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Shoto and Bakugo were holding their own well enough until the point where they ground disappeared underneath them.
The Half-Cold Half-Hot boy had been mid-jump backwards to create the angle he wanted for his next ice attack when some kind of massive air bubble—big enough it captured Bakugo, too, several dozen feet away—circled around them with a rush of wind. Before either of them could react to blast through it, their equilibrium was disrupted by everything around them vanishing until all that was left was near-blackness and they were in the air. Bakugo’s hands exploded with pops, providing quick flashes of light, an instant before their hero costume’s chest flashlights activated.
In the fraction of a second since they had been moved, they registered what was around them. The wind barrier that had encapsulated them was fading. They were no longer in Tokyo, everything around them was very, very wet. Ripples of water, sloshed past the fading wind.
Shoto caught a flash of a massive, black tail darting away in surprise. Ice prickled across Shoto’s fingers, the same moment there was panic in his voice as Bakugo shouted: “Icyhot!”
They had been transported somewhere far, far underwater. The spiking adrenaline shot up his spine, so potent and forceful, he felt dizzy. His ice shot around them, circling the space within the barrier, over and over, winding around, building on itself. Below their feet, on the sandy sea floor, and above them. With the barrier dispelled, the pressure on the ice was so immense it felt like Shoto had the wind knocked out of him and his energy drained simply trying to fight it.
The side cracked massively, spilling ice water through, water that immediately froze over under Shoto’s will. Micro-fissures appeared and were secured in seconds. He felt the ice collapse and pressurize, the density making it almost blue. Shoto hand was pressed to the ground, focusing as deeply as he could, he didn’t even notice Bakugo reach his side.
“Where the fuck are we?”
“Don’t know,” Shoto managed, the ice pushing outwards again, further. This time focusing on building in a way to help ease the stunning weight pushing down on them. His theory was a point at the top, pushing the pressure off the makeshift structure, the same way wind pressure diverted around aerodynamic vehicles.
Sweat dripped down his forehead, and froze there. “But the pressure—“ His mind blanked for a second, eyes widening as the pressure increased on their thickening ice spire, splintering the outer layers. His own chest felt like it would collapse if he kept this up. “A dome then, I’ll do a dome,” he muttered. The edges of his ice, probably reaching hundreds of feet above them and still inching along, began to form a dome. If it grew out faster than it did tall, the pressure became splintering again. Small burst of flame occasionally shot out of his left shoulder to try and regulate what his thermo-regulators on the back of his costume couldn’t but it wasn’t—
“Oi, Icyhot. Did you hear me? What’s—?” Bakugo’s hand touched Shoto’s shoulder, only to notice it was coated with ice.
“Don’t distract me, Dynamight,” Shoto growled, a cloud of icy air expelling from his lips. “We’re at the bottom of the ocean. Do you want to be crushed under 5,000 PSI or—“ He abandoned his jab. The dome was holding relatively well for now but he couldn't let up.
“Hey, focus, Shoto. You just said we’re at the bottom of the ocean. How do you know it’s the ocean?” And how the fuck are we still alive? Was the unspoken question following it.
“Too much pressure. M-must be thousands of feet under the surface. Salt water, I can tell, it’s harder to f-freeze.”
“Yeah, and you’re freezing too. How long are you gonna be able to keep this up?” Bakugo asked skeptically.
“As long as I have to,” the vain part of Shoto lied.
Shoto was losing feeling in his extremities but if he were to pass out, they had one more pressing concern. Air. This would be tricky. He focused his efforts upwards. He wouldn’t know when his tower of ice would hit the surface but judging by the pressure, it must be a far way. If he could maintain even a straw-sized hole through to the top—if it didn’t collapse, they could breathe. And the tower would alert the other heroes to their location. If they hadn’t also been transported into the ocean. He jerked at the thought, clutching the side of his head as a headache like a ice spike lanced through his temple.
Bakugo was kneeling next to him now, his flashlight thankfully positioned so it wasn’t shining directly into Shoto’s eyes. It quaked slightly, a sure sign that Bakugo was shivering uncontrollably. Shoto was glad his hands remained sure and still, or he probably would have slipped up by now.
Shoto’s flames were beginning to sputter out. The same thing had happened in his battle against Chimera where he’d frozen him solid, his temperature had lowered too far for him to even access his fire. The salt water was fighting not to freeze. He felt himself drop past that threshold and keep dropping. The tower was still building up. He was still confident there was a hole through the center. Their lifeline.
Bakugo’s hand was on his shoulder, shook him. Shoto didn’t move his hands from the thick sheet of ice below them, but his eyes roved toward Bakugo slowly. He felt ice spread from around his right eye to along the bridge of his nose. It felt familiar there, that same feeling of fear but familiarity. He was approaching his limits. He didn’t know if it was enough. If he’d created enough ice. The moving ocean tides and salt would steadily corrode the structure. If he went unconscious for long, couldn’t wake up, or he couldn’t reach the surface with the air tunnel, it might be over for Bakugo, too.
“Let go, I’m working,” he growled, jerking his shoulder stiffly out from under the glove. Bakugo’s bright red eyes stared at the ice on his gloved palm for a moment, silent. The ice was crawling over his body faster now, and there was true exhaustion. He couldn’t feel the cuts and bruises he’d received in the battle minutes earlier—if it had only been minutes. If he just pushed, no matter where they were, he could reach the surface, there was no other option. It was hard to breathe, his vision was gray. Not enough air. Their dome—bathysphere, technically—was stable.
“Stop.” Bakugo wrenched one of Shoto’s hands from the ice but the other one was encapsulated by it. Removing it would take more finesse--and Shoto to stop using it--to come out in one piece. “You’re freezing yourself. You’re gonna— fuck. Just stop.”
“We’ll die,” Shoto said.
“We’ll wait for help,” Bakugo said. “We’ll get out of this together. We always do.”
“They don’t know where we are.” Shoto didn’t leave the time for his brash friend to argue further. He pushed out and out, far beyond his sensing capabilities of his own ice, focusing on a breathing hole. His vision flagged. He felt his body begin to shut down as ice covered more and more of his body now that his body temperature had reached freezing. The building stopped. Either the breathing hole would be met with air or water.
At the same moment, Bakugo pulled his second hand away from the ice. Shoto managed a small smile, despite the clear danger they were still in.
“We must be running out of air,” Shoto said to Bakugo through rapidly graying vision.
“There’s still plenty of air, are you—“ Bakugo shook his head and asked a different question, when Shoto’s form began to slump where he was sitting, he pulled his friend into his chest. “You’re freezing over. Fucking Icyhot, use your flames.”
“C-can’t. I might t-take a while to thaw. S’rry, tried my best.” Shoto was staring at the ground, unable to raise his head. He wished he could have reassurances that he'd done enough to save Bakugo, but he wasn't misguided enough to think the world would owe him anything. His right eye froze over, open.
“You idiot, stay awake. Promise me you aren’t going anywhere.”
“Mmh,” Shoto tiredly mumbled.
The world went black.
Shoto woke with fire on his cheek. His eyes opened in alarm with a weak moan of pain. It was hard to see in the dark and through the blurring of tears unwillingly pricking his left eye, he could make out a blond.
“I said, ya hear me??”
Shoto couldn’t do much but blink, then try and curl up on his side. It wasn’t as easy as he thought and it was because his head was in someone’s lap.
“Don’t move."
He didn’t wake up like this very often anymore, and this wasn’t Fuyumi holding his head.
Bakugo’s hand kept his shoulder down and there was another on the side of his head. There was a look of concentration on Bakugo’s face that was pretty weird. Why was he in Bakugo’s lap? That was weird, too.
He tried to pull away but Bakugo’s grip increased on his shoulder and the aborted movement hurt Shoto’s neck pretty badly, too. He tried to voice the feeling but it came out only as a string of syllables.
“Just shut up, Icyhot. Use your fire, just start warming up.”
“I—” Shoto squinted at his friend. Oh, his jaw hurt. He tried to reach into his fire but it wasn’t there. In fact, he sorta didn’t feel much temperature at all. Usually he could feel the differences between his two halves.
He managed to bring both his hands together and clasp them and he noticed two things.
The first was that there was no temperature disparity. The difference was the most obvious in his extremities and though it was a familiar sensation, it was one that he tended to be aware of at least and able to identify at most. And there was nothing. Maybe he'd snapped something within him with ice the same way Touya had with fire. Oh, Dad would really hate that.
The second thing was that he couldn’t feel his hands. Not his fingers, or the rough texture of the scars, or his fingernails.
He let his hands drop uselessly. They were getting heavy anyway.
“Can’t feel anything, can you?”
On someone else, it might have sounded sad or resigned. In Bakugo it was poorly concealed anger. “So what, you’re just fucking dying?”
“Am I?”
“And I hit you so hard you got concussed, I’ll bet. My FUCKING luck.”
“Why are you shaking?”
Bakugo had him repeat the question as if he’s having a hard time understanding what he was saying.
“Because it’s cold and I’m still with it enough to actually feel it.”
“Oh. It’s cold?” Something wasn't connecting for Shoto, in the same way his hands couldn’t connect to his brain, or he didn’t know why Bakugo was holding him, his jacket laid over Shoto when he wasn't even the one shivering, Bakugo's hand rubbing fast circles into his back.
“It’s your fault, dumbass.”
“Sorry.”
A loud sigh. The movement on his back stopped. “Don’t be, it’s not your fault. Just stay awake this time.”
“What are we doing here?”
“Waiting.”
“What for?”
“Deku to fucking save us.”
The next time Shoto came to, it was not as peaceful. He recognized the stiff sterile, and threadbare sheets anywhere. The fact that his fingers could feel it at all was an improvement. The memories were muddled, but he was fairly sure he hadn’t felt anything but pressure the last time he was awake.
And they’d been somewhere very strange, with walls like ice. Of ice. He’d trapped them into an ice barrier.
He breathed out, letting his brain sift through that. He remembered cold and dark, and yelling. And…the ocean.
“Icyhot.”
Shoto looked in the direction of Bakugo, who was sitting on a chair by the bed. “Hey.” He managed a weak smile, seeing his friend was okay.
“Hey yourself,” he grumbled, now slouching carelessly back in his chair as if he hadn’t shifted forward and made the seat squeak a second before. “You know what happened?”
“Uhm,” Shoto tried to work through the brain fog. “A villain, warped us to the ocean, I froze…everything. You held me.”
He watched Bakugo’s face turn bright red, from anger or embarrassment, but probably from both. He let the small smile grow a bit on his face. Even years into knowing him, it was still so easy for Shoto to get under the blond’s skin. And he knew he wouldn't start a fight, either, unlike certain parental figures, Bakugo respected bedridden privilege.
Bakugo pinched the bridge of his nose, with the exhaustion and weariness of someone twice his age. “Those aren’t even the highlights. How about ‘created an ice bubble five thousand feet under the surface of the Sea of Japan?’ What the fuck.” He scoffed, taking that in again, as if something had just sunk in again as he spoke. “Which put you into a quirk exhaustion and hypothermic coma.”
“Oh, but I woke up.”
“After I hit you so hard I gave you a damn concussion. Then Deku and Lemillion came to our rescue. You wanna know how?”
Shoto closed his eyes. “Do I?”
“Because the breathing hole tower you made us was so tall, it stuck out over a hundred feet above the surface of the fucking ocean.”
“I–”
“Yeah. Basically what it comes down to, is, despite your shitty personality, you’re the guy I’d rather be stuck with when dumped off in a random part of the planet. But you try that thermo-self-destructing bullshit again and I’m leaving your freezing ass behind. Got it?”
“Yeah. I have it,” Shoto said. “Maybe we should hope next time it’s the Arctic Circle. I can make a mean bonfire.”
“Ugh. Shut up, I’ll kill you,” but there was an edge of amusement in his voice. “Once the lazy-ass third member of our agency gets here, we’re covering all the new safety protocols we came up with while you were sleeping. I'm gonna give you a damn quiz about it after, so--and I'm not kidding-you better be taking notes.”
“Oh. Fun,” Shoto said. But he meant it, just a little. Even small moments like these, with Bakugo, and Midoriya on his way, talking about life and death stuff, Shoto didn’t forget how lucky he was to be here. To have friends. To have freedom. To be able to plan for their future, and to smile even during their hardest days.