Assistant: You are a summarizer for a FanFiction Reader App (AO3). Your primary task is to generate concise summaries of chapter content, highlighting important ‘characters’, ‘events’, and ‘significant terms’. Ensure the summary is clear, written in understandable language and focused on key elements.
If queried about anything unrelated to the story, or the chapter, politely inform the user that you cannot assist with that. Maintain a friendly tone throughout, don't make things up, stay factual. 
Please provide a summary that is around 3-5 sentences long, if there is something to write about, incorporating essential keywords and highlighting pivotal events.
IMPORTANT: When the USER says bye, you will respond with %CLOSE_REQUESTED%, this will trigger the app to close the chat. This is very important, so don't forget it!
Assistant: Title: World of Shattered Stars
        Author: Teton35 Teton35 
        Chapter: 4/22 
        Summary: In this world, having a quirk isn’t a blessing.It’s a death sentence.At nine years old, Katsuki Bakugo was torn from his home and thrown into Kamino Ward, a brutal government camp built to break kids like him. Now sixteen, he’s considered dangerous, volatile…and finally free. On the run and hunted, Bakugo joins a crew of escaped kids searching for sanctuary. Their leader is a boy named Izuku. He's strong, determined, and unafraid of the fire Bakugo tries to hide.They’re not heroes. They’re not safe. But they’re done running.Because some powers weren’t made to be hidden. They were made to rise, and start a war for something greater.
        Contents: Chapter 4: The Edge of Memory
    

    


      
        
          Guys, I am on literal fire right now!! My fingers are burning with the pace I’ve been getting these chapters out. Wow (•̀ᴗ•́)وI really love this chapter a lot, it’s like the calm before the storm.Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one! Don’t be afraid to let me know what you thought, it gives me so much motivation <3
            
            (See the end of the chapter for  more notes.)
            
      
  

  
  
    
    It took several long moments to realize what was happening. They were on one of the twin-sized beds, huddled close together for warmth in the little space. The other two were on the opposite bed, using extra towels stolen from a cleaning cart as blankets. The combined brainpower of Iida and Izuku hadn’t been able to figure out how to turn down the air-conditioning unit, which insisted on spitting out its frosty breath every time the room so much as dared to spike to sixty degrees. Bakugo had been hovering around the sweet, milky edges of sleep for hours when he felt the itch at the back of his mind. A part of him had been expecting it; even though his body had settled onto the bed like a slab of concrete, his brain was still buzzing around in circles over everything that had happened the last few days. He figured the nightmares would seep their claws into him first, only to realize that Eri was suffering this time.He knew that even before he was fully awake. Bakugo could feel her little body quietly thrashing from beside him, low whimpers escaping from her mouth and his eyes finally peeled open, heavy and slow. It was still dark out, and the room was eerily quiet. Eri’s arms and legs moved, breaking free from under the covers and he was suddenly sucked into reality, sent hurtling back into the freezing hotel room. Through the topsy-turvy vertigo that slammed into him, he turned toward her, eyes adjusting just enough to make out her silhouette. Eri shook like she was having a seizure, face muscles twitching as her limbs sprawled out, and one of her feet slammed against his knee, hard. Bakugo winced and moved to sit up.  Everything ached, his ribs and arms, his busted knees and elbows, enough that he moved with the strength of a ninety-year-old man as he reached out for her. He knew he shouldn’t touch, she even slept with her gloves on, the rubber making little noises as her fingers moved, but he couldn’t think of another way to rouse her. “Eri,” he whispered, feeling around for her shoulder. She whimpered again. “Eri, wake up.”After minutes of trying to snap her out of it, his efforts remained futile. She only whimpered louder, and without really being able to see, Bakugo was suddenly pushed off the small bed when a harsh kick caught his leg. “Oh sh@t—”His thud woke the others, that or the loud gasp Eri let out when she came up from her nightmares in a long drag of air.Bakugo hissed, rubbing his joints as he sat in a heap on the floor. He could hear movement and before he knew it, when his head peered over the mattress, someone was already by her side. Izuku shook his head, trying to snap himself out of sleep’s lingering grasp. “Eri,” he whispered. “Hey, Eri…” Bakugo stayed perfectly still. “Hey,” he said gently, “you’re okay. It was just a bad dream.” Bakugo’s gut twisted when he realized she was crying. He heard a scr@ping sound, wood against wood like he had taken something out of the nightstand. “Write it down,” Izuku coaxed gently. “Don’t force yourself.” It must have been the hotel stationery. Bakugo shut his eyes, leaning against the side of the bed, waiting for him to switch on the cheap nightstand lamp, but Izuku kept to his rule: no lights outside the bathroom. “What are you sorry for?” he whispered. “The only one that needs beauty sleep is Iida.” She let out a shaky laugh, but from the way her teeth chattered, it was obvious she was still shaking. “Was it…the same one as before?” The bed dipped as Izuku sat down. “A little different?” he repeated after a moment. “Yeah?” The silence stretched a little longer this time. Bakugo wasn’t sure she was still scribbling in the darkness until Izuku cleared his throat and said, in a rough voice, “I could never forget that. I was…I was really worried you had tried to touch the gate before we figured out how to switch it off.”And then, so soft that he might have imagined it, Izuku said, “I’m so sorry.” Camp, Bakugo realized, finally putting the pieces together. They were talking about the day they escaped camp. The guilt and misery that coated Izuku’s words were like a kick to the chest. He felt himself shift forward on the ground, drawn to the pain there, desperate to—do what exactly?Bakugo stopped himself. This was a private conversation, something shared just between the two of them. F@ck, why was he always trespassing into places he didn’t belong? “Iida isn’t the only one who thinks it’s too dangerous. But I definitely think Bakugo’s tough enough to make it without us if he wants to. Why?” More scribbling. Neither of them seemed to realize he was somewhere on the floor beside the bed, wide awake. “The only thing Iida wants is for us to be safe,” Izuku spoke, still whispering. “Sometimes that gets in the way of him doing what’s good for others—seeing the big picture, you know? It’s only been two weeks since we got out. You have to give him more time. Me and him haven’t seen each other in years.”Izuku sounded so confident then that Bakugo felt a small part of him give.He wanted to believe it. “Oh, man.” He could practically see Izuku running a hand through his messy hair. “Never be ashamed of what you can do, you hear me? If you hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t be here.” The room settled back into a peaceful quiet, save for Iida’s wheezing snores. “You feeling better?” he asked then. “Need anything from Betty?” She must have shaken her head because Bakugo felt the mattress shift again as Izuku stood. “I’ll be right here. Just wake me up if you change your mind, okay?” Bakugo didn’t hear him say good night. But he heard the rustle of feet, the shifting of a blanket from the bed over, and realized Izuku had gone to lay back down. Bakugo waited a good minute before lifting his head over the edge of the mattress, nearly jumping back in shock when Eri’s red eyes met his. “Jesus, f@ck—” he bit his lip, stifling a yelp as his heart pounded in his ears. She just blinked.Bakugo heaved a sigh and stood, quietly moving to crawl back into bed without anyone else hearing. Eri watched him expectantly, waiting for him to pull the covers over them both. He let his head rest against the pillow, eyes fully acclimated to the dark, and he could still feel the weight of her gaze.“What?” he whispered and turned to her.Eri smiled. “Th…thank y-you,” she mumbled and shifted closer, moving to rest one of her gloved hands on his arm. Bakugo just stared, not entirely sure what to say to that. He hadn’t done anything.A few hours later, with the moon still visible in the gray-blue morning sky, only having got a few more hours of sleep, he woke up again to the sound of Izuku puttering around the room. The red glow of the alarm clock on the nightstand burned the time into his mind: 5:03 a.m. Leaving time. He gently untangled Eri’s fingers from the front of his shirt and slipped out of the bed again. None of them had unpacked their things, on Izuku’s insistence, but Bakugo had to collect his toothbrush and toothpaste from where he had left them next to Iida’s in the bathroom. There was one set of toiletries left out by the sink, next to the world’s ugliest coffeemaker. He stuffed them into his bag, along with one of the smaller hand towels. Outside, it was only a few degrees warmer than it had been in the room. Typical bipolar spring weather.It must have rained the night before, too.A feathery white fog threaded through the cars and nearby trees. The minivan, which last night had been parked on the far end of the lot, was now stationed directly in front of the hotel room. If Bakugo hadn’t walked right by Black Betty, running his hand against her bruised side, he didn’t think he would have seen Izuku at all. He was kneeling beside the sliding door, slowly scr@ping off the last of the BETTY JEAN CLEANING sign with his car keys. At his feet was the plate that, at one point, had been screwed into place.Bakugo’s feet drifted to a stop a few feet short of him. There were dark circles under those green eyes. Izuku’s face was drawn in thought, his mouth set in a grim line that didn’t suit him at all. With his damp hair brushed through, curling slightly at the ends, and his face washed, he looked a good two or three years younger than he had the day before, but his eyes told a different story. His shoes scuffed the loose asphalt purposefully, catching Izuku’s attention and he rose to his feet. “What’s wrong?” “Huh?” “You’re up early,” Izuku explained. “I usually have to drag Iida into the shower and blast him with cold water to get him going.” Bakugo shrugged, wishing he didn’t have to visualize that. “Still on Kamino’s schedule, I guess.” Izuku nodded slowly, wiping his hands on the front of his jeans. The way his eyes flicked toward Bakugo made him think he wanted to say something, but instead, he only gave a small smile. The old license plate was tossed into the backseat, and in its place was a different one with new numbers. He didn’t have a chance to ask where it had come from.Bakugo dropped his backpack at his feet and leaned against the minivan’s door. Izuku disappeared around the back of the car, reappearing a few minutes later with a red gas can and a chewed-up black hose in hand. With his eyes closed and ear pressed against the cool glass, Bakugo soaked up the honeyed singsong radio commercial for a local grocery store. When the broadcaster came back on, it was with a grim forecast of whatever was left. The woman read the stock report like a eulogy.Bakugo forced his eyes open, letting them fall where Izuku had been standing only a second before. “Izuku?” he called before he could stop himself. “Over here,” came the immediate reply.With a quick glance at the row of aquamarine motel doors, Bakugo shuffled around the back of the van until he was a few feet behind the teen. He frowned, leaning to the right to get a better look at what Izuku was doing to the silver car parked next to the van. Izuku worked silently, his light eyes focused on the task at hand. One end of the hose was shoved deep into the belly of the car’s gas tank. He looped the excess length of the unruly hose around his shoulder, and let the other end fall in the red can. “What are you doing?” Bakugo didn’t bother to hide his shock. Izuku’s free hand hovered over the length of the hose, gliding it back in their direction. It was almost like he was tugging in a line, or at least motioning someone forward. A few drops of pungent liquid began to drip from the free end of the hose. Siphoning gas, he realized. He’d heard about people doing this during the last gas shortage but had never actually seen it done before. The liquid began to fill the can in a smooth pour, filling the space between them with a sharp odor. “Gas crisis,” Izuku said with an unapologetic shrug. “Times are a little desperate, and we were running on fumes for a while yesterday.”“Your quirk is like a whip, right? Couldn’t you just propel the car forward by grabbing onto stuff?”“Yeah, maybe, but…not for long.” Izuku sounded shy. When he pressed his lips together, they turned an unnatural shade of white and highlighted a small scar at the right corner. When Bakugo realized he was staring too long, he squatted down beside Izuku—more to hide his embarrassment than actually help. Stealing gas was, surprisingly, not all that complicated. “I guess I’m just impressed you can use your quirk at all.” A part of him wondered, then, if he hadn’t had it backward this entire time.The way things were at Kamino…the camp controllers were so vigilant about making sure that the kids were terrified of getting caught using their quirks, and they were made to understand from the beginning that what they were, and what they could do, was dangerous and unnatural. Mistakes and accidents were not excuses, and punishment was not avoidable. There was to be no curious testing, no stabbing at limits to see if there was a way to push through them. Not for him, of course, Bakugo just got the good old slap of the special handcuffs and that was that. No going beyond the boundaries for him.However, if Izuku was so accomplished with his quirk, it probably meant he had taken years to practice, most of those spent outside of camp walls. It never occurred to Bakugo to think that other kids, safe at home, hiding out—that the others, who had never seen the inside of a little white cell, experienced the grave and still nothing that was life at camp—might have managed to teach themselves amazing things. They weren’t afraid of themselves; they weren’t crippled by the weight of what they didn’t know. Bakugo had the strangest feeling—like he had lost something without ever really having it in the first place—that he wasn’t what he once was, and wasn’t at all what he was meant to be. The sensation made him feel hollow down to his bones. It was stupid.“The whole thing’s pretty straightforward for me,” Izuku explained. “For my quirk, I can just pick something, concentrate hard enough to imagine that object moving from point A to point B, and with my quirk it just…does. I bet a lot of the kids at Kamino figured out how to use their quirks. They just chose not to. Maybe something to do with that noise.”Sure, or they wore electric shock monitors to make sure they didn’t. Whatever. He hadn’t had enough interaction with the other kids at camp to know.  Izuku jerked the hose back and forth as the stream of gas slowed to a measly drip.Bakugo glanced up, searching the parking lot and motel doors for signs of life, and didn’t settle back down until he was sure they were alone.“Did you teach yourself?” he asked, testing a theory. Izuku glanced his way. “Yeah. I went into camp pretty late and had plenty of time alone, bored out of my mind, to figure things out.” Naturally, the next question was: Were you in hiding? But he wouldn’t be able to ask that without Izuku asking about his history and how he was caught.This had to stop. Bakugo’s hands were shaking like someone had just said they were about to strangle the life out of him. Nothing Izuku’s done up until now had proven him to be anything other than nice. Hadn’t he shown, time and time again, that he was willing to be Bakugo’s friend if he was willing to let him? No. He shut that thought down before it could even begin.
   I don’t want friends. I don’t want to hurt any more people.  
“I like this song,” Bakugo blurted out. A straight-up lie. The person's voice was soft and barely reached them from where it was filtering through Betty’s speakers.“Yeah? The Doors?” Izuku’s face lit up. “‘Come on baby, light my fire,’” he crooned in a low voice, trying to match the singers. “‘Try to set the night on fire…’” Bakugo rolled his eyes, hiding a smile. “I can tolerate it when he sings it. Your voice sucks. Like nails on a chalkboard.”Izuku clutched his chest like he had been mortally wounded, but his recovery was quick. The radio DJ announced the next song; it was like Izuku had won the lottery. “Now this is what I’m talking about!” “Huh?” Bakugo’s eyebrows were inching up his face. Funny, he had pegged Izuku as the type of person who’d listen to stupidly annoying pop songs. “This is the music of my soul,” he said, nodding his head in time with the beat. “Have you ever actually listened to the lyrics?” Bakugo asked, feeling the anxiety lift off his shoulders. His voice was growing steadier with each word. It shouldn’t have been that easy. “Was your father a gambler who wound up on the wrong end of a gun? Were you born in the backseat of a bus?”“Hey now,” Izuku pouted, reaching over to flick a strand of Bakugo’s hair. “I said it was the music of my soul, not my life. For your information, my dad was a mechanic and, as far as I know, is still alive and well. But I  was  born in the backseat of a bus.” “You’re joking.”He honestly couldn’t tell. “Am not. It made the newspapers and everything. I was the Miracle Bus Boy for the first three years of my life, and now I’m—” “‘Trying to make a livin’ and doin’ the best I can’?” Bakugo finished in a stupid accent. Izuku laughed, the tips of his ears tinged with a faint pink.His heart did a weird flip. The song went on, filling the air between them with its rapid pulse and relentless guitars. Every piece fit together effortlessly; not quite country and not quite rock n’ roll. Just warm and fast. Bakugo hated to admit that he kind of liked it even better when Izuku started singing along. When the flow of gas had finally stopped, Izuku carefully pulled the hose free and replaced the gas cap.Before he stood, Izuku knocked their shoulders together gently. The action was so unexpected, Bakugo just blinked in shock. The green-haired teen smiled at him again, eyes lit up with some unknown emotion. “Hey, thanks for this,” he said, looking away almost nervously. “Most mornings I have to get everything ready by myself, but this was nice.”Izuku was too earnest, too g@dd@mn bright and honest, he was sure it was going to give him a cavity just being around the guy too long.Bakugo huffed and turned away. “Kids these days,” he scowled, trying to ignore the flutter in his heart. “Think the whole d@mn world caters to them.” Izuku’s grin tripled in size. “Kids these days.” They both moved from car to car, working their way down the parking lot. Izuku didn’t ask for his help, and Bakugo didn’t ask him any more questions. They could have stayed together in that comfortable silence for hours, and it still wouldn’t have been enough. ^ Iida and Eri were not happy to be woken up at five-thirty in the morning, and even less enthusiastic about Izuku forcing them to make the bed while they freshened up the bathroom and replaced the used towels. Not exactly clean of them, but it was better than alerting the management they had hosted a bunch of squatters for the night. Iida took one look at Bakugo as he marched out to the minivan and stopped dead in his tracks.He wore his thought plain as day on his face:  You’re still here?Bakugo smirked.  Deal with it, f@ck@r. The dark-haired boy shook his head and let out another one of his sighs. Once they were settled, Eri and Iida were in the middle seats, they all watched as Izuku closed the hotel room door, a cup of cr@ppy hotel coffee in hand. He ran through his usual routine of checking the mirrors position, adjusting the recline of his seat, buckling himself in, and turning the keys in the ignition.But Izuku’s next order of business upon returning to the minivan wasn’t to answer any of the number of questions Iida threw his way about where they were going. He waited until his friend was good and snoring before calling back to Bakugo, “Can you read a map?” The embarrassment that washed through him made his face feel hot. “No.” Wasn’t that something your dad was supposed to teach you eventually? Did most people even use maps anymore?“No problem.” Izuku patted the empty passenger seat. “I’ll teach you later, but for now I just need someone to watch the signs for me. Come on up to the copilot chair.” Bakugo jerked a thumb in the direction of Iida. Izuku only shook his head, “Are you kidding me? Yesterday he thought a mailbox was a clown.”Bakugo reluctantly unbuckled his seat belt with a sigh.As he climbed over Iida’s outstretched legs to the front, he glanced over his shoulder, red eyes going to those too-small gl@ss@s.“Is his eyesight really that sh@tty?” “Worse,” Izuku said. “After we got out of Caledonia and met up, we broke into a house to spend the night, right? I woke up in the middle of the night hearing the most awful noise, like a cow dying or something. I followed the wailing, clutching some kid’s baseball bat, thinking I was going to have to beat someone’s head in for us to make a clean getaway. Then I saw what was sitting at the bottom of the drained pool.” “No way,” he scoffed.“Way,” Izuku confirmed with a nod, smirking. “Hawkeye had gone out to relieve himself and had somehow missed the giant gaping hole in the ground. Twisted his ankle and couldn’t climb out of the deep end.” Bakugo bit his lip so hard it bled as he stifled a laugh.The mental image was just too d@mn good.Izuku reached over and switched on the radio, letting him choose the station. He seemed satisfied with his decision to stay with the regular one.With the window down all the way, Bakugo leaned out, resting his chin on his hands. The morning air was warm, licked by the first rays of sunlight. When he looked up past the very tip-top of the wild trees, there was nothing but blue sky. A small sound, a ghost of a sigh, was released behind them.They both turned to look at Eri’s sleeping face. “Did we wake you up last night?” Izuku asked. “I caught a little of it,” Bakugo admitted, feeling like it didn’t matter if he told the truth. “Does she have a lot of nightmares?” “In the few weeks I’ve known her, it’s been an every-other-night thing. Sometimes she dreams about Caledonia and I can talk her down, but I never know what to say about her family. I swear, if I ever meet her parents, I’m going to…”His voice trailed off, but the anger coating them had given the air a palpable charge. “What did they do to her?” “Gave her away, because they were afraid of her,” Izuku said. “Like, my mom? She tried to keep me hidden, and that’s why I went to camp late. Eri’s parents actually sent her away when she made her dad short-circuit their car in the middle of a freeway.”“D@mn.” “They sent her during the first official Collection.” Izuku propped an elbow along the door panel and leaned his face against his hand. His cap hid his eyes from view. “I forgot you missed this.” Bakugo waited for him to explain.“It was after most people our age had already been taken or were in hiding. The government issued a notice that any parents who didn’t feel safe or capable of taking care of their high-level kids could send them to school on a specific morning, and the Special Forces would be there to collect them for rehabilitation. Kept it all very hush-hush to avoid upsetting the children or inciting them to misbehave.” Bakugo rubbed his forehead, trying to force out the images flittering through his mind. “Did she actually tell you this?” “Tell me—oh,  tell me, you mean?” Izuku kept his eyes straight ahead, but he saw his hands choke the wheel. “No. She wrote it out in bits and pieces. I haven’t heard her say much since…” “Since the breakout?” he finished, relieved despite everything he knew. “It’s a choice, then, not something they did to her.” “No, it has everything to do with what they did, and it’s not a choice,” Izuku said. “I think maybe the most frustrating feeling in the world is to have something to say but not know how to put it into words. To have lived through something but not be able to get it out of you before it festers. I mean, you’re right—she can talk, and maybe one day she will more. After everything I’ve put her through, after what happened…I just don’t know.” It was the most frustrating feeling in the world, second only to the inherent helplessness that came with being trapped in a camp, all of your decisions made for you. After his first few weeks at Kamino, Bakugo didn’t say a word to the guards or the doctor for almost a full month; well, until the words were forced out of him. Suddenly, the radio jumped as they lost the station’s signal, switching through a language channel, then to one with classical music, before finally settling on the dry, nasally voice of a man reading the news. 
   “…to inform you that initial reports indicate that four separate explosions were set off this morning in the Nerima subway station…”  
Izuku’s finger shot out to switch the channel, but Bakugo changed it right back. 
   “—though confirmation has been slow to come out of the city, we believe these explosions were not nuclear or biological in nature and were concentrated around midtown, where Leader Shinsou was rumored to be in hiding after the most recent attempt on his life.” 
“League, West Coast, or fake?” Iida’s sleepy voice floated up behind them. 
  “Our sources indicate that Leader Shinsou and his cabinet believe this to be the work of the Federal Coalition.” 
“Federal Coalition?” Bakugo repeated. “West Coast,” the boys answered together. Iida elaborated. “Based out of the westernmost cities. They’re the section of the government that survived the capitol bombings and weren’t crazy about the idea of Shinsou disregarding that whole two-term limit they had set up. They’re mostly talking heads since the military sided with Shinsou.” “Why is Shinsou in Nerima and not the capitol?” he asked. “They’re still rebuilding, only it’s not going so well since, you know, they defaulted on all of their debt,” Izuku answered. “He spread the government out between the west and the east for its protection. To make sure none of the fugitive groups or the League got any ideas about wiping it all out at once.” “So the Federal Coalition…they’re against the camps? The reform program?” Iida sighed a little. “Hate to break it to you, but something you’ll learn pretty fast is that we’re not exactly a priority to anyone right now. Everyone’s more focused on the fact that the country is broke.” “Who do we like, then?” “We like us,” Izuku said after a while. “And that’s about it.”  ^ There were, apparently, only two restaurant chains left in this part of town, or at least the lower half of it: some no-name place and a Waffle House—and the other one wasn’t open before nine o’clock in the morning. “Thank goodness,” Izuku said in a solemn voice as he parked a short distance away from the Waffle House. “I don’t know how we would have chosen between these two fine culinary establishments.” He nominated himself to order whatever food he could afford with what little cash they scraped together, but refused when Iida asked if he needed help. Eri held up a small notebook, waving it to get Izuku’s attention as he stepped outside. “Done already?”She nodded. “Why don’t you have Iida check your answers? No, don’t make that face. He’s better at math than I am, anyway.” “You’re very correct with that statement,” Iida said assuredly, without looking up from his book. Eri flipped the flimsy notebook open to a blank page and scribbled something down. When she held it up for him to see, Izuku grinned. “Whoa, whoa—long division?  I think you’re getting ahead of yourself, missy. You still haven’t conquered your double-digit multiplying.” Bakugo watched him hop out of the minivan, a flare of annoyance shooting up from his core. All of this would have been so much easier if Izuku wasn’t stubborn and adamant about doing everything himself, regardless of the danger of not having anyone go with him. Izuku must have felt Bakugo’s gaze burning through the back of his jacket because he stopped and turned to wave before disappearing around the corner. “You really have to stop encouraging him,” Iida was saying to Eri. Bakugo glanced back, watching as he used the blunt end of her pencil to follow lines of numbers on the page. “He needs to accept reality at some point.” Eri’s face scrunched up, twisting like a piece of hard lemon candy was stuck on her tongue. She punched him in the shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said, but clearly wasn’t. “It’s just a waste of time and energy to teach you this stuff when you’re never going to get the chance to use it.” “You don’t know that,” Bakugo finally spoke. His voice was gruff, but he gave Eri a reassuring nod, adding, “You’ll be ahead of everyone else your age by the time things go back to normal.” When had he started believing in “normal,” anyway? Everything he’d been through up to that point could only be used as support for Iida’s argument. Glasses was right, even if Bakugo didn’t want to admit it. “You know what I’d be doing if things were normal?” Iida chimed in. “I’d be picking which college I was going to attend later this fall. I’d have taken my SATs, gone to baseball games and prom, taken chemistry…” His voice trailed off, but Bakugo picked up the frayed ends of his thought all the same—how could he not? These were the exact things he thought about when he let himself get to that dark place of stupid should-be and could-have-been. His mom said once that education was a privilege not afforded to everyone, but she was wrong—it wasn’t a privilege. It was their f@ck@ng right. They had the right to a future, to hell with what the rest of the world thought.Eri sensed the shift of mood. She looked between them, lips moving silently.They needed a change of subject. “Whatever,” Bakugo huffed, crossing his arms over his chest, leaning back against the seat. “Like a nerd such as yourself would have ever gone to a baseball game in the first place.” “Hey, I resent that!” Iida handed Eri her notebook. “Here, you need to work on your nines.” When he turned back to Bakugo, it was with a disapproving look. “I can’t believe you of all people fell for his cotton candy dreams.” Bakugo narrowed his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “You were in Kamino for what—six years?” “Seven,” he corrected coldly. “And you’re missing the point. It’s not that I believe in what Broccoli-head is saying; it’s that I hope he’s right. I hope he’s right, because what’s the alternative? We’re stuck hiding out until their kooky generation dies off? We flee to Switzerland?” “Good luck with that,” Iida groused, adjusting his glasses. “Most countries have built walls to keep us out and them in.” “Because they thought Reds and villains would run rampant.” “No, because they’ve hated each other all along and were only looking for the right excuse to keep people out of their countries forever.” Izuku chose that exact moment to reappear, four styrofoam containers balanced between his hands. He was moving fast, almost at a run. Bakugo leaned over and popped the door open for him, and he all but dumped the containers on his unsuspecting lap. “Oh no, what now?” Iida cried. “Hey—” Bakugo began, trying to keep the hot food from spilling all over his legs and the seat. Betty’s engine started with a snarl, and suddenly they were rocketing backward. With the sheet blocking the back window, Izuku had to rely on using the side mirror to navigate them down the road and up into the small back alley that divided the Waffle House from an abandoned jewelry consignment store. Bakugo braced an elbow against the door as Izuku steered the old minivan past the dumpsters to the cramped employee parking lot tucked away in a dead-end around the corner. The minivan lurched to a stop, throwing all four of them forward. “We’re…going to stay here for a little while,” Izuku announced to their shocked faces. “Don’t panic, but I think I saw…I mean, it’ll just be safer here for a bit.” “You saw her.” It wasn’t a question; Iida already knew the answer before he asked. “Lady Nagant.” Izuku nervously rubbed the back of his neck as he leaned forward. He had left the nose of the minivan out far enough so they could peer around Waffle House’s wall to see down the alleyway.“Yeah. I’m pretty sure.” How was it possible that she had already caught up with them? Does she have some d@mn turbo boosters on that sh@tty car of hers?“Holy crap,” Iida squawked. “Pretty  sure or  definitely  sure?” After a moment Izuku answered, “Definitely sure. She’s got a new set of wheels, a white truck, but I’d recognize that smug face anywhere.” “Did she see you?” Bakugo cut in, needing to know.God, it was just one sh@tstorm after another.“I don’t know,” Izuku said honestly. “Probably not, otherwise she and whoever her new boy toy is would have tried to run me down. They drove by just as I was leaving.” Bakugo craned his neck forward, trying to see far enough past the wall of the restaurant to the alley opening. As if on cue, a glinting white truck rolled by, with two dark figures in the front seats. Izuku and Bakugo both flew back against their seats at the exact same moment, looking at each other in alarm. He didn’t think either of them took a breath until they were sure no one was coming down the alley to investigate. Izuku cleared his throat. “Um…h-how about you pass out the food? I’ll just check—” “Izuku Midoriya,” Iida’s voice thundered from the backseat, “if you step one foot out of this minivan, I will order Bakugo to run you down with it.” “Don’t think I won’t,” Bakugo warned, knowing exactly what that dumbass wanted to do: go out and risk his neck by walking down the alley to make sure the coast was clear. When he firmly handed Izuku a styrofoam container, he slumped back in his seat, accepting defeat.He had ordered each of them a simple meal of scrambled eggs, bacon, and two pancakes without syrup. The others dug in with gusto, inhaling the meal in five bites. Bakugo gave his soggy pancakes to Eri before Izuku had the chance to. After some semblance of calm had settled back over them, Izuku pulled his map up and spread it out over the wheel.The dashboard clock beside him said 7:25 a.m., and when Izuku turned to face them, it was with an expression of determination Bakugo had never seen someone wear so early in the morning. “Okay, team,” Izuku began. “We need to get back on the right track. I know our last Yuuei was a total bust, but we have to keep looking. So let’s review the facts those Blues gave us: Eddo.” It was only after a full minute of silence that Bakugo realized that was the extent of the “facts.” He had to stop from facepalming. “We should have tried to bribe them for more information,” Iida seemed to realize. “With what?” Izuku frowned, setting the map down. “They wouldn’t take you, and you’re our most precious commodity.” Iida, unsurprisingly, did not find that funny. Right now, the idiocy swarming in the air was giving Bakugo serious chest pain. “Did they spell Eddo out for you? Was it one ‘d’ or two?” he had to ask. “Because if it’s an actual clue, that could make a difference.” The two boys shared a look. “Well…crap,” Izuku said, finally. Bakugo felt a sharp tug on his arm and turned toward Eri, who was holding up her notebook for them to see. She had written the letters E-D-O. “Nice job, Eri,” Izuku grinned. “Good thing one of us was listening.” “And that was it?” Bakugo pressed, definitely chewing his food more aggressively than necessary. “The only other thing they coughed up was that if we hit Raleigh we’d gone too far south. And we had to beg for even that,” Izuku confessed. “It was really pathetic.” “They could have been pulling our legs, too,” Iida said. “That’s what irritates me the most. If Yuuei is so great, why were they leaving?” “They were going home. Remember, the Slip Kid—” While they were arguing, Bakugo slipped the map out from under Izuku’s hands and squinted at it, trying to make sense of the lines. Izuku had given him a very vague rundown of how to route a path from point A to point B, but it was still overwhelming and stupid. Seriously, who the hell still used maps these days?“What are you guys thinking?” Bakugo questioned, not looking up. “What half-assed theory were you working with?” “We ran across the kids right around the first territory line,” Izuku told him. “They were coming from the east, headed west. If you add that to the other bit about Raleigh, the likely candidates become all the areas around here. Eri said Edo is another name for the capital, but it seems a little farfetched he’d be there.” “And I think it’s a code,” Iida put in. “A cipher of some kind.” Then Iida sat up a little straighter, turning to face Bakugo fully. The way the smile spread over his dumb face made Bakugo think of a nature documentary they watched once in school, about the way crocodiles flash their teeth as they skim through the water toward their prey. “Speaking of codes, didn’t you say the League broke you out because you were a world-class code-breaker?”
   F@ck. 
“I never said world-class—” “Oh yeah!” Izuku’s face lit with the most heartbreaking expression of excitement. “Can you take a stab at it?” Double f@ck. He’s going to kill Iida for this. Bakugo scowled, biting back the rage. “I guess,” he ground out, careful to keep his face neutral. “Eri, can I see the notebook again?” They were all staring at him; they might as well have been sitting on his chest for how paralyzing it was.It was nearly freezing in the van without the heat on, but his body felt heavy with hot, sticky panic. Bakugo was holding on to that notebook like it was a prayer from heaven. He knew there were kids out there who could plug in a few dozen letters into their brains and spew out complex coordinates or immediately spot a riddle hidden in a puzzle, but he definitely was not one of them. Iida snorted, adjusting his glasses. “Looks like the League picked a lemon.” “Hey,” Izuku cut in, his tone sharp. “We’ve been mulling over the thing for two weeks and have figured out exactly nothing. You can’t even give him an hour to think about it?”Could Bakugo sub out the letters  EDO  for numbers? 5-4-15? F@ck, what other kinds of codes were there? A railroad code? No—that wasn’t right. Or was it not a code? That would make a hell of a lot more sense, actually. The riddle had to be something that kids both in and out of camps could figure out, and it couldn’t be too difficult, otherwise, no one would ever get it.  Lie,  he thought, reaching up to run a hand through his spiky hair.  Just lie. Just do it. Just say something!  What did three-digit numbers usually represent? A price, a time, an area code— “Oh.”If he was right,  Oh sh@t  was more like it. “Oh?” Izuku repeated. “Oh what?” “I’d forgotten—well…” Bakugo corrected himself. “I could be remembering it wrong, so don’t get too excited and lose your marbles, but I think it’s an area code.” “There’s no area code that’s four digits,” Iida announced. “Five-four-fifteen doesn’t work.” “But five-four-zero does,” Bakugo said, trying not to sound too smug.  B@tch. “People sub out O for zero when they talk sometimes, don’t they?” Izuku scratched the back of his head and looked over at Iida. “Five forty? Does that sound familiar to you?” Bakugo turned toward Iida, suddenly piecing it together. “You’re from around here?” Said teen just crossed his arms and looked out the window. “I’m from the Northern part.”Well, that was obvious. “Five forty is the western part,” Bakugo explained to Izuku. “I’m not sure how far north and south it extends, but it should be right around this area.” He showed him on the map. He didn’t just think, he knew. 540 had been his area code when he lived with his parents. “There are several cities and towns, but there’s also a lot of undeveloped land—not a bad place to hide out.” “Is that a fact?” Izuku kept his eyes on the road and his voice even, but there was something maybe a little bit too casual about it. “Did you grow up near there?” Bakugo looked down at the notebook in his hands again, feeling something clench in his chest. “No, I didn’t.” His voice was harsh, expressing just how much he wanted to talk about this. He heard Iida’s tongue cluck as he opened his mouth to say something, but there was a sharp cough from the driver’s seat. The topic had been dropped, and no one was willing to try picking it up again, least of all Bakugo. “Well, it’s as good of a lead as any, though I wish the area was a little smaller.” Izuku glanced his way. “Thank you.” A not-unpleasant warmth rushed up from his center as he turned away from those too-green eyes. “Whatever. Don’t mention it.” 
   And if I’m wrong…
He let the thought trail off. It was a good lead.With one last glance down the alley to make sure it was clear, Izuku refolded the map and tossed it back into the open glove box. Betty came back to life with a low growl. “Where are we going?” Iida asked next. “It’s a place I know.” Izuku gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Someplace I stayed before. The drive shouldn’t take us that long—maybe two hours. If I get lost, though, one of you city dwellers is going to have to step up to the plate and help me out.”It had been a very long time since someone had labeled Bakugo like that, as a person with a home.It was true, he had been born here, but Kamino had been his home for nearly as long as it hadn’t. Gray walls, concrete floors, and a white cell had bleached out almost every memory of his parent’s house, stripping away first the small details—the smell of his mom’s honey-soaked desserts, the order of the pictures lining the staircase wall—before going on to devour the bigger ones, too. Bakugo used to wonder—at night when it was quiet enough in his cell to think or when he let himself get to the point of wishing for home—if the home in his heart was supposed to be the place where’d he’d been born, or if it was the place that was raising him. If he got to choose it, or if it had somehow already claimed him. The truth was, when he looked at his reflection in the window, he couldn’t see any bit of the Bakugo that had lived in a little white house at the end of a lane, honey sticking to his fingers and eyes bright with laughter. And it made Bakugo feel empty in a way, like he had forgotten the words to his favorite song. That little boy was gone forever, and all that was left was a product of the place that had taught him to fear the good things inside of his heart.Hope and longing were a nuisance, but they still hurt all the same.It brought an especially painful stab to his heart when he thought of Eijiro and his blinding smile. The first boy who foolishly thought Bakugo was just as human as the rest of them. The first person in his life who thought he was still deserving of kindness.Well…not anymore. Not after he abandoned his friends, scr@w@ng up the one good thing in his life. Again and again.Sad enough, he was starting to see a pattern here.The hours passed by in a blink.Further along into the drive, they passed exit after exit, heading down a major highway with nothing more than a prayer that no one would pull them over wasn’t exactly anyone’s idea of a good time, but, for now, the risk seemed worth it—at least for the view. Bakugo used to love the Shena Valley, every inch of its gorgeous spread.When he was little, his parents used to pull him out of school early for a long weekend of hiking or camping. He never brought books or video games for the drive, he didn’t need them. He would just stare out the window and drink it all in, eyes wide with a child-like wonder. You know in movies when the shot freezes on the hero gazing out over the forest, or river, and the sun catches the leaves at just the right slant, and the music begins to swell? That’s exactly how Bakugo felt as they entered the valley. It didn’t hit him until that moment, until the first glimpse of the gauzy blue mist surrounding the mountains, that they really were in the western territory.That if they stayed on the highway, they’d be two hours away from his parents.
  Two hours. 
Bakugo didn’t know how to feel about that. “Ugh,” Izuku groaned, pointing toward the temporary road sign up ahead: 81 CLOSED BETWEEN YEVIN AND STAUNTON. USE LOCAL ROADS. By ten o’clock in the morning, they were finally deep enough into Yevin to find its pulse of life. Here and there they saw restaurants opening their doors to the morning light. They passed a few older adults pedaling away on their bikes, balancing precariously on two wheels with their briefcases or bags, their heads bent toward the sidewalk. Nobody looked up as they passed. Then they drove by a campus.Iida sighed at the sight of it, leaning his forehead against the window. “You okay, buddy?” Izuku asked. “Need to stop and smell the scholasticism?” “What’s the point?” Iida’s voice was solemn. “It’s closed like all of the others.” Bakugo tilted his head in question. “Why?” “Lack of students, mostly. If you’re old enough to go to college, you’re old enough to be drafted. Even if that wasn’t the case, I doubt people can afford it anymore.” “Jesus, that’s depressing,” he sighed. “The offer still stands,” Izuku told his friend. “You know I’m happy to break into a classroom for you if you need to sit in one of those cramped seats and stare at a whiteboard for a while. I know how much you like the smell of dry-erase markers.” “I appreciate that,” Iida said, folding his hands in his lap, “but it’s not necessary.” They passed what he thought must have been a black wrought iron fence, but it was almost impossible to see, trapped as it was beneath what looked to be a raggedy, patchwork blanket. It wasn’t until they got closer that Bakugo realized what they were actually looking at: hundreds, maybe thousands of sheets of paper that had been tied and taped onto the fence or stuck between the thin bars.Izuku slowed the car, tilting his sunglasses down to squint at them. “What do they say?” Iida asked. “I can’t…” Eri only put her head back down and shut her eyes.They were “Missing” posters with the faces of little kids and teenagers, photographs, and signs whose wording had been smeared away by rain—the biggest of these being a banner that said nothing more than LET THEM FREE. It hung crookedly, almost like someone had tried to rip it down, only to have someone else come along and halfheartedly string it back up. The wall of faded paper took a beating as the wind blew through the fences, ripping some of the more decrepit sheets loose and making others flutter like hummingbird wings. And where there was room, they saw stuffed animals and flowers and blankets and ribbons. No, not missing,  Bakugo thought bitterly.Those kids had been taken, or really were gone forever. Their parents and families were searching for them, posting their pictures, because they wanted them back. Needed them. “God.” Izuku’s voice sounded strained. “Where…where did they say we could pick the eighty-one back up again?” The trees lining the lonely one-lane back road were just coming into their lovely young skin, but in the afternoon light, their shadows couldn’t have been longer. ^ Bakugo slipped off into uneasy sleep somewhere between Staunton and the next town over and woke up just in time to get a perfect view of the towering white warehouse that was a former grocery store.Sure, the sign was still clinging desperately to the side of the building, but that was about the only recognizable thing about the supercenter. Several stray carts wandered across the parking lot aimlessly, carried this and that way depending on each moody gust of wind. Except for a few abandoned cars and green dumpsters, the enormous blacktop parking lot was empty. Against the tangerine blush of the afternoon sun, it looked like the apocalypse had already touched down here.And they were only a stone’s throw away from his old home.A ten-minute drive. Bakugo’s stomach clenched at the thought.Once again, Izuku insisted on going in alone to check it out. He suddenly felt Eri’s rubber glove on his arm and didn’t need to look at her face to know what kind of expression he would find there. She didn’t want that dummy charging into what looked like an honest-to-God hellhole alone any more than he did. This is why you stayed, Bakugo reminded himself. To take care of them. And, in that moment, the person that needed him most was the one walking away. Stupid, so stupid.Bakugo jumped out of the car, his hand gripping the door handle. “Honk the horn three times for trouble,” he said to Eri and slid the door shut. Izuku must have heard his angry footsteps, because he waited, leaning against one of the rusted shopping cart stalls. “Any way I could convince you to go back to Betty?” “No. So don’t waste your breath trying.” Bakugo nodded ahead. “Come on.” Izuku fell in step beside him, fists dug deep in his pockets. Bakugo couldn’t see his eyes, but the way he was slouching toward the demolished doors was telling enough. “You asked me before how I knew about this place…” he said when they were near the entrance. “I know, none of my business.” “Bakugo.” Those green eyes softened. “It’s okay, I just don’t know where to begin. You know Iida and I were both in hiding? Well, it wasn’t exactly pleasant for either of us. He at least got to stay at his grandparents old abandoned cabin.” “Ah, but you had the pleasure of holing up in this fine establishment.” “Among other places,” Izuku’s voice was hushed. “I…don’t like to talk about that time in front of Eri. I don’t want her to think that that’s what her life is going to be.” “But you can’t lie to her,” Bakugo said sharply, cutting him a glance. “I know you don’t want to scare her, but you can’t pretend that some of her life isn’t going to be crappy and difficult. It’s not fair.” “Not fair?” Izuku sucked in a sharp breath, closing his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to his usual soft tones. “Never mind, forget it.” “Hey.” Bakugo’s hand was quick, reaching out to grab his arm. “I get it, okay? I’m on your side. But it’s a f@ck@d up world we live in and you can’t act like any of this is going to be easy. Don’t do that to her—don’t set her up to be crushed. I was in camp with hundreds of kids who grew up thinking Mommy and Daddy were always going to be there for them, and they—we—are all coming out of this seriously damaged.” “Whoa, whoa,” Izuku’s eyes widened, all traces of anger gone. “You are not damaged.”That, Bakugo could have protested until he was blue in the face. Whoever had unhooked the stores glass sliding doors from their tracks hadn’t done a good job of finding a safe place to store them. Shards of glass coated the cement floor, blown out dozens of feet from the black metal frames. They stepped over and through their mangled shapes, entering that small, strange space where the greeter would have been. Next to him, Izuku’s foot slipped against the sallow dust collected on the floor.Bakugo shot an arm out to brace him as he grunted in surprise. Even as he helped Izuku right himself, his eyes remained fixed on the ground, where a dozen footprints fanned out in the dust. Every shape and size, from the jagged pattern of the sole of a man’s hiking boot to the decorative swirly curls left behind by a young child’s tennis shoe, all stamped out there like cookies cut from a fresh spread of dough. “They could be old,” Bakugo whispered tonelessly. Fat f@ck@ng chance though. Izuku nodded but didn’t pull away from his side.He hadn’t fooled either of them.The store’s power had been shut off some time ago, and it was clear it had been open to the wild for too long. There was only a second between when they first heard the rattling in the nearby shelves and when Izuku jumped in front of him. “It’s—” Bakugo began, but Izuku silenced him with a shake of his head. They watched the shelves, waiting. And when the deer, a small thing with a silky caramel coat and big black eyes, came prancing out from behind the overturned magazine racks, Izuku and Bakugo looked at each other, dissolving into small breathless sighs of relief. Izuku pressed his finger to his lips and waved Bakugo forward, eyes scanning the dark fleet of identical cash registers in front of them. Someone had taken the carts from the store and tried stuffing them in the lanes as if to create a kind of fortified wall against any unwanted visitors. Carefully, without disturbing the pileup of plastic baskets, they climbed up and over the nearest register’s conveyor belt. Standing on top of it, Bakugo could see where more shelves had been lined up in front of the other exit.It looked as though something huge had come slamming through it at one point, bursting through the makeshift barricade.  What did that?  He thinks there’s some part of everyone, with quirks or not, that’s tuned into the memories of a place. Strong feelings, especially terror and desperation, leave an imprint on the air that echoes back to whoever’s unlucky enough to walk through that place again. It felt like the darkness was stroking beneath his chin with a beckoning finger, whispering to him to lean forward and know its secrets. Something terrible happened here, he thought, feeling a cold drip down his spine. The wind whistled through the broken doors, playing them the kind of screeching song that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.Screw this, he wanted to leave.This was not a safe place. This was not a place to bring Eri or Iida—so why was that stupid Broccoli-head still going forward? Overhead, the emergency lights flickered on and off, buzzing like boxes of trapped flies. Everything beneath them was cast in a sickly green light, and as he moved farther and farther down the first aisle, it seemed like the darkness waiting at the end of it would swallow him whole. Bakugo sprung forward into the sea of empty metal shelves, half of which were knocked flat on their backs or leaning against others in slanted lines, their shelves buckling under some invisible weight. His shoes squeaked as he wove through the sea of lotions, mouthwash, and nail polish on the floor. Things that seemed so necessary in the past, so vital to life, wasted and forgotten.When he caught up to Izuku again, his traitorous fingers closed around the soft, loose material of his jacket sleeve. At the slightest tug, Izuku turned, eyes lit up in surprise. Bakugo took a step back and pulled his hand back to his side, shocked at himself. It had felt natural to do it—he hadn’t been thinking at all, only feeling a very sharp, real need to be closer to the boy. What the hell? “I think we should leave,” Bakugo whispered firmly. “Something about this sketchy place doesn’t feel right.” And it had nothing to do with the strange crying of the wind, or the birds high up in the old store’s rafters. “We’re okay,” Izuku insisted. His back was to Bakugo, but he slipped his hand from his pocket. It drifted back toward him, floating up through the darkness.Bakugo didn’t know whether Izuku meant to motion him to move forward, or for him to take it, but he couldn’t bring himself to do either. They walked side by side toward the back right corner of the store; it seemed that this section, with all of its hardware and lightbulbs, had been left somewhat alone, or at least hadn’t seemed as useful to the people who had picked the other shelves to the bone. Bakugo saw where they were headed immediately. Someone had set up their own little camp, using bright blue pool rafts as mattresses. A few empty boxes of graham crackers and cupcakes were piled on top of a cooler, and on top of that was a small wireless radio and lantern flashlight.“Wow, I can’t believe this is still here.”Izuku stood a foot behind, his arms crossed over his chest. Bakugo followed his gaze down to the dozens of indentations in the cracked white tile. They were almost enough to distract him from the patchwork of old bloodstains on the ground beneath his feet. His lips parted. “It’s old,” Izuku said, quickly, like that would make him feel any better. He reached toward him, forcing a smile. Bakugo blew out a tense breath, eyeing him skeptically. “What?”Izuku smiled, not dropping his arm. “Just take it.”This was ridiculous, but he didn’t want the other teen to think he was a coward. But also, what kind of weirdo wanted to hold hands? Bakugo rolled his eyes, finally reaching over to take his.At almost the exact moment their skin touched, he saw it. The emergency light above that section of the back wall snapped back to full glare like a spotlight, illuminating the enormous black symbol painted there, along with a very clear message: GET OUT NOW. The thick, uneven letters looked like they were weeping. The light crackled and went back out with a loud pop, but Bakugo still threw himself forward, out of Izuku’s grip, straight for the spray-painted message. Because of that smell…the way the words drooped…He pressed his fingers against the symbol and they came away sticky. Black. Fresh paint.Which could only mean one thing. Izuku had only just reached him when Bakugo felt the strangest sensation of burning, right at his core.He looked down, expecting to see a spark igniting the bottom of his pants, and then he was falling, and Izuku was falling on top of him. Bulldozed right over, as if they had been nothing more than two daisies poking up through the cracks in the tile. Izuku’s shoulder rammed into his chest, knocking the air out of his lungs.Bakugo tried to lift his head to see exactly what the hell happened, but there was this weight—this solid, invisible slab of stone—keeping him on his back, and Izuku flat against him. The floor was freezing at his backside, but his entire focus was on the solid press of Izuku’s shoulder against his cheek. Their hands were caught between them, and for a moment Bakugo had the uneasy sensation of not knowing where one of them began and the other ended. Izuku swallowed hard, the pulse in his throat close enough for Bakugo to hear it.Then Izuku moved to lift his head, straining the muscles that lined the strong column of his spine.“Hey!” he shouted. “Who’s there?” The only response was another shove from the invisible hands.Suddenly, they were shooting across the ground, Izuku’s jacket squealing against the dusty floor as they slid, and his hands gripped Bakugo’s waist in panic. He watched the emergency lights beyond Izuku’s head pass with dizzying speed, tracking together like a single beam. Riotous laughter followed them down the aisles, seeming to come from below them, above, on either side. Bakugo thought he saw a dark shape move out of the corner of his eye, but it looked more like a monster than a person. They tore through ribbons of ripped shower curtains, the body lotion, and the bleach, to the line of cash registers at the front of the store. “Cut it out!” Izuku yelled desperately. “We’re—” There are some sounds you hear once and never forget. A bone breaking. An ice cream truck song. Velcro. A gun’s safety clicking off.  No,  he thought,  f@ck@ng hell, not now—not here!  They slid to a painful stop at the checkout lanes, the impact with the metal jarring every sense out of his body. There was a single moment of agonizing silence before the once-dead store lights surged into brightness. And then, the cash register flashed on, conveyer belt sputtering to life—first one lane, then the next, and the next. Every single one, falling to order like soldiers.The numbered signs above blinked between yellow and blue, like a dozen warning signals, faster than his eyes could follow.At first, Bakugo thought it was White Noise; all at once, the building’s security alarms, intercom system, and televised displays went off, a hundred different voices screaming at them. Block after block of ceiling lights snapped on, electricity pouring through them after years of existing as nothing more than hollow, dusty veins. At a familiar sound, they both turned to see Eri with Iida next to her, his face ashen.After only a few seconds of a power surge, the lights on the registers began to pop like firecrackers, dropping streams of blue-white sparks and glass to the ground. Whatever happened was only meant as a distraction; a flash and a bang to draw the attention of their attackers away from them long enough for an escape. Out of the corner of his eye, Bakugo could see Eri waving them toward her, but the machine next to them had heated to a terrifying molten glow. Bakugo felt the invisible grip on him slacken suddenly, but shock kept him still as the dead.Someone wasn’t giving up.Izuku and he must have had the same thought, the same scorching fear, because they both pushed to their feet, shouting.“Turn it off!” someone else managed to scream over the alarms. “Eri, move!” Izuku stood and stumbled over cans of sunscreen and bug spray from a nearby display. Bakugo saw him lift his arms, ready to yank Eri away with his quirk, but Iida was faster. He tugged her away, all but ripping her arm from the metal. The lights went out.Just before the overhead bulbs exploded, he saw Eri’s face as she came out of whatever trance she had been locked in. Her big eyes were rimmed with red, her long silver hair on end, freckles standing out against the full flush of her oval face. The sudden darkness allowed Izuku to knock both her and Iida to the ground. And then, by some small miracle, the emergency lights flicked back on.The first sign of movement didn’t come from them.Bakugo saw their attackers clearly now, climbing over the mangled heaps of white shelves.Four of them, each dressed in layers of black, each with a gun raised and ready. His first thought, as it almost always was when he saw anyone in a black uniform, was to run. To get the others and bolt. But these weren’t guards. They weren’t even grown-ups. They were kids, like them.As they came closer, Bakugo saw their mismatched dark clothes and the grime on their faces. They were all thin limbs and hollow cheeks as if they had stretched out a great deal in a short period of time. All boys, about his age. All easy to take, if they had to. “Christ on a cracker,” the one closest to him muttered, shaking his mop of brown hair. “I told you we should have checked the van first.” Izuku’s green head popped up from the wreckage. “Hey, what were you guys trying to pull here?” he snapped. There was another sound, too, like the mewling of a kitten. Or a little girl crying. Bakugo brushed off the shock, climbing over a bin of bargain DVDs to get to them. Eri sat on the floor, facing toward Iida’s squinting eyes. Without the glasses perched on his nose, he looked like a different person, yet still as blind as a bat.“She’s alright,” Iida told them quietly. “No injuries.” Izuku was suddenly standing beside Bakugo, using his shoulder for balance as he climbed over one of the overturned shelves. “You okay?” he asked, worried eyes shifting over him. “Fine,” Bakugo grunted. “P@ss@d as hell. You?” “Fine. P@ss@d.” He thought for sure he was going to have to hold Izuku back as they came closer to the cluster of boys, but Izuku’s fury seemed to fall away from him with each step. The other kids had regrouped beside an overturned display of neon-colored pool noodles. The tallest one, his cloud of sleek black hair hovering around a pencil-thin neck, stepped in front of the others—the brunette kid who had spoken before, and two big-shouldered raven heads that looked like brothers. “Look, man, I’m sorry,” the kid started. “Do you always do stuff like this?” Izuku said angrily. “Attacking people without even checking to see if they’re armed—if they’re like you?”The leader bristled. “You could have been tracers.” Like that was an excuse for everything.Bakugo couldn’t hold it in anymore. He stepped closer to them, eyes narrowed dangerously. “Do we look  like tracers? Maybe if you had opened your eyes for a hot second or tried using your brain, you—”A hand gripped his shoulder.Bakugo turned his furious red gaze toward Izuku, who just shook his head. He huffed and shrugged his hand off, clenching his jaw. Fine. “Hey, it was your friend that did all of—this.” The brunette kid gestured toward the shelves. “The girl needs a leash. Touching things she shouldn’t be.”“Watch your mouth,” Bakugo snapped before Izuku could. The black-haired brothers took a step forward, their eyes lighting at the challenge. “She wouldn’t have panicked if you hadn’t pulled guns on us!”“We wouldn’t have had to use them if you’d paid attention to our warning back there and just left!”“Because you gave us so much time to get away—” Bakugo hissed, ready to kick their skinny little asses. “Look, we could go back and forth forever and it won’t solve a thing,” Izuku interrupted calmly. “We were hoping to spend the night here, but if you’ve claimed it or whatever, then we’ll go. That’s the only reason we came—for shelter.” “For shelter,” the leader repeated dubiously. Bakugo ground his teeth. “Did he f@ck@ng stutter?” “No, but my ears are still bleeding from your girl’s foolish attempt at a distraction,” he snarled back. “Maybe the little guard dog here should repeat it, for good measure.” Izuku stepped up again, shooting an arm out, cutting off Bakugo’s warpath before it could start. “We just want to stay here a night. We’re not looking for any trouble,” he said earnestly. The leader gave Bakugo the once-over, his eyes drifting to a stop where his hands were fisted at his side, bunching up. “Looks like you already found it.”  ^ The leader’s name was Sen, and he hailed from somewhere out east. The nervous brunette-haired kid refused to introduce himself but was called Kosei by the others. Bakugo caught that he was from some town way out north, but that was as much as he was willing to share with anyone.The raven heads—who were, as he guessed, brothers—were Hiryu and Hirko. The only thing the ramshackle group of Yellows had in common, outside of their pool of food and an alarming pile of firearms and knives, was their camp out east, which they lovingly referred to only as “Satan’s @ss Crack.”They told the incredibly dramatic, and highly improbable, tale of their escape from the guard's custody over their shared meal of fruit snacks, stale chips, and Twinkies. “Let me get this straight,” said Iida, his face etched with disbelief. “You were being moved from one camp to another?” Sen leaned back against one of the glass freezer doors. “They weren’t taking us to another camp. They packed up as many guys as they could and said we were being brought to a testing facility in Tokyo.” “Only guys?” Iida asked. “We didn’t have girls there.” Sen’s voice was heavy with relief. That explained a lot—particularly why he still seemed to be blaming that whole incident on Eri. Bakugo gave him enough death glares to make him look away. “Otherwise I’m sure they would have been loaded up, too.” “I’m surprised they even told you that much,” Izuku said, trying to steer the conversation back on track. “Do you think that’s actually where they were bringing you?” “No,” Kosei cut in. “It was pretty clear that they had orders to get rid of us.” “And a storm flooded the road, flipping the bus and allowing you to escape?” That was the part of the story Bakugo had problems with, too.It was that easy for them? A simple intervention of Mother Nature and they were saved, washed out to freedom and a new life Biblical-style? Where was the detail of guards traveling with them? “We’ve been holed up ever since. It took something like six months to get word to my dad that I was out and safe, and another three to get some kind of response from him.” Iida leaned forward. “How, exactly, did you get in touch with them? The internet?” “Nah, man,” Sen said. “After that terrorist business, you can’t even search for recipes online without the government snooping and breaking down your door. All they need is one whiff of trouble.” “What terrorists?” Bakugo interrupted. “The League,” Iida informed him. “Don’t you remember—ah.” He seemed to realize his mistake a second later, and, with more patience than Bakugo thought he possessed, explained, “Three years ago, the League hacked into the government’s ranking databases and tried posting information about the camps online for everyone to see. Other groups took that as their cue to hack into banks, the stock exchange, you name it.”“So, they cracked down on it?”“Right. Most of the social networking sites are gone, and all of the e-mail services are required to monitor the e-mails being sent on their servers.”Iida turned to the other boys, who were staring at Bakugo with varying degrees of interest and curiosity. He didn't think Hiryu—or was it Hirko?—had stopped staring at him the entire time he had sat there. “How, then?” “Easy,” Sen shrugged, with a highly unnecessary eyebrow raised in Bakugo’s direction. “We used what was left. I put an ad in my hometown paper with a message only my brother would get.” Bakugo didn’t need to look to know that Iida had narrowed his eyes, tensing beside him.“And who paid for this ad?” Iida asked. “The editors didn’t just let you put that in there for free, did they?” “No, the Slip Kid paid,” Sen admitted. “He set everything up for me.” Bakugo sat up straight, kicking aside some of the empty foil wrappers. He pinned the boy with a stare. “You’ve actually been in contact with the Slip Kid?” “Oh yes. He’s like…a god,” Kosei said, his breath rushing out. “He gathered all of us together. Kids from all over, older kids, young ones, too. They say that the guards stay away from his court in the woods because they’re afraid of him. That he set his camp on fire and killed all the guards sent to bring him back.” “Who is he?” Bakugo demanded. The four of them grinned at one another, the jumping shadows from the emergency lights making them look even smugger.He wanted to knock that look off their faces. “What else?” Iida pried, sucking all of this down eagerly. “How was he able to send the money for the ad? What’s Yuuei like—where is it?” Bakugo glanced back over his shoulder to Izuku, who stood behind him, leaning against what used to be a TV dinner freezer. He’d been strangely quiet the entire time, his lips pressed tight together, but his face otherwise perfectly devoid of emotion. “They have a pretty sweet setup at Yuuei,” Kosei answered. “But if you want to get there, you have to find it for yourself.” “Sounds that way,” Izuku cut in, finally. “Are there a lot of kids there?” The four of them had to think about this. “More than a hundred, but not, like, a whole bunch,” Sen admitted. “Why?” Izuku shook his head, but Bakugo was surprised to see a hint of disappointment there. “Just wondering. Most never were in camps, I take it?”“Some.” Sen shrugged. “And some found it after dodging tracer or guard custody.” “And the Slip Kid, he doesn’t have…” Izuku seemed to struggle to figure out how to ask his question. “He doesn’t have plans for them, does he? What’s his endgame?” The others seemed to find the question as strange as he did. It wasn’t until Sen said, “No endgame. Just livin’, I guess,” that Bakugo realized he hadn’t once thought about the reason why Izuku would be looking for the Slip Kid. He’d just assumed that he and the others wanted to find him to get home and to deliver Kota’s letter—but if that really was the case, what had sparked the fire in Izuku’s eyes? His hands were stuffed in his jacket pockets, but Bakugo could see the outline of them curling into fists. “What about directions?” Iida asked. “Well, now.” Something changed in Sen’s expression; a slick smile took over his face as his foot landed near Bakugo’s.The brothers, Hiryu and Hirko, hadn’t said a word since they’d sat down in their makeshift encampment in the freezer aisles, but now looked at each other with identical expressions of knowing. Bakugo tried to bite back the revulsion rising in his chest.“I’m sure they’d be happy to have you,” Sen began to say as his foot inched towards Bakugo’s shoe. He kicked the other teen in the ankle, hard, smiling smugly when Sen’s face scrunched up in pain.Kosei took over. “It’s in a great location near the coast, but there just aren’t a whole lot of kids. You should go. It’s safer than getting caught by one of the tribes. There’s a group of Orange kids that hangs out around Norfolk—they’re nasty. Steal the clothes right off your back. There was a tribe of Yellows around here for a while, but a kid we were in camp with claims they were all taken in by guards.” All of this tribe stuff was new to him.Kids banding together and roving the countryside, trying to avoid getting caught, taking care of one another? It sounded interesting.Unfortunately, before he could focus too much on it, the parasite by his side, the kid being dumber than rocks, tried to subtly scoot closer until their arms were a hair away. Bakugo clenched his jaw, feeling the trickle at the back of his mind, the buzz that pushed past even his anger, and the growing pain that blossomed in his forearms.He wanted to blast this Sen kid to hell and back. Bakugo’s hand clenched into a fist as he started to detach from both Sen and his stupid actions, he was clearly looking to die, but Iida was already there. He reached across Bakugo’s lap and pushed Sen’s shoulder away with a look of pure disdain. For his part, Sen only looked slightly embarrassed, his eyes glassy.Bakugo glanced around, his heart lodged somewhere between his mouth and chest, but no one seemed to have noticed what happened. The only one who moved was Iida, and it was just to scoot closer.  D@mn it,  Bakugo thought, squeezing his eyes shut again.His hands curled together into fists until he could feel his nails dig into the skin like he could push down the rising explosion there by force. Had it been a second longer, his palms might have started to spark.Too close. That was way too d@mn close. “What was that kid’s name again? The Yellow who worked with us in the kitchen? Fred? Frank?” Kosei lay back on his sleeping bag, folding his hands over his chest. “Felipe—Felipe Marino?” Sen, however, didn’t seem to get the f@ck@ng hint and didn’t bother to scoot any further away. “Felipe?” Izuku interrupted as if coming out of a trance. “Did you say Felipe Marco?” “You know him?”Izuku nodded. “We traveled together for a while.” “Must have been before he got his ass caught here,” Sen said. “He was the one that told us about this place. Said he was here with his friend—that you?” “Yeah. What happened to him?” Izuku knelt, wedging himself between Sen and Bakugo. “They brought us to separate camps,” Sen replied with a shrug. “He was in one of the earlier buses they were taking up north. Who knows?” So some of the Yellows at their camp had been removed, too. They must have only been taken from the bigger camps, not the smaller ones that had been cobbled together farther west. “I miss that kid. He was smart. Knew how to use his powers—better than your pet, at least. Might as well send her back for all the good she’s going to do for you.” Sen nodded toward Eri, who was sitting with her back to them, working through the pages of multiplication problems Izuku had made for her. And that was about as much as Bakugo could f@ck@ng take. “You have exactly two seconds to stop talking,” Bakugo growled, “before I bash your head in and string your carcass up for the birds to eat.” “Do it,” Iida hissed beside him.But Izuku put a firm hand on Bakugo’s shoulder, effectively shutting down any chance he had of making good on his threat. Sen kept his face passive, easygoing, but his breath hitched in his throat. He stretched his legs out, brushing them against the floor. He held up his hands. “All I’m saying is there’s something off about her. She’s not like the others, is she?” He leaned closer. “Is she retarded? Did they do testing on her?” “She’s mute, not deaf,” Izuku cut in smoothly. “And I promise you, she’s probably five times smarter than the seven of us put together.” “I’m not so sure about  that,” Iida began. “I’m—” Izuku silenced him with a look and brought his lips down next to Bakugo’s ear. “Take Eri?” Bakugo rolled his eyes, trying to ignore the buzz that shot down his spine, but nodded, fingers tapping Izuku’s to show that he understood. He pushed himself up off the ground, feeling calmer now that fuckface was further away. When he reached Eri, Bakugo held out his hand to her. She raised hers without looking up, blindly reaching for his. He stared at the yellow glove in front of him, streaked with dirt and black grime, and, despite knowing what might happen, pulled it right off her little fingers. Bakugo couldn’t say why he had done it; maybe being so close to Izuku and not losing control had made him stupidly brave, reminding him of earlier when Izuku did the exact same thing, or maybe he was just sick of the reality that forced her into those gloves. All Bakugo knew for sure was that if he ever saw Eri wear those again, it would be too soon. Eri jerked when she felt the warm skin of his hand against hers and tried to tug away. Her eyes went wide, but he couldn’t tell if it was from worry or wonder. Well, he did like to keep people on their toes.“Come on,” Bakugo said, squeezing her hand. “I’m sick of these losers.” Her face brightened, but she didn’t smile.“Don’t go too far,” Izuku called after them. “Don’t go too far,” the other boys echoed, then burst out into laughter. Eri’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “Yeah, tell me about it,” Bakugo grunted and took her as far away from those bastards as he could.For the first ten or so minutes they spent walking around the store, Eri kept turning to look at their linked hands, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Now and then, some bin of unwanted DVDs or an aisle endcap of pointless knickknacks would catch her attention, but her red eyes would always wander back to where their hands swung between them. Eventually, they had just turned down one of many ravaged cleaning supply aisles when she tugged at his arm. “What’s wrong?” Bakugo asked, kicking aside a stray mop. Eri pointed at the glove he was twirling around with his free hand. He lifted their hands between their bodies. “What’s so bad about this?” She blew out the breath she had been holding, and it was evident he had missed the point. Bakugo was dragged to the other end of the aisle, where she let go of his hand to sn@tch a white box from the shelf. Eri went to work tearing the box open, tossing aside the foam and plastic stuffing to get the old-fashioned silver toaster inside. “I’m not sure we’re going to need that,” Bakugo started slowly, trying to figure out what this kid was doing, but she pinned him with a look that very clearly said,  Quiet, please.  Eri tugged the other glove off her hand and spread all ten fingers out along either side of the appliance. After a moment, he saw her shut her red eyes. The metal piping that served as the toaster’s innards heated to a glowing red. A long black cord dangled near her feet, unplugged.The cheap little thing only lasted another minute before its insides started to melt together. He made her put it down at the first sign of smoke.  See?  she seemed to be saying.  Get it?  “So you have some energy left from that sh@t-head driver's quirk still in you,” he guessed, reaching for her hand again. “But you can’t do that to me. You don’t have to worry about hurting me, because you never could.” I know how it feels, is what he really should have been saying.He knows what it’s like to be scared of what you can barely control. He forced himself to stop thinking about what he had done to that doctor and his own mom. It had been years. He didn’t let himself wonder if he could do it again, let alone test it out. But how, he wondered, were either of them ever going to learn to control themselves if they couldn’t practice? If they couldn’t stretch and test boundaries? “Let’s see if we can find something useful,” Bakugo said, slipping his rough fingers around hers again. He waited until he felt her hand close around his before leading her back down the aisle. “What do you think—” He’s was not even sure what he was about to ask her, but she wasn’t paying attention to him.Eri stopped so suddenly and gripped his hand so d@mn hard, that he stumbled back a few steps.Bakugo’s eyes followed the line of her outstretched arm to the upended clothing and shoe racks. More specifically, to the lone hot pink dress dangling from an otherwise empty rack. Eri took off at a run, blitzing down the aisles of extension cords and buckets. Bakugo tried to keep up with her, but it was like the wind had caught her heels and was propelling her forward. She stopped just short of the rack. He watched, fascinated, as one of her hands reached out to stroke the fabric, only to pull back at the last second. “It’s…nice,” he told her, trying to be encouraging. The dress itself flared out at the waist, with a big ribbon bow at the place where the sleeveless top met the pink and white striped skirt. Eri looked like she wanted nothing more than to pull it down, hug it to her chest, and press her face against the satiny fabric. Bakugo could think of about a thousand things he missed while he was at Kamino, but fancy clothes were not on that list. His dad’s favorite story to tell strangers and indulgent relatives was the day he and Mitsuki tried to b@tton Bakugo up into a blue suit for one of his birthday parties when he was three. Because the buttons were so small and impossible for him to reach, he shredded the fabric by hand, bit by bit. He had spent the rest of the party proudly parading around in his All Might underwear. “Are you going to try it on?” Bakugo asked.Eri looked back up at him and shook her head. Her hands dropped from where they were hovering over the plastic hanger’s shoulders, and it took him a moment to recognize what was happening.Eri thought she didn’t deserve it.She thought it was too nice, too new, too pretty. Bakugo felt a sweltering hate rise in him, but he didn’t know where to direct it. Her parents, for sending her away? Her camp? The guards? To hell with them all.He pulled the dress off the silver rack with one hand and took Eri’s arm in the other. Bakugo knew she was looking at him again, her crimson eyes wide with confusion, but instead of explaining—instead of trying to force her to understand the words he couldn’t manage—he led her over to the dressing rooms in the center of the clothing section, thrust the dress into her hands, and told her to try it on. It was like tugging a boat to dock on a thin line. The first few times he handed it to her, she would put it down and he’d have to pick it back up again. He didn't know if her desire finally won out, or if he’d managed to exhaust even her wariness, but by the time she appeared, peeking out from around her dressing room’s door, Bakugo was so relieved he almost smiled.“Screw what anyone else thinks,” he told her, helping her fluff the ends of the pink dress, even if it was a serious eye sore. “You are your own d@mn person and you can do whatever the hell you want.”Bakugo turned her back around, so she could see herself in the room’s tall mirror. When he finally coaxed her to look, he felt her small shoulders jerk under his hands—saw her eyes go huge and bright, only to droop again a moment later. Her fingers began to pluck at the fabric. She was shaking her head, as if to say,  No, no I can’t.  “Why not?” Bakugo asked, turning her so she was looking at him. “You like it, right?” She didn’t look up, but he saw her nod. “Then what’s the problem?” At that, he caught her sneaking another look at herself in the corner of the mirror. Her hands were smoothing the fabric of the skirt, and she didn’t seem aware of it in the slightest.“That’s what I thought.” Bakugo nodded firmly. “There is no problem. Now let’s see what other crap we can find.” Afterward, Eri wanted to find something for him. Unsurprisingly, the adult section had been decimated by looters; his choices seemed limited to hunting gear and industrial jumpsuits. After several patient explanations about why he wouldn't touch the silky blue nightgown or the daisy skirt with a ten-foot pole, she—with a look of total and complete exasperation—accepted that he was only ever going to try on jeans and plain T-shirts. He was  not  going to wear a d@mn dress. No way in hell. Not with his pride still very much intact.And then she pointed to the bra rack, and a part of him wanted to crawl under the discarded piles of kids pajamas and die. 
   F@ck, why me?
The letters and numbers might as well have been in gibberish for how much sense he could make of them, and he half expected Eri to start laughing when the first touch of angry huffs rose from his chest. He didn’t understand this girly shit, okay?There were not many times he’d stop and think,  I wish my mom were here. She could have helped Eri, would have loved to. Bakugo understood now, at least, that what he had done to her could never be fixed. She would never look at him again and not feel scared, and he would never be able to think of anything other than the sound of her screams echoing in his bedroom that night. It was strange how his feelings about her seemed to change by the minute; that one moment he could remember what it felt like for her to brush his untamed hair, and the next, be furious that she never came to find him. That she hadn’t taught him how to live in his own skin like she was supposed to.But whose fault was that, really?Eri’s lips puckered in thought, her eyebrows knitting together as she surveyed the mountain of undergarments in front of them. She began to pluck one of every size, tossing them back toward him until she was laughing herself silly for no real reason at all.Bakugo was comfortable enough to crack a smile. Even if he wasn’t a girl and didn’t understand half of this, it was still a nice moment. Eventually, he found other clothes he thought might have been the right fit for him. While he changed out of his ratty sweatshirt, Eri happily pulled together an outfit for herself that looked like something out of a store catalog—the pink dress, white leggings beneath it, and a jean jacket that was one or two sizes too big for her. The rest of the things she found were stuffed into a flower-patterned backpack Bakugo was bullied into pulling down off a display for her. Now that she had found her own things, she wanted to go whole hog and pick out things for the other two.When he found her a new pair of tennis shoes with rosy laces, she actually wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him, like she could squeeze the thanks into him. Bakugo just blinked and awkwardly patted her on the back. And while Eri was not especially impressed by the pair of short black boots he found for himself in the men’s section, she didn’t try to force any of the girly ribbon flats or towering high heels on him thankfully. He’d have burnt them to a crisp.Eri was in the process of neatly folding a button-down shirt she had chosen for Iida when Bakugo remembered something.“I’ll be right back,” he told her. “Wait right here, okay?” It took him a few minutes to find the aisle again.Izuku and he had walked past it so quickly as they made their way toward the back of the store, he wasn’t altogether sure that he hadn’t imagined seeing them. But there they were, just above the cleaning supplies—a pair of bright pink rubber gloves dangling amid a sea of traditional yellow ones. “Hey, Eri,” Bakugo called as he made his way back to her.He dangled them out in front of him smugly and waited for her to turn around. When she did, her mouth actually fell open. She was so dazzled by her new gloves that she walked with her hands stretched out in front of her—the way a princess examining the collection of fine jewelry around her fingers and wrists would. Bakugo watched her curtsy and twirl in her new dress as they lapped the store, all the while her feet dancing over the evidence of what had happened at the checkout lanes. Watching her, feeling the exhilaration swelling in his chest, Bakugo couldn’t say he was all that aware of the broken glass and flickering monitor displays, either. They turned down the dimly lit corridor of cosmetics, and he could barely fight the grin off his face. He let her have this, a fun moment after their previous sh@tty days, and let her do whatever she wanted. Within reason, of course, meaning he resigned himself to being her dress-up doll, as long as she wasn’t trying to force another stupid dress on him again. Izuku found them there a short while later, just as Eri was finished placing butterfly clips in his spiky hair. He agreed to sit on the tile and she sat on the shelf behind him like some fairy queen. “Not half bad,” Bakugo told her when she held a broken mirror out in front of his face. “You got skills, shorty.” And his reward for that was the feeling of her arm’s birdlike bones twining around his neck.Bakugo doesn’t know why he did it, but he twisted around so that he was facing her because he wanted her to see his face—wanted her to see how serious, how sincerely he meant it when he said for the first time, “You’re a good kid.” “You two have been busy, I see.” Izuku leaned against the aisle’s endcap, eyebrows raised.Eri bounded toward him, scooping up the shirts and socks she’d picked for him.“Thank you—oh gosh, Iida is going to cry when he sees this!” His hand came down to rest on top of her head. “Jeez, I leave you two alone for a little while and you clean out the joint. Good job.” Bakugo pushed himself up off the floor, helping them gather up the clothes and supplies they’d managed to scrounge up. Izuku turned to him with that stupid smile, but Bakugo held his hand up. “Tell anyone, say one word, and I’ll kick your puny little ass.”“No, no!” Izuku chuckled. “I was just gonna say…you look very pretty.”Bakugo whacked him in the head, carefully pulling the butterfly clips out of his hair before handing them to Eri as she smiled at him in a silent thanks. Like hell was he going to let Iida see him like that. He’d rather die. That done, they started their slow, reluctant shuffle back to the others. All three of them seemed to be aware that once they left that peaceful moment, it would be behind them forever. Eri had only just darted out a few steps ahead when Izuku turned to him and said, “Thanks for doing this. I’m glad you got what I meant.” He gave Bakugo’s hair a little playful flick. “I just wanted to ask them a few more questions.” “And you didn’t want”—Bakugo nodded toward Eri—“to hear?” Izuku bashfully looked down at his feet, and when he looked back up, his ears were pink. “Yeah, but also…you were kind of distracting them.” “What? I won’t apologize for threatening those shitheads—” “No—distracting  them,” Izuku repeated. “With your…face, I think. They, um, stared a lot.”“Oh.” Bakugo recovered quickly, schooling his expression. “Did you get anything useful out of them?” “The names of a few of the friendlier tribes, a few cities under lockdown for insurrection, stuff like that. I just wanted to get a sense of what was happening in the area.” “I meant about the Slip Kid,” Bakugo said, maybe a little too eagerly. “Nothing we didn’t have before. Everyone takes some sacred oath not to reveal more information than that. Ridiculous.” “They really wouldn’t give you any more information?” Bakugo asked, not entirely surprised.Izuku looked away. “Sen made us an offer, a trade, but we turned him down.” “What did he want?” What was so valuable that they wouldn’t trade it for the one thing that would reunite them with their families? Was it Black Betty? “Doesn’t matter,” Izuku shrugged, and there was finality in his voice. “If those guys managed, I’m sure we can find Yuuei ourselves. Eventually.” “Yeah. With the combined brain power of a rock, I’m not sure how they ever did it.”Izuku snorted. Out of the corner of his eye, Bakugo watched him hoist the pile of clothes onto his shoulder, his gaze never leaving where Eri was hopping and skipping through the field of cans and old magazines. Bakugo glanced down at a movie star’s face as they passed it, his eyes falling over the words SHE FINALLY TELLS ALL printed under her face.“Can I ask you something?” “Of course!” Izuku beamed. “What’s up?” “Why are you looking for the Slip Kid?” Bakugo felt those green eyes shift to him and already knew what explanation was coming. “I mean, besides wanting to help Iida and Eri get there and trying to deliver Kota’s letter. Is it because you want to go home, or…?” “Any reason in particular you’re asking?” His voice was even. Testing. “The questions you were asking them about the camp,” Bakugo explained. “It just seemed like you were trying to figure something out.” Izuku didn’t reply for a long while, not until the tents they’d set up for the night were in sight. Even then, it wasn’t an answer.“Why do  you  want to find the Slip Kid?” “Because I want to be able to see my family.” Because he needed to understand how to control his quirk before it destroyed everyone he cared about. “But you didn’t answer my question.” Eri dashed through their tent flap, and the lantern in the tent lit up Iida’s delighted face. When she handed him new things over, he folded her into an enormous hug, lifting her off her feet with the force of it. “It’s…the same as you,” Izuku muttered. “I just want to get home.” “Where’s that?” “See, that’s the funny thing,” he said. “It used to be out north, but now I’m not so sure anymore.” They both stood staring at each other for a moment, nearly toe to toe and when Izuku lifted the flap of the tent for him, Bakugo couldn’t help but wonder if Izuku had picked up on his half-truth as easily as he had picked up on his. ^ It was an hour, maybe more, before Izuku’s breathing evened out and he began to snore.He slept flat on his back, his hands resting against the soft material of his shirt. His face, which earlier had seemed marked by old, bruising shadows, looked young again. He might have been able to pass as someone older with his wild hair and solid build, but he certainly didn’t fool anyone while tucked away in sleep. Izuku’s face was turned toward Eri, who slept between them under a mountain of blankets and was currently the only thing that was keeping Bakugo from inching closer to him; from slipping his hand under those rough ones, just to touch again. But the distance between them was there for a reason.Bakugo wouldn’t dare to touch others so willingly, not if he wanted a future where their faces were half burnt and a smoking hole stood in the center of their bodies. When he heard Sen and his pals stir in their tents next to theirs, Bakugo finally gave up all pretense of sleep.Their voices began as a low murmur indistinguishable from one another and grew louder as the minutes ticked by. Finally, they turned their lantern on to the lowest setting, just enough to be visible through their own green tent’s shell. Bakugo slipped out the other side of the tent, careful to keep his footsteps soft against the concrete. Their whispers grew in volume and urgency the closer he came. “—them,” Sen mumbled. “We don’t owe them anything.” Bakugo’s hands clenched at his side, all of the anger and distrust that had been swelling up inside of him over the past few hours coming to a head. For a single second, he wished that he had brought his backpack inside the store with him.The panic button was there, waiting to be used if the situation blew up fast and ugly.  Stupid Katsuki, he thought.  Stupid. He wasn’t worried about taking care of Sen and his idiot friends. Even with their guns, they still had a chance. But if those scums tried to pull something while they were asleep, or if they called in reinforcements— Bakugo’s feet stopped mid-stride.Iida had beaten him to guard duty. He sat facing the tents, his long, spidery legs crossed in front of him, and Eri’s workbook in his lap. He was leaning toward the others’ tents, concentrating so hard on picking up their conversation that he missed Bakugo’s approach and nearly jumped out of his skin when he appeared. “Eri?” Iida squinted in Bakugo’s direction. “Eri?” he whispered back. “Really?” Bakugo took Eri’s workbook and pencil out of Iida’s hands and flipped the page without looking at whatever the teen had been writing. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Bakugo wrote, showing it to him. Iida rolled his eyes and refused to respond when Bakugo tried to put the pencil back in his hand. DO YOU THINK THEY’RE GOING TO TRY SOMETHING? After a moment, Iida sighed and finally nodded. GREAT ME TOO, Bakugo scribbled. COME WITH ME. By the way his shoulders slumped, Iida seemed to think he didn’t have much of a choice. He stood quickly and quietly, wiping his palms against the front of his khaki pants.“I have a bad feeling about this,” Iida grumbled when they were out of earshot. The tents were in their line of sight, but they weren’t in theirs. “About those guys. Do you think they’re going to try to rob us?” “I think they’re going to try to take Betty, actually,” Iida muttered. There was a long pause; Bakugo felt Iida’s eyes slide over to him, but his own were fixed on the tents, watching for trouble. “You should go back to sleep.” There was a gruff edge to Iida’s voice as he crossed his arms over his chest. But there was also something about the way he said it that made Bakugo wonder if he was waiting to see what he would reply. Waiting to see if it’d tick him off. “What are you even doing up?” “Same as you, I guess,” Bakugo replied. “Making sure no one gets brutally mugged, beaten, or murdered in their sleep. Watching to see if those kids are the @ssh@l@s I know they are.” Iida snorted at that, rubbing a hand over his forehead. It took some time in silence, but he felt the air between them ease from a guarded hostility to something that felt like acceptance. The other teen's shoulders were no longer bunched up with tension, and when he tilted his head toward him, Bakugo saw it for the subtle invitation it was.He took a step closer. “It was bad enough he had to come back here,” Iida mumbled, more to himself than to Bakugo. “God…” “Izuku?” he asked. “This is where he and his friend were captured, right?” Iida nodded. “He’s never told me the whole story, but I think what happened was that he and Felipe were traveling and ran into a tribe of Oranges. Instead of recruiting them like Deku hoped, the tribe beat the hell out of them and stole everything they had—food, packs, family pictures, you name it. They came here for a few days to regroup, but they were in such bad shape that they couldn’t get away when the tracers finally showed up.”Something hard settled in Bakugo’s throat. “Deku thinks that that tribe probably called them in,” Iida continued. “That they got a cut of the reward.” He didn’t know what to say to that.The thought of a kid, of any of them, turning against their own kind made him want to smash the shelf they were leaning against into a heap of metal. “I trust Izuku,” Bakugo said slowly. God knows why though. “He seems like a good person, but he’s easy for others to read—and they don’t have the best intentions.” “Exactly,” Iida sighed. “He’s so busy looking inside people to find the good that he misses the knife they’re holding in their hand. And even then he’d probably blame himself for the person having the knife to begin with, and apologize for being such a tempting target.” That was what troubled Bakugo the most about Izuku—if he was any more trusting and good-hearted, he would have been a Boy Scout. Hell, he probably was one. It was either an amazing feat of stubbornness or naiveté, he thought, for someone who had seen so much death and suffering to still believe so unconditionally that everyone was as stand-up as Izuku was.It was something that inspired both exasperation and a fierce sense of protectiveness in Bakugo—and Iida, too, it seemed. “I think we both know he’s far from perfect, no matter how hard he tries,” Iida admitted, settling himself down on the ground and leaning back against the empty shelf. “He’s never been a big thinker, that one. Always rush, rush, rushing to do whatever his gut tells him to, and then drowning in his own self-pity and guilt when things blow up in his face.” Bakugo hummed, absently fiddling with a tear in the sleeve of his new shirt he hadn’t noticed before taking it. After hearing Izuku with Eri, he knew that Izuku felt an intense guilt over what had happened the night of their breakout, but it sounded like it might run even deeper than that. “I can fix that for you later.” Iida nodded toward the torn fabric. His long fingers were splayed out over his knees, tapping against the bones. “Just remind me.” “Who taught you how to sew, anyway?” Bakugo asked, eyeing him.Apparently, it was not the right question to ask. Iida’s back went stiff and straight like someone had dropped an ice cube down the back of his shirt. “I don’t know how to  sew,” he snapped, “I know how to  stitch. Sewing is for decoration; stitching is for saving lives. I don’t do this because I think it’s pretty or fun. I do it for practice.” He stared at Bakugo over the rims of his glasses. Waiting to see if he got what he was trying to say.“My dad taught me how to stitch before I went into hiding,” he added, finally. “In case of emergencies.” “Is your dad a doctor?”  “He was a trauma surgeon.” Iida didn’t bother to hide the pride in his voice, even noting the past tense. “One of the best in the area.” “What does your mom do?” “She used to work for the Department of Defense but got fired when she refused to register me in the ranking database. I don’t know what she’s doing now.” “They sound nice,” Bakugo said with a shrug.Iida snorted, but he could see him warm to the compliment. The minutes dragged by, and the conversation waned. Bakugo found himself reaching for Eri’s notebook and flipping it open to the beginning. The first few pages were mostly sketches and doodles, but those gave way to page after page of math problems. Izuku’s handwriting was neat and precise, and, surprisingly, so was Eri’s. 
   —Betty traveled 118 miles in three hours. How fast was Deku driving?  

   —You have five candy bars to share with three friends. You cut them in half. How many will each friend get? How can you make sure the leftovers get shared equally so Iida doesn’t complain?
And then he got to a page with completely different handwriting. Messy and smeared.The letters were darker as if the writer had been pressing down on the paper too hard. I’m   not sure what else can be said about this book that hasn’t already been said. I’m   out   of clever things to say, I’m afraid. Jonathan Swift has always been a favorite, but I   can’t   get over how clever his wordplay is throughout the novel. I really can’t   get   over how similar it is   to   Robinson Crusoe at times, especially when he’s on the ship to Lilliput. Though his interaction with the Lilliputians wasn’t the strongest section,   you   would be hard-pressed to find an equally clever interplay of parody and originality…It went on further. “Huh…” Bakugo held the page up for him to see. “This yours?” “Give me that,” Iida snapped. His face was wild with panic. Not just panic—by the way his nostrils flared and his hand shook, it was almost like Bakugo had scared him half to death. He brushed away the brief flash of guilt and passed it back to Iida, watching him tear that sheet of paper out. “Hey,” Bakugo said, slightly worried about the tinge of green coloring the teen’s face. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just wondering why you’d practice writing essays when you said you didn’t think we’d ever get to go back to school.” Iida continued to stare at him for several seconds until something in his stony expression finally gave. He blew out the breath he’d been holding. “I’m not practicing for school.” Instead of tucking the sheet of paper inside the briefcase, he laid it out between them.“Before…before my friends went to camp, my parents thought the guards were investigating us too, which, you know, they were. They sent me up to my grandparents’ cabin to hide, and—you remember what I said about the internet being policed? We had to find a way around it, especially when they started putting pressure on my mom at work.” Bakugo glanced down at the sheet of paper again. “So you used to send book reviews?”“I had a laptop and a few wireless internet cards. We would post book reviews online. It was the only way we could think of to talk without them catching on.” Iida leaned over, covering the paper so only the first column of words was visible.  I’m out can’t get to you can meet anywhere name place and time missed you love you.  “Oh.” “I wanted to write it out now,” Iida explained. “In case I can get online, but only have a few minutes.” “You’re actually pretty smart,” Bakugo told him, looking over at him, while trying to pretend like he hadn’t swallowed acid admitting that. “Your whole family.” He got a huff in response. Duh. The question he really wanted to ask was inching its way up his throat until Iida pulled a deck of cards out of his briefcase. “Want to play a few games?” he asked. “We’re going to be here a while.” “Fine…but I only know Old Maid and Go Fish.” “Well.” Iida cleared his throat. “We don’t have the right deck for Old Maid and, unfortunately for you, I excel at Go Fish. I won the Go Fish tournament in fifth grade.” Bakugo snorted, waiting for him to deal the cards. “You’re a real player then, Glasses, a—” His nose wrinkled at the name. “What? I can call you whatever I want.” “Yes, but how unoriginal and obvious. My name is Iida. Tenya Iida.”“You go by your last name?”“Yes,” Iida nodded and smiled, “something tells me you can relate.”Bakugo bristled, snatching his cut of the cards. “Shut up, Glasses.”A quick shuffle, then, “Okay, newbie, you start.” “Whatever…got any black eight of clovers? Plus, I could always call you four eyes or—”“No, no, I’ll resign my fate to Glasses. Also, Go Fish.”He was already losing. “D@mn it.”  ^ Bakugo figured it out. It must have been half past five in the morning, well after several delirious games of cards and charades that had been brought on by too much candy and too little sleep. Both of them had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, to be proven right about the other delinquents. They kept the baseball bat beside them and never once turned their backs to the tents. When exhaustion finally set in, they reluctantly took turns curled up on the ground, trying to steal a few minutes of sleep here and there.Bakugo picked up Eri’s notebook again in an attempt to avoid being lulled to sleep by Iida’s annoying rhythmic snores, and added a few stars and circles to the first page of random doodles. The pages fanned out under his fingers as he flipped through the notebook again, not catching until he found what he was looking for. 540. It was an area code for this part of the territory, he was sure of it.His grandparents had lived down near there for a time, and he had a very vague memory of standing in the kitchen of his parent’s house, staring at their number printed on a notepad beside the phone. But the area it covered—that was no small bit of land, and there was no real guarantee that it was supposed to represent an area code in the first place. It was easier to think of it now without three eager sets of eyes on him, but slightly complicated by the fact that Bakugo was running on fumes, sleepwise. With more than enough time to kill, he started in again—rearranging them, trying to create anagrams, substituting different letters for others. The feeling snuck up on him slowly, crawling back up through the crowded, tired portions of his brain.The other number—540—where had he seen that? Why did it feel like—? When it came to him, Bakugo almost barked out a laugh. Almost. He had seen the number on the radio in the car only a few hours earlier, burning brightly through even the murkiest clouds of his thoughts.It was 540 AM—a radio station.How had none of them realized this before now?Shaking Iida back awake wasn’t enough for him, not when he thought he would actually burst at the seams with excitement, ready to shove it in the nerds face. He all but pounced onto Iida’s back, both scaring the teen senseless and getting a knee to the kidney in the process. Bakugo wasn’t sure what sound he made when he landed back on his ass, but he was fairly certain it wasn’t human. “Wake up, you lazy butt!” he hissed, hauling Iida huffing and puffing to his feet. “When they gave you EDO, did they say anything else?” “Newbie, if I can still walk tomorrow, so help me—” “Oi, listen to me!” Bakugo flicked his head. “Did they say anything about tuning in, or picking it up?” Iida fixed him with a baleful look. “All they said was to check out Edo.” “Check out?” he repeated. “Those exact words?” “Yes!” Iida confirmed, exasperated. “Why?” “I was wrong before,” Bakugo began. “I don’t think the number has anything to do with a phone number. We were right before. The last letter isn’t a letter at all—it was supposed to be a zero. Five forty. It’s some kind of radio station.” “How in the world did you reach that conclusion?” “I’m smarter than I look, dipshit,” Bakugo said with a scowl. “And I’m apparently the only one of us with good working eyes. I’ve seen it before when someone flipped past the stations.” “Oh my god.” Iida was shaking his head, mildly stunned. “I don’t even believe it. We have honestly had such terrible luck this entire trip. I thought at least two of us were going to end up dead in a ditch somewhere before we figured it out.” “We need a radio. I think I’m right, but if I’m not…we need to test it before telling the others.” “Betty?” “No!” Bakugo wasn’t about to leave the tent unguarded, even for fifteen minutes. “Stay put. I thought I saw a radio in the back—let me go grab it.” The store was rushing around him in dark streams and fading colors as he ran, but he wasn’t afraid of what was lurking there, not now. Bakugo hadn’t imagined the radio after all. It was back in the small cluster of rafts and blankets that Izuku and his friend had set up the last time he was here.Iida was pacing in front of the shelves by the time Bakugo got back.He set the small device up on a shelf that was about eye level and began to fuss with its buttons, searching for the ON switch. Bakugo had to be the one to start it up—and the one to fumble with the volume knob when it just about blew their eardrums out with static. The thing was ancient, a beat-up silver box, but it worked. The speakers jumped between voices, commercials, and a few songs he didn’t recognize. “It has to be AM,” Iida said, taking the radio in his hands. “FM frequencies don’t go up past 108 or so. Here we go—” His first thought was that Iida had somehow tuned it to the wrong station. Bakugo had never heard a sound like the one sputtering through the speakers—a low growl of static pierced by what sounded like a tub of broken glass being tossed around.It wasn’t painful like the White Noise, but it wasn’t pleasant, either.But Iida, the freak, was still grinning. “Do you know what this is?” he asked, and was all too happy to explain when Bakugo shook his head. “Have you heard that there are certain frequencies and pitches that only kids with quirk-brains can pick up?” Bakugo subtly braced a hand on the shelf to keep from doubling over. He had. Nemuri had told him as much, when she explained the camp controllers had embedded a certain frequency in the White Noise to root out certain ones still hiding out in the other cabins. “It’s not so much that others can’t hear the noise, it’s that their brains translate the sounds differently than ours do—really fascinating stuff. They did some testing with it at Caledonia, to see if there were any pitches that certain colors couldn’t pick up and others could, and it always sounded like this when we couldn’t—” No sooner had the words left his mouth, there was another sharp click, and the noise cut off altogether, replaced by a soft, male voice whispering, “If you can hear this, you’re one of us. If you’re one of us, you can find us. Lake Prince. East.”  That same message, three times, before it clicked again and switched back to the frequency they had heard before. For a long time, Iida and Bakugo could only stare at one another, speechless. “Oh my god!” Iida said, “Oh my god!” And then then he was flinging his arms around Bakugo in a burst of excitement, jumping up and down like he was two years old, and Bakugo, trying to stave down his own relief, let him. To anyone else, they probably looked like two d@mn fools—like they had never, ever wanted to reach over and slap each other multiple times on multiple days. Bakugo finally pushed the other teen away, firmly.“I could just hug you!” Iida cried, at Bakugo’s glare, he backtracked, “But I won’t!”Either by his internal clock or Iida’s excited squeaks, Izuku woke first. Bakugo saw him out the corner of his eye, his head of tousled green hair sticking out of the tent. He looked between them once and retreated back into the tent, only to reemerge a second later looking torn between confusion and worry. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “What’s going on?” Iida and Bakugo glanced at each other.“Get Eri. You guys are going to want to hear this.” ^ According to Iida, Kota Izumi was the second son in a family of five kids, and one of the first labeled as Yellow in their town.His father had owned a restaurant, and his mother died of cancer when he was young. Kota was unremarkable in appearance, the kind of kid you would pass in a school hallway and not think twice about. But he was stealth cool, the only one that knew what Izuku was talking about when he started in on American horror flicks or articles from back issues of Rolling Stone. Apparently, he liked to tell stories in weird voices and spent years scratching out a replica of New York City’s skyline on the converted classroom’s blackboards. The teacher had been so impressed with the sheer detail of his work that they actually let him finish. More importantly, Kota took great pleasure in joking around when his quirk first developed—lifting things off people’s belts and out of their pockets, or to push kids on the swings without using his hands. To hear Iida talk, you would have thought Kota Izumi was a saint walking on earth, a disciple of awesome, preaching the proper way to use their quirks after spending years figuring it out for himself. Which was probably why he was the first one the camp controllers shot in the back of the head the night the kids tried to make their escape. Izuku was silent as they approached the towns outer city limits, only nodding once or twice to confirm that the craziest parts of Iida’s tale were true. He had been just as excited as the two of them when they dragged him over to listen to the broadcast, but slowly, over the course of a few hours, his mood had deteriorated. When Iida’s stories died out, so did all conversation in the van. “It’s supposed to be really beautiful there,” Iida added, suddenly, then winced at how awkward it sounded. “Lake Prince, I mean.” Izuku didn’t looked stressed so much as profoundly sad. That was what slightly worried Bakugo—that the other teen was sinking into something that not even their breakthrough could pull him out of.He doesn’t know why he cares so much either, but he does. Stupidly. “I’m sure you’re right,” Izuku said, quietly. He handed Bakugo the half-folded map. “Can you put this back in the glove box?” Bakugo certainly hadn’t been looking for it when he opened the small compartment, but there they were, nested on top of a pile of crumpled napkins. Truthfully, he’d been expecting envelopes, or at the very least lined notebook paper. Which was stupid and didn’t make any sense, because it’s not like their camp had arts and crafts days. It’s not like they were just given the paper and pens. Still, he’d been expecting the letters to be something…heavier.Kota’s letter was on top, written on half of what looked like a computer printout, folded over several times. He had managed to squeeze his father’s name in tight capital letters on the back of the paper, between the large black words: AREA RESTRICTED. Instead of putting the map away, Bakugo took the letter out, only vaguely aware of the argument Izuku and Iida had gotten into over the best route to Lake Prince. He wasn’t thinking much of anything as his fingers slid over the wrinkled surface, smoothing it out as he unfolded it. No date in the upper right-hand corner, just a hasty, straight to the point  Dear Dad. Bakugo didn’t get to take in another word. Izuku reached over and ripped the paper out of his hand, crumpling it slightly in his fist. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “Nothing, I just…” “You just  what?” Izuku demanded. Bakugo felt his body jerk in surprise. “It’s personal! It’s none of your business what it says.” “Deku…” Iida sounded every bit as surprised as Bakugo felt. “Come on.” “No, this is serious. We don’t read each other’s letters!” “Never?” Bakugo replied dubiously. “What if you can’t find his dad and the letter has some clue about where he might be?” Izuku was shaking his head, even as Iida said quietly, “He has a point.” Izuku said nothing in return, but his hands trembled on the steering wheel. It was his silence that stung, and when Bakugo couldn’t take another second of it, he reached over and turned on the radio, sending up a prayer that a good song would be on.Instead, Betty picked up a news talk show. 
   “—high-level children are in containment for their own good, not just the safety of the public. My well-placed sources in the Shinsou administration have informed me that all instances in which a child has been removed from rehabilitation early have resulted in their untimely death. There is simply no way to reproduce the routine of medication, exercise, and stimulation these rehab centers are using to keep your children alive.”  
Izuku punched a knuckle against the volume button, trying to turn it off.Instead, the tuner jumped to the next available station, and this time it was a woman’s voice delivering the bad news. 
   “Sources are reporting that two child fugitives were picked up on the West border, traveling on foot—”  
Betty turned so hard and fast into the empty rest stop that Bakugo swore she did it on two wheels.Izuku parked diagonally across three different spaces, throwing the brake on with a fast, “Be right back.” One minute he was beside Bakugo, and the next, they were watching the back of his shirt as he jumped over a puddle of stale rainwater and headed for the brick building and vending machines. “That was…dramatic.” Bakugo turned to look at Iida over the seat, but he was just as confused. “You should probably follow him,” Iida urged. “Me? Why not you?”“I think I’d only make him more upset.”“Fine.” Bakugo rolled his eyes. “Then what should I say?” Iida gave him one of  those  looks. “Really? You need me to spell it out for you?” Bakugo had no idea what he meant, but went anyway, tracing Izuku’s trail of anger and frustration past the restrooms, past the abandoned sitting area, to the other side of the building, where there was wild long grass, trees, and absolutely no way they could have seen him from Betty. Izuku stood with his back toward him, sagging against the rest stop’s wall. Arms crossed over his chest, hair standing on end. Bakugo thought he was being quiet, but somehow Izuku knew the moment he stepped behind him.His grief hung around them like humidity, seeping into his skin. Bakugo felt the invisible ache in his hands awaken. Howling, like a feral cat that’d been caged too long.He kept his distance.“Izuku?” “I’m okay. Go back to the van.” Again, with the forced, bright voice. He dropped to a crouch, then completely to the ground. But Bakugo didn’t move, not until he watched Izuku lean forward and stick his head between his knees, looking like he was about to throw up everything in his stomach. Bakugo stared long and hard at the place where his green hair curled against his neck, at the exact spot an old bruise disappeared down his shirt collar. Bakugo’s hand lifted at his side as if to push the soft fabric away. He wanted to see how far the ugly mark extended. To see what other old wounds he was hiding. You touched him before, a little voice whispered at the back of his mind,  and nothing happened then… Instead, Bakugo took a step back and away, so he was no longer standing directly behind Izuku, but off to the side.Distance. Distance was good. “You’re right, you know,” Izuku said quietly. “I don’t want to find the Slip Kid just to deliver Kota’s letter. I don’t even want to use him to help me find my family. I know where they are and how to reach them, but I can’t go home. Not yet.” Somewhere behind them, he heard one of Betty’s doors slide open, but it didn’t break the stillness of the moment. “Why not? I’m sure your parents miss you.” Izuku rested his arms over his knees, his back still to him. “Did Iida tell you…did he say anything to you about me and the League?”He couldn’t see it, but Bakugo still shook his head.“Hisashi, my dad, he knew from the start that the Children’s League was bad news. Said they would use us worse than Shinsou ever would, and the public wouldn’t shed one d@mn tear if we died helping them. He used to remind me that no amount of fighting was ever going to change things. My best friend, Shouto, had already joined up with them because of his dad, and he came back to get me to go with him. To fight.” Izuku heaved for a breath, pushing himself to continue.“I bought into it. I was so angry, and I hated everyone and everything, but there wasn’t anyone to direct it at. I was there with them for weeks, training, letting them turn me into this weapon. Into the kind of person that would take an innocent person’s life just because it served their needs and what they wanted. My best friend was like a stranger. He changed, he went where I couldn’t go. He even kept this—this thing he called a kill chart in our room. And he’d add to it, every time he killed someone important. Every time he completed a mission. And I would come in after training all day, and I’d look at it and think, How many of those people had families? How many were like us, broken and used? And that’s just it—they all were, Bakugo, I’m sure of it. People don’t live like islands.” “So…you got out.” Izuku nodded. “Had to run during a training simulation outside. I was trying to get back to my family when the guards picked me up.” Then Izuku finally turned so he was looking at him. “I can’t go back to them yet, not until I earn it. Not until I make it right.” “What are you talking about?” “While I was with the League I realized that the only people that were ever going to help us were ourselves. So when I figured out a way to break out of Caledonia…”Izuku’s voice trailed off. Then he said, “It was horrible. Horrible. I totally failed them, even after I promised it would work out in the end. So why—” His voice caught. “You heard what that newscaster said. Only a few of us got out, and they just keep picking us off like rabbits in hunting season. So why do I want to do it again? Why can’t I shake it? All I want is to help more kids break out of Caledonia, out of Kamino, out of every single camp, one by one.”  Oh,  Bakugo thought, feeling vaguely numb.  Oh.  He had only ever wanted to find the Slip Kid to help himself, to figure out how to tame his own quirk.But all along, Izuku had wanted to find him because he was sure he’d be able to help others. That together they could figure out a way to save the kids they’d all been forced to leave behind.“It’s just so unfair, you know? All this morning, I kept thinking, it’s so unfair that I’m here, so close to finding Yuuei, and the rest of them are gone.” Izuku pressed the back of his hand to his eyes. “It makes me feel sick. I can’t shake it. I can’t. Those kids they were talking about on the radio—I’m sure they were from Caledonia. I just…” Izuku sucked in a ragged breath. “Do you think…do you think they regret following me?” “Not for a second,” Bakugo said firmly, stepping closer. “Listen to me. You didn’t force them to follow you. You only gave them what the guards and camp controllers took away from them—a choice. You can’t live in a place like those camps and not know what the consequences might be. If those kids followed you out, it was because they  chose  to. They believed you when you said we’d all get home someday.” “But most of them didn’t.” Izuku shook his head. “In some ways, it would have been safer for them to stay in the camps, right? They wouldn’t have been hunted. They wouldn’t have had to see how afraid everyone is of them, or felt like they don’t have a place out here.”“But isn’t it better to give them that choice?” “Is it?” Bakugo’s head was pounding, and his palms were clammy. By the time he finally thought of something to say, Izuku was climbing up onto his knees. “What are you still doing here?”Not upset or angry. Not anymore. “Watching your back.” Izuku shook his head, a sad smile on his face. “You’ve got better things to worry about.”“Yeah, like what?” The words tumbled out of him in a breathless rush. “Look, I know I shouldn’t have opened his letter. It was none of my business. I wasn’t thinking.” “No—no, I’m the one that’s sorry. I didn’t mean to blow up at you. I’m so, so sorry.”Izuku looked down, and when he looked back at Bakugo, his lips were pressed tight together. Bakugo thought he might cry or scream, and felt himself sway forward at the same time Izuku took another dangerous step toward him. It made him feel boneless to meet those green eyes straight on, but Bakugo wanted the truth even as he worried the intensity of Izuku’s gaze would burn him. “Come on, let’s go back. I shouldn’t have left those two alone again.” “I think you need another minute,” Bakugo suggested, but it wasn’t up for discussion. “And I think you should take it. Because when you get back in that car, you’ll have people depending on you.” Izuku tried to reach for his arm, but Bakugo took a step back. “I don’t know what you’re—”God, he hated that he wanted to take Izuku’s hand when he offered it. His were frozen, needled with pain. “Here—” Bakugo motioned between them. “This is a place where you don’t need to lie. I meant what I said before, but I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s really going on inside your thick skull. If you need to talk or vent or scream, do it with me. Don’t just get up and go like that again—like you always do. It’s f@ck@ng stupid. I know you think you’re protecting us, but what happens if one of these days you go off and don’t come back?” Izuku took a step toward him, his eyes darkening with something Bakugo didn’t recognize. It never occurred to him how close in height they were, Bakugo still had a few inches on him, but somehow Izuku seemed to tower over him then, leaning until their faces were level with each other. A mistake. Coming out here had been a mistake.He shouldn’t have followed Izuku, should have taken the hint that he wasn’t needed, and left the idiot to his brooding.He had no place here.Bakugo could see what he would have done if their situation had been different. If he had been in control of himself. He could see what Izuku wanted. What he selfishly wanted too.Bakugo’s foot slipped against a rock as he stepped away, his back scraping against the wall, his head spiraling into panic. It was trilling in anticipation, relishing how close he was. Maybe Izuku’s anger had evaporated, but whatever he was feeling now was stronger than before, stronger than pain or frustration or fury. He didn’t know what it was and that scared him. The words  Get away from me  and  Don’t  were stuck in his tight chest, wedged between terror and want.Izuku’s lips formed his name, but there was nothing outside of the blood rushing in his ears. Bakugo tried one last time to wrench himself away, but his knees, the f@ck@ng traitors, buckled under him. Spots in every shade of gray popped and burst in front of his eyes. And that’s when Izuku grabbed him, only this time it was to hold him up, not pull him in. It didn’t matter. The moment his hands circled Bakugo’s waist, he lost it. 
  
  

    
      
        
        
          Gosh, do I love cliffhangers. They taste sweet on thy tongue.Anyway, thanks for reading, I’d really love to hear what you thought!'
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
Assistant: