Switchblade by Cacid

by alkhuzamaa

Midoriya Izuku went missing for a week and turned up in a back alleyway with skills he's never even heard of and no memory of how he came by them. He resigns himself to never learning the truth of what happened to him, but he shouldn't waste this chance should he? He could become a hero with reflexes like these.

70. Ch 70

As it turned out, the PLF and the Chain had not learned that leveling cities would not win them the

war.

Izuku was nowhere near it, thank god. The entire district where Aldera junior high had once sat was leveled, nothing left but bodies and rubble and Twice--who had really lost his mind, it seemed- -laughing. There were horrific pictures in the news. Countless died, including a few people Izuku recognized even in the blurry newspaper photos. One of them was one of Tsukauchi's police officer friends, the one with a cat mutation. Another was a minor hero from the spy's old neighborhood. Izuku used to cheer for the older woman whenever he saw her on the street... he noticed a few others he might know, people who used to bully or ignore him at school, parents of those people. They didn't say exactly how many had been injured or killed but for Izuku to recognize this many of them...

Endeavour was badly enough hurt in the disaster to put him off the frontlines for months, maybe for good. What would poor Todoroki Shouto be going through now? He spent so much time working to spite his father, a larger than life figure, and now... well, some people might be larger than life but nobody was larger than death, even when the reaper struck to maim rather than kill.

A group of fifty or so Chain, the survivors, ran Twice out of town. It seemed that Twice--still cackling--led them a merry chase. Shortly afterwards Lemillion, along with Nighteye and others from his agency, caught up with the mad general. It wasn't clear exactly what happened after that-- TWRR couldn't be trusted about any of this--but Lemillion was gravely wounded and Nighteye "stabbed Twice many times, and continued to stab him long after the man stopped breathing." The paper implied that Twice had already been a subdued, bound prisoner at this point, that this was a brutal, illegal, public execution. That was almost certainly a blatant lie. Chances were Twice had been about to kill Lemillion--who was just too nice for his own good and probably tried to give the villain a chance to repent or something, opening himself to an ambush--and Nighteye struck a fatal

blow to save his student and then just kept fighting a dead man, and who could blame him?

Izuku scheduled a few hours to stare at the ceiling of their new bunkhouse--constructed in a central square in Hosu because General Geten didn't think permanently commandeering existing buildings set a good example. He stared and tried in vain to come to terms with the fact that his childhood home, childhood school, childhood haunts... were all gone. It was like being exiled yet again. It didn't feel real, though. He had these pictures in the news, but it was just like watching a disaster movie set in his home town. It wasn't... he wouldn't be able to comprehend or come to terms with the horror until he saw it with his own eyes, and that might never happen.

Izuho dropped the newspaper with a grimace, rolled out of bed and fell out into formation at Sone's barked demand.

In the spindly shadow of one of the massive towers set up to replace Hosu's anti-teleportation beacon which had been destroyed when the PLF took the city, General Geten, Major Nagant, and the commanding officers of the two other battalions camped nearby stood on an elevated stage, arms crossed. Well over a thousand soldiers waited before them in the midday sun. Many civilians watched from nearby buildings or even nearby streets, some brazenly like victorious wolves, some timidly like lambs waiting for a slaughter they had accepted as inevitable. A butterfly attempted to land on Izuho's hair, perhaps intrigued by the novel color. The spy was tempted to grab the pretty insect and hide it away, somehow certain a terrible fate would befall it if it left his sight.

Major Nagant, scowling furiously, stood beside and Geten who was unreadable as always beneath his parka. "Yesterday," Geten called, "one of my fellow generals and good friends, Twice, was murdered in enemy custody." An obvious, blatant lie... but of course it would be the party line.

A vicious, angry roar erupted from the assembled crowd, Arashiro screaming right in Izuho's ear so that he winced away from her. "They'll do it again," Nagant roared to be heard above the clamor. "I used to work for the HPSC, before I saw the light," concerned murmuring followed that little tidbit. That explained a lot about her skills and fanaticism. "Unless we make a statement, show to them that force will be met with force, they will continue to commit war crimes with impunity."

"Nothing will bring back Twice," Geten said, head bowed, "but there are steps we can take to make sure the Chain does not do this to other prisoners."

The more charismatic Nagant picked up the thread again. "They only did this because they believed there would be no consequences. We must let them know that this is not the case, or others will share Twice's fate."

Oh no. He could see where this was going and he did not want to be here. He didn't want to see it. Nearly all prisoners of war had long since been shipped out of Hosu, but they had captured a number of Chain stragglers in the last few days, stranded operatives attempting to flee the city.

"Bring them," General Geten directed a sergeant at his side.

Four dazed people stumbled onto the stage, shackled hand and foot and quirk-cuffed. Each wore a bag over their head, and not the fun kind of bag that Fossa had once worn when he was waiting for the Face Fixer's temporary disguise to wear off after his mission to infiltrate the Shie Hassaikai.

The bags were removed in short order by the MPs overseeing this travesty, Misaki in their lead.

Fossa recognized two of the victims. One was a minor hero, borderline sidekick, who sometimes worked with Manual. She was called White Sight or something like that. The other was a student

Izuku vaguely recognized from the provisional licensing exam, a boy (probably) completely covered in light brown hair. He was, at most, seventeen. The other two victims Izuku did not know. He would probably never know their names.

"They murdered a high ranking prisoner without a second thought!" Nagant roared, her charisma whipping the crowd into a frenzy of rabid howls.

"Kill them!" someone shouted, the chant of, "off with their heads!" beginning before either the major or the general suggested it.

"What shall we do with these prisoners?" Geten asked, calm as a glacier. "What shall we do to make the Chain know there are consequences for their actions?"

"Execute them!" the crowd roared, although "obliterate" and "kill" sometimes replaced "execute," the voices mixing into a jumbled, disgusting, murderous soup of angry shouts.

Arashiro gave Izuku a horrified side glance and took a breath, clearly ready to protest. Izuho slapped his hand across her mouth and shook his head violently. She bit his fingers. "Hey!" he hissed.

"What the hell?" she demanded, "you can't think--"

"You don't want to rock this boat," Fossa hissed in her ear. "There's nothing you can do, do you understand?"

"I have to--"

"If you don't want to be relegated to driving waste trucks or something for the rest of the war, somewhere where you can't do any good or any harm, toe the line," he hissed. It didn't seem anyone had noticed them, nearly every soldier caught up in the adrenaline rush of the mob.

Izuku grimaced, unable to bring himself to chant along as he ought to. "You know what they say about revolutions not being civilized." Arashiro grit her teeth, eyes wildly flicking in every direction. Who knew what she was thinking, way too much probably.

One of the four prisoners, the student, recognizing their doom began to fight viciously against his bonds. It was hopeless, and Misaki grinned viciously and struck the poor kid harshly with a baton. The other Chain prisoners, more injured or less feisty, did their best to hide fear and tears but didn't fight. White Sight managed to look condescending, as if she pitied their foolishness. Oh to go to face death with a look like that on his face... Izuku didn't have the resolve.

Neither Camie nor Nishida--their closest neighbors in formation--looked particularly happy about this, both of them crossing their arms and joining in half-heartedly at best with the chants. The rest of Izuho's squad was at best neutral towards the proceeding war crime while Sone and Shimoda jumped up and down screaming "off with their heads!" like their birthdays had come early this year.

Major Nagant jumped down from the stage, the crowd parting to give her room. She raised her rifle serenely. Fossa closed his eyes. Like he told Arashiro, there was nothing he could do. There was nothing he could say. If he were a half-way decent spy he would have broken into the battalion's makeshift prison yesterday and slipped the prisoners a key to the cuffs. He could have at least given them a chance, and yet yesterday it hadn't seemed worth it. It would have been so hard not to be caught and these four were just bound for a POW camp, anyway, they'd be fine. Hah. If only he'd known... "I'm sorry," Izuku and Fossa whispered under their breath, too quietly for even

frantic Arashiro to hear.

One explosion. "Off with their heads!" Two explosions. "Shoot them! All of them!" Three explosions. "Liberation for all!" Four explosions. "Death to the Chain!"

The crowd quieted down and Izuho dared to raise his head. Nagant had killed all of them with a single shot each. It would have been merciful if it weren't murder. The crowd slowly quieted.

"We will be victorious," Geten told them coolly. "Unfortunately that will require a first of iron. I hope this will send a strong message to our uncivilized enemies." That lack of self-awareness... God, did they record this and broadcast it? There was probably a TWRR reporter in the crowd, but had they taken a video? "We will Liberate this country, no matter how much work or how much time that takes. Dismissed." Most of the crowd remained nearby, milling about, chattering excitedly.

"Sergeant Sone, if you would be so kind?" called Nagant, beckoning. Oh god.

Izuho's squad leader jumped up onto the short stage where the bodies lay, a ferocious grin on her face. "With pleasure," she crowed, acid dripping from her fingers.

"How did she get this job?" Arashiro asked, voice quavering.

"She volunteered before hand, I bet," Izuho replied, breathing hard to drive away a sudden wave of nausea. "I think dissolving bodies sends a stronger message than just shootings prisoners. They probably planned it this way."

Camie and Nishida had vanished the moment Geten dismissed them, Camie heading straight back to her never-ending paperwork, Nishida wandering towards the sparring fields.

Arashiro and Izuho lingered alone. "I don't like that," Arashiro hissed. "Just because the Chain did something wrong doesn't mean we should do it, too. I know, there has to be consequences or... but I don't like that. I don't like that. I don't like that."

Izuho didn't dare say anything, worried that Izuku might try to speak in his place if he opened his mouth. "It's a war crime, isn't it?" Arashiro demanded. Izuho remained silent. "Why won't you say anything? You have to care! I know you care! What they did to Twice was horrible but this was... You don't think this was okay, do you?" She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, panting through her teeth as confused emotions warred to control her. Arashiro bowed her head so her hair flowed over her face, crossing her arms, biting her lip, uncrossing her arms. Then she began convincing herself that she was doing nothing wrong as is the primal instinct of all humans, whether fighting for the noble thing or for genocide. "Would the Chain really keep executing prisoners? They would, wouldn't they...? That sounds like them. I mean, they're right, General Geten and Major Nagant, and I know the old MLA had to do unsavory things, too, the PLF is no different, we'll have to do the same..." She gulped, trying to swallow down that rationalization, grimacing in emotional turmoil as she choked on it.

"Do you know what happened to Influx?"

"What?"

"Influx, General Andros, of the MLA."

"...What? Why are you asking me this?"

"She once worked for the other side, for their Chain. She changed her mind. When her old handler

caught Influx, she was brutally murdered after she wouldn't give their Chain any information. They hacked her body into pieces and mailed it back to her lover, Epona."

"That's... horrible... but what...?"

"You will notice that their Chain, which was far more horrible and oppressive than ours has ever been, still had the decency to return their victim's body, ruined as it was, and Influx got a proper funeral in the end."

Arashrio stared at him, open mouthed, as Izuku turned on his heel and strode away to the firing range.

That was so stupid. He'd known something like this would slip out if he opened his mouth. He should have bit his tongue.

It was clearer now, what exactly had run through Izuku's borrowed mind when he held Hirano's throat in his hands, ready to strangle the serial-killing monster to death: calm down, calm down... this wasn't the deal and it isn't the clever thing to do. She'd be ashamed of you for losing control this way. Get a hold of yourself. Killing him isn't the only option and it would be the stupid option as well as a betrayal of trust. Taking Hirano back to All For One, making him face the real monster... well, death might be kinder but it's fitting and it keeps your part of the deal.If All For One had not been an attractive source of well-deserved justice, if Izuku's shoulder-sitter had not promised that no lives would be taken by the student's hand if there were any other choice... Hirano would have died in that basement and, ironically, would have been spared the horror of a nomu's grisly fate.

In a war zone, here behind enemy lines where murderers could hide behind excuses like "just following orders" and "war crimes beget war crimes," psychopathic cruelty blending into the background violence... here there was no justice. Only death.

Getting close to Nagant, Geten or even Sone without witnesses was pretty much impossible, but from time to time Misaki liked to stroll off the beaten path, wandering at night just as Izuho did. Fossa, still in the habit of rising from his bed nearly every night had waited patiently for a golden opportunity. Here it was and he had to take the chance tonight because they were moving out in three days at most and everything from the terrain to the guard schedules would change. Fossa would have to start planning from scratch.

Misaki was utterly alone, lingering in a thick copse of trees at the very edge of one of the parks included in their Hosu "camp." The patrol that watched the perimeter had passed by five minutes hence and it would be ten minutes before another group came this way. Fossa had checked and triple checked and was as sure as he possibly could be that they were alone in every sense of the word.

Perched on a tree branch like a leopard ready to lunge, the spy watched the captain, watched the self-satisfied bastard take drag after drag from his cigarette. Fossa finger the wire garrotte he had brought to avoid bloodstains. Here he was, at the very end of the road, all the plans and contingencies in place, and suddenly he couldn't decide whether it would make everything better or worse to kill this man.

Killing Misaki wouldn't make much difference; the MP was... just following orders.

And that justified nothing. Just because somebody told you to do it didn't mean it was okay, and there was no way Misaki hadn't volunteered for that job and if that weren't enough, the horrifying rumors of what the captain and his friends had done to a family of quirkless civilians that failed to escape during the Hosu evacuation were almost certainly true.

More death wouldn't fix anything. What happened to that poor kid, to that poor hero, to that poor pair Izuku had no hope of ever identifying, couldn't be fixed. Would more death just make it worse? That came down to whether Misaki was liable to do things like this again.

Yeah. Yeah Misaki would do it again. The bastardliked it. He liked hurting people. He would commit war crimes like this, and worse, until someone forcibly stopped him. He'd murder prisoners and quirkless civilians and anybody else he could. If only Misaki had the power, he would be every bit as horrible as All For One had been.

If Fossa killed Misaki someone else would take his job, probably someone just as awful. It wasn't like the rest of the MPs were good people. The captain's death wouldn't really change anything.

Oh but it would. It would get rid of one person who didn't deserve to be a human being anymore. Who was Fossa to make that decision? Izuku barely knew whether he was a decent person at this

point. How could he judge whether someone else deserved to die?

This was war. Killing the enemy was what war was about. Killing the nastiest pieces of work in the enemy camp so that the remaining moderates who were willing to negotiate ended up in charge was a perfectly valid and, honestly, arguably moral strategy.

That couldn't be right. How was this any different from that execution three days hence? How could assassination ever be in any way moral?

Misaki was free to defend himself. As the murdered prisoners had not been. Fair game. And this was the only way.

But it wasn't the only way. Fossa had a choice. He could stop Misaki without killing him--just restrain and silence him and then trap him in a snowglobe. He'd been practicing his quirk more lately. He could do it.

And then what? Izuho couldn't keep that globe on him or among his belongings--if it were found as it likely would be Fossa would pay with his life.

But he could just hide the globe--in a hollow tree, a buried chest--

And what happened to Misaki if Fossa died in the war unexpectedly, with no chance to come clean about his dirty secrets? What happened if the area where Misaki was hidden were hit by a bomb or some other war-related cataclysm and the area was so changed that the hiding place couldn't be found? Then Misaki would be there, trapped, in suspended animation for... who knew how long... centuries? Millennia? Not even Misaki... the horror of that helpless, unending torture was too much to comprehend.

Wouldn't it be better to take the chance and imprison him than to murder Misaki outright?

No. No it would not. It would be a loophole, a way for Izuku to pat himself on the back and say, "see? I'm not a killer!" while doing something at least as morally questionable as taking a life. He would be like a preacher stealing from the poor to build a bigger cathedral. Hirano Niko probably told himself these kinds of things to justify his crimes. "Oh, it's not like I killed all these people! Most are fine, see, just in my basement for a while. What's the big deal?" That slope was too slippery to set foot on.

Why not just walk away then? Take the high road, work to save the next batch of prisoners rather than avenge the previous.

No. No, Fossa had to do something. He couldn't just let this stand. This was too much. Someone had to pay up. Geten, Nagant and Sone later, Misaki now.

This was crossing a line.

The line had long ago been moved, crossed, blurred, and diluted to span the whole universe.

Izuku had to have a reason though. He couldn't stomach... it couldn't just be a revenge kill. Misaki had to die for something. It didn't have to be much, but it had to be something more than Fossa's rage, something set in the future rather than the past.

Well, in that case Misaki's ID card and keys would do.

Misaki had an ID card that granted access to a lot of places Izuho's wouldn't, namely three of the mobile command trailers where sensitive information abounded. The captain's disappearance would be noted soon and they'd remove his credentials from the (still rudimentary) system, so Fossa had to act quickly.

To the spy's knowledge, none of these trailers had cameras or security systems beyond the card scanners, probably because the electronics required to rig something like that were becoming increasingly scarce and the specialists who could set them up were busy with more important tasks. Regardless, Fossa was careful to hide every distinguishing characteristic before scanning himself in to the MPs' command trailer. Three offices... all dark. The locks were hefty, not the sort of devices he could pick with anything short of professional equipment. His collection of bobby pins and paperclips would likely not do. It didn't matter, however, because he had Misaki's keys.

The captain's office was quite bare--just a filing cabinet and a desk, no personal affectations whatsoever besides a leather coat draped over the chair and a few fancy pens. The spy locked the door behind him and stooped low so that he could not be seen through the window by chance.

Both Misaki's desk and cabinet--which was more of a safe--had combination locks, although they looked aged and cheap. The outer layers of security--the ID scanner and the lock on the office door--were the primary deterrent against espionage, and the combination locks were secondary, features to prevent what Fossa had planned to do--steal someone's ID card and keys and then take all of their classified papers without a fuss. That was too bad. The spy had hoped the PLF would be less vigilant.

Fossa had never before had reason to check if safe cracking were one of his inherited skills. As it turned out it was, although he could feel that he was out of practice and really needed a stethoscope for the desk's quiet tumblers. He allowed himself fifteen minutes for the attempt, not willing to risk more. In that time frame, Fossa only managed to get the filing cabinet open. It would do.

Fossa flicked through the stacks of documents as quickly as possible, three layers of gloves separating him from the paper and protecting him from most forensic and quirk methods that might identify his meddling.

Orders to seize experimental support equipment... what was this? "The following items should be located at Niwa-Futaki Incorporated. Catalogue and ship to the Citadel marked to the attention of Dr. Kyudai..." Who was this Kyudai? And what in the world were these things he wanted to seize? Niwa-Futaki worked on support equipment for extremely exotic quirks, like Sir Nightye's ability to see the future, or Orion's ability to locally warp space, the kind of abilities a normal support company wouldn't have the slightest clue how to deal with. The company employed specialists in sciences that bordered on science fictions. What was this Doctor Kyudai up to? And this order was from Shigaraki himself! What was so important as to warrant their fearless leader's personal attention?

There were no further clues on that front. Izuku didn't have the slightest idea what a "Mork's String Disrupting Vortex Generator" could do, let alone a "Coalescing Entropy Flux Coupler." The crazy UA support student Hatsume would probably know. Izuku barely knew her but suddenly he missed her intensely. Odd that the spy's brain chose to fixate on someone who had been part of the scenery in his old life rather than one of those in the foreground who defined his existence.

Alright. Back on task.

Here was the location of the prison camp where the other Chain prisoners from Hosu had been taken. The Chain probably already knew the prison camp's location, but Fossa memorized the coordinates and details for good measure. Disciplinary records for the battalion... The guard patrol schedule for last week... Plans for the camp... A code book. Sometimes the technology at hand didn't allow for encrypted messaging. Sometimes technopaths had the ability to break encryption, RSA certainly and even some quantum-safe algorithms. As a result, old-school, date-specific word-replacement codes found use as secondary security features.

Fossa wanted this book. If he could pass it to the Chain, it could be significantly useful to them, assuming nobody had stolen one already. Would someone notice the book's absence when they searched Misaki's office after his disappearance? Maybe? They might just assume he'd had it on his person; Fossa was pretty sure that officers occasionally carried these things around with them.

Stealing it was probably worth the risk. How was he going to hide it though? In a globe, clearly. His quirk needed a living or recently dead thing to function, but inanimate objects associated with those dead things could be stored, too. He'd been working on that during his night wanderings and gained much more control of his ability, enough to manipulate the size of the glass orb produced to some extent. If he dug up a weed and hid this book in it, he might be able to compress it to the size of a very large marble which he could keep on his person at all times and easily hide with no notice if he were searched, something he could not have done with the full-size snowglobe that would have been required to imprison Misaki. Alright. It was a plan. Fossa tucked the book into his jacket.

If he'd been thinking clearly he would have brought broken glass and a plant in here, but the idea that he'd find something worth the risk of stealing had seemed very unlikely and he hadn't really been thinking clearly after what he did to Misaki...

He dared not stay longer. Much as Fossa might like to search more offices, he was unlikely to find anything more useful than a current code book and he had pushed his luck enough. Someone could wander in here at any moment.

"Did you hear?" asked Shimoda at breakfast the next morning.

"Hear about what?" Arashiro yawned. She must be sleeping about as badly as Izuho given the dark bags beneath her eyes. She also wasn't talking to Izuho much. Or anyone for that matter. Nishida had been quiet these past few days, too.

"Captain Misaki Sora disappeared last night," Shimoda explained. "What? How?" Izuho asked.

"No idea, just gone," Shimoda replied, snapping her fingers in emphasis. "Like magic! Not a trace. It's really creepy."

"That sounds like Chain special forces," Nishida said quietly. "We'd better keep our eyes open." "Maybe, but it could have been one of us, too," Camie pointed out.

"Huh? Why would you--a traitor you think?" Shimoda raised an eyebrow. "What are you saying? Why would you even think that?"

"Maybe just somebody who didn't like the spectacle three days ago," Camie shrugged. Wow. That was scary. How could she possibly have guessed this? She couldn't know could she?

Nishida stirred his soup absentmindedly. "Sometimes we have to send a message, not that I really li--I mean... well, I suppose it could be a traitor, but it's probably the Chain."

"I'm sure Nagant and her staff will get to the bottom of it," Izuho shrugged. "Captain Misaki could have just deserted, you know, or... he never seemed like a really stable man. Maybe the whole thing with Twice and the prisoners was too much for him and, you know... pressures of war..."

"You think he killed himself?" Wakiya gasped, scandalized. Wow. The spy was selling this so well that even Izuho himself had trouble keeping track of the fact that Fossa had killed Misaki the night before.

"Well, I guess it could be?" Nishida said. "I don't know.".

Camie looked away, rubbing her eyes. Huh. She was upset, too. What about? The executions? Or Misaki's disappearance? "It wouldn't really surprise me I guess. Nishida was--I mean is, I mean I don't want to speak ill given that he might just have gotten lost or be on a secret mission or something, but he had this laugh that really seemed unhealthy sometimes, like he wasn't really with

the program you know?"

"Yeah, we know," Wakiya replied. "And Misaki threatened to dock my pay because I looked at him weird. That doesn't seem like something a stable person would do, so... maybe."

Fossa was vaguely proud that the PLF never managed to find any trace of Misaki's body. He wasn't proud of anything else.

"I hate this stupid war," he mumbled into his pillow. "I want to go home." But he couldn't. He could probably go back to UA if he really put his mind to it, but not home.

"I guess I just don't like moving around that much," Fossa told Camie with a shrug, and that wasn't a lie--they were back in tents and the novelty was already wearing thin. Izuho had joined the clerk in her office, not wanting anyone else to watch these manipulations, and it wasn't as if he were an uncommon guest here. They talked often.

"Yeah, I can understand that," she nodded, squinting at a form even as she kept up her end of the conversation.

"Everything I knew as home is gone now," he muttered, sipping the tea Arashiro had provided. "I wish I could, maybe, get permanent quarters. Settle down for a while. Start to make another home."

"It was nice when we were staying in Hosu," Camie agreed. "I miss that place. Going back to tents in the middle of nowhere is not real cool, huh?"

"No, not cool. It is cold, though." She gave him an unimpressed look. "Sorry." Apparently she was not a fan of puns. "Do you think--no, probably not."

"What?" she asked with a tilt of her head, ready to hear him out.

"I really love my squad and I'm proud of what we're doing, but sometimes... I just wish we could get transferred to a permanent position, maybe something back at the Citadel," back at the Citadel where the PLF cooked up battle plans and nightmares. The TWRR had gleefully reported on the recent tests of new Nomu in combat, but god those photos were disturbing. How could anybody look at those monstrosities, realize that some of them were the twisted remains of Chain soldiers, and not be horrified?

Camie nodded. "Oh yeah, that would be nice, not likely to happen, unfortunately, although..."

"What?"

"Well, you're a great shot and you've got super good eyes, so maybe... you'd probably be able to argue that you'd be a great asset guarding some high security facility back near the Citadel, maybe you and Arashiro both."

"That would be amazing," Fossa put on his most wistful smile. "Wouldn't happen, though. It's not like anybody important would put in a word for me. Sone doesn't even like me..."

Camie raised an eyebrow. "I'm more important than you think, you know, and I certainly like you. For one thing, you keep bringing me snacks and that makes you one of the best people around in my book. Nobody else brings me snacks."

Izuho giggled. "I mean, yeah, but you're the one who can get us fruit and chocolate and bandages when nobody else has any idea where to even look, so yeah, you definitely have power, almost magical sometimes--"

"I mean I have a lot of say in transfers in and out of the battalion. I might... well, I might be able to find you a way to get a transfer to the Citadel."

"Seriously? I mean... I know you're really the person running the battalion, Nagant is just your puppet--"

"Don't let her hear you say that," Camie giggled, although she looked around nervously at the same time, "not even joking, 'kay? She's got one wicked burning temper, but yeah. I might be able to swing you out of here, but you'd have to do me a favor in return," she winked at him.

"Uh..." he shifted uncomfortably. She certainly wasn't trying to imply a demand for sexual favors. She wasn't the type, but misinterpreting her statement in that way would probably be to Fossa's advantage, making her less likely to think he was manipulating her, making it appear that he thought she was manipulating him. "What would that be? Because, I mean, I'm not like... I've never really done anything like... I mean you're pretty and all but--"

"What? No! No, not like--no, no, no, Mihara." She covered her face with her hands. "Now I'm blushing and I'm going to be so embarrassed all day and you, too, I can see you turning red just, why did you have to think that was what I was talking about? No. I just have never seen the Citadel and I want you to like, keep in touch, maybe send me a picture of the place. There's also a guy over there who I want to send a birthday present to--he sent me this tote awesome stuff to fix my hair after part of it got burned off and I owe him big time--and you know how the mail system is; nothing ever gets delivered except official orders, so I'd like, ask you to take the package along if that were cool with you. I just have to figure out what I'm gonna get him first 'cause it needs to rock his socks of. Anyway, it's nothing like, creepy, I'd ask I swear!"

"Okay," Fossa rubbed his cherry-red cheeks. "Let's never speak of this again and, yes, if you managed to swing a transfer for me I'd happily play deliver boy."

She smiled, still blushing. "I'll see what I can do."

Fossa grinned. "Thank you." That couldn't have gone better.