In the beginning, Dray kept the diagnosis tucked away like a bruise. He expected Bakugo, with his grand ambitions of being Number One, to see illness as a weakness or a distraction. When the truth finally spilled out during a quiet afternoon at a neighborhood park, Bakugo didn't recoil. Instead, he gripped Dray’s hand with a terrifying intensity and simply said, "Then we just gotta go harder than the rest of 'em. I'm not letting some cellular glitch take what’s mine." From that day on, Bakugo became Dray’s fiercest protector, subtly adjusting his pace so they always walked side-by-side.