Izuku decided to keep his eyes closed and gather as much information as he could before letting his captors onto the fact that he was awake. Despite his adrenaline increasing, his blood rushing to his extremities in preparation for him to fight, Izuku forced himself to remain still, lax, taking deep breaths as if he was still unconscious.
"It was the correct decision taking this green-furred Terran over the blue-furred one for the first attempt," one voice insisted.
It was never a good idea to assume things, Izuku knew, but he was pretty sure that he could clock himself and Shigaraki as "Terrans" in this instance, all evidence considered, as there were two of them and Shigaraki had light blue hair and he himself had green.
"I still disagree," another said. "Sure, this one seems more cooperative, but if this attempt does not work, we should have saved him for the next attempt that might be more successful. It would have been smarter to use the less cooperative Terran for our first attempt in case it is a failure."
That further indicated that they were the "Terrans" the aliens were talking about because Izuku could indeed be seen as the more cooperative of the two, seeing as how Shigaraki withheld the food trays and water bottles given to him and Izuku always gave them back. That would make it easy to see Izuku as being more cooperative, especially if you add in how loud Shigaraki could get when he yells. Izuku hadn't seen any other species carrying on like that, so it was probably very out of the norm to make a scene like Shigaraki tends to do on a whim.
"I don't think it will be a failure," the first voice contested calmly. "We have had first-time successes for multiple species. It's been five gigaclicks since we've had a failure."
If they were talking about the fact that Izuku could now somehow understand every word they were saying, Izuku would call it a definite success.
Not that he had to let them know of this fact.
Izuku's mind whirred with the different possibilities that were now open to him.
"But this is the first time we're implanting a Universal Translation Device into the brain of a deathworlder. There might be some unforeseen difficulties. I mean, look at the technology we had to revert to using! It's not even a complete implant! It sticks out so grotesquely!"
Izuku stopped himself from reaching up to see what might be sticking out of his body so grotesquely and forced his breathing to remain steady. He could worry about that later.
"All in the name of science. Improvements can be made once we are sure it is a success. Then we can improve our deathworlder specific technology before we implant into the blue-furred Terran."
Izuku decided that he had heard enough when it was mentioned that the same is going to be done to Shigaraki. His most immediate goal became to prevent that exact thing from happening, with a concurrent goal of getting the hell off this planet.
Izuku decided that it was time to open his eyes and do what he does best.
Without warning, he shot up, hands flying to his head to continue to try to get that damn mask off his face before they could put him under again. He allowed his breathing to come faster as he felt around, wondering where that grotesque thing might be sticking out of him from could be as tears filled his eyes as he allowed his panic to take over.
"Hello, Terran! I'm glad you're awake! We did a procedure while you were out and now you should be able to understand us," one of the aliens said to him. A dreto, he was able to identify through blurred vision of his tear-filled eyes.
He let out an incomprehensible sob in response, flailed backwards until he fell off the metal table he was on, and landed hard on his hands and knees on the metal tiled floor with a grunt. Reeling back as some of the aliens stepped forward, trying to calm him with words he pretended to not understand, he quickly moved back to get away from them, crashing into the shelving units behind him, sending jars and bottles scattering to the ground, the fragile material often shattering on impact when it hit the floor and crunching under the feet of the aliens as they still tried to approach Izuku.
There was a tall metal pole that looked like it was used for IVs, so Izuku grabbed it. It was, apparently, not for IVs as it was permanently affixed to the floor. Not so permanently once Izuku got a good grip on it and yanked it right out, yielding it as a weapon, still sobbing loudly and incoherently as the aliens tried to soothe him with their words he pretended to not understand and wide, slowly moving gestures as to not startle him further.
"He obviously doesn't understand us! The UTD implant was a failure!"
Izuku swung the metal pole and the aliens jumped back, but Izuku wasn't aiming for them. He used the pole to knock down the other shelving units lining the room, tossed the pole away, and leaped forward, over and across the toppled shelves to get to the exit. He tugged uselessly on the door once, twice, before really putting his quirkless but beach-trained muscles into it and yanking the door right off its hinges and leaping for freedom out into the hallway, picking a random direction, and booking it, wiping at his tears around the stupid mask still so firmly affixed to his face as he ran, worried that he had still been unable to locate the grotesque thing sticking out of him.
What if he already accidentally yanked it out and he's bleeding out somehow without realizing it?
He looked behind him quickly and was relieved to see no blood.
When he turned back around, he thought for a moment that the hallway was filling with fog, then realized with dread that it wasn't the hallway, but his mask once again, filling with familiar fog that had already knocked him out once before. He renewed his efforts to try to get the mask off, but he lost consciousness once again before he was successful.
When he regained consciousness and felt the cool metal underneath him, he sat boltright up, ready to continue his crying-panicking-fighting-running escapade from earlier, but was immediately disoriented when the image of his familiar cell filled his vision instead of whatever place he had woken up in before.
"About goddamn time!" Shigaraki was yelling from his own cell across the corridor. "I thought you were gone for good! Taken out by a stupid-ass mask-gun. Can you imagine?"
Ignoring Shigaraki's endless ranting and raving, that had probably been going on endlessly if the rasp in his voice was any indication, H'zashi centered in on Izuku, stepping closer, optimistically cautious. "Midoriya!" H'zashi greeted. "Hello! You've been fitted with a Universal Translation Device implant, also commonly known as a UTD. Can you understand me?"
Izuku forced himself to not respond, noting that the dolluns were still in range, though they were retreating, probably just having brought his unconscious self back to the security of the cell. Izuku tried not to feel too bad when he saw H'zashi physically deflate, reminding himself that he'll be able to speak to him freely soon enough.
Izuku's hands automatically went back to work trying to pry that stupid mask off his face. He was never going to allow another one of these to ever take root again if he could help it. They were an absolute pain to remove once they found their target and got locked on.
"What? Are you deaf or some shit, now? That would explain why you never goddamn listen to me, you fucking brat!" Shigaraki continued, becoming louder and more agitated as Izuku continued to not respond. "Fucking figures that they would try to fix you and return you fucking defective! Are you listening to me?! Hey fuckface! What did they do to you?! I'll fucking kill 'em!"
"Chill," Izuku commanded finally once the dolluns were finally out of sight. "I hear you loud and clear. I just had to wait until the coast was clear. Why would you think that I'm deaf?" Izuku asked, initially intending the question to be rhetorical as he focused on trying to work his fingers under the arms of the mask embedded in his hair.
"Well, they bring you back with one of those stupid implants on your head for deaf people, and then you just flat out ignore me when I'm yelling at you. What am I supposed to think?" Shigaraki retorted, but at least he stopped his yelling.
Izuku stopped at that, reaching up to find a flat metal disk embedded in his head among his hair. Just like Shigaraki had said, it probably looked similar to a cochlear implant. Is this what the aliens were calling grotesque? Izuku could have laughed. It was as much out of the way and flush with his head as an implant could be, as far as he was concerned. He wondered just how far ahead their technology was that this was considered sticking out so grotesquely.
"I think this thing allows me to understand the alien's language," Izuku informed Shigaraki. "They call it a Universal Translation Device."
"It's working? You can understand them?" Then, at Midoriya's nod, "Universal?" Shigaraki asked, seeming skeptical all of a sudden. "Are you sure it doesn't work both ways and that they can't understand our languages now, too?"
"So much for getting our hopes up for an open line of communication," H'zashi grumbled across the hallway to A'zawa, momentarily distracting Izuku from his conversation with Shigaraki.
"They don't seem to be able to understand us," Izuku informed Shigaraki, nodding his head in the direction of their conversing cellmates.
"Thank the stars that your Terran is back, safe and sound, at least," A'zawa said. "It's so rare that UTD implantation goes wrong, so it's lucky that he seems unharmed otherwise."
"What are they talking about?" Shigaraki asked, curious.
"You're right," H'zashi said. "I should be grateful. At least we can hopefully see if your Terran will calm down, now that my Terran is back in his sights and he sees that he's alive and safe."
"They're talking about how it's a good thing that I'm back because you'll calm down," Izuku said. "You were also right about them not using our names when they talk about us."
"Ha! Told ya!" Shigaraki gloated. "Let's make sure that they can't understand, though. Oh, no!" Shigaraki shouted suddenly, pointing at A'zawa's shoulder. "There's a poisonous dart right in your shoulder!"
"But now that the UTD was a failure with your Terran, I wonder how long it will be until they update their technology and try with my Terran," A'zawa was saying when he happened to look over at Shigaraki by chance at that moment and seemed startled that Shigaraki was pointing at him. Instead of looking down at his shoulder, A'zawa looked down the hallway in the direction that Shigaraki could have realistically been pointing instead, but didn't see anyone there, and looked back at Shigaraki.
"Shigaraki, what?" A'zawa tried.
Shigaraki shook his head in dismissal and turned back to Izuku. "I'm assuming he has no idea what I said."
"Not a clue," Izuku confirmed.
"Not that your Terran would be cooperative if they do get it working," H'zashi theorized.
A'zawa snorted. "You don't think?"
"You're planning on bringing them in," Shigaraki accused. It wasn't a question.
"Well, that was the idea from the start," Izuku defended. "To get them on our side so that we could all work together, remember? This just makes it so much easier!"
"What if they don't want to help us?" Shigaraki asked, ever the skeptic.
"Then we're on our own, but we were on our own anyway," Izuku reasoned. "I think it's a shot worth taking."
"Until they tell the guards that it actually did work," Shigaraki warned.
Izuku shrugged. "Then it's my not-words against theirs."
"I think that's why they chose my Terran, first," H'zashi mused. "They were probably so certain that it would work, so they chose the more cooperative Terran to test it out on first."
"That's exactly what they did," Izuku said, cutting into H'zashi's and A'zawa's conversation without warning. "But they chose wrong because I'm not going to cooperate either."
H'zashi's feathers sharpened in surprise as he turned to face Izuku fully and A'zawa just stared from his place across the corridor, a smile growing over his face as the time slowly stretched on and no one said anything.
"Try not to freak out," Izuku whispered, "but I can now understand everything that you're saying."
Izuku took the time to watch their reactions, mindful of Shigaraki's hesitations, but was relieved to find H'zashi's feathers puffing out with presumed excitement and A'zawa's attentive eyes on him, hopefully open to whatever might come out of his mouth next.
So, why not give them a little taste of his personality? It couldn't hurt.
"And you guys call us "my Terran" and "your Terran" when you're talking about us behind our backs?" Izuku teased with a smile to hopefully show that he was not trying to be malicious. "How sweet."
H'zashi's feathers drooped once more. "Oh, no," H'zashi fretted, turning wide eyes across the hallway to meet A'zawa's eyes. "How are we going to gossip, now?"
Izuku laughed, gleeful that his teasing wasn't taken the wrong way, and hopeful that their communication, even with this new UTD implant in place, would work smoothly between the three of them.
"So, here's the plan," Izuku said, getting right down to it while they still had the privacy without any guards nearby. "I overheard the dretos saying that they were going to try it out on me first, and then on Shigaraki. To buy him the most time possible before that happens, I'm going to act like the UTD didn't work. If and when they do come for Shigaraki to repeat the procedure on him once they update whatever technology and procedures they need to, I'll reveal that actually, surprise, I can understand and communicate, hopefully buying him even more time, if we haven't already escaped by then."
"What are you saying to them?" Shigaraki asked, eyes narrowed as he watched the aliens become immediately enraptured with whatever the hell Izuku was saying to them.
Izuku waved him off, fully intending on catching him up in a moment.
"So, what?" A'zawa asked. "They really have no idea that you can speak and understand Standard at all?"
"Not a clue," Izuku answered with a laugh, thinking back to his poor attempt at a half-assed escape. "When I woke up, I cried and yelled and panicked and fought back without giving a single indication that I knew what they were saying to me."
A'zawa and H'zashi both took a moment to look between Izuku and Shigaraki, and then at each other.
"What?" Shigaraki demanded.
"Maybe our Terrans aren't so different," H'zashi said to A'zawa before turning back to Izuku. "Are there different subspecies of Terrans?"
"Uh, no," Izuku said. The idea of different genders and races and ethnicities running through his head briefly, but he didn't think any of those counted as a different subspecies, even to an alien species.
"Interesting," H'zashi commented, seeming like he had to rethink everything. "You two seem so different in so many ways, especially with your sleeping habits, for one. I thought there might have been some differences in some subspecies going on."
"Ah, no," Izuku waved off. "He's a– a–" Izuku was startled to find there was no direct translation for "cuddle" in their language. "Snuggler?" he tried instead.
"We've noticed," A'zawa said, once again side-eying Shigaraki.
"Well, he's noticed, especially, being the object of the snuggles," H'zashi corrected with a trilling laugh, gesturing with a wing toward A'zawa. "And he sleeps really regularly, but you don't," H'zashi noted.
"Some Terrans have sleep disorders," Izuku said with a shrug. "They sleep too much or not enough. Being in a stressful situation doesn't help things, as you can probably imagine."
"But sleep is important!" H'zashi argued.
"What are you talking about?" Shigaraki asked, pressing himself against the bars as if to get closer to hear the conversation better, as if that would allow him any better insight.
"Tell that to my brain!" Izuku said with another shrug. "It's not like I would choose to not more sleep regularly if I could."
"And what is with all the sweating?!" H'zashi asked with a squawk and an agitated flap of his wings, looking back and forth between the two Terrans. "Do you have no sense of self-preservation?!"
"What?" Izuku asked, entirely confused, looking to A'zawa for assistance with this topic.
"He has a point," A'zawa said, entirely unhelpful.
"What's going on?!" Shigaraki groaned, slamming his forehead against the bars of his cell.
"Don't mind him; he's fine," Izuku dismissed.
It was after a lot of back and forth that Izuku learned that sweating is apparently not normal, and is in fact a last-line-of-defense life-sustaining mechanism. A'zawa and H'zashi seemed skeptical when Izuku explained that it's quite normal for Terrans.
"Whatever! It's fine!" Shigaraki exploded, making A'zawa, H'zashi, and Izuku startle, all attention going from their current conversation about the time system involving clicks to Shigaraki, even if Izuku was the only one who could understand what he was saying. "I don't need you! I don't need any of you!" he screeched. "I can make it out of here on my own!"
He stormed away from the bars and flopped down in his own bed-grass box, and that was a new sight for Izuku to see as he had only ever seen Shigaraki in A'zawa's bed-grass box.
"What's your problem?" Izuku asked.
"No, it's fine! Go on without me," Shigaraki insisted in a snarl. "I've done things on my own before. I can do it again." Then after a pause, he angrily said, "it's not like they did anything to help when you were being taken away, you know?! And now you're just cozying on up to them?!"
"Not like they did anything?" Izuku repeated, incredulous. "Like you did anything, either?" he challenged.
Shigaraki clenched his jaw and looked away. "Yeah. I didn't do anything either," he said. "So I guess we can just part ways and be on our own." He folded himself into his own bed-grass box and didn't move again until the beginning of the next cycle, not even getting up to inspect to see if there was anything different to try on the meal tray offered for him.