The sky on this damned planet never shut up. Too blue. Too wide. Too alive.

Bakugo hated it at first.

He'd been selected for the Avatar Program six months ago—one of a handful of pro heroes recruited for their combat instincts, their ability to think fast under pressure, their refusal to die quietly. Pro Hero Dynamight, the RDA liaison had said with a stiff smile, your record speaks for itself. He'd told her he already knew that.

But nothing in his record had prepared him for Pandora.

The moment they plugged him into the Avatar body—taller, leaner, a damned braid hanging down his back—he felt like a stranger in his own skin. The trees were too tall. The air too clean. Even his explosions sounded wrong here. Muffled. Like the jungle was swallowing them whole before the impact ever landed.

His Quirk still worked. Technically. The Avatar biochemistry had adapted to it in ways the scientists called extraordinary and he called barely functional. The nitroglycerin still sweated from his palms. The blasts still fired. But out here, in all this wet green living air, they felt smaller. Like shouting into a storm.

It felt like a place that didn't want him.

And then there was you.

You moved like wind—silent, fluid, impossible to track. A Na'vi whose golden eyes kept watching him from the shadows, as if you were waiting for something.

He didn't trust it. Shouldn't trust it.

One day on patrol, a thanator struck. Too fast. Too sharp. Its claws tore across his side before he could react. He staggered, explosion sparks flickering weakly from his palms.

Pain blurred his vision. The jungle roared louder.

Then you were there.

He wanted to snap at you. Wanted to yell he didn't need help. But his body was too heavy. His fire too faint.