Thirst and hunger let him know that it must be well after noon. The next stream he saw Izuku would drink all he pleased. The need for water outweighed the danger of microbes at this point. Was that a voice? It was, definitely. Someone was following him. Heroes? Villains?
The trees around here were not nearly so pleasant as last night's maple. They were all thin conifers. Beggars could not be choosers. Sap oozed over his hands and clothes, needles poking at skin as Izuku scrambled away from the forest floor.
The voices drew nearer. "He sure got a long way," said a familiar voice. Snipe? It sounded like Snipe.
"We're catching up," growled Hound Dog. Izuku stayed frozen in his tree. He wasn't coming down until he was sure that it was Snipe and Hound Dog. The two heroes came into view. "He's got to be around here somewhere, up in a tree maybe? He might not believe it's us. There was that shapeshifter with the League last night." There was a shapeshifter?
Snipe called, "Midoriya? It's us! You picked up two knives from me at the entrance exam, remember? Present Mic introduced me, said "say hello, Snipe." Ojiro was there for a weapon, too."
Even if Izuku weren't convinced that was really Snipe (and he was) the jig was up. He had been found, and that wouldn't change regardless of the identity of the people on the forest floor below him. "I'm here," Izuku called out. Hound Dog and Snipe jerked their heads up.
"Wow, ya' move fast kid. Come on down now," Snipe beckoned. Izuku clambered down, grimacing at the sap clinging to his skin.
Hound Dog pulled a water bottle and protein bar from his bag. "Drink and eat slowly," he advised.
"Now sit down on this log and let's see about those cuts," Snipe said. Izuku took a seat, sighing in relief as the water touched his parched lips.
"T-thank you," Izuku said, "but I really don't have anything worse than scrapes from climbing the trees."
"Where were ya' headin'?" Snipe inquired as he refused to take Izuku's word about injuries and proceeded with an examination.
"I figured that if the area had fallen under the control of villains walking out was my only chance and if the heroes had retaken it I would probably be found by... well, you, Hound Dog."
The school counselor nodded. "Good thinking. We're more than ten kilometers from the lodge at this point. Are you alright to walk that distance or should we call for a helicopter?"
"I can walk," Izuku replied.
The two heroes made sure Izuku was really fine to walk the distance, fed him some more, then led the way back to the lodge.
The greenette was almost afraid to ask. The fact that the heroes hadn't immediately offered assurances about the status of his class wasn't a good sign. "What happened?" Izuku asked eventually. "Is... is everyone alive at least?"
"Everyone's alive, as far as we know now," Snipe said. "There was a period of about five hours early this morning where we all believed that you were dead 'cause one of the captured varmints was braggin' about it."
Wait. What? "No one even got close to me," he shook his head. "I hid in a hollow tree all night and the villains searching never got within twenty meters..."
"Regardless, that's what he said. When they called in Detective Tsukauchi, though, he knew the varmint was lyin' and we came out to find ya."
"Six students," Hound Dog sighed, "are unconscious due to inhaling poisonous gasses. Iida Tenya and Ragdoll were both kidnapped during the attack."
What? "Iida? Why?" Izuku exclaimed.
"They were attempting to take Tokoyami Fumikage," Hound Dog explained, "and Iida was absolutely determined not to let them do so... he succeeded in freeing Tokoyami but made himself vulnerable in doing so. His kidnapping was opportunistic."
"And Ragdoll?"
"Was targeted," Snipe said darkly. "Although we don't know why. We also don't know what they wanted with you." Izuku could guess.
"This... you said League, so it was the League of Villains?" Izuku asked.
"Yes," Hound Dog growled. "Shigaraki, the one who has an unhealthy obsession with hands, was reportedly present, as was Kurogiri, the warpgate controller, but those were the only two who were also part of the USJ attack. The rest were new recruits."
Hound Dog ended up carrying Izuku the last two kilometers despite the greenette's protests. He was fine. Exhausted, yes, but fine.
His poor mother had clearly not had any sleep in the last day. Izuku, who certainly wasn't in better shape despite a nap on the ride home, barely managed to reassure her that he was perfectly fine before passing out on the couch. Vague nightmares haunted him. The most vivid one involved a blonde man in a prim suit whose quirk the greenette couldn't quite figure out trying to murder Izuku in a museum, chasing him between the exhibits. The hunted came up with clever plans to combat the hunter by making use of whatever objects were at hand but none of it seemed to work for long... it ended in red mist and shattered glass.
As the hero student fetched himself breakfast at... it was about one pm... probably the following day... his mother watched him nervously. "Izuku," she whispered, "I... I can't take this anymore. I would never make you drop out of hero school, I wouldn't try to do that to you, but can't you transfer to another program? Somewhere that's less of a target?" she almost begged.
Izuku cringed. He hated worrying her, but his entire life was going to be like this, wasn't it? "Maybe I could transfer to Ketsubutsu, given that they admitted me before but... what would my chances be of finding another teacher, another class, that wouldn't mind me being quirkless? UA's been really good to me about that," despite the fact that pretty much none of his classmates had a clue about it, "and given the kind of career I'm going to pursue, switching schools now would make things really complicated... and I would miss all of my friends."
"I know it wouldn't be ideal but I just want to protect you," tears streamed down her faces as she combed her fingers through his hair.
Perhaps by shepherding him away from UA she might save him from the ire of the League of Villains... but probably not. For All Izuku knew, he could have been the reason they showed up... no, probably not; if he were the only reason they would have put significantly greater resources into tracking him down. Regardless, the most dangerous things might be in Izuku's mind, and there was nothing at all that his mother could do about them. "I know, but you can't, and you don't have to. I'm learning to protect myself. At the USJ the students protected each other until All Might arrived but last night I escaped from the attack all on my own. They tried as hard as they could under the circumstances to find me and they couldn't. During internships I chased the Hero Killer away from his targets. No one helped me, I did that all on my own, too. I know you worry, and my line of work is going to be... something worth worrying over, but if anyone wants to hurt me, I'm going to make them work really hard to do it." She didn't seem particularly assured, but did not press demands for him to switch schools.
Izuku spent the remains of the day trying to figure out where all his friends were. Ojiro was unconscious, a victim of the poison gas attack. Shouji was in the hospital for observation but insisted he was "not hurt in the slightest anymore--they're just being annoying." Kacchan had been "a little hurt" in a fight with a villain called Moonfish and was only now being released from the hospital. From this context and a quick internet search for Moonfish, Izuku translated "a little hurt" to "maimed and nearly killed" and fretted over his best friend until he started pulling his hair out. There was still Iida's situation to worry about, too, and nothing at all he could do about it. Nothing.
He hated being powerless like this. There were too many bad memories associated with this feeling. He kept thinking about finding Kuma's body, his traitorous mind sometimes editing in his class president in her place. Iida could be dead already. And there wasn't a thing in the world that Izuku could do about it. The universe did not care that it wasn't fair and wasn't right. There was no
force of karma or justice save that which humans inflicted on each other... and humans were really bad at getting those things right, weren't they?
"Please, oh please," Izuku spoke to no one as he stood in front of his bed, contemplating the difficulties of sleep, "Bit Weasel please don't show me anything nasty tonight. Please! I can't take it right now!" He had enough on his mind without adding the trauma of the MLA War to the melting pot of anxiety.
Maybe she listened because he did not dream that night.
He had woken up and gone about his morning routine for a full thirty minutes before realizing the world had ended and restarted while he was asleep. Izuku watched All Might strike down All For One, finishing his last battle as a pro hero, and didn't know what to think. It would have been much better for everyone if one of the collapsing buildings in Kamino Ward had smashed the architect of this disaster flat. All For One would have to be executed, right? If Moonfish made it to death row, certainly All For One was headed there. Capital punishment was barbaric, but there were occasions where it was the only sane option. Even in an ultra-maximum security prison, someone like All For One was an existential threat to everyone and everything around him. They couldn't possibly get the trial over with and hand down the verdict quickly enough to quell Izuku's anxiety.
There was a knock on the door. "Nerd," Kacchan said to him, "are you coming?" The blonde bore a fresh, prominent scar on his forehead but other than that he looked little worse for the wear. Maybe he hadn't been downplaying the severity of his injuries. It certainly looked like he'd been properly discharged from the hospital rather than sneaking out a window... which was something the greenette one hundred percent believed his friend would do.
"To...?" Izuku wondered.
"To the hospital."
Didn't Kacchan just get out of the hospital? Oh, to visit friends. "Is... I barely got to see the recording of All Might's last battle I have no idea, Kacchan--is Iida alright? Did they find him? What about--"
"Nobody we know is dead," Katsuki interrupted, "not yet anyway."
"Not yet?" Izuku quailed. What did that mean?
"Ingenium, Edgeshot, and Best Jeanist were all really badly hurt," Kacchan said. "I..." he paused to punch the wall, "from what I've heard on the news I expect at least one of three to die, and I've found myself wishing really hard that it's Edgeshot, just 'cause the other two I know, or know through a classmate, and it makes me kind of sick to be thinking like this..."
"All For One needs to burn," Izuku growled. "I'll come with you, just let me tell my mom."
It turned out that Ojiro had finally been discharged an hour earlier and Shouji had gone home the day before. After eventually receiving a reply to their text message, Izuku and Katsuki learned that their tailed friend had been whisked home and put to bed by his concerned mother. The two proceeded to Iida's door.
"Iida?" Izuku asked, knocking tentatively.
"Come in," a groggy voice replied. "Hello... Mi... what is it... Fossa," Iida settled on Izuku's hero name. "That's easier to remember." He looked like a corpse; it was really unsettling to see someone that pale, like he was wearing zombie makeup.
"Holy shit are you... what happened to you?" Katsuki demanded.
"Language!" Iida chopped the air with the one arm that wasn't rigged to a dozen machines. Still
the same old class president.
"You look... very unwell," Izuku said, "are you going to be alright?"
"I'll be fine," he replied. "Ragdoll and I were drugged with something nasty that makes you look like you're dead and feel like you're dead." Was he talking about stasis tranquilizers? "So they could have more leeway during the... whatever surgical modifications... the antidote has a lot of funny side effects and takes a while to really work. And, you know, it sometimes doesn't. Work I mean. But it worked for me."
"What the hell were they trying to do to you?" Kacchan wore his horror plain on his face.
"Seems f-fairly obvi-vi-clear. Seems clear, given there were all the nomu things in the building we were in."
Izuku tried to quash the part of his brain which was thinking "wouldn't it be really convenient if All For One were shot by a sniper during a custody transfer?" and "how hard would it be for me to obtain a sniper rifle?" followed by "do I know how to use a sniper rifle?" Probably. It seemed like the kind of thing he would know how to do although he might not excel at it.
"He can take people's quirks, you know," Iida interrupted Izuku's musings, "like he did to Ragdoll."
Kacchan had, apparently, not known that. His eyes grew wide. "Why aren't you surprised, Fossa?" Iida asked him. "You're not surprised."
Izuku considered his reply carefully but didn't see any harm. "I already knew that All For One existed due to involvement in a case."
"You did?" Kacchan hissed. "And you didn't--you weren't allowed to say anything about it." "Of course not," Izuku agreed softly.
"Anyway, I'm even more glad they took me and not Tokoyami, because All For One wasn't int-r- didn't want my quirk but I don't know about Dark Shadow..."
Izuku suspected that Tokoyami would not have survived the death of his partner, or at least would have been so completely destroyed by losing his quirk as to be unrecognizable in the aftermath. "You are the best class president, Iida," Izuku told him.
"What was it you told my brother," Iida hummed, ""part of the job?"" Wow, False Flag's motto was making the rounds. "It wasn't like with Stain. That was... that wasn't protecting anyone that was revenge. Just magnifies wrongs. This wasn't like that."
"No, no it wasn't like that at all." Izuku had still worried about Iida in the aftermath of Hosu even after their chat, but he could probably stop worrying now. "You're going to be an amazing hero, Iida."
"He's right," Katsuki agreed.
"Do you know if my brother's alright?" Iida asked them abruptly and Izuku didn't know what to say. He exchanged a glance with the blonde. Katsuki looked panicked, obviously having no idea how they should respond.
"He was hurt pretty badly," Izuku said after a moment. There was no point in hiding the truth. Obscuring a fact would not rewrite reality. "But what he did was no different than what you did. He was protecting you like you were protecting Tokoyami. Tokoyami isn't responsible for what happened to you anymore than you're responsible for what happened to your brother or any of the other pros injured at Kamino Ward."
"Went to die," Iida whispered, tears budding in his eyes, "for me. All of them, marching off to die, for me--"
"Not for you," Izuku said so sharply that both Iida and Katsuki blinked in surprise. No. At Utapa, Bit Weasel didn't go to fight for a person. She wasn't fighting for Destro, not principally; the
MLA weren't there to support their leader, they were there to die for an ideal. There were different emotions involved in that kind of sacrifice, the most powerful kind because while one can fail irrevocably to save a person, ideals never die. Those who march onto the field to make a point raise the banner of a god, fight and die in the service of heaven (or hell depending on what exactly the ideals in question are and, sometimes, on one's perspective). The heroes who went to Kamino Ward were like that. "For an ideal. For a world where there is justice and freedom and people like All For One don't exist. That's what they fought for; you and Ragdoll were just a part of that."
"Oh." Iida said, looking confused. He might not be lucid enough to have this kind of discussion.
Iida abruptly fell asleep. Without further ado, they left their class president to convalesce. "I'm going to see if I can find Gang Orca and ask after Best Jeanist," Katsuki told Izuku.
"I don't know them, but I know Ingenium. I'm going to see if I can wish him or his parents well," Izuku replied.
"Meet back here." Katsuki marched briskly away.
Izuku was told that Iida Tensei was back in surgery, purchased a card for his acquaintance, and returned to the lobby to wait for Kacchan.
The blonde appeared after nearly an hour. "That was depressing as hell," Katsuki said, dragging his feet as Izuku stood to follow his friend out of the hospital. What should he say in reply? Nothing would probably be best. "All For Bastard threw him through a building. Turns out being thrown through concrete and brick walls fucking hurts... No idea if he'll live... but could make a more or
less full recovery if he does and responds well to the healing quirks. Someone really, really needs to make Gang Orca go home but that someone is not me."
"It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that any of them could die," Izuku said. "I've seen people dead, people I cared about--"
"What?" Katsuki gasped. "Who? When?"
"Well, not people I care about unless I--you don't need to know about that," Izuku was not sharing his fear that he might secretly be someone else entirely. "There were people I knew when I was... you know, in the memories. I saw Kuma dead. All For One killed her. I hate him... I hate him for that," Izuku clenched his fists, "more even than I hate him for what he did at Kamino Ward last night. I was thinking earlier that he really needs to be shot by a sniper during a prisoner transfer... and he does. He really does. They can't end him soon enough."
"Calm the fuck down, nerd," Katsuki said, voice wavering.
"Anyway," Izuku waved his hands, trying to pull the conversation back on track, "it's not like it's new to me, but I still can't imagine it happening. It's... Edgeshot can't die, Ingenium, can't die, Best Jeanist can't die, they just can't." But they might. Being "in the right" didn't mean you would survive.