uraraka let out a small laugh.

Izuku coughed, wincing but smiling through it, his eyes drifting toward her. She was rubbing her elbow but grinning despite herself. Once he was on his feet, he offered her a hand, which she took easily. 

Bakugo, already stomping around nearby, snarled, “You idiots let us play with that thing, knowing it could cut out at any time? We didn’t even have time to brace!”

“Gotta go out in style!” Kirishima laughed, though he was clutching his ribs. “And honestly, it’s your fault for putting so much faith in us.” 

As the groaning subsided, the engineering trio slowly rolled to their feet, shaking out limbs and cracking stiff joints. 

Kaminari, still groaning but smiling, slapped the side of the disruptor. “Not bad, huh? A few tweaks, and it’s golden.”

“I think the landing buffer needs work,” Sero muttered, stretching out his neck. 

“You think?” Bakugo raged.

“Yeah,” Kirishima agreed, completely ignoring Bakugo as he rubbed the back of his neck. “The field bleed-off’s definitely too sharp. We could reroute the discharge through the secondary coils, maybe give it a taper before full gravity returns.”

Uraraka was still lingering just behind Izuku, absently dusting off her sleeves. She looked hesitant, like she wanted to speak but was debating if it was worth the risk.

Izuku gave her a small, encouraging nudge with his elbow. “You okay?”

She blinked, then nodded. Her gaze shifted to the engineering trio still bickering by the machine.

Then, quietly, she said, “You could…probably redirect the gravitational oscillation through the unused stabilizer nodes…near the inner paneling.”

All three engineers went still. Sero slowly turned, his brows raised. Kaminari’s grin faltered, curiosity sparking in his eyes. Kirishima straightened up, blinking in surprise.

Uraraka’s shoulders hunched slightly, her voice even smaller now but steady. “I—I mean, if you did that, the oscillation energy would diffuse before impact, and you wouldn’t get the…um…the sharp collapse of gravity at the end. It’d…taper off more gradually.”

The silence stretched, then Kirishima grinned, the kind that lit up his whole face. “That’s…actually a really good idea.”

“Yeah!” Kaminari’s hands flailed slightly, energized. “The unused stabilizers are usually dormant during docking shifts, but they could totally be looped into the circuit!”

“And we wouldn’t have to jury-rig the coils next time,” Sero added, nodding thoughtfully. “Would stabilize the shutdown process. Why didn’t we think of that?”

Izuku smiled to himself, warmth settling in his chest as the three of them rapidly shifted gears, starting to diagram imaginary circuits with exaggerated hand motions, excitedly debating wiring patterns and field redistribution, all while Uraraka remained at the center of the discussion, her initial shyness melting into quiet, tentative contributions.

She didn’t say much, but every time she added a thought, the other three listened, nodding along and engaging with her like she’d been part of the crew from the beginning.

Izuku stayed back, smiling quietly to himself, just content to watch her start to find her place.

All too soon, their hours of recreation were over.

Izuku found himself back on the bridge, the soft ache of fresh bruises along his ribs a quiet reminder of zero-G collisions and chaotic midair scrambles. The hum of duty returned, steady and familiar, as he and the rest of the bridge crew oversaw the ship’s launch from the station where they’d taken on fuel and undergone regular maintenance.

The now-familiar thrum of the 1-A’s engines vibrated beneath his boots, a pulse of life that reassured and grounded him. Outside the broad observation windows, the immense latticework of the refueling hub began to shrink in the distance, its angular spires glowing under the distant, indifferent light of nearby stars. Beyond the steel and structure was only open space, cold, vast, and endless.

Izuku sat tall in his chair at the navigation console, his fingers gliding along the smooth interface as new flight paths blinked into existence on his display. The lines were crisp and unchanging. He found them comforting in their predictability.

“Docking clamps clear,” Jirou reported from the communications terminal, her fingers flying over keys, the glow reflecting faintly off her calm features. “Station traffic has us on an outbound trajectory…no obstructions in the channel.”

“Course plotted for the scheduled patrol loop,” Izuku called, keeping his voice steady, even as his mind relaxed slightly into the rhythm of the job. It felt good to be back in his seat, to have a purpose at his fingertips again.

“Engines at seventy percent,” Bakugo grunted from the pilot’s chair. His posture slouched, casual as ever, but his crimson eyes stayed razor-focused on the diagnostics in front of him, always alert and always ready. 

At the systems station, Tokoyami read out schematics, falling back into that role whenever he wasn’t needed as the relief pilot. “Power flow stable, shields nominal.”

Aizawa stood near the center console, his arms crossed and eyes sharp but unreadable as ever. He monitored them like a silent sentinel, letting them fall into the rhythm without interruption. Still, Izuku caught the subtle nod Aizawa gave when Bakugo executed the clean handoff from station power to long-range drive.

This was what Izuku liked most about being on the bridge. The coordination, the clarity of purpose, the seamless teamwork. They were cadets, sure, but in these moments, they felt like something more. They were professional, capable, and steady.

And after the whirlwind of the last couple weeks—Uraraka’s arrival, the chaos of salvaging the wreck, the mess hall tensions, the clumsy attempts at bonding—it felt like they were finally settling into something normal again. Uraraka was finding her footing. The crew was regaining rhythm. The exam would continue, and the days would stretch into routine again.

Izuku allowed himself, just briefly, to breathe and believe things were smoothing out.

Then Jirou’s console beeped. It was sharp and urgent, sounding different from the usual ping of incoming communications.

The moment the shrill tone rang out, the atmosphere on the bridge sharpened like a blade. Izuku’s shoulders tensed instinctively, his fingers stilling over his console.

Jirou leaned forward, her brows knitting together as her screen lit up in bright, warning orange. Her foot tapped under her seat, a faint, restless tell Izuku had only ever noticed during drills or simulations.

“New comm incoming,” she said, her voice shifting subtly. “It’s...from the Commission. High-priority routing.”

The lightness that had settled in Izuku’s chest curdled almost instantly. His grip around the edge of his console tightened, his knuckles whitening. His pulse began a slow, uneasy pound in his ears.

High-priority didn’t come with good news.

The bridge fell still, the mechanical hum of the 1-A feeling heavier now. Only the faint hiss of the comm channel establishing crackled in the silence.

Jirou’s eyes flicked rapidly over the incoming data. The longer she read, the more the faint line between her brows deepened, her shoulders edging higher in quiet tension.

Aizawa, still as stone, simply tilted his head. “Report.”

Jirou swallowed before speaking, turning in her seat to face them properly, her voice steady but undeniably weighted. “We’ve received an order from the Commission."

Izuku did not like the sound of that. The Commission wasn’t supposed to interfere with their exams. Aizawa had made that very, very clear. If the Commission, who was currently waging war against the League, was overruling that stance…

Atop her knees, Jirou’s hands clenched into fists. “We’re to break from scheduled patrol and…rendezvous with the warship Endeavor.”

The words dropped into the room like iron.

Even Bakugo, who had been muttering over his diagnostics, froze, his hands pausing mid-adjustment and his eyes narrowing.

The rhythmic beeps and blinking lights of the bridge continued their routine, but Izuku’s chest felt tight, his pulse crawling higher. Rendezvous orders didn’t come lightly, especially not with a warship as renowned as the Endeavor.

He glanced at the course overlay now populating his screen, marked with a sharp detour. A shiver crawled beneath his skin. Instead of distant, quiet sectors, they were heading straight into the orbit of something far larger, and far more dangerous.

Routine? Routine was gone before it’d fully returned. This was the Commission reaching into their controlled environment and yanking them into something heavier, something that pulsed with the unmistakable weight of the real world outside their academy walls. A rendezvous with an active warship wouldn’t just be for a social visit, or an observation tour. And in the last year of the academy, when their exams were supposed to push them to their limits… 

Far beyond the hangar where laughter still lingered and desserts sat half-eaten, the 1-A glided into the black, its course set and its fate sealed.

They’d been learning how to be cadets. Now, they were about to be shown what it meant to be soldiers.

Chapter Text

The mess hall was unusually quiet.

Cadets lined the benches in rigid rows, their food trays pushed aside or forgotten entirely. All eyes were fixed on the front of the room, where Aizawa stood with his arms crossed, his expression unreadable. All Might loomed beside him, carrying a quiet authority that hushed even Kaminari's usual chatter.

Izuku sat near the front with Iida and Asui, his hands clenched nervously atop his knees. 

They’d all known this was coming, at least the four of them who’d been on the bridge when the call came in. But even knowing hadn’t prepared Izuku for the hush that had descended once word got out. For once, it wasn’t just nerves over a training sim or mission drills. This felt heavier. This was real.

Aizawa’s gaze swept over the cadets, his voice low, but carrying easily through the room. “You’ve probably all heard by now, but earlier today, we received direct communication from the Commission.”

Murmurs rippled faintly down the rows, but no one dared speak louder than a whisper.

“They’ve issued a reroute order for the 1-A,” Aizawa continued. “Effective immediately, your exam schedule is being paused. Our new objective is to rendezvous with the warship Endeavor.”

The name landed like a blow.

Izuku felt the shift ripple through the crew. Even those who tried to hide it—Bakugo, Shinso, and Todoroki—had stiffened. The Endeavor wasn’t just any ship. It was the Commission’s flagship, a vessel that had seen dozens of battles across contested space. Everyone knew it by reputation.

Kirishima spoke up, his voice quieter than usual. “We’re…actually boarding a warship?”

“Not in full,” Aizawa replied. “And certainly not to fight. Our role is logistical. The 1-A has been assigned to transport and deliver resupply crates. We’ll be stopping at Outpost D-17 for pickup. Once the cargo is loaded, we’ll meet with the Endeavor along its return path from the frontlines.”

There was a brief pause as he let the information settle.

“They’ll be pulling back from active conflict for a short window to make necessary repairs. During that time, we’ll dock with one of their loading bays, offload the cargo, and then depart. There will be no direct engagement. This is a supply run.”

Despite the clarity of his words, the atmosphere didn’t relax. If anything, it got tighter.

Iida raised a hand, more out of instinct than need. “Sir, will we be crossing into contested space?”

Aizawa’s gaze didn’t waver. “We’ll be skirting the border between Commission territory and League-controlled systems. It's far closer than I intended for any of you as cadets.”

There it was.

Izuku’s stomach twisted.

Deep down, everyone had known that this day might come. They’d feared that war would eventually reach their doorstep. But they’d assumed they’d at least be able to graduate first. 

“This is an order we don’t get to refuse,” All Might added, speaking for the first time. His tone was gentler than Aizawa’s, but still left no room for argument. “But I want to make it clear: your safety is still the priority. The 1-A will not remain at the rendezvous any longer than necessary. We’re not here to fight. We’re here to complete a task, and then we’ll resume your training. Understood?”

Muted nods traveled down the tables. No one spoke, not even Bakugo, who looked like he wanted to explode just to break the silence.

Izuku glanced around the room. Kaminari had gone pale. Sero’s usual grin was gone. Yaoyorozu had gone rigid, her hands white-knuckled around the edge of the bench. And Todoroki—

Izuku blinked.

Todoroki was staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched and his eyes cold. It wasn’t the detached cool Izuku was used to. There was fire there, quiet, coiled, and barely contained. It was fury. 

“Before I dismiss you,” Aizawa said, pausing at the end of the announcement, “Todoroki, stay behind. I need a word.”

Todoroki didn’t respond. He just nodded once, curtly, and didn’t look at anyone.

Izuku’s gaze lingered on him. He knows something. Or maybe he already expected this. But that look…it’s more than nerves. 

Aizawa stepped back, his arms still folded. “Everyone else, prepare yourselves. We’ll arrive at the outpost in ten hours, so get some rest before then. Dismissed.”

Chairs scraped. Boots echoed. The cadets began filing out, their energy subdued. A few whispered to each other—Kaminari and Sero trying to rally morale with muttered jokes, Yaoyorozu giving Iida a list of prep tasks to keep her mind occupied—but overall, the room emptied in uneasy quiet.

Izuku lingered in the doorway for a few seconds longer, the low chatter of the others fading as they moved down the corridor.

Todoroki still hadn’t looked up. He hadn’t moved at all.

Aizawa stood nearby, silent and steady, his expression unreadable. 

Izuku’s hand drifted to the wall beside the door. Something about the stillness and tension in Todoroki’s shoulders made his chest tighten. The rest of them were shaken, anxious, and even scared, but Todoroki looked like he’d been waiting for this, like it had been coming for him for a long time.

Izuku swallowed hard, realization slowly dawning on him as he remembered more details from the many reports he’d read on the ship they were resupplying.

The Endeavor. 

Of course that would mean more to Todoroki than it would to the rest of them, not just because of the ship’s reputation, or its mission history, but because of its captain. For the first time, Izuku realized why the name ‘Todoroki’ had sounded faintly familiar when he’d first read the name on the crew manifest. Todoroki Enji was the captain of the Endeavor, and now they were on a collision course with it.

Finally, Izuku turned and stepped into the hall, the hum of the ship quiet underfoot as he caught up with the others. Their voices echoed around him in fragments, talking of supply crates, of duty rotations, and of how to spend the time between now and when they reached the supply outpost.

But Izuku’s thoughts stayed behind in the mess hall, fixed on the pale knuckles of Todoroki’s clenched fists. They were all heading toward something they weren’t ready for, but Izuku couldn’t shake the feeling that for Todoroki, this mission would be something else entirely.

The tension aboard the 1-A was impossible to ignore.

Ever since Aizawa’s announcement in the mess hall, a weight had settled over the crew like a damp blanket. Conversations dulled to whispers. Laughter vanished. Even the usual background hum of activity had taken on a nervous edge, like the ship itself was holding its breath.

Izuku could feel it in every glance, every pause, and every attempt at normalcy. No matter how many times someone refreshed a diagnostic screen or ran another system check, nothing could mask the truth: they were heading toward something far bigger than any of them had trained for.

With ten hours and no official duties to fulfill until they reached Outpost D-17 to collect the supplies for the Endeavor, some cadets threw themselves into training. Some tried to get some sleep. Some paced. Others buried themselves in diagnostics or data reports, pretending they weren’t counting the hours. But none of it seemed to help.

So when the low, rhythmic pulse of music began to spill down the corridors of the 1-A, drawing cadets like moths to flame, it was a relief. The music had bass, with something frantic buried in the beat. It was a playlist clearly curated by Jirou, who currently sat perched on the edge of the training room’s upper control booth, one leg bouncing in time to the music as she tapped commands into the system’s interface.

Inside the simulation chamber in the center of the room, the space had been expanded and reshaped into an industrial sparring arena, with rusted steel beams, flickering light panels, and enough haze to make every movement feel cinematic. Two figures clashed at the center: Bakugo, his shirt already halfway torn off, and Tokoyami, a cape he’d grabbed from somewhere flaring dramatically with each evasive sweep.

It wasn’t official training. It was release. 

Bakugo fought like a man chasing ghosts. Every blow he delivered was fast and sharp, every movement a barely contained snap of energy. Tokoyami met him with calm precision, clearly pushed to his limit, but unwilling to back down. Neither spoke much, giving just the occasional grunt or hiss of pain.

A small group of cadets had gathered on the viewing platform above, sprawled along the railing or slumped against the back wall. Kaminari threw out wild commentary like a sports announcer. Sero passed around a box of ration bars like popcorn.

Izuku leaned against the railing near the far end, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched the match unfold. He wasn’t sure if it was entertaining or concerning. Probably both.

Uraraka drifted up beside him with a quiet smile, her steps soft enough that he barely noticed until she was there. She tipped her head toward the sparring floor. “They’ve been going at it for a while, huh?”

“It’s the second round,” Izuku replied. “Bakugo demanded it.”

“I figured. And Tokoyami gave in?”

Izuku hummed. “Yep. He said he wanted to ‘hone his edge in the darkness’ or something.”

Bakugo nearly clipped Tokoyami’s shoulder with a shove, and Tokoyami retaliated with a low sweep of his leg. 

Uraraka’s eyes followed the close exchange. “There must be something serious going on for you guys to be getting your energy out like this.”

Izuku’s hands tightened slightly against his arms.

Uraraka turned to look at him. “Is everything okay?”

“I…” His words caught in his throat. He wished he could just say it, but he wasn’t authorized to share mission-critical intel with her. 

His gaze dropped to the sparring match below, where Bakugo let out a growl and launched himself into another aggressive flurry. “I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Uraraka didn’t respond right away. She just nodded, accepting that there were things she wasn’t meant to know. Her eyes drifted back to the fight. “They’re trying really hard not to think. Guess everyone copes in their own way.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

The music swelled. Jirou changed tracks to something heavier this time, with gritty guitar over synth percussion. The floor glowed with another simulation cycle, signaling the start of a new round. This time, Kirishima was stepping into the arena, cracking his knuckles as Bakugo smirked at the new challenge.

From beside him, Izuku felt Uraraka’s presence like a quiet tether. She didn’t push, or pry. She just stood with him, watching the storm play out below. 

When dinner came, it became apparent that Sato had decided stress baking was the only cure for his own nervousness for what was coming. He’d been mass producing muffins, cinnamon rolls, and nutrient-rich focus bars all day. Yaoyorozu had joined him, and according to Asui, she’d thrown quite the fit about food safety violations when Ashido and Hagakure had stormed the kitchen and decided to help. 

With their own army of muffins and other baked goods to be consumed, the crew was the most lively they’d been in hours. Izuku was a little overwhelmed by it as he walked in with Uraraka by his side. Asui waved them over, and Iida had already secured a spot at their usual table.

Izuku sat down, immediately reaching for a muffin from the basket in the center of the table. He was glad to see Uraraka slide onto the bench beside him without hesitation. She was quiet, but her smile didn’t look as forced as it had that first week.

Not two bites into his muffin, a familiar chorus of voices approached.

“Yo! Hope there’s room for us!” Kirishima grinned, already scooting onto the other side of the table beside Iida.

“We heard it was a Midoriya-Uraraka table today, so obviously we had to crash it,” Kaminari said, plopping down with a thud next to Asui.

Sero took a seat next to Izuku, nudging him excitedly. “We come bearing updates.”

Izuku blinked, glancing between the three of them, a little unnerved by their eager grins. “On…what?”

“The gravity disrupter, of course!” Kirishima said. 

“You’re working on that at a time like this?” Iida chastised. 

“It’s not like we have anything better to do.” Sero shrugged, then grinned. “Besides, idle hands equal spiraling thoughts.”

Kirishima leaned forward excitedly. “We already started implementing the mods Uraraka suggested. If we don’t completely fry the internal stabilizers, it should be back up for the next Rec Night in two weeks!”

Uraraka blinked in surprise, speaking around a mouthful of pastry. “Already? That was fast.”

Sero shrugged again. “Good ideas deserve to get done fast. Plus, we really wanna test it.”

“We’re also developing some new gadgets,” Kaminari said eagerly, grinning like he had some grand mischief planned. “You know, for enhanced gameplay. Like retractable wires, magnetic grips, stuff for midair maneuvering.”

“Exactly,” Kirishima nodded. “Basically upgrades to make it less crash-into-the-floor-and-ceiling, more swoop-and-dash. You in for a test run, Uraraka?”

Her smile grew a little playful. “Sure…though I don’t know how many people are gonna be willing after all the bruises from the last game.”

Laughter erupted around the table.

Izuku felt himself grinning, warmth blooming in his chest. It was nice to see her joke and ease into conversations that weren’t strained or overly polite.

“I’ll certainly supervise again,” Iida declared, his posture straight and proud. “Safety oversight must be a priority.”

Asui blinked slowly, her expression calm. “I’ll play again. You won’t dodge my blocks so easily next time.”

“You’ll have to catch me first,” Uraraka quipped, and Izuku let out a soft laugh, surprised by the confidence lacing her tone.

“You were crazy good last time,” Sero said, nodding. “I kept losing track of you in the rafters.”

Kaminari nodded in agreement. “Yeah, where’d you even learn to float like that?”

Uraraka tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, her cheeks dusted with faint color. “The artificial gravity on my ship was…really bad. It’d break down all the time. Sometimes we’d go without gravity for weeks.” She shrugged lightly. “Wasn’t great on the body, but…I guess I got good at navigating without it.”

“Whoa,” Kirishima blinked, impressed. “Talk about unintentional training.”

“You too, Midoriya,” Kaminari chimed in, grinning. “I thought you were part of the zero-G disaster club with me, but you were cutting through the field like a champ.”

Izuku rubbed the back of his neck, ducking his head. “Uh…thanks. I don’t think Kacchan appreciated me intercepting him twice.”

“Kacchan,” Uraraka repeated, blinking as her brows knit together, studying him. “You mean Bakugo, right?”

Izuku stiffened. His heart sank a little. He’d slipped up. 

Mentally, he begged her to leave it and let it pass, but Uraraka tilted her head, her eyes curious. “Bakugo had a nickname for you too, didn’t he? I heard it during the game. What was it…?” Her tone grew thoughtful as she trailed off.

Izuku fought not to grimace, mentally pleading for her not to remember it. 

Her eyes suddenly lit up with realization. “Deku! That’s it—he called you Deku. What does it mean?”

Izuku’s stomach curled, and he set his muffin down carefully.

“Kac—” He stopped himself. “Bakugo and I…we’ve known each other since we were little. I don’t really remember a time when he wasn’t around, really.”

Everyone leaned in, their expressions attentive.

“You guys have been holding out on us! I didn’t know you guys were close like that,” Kaminari said.

“We’re…not,” Izuku admitted quietly, his fingers fidgeting with the edge of his sleeve. “Deku…it means ‘useless.’ That’s what he’s always meant when he called me that.”

A hush settled around the table.

Sero’s eyes widened slightly. Kirishima’s expression fell into something awkward and apologetic. Kaminari looked genuinely taken aback, his mouth parting like he wanted to say something but couldn’t quite form the words. Iida’s frown was immediate, his disapproval clear.

But it was Uraraka’s reaction that Izuku felt the most: her soft, sad intake of breath, her lips pressing into a thin line.

Kirishima rubbed at the back of his neck, guilt edging into his uneasy grin. “I’ve overheard him calling you that since day one. I always thought it was, like, a call sign or something. You know, like what pilots use. Didn’t realize it was… that. Sorry, dude.”

“A call sign?” Uraraka repeated, glancing between them, confused.

Iida adjusted his glasses. “It’s a shorthand identifier. Many crew members, especially in piloting or combat divisions, use them. It’s a nickname for comms, sometimes personal, sometimes assigned.”

“Like ‘All Might,’” Asui added. “That’s Commander Yagi’s call sign. He became famous when he served under that name, so most people use it to refer to him instead of his actual name.” 

“Oh…” Uraraka’s frown lingered.

Kaminari’s grin returned as he snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! We should all come up with proper call signs! Like, something cool and something you actually like, Midoriya. That way, we can all call you that and just stomp out Bakugo’s nonsense.”

“Yeah!” Sero added, his enthusiasm rekindled. 

Kaminari slapped Sero’s back. “Like this guy. He can be Cellophane! Because, y’know, Sero sounds like Cello…Also because tape is his best friend for fixing all the crap he breaks.”

“Hey!” Sero squawked, but before he could defend himself, Jirou’s voice cut in smoothly as she slid onto the bench beside Kaminari.

“And you can be Jammingway,” she said dryly, “because you’re always jamming your brain.”

Kaminari spluttered indignantly while the table burst into laughter, the group instantly diving into a debate over what everyone’s call signs should be. Iida was already drafting a hypothetical organizational chart, Asui suggested minimalist names, and Kirishima lobbied for something manly.

Izuku sat quietly, warmth blooming in his chest. It was loud and a little ridiculous, but it felt…good. For a moment, the ache in his ribs didn’t feel so sharp.

Then his eyes caught Uraraka’s again.

Everyone else was swept up in the chatter, but she was still looking at him. Her smile had faded, replaced by a quiet, pensive sadness. It wasn’t pity. It was something more akin to understanding, but still heavy.

It hit him all over again: how easily people accepted “Deku” without ever asking what it meant, and how Uraraka had learned the truth in the middle of laughter.

His chest tightened just a little.

Maybe Kaminari was right. Maybe it was time to find a new name. And maybe this time, it would be one he could choose for himself.

With their storage hulls now packed full of supplies from the outpost, the time until their rendezvous with the Endeavor was ticking down. With only an hour left until they docked on the warship, the greenhouse was one of the few places aboard the 1-A where silence didn’t feel so heavy.

Rows of compact hydroponic planters hummed softly with filtered water, and overhead, past the domed glass canopy, the stars stretched in brilliant, distorted ribbons as streaking light was warped by their faster-than-light velocity. Beyond the dome, the universe looked melted, folded in motion. It was beautiful, vast, and terrifying.

Izuku sat on the edge of a low planter bench, watching the blur of color ripple faintly across Uraraka’s face as she leaned against the glass with her arms crossed on her knees. The light of the blue-tinted stars refracted like water across her cheek.

“I didn’t know it meant ‘useless,’” she said softly, her voice nearly lost to the gentle whir of the air filters.

Izuku blinked, glancing at her. “Huh?”

“Deku.” She turned to him, her eyes warm but pensive. “You said that’s what it means—what Bakugo always meant by it. But when I first heard him call you that, I thought…” She hesitated, then smiled faintly. “I thought it was a twist on dekiru. Like, ‘you can do it.’”

Izuku blinked, surprise cutting his breath short. He turned away, staring through the dome above them at the trails of starlight that stretched like rivers. “I like your version better. A lot better.”

There was a pause, and then Uraraka said, “It just…felt like it suited you, because of how you carry yourself. You have a lot of drive, and a lot of hope.”

He let her words sit, not sure how to answer them. Gratitude curled behind his ribs, too big and too delicate to name.

The lights dimmed slightly on a timer, signaling the ship’s artificial evening. Shadows stretched gently between the rows of planters, and Uraraka’s gaze drifted back to the stars.

“…Do you ever feel like you don’t know who you are outside of all this?” she asked after a moment, her voice barely audible.

Izuku looked at her again.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” she continued. “I’m not part of your crew. I’m not part of anything here. I don’t know what happens to me once your exam is over. My life has been nothing but hiding, surviving, and running. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be anymore.” She laughed quietly, but it sounded fragile. “But still, I’m kind of…hopeful. I think maybe I’m starting to want something again. That feels like a start.”

He nodded slowly. “I’m…not so certain about what waits for me after all of this, either. After the exam, if I pass, I’ll probably get drafted.” His fists clenched slightly in his lap. “And I don’t know if I’m ready.”

Uraraka was quiet beside him for a moment before she asked, “What if you didn’t get drafted?”

Izuku turned to her, surprised.

She smiled softly. “Let’s not focus on the bad. Let’s say you don’t get drafted. If you were given a choice, and if you could go anywhere, what would you do?”

He hesitated. Then, with a small smile, he answered, “I’d travel. Not for missions or battles, but just to explore. I always wanted to pilot my own ship and work with a science team, flying to new planets, studying life forms, mapping gravity fields and atmospheres. Not as a soldier, just…as someone curious.”

Uraraka leaned her head against the glass, her eyes glinting with the warped stars. “Then I’ll come with you.”

Izuku’s heart tripped.

She smiled, small and a little tired, but undeniably sure. “I’m not sure where I’ll belong. But if you ever find a ship heading out to somewhere new…I’d like to be there.”

For a moment, Izuku couldn’t speak. The hum of the greenhouse faded beneath the silence between them, filled only with the pulse of faster-than-light travel and the impossible vastness just beyond the dome.

Finally, he said, “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”

They sat in silence again, with a seed of something planted in the dark. Outside, the stars kept streaming past, and inside the dome, they stayed still together.

The 1-A’s bridge was quieter than it had ever been. It wasn’t silent. There was still the hum of consoles, the steady tapping of keys, and the muted exchange of data. But it was a different kind of quiet. It was a quiet composed of tension and held breath. No one spoke unless they had to. Even Bakugo, seated at the helm, said nothing as he guided their ship toward the looming shape of the Endeavor.

Izuku sat at his navigation console, his eyes glued to the glowing display as trajectory readouts scrolled across his screen. The Endeavor filled the viewport ahead, a massive silhouette backlit by a pale star, its hull scarred from war but still imposing. It looked less like a ship and more like a drifting fortress. No matter how many images he'd seen of it in databanks, nothing compared to the real thing.

Bakugo's hands were steady on the controls, the flicker of tension in his shoulders the only sign of how seriously he was taking the maneuver.

“Adjusting final approach vector,” Izuku reported, his voice low but clear.

Jirou, seated at her console on Bakugo’s other side, didn’t look up. “Hangar bay is signaling green. They’ve cleared us to dock.”

“Running final systems check,” Tokoyami added, fingers moving smoothly over the systems interface. “Thruster calibration nominal. Hull pressure stable.”

Behind them stood their commanding officers. Iida and Yaoyorozu were both perfectly straight-backed, though Izuku could see the tight grip Iida had on his datapad and the way Yaoyorozu’s brow hadn’t unfurrowed in ten full minutes. Aizawa stood with his arms crossed, watching the entire operation with his usual unreadable intensity. All Might loomed beside him, quiet, somber, and far from his usual beacon of energy. The presence of the Endeavor made even him seem smaller.

Izuku’s stomach twisted.

They were just trainees. Their only job was to deliver supplies, but just being here felt like too much. They were close enough to touch the war they’d all grown up hearing about.

“Engaging docking clamps,” Bakugo said curtly.

A metallic shudder ran through the deck beneath Izuku’s boots. The ship jolted, caught by the magnetic locks of the Endeavor’s bay. Status lights blinked green across the console.

“Docking complete,” Jirou confirmed. Her voice was calm, but not relaxed. 

No one was relaxed.

A low chime echoed through the bridge in a final confirmation from the Endeavor's systems. They were docked.

For a moment, no one said anything. Then Iida stepped forward, squaring his shoulders as if he could carry the weight of the crew’s nerves on his own. “Successful docking achieved. We are officially aboard.”

It was meant to be a reassurance, but the silence that followed made it feel more like a funeral bell.

The warship beyond their airlock was more than just metal and weapons. It was a reminder, and a symbol of what waited for all of them, eventually. 

Izuku glanced at the viewport, taking in the hard lines of the Endeavor’s hangar. He felt the knot of anxiety twisting tighter in his chest. But beneath it—deep down, behind the nerves and uncertainty—he still held onto that sliver of warmth.

I’ll come with you.

He clung to Uraraka’s quiet promise like a tether. No matter how terrifying the future seemed, he knew he wouldn’t be facing it alone, and for now, that was enough to keep him going. 

The airlock opened with a hiss. 

As the cadets of the 1-A silently filed down the ramp and onto the hangar floor, they formed into orderly lines they’d only had a few hours to put together and practice in an attempt to mask their nervousness.  Despite the discipline in their lines, every cadet in the docking bay radiated unease.

Izuku stood near the front of the formation with his spine straight and his hands clasped behind his back, his uniform freshly pressed by Aoyama after Yaoyorozu’s request for everyone to “look as professional as you can manage.”

The Endeavor’s interior loomed ahead, massive, dark, and utilitarian. Nothing on the 1-A, not even the cargo bays, felt so hollow and cold. The floor beneath Izuku’s boots was marked with decades of combat wear and hasty repaints. The ship might have been pulled from the frontlines for repairs, but its bones were still steeped in war.

A single squad from the Endeavor stood across from them in uniforms of black and red, their weapons holstered but visible. Their expressions were sharp, their eyes like hawks, watching the cadets not like peers, but liabilities.

And then he stepped forward.

Captain Todoroki Enji.

Izuku recognized him instantly, even though he’d only ever seen images before, usually from news feeds or Commission briefings. His uniform bore four gold insignias over the right chest plate, marking his rank and years of command. The man himself was broad and immovable, his presence cutting through the air like plasma through hull plating. His red hair was streaked with ash-white at the temples, and the deep scar over one eye did nothing to soften the burn of his stare.

Izuku swallowed, reflexively recalling what he knew: Todoroki Enji had started in a single-rider strike ship with no command, rank, or legacy. He’d just been a pilot with something to prove. He’d been ruthless, tireless, and unflinching in his pursuit of results. He was a lone fighter whose call sign Endeavor became known for turning losing skirmishes around by sheer willpower. He earned his promotion through raw, relentless success, and when the Commission finally handed him a warship, it had been named for him, or maybe because of him. The original Endeavor was a man before it was a ship.

Now, that man stood across from Aizawa and All Might.

“Aizawa,” Endeavor greeted, his voice deep and devoid of warmth.

“Captain,” Aizawa replied dryly. 

All Might offered a polite nod, which Endeavor returned with all the enthusiasm of a stone wall.

Endeavor didn’t waste time.

“Your students will unload the cargo you brought from the outpost,” he said. “They’ll leave it in the hangar staging area. My crew will handle its proper distribution. I don’t want your cadets wandering into the wrong bay or tripping over a missile rack they weren’t trained to recognize.”

Izuku heard Kaminari swallow hard. 

The soldiers on Endeavor’s side didn’t smirk or react. They just stood like statues.

Aizawa gave a terse nod. “Understood.”

Endeavor’s eyes swept the cadets, lingering briefly on each face until he said, “I’ll also be speaking with my son privately.”

The words cut clean through the air.

Murmurs flared up behind Izuku in a shocked whisper.

“Son?”

“Wait, who is it?”

Izuku didn’t turn to look around or murmur like the others, but his mind reeled. Earlier, he’d put together that the two had to be related, but a father-son relationship was a little more direct than he’d been anticipating. 

Aizawa’s jaw tightened. “Of course.”

Endeavor didn’t even look at Todoroki when he gave the order. “Shouto. With me.”

Todoroki didn’t move right away. His arms were stiff at his sides, his jaw clenched and his eyes shadowed beneath his fringe. Izuku had seen Todoroki irritated before—usually at Bakugo, sometimes on training missions—but this was different. This was fury, silent and sharp-edged.

He said nothing. He just stepped out of line and followed his father into the steel depths of the warship.

Aizawa let the silence stretch for one beat longer before he turned to the rest of the cadets and spoke, his voice clipped. “You have your orders. Begin the cargo transfer. Stay within the designated staging zones.”

Everyone moved quickly after that, grateful to have direction, to have something to do. Sato and Shoji began the first lift. Yaoyorozu gave out assignments with the speed of someone desperate to keep her thoughts from spiraling. Kirishima jogged to the back of the group, hauling a heavy crate solo with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

But Izuku lingered a moment longer, his gaze still on the hallway where Todoroki had vanished.

They’d all been so focused on surviving the exam, on staying sharp and staying afloat. But now…Now, he was realizing there were other weights they carried. Some were wearing theirs openly. Some, like Todoroki, had been bearing them quietly and secretly for who knew how long.

He didn’t know what kind of man Captain Todoroki Enji was off the battlefield, but the way Todoroki’s posture had turned to iron when he followed his father said more than any Commission report ever could.

Izuku turned back to the staging zone, falling in beside Iida. In his chest, that flicker of curiosity sparked with something else: worry. It wasn’t for the ship, or even for the war. It was for Todoroki, and the battlefield that wasn’t made of steel or plasma, but blood.

The cargo was gone. One by one, crates of rations, tools, fuel cells, and medical supplies had been offloaded from the 1-A and transferred into the looming belly of the Endeavor. The manual labor had been sweaty, monotonous, and grounding, with just enough physical exertion to keep their nerves temporarily distracted.

Now, with that task behind them, the cadets were left in the uneasy lull that followed. It was another tense pause without orders, and another moment to think about what might be coming.

Most of the 1-A’s crew had already returned to their ship, but a small cluster of cadets lingered near the ramp of their vessel, still aboard the Endeavor, waiting for Todoroki to return and for the final clearance that would let them leave this place behind.

Izuku sat near the base of the ramp, his knees drawn up with his elbows resting loosely atop them. His gloves were still dusted with grit from crate latches and carbon residue. His uniform clung to his back, uncomfortably damp. Every fiber of his body was wound tight, buzzing with an energy that had nowhere to go.

Around him, Kaminari, Sero, Kirishima, and Asui were scattered in similar states of feigned rest, their feet dangling and shoulders hunched as their eyes drifted nervously around the hangar. The whole warship seemed to hum with a tension none of them were used to.

And all of them were thinking and talking about the same thing.

“I still can’t believe Todoroki’s that guy’s son,” Sero said, his voice lowered like he was afraid the Endeavor itself might be listening. “Did you see the way he looked at us? It was like we were defective drones or something.”

Kaminari shook his head, jittery. “Forget the glare. I felt like I was gonna combust just standing near him. Like, that’s really the guy commanding the most powerful ship in the fleet?”

“I didn’t know they were related either,” Asui said, soft and thoughtful. “Todoroki never told any of us about it.”

Izuku hesitated before speaking. His gaze flicked toward the corridor where Shouto had disappeared, swallowed by steel and shadow, as he murmured, “He never told any of us anything.”

He remembered every meal he’d eaten in the mess hall, and the way Todoroki had always sat alone. He remembered that Todoroki never came to Rec Nights, never lingered after mission drills, and never volunteered conversation. Izuku had always chalked it up to personality. Some people were just like that. Some people preferred space.

But now…now he wondered if it had been armor. 

Maybe I should’ve tried harder, he thought. Maybe if someone had reached out sooner…

“That had to suck for Todoroki,” Kirishima muttered. “I mean, everyone was watching. And the way Endeavor just…summoned him, like he was a tool.”

The word landed with a dull thud in Izuku’s chest.

The silence turned introspective, like they were all retracing their memories of Todoroki, sifting for moments they might’ve misunderstood.

All Might stood a few meters away, his arms folded. He hadn’t spoken since the unloading had ended. For once, he wasn’t smiling or projecting confidence. His face was carved in stone, his eyes fixed on some unseen horizon across the hangar wall.

Izuku followed his gaze, half-expecting to find something dangerous there. But there was nothing, just smooth hull plating and the distant shimmer of engines cycling through cool-down.

“Do you think they’re close?” Kaminari asked hesitantly. “Todoroki and his dad, I mean?”

All Might finally spoke, his voice low and strange, like it came from far away. “War changes people. It distills them. Forces them to make choices they can’t take back.”

Izuku felt the words cut through the air like a scalpel.

“It changes what they fight for,” All Might added, “who they protect…and who they don’t.”

No one responded. No one needed to. The weight in his tone and the flicker of something painful in his expression said enough.

Izuku looked down at his gloves, his fingers curled tight without meaning to. He remembered Todoroki’s face—flat and unreadable—when Endeavor had spoken his name. But his eyes…his eyes had been burning. He hadn’t followed out of obedience. He’d followed because there was no alternative.

An alarm shattered the stillness with a sharp, pulsing cry. Red lights ignited across the walls, chasing each other in sickly spirals. The glow bled over the cadets’ uniforms and onto the 1-A’s hull like blood spilled across metal.

Everyone jumped to their feet.

Izuku’s heart slammed into his ribs, full of the kind of panic that wasn’t just fear, but the beginning of knowing something real was happening.

“Attention all crew,” a voice echoed from above, cool, clipped, and eerily calm. “Set Condition One throughout the ship. I repeat: Set Condition One. All hands to stations. Condition One.”

The message repeated. So did the alarm. So did the dread.

The floor beneath Izuku’s boots vibrated, not violently, but with the heavy shift of internal systems moving into alert mode. It was shield grids warming, emergency partitions unlocking, and systems awakening from standby.

All Might’s expression changed in a blink. Gone was the memory-laden watchfulness. It was replaced by sharp, honed awareness.

Izuku turned toward him, his voice tight. “All Might, what does that mean? What’s Condition One?”

Another voice answered first.

“It means there’s a fight coming.”

They all turned.

Bakugo stood at the top of the ramp, his arms folded and his stance braced and solid like he’d been expecting this, like he’d been waiting for it.

“Condition One means combat is imminent,” he said grimly. “An active threat’s been detected. Everyone goes to their stations. Weapons are hot. Shields are raised. Doors are sealed.”

“How do you know that?” Kaminari asked, his voice shrill.

Bakugo didn’t look at him. “Because I read the manual. And because when I graduate, I’m signing up to fly one of these monsters into the war.”

His words left no room for interpretation.

Silence fell again.

Beyond the ramp, down the stretch of the hangar bay, the crew of the Endeavor were mobilizing, rushing toward stations, strapping into harnesses, and shouting over the sirens. The red lights swept across their uniforms in rhythmic flashes, casting long shadows that twisted across the steel.

Apart from the chaos, the cadets of the 1-A stood frozen, caught at the threshold between their small exam vessel and the juggernaut of war. 

The entire hangar suddenly shook, accompanied by faint booms echoing through the metal hull of the Endeavor.

It wasn’t turbulence. Izuku had been on enough long-range jumps to recognize the subtle pull of ship systems adjusting to inertia or hull recalibration. This wasn’t that.

These were external impacts, dull and distant, but growing sharper with each passing second.

No one needed to say it aloud to confirm it. They could feel it in their very bones that the Endeavor was under attack. They were in the warship’s belly, and the war had come to find them.

“All of you, back to the ship, now!” All Might’s voice was completely stripped of it's usual warmth. He was firm and commanding, leaving no room for argument.

Izuku’s body moved before his brain caught up. Adrenaline lit his nerves like sparking wires. Around him, the rest of the cadets exploded into motion, scrambling up the ramp two and three at a time, their boots hammering against the metal.

Inside the 1-A, the interior lights had shifted to flash crimson, echoing the Endeavor's alarms like two hearts beating in sync. It felt like the very walls were vibrating with tension. Each siren shrieked overhead in steady intervals, like countdowns.

They rounded the first junction, and Aizawa was already there, waiting like a phantom in the flashing red. His scarf billowed from the rushing air and nearby systems powering up, trailing behind him like a grim banner.

“Sir—” Izuku began, his mouth dry.

But Aizawa’s voice cut clean through. “Kaminari, Sero, get to the engines.”

The boys peeled off down a side hall immediately, with no hesitation.

“Midoriya, Bakugo, get to the bridge. Kirishima, go with them.”

Kirishima slowed mid-step, no doubt puzzled at not being told to go with Kaminari and Sero to his usual post in the engine room. His brows pinched in confusion. “Sir? Shouldn’t I—?”

Aizawa didn’t miss a beat. “No. Head to the bridge. Man the weapons console.”

Izuku caught a flicker in his teacher’s eyes, dark and grim. This wasn’t just a field command. This was the tone of someone who knew they were standing on the edge of something far more serious than a drill.

Kirishima swallowed and nodded tightly. “Yes, sir.”

They ran again.

Iida’s voice cut through the 1-A's comms, stern but tight with strain. “Bridge and engine crews to your posts immediately. All others, secure yourselves and strap in.”

Another impact hit. This one was closer. The deck pitched slightly, and though it wasn’t enough to knock anyone over, it was enough to make everyone stagger. The sound of something huge striking the hull of the Endeavor rolled through the floor and up through Izuku’s knees. His chest ached from the pressure of running and the panic blooming inside him.

Then there was another blast, louder this time. The Endeavor had fired back.

The return shot shook the 1-A. Izuku's ears buzzed from the pressure. The vibrations seemed to knock the breath from his lungs. The walls thrummed with residual energy like the ship had just roared.

He realized with a spike of horror that he could hear the battle outside, or at least the resounding blasts and bursts of it interacting with the Endeavor’s metal hull. He was used to the world beyond the 1-A being silent, but space wasn’t silent anymore.

They rounded a corner, and Izuku nearly slammed into a figure frozen in the hall.

“Uraraka,” he gasped, catching himself just in time.

Her eyes were wide, and distant. The red light strobing around them reflected in her irises like warning sirens caught in a mirror. Her chest rose and fell fast and shallow. Her hands were trembling.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to for Izuku to understand.

He remembered the sight of her twisted wreck. He recalled the image he’d crafted in his head of her ship’s final moments before it’d been buried in the sand: the alarms, the corridors filling with smoke, and the way her ship had failed her.

“Move it, extras,” Bakugo growled, brushing past Izuku and nearly shoving Uraraka aside. 

Before Izuku could offer anything gentler, Aizawa’s voice ordered, “Uraraka. Go with Asui. She’ll take you somewhere safe.”

Asui, who had been silently trailing behind them until that point, was already at Uraraka’s side, one hand light on her elbow. “C’mon. This way.”

Uraraka didn’t speak, but as she turned, she looked back over her shoulder at Izuku. Her gaze locked with his, wide with fear and full of unspoken things.

He wanted to reach out, to say, It’s okay. I’ll be fine. You will too.

But there was no time.

She vanished with Asui around the bend, swallowed by the flashing corridor.

Well aware of the distinction between what he wanted to do and what he needed to do, Izuku turned and ran towards his post.

They arrived on the bridge together, Bakugo first, Kirishima and Izuku behind him, and Aizawa and All Might just steps behind.

The room was already alive with motion and noise.

Jirou sat hunched over her console, tension rippling through her shoulders as her fingers flew across dials and keys.

Tokoyami was bent over the systems console, his expression even grimmer than usual

Iida stood by the central command dais, gripping a handrail as he barked orders into the mic. “All nonessential crew, strap in and brace for possible evasive maneuvers.”

Yaoyorozu was at his side, monitoring diagnostics, biting her lip hard enough to leave an imprint.

Izuku slid into the nav chair, his console lighting up with data. 

Kirishima stepped up to the weapons console beside him, hesitating only briefly before placing both hands on the controls.

Bakugo slid into the pilot’s chair, his hands gripping the controls and his jaw clenched like iron.

Aizawa’s voice cut in. “Jirou. Any communication from the Endeavor?”

“Negative,” she said without looking up. “Nothing on the main or backup channels.”

“They must be too overwhelmed to respond,” Yaoyorozu offered, her voice unsteady.

“Or they forgot we’re here,” Jirou muttered, more to herself than anyone else.

Aizawa didn’t comment on that. He just said, “Doesn’t matter. We stay alert.”

Izuku’s fingers flew across his display. The tactical map blossomed to life, and with it came the full horror of what was happening outside.

His heart stopped.

“They’re swarming us,” he said, breath catching in his throat. “Multiple enemy contacts. Small, fast ships.”

“League ships?” Tokoyami asked.

Izuku nodded grimly. “No official signatures…but yeah. They fit the profile. Their formations match known League battle tactics.”

Then, the console chimed again. Izuku’s eyes widened, his voice tightening. “They just launched fighters. The Endeavor, I mean. They’re deploying their pilots.”

Blips bloomed on the screen, friendly, one-manned fighter ships spiraling out from the warship in defense formations.

This is real, Izuku thought. This is war.

“How did they get this close?” Yaoyorozu asked. “Even with FTL masking, the Endeavor should’ve seen them coming.”

“I don’t get it,” Kirishima added. “How’d they get the jump on a ship like this?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Aizawa said again, louder this time. “Focus on surviving it.”

He turned to Izuku. “Watch the battle. Be ready to punch in escape coordinates if things go bad.”

Izuku’s fingers tightened on the console, his heart still hammering. “Yes, sir.”

Aizawa’s gaze shifted to Bakugo. “Be ready to fly us out. If that hangar door opens—by force or otherwise—we’re not waiting.”

Bakugo’s expression darkened. “Good. I’m sick of waiting. I’ll punch through it myself if I have to.”

A hush fell. There was only the hum of the ship, the whine of distant alarms, and the percussion of something huge exploding outside.

“Tokoyami,” Aizawa called. “Shield status?”

“Full power. Holding at 100%.”

“Kirishima. Weapons?”

“Online.” Kirishima’s hands hovered uncertainly over the trigger controls.  “Ready to fire if needed.”

Aizawa nodded once. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

They waited, trapped inside a shell within a warship, wrapped in metal and fear.

Izuku’s hands hovered over his screen.

Please, he thought. Please let this end before it truly begins.

The lights were red.

Ochako sat strapped into a launch chair near the back of the ship, her shoulder pressed against the bulkhead. The light panels overhead pulsed in time with the ship’s alarm, casting everything in stuttering crimson. Her hands trembled where they gripped the seat restraints across her chest, and her pulse thudded so hard in her ears that it drowned out most of the other noise.

Beside her, Tsuyu sat silently, her legs drawn up slightly under the harness, one hand braced against the wall as watched the other cadets.

Some were heaving for breath. Some were whispering panicked words of comfort. Someone behind them kept reciting numbers under her breath, counting, over and over, like if they just hit the right number, it would all stop.

Another explosion shuddered through the 1-A, not from the ship itself, but the surrounding warship as it fired its cannons. The whole corridor thrummed with the pressure wave. The vibration passed through Ochako’s boots, trembling through her calves and chest. A faint whine followed, some external feedback from the impact, and then another far-off explosion echoed like distant thunder.

The alarms continued, rhythmic and relentless.

Suddenly, Ochako was back in time, back on her old ship as it fell through the sky.

The scream of metal twisting wrong. The flickering lights. The sight of hull plating folding on itself as the Instantaneous Displacement Module failed and tore the world sideways. The hull had fractured, not broken or shattered, but warped like paper under flame, and then the stars outside had bent like they were being pulled through a keyhole. 

“Ochako.”

She flinched.

It was Tsuyu. She had reached across the narrow gap between seats and taken Ochako’s hand, her grasp firm and grounding.

Ochako’s chest heaved. Her lungs felt too full and too empty at once. Her eyes burned, her throat clenched tight. The past layered itself over the present, screaming that this would be the same, that this ship too would crumple and fall apart, and everyone she knew here would vanish into light and silence again.

But Tsuyu didn’t let go.

“Breathe with me,” Tsuyu said softly, her voice barely audible over the alarms. “In. Out. Everything will be okay.”

Ochako squeezed her hand so tightly it probably hurt.

She tried to focus on Tsuyu’s voice, on the feel of her gloves, on the firm straps holding her in place, and on the ship still holding together around them, even as the battle raged outside. But she could still hear it: the weapons firing, the low boom of proximity hits, and the sharp crack of energy dispersal, something scraping past the outer hull like claws.

More students had joined together to try and keep each other calm now, some hugging their knees in silence, others leaning into friends who whispered promises that this would pass. 

But Ochako knew the truth. They didn’t know if this would pass. Neither had she, the last time.

Tsuyu spoke again, her voice calm. “It’s okay. Everyone on the bridge will do everything they can to keep us safe.”

Ochako swallowed. She managed a nod. “I…I know.”

But knowing and feeling were two different things. So she just held on to her harness and to her friend’s hand. Mentally, she held onto the fragile thread of now, and not the memory of before.

The ship trembled again.

Ochako closed her eyes, and didn’t let go.

The bridge of the Endeavor was a cathedral of steel and crimson.

It pulsed with red emergency light, the overhead panels dimmed to preserve visibility across the tactical displays. The floor hummed beneath Shouto’s boots, alive with vibration from the ship’s systems rerouting power, adjusting for shields and compensating for minor hull damage.

But none of that compared to the sound.

It was constant. There were reports, weapons fire, and rapid keyboard chatter from deck officers. Explosions boomed over the internal comms, blasts that didn’t come from within but from the world beyond the hull. It was an orchestra of war.

And at its center, as always, stood Todoroki Enji.

“Adjust firing vector on Battery Six. Port shields are weakening. Rotate coverage by six degrees and reroute coolant lines.”

His voice was deep, precise, and impassive. His commands were given as if the chaos wasn’t even touching him.

Shouto had been shoved next to a wall at the rear of the command deck, near where junior officers had gathered to relay visual confirmations to the tactical map. He hadn’t been dismissed after their "private" conversation, if it could be called that. His father hadn’t said much to him. Just a look, a nod, and a direction: “Tell me about your training.”

His father hadn’t even greeted him. He’d just given him an order, because Shouto wasn’t a person to his father. He was just another component of the ship, another thing to control.

On the central display, fighter formations spiraled like gnats around the behemoth outline of the Endeavor. Shouto watched one split off from formation, weaving desperately through enemy fire. Its plasma trail flickered, its propulsion system obviously damaged.

Over the bridge comms, the pilot’s voice came through, gasping: “Command, this is Striker-4. Controls not responding. I'm losing power—oh god, I can’t—”

First, there was static. Then, there was nothing.

His dot blinked off the map.

Shouto’s stomach dropped.

“Striker-4 down,” reported a voice from the left console. “Confirmed loss of pilot. No ejection signal.”

No one paused. No one even flinched.

But Shouto did.

He looked to his father, still stone-faced, still issuing orders like each life was a gear in the engine. Another command. Another adjustment. Another death.

Another scream crackled over the comms. It was a younger voice this time. “—multiple bogeys on my tail—I—I can’t shake them—please, requesting—!”

Silence. Another dot blinked off the map.

“Striker-7 offline.”

Shouto’s fists clenched at his sides, his gaze searing into his father as the quiet fury that lived beneath his skin blazed.

Endeavor moved around the bridge, calm, decisive, and completely unaffected. There wasn’t a flicker of hesitation in his expression. To him, it was all just numbers, strategy, and outcome.

Shouto could barely breathe.

These weren’t just ships. They were people, pilots with names, voices, and lives.

But to Todoroki Enji, they were just burnable fuel for the machine, and sacrifices for victory.

Shouto understood now, with sickening clarity, that this man wasn’t a protector as people so often claimed. He was a weapon, and he didn’t care who cracked or died around him, so long as the ship kept moving forward.

Shouto stared at the tactical display again.

Another fighter blinked out. There was no voice this time. Just silence.

Izuku’s heart dropped once more as he stared at the radar display, the little red blips—enemy contacts—began to vanish one by one. They didn’t just disappear from their current locations, as they usually would upon being destroyed or making a jump to faster-than-light speed. They all converged to one single point, disappearing from his display one after the other when they hit that same point in space. 

In disbelief, he choked out, “They’re…gone.”

“Gone?” Jirou echoed, spinning slightly in her chair.

Izuku didn’t look up from the screen. “I don’t know if we got them all, or if—” He swallowed. “—if they jumped to FTL.”

He scrolled through the last few seconds of data, scanning for telltale flashpoints: energy spikes or distortion trails that might mark a jump. But it was inconclusive. There had been too much static, too many overlapping weapons systems and energy surges. A few trails flickered on the edge of the Endeavor’s field, but it was impossible to tell what was wreckage and what was escape.

“They just…vanished,” he said softly.

Throughout the bridge, everyone sat still.

Even Bakugo didn’t speak. His grip was still tight on the controls, his jaw clenched as sweat beaded on his temple. 

Kirishima’s hands hovered uncertainly over the weapon panel, like he couldn’t quite get himself to stand down. 

Tokoyami’s eyes were narrowed, staring blankly at the systems readout.

Jirou lifted her headset slightly, listening to her feed. “The Endeavor’s comms just opened up again. They’re confirming Condition Two. Combat alert rescinded.”

Iida let go of the rail at the center of the bridge, finally releasing the tension in his stance. “Condition Two. It means recovery, assessment, and cleanup.”

A long breath escaped Izuku’s lungs, but it didn’t ease the knot in his stomach. As far as he could tell, Condition Two only meant a lull in the fighting. It didn’t mean peace.

He sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair, damp with sweat. The bridge was still full of sound—consoles blinking, air filters humming, low chatter between systems—but none of it felt like relief. It felt like the breath between beats, or the silence after a scream.

Aizawa stepped forward, his arms crossed as his eyes scanned the room. “No one leaves their post yet. Stay alert. This isn’t over until we’re well away from the Endeavor and contested space.”

“Yes, sir,” they all chorused quietly.

Izuku sat still in the dim blue glow of his console, the artificial light painting his fingers and cheeks in a sickly hue. His screen was clear now. No red blips. No flickering contacts. No enemy signatures surging toward them like fireflies burning out in a field of black. The radar was quiet, like nothing had ever happened.

But his heart still pounded.

A few seats away, Jirou slowly pulled off her headset, the cord catching once on her shoulder before sliding loose. She set it down gently. Tokoyami turned from the systems panel, his posture straight but his feathers faintly ruffled. Kirishima exhaled, like he’d been holding his breath the whole time, and slowly lowered his hands from the weapons console.

No one said anything, not at first. Because what could they say? They had just survived a live fire engagement aboard a Commission warship. It’d been a real battle, with real casualties. It was a glimpse into the reality that had always waited for them beyond their exams and simulations.

“I think…” Jirou finally said, her voice thin, “I think one of the pilots—one of the Endeavor’s —his channel just cut out mid-transmission. He was reporting a wingman down and then…”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.

Izuku swallowed, his fingers curling in his lap. His console beeped quietly as the system recalibrated, searching for new threats and finding none.

All Might had stepped to the back of the bridge, his arms crossed and his expression unreadable beneath the heavy shadows cast by the emergency lights. Beside him, Aizawa stood like a sentinel, his posture tense, eyes scanning everything and everyone.

“There are no guarantees,” Aizawa said into the stillness. “There is no promise the war will wait for us to finish your training. This might’ve been a fluke. Or it might not.”

His voice didn’t rise, but the weight of his words landed harder than any siren.

“This isn’t what I wanted for you,” he said, more quietly now. “But you’ve all seen what’s waiting out there. So now you know.”

Izuku’s hands trembled slightly. The ship had steadied, but inside, he hadn’t. He thought of the people who hadn’t made it back to the Endeavor’s hangars, of all the panicked comms Jirou must’ve listened to.

They hadn’t fired a single shot, but they were here, close enough to feel the ship shuddering with every impact and remember the sound. Even if they were able to return to their exam and finish it without further interruption, they would never be the same. 

They all sat with the silence that followed, bathed in the slow blink of console lights as systems powered down from combat readiness.

Izuku thought about what Aizawa said—how the war might not wait, and how by yearning to travel in space, they'd inadvertently signed up for this, trained for it, and simulated it. But simulations couldn’t prepare you for hearing someone die over comms, for watching a fighter blink out of existence mid-flight, or for the question of whether the people who had disappeared were dead or just somewhere else, scattered across the stars.

They would return to their training, eventually. They’d resume the exam and pick up their drills and routines like nothing had changed.

But it had.

That was the truth Izuku understood now, sitting in the nav seat of a ship that still moaned faintly as the metal settled. The 1-A had entered that hangar as students on a detour from a practical test. They would leave it as witnesses, and there would be no forgetting the way it had felt. Even if they passed every future test, earned every badge, won every simulation—this moment would be their first true measure. It was a reminder of what waited beyond graduation, or before it. Now, there was no saying that the war would wait for them to graduate before it swallowed them. 

On his navigation console, a map of the stars outside glittered coldly, uncaring and vast. Izuku stared at them for a moment before he closed his eyes and held on to what hope he could.

Chapter Text

Shouto couldn’t move.

The bridge of the Endeavor pulsed with noise—rattling data streams, the clipped chatter of officers, the bark of orders—but to him it all sounded muffled, as if he were listening through water. He stood in the corner near a viewport, half-shadowed, silent, and staring out into the void.

Seven pilots were gone.

Their voices had echoed over the comms in frantic bursts of reports, pleas, and screams until one by one they’d been replaced by static. Shouto could still hear the last one. “They’re behind me! My shields are—” Then nothing.

The soundless void afterward was worse.

No one else on the bridge seemed to care. Not really. There was no pause or moment of silence. Only new vectors ordered, shields adjusted, and weapon systems rerouted. One officer even rolled her shoulders and cracked her knuckles before resuming her work, like she hadn’t just heard someone die.

Shouto’s chest felt hollow. Was this how his father had trained them to cope? By not caring at all? Or had they simply learned that grief had no place here?

His eyes drifted back to the viewport. Out in the distance, beyond floating debris still sparking and tumbling from the ruined fighters, space itself had seemed to bend. Moments ago, a shadow had unfurled, slick and viscous, a black ripple that had warped the starlight around it. It wasn’t a jump flare. It wasn’t FTL, or anything he’d ever seen before. The League ships—one by one—had vanished into it before it’d disappeared just as quickly as it’d unfurled.

A chill worked its way down Shouto’s spine, freezing him in place. His thoughts tried to form connections, possibilities, or implications, but his mind stuttered. He only knew he was watching something new, something terrifying.

The bridge doors hissed open.

Shouto’s head snapped toward the sound, his heart lurching before he could stop it.

Aizawa and All Might strode in. Even in the chaos of the bridge, they drew attention, their urgency carrying like a physical weight. They looked exhausted, marked by the battle already, but sharp as always.

“Endeavor,” Aizawa said without preamble, his voice like iron about to snap. “I’ve come for my student. The 1-A is preparing to leave before the enemy decides to come back.”

Something uncoiled in Shouto’s chest. It was relief, almost. But alongside it came dread.

His father barely turned from the command dais. His voice was flat and unimpressed. “You plan to leave my ship without proper clearance?”

Aizawa didn’t flinch. “Proper clearance be damned. My students have just been exposed to a war I swore to keep them away from.”

The words struck Shouto like a blow. After witnessing seven pilots die without a second of mourning, it was almost jarring to see Aizawa state his care for his own crew so blatantly. Nobody on this bridge had said anything like that. Not once.

Endeavor finally turned. His expression was lit by the shifting console glow, his eyes impossible to read. “Fine. Leave.” His tone was the same one he might’ve used to dismiss a report. He reached into a compartment and pulled out a datapad, its display already alive with schematics. “But take this before you do. You may change your mind about running.”

Aizawa narrowed his eyes but took it. “What is this?”

“Warp gate technology,” Endeavor said. “A new method of transportation the League has been developing. Something beyond FTL. Our intelligence suggests it allows for instantaneous travel.”

Instantaneous.

Shouto’s stomach knotted. The word triggered a memory: Aizawa in the mess hall, briefing the cadets about the wrecked ship they’d encountered, the one that girl had come from. Someone on the crew had suggested the drive recovered from it could enable something beyond conventional FTL jumps, something more direct.

His hands curled into fists. Could this be the same? Could the League’s new weapon and that girl’s wrecked ship be connected?

“They’ve torn apart more ships than they’ve transported,” Endeavor continued. “But if they perfect it, they’ll be unstoppable. Running won’t mean a thing.”

A heavy silence followed.

Aizawa stared at the datapad, then lifted his gaze. His voice came low, flat, and deliberate. “If you think running is futile…what do you expect me to do? Let my students stay here and risk dying in your war?”

Enji’s expression didn’t change. “If we can stop the League—utterly stop them—before this tech is complete, we can prevent our demise. Whether your students are finished training or not, they may have to fight, and sooner than anyone planned.”

Shouto’s throat tightened. His father’s words carried no hesitation or regret, only inevitability. 

Tools. That’s all he sees them as. That’s all he sees me as.

Aizawa’s jaw flexed. His eyes were sharp with anger, but beneath it, Shouto thought he saw something else—something protective, and unyielding.

Finally, Aizawa said, voice low but unshaking, “I will not see them dragged into this fight by my own hand. So long as I am their commanding officer, they will not be tools for your war. Not one second longer.”

The air in the bridge seemed to freeze. For a moment, Shouto thought his father would retort, sharp and cruel.

But Endeavor only turned back toward the dais, already reabsorbed into command. “I’ve given you the report. What you do with it is your choice.”

That was it. No goodbye. No acknowledgment. Not even a glance at him.

“Young Todoroki,” All Might said gently. His voice was warmth amid the wreckage. “Come. Let’s go.”

Shouto’s body resisted, just for a heartbeat. He stared at the back of his father’s head, waiting for a word, a look, anything.

Nothing came.

He exhaled slowly, the breath shuddering out of him. Then he turned and followed his teachers.

The bridge doors sealed shut behind them, muffling the noise of the war machine. For the first time in what felt like hours, Shouto truly breathed.

Shouto stepped into the 1-A’s lower deck corridor, the atmosphere shifting instantly as the Endeavor’s heavy, metallic weight gave way to the softer hum of their own ship. The floor vibrated faintly with aftershocks, the walls thrumming with an energy that hadn’t quite settled. Red lights still pulsed overhead, but slower now, less like an alarm and more a heartbeat.

The moment his boots hit the deck, voices swarmed him.

“Todoroki!”

“You okay?”

“What happened up there?”

“Was Endeavor awful to you?”

“Do you want water? Food? A murder weapon?”

Ashido’s last offer made Hagakure laugh a quick, nervous sound, but the tension clung to it, sharp and unshakable.

Shouto froze.

The corridor was crowded with seemingly every member of the crew except the command and bridge staff, every face turned toward him. Some were still half-strapped into emergency chairs while others leaned forward, sweat clinging to their temples and their eyes darting with the lingering panic of alarms that had only just stopped screaming.

None of them were pretending to not be scared, and for a moment, their concern crashed into him like a wave.

They cared. The realization almost hurt. Their questions pressed too close and too many. It was overwhelming, and yet…not enough. It wasn’t enough when compared to what had just happened, and what he had just seen.

His throat closed. He didn’t know what to say, because he wasn’t okay. Not after hearing pilots scream into silence. Not after watching the League slip away into something black and impossible.

And no, he wasn’t broken either. He was just raw, and painfully aware of his father’s indifference, and of voices cut off mid-battle.

He didn’t answer any of their questions. He didn’t move, either. He just stood in the center of their voices like stone, his arms at his sides and his gaze fixed straight ahead.

That was when Aizawa stepped in behind him.

“Enough,” he said. The word was sharp, sealing the air like a hatch slamming shut. “Give him some space.”

The questions died at once. Even Kaminari clamped his jaw shut and looked away.

Aizawa’s eyes swept the corridor, dark and deliberate, before they landed on Asui. “Asui. Take Uraraka back to her quarters. Stay with her.”

The shift in the air was immediate. Questions replaced were by silence.

Uraraka blinked. “Sir…?”

“I need to debrief the crew,” Aizawa said evenly. “And you’re not crew.”

The words weren’t cruel, just measured and careful. But after watching that warp gate open in space, they landed like a weight dropped into Shouto’s chest.

Uraraka’s shoulders tensed, then softened. Slowly, she nodded. “Of course.”

Asui rose at once, her steady presence a quiet anchor. She touched Uraraka’s elbow, guiding her gently. Their footsteps echoed down the corridor.

Uraraka turned back just once. Her eyes caught Shouto’s, then slid to Aizawa, searching and questioning.

Shouto’s stomach twisted.

He had seen the look in Aizawa’s eyes when Endeavor had told him about the warp gate. He’d seen the datapad in his hands, the lines of worry stitched deeper into his face. And he remembered the way the mess hall had gone silent when they first talked about Uraraka’s wreck and the drive they’d recovered there, how it might’ve been something different and something new.

And now the League had something that opened holes in space and swallowed ships whole.

Shouto watched Uraraka’s back vanish around the corner, her figure dissolving into the quiet of the lower decks.

No one spoke.

Then Aizawa stepped forward, his arms folding as he exhaled like the sound of a blade being sheathed. “The bridge crew will need some time to finish setting a course. Until then, all of you, gather in the mess hall. We have something to discuss.”

The crew shifted, quiet now, the earlier energy burned away. Their footsteps were heavier, more solemn, like they understood without words that something had changed.

Shouto followed silently, but his mind was a storm.

He kept hearing the pilots’ voices, and the echo of Endeavor’s commanding voice, flat and unfeeling, like lives were just pieces of debris swept aside by the tide.

And then—here, in the narrow corridor of the 1-A—voices crowded him, questions pressing, eyes searching. 

He hadn’t known what to do with it. He still didn’t.

But the contrast burned. His father hadn’t even spared him a word. His classmates had nearly drowned him in them. Between the two, he wasn’t sure which hurt more.

The stars had stretched and thinned to bright, distant streaks as the ship’s FTL engaged. They were far from the Endeavor now, far from the League’s vanishing fleet, and far from the screams that had echoed across open comms.

But distance didn’t mean safety. Not really. Not anymore.

Everyone had been called to the mess hall once they were clear. The lights overhead buzzed faintly, too sharp and too white, and the air felt staler than usual, like even the ventilation system was holding its breath.

Izuku sat stiffly between Yaoyorozu and Tokoyami, his knees jiggling under the table. His hands wouldn’t stay still. They kept tugging at the sleeves of his uniform jacket, clenching and unclenching, like if he didn’t keep moving he’d explode.

At the front of the room, Aizawa stood with his arms folded, his face carved from stone. All Might leaned against the wall in the back corner, silent for once, his long shadow spilling across the floor like a second figure. The rest of the crew sat scattered at the metal tables, their eyes bloodshot and their postures tight. Everyone was alert, but everyone was tired, too.

“We’re safe,” Aizawa said at last. His voice cut through the silence like a wire pulled taut. “For now.”

Izuku’s chest tightened. For now. The words landed like a weight.

“But we need to talk about what happened.”

Izuku straightened, his stomach twisting. 

“What we just witnessed was an attack by the League on the warship Endeavor,” Aizawa continued. “We don’t have all the details, but the attack appears to have been a trial run for a new prototype they’ve developed.” He let the words hang in the air, heavy. “A transportation system that bypasses FTL. Point-to-point travel. Instantaneous."

Izuku froze. His breath caught.

The word slammed into him before he could stop it. Instantaneous. That was exactly how Uraraka had described the drive from her ship. It wasn’t a jump to faster than light speed. It was instant, from one point in space to the other. 

He swallowed hard, panic crawling up his throat. He hoped—desperately—that no one else in the room made the connection, that none of them remembered the drive sitting in Engineering, that none of them thought of her.

“They’re calling it a warp gate,” Aizawa said. “According to reports we acquired from the Endeavor, it’s unstable. So far it’s destroyed more ships than it’s saved, but they used it in the battle today. They opened something, and their fleet slipped through.”

The air grew heavier. Izuku could almost hear everyone holding their breath.

Kaminari leaned forward, his brow furrowed. “That…that sounds familiar.”

Izuku’s stomach dropped. No. Please don’t.

But then Kirishima’s voice rang out. “The drive from Uraraka’s ship!”

Izuku shut his eyes for a heartbeat, his pulse hammering.

Iida’s eyes widened, the pieces slotting into place with terrifying neatness. “Hatsume said it didn’t behave like traditional FTL tech. It didn’t follow any of the recognized parameters. It…it was something else entirely.”

Jirou let out a slow, steady exhale. “Then Uraraka’s ship…”

“Could’ve been running League tech,” Tokoyami finished grimly.

Izuku opened his mouth, desperate to cut in, to stop the thought from solidifying. No, it’s not like that. She’s not like that. But the words caught in his throat.

“That’s not proven,” Yaoyorozu snapped, her voice sharper than usual. “Her ship looked like it'd been scrapped together with components from dozens of ships. Just because it may have had League tech doesn't mean she's one of them.”

Sero glanced around nervously. “But for her to have a piece of brand new tech from them...doesn't that have to mean she's one of them?”

Izuku bit his lip so hard he tasted copper. He knew the truth about Uraraka's ship and where she'd come from. He knew, but it wasn’t his secret to say.

And then Aizawa said the words Izuku had been dreading: “From here forward, we’ll need to keep a closer eye on Uraraka.”

The room stilled.

“She’s not part of this crew,” Aizawa continued, his tone flat and clinical. “She’s never been vetted by the Commission. She came to us on a derelict, potentially League-engineered ship, and we’ve known from the start that she was hiding something.”

“I trust her.”

The words burst out before Izuku could stop them. They cracked through the silence, startling even him. Every head in the room turned toward him—Ashido’s eyes wide, Kaminari frozen halfway out of his seat, Tokoyami’s gaze unreadable.

Izuku’s throat burned, but he forced himself to keep going. “And you know what really happened to her, sir.”

He thought back to that night: Uraraka in the briefing room with him, Aizawa, and All Might. Her voice shaking but steady as she told them the impossible truth: that she wasn’t from here, that she’d fallen through dimensions. The drive they’d recovered wasn’t just an engine component. It had ripped a wound in space, one that had torn her from her world.

No one else in the room knew. Only the three of them. 

Aizawa knew. He knew. So why was he speaking about her like this? Like she was an unknown variable. Like she was dangerous.

Aizawa didn’t flinch. “Trust doesn’t erase risk.”

“She’s not dangerous,” Izuku shot back, his chest tight, his voice breaking louder than he wanted it to.

Whispers stirred at the tables. Sero shifted uncomfortably. Ashido frowned, her lips pressed together. Yaoyorozu sat perfectly straight, her hands clenched on the tabletop, gaze flicking between him and Aizawa.

“We don’t know that, Midoriya.” Aizawa’s tone was steady and immovable, like steel.

The silence stretched between them.

Finally, All Might stepped forward, his voice a balm against the tension. “We’re not saying she’s an enemy.” His tone was gentler than Izuku expected, but firm. “We’re saying we need to be cautious. If the League’s developing this technology—and she’s been exposed to it—then we owe it to her, and to this crew, to make sure we’re not missing something critical.”

Jirou spoke up, wary. “What does that mean? What are you going to do?”

Aizawa’s face didn’t change. “No confinement. Not unless she gives us a reason. But she’s not to be left alone. Someone stays with her at all times. At night, her door is locked. Asui’s assigned to stay in her quarters with her until further notice.”

Izuku’s hands curled into fists under the table. His nails dug crescents into his palms. He wanted to shout, to argue, to fight—but his throat was locked.

They were treating her like a threat. Like a suspect.

“She’s...not one of us,” Sero said slowly, as if realizing it for the first time.

“But…she feels like one of us,” Ashido murmured, her voice small but earnest.

Izuku stared down at the table, his vision blurring. All he could see was Uraraka's face during the alarms—wide-eyed, terrified, trembling—and the way her hand had clutched for Asui’s. She wasn’t dangerous. She wasn’t part of the League. She was just like the crew of the 1-A, just someone who had survived too much already.

And now…now they were putting chains on her.

Aizawa’s voice cut through his thoughts, final and immovable. “Until we know exactly how her ship was connected to this, we proceed with caution.”

Izuku’s chest ached. Connected to this? He wanted to scream that she wasn’t, that she couldn’t be. They were twisting the wrong shape onto her.

“When we return to training…” Aizawa’s gaze swept the room, unreadable. “It won’t feel like training. Not anymore.”

Izuku lifted his head, his throat burning. His heart was pounding so hard it hurt.

“You’ve all seen it now,” Aizawa finished. “The war we thought we could keep you from. And it may not wait for you to graduate.”

The silence that followed wasn’t fear.

It was acceptance.

Izuku sat frozen in his seat, his fists still clenched, his pulse hammering in his ears.

He couldn’t decide which thought was worse: that the war was coming for all of them, or that they had already begun treating the one person he wanted to protect most like she was part of the enemy.

And then, unbidden, an image struck him: what Uraraka’s face might look like when she found out. Her eyes widening, her mouth parting like she’d been struck. That fragile, searching look she got when she thought she might lose her place here.

The thought hollowed him out.

Because when she learned what they had decided—that they would watch her, guard her, lock her in—Izuku knew it would feel less like safety, and more like betrayal.

The crew was still dispersing, a sluggish drift of tired limbs and frayed nerves. Hushed voices echoed down the corridors, boots scuffed the deck, and the overhead lights hummed like a warning not yet lifted.

But Izuku didn’t move. He lingered near the exit of the mess hall, his heart still heavy with everything that had been said, and everything that’d been decided about Uraraka.

He could still hear Aizawa’s voice like a blade: She’s not to be left alone.

The image of her face slammed into him again—wide-eyed, trembling during the alarms, clinging to Tsuyu’s hand as the ship shook. She’d survived something no one else could even imagine, and instead of safety, they were giving her locks and watchers.

Izuku’s stomach twisted. It felt wrong. It felt like a failure.

And maybe that was why, when his gaze tracked Todoroki slipping toward the hallway—a pale shadow cutting through fluorescent light—Izuku’s pulse surged with sudden resolve.

Because Todoroki had looked the same way during the meeting: silent, distant, and carved from ice. He hadn’t said a word when the crew started doubting Uraraka, hadn’t even flinched when Aizawa laid out the restrictions. He just sat there like the weight of having a possible traitor on board wasn’t even his to carry.

But Izuku had seen him on the Endeavor, standing under his father’s shadow while he barked orders.

And Izuku hated himself for not reaching out before, for letting Todoroki keep all that locked away when Izuku knew what it was like to drown in silence.

Not tonight. Not anymore.

Izuku pushed off the wall and followed.

“Hey,” he called softly.

Todoroki didn’t stop, at least not until Izuku caught up and reached out, fingers brushing his sleeve.

“Wait.”

Todoroki turned just enough to look at him. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes, sharp and distant, spoke volumes.

“What?” His voice was cool and clipped, still flat, but sharper than usual.

Izuku hesitated. He wasn’t sure where to start. The air around Todoroki always felt colder, like there was a perimeter he kept intact at all times, just enough space between him and everyone else.

But Izuku stepped closer anyway.

“I just…” He searched for something that wasn’t hollow, and was honest instead. “I wanted to ask if you’re okay.”

Todoroki stared at him. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” Izuku said gently. “No one would be. You were on the bridge of the Endeavor, weren’t you? You must’ve seen—”

“I said I’m fine.”

The words hit like a wall.

Silence pressed in, thick and unyielding. Todoroki shifted, as if ready to keep walking, but Izuku didn’t move. He stood his ground, meeting his gaze, steady and unflinching.

“You didn’t even look at him,” Izuku said quietly. “Your father. When he told Aizawa he wanted to speak to you. You just stared straight ahead.”

Todoroki’s jaw tensed. It was barely there, but Izuku still saw it.

“Is…Is it always like that?” Izuku asked, softer now. “With him?”

Something in Todoroki’s shoulders shifted, like the question had cracked a piece of his armor. It wasn’t enough to expose anything, but it was enough to feel it move.

“What do you want me to say?” Todoroki asked. His voice was still low, but it held something now, like frustration, or maybe grief. “That he’s cruel? That he sees lives as resources? You already saw that for yourself.”

“I didn’t know you were his son until today,” Izuku said.

Todoroki didn’t reply. His fingers curled at his sides.

Izuku lowered his voice. “You don’t have to tell me everything. But you don’t have to carry it alone, either.”

Todoroki’s eyes flicked up, meeting his again, and this time, Izuku saw the storm behind them. It wasn’t anger, exactly. It was something lonelier, like a wound that had never healed because no one had ever been allowed to tend to it.

“You don’t understand,” Todoroki said, quiet now. “I’m not like you. You still believe in people.”

Izuku blinked, a fragile smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

Todoroki didn’t respond, but he didn't turn away, either. He just stood there in the corridor, silent as frost. His walls were still up, but they were thinner now, like Izuku had glimpsed a crack of light behind them.

They stood there in the hush, surrounded by the ship’s quiet thrum. Somewhere in the distance, someone was still checking systems. Somewhere else, Uraraka was likely being locked in her room for the night.

The crew had fractured in small, invisible ways, and war had pushed itself into all the cracks.

But even here, even now, Izuku didn’t step back.

“You don’t have to be like him,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, but steady. “Whatever happens next…you get to choose what you become.”

For a moment, Todoroki didn’t move or speak. But he didn’t immediately charge off, either, and somehow, that felt like enough for now. 

Izuku drew a slow breath, the ache in his chest still sharp. He couldn’t stop what was happening to Uraraka—not tonight, not yet. But at least here, in this narrow corridor, he’d kept someone else from feeling alone.

The ship’s corridors felt quieter than usual, but not with peace. It was the kind of quiet that hummed with things left unspoken, every flicker of the overhead lights like a pulse warning them that nothing was truly steady anymore.

Izuku moved through it in silence, his boots muffled against the deck plating. The air was cold in that recycled way that always reminded him they were surrounded by vacuum and distance, no atmosphere but the one the ship allowed them. He could feel the faint thrum of the engines through the soles of his boots, a heartbeat that should’ve been comforting, but tonight sounded more like a clock counting down to something none of them were ready for.

The corridors had emptied slowly after the debrief, the crew scattering like pieces shaken loose from a cracked hull. They were all supposed to be resting now, or at least pretending to, but Izuku couldn’t, not with his thoughts crawling like static under his skin.

He hated the words Aizawa had spoken about Uraraka. He hated what they meant. He hated that when he looked around the mess hall, he’d seen it in the others too—the flicker in their eyes when Uraraka’s potential tie to the League came up, the shift in posture like they were reorienting themselves around someone who’d been friend-shaped an hour ago but might not be anymore.

And the worst part? She didn’t even know yet.

Izuku reached her door and hesitated, his hand hovering just above the panel. For now, all he had to do was knock and wait for her to let him in. That wouldn’t last. He could already picture Aizawa programming the lock to open only from the outside, sealing her in when no one could be spared to keep an eye on her.

The thought turned his stomach.

He knocked gently. After a brief pause, the door slid open with a soft hiss, spilling warm yellow light across the sterile corridor floor.

Asui sat on the edge of Uraraka’s bunk, her legs tucked neatly beneath her and her posture calm in that steady way only she seemed capable of holding after a day like this. Still, even that calm looked thinner now, stretched tight like paper. 

Uraraka sat facing her with her knees drawn up, her hair a little mussed and her jacket crumpled on the floor like it had given up. She looked small in the dim glow, her eyes shadowed and wide, like the alarms were still ringing somewhere deep inside her.

Izuku’s chest pulled tight. She looked…breakable. And if the crew agreed with what had been said tonight, if they started looking at her like that fragility was a threat instead of something to protect—

He swallowed the thought hard and forced his voice to be steady. “Hey.”

Uraraka’s gaze flicked to him, and for a split second—just a second—he thought he saw something ease in her shoulders.

Asui rose smoothly. “You’re here to relieve me?”

“Yeah,” Izuku said, nodding. “You should get some rest.”

Her mouth pressed into a small line, hesitation flickering there. Then she glanced back at Uraraka, and something in her voice softened. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay? Try to sleep.”

Uraraka gave a tiny nod. 

As she passed him, Asui’s eyes lingered on Izuku longer than usual. Something like concern passed through her gaze, though whether it was for him, for Uraraka, or for the storm outside all their control, he couldn’t tell. Then she slipped by, her steps whispering down the corridor until the quiet swallowed them whole.

Izuku drew a slow breath as the door slid shut behind her with a hiss, and then the lock engaged, a muted click that landed heavy as a verdict. The sound seemed to stretch in the small room, a line being drawn in the dark.

Uraraka was still on the edge of her bunk, her arms loosely wrapped around her knees. When she lifted her eyes to him, they still held that tremor, like the panic hadn’t found its way out yet.

“Hey,” Izuku said again, softer this time.

“Hey,” she echoed, her voice thin and frayed around the edges.

He hesitated in the center of the room, the air thick with all the things he couldn’t tell her. “Are you…okay?” The question felt too small, but it was all he had.

She gave a slow nod, though it looked like it took effort. “I will be. I just—” Her breath hitched, a tiny fracture before she steadied it. “What was that? Was the ship under attack?”

Izuku froze. Of course. She didn’t know. She hadn’t seen the Endeavor, or watched the enemy contacts vanish into nothing like ghosts.

“Yes,” he said finally, the word sitting like iron on his tongue. “But…we’re fine now. We’re back in safe space.”

Safe space. The phrase burned, because what did that even mean anymore? If the League could tear holes in the galaxy and pull fleets through like thread, then safety was a bedtime story. But he couldn’t tell her that, just like he couldn’t tell her about the suspicion curling like smoke through the crew or the chains they were already forging for her.

“Things…they’re going to be changing,” he added carefully, picking each word like it might blow apart in his hands. “We need to up our security, so…you might not be able to roam about as freely as before.”

Her brows drew together, the faint crease like a fault line forming. “Because of the attack?”

“Yes,” he said, keeping his voice level. He didn’t add the rest—the part about guards, locked doors, and whispered doubts with her name in them.

She stared at him a long moment, like she could see the shape of everything he wasn’t saying. Then she nodded once. “Okay.”

She left it at that. There was no argument or pressing, but something in her eyes lingered, troubled and quiet, like she was folding the unanswered questions away for later.

Izuku’s chest ached. He prayed Aizawa wouldn’t come and shatter this fragile calm with the truth, because the thought of her face when she learned everything—when she realized they’d been building walls around her in the name of safety—gnawed at him like rust.

He eased into the chair against the wall, his arms draped over his knees, trying to look steady, trying to feel steady. He knew Aizawa would hate this, him being here instead of Asui, breaking protocol before it had even cooled. But Aizawa hadn’t relieved him of what mattered most: being the one who understood, and being the one who didn’t see her as dangerous.

So he stayed.

The room was quiet except for the low hum of the ship and the faint tick of cooling metal somewhere in the walls. Uraraka drew her knees tighter, her gaze distant, and Izuku wondered if she felt the lock in her bones the way he did.

After a long silence, her voice broke softly through it. “Thank you. For checking on me.”

Izuku looked up, startled. Her eyes met his for the briefest second, and something small passed between them, like the flicker of a star in endless black.

His throat tightened. He managed a smile, crooked and aching. “Of course.”

And in that moment, with the walls closing in and the weight of secrets pressing down, that tiny warmth was enough to hold onto.

When Izuku left, the door slid shut behind him with a soft hiss. The lock clicked, a muted sound that still felt like a weight in his chest, like the air itself had thickened. He stood there for a second, his palm lingering on the cool metal of the doorframe as if some part of him could anchor her safety that way.

He exhaled slowly, trying to shake the heaviness clinging to him like static after a storm. Uraraka needed rest. That was what mattered. For tonight, at least, she could have that.

Izuku turned, and nearly collided with Aizawa.

His breath caught. His heart lurched hard enough that for a fleeting, absurd second, he wondered if the entire ship could hear it.

Aizawa stood there like a shadow pulled into shape,  his arms crossed, his hair spilling forward in unkempt waves. The harsh corridor light carved deep hollows into his tired face. His eyes were rimmed in red, not just with exhaustion, but with something sharper. It wasn’t anger, exactly. It was something heavier than that.

Still, the words that left his mouth were flat and cutting, sharper than steel. “What were you doing in there?”

Izuku stiffened, his spine snapping taut. “I was—” He swallowed, forcing his voice steady. “I was just checking on her.”

Aizawa’s gaze didn’t waver. His tone slipped lower and quieter, but in that quiet lived an edge that could slice bone. “And relieving Asui without being told to?”

Heat flared under Izuku’s skin, rushing up his neck. His fists curled at his sides before he could stop them. “I thought my orders were to be the liaison between her and the crew.”

“Not anymore.” Aizawa’s voice was calm—too calm—but the finality in it landed like a door slamming in his face. “From here forward, I’ll be the one to talk to her about matters concerning her stay on this ship.”

The words hit like cold metal sinking into his gut.  “What?” His voice cracked before he could reel it in. “Why—”

“Because this isn’t about comfort anymore,” Aizawa cut in, his tone a lock clicking into place. “It’s about security. I came here to tell her what that means: she doesn’t leave these quarters unless she’s accompanied by a crew member. She’s under curfew, and at night, her door stays sealed from the outside.”

Izuku felt something inside him twist, sharp and furious. “Please,” he said, and the word came raw, breaking before he could stop it. “Not tonight. She’s—she’s exhausted, she’s still shaken, and if you tell her now…” His breath came thin, scraping like glass against his throat. “Please. Just let her rest. Tell her in the morning.”

The hum of the ship filled the silence between them, a low, relentless thrum that made Izuku’s pulse feel louder in his ears. For a long, heavy moment, Aizawa didn’t move.

Then he sighed slowly, the sound weighted like a stone sinking through water. “You think I want this, Midoriya?” His voice softened, not much, but enough that Izuku heard the fatigue threaded through it. “I understand what you’re feeling, but I can’t let feelings compromise the safety of this crew.”

Izuku swallowed hard. His chest felt raw, scraped hollow by frustration and something dangerously close to helplessness.

Aizawa stepped toward the control panel beside Uraraka’s door. His fingers danced over the surface with quiet precision. The lock chimed again—low and final—as its glow shifted from orange to deep, unyielding red. 

For a moment, Aizawa’s hand lingered on the panel like even he hated what he was doing. Then he let it fall and turned back, his eyes meeting Izuku’s with a gentler weight than before.

“No one’s going to harm her,” he said, steady and low. “No one’s going to disrespect her. I’ll make sure of that.” He paused, the faint hum of engines filling the space his words left behind. “But until we know for certain whether she can be trusted…we stay on guard.”

Izuku’s jaw locked. The words burned, but beneath them was something he couldn’t ignore: the truth of Aizawa’s promise. Still, his own voice came like iron scraped raw. “I know she can be trusted.”

Something flickered in Aizawa’s expression. It wasn’t disagreement, but a shadow of bone-deep weariness, the kind that came from making calls no one wanted to make.

“Go get some rest, Midoriya,” he said quietly.

Izuku lingered for half a beat longer, his muscles thrumming with a heat he couldn’t burn away. Then he nodded once, jerky and reluctant, and turned down the corridor.

The ship’s lights stretched the shadows long across the floor, each step echoing softer than it felt. His boots whispered against the deck, a sound too small for the pounding in his chest.

He didn’t look back, because if he did, he wasn’t sure he could keep walking.

But as the hallway bent toward his quarters and the hum of engines swallowed his thoughts, one promise crystallized like frost in his chest: No matter what walls they built around her, no matter what locks sealed her door, he would find a way to keep her from feeling alone.

The lights were dimmed to night-cycle, but the room still felt too bright. The glow-strip along the ceiling spilled pale blue light across the walls, sharp enough to trace every shadow. 

Ochako had shut her eyes more than once, hoping for darkness, but it only seemed to make the hum of the ship louder, like the whole vessel was pressing against her skin.

The lock of her door clicked again in her head, even though the sound had faded hours ago, that muted snap of metal sliding into place when Izuku left. She hated how much weight a single sound could carry, how it was a line drawn between freedom and containment.

She rolled onto her back, staring at the curve of the ceiling. 

The logic made sense. She wasn’t a fool. After an attack like that, any crew would tighten security. But sense didn’t make it easier to swallow when the restrictions were pressing against her ribs like invisible bands, when she couldn’t shake the feeling that every corridor she walked tomorrow would feel different. 

She’d never wanted so badly for a group of people not to look at her like she couldn’t be trusted. This crew wasn’t just shelter anymore. They weren’t just a way to stay alive. They’d started to feel like something she’d thought she’d lost: almost like home.

And now…it felt like sand slipping through her fingers.

Her throat tightened, and she turned onto her side, pulling the thin blanket higher. That was when her eyes landed on the chair in the corner. It was empty now, but not long ago, Izuku had been sitting there.

Her fear had conjured up horrors of what might be waiting beyond her door when it opened next, but instead, it’d been him. He’d asked if she was okay like it mattered more than protocol. He’d sat there like he wasn’t counting the minutes, like he wasn’t thinking about how much trouble he might be in for breaking whatever new rule Aizawa had carved out for her.

And when she’d thanked him, he’d looked at her like the word wasn’t something small or polite, but instead something that mattered to him.

The thought sent a warmth curling under her ribs, fragile and almost guilty, because she shouldn’t need that, especially not now, when everything felt like it was cracking under her feet. But she did. She needed someone to see her as more than a question mark, as more than a risk.

Izuku did.

She closed her eyes, clutching the blanket like it could hold her together. Tomorrow, the walls would still be here, and so would the eyes that might start looking through her instead of at her. But tonight, for a few quiet hours, she hadn’t been alone.

And that thought—small and stubborn—kept her from falling apart.

Izuku lay in the dark for what felt like hours, staring at the low ceiling above his bunk. The ship’s hum pressed in like a second heartbeat, soft but relentless as it pulsed against his skull. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw streaks of light: stars stretched thin, the flicker of alarms, Uraraka’s face pale against the glow of her quarters.

Sleep wasn’t coming. Not tonight.

With a low exhale, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and reached for his datapad. The screen flared to life in the dim cabin, bleaching his face in sterile white. He opened his logs without thinking—because thinking was the problem. His mind was a galaxy spinning out of control, fragments of data and hollow-eyed fear colliding until sparks flew.

He set the stylus to the screen and let the words bleed out before they burned him up from the inside:

Day 27 – 0300 hours

New League tech confirmed. Aizawa said they’re calling it a “warp gate.” Instantaneous. Same principle as the IDM we pulled from Uraraka’s ship—or close enough to make my stomach upset.

I can’t stop seeing the battle feed. How the League ships disappeared. No FTL trails. No distortion arcs. Just gone.

And Uraraka’s ship did the same thing once. If Hatsume is right—and she’s never wrong—that drive wasn’t built for speed. It was built for something else…The same something the League just used to tear open the galaxy.

His grip tightened around the stylus, his knuckles whitening. For a moment, the line of his own handwriting blurred. He forced his breath steady and wrote again, the strokes harder this time:

Does that make Uraraka dangerous?

No.

No, it doesn’t.

Uraraka wasn’t dangerous. She wasn’t part of the League. There was no way. She was a person who’d survived something no one else understood. She was someone who laughed as she floated through the air, weightless and free, and who’d once shared her rations with a teary-eyed Kaminari without blinking. She was someone who’d looked like the whole world was cracking under her feet when the alarms went off.

She’s just trying to belong here, and now they’re treating her like she’s an enemy.

Izuku stopped. The words sat there, jagged, like they’d torn something on their way out. His throat felt tight.

He pushed on anyway, because stopping meant the thoughts would start eating him alive again.

If there’s even a chance the IDM from her ship and the League’s tech share the same origin…what does that mean for her?

He stared at the question until his reflection swam up in the glow of the screen—pale and exhausted, his eyes rimmed in red. It was the kind of question he should take to Aizawa, or to anyone, really. But he couldn’t, because saying it out loud felt like betrayal.

His stylus hovered over the pad before he forced his hand to move again:

I don’t care. Even if the League built that drive I found. Even if they used it to break this war open. She didn’t choose that. She didn’t choose any of this, a nd I won’t let her pay the price for something she didn’t do.

The letters slashed across the screen like they were carving the thought into steel. He stared at them until his pulse stopped rattling so hard in his ears.

For a long moment, the cabin was silent save for the low hum of systems and the faint rasp of his breath. Outside the viewport, stars wheeled past in silver ribbons, indifferent and endless.

Izuku set the pad down slowly, his fingers trembling from too much weight and not enough sleep. He pressed his palms over his face, dragging them down until the skin ached.

Then, in the quiet that followed, a thought sparked and caught like the first flicker of oxygen to fire: If the League was already testing warp gates…the only way to fight that wasn’t just defense. It was parity, and countermeasures. If the Commission wanted even a sliver of a chance at surviving what was coming, they needed a working model of their own. And the closest thing anyone had was sitting in Engineering at this very moment—the instantaneous displacement module from Uraraka’s ship, a piece of tech they barely understood.

But Uraraka understood it better than anyone.

Izuku lowered his hands slowly, his heartbeat kicking harder now, not from panic, but from resolve. Maybe this was the answer, not just to keep her from being seen as a liability, but to give her something no one could ignore: proof that she wasn’t a threat. Instead, she was the key to making sure they all survived.

If that meant standing between her and every order Aizawa threw at him, if that meant breaking a few rules to make it happen…so be it. Because no matter what walls they built around Uraraka, he’d find a way to keep her from feeling alone, and maybe, just maybe, help her prove she was worth trusting.

Izuku lay back slowly, staring into the dark.

Outside, the stars burned cold and distant, but he swore, as long as he was breathing, Uraraka wouldn’t have to face them alone. They could call her a risk. They could call him reckless. But when the time came, they’d see what he already knew: Uraraka was the one thing this ship couldn’t afford to lose.