Shigaraki's wrists were tied together, probably finger to finger, the villain shrieking as his quirk attacked his own body. Magne, too, was suddenly yanked towards a mailbox, bound up in wild, errant ropes of fabric.
How? A nomu? No... a nomu would certainly not be leveling its stolen quirk against the PLF-- what was happening?
"Is that... I thought Hawks killed Best Jeanist!" Nagant snarled, shocked enough to put down her scope.
It was the quirk and--perhaps to some--the voice that was recognizable. The fiber hero himself was completely covered in caked dirt and mud as if he had just crawled out of a grave... and that might well be exactly what had happened. The graveyard explosion... there were stasis tranquilizers designed to induce suspended animation that would wear off on their own, no antidote required. Sharply jostling the hibernating body could sometimes shake the drugs early. Hawks' final words, "I'm sorry, but maybe not for everything you think I did ." Was this what he meant? That he'd done horrible things but at least one of those things he'd supposedly done had been faked? Well, clearly, unless Nedzu had learned how to turn people into nomus and decided to try it out in a fit of desperation but that seemed far less likely and supremely out of character, so...
So Hawks didn't kill Best Jeanist, just put on a show and still three people died over it--Tokoyami and his familiar were right all along and it cost them everything. And who was going to tell Best Jeanist he was too late to make Hawks into a throw rug? Oh, this whole mess was going to hurt later when Izuku had the time to digest it--time he didn't have now.
The last rays of the sun drowned beneath the skyline, a bright moon illuminating the empty spaces where streetlights had once shone. The power was off in most of the city, even in the places where infrastructure had survived. Splotches of light from trucks and helicopters carrying Chain reinforcements glittered like jewels of hope in the dark, but more PLF were still coming through the portal, its sickly blue light clearly visible even from this distance.
Nagant--recovered from the shock of the Chain's best crowd-control hero literally rising from the
grave--prepared to shoot again, and Fossa had lost the nerve for a suicide mission. He still needed to stop the major, though. Best Jeanist had only managed to restrain Shigaraki for a few seconds but he had taken two dozen other enemies out of the fighting already. The fiber hero was a dangerous enemy but one guaranteed not to be wearing body armor, and certainly not in condition that would allow him to take a bullet, making him a prime target for any sniper.
Fossa needed a distraction... a distraction that wouldn't end with him dead. He didn't have the time to work himself up to that again. Well, if crying wolf worked for False Flag, maybe it could work for Fossa, too? It all hedged on Lady Nagant knowing who War Dog was.
"What is that?" Fossa asked. "What the--it's moving so fast? Is that a wolf?"
"Where?" demanded Nagant.
"There, major, cross street. It dived behind a building. It was making Edgeshot look slow, though."
"Show me exactly where it was, corporal," Nagant demanded.
Fossa pointed. "Don't see anything," the major grumbled, about to turn back to the fight between the PLF's generals and the Chain's most powerful combatants.
"There it is again, major! It's coming this way--went up into an apartment building--" Fossa pointed a second time.
"What exactly does it look like?" Nagant asked, glaring into the dark.
"Like... like a werewolf from the stories, major. It's running on its back legs, has a big tail. It's wearing clothes, like a person, but not shoes. I don't think it was carrying any weapons."
Nagant stared into the darkness through her scope. "Which way was it heading?" "I'm sorry, major, it was moving really erratically, I'm not sure."
"I didn't see anything," one of the sergeants accompanying Nagant said. "I'll keep an eye out, major."
"Alright. You keep a close eye on that, too, corporal. If you see anything, you shoot first, tell me later," Nagant said, still deadly serious, and returned her attention to Shigaraki's ongoing duel with Miruko and Edgeshot. Best Jeanist had backed off into a position with better cover, taking on a similar role to Cementoss as he kept small-fry from interfering in the fight, dragged injured Chain soldiers out of the melee, and harried the more powerful combatants including the pair of nomu sent to reinforce Shigaraki's position.
What a trip that must have been for the former--current?--number three pro. Your colleague fake stabs you to death, you wake from stasis in your own coffin, drag yourself out of the dirt and turn up in the middle of a graveyard war zone when, last you knew, the country was not only not having a civil war but perfectly politically stable. God. Izuku's life really sucked sometimes but at least he wasn't Best Jeanist.
Nagant took aim for Miruko again, and there was no way Fossa could distract the major now. His well of ideas had run dry as a bone.
So this was it after all. For a moment there, he'd convinced himself that he might survive this and the Chain might triumph. It was amazing the things the human mind could convince itself of, always looking for the light even in the pitch black of a sealed tomb. It was his day to die after all.
He'd been ready mere minutes ago, an instant from pulling the trigger. Where was that feeling now, that unshakable conviction? It couldn't have run far in such a short time. Come on. He'd known the day was coming. Come on. It wasn't how long you lived, it was what you fought for that mattered. His whole life was irrelevant and that was fine. Every life ended in tragedy. His would just be a bit more tragic than most. His finger twitched on the trigger as he shifted onto the balls of his feet. Now--
"Holy shit it is her!" Nagant nearly yelled. Fossa snapped his head back to the fighting around Shigaraki--War Dog tore her way in through the PLF lines behind the grand commander, clawing someone's head clean from their shoulders as she sprinted into the heart of the grudge match where Best Jeanist played crowd control and Edgeshot, Miruko, and a somewhat recovered Aizawa dueled Shigaraki.
The werewolf did not race up to Shigaraki fearlessly, but she did race up toMagne fearlessly. The general--completely unprepared for the enemy's speed and ferocity--was screaming bloody murder in a heap on the ground an instant later, Geten--who had been the PLF crowd control--interceding to save his comrade's life. Nagant shot. War Dog dodged with superhuman reflexes--howled in fury as a bullet grazed her side--and whirled to stare straight at the sniper. "Oh fuck," Nagant's eyes widened almost comically as the werewolf covered the distance between them in a handful of heartbeats, jumped onto the building and scaled the walls of their roost as if the smooth bricks were a jungle gym. Fossa could practically hear those deadly claws tearing chunks out of the wall and he could certainly hear the bloodthirsty snarling.
The vigilante was upon them in seconds. "Cover me--Run!" Nagant said ambiguously as she turned and leapt from the building, leaving the rest of them to their own devices.
Fossa ran for the edge of the roof, putting every ounce of strength into the jump--too far, he wasn't going to make it--he crashed through the glass door of the highest balcony of the neighboring apartment building. He'd aimed for the roof, but this was better than the street--god that hurt. Glass covered him from head to toe. How much had actually pierced skin? Crap, he was definitely bleeding all over this nice, white carpet.
Agonized screams and primal howls along with the tell-tale rip of flesh parting beneath claws sent him staggering to his feet in a panic. War Dog would be through with Nagant's allies in seconds and if Fossa were still here he'd be next. Wait. He wasn't alone. He turned to the apartment's kitchen. Four sets of terrified eyes fixed upon him.
"I'm so sorry about your door," Izuku told the family. "I... I have..." he had no money on him. "I can't pay for it. I don't have any cash and I definitely can't write you a check--I'm so sorry." He ran for their door, nearly ripping it from its hinges in his haste. It was justified given an actual hound of hell chased him. The bite scar on his arm throbbed and he shuddered, body reacting in sympathy to the agonizing memory of his almost-death by her teeth. He could feel his heart pounding in his throat as he tore down the main stairwell. Please don't let War Dog be waiting for him at the bottom.
Izuho made it to the ground just in time to join the retreat. Reinforcements from the Chain's front line had finally arrived--there were Gang Orca, Wash, Nighteye and Ingenium jumping out of transport helicopters. War Dog, who had finished chasing Nagant away--the major probably wasn't dead, unfortunately, but you never knew, sometimes bad things happened to bad people-- had returned to assault the PLF leadership. Adding to that the increasingly large presence of armored vehicles and artillery backing up the Chain--things the PLF didn't emphasize nearly as much and would find difficult to bring through the portal even if they did--and the tide had turned.
The PLF wasn't going to lose in the strict sense of the word. Both sides were going to end the Battle of UA with heavy losses, with the deaths and damage to the city being a blow the Chain would take months to recover from. But the PLF was being forced to retreat so the war wasn't over. There was still hope.
And, by some miracle, Izuku wasn't dead. Not yet anyway.
Izuho's radio buzzed--Sone demanding he rejoin them. His squad was only a few blocks away. Fossa made his way to them swiftly, pulling glass shards out of the back of his hand even as he ran and ducked a stray emitter quirk. The glass had left behind mostly shallow cuts that should stop bleeding with a bit of pressure.
"There you are Mihara," Sone acknowledge him with a glance as he furtively peeked around a corner. "Alright, that's it. Move!" They'd lost two people, but nobody Izuho was close to, and there was no guarantee they were dead. They could be POWs or just lost in the shuffle.
The spy fell in beside Arashiro. She looked worse for the wear, hair in disarray, dried blood all over her face. "Are we not heading for the portal?" Izuho asked, confused as they took a sharp turn to the right.
"We're supposed to grab this stuff from some support lab," Arashiro told him. "Wow, what happened to you?"
"You wouldn't believe me," he panted, exhaustion and adrenaline overload catching up with him. He didn't ask what had happened to Arashiro; a broken nose from a punch to the face was pretty self-explanatory.
"I might believe you. It's been a weird day."
"I jumped through a glass door to escape from a feral werewolf that nearly killed Magne," oh, please let Magne actually be dead, "and was going to eat Major Nagant," and take Nagant, too, pretty please.
"Seriously?" Arashiro's eyes bulged. "Yeah, seriously."
Left. Right. Dive for cover--back on the move, circumventing the Chain position. Here they were. This was... unbelievable. This used to be a residential block. Every single building had been leveled, nothing but an occasional stairwell rising out of the rubble like a tombstone on a grey hill. Search and rescue efforts had started. A few huge pieces of rubble had been thrown into the street... but there were no rescue efforts currently ongoing. "The first squad met heavy resistance and couldn't break through," Sone said sharply. "Be ready for anything!"
The soldiers rounded one final corner, ready for anything as instructed... and found only bodies. PLF. Chain... Hound Dog... who'd been so diligent and kind retrieving Izuku after the training camp raid... two third year hero students Izuku barely knew... a second year support student armed and armored to the teeth and torn nearly in half... a half dozen others. Only one of the bodies moved when kicked. The disheveled Chain soldier looked up. No. Please not her. Please not Uraraka. Concussed, dazed, likely not even aware of what was happening, she made a token tempt to crawl away.
"Bitch," Sone said, approaching the prone girl, the sergeant's hand dripping with hissing acid. "Sergeant, you wouldn't really, would you?" Fossa asked, putting all the shock and horror he could
muster into his voice.
"Oh, you have opinions, corporal? Shut it."
Izuho gulped, resigning himself as best he could to seeing another classmate die, because there was nothing he could do to save her, not with so many loyal PLF soldiers here. It wasn't like with Nagant. Trying to shoot Sone wouldn't save Uraraka, and it would certainly get Fossa killed. He had no rational choice but to watch. It would be like the execution all over again but worse because she was his friend.
There were a number of uncomfortable whispers, with Arashiro murmuring "um, um, sergeant," over and over again. Nishida made an ambiguous, unhappy noise and Wakiya shifted from side to side uncomfortably. Sone turned to her squad. "Fine. What's your objection, Mihara?"
"Sergeant, please hear me out. We're better than them. We are. But what are we fighting for if killing an unarmed, incapacitated child is reasonable to us?" They didn't have the excuse of Twice's supposed unjust execution this time. "That's like something the Chain would do, it's..." evil and possibly criminal for starters, but that was unlikely to gain any points in this desperate plea.
"She's a hero. Let her go, or take her prisoner, and she'll never stop trying to destroy us," Sone said. "We don't have the resources to take prisoners, anyway. We have a target." Their target, the building to the left it seemed, was a subsidiary of the support company SILVR, a designer of body armor and melee weapons among other things. Fossa loved their work.
Arashiro spoke up hesitantly, gaining steam as she continued. "This kid's pretty clearly a rescue hero, sergeant. I remember her from the UA festival, I think. They said she wanted to work big disaster sites... She was probably here just trying to move debris off trapped people." Yeah. That was exactly what she was doing. Hound Dog had been locating trapped people with his enhanced senses. Uraraka had moved the debris. This was a combat capable team, but they had come here hoping to save people trapped by the building collapses, and paid for it with their lives. Because the world and the PLF in particular was evil and unfair. "It's probably... I mean we'll hardly be hurting our cause by just leaving her here, and Mihara maybe has a point about winning hearts and minds, you know." Nishida murmured an agreement, probably thinking about his own daughter. Wakiya, likewise, gave a tentative nod. Shimoda, meanwhile, shot them disgusted looks as if they had all lost their minds.
Sone hissed, considered, then rolled her eyes to the heavens. "Fine! Tie the bitch up and let's get out of here."
"I have zip cuffs," Fossa volunteered. He always made sure to carry a set. They were easy to get your hands on, light, and unpickable for all that many quirks (and all knives) could cut them instantly.
Sone nodded to him. "Fine." Grasping his classmate gently and carrying her unresisting form to the remains of some unfortunate building's front porch, Fossa secured her to a support beam.
Uraraka had regained enough sense to groggily inspect his face, staring at him as if she expected to see... well, Izuku. "Who're you?" she mumbled.
"Corporal Mihara Izuho," he replied quietly. "Sound like someone I knew," she mumbled.
"I know that feeling," Izuku said, meeting her eyes as he slipped the tiny marble containing Misaki's code book into her hand. He winked at her. "You should tell them about me," he would let her decide who "they" would be. "They should know we're not all monsters over here in the PLF. We're not all bad." Someday he was going to laugh about all the double meanings in these sentences.
"Hurry it up, Mihara!" Sone snarled. "You want to be left behind? Move it!" "Coming!" Izuho sprinted back to his squad, dizzy from emotional whiplash.
He'd been prepared for unfathomable horror and now the unexpected relief was overwhelming. This could have been so much worse. Thank you, Arashiro for being a good person on the wrong side. Thank you, Nishida, for not wishing the pain of a lost daughter on others. Thank you, Wakiya, for not being a complete monster. Shimoda and Sone, screw you.
The PLF retreat was orderly until it wasn't, which was when someone (probably Nedzu) had Ryuukyuu and a few helicopters place artillery on top of some mega apartment blocks. Most of the PLF had made it out by that point, but those that hadn't, Izuho's squad among them, suddenly found themselves dodging small explosions at every turn. By the time they made it to the portal, Izuho barely knew where he himself was and hadn't the slightest clue where the rest of his squad-- and their plundered technology--might be.
Izuho jumped through the blue disk into PLF territory and was instantly swept away by the throng on the other side as if he were a leaf spilling over a dam and churning in the deadly currents beyond. For a moment, it seemed the crowd would crush him and he would die that day after all, killed in the most unlikely and ironic way possible, but the pressure eased as officers got the chaos under control. Izuho threaded his way to the edge of the crowd.
Dizzy and exhausted, the spy dragged himself onto the low branch of a conifer. It would be harder to get in the way up here, harder to be crushed. It seemed several other soldiers had the same idea because there were one, two... five other people in this tree, all blinking at each other in exhaustion, bewilderment and shock. Izuho gave them a half-hearted wave. One waved back.
The earth trembled and the shockwave of a massive explosion nearly threw Izuku back to the ground, a silvery firelight painting everything into a twisted reflection of itself. "Well. There goes the portal," someone groaned. Oh. Hats off to you, Chain commander who was probably Nedzu. That was brilliant aim.
The remains of the PLF's portal blazed, bellowing acrid smoke into the night, a funeral pyre for the dozens who had been killed by the bomb the Chain had launched into PLF territory, a reminder of those stragglers stranded on the other side.
Izuho was fortunate. He was far enough away that he didn't have to spend the night waiting in line to be assessed and treated for radiation poisoning. The reactor had not been entirely destroyed by the explosion, but plenty of dangerous material had dusted those in the direct vicinity.
Half the army sulked, feeling the sting of defeat strongly given how close they had come to "winning the war in one blow." Those soldiers were furious, searching for the reason why they had lost, convinced someone must have tipped the Chain off to their plans. For whatever reason, suspicion never fell on Fossa. A number of people were dragged off for harsh questioning-- including Shimoda for some reason--but nobody bothered Izuho. Perhaps it was because he had been rescued from an HPSC prison where many believed he had been tortured (well, solitary was a kind of torture) but nobody seemed to consider for an instant that he might be the leak. Which... well, he wasn't, but he would have been if he could have been...
The other half of the army was flying high, elated by the damage they had managed to do, thrilled by how close they had come to total victory this time and convinced it would not be long before their ultimate goals were achieved. Whatever those goals were. Making Shigaraki the dictator of the entire country rather than just a significant chunk of it. Taking all the stuff that belonged to people who couldn't fight to keep it and thus didn't deserve it. Putting themselves on top of the social pyramid or at least higher than some other group that used to look down on them.
Izuku was neither sulking nor elated, just exhausted. Too many emotions too quickly could drain a person dry, sucking all the hormones out of the body until there was nothing left for the brain to work with. That might be for the best. There were so many things he didn't want to think about, didn't want to process just yet. He couldn't let himself think about Tokoyami. He couldn't let himself think about Hawks. He couldn't let himself think about Hound Dog or Midnight. He couldn't let himself worry for Uraraka who he had been forced to leave alone, semiconscious, in a combat zone. He couldn't let himself think about War Dog ripping people's heads off. He couldn't let himself think about those moments when he had resigned himself to an unsung death. He stayed in his sleeping bag and dozed and pretended that everything was fine.
Wakiya, Izuho's current tent mate, seemed to have the same idea. "Do you think we should go to dinner?" the other soldier asked, voice muffled by the jacket he used as a pillow.
"There'll be dinner tomorrow," Izuho replied, similarly muffled. "Alright. Go to dinner tomorrow, then."
His fingers pressed into the mud and he dragged himself forwards, wave upon wave of ice-fire jolting through his entire nervous system as he did so. Tiny sobs slipped past his resolve as he lay on an abandoned river bank in the pitch black of a misty night, fighting against unconsciousness and something worse, something insidious and twisting that grasped hold of the threads of self in his mind and tied them into knots. Pressure throbbed behind his eyes, here and there, present and past, mixing into a slurry so that every shape looked like an old friend, every word held a double meaning, and every thought seemed out of place. "Where's the lighter?" he grit his teeth, pulling a soggy bag from his pocket. It took so long to get a flame, so long to heat the one piece of available metal--a key--to a red hot glow and plunge it into each of the fang marks in turn, blood steaming
and popping, hot iron scent mixing with the foul odor of decaying things in the muck of the bank.
The river's cold hadn't really numbed the pain and it was still so overwhelming that the burning metal actually eased the agony, yet the twisting, knotting, insidious march of something through his mind did not cease.
"Why'd you have to do that, War Dog?" he grumbled deliriously. How much blood had he lost?
He needed a healer. Now. But he was going to have to drag himself up this slope and find a pay phone or something and... it all seemed so far away...
A breeze, tinged with sea salt, brushed over his tongue, the wind tanglingthe golden tresses of his hair. Above him, a dark trunk plunged heavenwards, this city's version of a skyscraper. Someone with wings had perched in the crown like an angel on a Christmas tree. "I'm king of the world!" they declared. Izuku smiled, continuing up the winding street, cutting across someone's lawn by way of well-used stepping stones when convenient. The lawn's owner, sprawled on her porch swing with a book, waved at him.
He could see the bay now when he looked back down the mountain. Lots of ships in the harbor today. Customs must be working overtime--
Threading the way through the crowds in one of the busiest shopping districts, he met his own eyes reflected in the store front. A young woman's face stared back at him calmly--
In the still water of a pond full of pelicans and turtles, an old gentleman gazed back from beneath a dapper top hat--
The doors to the balcony were thrown open, the breeze pushing the curtains inward framing the sprawling expanse of the mountain below, the endless churn of the sea on the horizon. A teenager's beaked face was reflected in the floor to ceiling mirror--
An old man. A little girl. A blonde. A brunette. Short. Unnaturally tall. Green eyes, brown eyes, black eyes--never his face, never his body, never himself, lost like a handful of sugar dissolved in a river, every particle swept away to parts unknown, never to coalesce together, the universe built as a monument to chaos. Hands, fingers, feet, always something like what it should be, never all together, blurring and mangled and endless faces, endless reflections, never his face--
Kuma stepped between him and the dark mirror and smashed it with her fist, the shards clattering to the ground.