Even Izuho was bored and impatient. If he had to guess, there must have been some terrible, unexpected delay. There was no good reason to keep this many soldiers lingering in the middle of nowhere.
"What the hell is that?" Nishida muttered, staring at the massive, steel triangle as two squads carefully assembled it in the center of a shiny, newly finished concrete square. This was a lot of concrete. They must have cut down hundreds of trees to get this place ready. Hopefully the PLF wasn't about to do something to ruin that serene lake as well as the forest. What was that logo on on the triangle... oh. It was Niwa-Futaki's logo. This was the fate of those crazy pieces of exotic- quirk support equipment that Misaki and the MPs had been sent to seize in Hosu. What had these mad men done?
"I've got no idea what that is--and what's that?" Wakiya pointed at the hulking cylinder of steel and concrete as a crane pulled it out of its shipping container and lowered it beside the triangle. Crews began to secure it to massive supports on the ground.
"That is a portable nuclear reactor," Izuho replied. How did he know that? He'd certainly never seen one before. Those things hadn't existed--certainly not in that form--during the MLA war and Izuku had, at some point, started tacitly assuming that all of his extra skills were inherited from MLA generals during or before the war--but then why would he have preferences for modern weapon and body armor manufacturers like ACMX and SILVR? Those companies hadn't existed during the MLA war any more than this reactor technology. The spy's life had become so complicated that he was losing track of the logical threads binding it together. If only he still had his journals.
"A what?" Arashiro nearly shrieked.
"It's a modular, portable, fission reactor, which explains why we have to be right next to the lake, convenient for cooling I guess... and why they decided to do this in the middle of nowhere because an accident in a city would be," Izuku stopped himself from saying "a huge blow to their image" because that wasn't the sort of thing a loyal PLF soldier would say and substituted, "horrific."
"Why...?" Arashiro asked, hands spread in confusion.
More technology emerged from semi-trucks, scientists in PLF uniforms or lab coats running back and forth like bees building a hive. In between two of the of the massive, green shipping containers, Fossa caught sight of the sinister form of Shigaraki himself, the PLF's leader waiting patiently beside a trailer.
A hunched man in a lab coat appeared, speaking quickly to Shigaraki, then both vanished into the darkness of the final shipping container to arrive. Moments later, Shigaraki and the scientist reemerged surrounded by a Krypteia squad, easily identifiable by their specialized, black armor, high boots, and balaclava-like head gear. Fossa had only seen two Krypteia agents before, though likely more than two Krypteia agents had seen him; they wouldn't be secret police if one saw them often, would they? Fossa rarely worried about them, mostly focused on the threat posed by regular old MPs, not Shigaraki's handful of assassin-black-ops-thought-police-boogeymen... although... maybe he should reassess that opinion, because given the swords, the gait, and the clear lack of nose, one of those Krypteia agents was Stain. Stain, an expert duelist who would certainly recognize Fossa's fighting style if not his voice.
Shigaraki's scientist companion pushed a tall cart, its contents obscured by a sheet, but in short order the sheet was removed to reveal a child-sized (ugh) nomu, completely submerged in dark water and on some kind of life-support equipment. The Krypteia helped the scientist--who likely was Dr. Kyudai, the one requesting the experimental support equipment in the first place--position the nomu amidst the tangled web of cords, wires, conduits, and cooling apparatus.
"I don't have a good feeling about this," Izuho said slowly.
"Me neither, honestly," Shimoda--who was usually quite gung-ho about crazy plans and whole-sale slaughter--muttered, ears pressed back against her head.
Long minutes passed and the crowd--originally consisting of a few battalions--swelled like a river in a monsoon. "Oh," Fossa realized suddenly.
"What?" asked Nishida.
"It's a portal," he said, because it was obvious. Why would they assemble whole divisions of the army in the middle of a forest unless they had someone to go from here? "All the support equipment is to get around the teleportation-disruptor beacons that keep either side from using quirks to appear in... nearly any place they'd like to appear. This also means we don't have to worry about the teleporter getting tired, I guess."
The disruptor technology used to prevent teleportation was commonplace. Niwa-Futaki had been involved in its early development many years ago, hence their involvement in circumventing it now. UA had installed beacons long before All Might became a student there, as had most government buildings and corporations working with sensitive information. It was unclear whether Kurogiri's quirk had somehow evaded the old version of the beacon technology or the League of Villains had managed to sneak into UA and disable one of the towers prior to that raid on the USJ a lifetime ago. The beacons were everywhere now. As the war began, brilliant (or even mediocre) scientists on both sides had independently realized they could broadcast the disruptor signals from cell towers with only minor modifications, and over night the country was teleporter-proofed. Attempting to teleport into an area where a beacon was active usually resulted in seizures and intense pain.
It was really fascinating support technology. Teleportation quirks of all kinds required the user's brain to perceive two places as being a single place; the beacons worked by imitating telepathy
quirks and amplifying the idea that "two places can be one place" into "all places are the same place and thus there are no places" in order to destroy an individual's sense of location, time, balance, and potentially sanity. But the PLF weren't going to use an actual person to perform the teleportation. There would not be a brain to destroy, no idea to amplify and distort past the realm of sanity.
The Chain wasn't going to see this coming. How could they? Teleporting an army into the center of a city... even without the beacons, it shouldn't be possible . Presumably even Kurogiri (who was probably still a Chain prisoner) had a soft limit of transporting a few hundred people at a time, otherwise why would the League of Villains have brought so few enemies to the USJ attack? They could easily have found more people ready to kill UA students--just empty out a few prisons worth of maximum security wings.
Nobody would be prepared for the whole PLF to appear out of thin air. This was going to be a blood bath. And there was nothing Fossa could do about it. He would sacrifice his life to give the Chain five minutes advance warning but even that... was so far beyond his power. He had a rifle now, granted to him because of his apparent success in Hosu, a gun with enough range... no, there was little chance of him managing to hit anyone or anything important from this distance if he fired on the portal. He would only die for nothing.
"Let's go already!" Shimoda growled. "Forget that bad feeling! This is it! The end of the war, I can feel it!" Izuku suppressed a shudder.
Arashiro gave Izuho a tentative smile--excited, nervous, not as optimistic as Shimoda nor as bloodthirsty. Sone cackled joyously, almost giggling, even as she tapped her foot impatiently.
A spiraling disk of electric-blue mist gathered in the center of the steel triangle, expanding ever outwards like a galaxy whirling so fast it flung itself apart, stars cast aside into the infinitely expanding voids.
Shigaraki and his Krypteia squad stepped through first. Then the line began to move, slowly at first, then faster as the portal expanded outwards to a mind-boggling ten meter diameter. The approaching soldiers broke into sprints.
"Stay close," Sone barked as they stepped through the mist. Izuho held his breath as he jumped through, anticipating pain--or at least discomfort--that didn't come. Passing through the portal was like walking through a rainstorm that left that lingering, spring scent in clothes without actually soaking them. He felt weightless for an instant, drifting, and then his boots struck solid ground. He knew this street, even through the screams and the roar of fires, the cymbal-crashes of overturning cars and the moans of the injured and dying who lay splayed out on the sidewalk. UA was about three kilometers from here. This was the absolute heart of Chain territory, their stronghold, the equivalent of Shigaraki's Citadel... and they would be completely unprepared for an attack on it.
Sunset fast approached on what might well be the final real battle of the war.
Teachers, students, heroes, soldiers, local militia members, officers of the peace, martial arts instructors, high school wrestling coaches--everyone who knew the first thing about fighting fought for the Chain now. They had no reserves, save perhaps UA's training robots which weren't designed to leave the school and Nedzu's on-campus defense systems. Certainly there were people rushing to the city, just as operators rushed to get armored vehicles out of repair docks or transport trucks and onto the streets. All such efforts were liable to be too slow.
Fossa peered through the shattered window of a building that had been a tea house in its former life. He flattened himself to the dusty floor by reflex as an orange ray of energy arced through the air, narrowly missing his perch. Had that been aimed at him? No, it was just chance amidst the chaos. He glanced behind him in the grip of paranoia. Good. The barricade he'd set up on the door still held, protecting him from backstabbers. It would be nice if Arashiro were here... nice to have someone to watch out for him... but he needed to be alone so he'd assured Sone he could handle this roost and the sergeant had shrugged, still not particularly invested in whether he lived or died. Arashiro would probably demand an explanation for his lone-wolf attitude... if they both made it through this battle. He'd tell her he was worried that this position wasn't defensible and he didn't want them both to die if the tea house were leveled.
A massive explosion rocked the city--where was that--a graveyard. What? Why had the PLF blown up a graveyard? Was nothing sacred anymore? It had to be an accident, right? There was no reason to... hundreds of heroes were buried there, high ranks and street-level alike. Unless someone was just trying to make a point about how little respect the PLF had for the heroes of old, there was no reason to attack a cemetery like that. It gained them nothing and wasted some heavy munitions.
A three story building across the street went down, tilting and collapsing onto its neighbors like a domino. The unholy screech of the structural failure drowned out the rest of the fighting for a moment, just as the rising cloud of dust blocked it from view.
By the time he could see again, the ebb and flow of the fighting had spilled back into view of Fossa's window, a seething tide of emitter quirks, munitions and screaming. Somebody threw a car at the Chain lines. A Chain soldier, armed (literally-ha) with enormous octopus appendages, caught it and threw it back. The vehicle smashed three PLF soldiers flat. It was shocking how quickly death could come on the front lines. Not even a moment's warning. Those three probably didn't see it coming until an instant before the end.
It could be Fossa next. He ducked as a glint on a distant rooftop caught his eye. Another sniper? Hard to say. Fossa shimmied across the floor to the opposite wall. There was no reason to chance being outsniped. He raised his head enough to assess the situation.
Shigaraki, half his Krypteia squad in lock step, stalked towards the Chain's heart, breaking the lines effortlessly, an icebreaker leaving shattered wrecks in his wake. Izuku didn't look too closely. There were certainly friends and coworkers dying by those grey hands and he couldn't afford to think about it now--Shigaraki dropped to the ground with a shout, one of his Krypteia body guards staggering backwards as bullet after bullet struck his armor. Snipe... and here was Eraserhead, swinging down into the fray like an avenging angel.
Two cross streets to the north, the armies raged against each other like furious bees, buildings crumbling beneath the quirks, bullets, and bodies flung ballistically through the air. Midnight and Cementoss--it was good to see they had recovered and returned to the field--took up position on a closer cross street, doing their best to keep the PLF from flanking Eraserhead, Snipe and the handful of supporters who dared to stand against Shigaraki. The UA student with octopus tentacles--Suneater, wasn't it, Fat Gum's intern--was one of that brave handful, and throwing cars seemed to be his favorite thing. That at least kept the Krypteia busy.
God, who should Fossa shoot? One of the Krypteia? He might be able to kill one with a skull fracture if he hit them dead-on--wait. Damn. The PLF was forcing the UA defenders back again, breaking through the line Midnight and Cementoss tried to hold. Shigaraki and his cronies were out of range already. Now what?
Stragglers in every which uniform danced between the lines and around the lines and appeared on rooftops demanding Fossa's attention lest the sniper be outsniped. Someone with wings crashed to the ground, smashing through the remains of a parked car, and did not stir. He couldn't look. He could not let himself think about his friend with wings, not now, no matter how much his brain wanted to dig up memories of Dark Shadow.
And speaking of outsniping... Fossa couldn't let that girl take up a position there. Aizawa hadn't seen her and if she were a decent combatant she could put Eraserhead on the back-foot or maybe kill him. She might be a good shot for all Fossa knew, but she wasn't smart enough to find good cover, or maybe just didn't expect an attack from behind PLF lines. Idiot. Expect fire from all directions.
With a quick glance to confirm that nobody was likely to see him, the spy took careful aim and put a bullet through his enemy's side. She toppled from her roost, smashing onto the street--right in front of Katsuki, Tsu, Yaoyorozu--wisely wearing full body armor with extra zippers to accommodate her quirk--and Monoma. None of them looked wildly upwards as an inexperienced combatant might, rather they ducked and ran, Yaoyorozu ushering what was clearly her little squad into cover behind an overturned SUV as they hurriedly retreated from the PLF advance.
Fossa didn't see it happen--only the aftermath--Midnight laying in the street with her throat missing and her blood running down the gutter. Stain stood over her, murderous blade in hand. Cementoss, all his power focused on holding back a mob of PLF soldiers long enough for UA's defenders to retreat, could do nothing for the others who had aided him--nearly all of them students or minor heroes not at all suited to face the infamous Hero Killer; it would be like making Arashiro duel Eraserhead. Could Fossa shoot Stain? No, he was too far away to make that shot with this weapon, and it wasn't like he could abandon this sheltered hiding place, not with the amount of sniper-on-sniper action in progress, not with the aerial battle heating up, helicopters joining in with the flying quirks now and adding guided missiles to the fray. Just what they needed. As if it weren't insane enough already--
In the blink of an eye, the form of a vengeful werewolf shot out of an alleyway. Stain turned and ran, False Flag in War Dog's guise charging after him, snapping at his heels... but there was nowhere to run, not for long, and Stain turned to fight as they approached Shigaraki's position. The Hero Killer quickly realized he'd been had and settled in for a duel against a comparable foe. False Flag was really, really good, but so was Stain. Kesagiri Man alone would probably have been killed when he and Fossa faced Stain together, and False Flag hadn't wanted to try her luck against the Hero Killer with them, preferring to trick the villain instead.
Magne was coming to join the fight against Eraserhead and Snipe. Geten was on his way, too, if the approaching glacier were any indication. They'd be there in thirty seconds at most. Oh that was not good. Both of them could do a huge amount of damage, especially Geten.
This really was the end of the war, wasn't it? UA's defenses were not quite in disorderly retreat yet, holding some amount of organization as they fell back, but that would change soon. The Chain wouldn't hold out long after this line broke... Cementoss must be getting tired by now, and even if he weren't, the PLF was starting to break through the surrounding buildings and circle around, smashing through the Chain lines in other locations. When Cementoss fell, there wouldn't be any chance left, not with Shigaraki leading the charge. The PLF's leader casually disintegrated an entire
truck thrown towards him. No barrier would get in his way; only Eraserhead held him back, dueling him in close quarters now as Snipe turned his attention to the other generals approaching. Fossa's old teacher would tire soon...
He'd lost his home town, his old school. Now he was going to lose his new school, too. Not just the building. Midnight lay dead where she had fallen. She must have fought so hard to get back on the lines after her injuries at Gunga Mountain only to end up here... Suneater fell back screaming, Shigaraki having lunged like a viper and landed a devastating blow between Eraserhead's blinks. There was nobody to help the student. Suneater dragged himself painstakingly away from the combat zone, leaving red streaks behind him.
Eraserhead would probably appreciate not being sniped by that man sneaking up behind the air conditioner--never mind. Snipe got him first, but that didn't change the fact that Eraserhead was visibly tiring.
Monoma streaked across the street and Fossa's heart skipped a beat as his blonde friend skidded towards the teacher, slapping Aizawa's ankle before--thank god--fleeing with his head bowed, dodging away from a beam of blue lightning, diving around a corner before glancing out at the battle, activating his borrowed quirk.
Brilliant Monoma. That would give Eraserhead some leeway, time to rest--Geten had finally gotten wise to Erasure's limitations and stepped out of sight--a glacier shattered into existence, ripping up through the water mains and--unfortunately--the pipes in Fossa's tea house. Crap. Okay... the roof wasn't going to come down but this place was hanging by a thread and he couldn't see anything out that window anymore, nothing but ice anyway. He could still hear the screaming, the pounding of boots.
This was the end. His home, his school, his friends, his country... What would happen to his mom? What would happen to Kacchan? To Monoma who had just joined the most dangerous fight on the field, to Shouji and Ojiro who--who knew? They could be dying right now. They could have been killed months ago and Izuku would have no idea because they weren't important in the eyes of the PLF or the TWRR. They weren't like Endeavour or Eraserhead or Ryuukyuu whose deaths would make headlines. Izuku's dearest friends could all be dead already and even if they weren't, the Chain was going to lose and Izuku was never going to see them again.
What would the PLF do to the prisoners they currently kept? To the prisoners they took in this battle? Would they be released on parole when the Chain surrendered? Reeducated? Killed outright like White Sight and her three companions? Shot by Lady Nagant to thunderous applause? Could Fossa do anything about it this time? Maybe? And maybe he was overreacting. Just because they lost UA, that didn't mean the Chain would lose. A battle wasn't a war.
There were other Chain strongholds, of course, military bases, Shiketsu, Ketsubutsu, HPSC headquarters... but this would be a blow from which the Chain might never recover, especially if the entire UA staff shared Midnight's fate... and they very well might. Hopefully Nedzu would find a way to escape and rescue at least some of his students. If Nedzu died... that would be a blow at least as devastating as losing the rest of the staff combined.
Fossa needed to get out there, needed to find somewhere else, somewhere he could do something. He dared not jump from the window, wary of fire from friends and foes alike (whichever was which). Rather, Fossa ruthlessly disassembled his barricade--kicking pieces of it to splinters when it refused to disintegrate quickly enough--and made for the stairs, slipping out into a back alleyway and joining in with a small but steady stream of PLF soldiers--not squads, just other solo operatives--headed for the advancing battlefront. His fellow PLF operatives grinned, showing their
teeth and whooping, certain their victory would come before the sun's last ruddy light died.
God, everyone Izuku cared about might be killed today. Killed or worse or... It didn't seem real. Like the destruction of Aldera and his childhood home hadn't felt real. Here he was, seeing it, and it still felt like a movie. It was just too much to comprehend if he treated it as real.
A shadow across the dregs of the fading sun--Ryuukyuu dived out of the air with an earth-shaking roar, aiming for where Stain fought False Flag and Cementoss struggled against the PLF advance. Kesagiri Man--that was probably him--and three others leapt from the dragon's back as they vanished behind the buildings.
Half a minute later an assault helicopter raced in from the north. Miruko and Edgeshot jumped from its open door, launching themselves from rooftop to rooftop towards Shigaraki. Good. Hopefully they would get there in time to keep Monoma and Eraserhead alive. Maybe things could turn around?
Fossa turned sharply towards a door that hung pathetically from a single, half-attached hinge and sprinted up an emergency staircase towards the roof of a convenient apartment building. Some climate control equipment provided partial cover. The deepening darkness would pick up the slack, helping to keep him hidden.
A patter of feet, a crunch of gravel. Izuho whipped his head to the left, leveling his rifle, to find Lady Nagant setting up her scope only five meters away. Where had she come from? How had he missed that? She must have jumped from one of the adjacent buildings but he should have spotted her or her entourage long ago. "Hello major sir--I can leave if this is your spot?" Izuho said, bleeding cluelessness.
Nagant chuckled. "There's plenty of room and cover for all of us." The major had brought along three others--one of whom was a lookout with a radio and two of whom were some sort of personal security trained to watch her back. Without a moment's hesitation, the major shot and Eraserhead-- just barely visible around a corner--screamed, falling to the ground. Major Nagant never missed-- but she'd gone for the chest rather than the head and Aizawa's body armor had taken the blow-- thank all the gods in heaven--although he likely had broken ribs. Miruko dragged Aizawa out of sight a moment later. Was Monoma still there to pick up the slack? No? It didn't look like it. Was the blonde injured? Dead? Sent away by a frantic teacher convinced the battle was hopeless? "Damn. Hate it when they've got the good stuff," Nagant muttered. "Should have gone for the head."
With Eraserhead incapacitated, with just Miruko, Snipe and Edgeshot--wherever Ryuukyuu was, she wasn't here--against Shigaraki, Geten, Magne and now Nagant... they'd already barely held their own and now it was over. Shigaraki, his fellow generals, and the remaining Krypteia--three had been killed--advanced down the ruined street. Nagant fired twice in quick succession, pinning the Chain defenders down.
Hopeless. This was it, it really was. Helplessness crushed him like the water at the bottom of the deepest trench in the sea. He looked up at the world from infinite, icy depths and forced himself to breathe as dizzying dread settled into his stomach, impotent rage twisting his mind into obscene shapes. Hopeless.
Or was it?
Fossa probably wasn't good enough to hit Shigaraki at all from this distance, and given that Snipe had hit the PLF's commander at least a dozen times since the fighting started, Shigaraki clearly had some kind of healing quirk wired into him now, so a graze would do nothing... but if Fossa shot
Nagant... That would even the odds quite a bit. He'd have to be quick, get her before her security sergeants had a chance to react. They would react afterwards, of course, and the chances of Fossa getting out of this alive approached zero, but what did that matter in the grand scheme of things? He could add his name to the long and terribly illustrious list of people who died at the Battle of UA.
His mother, his classmates... they would probably never learn what happened to him regardless of who won the war, but that had been a long time coming, hadn't it? Had he ever really believed he would make it out of this hellhole alive? Did he even want to after all the things he'd seen? All the thing he'd done? How could he ever have returned to a normal life after this?
Besides, was life really about how long you lived? Everybody died within a hundred years of their birth at most and what was that in the grand scheme of thing? Everyone lived in the present for the blink of an eye and spent the infinite expanse afterwards as history. What difference did an exact date of death make? It was what you did with that blink granted to you, what you built up and tore down, how it ended and what it ended for, that mattered. Dying in an effort to save everyone and everything he held dear, that would be something, wouldn't it? This could be his Utapa, his hopeless last stand, the final outcome already known and irrelevant. Just because it was hopeless, that was no excuse not to fight.
Nagant shot again. Someone Izuku almost certainly knew crumpled into a still heap beside an overturned rubbish bin.
He was never going to find out what happened to him, was he? He'd never know who his shoulder- sitter was, what exactly had occurred in the gaps of his memory, how he ended up with all these borrowed lives in his head, a relic of an old war thrust into a new one. He'd never get the chance to explain to his classmates, his mother, his teacher, what really happened to him after the battle of Gunga Mountain. He'd never get to pay back Sone for that travesty she committed after the public executions. He'd never have the chance to explain himself to Arashiro... or Camie. God, what would they think? Hopefully something profound. Maybe it would shake them out of their stupor, make them ask some questions about what they were doing and why.
It had all been pointless. His entire life, practically. Monoma was probably dead, so saving him had been pointless. Iida was probably going to die, so saving him had been pointless, too. Breaking into Misaki's office had been equally futile; he'd never get to pass the codebook on, and his knowledge about the stolen support equipment was the embodiment of a complete moot point. Hawks, Dabi, Moonfish, Misaki, that nameless soldier he sniped mere minutes ago... none of it meant anything . All of it, all those horrible things he'd done, had been for nothing. Joining the PLF, though... that had led him to this final moment, the moment where he showed his hand, a Fossa in a viper's nest, and sank his fangs fatally into one deserving neck before the other snakes ripped him to pieces. This. This was different. This mattered.
Nagant shot again. Miruko barely showed she'd been hit--she must be wearing solid metal plate armor, much heavier stuff than Aizawa's, the kind of protective gear that required a strength quirk to move in smoothly. "Her too? Come on. Fine. Head shots only from now on, no matter how inconvenient it is."
There was no time left to think. Thirty more seconds and Miruko at least would be dead. She already sported a terrible wound across her bicep from Geten's ice and Nagant was ready to take another shot.
Izuku shifted weight to the balls of his feet, ready to pivot and aim for Nagant's head--
"Where is that god damned birdie? I'm going to turn him into a throw rug!" Someone screamed so
loudly that, even over the chaos of the urban battlefield, Izuku was quite sure of the bizarre demand he had heard.
Shigaraki's hands--reaching, always reaching--clawing towards Edgeshot, were yanked behind the villain's back.