Izuku had been in space for two months.

At least, he thought it was two months. He could tell the movements of light and dim light on the ship he was captured on was different from Earth's orbit. He estimated that there was around a six hour difference, but he couldn't be sure. He tried to instead estimate the days by when he was tired and when he woke up. He knew that the body would maintain a natural 24-25 hour circadian rhythm. However, he wasn't sure how different light cycle intervals would interfere with the natural sleep pattern, so his count of the time which had passed could be off by several days. Not to mention, there were many times in that span of two months where he had been drugged to unconsciousness. So, two months.

He missed his mom's birthday.

The real kicker was that he'd been kidnapped by Shigaraki a week before. He'd been held by the League for a week, bound in quirk restraining cuffs and tortured. He'd finally escaped, Dabi had fallen asleep while on watch and he'd been able to get out of the ropes, but unfortunately didn't have the equipment to get out of the cuffs. He had escaped, on the run trying to find the closest location to get a cell phone and call for extraction. He was marooned in the middle of a forest, beaten bloody and exhausted, but he had run nonetheless.

Until he was abducted... again.

There were no beams of light up to a flying saucer. There were no little green men with large heads. There were no vocoded voices saying "we come in peace".

There were cockroach-like creatures with guns. They shot him with a dart of kami knows what, and then he woke up again on their departure, feeling the immense force of gravity pressing on him like his skin had become molten lead.

For two months he had been in the small cubby cell. It was a padded white room, like a mental facility. Everywhere he looked there was white, the ceiling, the walls, the floor, all white. He wasn't even certain which side of the cell was the entrance. The cell was barely big enough to lay down curled up, something Izuku silently thanked, because sure he'd been abducted twice, but at least he didn't have to stand up for two months.

Food had come in through the slot in the ceiling, or was it a door? Izuku wasn't sure, because the gravity was artificial, so technically any direction and no direction was up. Whatever food they did give him definitely wasn't enough, at the peak of his training he would consume upwards of 5000 calories in a day.

Izuku could feel his muscles atrophy, especially his biceps and his forearms from where they remained bound behind his back. If he ever was released from the cuffs, Izuku wasn't sure he'd be able to move his arms from how long they had remained in that position. It was all Izuku could do to roll his shoulders and tense his different muscle groups, trying to relive the ache. Izuku wasn't certain that he'd be able to use the strength enhancement facite of one for all if he was ever released, with how long he'd gone without doing even a squat. But he knew that it was more important to conserve fluids and energy, with how little they were feeding him, he would only hurt himself if he continued to expel energy.

Kami, he could see his ribs now.

One of the worst parts of this whole ordeal was that they didn't allow him any modicum of personal hygiene. He hadn't taken a shower in two months. When he had to use the bathroom, he had to undo the lower half of his hero suit (which took a large amount of flexibility with bound hands) and go into a food bowl or cup which was left behind. However, they only collected the equipment left in the cell when he was drugged with a dart, so the filth accumulated in the corner of the cell. He wasn't sure what smelled worse, his feces or him.

However, by far the worst of it, was the isolation. Two months, two months. Sure little Deku didn't have friends in childhood, he had no one to talk to but his busy single mother. But the jeers of his bullies, he knew then and now, was better than complete and utter silence.

There was nothing, no sounds but the groaning of the ship, no color but his own filthy self and the pile of shit in the corner. Izuku took to humming the All Might theme song just to stave off complete insanity from boredom alone.

And then Izuku realized that he actually might be going insane. He started to hallucinate sometimes, and Izuku knew he was going downhill.

"You look so pitiful." Shigaraki laughed in front of him. Izuku didn't look up from where he had his knees curled in front of him. Shigaraki wasn't really there, Izuku knew that. He was an audiovisual hallucination caused by malnourishment, dehydration, head injury, and lack of stimulation to these areas in the brain.

But that didn't mean it didn't feel real.

Izuku was great at observing things, he knew exactly what Shigaraki looked like, the scratch of his crazed voice, the blue stringy hair, the reddened itchy dry skin near the base of his neck where he never stopped scratching. His eyes, which reminded Izuku too much that he had left his friends behind to fend for themselves against his unhinged plans.

Izuku wondered whether they were still alive.

"It won't matter." Shigaraki cackled. "You'll be dead soon. I'll finally win the game, you've left the match. Poor little Deku , you were never going to win anyway."

Izuku really wanted to cry, but he'd already cried so much, and he'd quickly learned that it wasn't worth the water.

Izuku would probably die up here. At least with Shigaraki, people had the possibility of finding him. No one was going to come rescue him from space. He was completely and utterly alone.

Then the hatch opened on the ceiling. Turns out it was a door, huh.

And everything went dark.

The first thing that he had noticed was the sheer noise.

The cacophony of sounds jolted him from his drugged sleep and assaulted his senses. After months locked in a room where he could hear his heartbeat, his ears rang with the intensity.

Before he even dared to open his eyes, he did a mental catalog of himself. His arms still ached, but that at least meant that he still had arms, and they were still painfully bound behind his back. His face was pressed to cool metal, a sensation which was so different from the padded cloth that he was accustomed to. The hard surface made his jaw ache, but he savored the cool sensation on his hot cheek. His legs were still free, but when he adjusted his foot, it hit a wall.

Finally after opening his eyes, he wished that he had never opened them.

He was in a metal cage. Small, so small he wouldn't even be able to stand up. Surrounding him were what had to be hundred of other cages, and hundred of other species trapped in those cages.

So, trafficking wasn't a uniquely human activity, then.

His eyes darted side to side as he struggled to sit up, back braced against the slotted metal bars. The bars were far apart enough that he would just be able to fit his hand through, but looking around he couldn't see the presence of a latch or a human-like lock.

He was high up to, there must have been other cages stacked above and below him, packed like sardines in what he assumed to be an alien warehouse.

Beside him, in a cage like his own sat a blue blob like creature, one that was raging against the bars. Throwing themselves against the metal again and again as if they could break through. Izuku didn't bother following suit, he knew the metal wouldn't budge.

To his left was a brown colored creature that looked like a cross between an elephant and a beaver. They were unmoving in the center of their cage, if Izuku wasn't certain that their overloads wouldn't allow it, he would have thought them dead.

He sagged against the bars. The chattering of different species surrounding him, banging, wailing, chirps, pops. All of it surrounded him and suddenly it became very difficult to breathe.

Izuku knew what a panic attack felt like. He had had several in the past two months, and many more before that. But the panic he felt now was only compounded by the fact that what surrounded him was not only his own thoughts, but the screams of the other creatures which he could not and could not save. It was too much, UA never prepared them for a scenario in which they were kidnapped by aliens. UA didn't even prepare them to do their taxes!

But despite his panic, his agony of being so close to a dream and having it ripped away in the cruelest of ways, Izuku did not scream, did not cry. Instead, he sat slumped in his cage, and closed his eyes, hoping that despite the noise he would just go back to sleep.

These were people surrounding him. People should have to be subject to the horrors they were experiencing. He was going to be a hero, whether or not he was in space or otherwise.

Did the blue creature next to him have higher thought? Did they feel every blow as they smashed into the bars? The sheer cruelty of the situation felt like an actual blow inside of him. If Izuku had his quirk right now, he would have reaped destruction across this place. If he had his quirk, he would have ripped his captors to shreds and freed all of the fellow prisoners. If he had his quirk.

But he didn't.

Izuku felt the same as he did when he was 14, completely and utterly powerless .

Izuku hadn't been fed in several days. They hadn't been given water either. Thankfully, the sky opened up on the second day he was there, and he strained to drink the water which flowed down from the bars of the cage. He tried not to think about how dirty the water was, flowing down the stacks from several cages until it flowed down to him. The water, and he hoped it was water but as it was another planet he couldn't be completely sure, was an unforgiving red color as he licked it from the bars of the pipe.

He felt like an animal. Put in a cage, unable to clean himself, unable to go to the bathroom without getting on himself and the others around him. If he ever made it back to Earth, he vowed to never put another living creature in a cage.

What were they even trying to accomplish here? Were they going to be sold to the highest bidder? Were they sitting here waiting to die in order for their captors to study their corpses? Why weren't they being fed? Izuku had known grave cruelty for most of his pathetic life, but this was something on a completely other level. Izuku would call it inhumane, but there were more than humans in these cages.

It was that day when he finally got the answer to his questions. A large crane-like machine lifted his cage, and it threw him into the bars as the crane swung him around and set off in the direction of open air. He grabbed the bars for stability on the landing as the machine placed him on top of a stage in front of an amphitheater filled to the brim with an assortment of different creatures.

The stage was occupied by two different creatures. One holding a weapon which buzzed ominously at the tip, facing him. The other was faced towards the crowd, clearly addressing it in a language they seemed to share, it sounded full of clicks, with several familiar vowel sounds and consonants which resembled nothing but gibberish to Izuku's untrained ears.

And then the auctioneer invited another creature onto the stage. Izuku backed into the farthest corner of the cage as the new creature approached him. It was ugly, and looked like a menacing tower of meat which Izuku had no intention of interacting with.

Was this his new owner? Nonononono. Not good.

The monster that resembled a nomu way too much for Izuku's comfort reached its arm into the cage. Izuku, who had been steadily accumulating anger throughout the past two months, finally got the opportunity to hurt the people that had harmed him.

He lunged, fast as his atrophied muscles would allow, and clamped his unwashed teeth onto the alien's limb.

He tasted bitter liquid, felt the crunch beneath his teeth, heard the cry of pain and felt satisfaction settle in his bones. He knew that he wouldn't be able to escape, and nothing would come of his belligerence, but he would rather die than take this shit sitting down.

He finally let the seasoned All Might smile cover his face, because he was here. He was more than a victim, he refused to be, and if someone wanted to buy him, then he would take hands .

The yellow blood dripped savagely off his teeth. He bared them in a snarl more than a smile while the alien ripped their hand out of the cage, a mouth sized hole bitten clean into their arm. Izuku spit the bitter blood collected in his mouth back through the bars onto the other creature.

Izuku braced himself for the retaliation of the guard, and watched with dread as the tip of the weapon came down upon his shoulder. The buzzing end striking his skin. He tensed, ready to be in agony . But, the weapon came down and all it did was tingle .

Izuku straightened. The guard, confused, removed the baton from his shoulder and brought it back down again, and again, and again.

Nothing.

Izuku, feeling like a king amongst rats, laughed. He laughed, and laughed, and laughed. His breath started to come short. His stomach hurt. He couldn't breath, couldn't think. Shigaraki laughed at him from the edge of his vision, cackled like the maniac Izuku could remember all too vividly.

He didn't see the dart coming towards him, and didn't realize the creeping darkness at the edge of his vision until he fell to the bottom of the cage, unconscious. .

When Izuku woke up, he was in another cell, a muzzle firmly planted onto his face.

Fuck.