Some heroes arrived via bus. Others stepped out of SUVs, minivans, sedans, ambulances (presumably full of paramedics ready to address the aftermath) and--in a handful of cases--mobile homes. A scant handful arrived on foot with the aid of a transportation quirk. Izuku caught sight of Ingenium skidding to a dramatic stop inches from another hero's nose. This must be a common occurrence given the victim's melodramatic reaction.
The assembly convened with striking speed. The dirt parking lots went from empty to packed solid with dusty vehicles in only a handful of minutes.
Certain faster vehicles were positioned such that they could get back on the road quickly should a speedy retreat be necessary. If the battle went that badly, presumably they would have fewer people to evacuate and the scant available vehicles would be sufficient. That was... not a pleasant thought... or maybe Izuku was reading too much into this. Maybe nobody had considered the need for a speedy retreat at all and the arrangement of cars was random.
Hopefully not. That would not inspire confidence in this nebulous "control" that would be giving them orders. It wasn't clear whether "control" was straight up the HPSC or whether people like Nedzu and Detective Tsukauchi might be part of "control."
As Fossa prepared to follow Kesagiri man into the thick trees, hiking towards their assigned location, he searched the crowd for his classmates. There were Shouji and Katsuki accompanied by Gang Orca. There was Tokoyami... with some sidekicks that Izuku didn't recognize. Were those Hawks' sidekicks? Should they be here? It wasn't that their loyalty was in question (although it might be) but rather that being forced to fight their former leader would be traumatizing under the best circumstances. Influx, after she turned in her triple agent's coat for a quadruple agent's coat, always tried to stay away from any battle where the MLA tangled with agencies associated with her former handlers.
"Come along, Fossa," Kesagiri Man called him.
Izuku followed, but Nighteye drew him aside for a moment. "I," the hero grimaced and fiddled with his glasses. "I'm sorry."
"For... what?"
"I... what I saw when I looked into Hawks' future when you were my intern. What I said about Romeo and Juliet, what I told you about getting certified for automatic weapons..."
"Yeah? That was about Tartarus, wasn't it?" Izuku hadn't thought about it before but it was a perfect fit.
There was a long pause. "I don't think so."
"You think you saw some of this battle?"
"Possibly. Just be careful, please, and if anything out of the ordinary happens." Nighteye shook his head. "It doesn't matter, I know it doesn't. I can tell you and it won't change a thing. It never does. Why do I even bother?" The hero pulled at his hair and ground his teeth, a shocking lapse of decorum. "Be careful," Nighteye repeated. "And if you see anything or anyone where they shouldn't be, please call it in right away."
"A-alright." What was that supposed to mean? What was out of the ordinary on a battlefield? "Good luck, Fossa."
"You, too."
Izuku jogged to catch up with Konno. Dirt gave way to crunchy organic matter, the light dimming as the green umbrella of leaves above fought to impose darkness on the forest floor. "What did Nighteye want?" Fossa's mentor asked.
"He gave me kind of cryptic warnings about reporting anything that seems out of place and being careful which... did not do a lot for my peace of mind." Indeed, every hair on his body stood on end.
"If all goes well we will see very little combat," Kesagiri Man attempted to reassure him. "Well, things probably aren't going to go well then, are they?" Izuku whispered.
Their short hike up the mountain ended several hundred meters behind the PLF's villa with most of the journey passing in nervous silence.
The building about to meet the heroes' might was at least ten stories tall. It looked more like a large resort hotel than a private residence. The view from the windows on the top floor must be incredible. If it weren't about to become a battlefield, this entire mountain would be lovely. Maybe it would be lovely someday, once all the screams had faded and the blood washed away.
Someone was going to die here. That was a given. Even if Nighteye had not been behaving so... shiftily, it didn't take future sight to know there would be fatalities in this fight. The PLF were fanatics. There would be no surrender and likely no quarter.
Izuku had good friends lining up to storm that building. They might as well be a world away for all the help Fossa could provide them. They were smart. They were strong. Most were far from
thoroughly trained for this kind of combat but they would adapt. Somewhere in a nebulously placed command structure, Nedzu was probably doing his best to watch out for his students and faculty.
Fossa would just have to trust his friends to make it out safely. There was nothing he could do, other than... keep an eye out for things out of the ordinary as Nighteye had asked.
He would have tried to do that anyway.
"Well, we have a good view at least," Konno took up position behind a thick trunk and drew his sword, ready to respond to--or launch--an ambush. Fossa, finding a few convenient handholds, scrambled up one of the trees, perching on a sturdy branch a few meters above his mentor. He took the opportunity to check over his assigned weapon and position spare clips for easy access. He would have done this earlier but there simply hadn't been an opportunity. Fortunately there was no issue with the weapon; it wasn't as if he could have done anything about it if there were a problem.
Kesagiri Man surveyed the nearby terrain as Fossa finished his preparations. "I can't see either of the two teams that are flanking us," Konno admitted. Right. There should be several other groups of heroes nearby. "Can you spot them from up there?"
Izuku squinted through the foliage. The ragged topography on this part of the mountain made it difficult to look in any directions save those perpendicular to the contour lines. "I cannot," he admitted. "I can see a bit more of the villa from up here, but I don't see any of the other teams."
"I do not like being alone out here like this," Konno hummed under his breath, voice just barely loud enough to hear.
"Neither do I, but I get the feeling that our job is probably one of the safest ones."
"Unfortunately, you are almost certainly correct. Few of our enemies seem likely to desert... or order a mass retreat for that matter. We may not see any combat at all if things go well." Why would you tempt fate by saying that?
There was no need to ask for silence. By mutual agreement, both heroes stilled like waiting snipers, tongues frozen and breathing slowed both to keep nerves at bay and to deepen the silence.
A half-hearted breeze sent the leaves rustling like windchimes. Two small birds chased each other past Izuku's perch, chirping angrily. Some kind of small mammal scampered past a neighboring tree. The mountain shook with the force of something.
It didn't sound like an explosion. It felt like one, sort of, maybe more like an earthquake. "Cementoss I think," Konno said quietly. Perhaps Fossa had never seen the teacher use anything
akin to his full power.
An actual explosion followed. It might be Katsuki's quirk, or rather one of his grenade gauntlets. It might be someone else's quirk. It might be an actual bomb. It was impossible to say.
Several minutes passed with nothing more than occasional seismic disruptions and distant clatters or crashes to indicate that a battle raged less than a kilometer away. Then a window on the sixth floor of the villa shattered and someone--probably a PLF member but it wasn't possible to be sure-- plummeted head-first to the ground.
"Ouch," Fossa whispered under his breath. Whoever that was, they were probably dead. Very good luck, very good equipment, or a powerful protective quirk might save them. Maybe. Defenestration was regarded fondly by professional assassins for a reason.
Smoke began to rise from the villa following a particularly loud explosion, a dark cloud coiling towards the sky. It was evident within seconds that the villa did not meet fire code and, apparently, every individual with an appropriate firefighting quirk was occupied. The insidious, magma glimmer of an inferno flickered to life in one window that Izuku could just barely catch sight of when he leaned to the left and tilted his head to peek around an inconvenient leaf cluster.
Even Todoroki would be hard pressed to get that blaze under control if it weren't attended to in the next few minutes. Izuku's eyes fixed on a single figure running through the trees. "Look."
"I see them," Kesagiri Man declared. "We're moving to intercept."
Fossa jumped down from his branch and chased Konno across the rough mountainside. The pair of them, anticipating the pathway of the approaching figure, crouched behind two trees, the trunks roughly three meters apart.
The fleeing figure approached with much crunching of dry leaves. Kesagiri Man stepped into the light, sword at the ready, as the blonde PLF crony skidded to a halt. "Surrender," Konno said flatly.
"Nev-urk!" Fossa kicked the young man in the stomach. Kesagiri Man's sword was at the man's throat in an instant.
"Surrender," Konno repeated. The coughing blonde slowly raised his hands. "Good choice."
Fossa cuffed the man's hands. He didn't recognize this enemy and had no idea what his quirk might be, but Fossa was going to gamble that this prisoner really was the small fry he appeared to be, that he wasn't worth one of the three pairs of quirk-cuffs that Fossa and Kesagiri Man had between them.
"Control has instructed me to secure him to a tree for pick up at a later time," Konno explained, looping a length of spun-steel cable around a nearby trunk and linking it to the man's cuffs.
Izuku did his best to keep an eye on the villa for additional escapees as his mentor secured the prisoner. "We are to return to position immediately."
"You're just gonna' beat me up and leave me here?" the captured crony complained.
There was no need to dignify that with a response. Kicking someone in the stomach hardly qualified as "beating them up" anyway.
Control telling them to just leave the guy was probably not a good sign. Either control was too incompetent to come up with a decent solution for dealing with prisoners caught fleeing the villa or they had come up with a solution and it was no longer viable because the battle was going badly and everyone who might have been involved in retrieving and securing prisoners was otherwise occupied... or Fossa might be over thinking again. Perhaps control had identified the PLF member and decided he wasn't important enough to waste resources on right now. In fact, that was probably what had happened. Fossa was letting his unease color every detail and that wasn't warranted.
It was still a nice day, if you ignored the thick cloud of black smoke and the--"Holy hell what is that?" Fossa gasped as he caught sight of a silhouette in the distance, a silhouette nearly the size of a building. And it was definitely not Mt Lady. "That wasn't in the briefing!"
"They think he's called Gigantomachia," Kesagiri Man said, resigned. "I saw his file. I suppose they didn't give it to everyone."
"W-why would they not give all of us that intelligence?" Fossa forcibly kept himself from screaming. There was no reason to do that it was so stupid.
"I am certain they had a reason--oh dear." "What?"
"Things are not going well," Kesagiri Man replied, tapping his earbud. "I've been asked to reinforce the frontlines."
"Not we?"
"I am not bringing a student into that quagmire," Kesagiri Man replied with a stubborn shake of his head, "no matter how capable I know him to be. Stay here. Keep watch. Don't engage anyone unless absolutely necessary, just report in what you see."
Fossa would probably be able to do a good deal of damage to the enemy if he followed Kesagiri man to the front, but it wasn't--strictly speaking--the kind of combat he was built for. He could understand his mentor's demand that he stay put. Watching for escaping villains was still an important job. Fossa could likely do more good here than in the center of the battlefield and Kesagiri Man would likely fight better without worrying for the student he had brought into the line of fire. "Alright. Good luck, Kesagiri Man."
Konno disappeared into the trees at a gentle run, pacing himself so as not to arrive exhausted. Fossa returned his attention to the blazing villa.
A girl who was probably not Toga despite looking similar to the LOV villain fled through the forest. She had appeared out of nowhere, with nowhere understood to be a well hidden escape tunnel. Fossa called it in. Control replied with a frazzled "acknowledged." Several minutes passed. The ground shook. Explosions, screeches, and the roar of the structure fire grew louder.
A group of five villains, one of whom Izuku recognized as an A-rank menace with a transformation quirk--Mosasaur was his alias--appeared without warning and cut across the mountain heading west. Fossa called it in. Control, even more frazzled now, snarled back, "acknowledged." Maybe the student should stop the reports? Was he distracting someone from important work? But no, he wasn't going to stop doing his job just because it wasn't being appreciated.
The last hints of blue faded from the sky as the smoky onslaught continued, the whole mountainside darkening and air turning acrid on the greenette's tongue. A few trees near the villa caught fire. That was... really not good and Izuku was uphill of the flames which was extra not good. However, the forest wasn't dry and there was little wind. The fire did not seem likely to spread aggressively.
A dark silhouette caught his eye and the greenette glanced up. Oh. That was Tokoyami and Dark Shadow. Flying. He hadn't realized that was something they could do, not like this. Whatever. They had their job, Fossa had his.
Whatever Tokoyami and his partner were up to, it was not Izuku's concern. He was here to watch for escaping--and there went another set, appearing as if by magic.
"Oh, no." It was Hawks and Dabi. Hawks wasn't quite limping but leaned heavily on his partner, walking with the awkward gait of someone with a serious back injury. He wore his wings like a flowing cloak.
"Control, Hawks and Dabi just exited the building. They are headed directly towards me on foot.
Hawks appears to be too injured to fly."
"Acknowledged." The dispatcher seemed to have calmed down considerably. Maybe the outlook was improving? The strength and frequency of explosive cracks shaking the mountain had not decreased, though.
Hawks and Dabi continued through the trees. Tokoyami abruptly dived down into the forest, headed straight for the PLF pair. "Oh, damnit, damnit," Izuku hissed. What was Tokoyami thinking? He couldn't possibly have been instructed to do that! His classmate was going to get killed chasing after his old mentor.
Fossa leapt from his perch and sprinted through the trees, leaping over a fallen log and skirting a marshy pond. A displeased squirrel chittered alarm calls at him.
Flames glittered through the underbrush ahead. Fossa slowed, not wishing to jump into the path of an attack as he entered the fray.
Tokoyami and Dark Shadow reared up like a banshee, lashing out at Dabi, not able to penetrate the barrier of flames, shrinking in pain as more brush caught on fire and brightened the clearing. Izuku's classmate and his familiar were forced to dodge more and more nimbly.
"Stop it! Stop it! Both of you stop it!" Hawks shouted, feathers whizzing through the air, burning as they tried to restrain Dabi, disintegrating beneath razor talons as they tried to restrain Dark Shadow. Hawks lunged for his lover, ready to physically drag him away, then let go as Dark Shadow nearly ripped all of them to pieces. This was so far out of hand...
"Hey!" Izuku stepped into the clearing, coughing pathetically on the thick smoke, and leveled his weapon. "Freeze, the lot of you!" They did.
"Now, my friends are going to come stand with me," he gestured with his head for Tokoyami to come to him, "and you two are going to keep walking and not look back and not try anything, got it? Hawks is going to take all of his feathers with him." The ex-hero sighed in exhausted relief and began busily putting his wings to rights.
"We're not going anywhere," Dark Shadow growled.
"Yes. You. Are." Nothing good could possibly come of this situation. Either both parties left now or someone was going to die horribly and probably pointlessly.
"Let's go, come on Dabi," Hawks panted in his lover's ear. "We've got each other, it's all we need."
"They know where we're heading," Dabi snarled.
"They're not going to follow us," Hawks pulled on the villain's shoulder. "Tokoyami likes me too much. Who needs any of this? If we leave now we can go anywhere and do whatever we want. We can go get married if you want, or just go get dinner, and you never have to put up with Shigaraki being a stuck up little twit ever again, or with that psycho doctor or with any of it."
Dabi took one step backwards, two, then turned and the pair of villains headed for the edge of the clearing.
That was when Fossa realized that some of the distant explosions of combat were drawing nearer-- Katsuki snarled as he launched himself into the clearing like a heat-seeking missile. "You filthy
traitor!" the blonde roared, both at Hawks and Tokoyami, although the blonde's physical ire fell upon the former hero.
Oh this was just perfect.