It's a Plan(et)

Chapter 12

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

Therefore...

Hectoclick = 100 seconds

Kiloclick = 16 minutes, 40 seconds

Megaclick = 11.6 days

Gigaclick = 31.7 years

Teraclick = 31,700 years

_ _ _ _ _

One of H'zashi's feathers fell out. One of his tail feathers, and he seemed very embarrassed about it, so Izuku tried to refrain from prying.

Izuku thought that H'zashi would just put it back in like the others, but H'zashi walked over to Shigaraki, handed the feather to him, and then, very pointedly, made sure that he used all five fingers on it to decay it, to make it disappear.

When the same thing happened two more times, Izuku felt he had to say something. The strong glare from Shigaraki to find out what the hell is happening was also a strong nudge in the right direction.

"H'zashi, what's happening? Are you okay? Are you healthy?" Izuku asked.

"It's just stress," H'zashi answered. A'zawa put a supportive, comforting hand on H'zashi's shoulder.

"Is there anything I can do to ease your worries?" Izuku asked. "We have a solid plan in place, plus the back-up plan to come back through this way if our first plan fails. Even if they shut the bars again, remember that the electricity doesn't bother Shigaraki, so he'll be able to decay the bars like nothing, then decay the door, so we're just back to where we are right now."

"It's the arena," H'zashi said after a long moment and a squeeze to A'zawa's hand. "You Terrans are valuable, so when we said that the deathworlder won't be allowed to kill, we meant that it wouldn't be allowed to kill you Terrans, not that it wouldn't be allowed to kill us."

"Oh," Izuku said. "I'm so sorry you've been worried about that, but when I said that we were planning on teaming up and nothing would interfere with that, I was including both of you in there as well."

A'zawa and H'zashi's eyes fixated on Izuku, like they could hardly believe what they were hearing, like it didn't quite make sense and they were trying to look at all the evidence they could find to try to piece it all together.

"You're our friends. We're in this together. Shigaraki and I decided that from the start that you two might be able to help us escape, even before we could communicate, because we found ourselves all in the same predicament. It's us, all four of us, against anything Kulphea can throw at us. We aren't leaving you behind or letting anything bad happen to you. I'm sorry if anything we did made you think that."

H'zashi let out a half-wail, half-squawk, and threw himself forward on top of Izuku and Shigaraki.

Shigaraki quickly curled his hands into fists to prevent himself from accidently decaying anyone in the confused pile he found himself in. "Uh, what's this?" he asked Izuku as he met his eyes through the feathers that surrounded them as wings gathered them closely.

"H'zashi was scared that he might be injured or killed because he and A'zawa are not a rare species among the universe like Terrans are. The stress was causing his feathers to fall out and this is his response when I corrected his thinking," Izuku answered, occasionally blowing in between words to prevent feathers from getting in his mouth.

"Oh," Shigaraki said. "Makes sense."

"Danger Sense," Izuku said when he felt the flare come to life at the base of his skull.