"So she's playing us?" Epona sighed. "All this time... She actually convinced me, I..." She shook

her head, clearly despondent.

"Well," Bit Weasel said, "not entirely."

Destro, lips set in a grim line, cocked his head. "How so?"

Kuma laughed. "Oh come on, Chikara. Anyone with eyes can see Andros is head over heels for the horse goddess here," it was one of Epona's more common nicknames; her birth name was dead to her, but a variety of other monikers were accepted. "You don't need to be a telepath to figure that out."

"There's this thing called faking, Tripswitch," Epona mumbled.

"Regardless of what may be obvious to some people, a telepath's insight would certainly help," Destro said dryly. "Weasel?"

"She's a triple agent, or that's what she's meant to be, feeding us tidbits of information cherry picked by her handlers, telling them everything she sees," the mind reader continued, "but she's in too deep. Andros is in love with Epona," the general in question perked up like a parched lily in a rainstorm, "passionately in love," he could practically see Epona unfurling moon-silver petals, "and finds herself increasingly sympathetic to our cause."

Arch took over. "If we play our cards very carefully, we can likely make a quadruple agent out of her. It might require some... reciprocation on Epona's part."

Epona snorted, "well, that's not a problem," then blushed and looked away. "Though I feel like a bit of a manipulative bastard," she admitted, "playing players is still playing..."

"Hm," Bit Weasel hummed, "but I don't think she really wants to be on their side anyway. It's the same thing we're always up to, just a slightly different kind of liberation."

"Here's what we know so far, about her and her handlers," Arch pulled documents out of a manila folder and splayed them out on the conference table. "The woman she reports to appears to be a real piece of work, which has the potential to make this a good deal easier."

Chris nodded to himself, scanning the information rapidly. "Needless to say, none of this information leaves this room." He smiled viciously, revealing canines that seemed pointier than usual, "let's get to it."

"So that's what happened with Influx," Izuku smacked his alarm clock irritably. He would have liked to see more of that. Very little information about Influx was available. Plenty of Destro's generals were mysterious, blank pages but Influx especially... Apparently Andros was her family name; Izuku hadn't known that. He'd been vaguely aware that she had been an MLA spy and, when revealed as such, had fled and officially joined the organization's top ranks as a regular field commander. A triple agent turned quadruple agent, though... that part wasn't in any of the books. It was probably her own ex-handler who had her brutally executed after her capture during the Holiday Raid.

"Real piece of work" indeed. Influx didn't deserve that.

Nighteye continued to allow Izuku an unprecedented amount of freedom. He was treated like a fully fledged undercover operative. Nighteye was his handler and as long as he got his paperwork in on time he could do as he pleased. The lack of supervision was disturbing. Fossa could probably handle himself in an investigation as low risk as this one, but if an unknown variable popped out of the woodwork and things escalated, Izuku's nearest backup would be an hour away at best. Adult, experienced undercover heroes worked in such situations all the time... but Fossa was still learning and, really, Nighteye should be keeping a much closer eye (heh) on him. He couldn't bring himself to outright say that to the hero, however, merely resolving to carefully watch his step and keep his head down if things went sideways.

Izuku did not know how to play any variation of pool. Huh. It was almost strange to find something he didn't know how to do without explanation and practice. He spent the afternoon of his second day losing eight ball to six people in short succession. Three of them were attractive young women making not so subtle passes at him. Fossa played naive and oblivious, as if he were somehow unaware of the predatory, gold-digging stares.

Nibbling on a superb bowl of fried pork that evening (this job had some major perks besides the car) Fossa caught sight of Otani speaking with the tall, orange haired manager, Ishihara, and the head chef before the three of them ducked back into the kitchen. Now that was extremely unusual. If there had been a problem with his meal, Otani would have resolved it in the dining area, wouldn't he? No... something more was going on here. Fossa got to his feet and took a deliberate wrong turn on his way to the bathroom before becoming fascinated with an ancient phoenix painting on the wall. A service door behind him led to the kitchen proper, skirting the main walk-in

refrigeration unit. He took furtive glances through the window in the service door.

Ishihara, Otani, and the head chef all stepped together into the walk-in refrigerator. Izuku waited, pretending again to inspect the phoenix painting, muttering to himself about whether the place might sell it to him. Five minutes passed. He had to leave. If he stayed here any longer someone was bound to notice him and perhaps become suspicious.

The fact that the three men had ducked into that refrigerator five minutes past and not reappeared... that, too, was extraordinarily suspicious. They had assumed that Green Mountain was merely a location where deals went down, where wealthy patrons made arrangements to move illicit items... but were they actually selling merchandise out of this place? Out of the freezers? There were certain drugs--high-end quirk enhancers nastier than Trigger or just straight up narcotics--that needed to be refrigerated. They could also be dealing illegal animal products: pangolin, dolphin, that sort of thing.

Deciding to take a small risk, Izuku nudged the door open and admired the kitchen. It was spotless and all the equipment must have been replaced within the last year or two. A line cook spotted him immediately and raised an eyebrow. Fossa shrugged and rubbed the back of his head. "Sorry, just curious, didn't mean to disturb you. Really nice setup you've got here." As he ducked back out, he noted the refrigerator in question sported the kind of heavy duty lock that said "don't even think about it unless you have a laser cutter."

Unless he planned some kind of elaborate distraction, there was no way he was getting a look inside that refrigerator. If he started a fire, the disruption might gain him the opportunity for a quick peek, but probably not. Perhaps he could get Otani to tell him, though, over another round of darts...

"I don't think I'll ever win a round against you," Fossa complained petulantly. "Yet you keep trying," Otani gave him an amused half-smile.

"I'm not the sort to give up, not unless I get bored, do get bored easily though sometimes," Izuku replied, intentionally hitting the outer rim (zero points) and grumbling about it.

"Ah, boredom," Otani hummed, "the ultimate enemy I think."

"At least the food here isn't boring," Fossa replied, "or... you know... the other amenities."

Otani chuckled. "No indeed. It's one of the things I love about Green Mountain. Always something new and excellent."

"Do they change the menus often?" the greenette asked.

"Every month or so, and the special is different each night as you are well aware," Otani answered.

"I had a rattlesnake steak once," Fossa hummed to himself. "You don't see a lot of exotic meats like that around here... I suppose I might not know where to look."

"Green Mountain will occasionally have things like that," Otani told him. "You just have to ask."

"I had a couple of things last year," Izuku dropped his voice to a whisper, "that were amazing but I didn't realize at the time were, you know... not things that you can buy... above board." He faked a grimace.

Otani chuckled again. "I certainly can't fault you for that."

"No idea how my folks got the stuff," Izuku continued, fishing a bit more aggressively. "Kind of wish I did... not that I would ever purchase something like that knowing it was illegal of course." He made sure the last part of the sentence sounded as whiny and fake as possible.

"Well," Otani hummed, "perhaps you'll find out if you stay in town for a while."

That was probably as much luck as Izuku dared push. He finished another three rounds of darts before heading out for the night.

"Block C is secure," Tripswitch's voice crackled over the radio. "No sign of Fractal yet..."

"I've got Fractal," Bit Weasel's broke in. "He's seriously injured but stable. The kid he was trying to help, Tawny, is dead, though... it's not pretty down here."

"It's not pretty up here, either," Izuku replied, pushing open a heavy, metal reinforced door into yet another personal hell. Putrid air blasted him in the face. A haggard young woman cowered in the corner, pulling a threadbare blanket over her head. She rallied her courage and hissed at him in defiance.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Izuku told her.

"You're one of them!" she screeched at him. "That's what you always say and they you—you--" she trailed off, flinching as if expecting a blow.

"They kidnapped my friend," Izuku told her. "We came here to get him back. We didn't expect to find any of this. I'm sorry for what those monsters did to you." He stepped back. "The doors are open. The guards are dead. You can stay here and wait for help or you can get up and run. Save yourself."

The bedraggled woman considered, eyes darting side to side. Izuku stepped away, leaving her to her own devices. It was for the best. She would never trust a meta human, having been mercilessly tortured for weeks by the worst of Izuku's kind. "Good God, Destro..." Bit Weasel--reliable, cheerful, faith-in-humanity Bit Weasel--sounded as if she had just become a nihilist. "Jesus Christ almighty--"

"Weasel!" he shouted to her. "What is it?"

"There's an open pit mine in the back... They've been... there's at least two people alive down there right now, but not for long I don't think. Reeks like there's a hundred dead down there at least. How could-how could they do this? They ought to know better than anyone what it's like to be oppressed, targeted, killed just because of an accident of birth--how can metas have done this? Shouldn't we know better?"

"We do know better," Fractal's soft voice replied. "But as Auden said: I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return."

Izuku shuddered despite himself. He knew that poem. It was a condemnation both of war and intolerance and a lament against the poet's own helplessness in the face of both. "Even if you had lived through the horrors and abuses these men and women had, you would never do such a thing,"

Fractal continued after an unnervingly wet cough. "Do not refer to these people and yourself as "we," Weasel. Sharing one genetic trait with them does not make them your kin."

"Can one of you flyers come out here?" Bit Weasel asked quietly. She just sounded tired now. "I think these two are beyond help, other than a coup de grace, but they deserve that at least and I can't get down there." They had two flyers with this group. One had dragonfly wings, Muhammad was his name. The other was a telekinetic who could walk on air, Yoonjae. Neither liked to go by a codename.

"I hear you, Weasel, I'm coming," Muhammad replied.

A sound of shuffling feet behind him--he turned to catch a makeshift wooden club--probably once a chair leg--swung weakly at his head. The woman he had rescued earlier swayed on her feet, nearly collapsing as she lost her balance after the failure of her sucker-strike. You had to respect that kind of tenacity. It was beyond foolish but it was also beyond impressive to turn around and attack the enemy when so badly injured. Her eyes shone with a terrible fire. "Those to whom evil is done" indeed...

"I've seen worse than this," he told the nameless assailant. "I've seen regs," that was the current slang for those without abilities, "do worse to meta humans, much worse, on much larger scales. I've seen little girls and boys wearing slave collars that shock them if they step out of line or look like they're going to use an ability. I've seen "labor" camps where a few dozen people a day are shot dead. This is, however, by far the worst I've ever seen metas do to regs. It's vile. And the perpetrators had to die. If we are ever going to have peace and equality, if we're ever going to get along and share this world with some facsimile of tolerance... there's no room in a world like that for people like this. Are you like them? Are you going to go start your own blood factory in vengeance for what happened to you at one of theirs?" He'd given this speech--or variations on it-- dozens of times before, with a few key categories interchanged.

He never heard her answer. He never knew her answer. She turned and stumbled away and Izuku kept walking, opening door after door. He found a corpse behind one, a drugged old man behind another. He took the unconscious survivor with him and went down to help with the pit mine... or perhaps more to bear witness than help.

It wasn't particularly cold, but the sun had just set and the dying light put a chill in the wind. Bit Weasel, Tripswitch, and Muhammad had already rigged up a pulley and the body of a middle aged man had been retrieved. If he'd been breathing when they brought him up, he wasn't anymore. Izuku stared into the yawning, black mouth of the hellish hole and recoiled at the overwhelming stench of decay. Nauseating... like the worst swamp combined with the worst volcano combined with the worst chemistry lab. He swore in a few languages. It didn't make him feel better.

"Her back is broken," Muhammad said quietly, setting a girl down on the grass. It wasn't just her back. Her clothes were soaked in blood; it looked as if she'd been impaled on a dead branch, or an old mine support, on her way down. The poor girl looked very similar to Muhammad; she could be his little sister. He had several siblings, didn't he? None of them metas... From the agonized expression on his face, the resemblance was not lost on him.

The casualty stirred, opening her eyes. "Kas?" the girl asked in confusion, reaching upwards. "You came for me..."

"Of course I came," Muhammad replied. He might not know who Kas was, but he knew what to say.

"You're the... I knew..." she closed her eyes again.

Bit Weasel knelt down and aligned her fingers to the key nerves on the child's face. Izuku nodded to her and she went to work. The telepath could kill unconscious people with just a brief touch-- flicking a few exposed, critical switches in their brains--instant and painless, it was a good way to go. The final casualty stopped breathing.

"I want to nail these animals to a tree and use them for target practice," Muhammad muttered. That wouldn't be a reasonable option not only because it was a vile war crime in its own right but also because most of these murderers had chosen to resist with lethal force rather than flee; lethal force would be met in kind by the MLA. And the MLA were better at it.

"That's sick," Kuma said dully. "Just kill them. Solves all the problems, throws some chlorine tablets in the gene pool, doesn't make you stoop to their level."

The combat part of the mission was short, but it took them a very long time to sort out the injured and figure out what to do with the bodies.

"You alright?" Mirio asked him as they stepped off the train that morning. The two of them commuted together from UA dorms to Nighteye's offices but usually didn't talk much on the train; it was too crowded.

"I had... the worst dream," Izuku said. "Couldn't sleep the rest of the night." He hadn't been able to concentrate on anything else to distract himself, either, not even familiar old videos of All Might or compilations of cats jumping into boxes and falling over...

"Sorry about that," Mirio nodded, face falling. "I have my fair share of them, too... mostly about the Hassaikai raid lately."

"Oh. Overhaul was... really scary..." and Izuku hadn't been anywhere near that fight, not for more than a few seconds.

"Yeah," Mirio hissed through his teeth. "I saw what he did to that poor police officer and he managed to grab me, too. I got freaked out, sloppy," the blonde admitted. "Stupid. If Eraserhead hadn't been there I... don't like to think about what could have happened to me. But sometimes, at night, I think about it anyway." The third year grimaced, expression vulnerable, and Izuku felt compelled to share, not to leave this show of trust between comrades unreciprocated.

"I have seen," Izuku began, "some really, really awful things. You wouldn't... I don't think you'd believe how awful if I told you." This was probably more than he should say. "Sometimes in dreams I see lots of people dying terribly. I know how it is." Mirio gave him a meaningful glance, one he'd come to recognize. "Yes, I speak to a therapist. Do you?"

Mirio considered this. "I didn't think I needed to until recently. I... saw someone die in a raid when I was a second year but that was not right in front of me and not nearly so, so ugly. Maybe I should I guess. I'll ask Sir about it.

"On another note entirely," Mirio tried to sound chipper but didn't really succeed, "what are you up to this morning?"

"Paperwork I think," Izuku replied. "Ah, sorry."

"I don't really mind." Some mindless form filling would help him calm down. He'd seen things like that death pit before, or the equivalent atrocities perpetrated by gens against metas, but never in that level of detail, never with that kind of emotional weight. It crushed him as if he were trying to carry all the victims' bodies on his own shoulders.

"I take it back then."