Three battalions assembled before another improvised stage. Hosu just before the prisoners' executions had looked almost like this, save there had been civilians lurking nearby in Hosu. Here there were only trees, soldiers, songbirds and squirrels.
Nagant jumped up on the stage, chin tilted back haughtily and eyes alright with fury. She hadn't replaced her security detail yet, had she? War Dog had killed all of the sergeants that typically tailed her, and for whatever reason she hadn't found more yet. Perhaps they had really been friends and she was traumatized by their deaths, couldn't bring herself to replace them. Perhaps she'd just decided that they'd been useless and she didn't need more canon fodder. Beside Nagant stood Geten, arms crossed and hood drawn low over his eyes. A trio of cars stopped beside the improvised structure. The doors of the leading black SUV opened. Half a Krypteia squad stepped out of the vehicle... and then Shigaraki followed. Murmurs, excited or foreboding whispers, and wild speculation rippled through the huge crowd.
Izuku gulped, liking the implications less and less every second, and Fossa plastered a serene, vaguely curious expression over his face, stomping on any emotions which might distract him in these critical moments. Shigaraki could just be here to make some kind of inspiring speech. He was known to do things like that.
Shigaraki raised a hand. Silence fell. A cruel smirk spread across the monster's face. "Good afternoon, my army," he said simply and, at a sharp hand signal from Nagant and a much more subtle twirling-finger sign from Geten, the assembled soldiers broke into cheers.
"Liberation!" they chanted together, or close variations on it, with "all hail the Liberator!" being
common. Did they not see themselves? Did they not hear themselves? Did someone actually need to paint red symbols on the cars or start calling it "The People's Democratic Republic of Shigarakiland" for anyone to spot the parallels?
Shigaraki held up a hand again and Nagant clenched a fist. The cheering cut off as if strangled. "I have come to you today with some very unfortunate news," the grand commander swept his eyes over the crowd, looking at each and every one of them in turn. "There is a traitor in your midst." He said it softly, almost gently, and in that instant Izuho locked eyes with the PLF's leader.
Heads whipped to the left and right--suspicion, accusation, confusion, disbelief--every mix of shock, vindication and fury, charged the air.
Izuku stopped breathing, so dizzy he floated to the very top of his head and then passed through his skull, circling in the air above his mortal frame. Fossa stared straight ahead, rigid and motionless, allowing his face to morph into confusion. It was a common enough reaction. It wouldn't look out of place... on the off chance that it mattered what he looked like. The PLF leadership wouldn't orchestrate this show unless they planned to kill Fossa in front of everyone, would they? How much could they really have learned from that brief interrogation about his meeting with False Flag? Wasn't there more they wanted to know? They wouldn't question someone in front of a thousand soldiers. They must already know everything somehow... or maybe this was only going to be a public arrest? That could be... they might take him away and torture information from him later.
It didn't really matter. Fossa didn't have any information to give. Stain, at least, already knew that False Flag existed and so did Shigaraki, certainly, so what did it matter that Izuku knew slightly more about her than they did? The changeling's real name would be of no use to them, even if they managed to compel Izuku to tell it. It wasn't as if Samara used her real name.
MPs strode purposefully through the crowd as nervous and angry soldiers craned their necks to watch. Fossa stood stock still--it was futile to run--watching them approach like wolves closing in on a crippled caribou.
The hunters' eyes fixed on him--and passed him by.
The squad walked right past him without a second glance, weaving their way through the crowd to the stage and taking up positions on either side just as... ornaments?
Was this about Fossa or not? How could Izuku make sense of any of this when he was so dizzy and terrified--
The doors of the second black car in the convoy opened and the rest of the Krypteia squad stepped out, dragging with them a figure in uniform, head entirely covered by a bag as was typical.
Not Fossa... It was... they had caught a traitor just... not Fossa.
They brought their captive to the stage as confused relief-rage whiplashed through the audience. The PLF command knew how to play a crowd. How relieving it was to realize neither you nor any of your squadmates were under suspicion after those brief seconds of ultimate anxiety. But it all felt unreal now, staged, a program on the television. Shigaraki grasped the obscuring bag with all five fingers and it unraveled to dust.
Izuho gasped, hand rising to cover his face. Utsushimi Camie shook out her blood-stained hair and narrowed blackend eyes to glare over her shoulder at Shigaraki.
Not him. They hadn't caught Fossa... There'd been two of them? Camie, how could--it was obvious, really. It made sense... that the former hero student might be--but had she always been a traitor? Or had something, maybe the execution in Hosu of a student who could well have been her classmate, changed her mind? Would Izuku ever know? Were they--could the PLF be wrong? Bluffing? Camie had always seemed so loyal, played her part so well, could she really be a spy? But they... the PLF command wouldn't have done this if they weren't absolutely sure. So Camie was like Fossa and there were two turn coats right here under Nagant's command, dancing around each other like a pair of snakes winding through a rabbit warren, hunting the same prey, hunted by the same predators, but oblivious to their kinship.
Izuku had never known. And Camie would never know.
"You sold us out," Nagant snarled, yanking Camie's hair back so the ex-hero student grimaced. "I trusted you and you turned around and told the Chain everything as soon as you got the chance! You're the reason they were ready for us at UA!" Oh. Someone really had managed to give the Chain a few minutes advance warning? "You were an outcast. Turned out and abused by the Chain. We gave you a new life, a new home, the benefit of overwhelming doubt, and this is how you repay us? You little bitch!"
Snarls and calls for blood followed Nagant's fury.
Camie... looked more serious and determined than he'd thought possible. She'd probably known this day was coming for a while. She showed not fear of death nor fear of the ones who would kill her, nor fear even of the angry mob of soldiers ready to tear her to pieces if Shigaraki were to cede his right to kill her. "Have you nothing to say for yourself?" Geten asked, recrossing his arms even more aggressively.
"Yes, actually," Camie told them.
"Oh? Really?" Shigaraki snarl-grinned at her. "Let's hear it then, before you reap the rewards of your actions and pay us back in full for your treachery."
"I," Camie told him plainly with just a hint of undying rage, "joined the MLA. The Meta Liberation Army, not the Paranormal Liberation Front. The MLA was supposed to bring down the HPSC, level the playing field for the oppressed, exploited, and abused." Wow. That was not what the neo-MLA had actually been about, but no doubt Camie had believed it.
"Enough of this," Shigaraki reached for her.
"So afraid of what I have to say you can't let me finish?" Camie said and Izuku clasped his hands in awe. He had never... nobody stood up to Shigaraki like this. Nobody. She was a goddess, doomed, but a goddess for these last few moments.
"Hardly," Shigaraki snapped back as Geten shifted uncomfortably. "What reason do I have to let you drone on and try to justify the unjustifiable?" However, Shigaraki did not stop Camie from speaking, perhaps stung by the accusation of cowardice. Shigaraki's gray skin was thin as an amphibian's, after all.
Camie carried on as if she had not heard his reply. "I joined the MLA to fight the HPSC not because they call themselves the HPSC but because of the things they do. They manipulate people, they deport people, they send people to black sites, they carry out unethical experimentation, they kill people and justify it in the name of peace. The PLF has become the very thing I always despised. Everything I hated," she screamed over the angry roar of the crowd that threatened to overwhelm her words, "I still fight it! I am loyal! The rest of you, you are the traitors!" How many
times had she planned this? Practiced what she would say before her executioners?
Nagant, face contorted with fury, cuffed Camie across the cheek. "Haven't you an ounce of shame you little monster?" she snarled. "How many of us have suffered and died because you decided you know right from wrong better than every single person here? Because you didn't have balls to keep your vows, because you project your own failings onto our cause? We fight to Liberate the country and here you are trying to drag us all back into Chains!"
Camie tried to speak again, but Nagant grabbed her around the neck, half strangling her. "How many died at the Battle of UA because of the intelligence you leaked?" Geten demanded so quietly it was hard to hear him over the constant, angry growling. "How many of your own--friends and companions who cared for you--did you send to the slaughter? You are a monster, far more than the HPSC proper ever was."
"You've heard what she's done," Shigaraki called, pacing across the stage to one side then slowly back to the other. "What should we do with her?" Izuku closed his eyes against the tears as the demands for his friend's head deafened him.
It suddenly felt real again. The ally he never knew he had. His second best friend in the battalion. Friend? Manipulator? Manipulatee? She'd intend to use him to send messages of some kind to another spy, hadn't she? That was the purpose of her deal with him when she arranged for his transfer to the Citadel. They'd both been manipulating each other, totally unawares. That didn't mean Camie wasn't his friend. Fossa manipulated Arashiro, but Izuho and Arashiro were friends, maybe best friends at this point. But it didn't matter. None of it did. It didn't matter how powerful and noble Camie's final words were. Nobody heard them. Nobody but Izuku. Her last speech might as well have been silence for all it changed anything.
"Kill her! Dust her! Rip her to shreds! Let me at her!" the crowd surged, only a demand for order from Geten keeping the hoard from rushing the stage to tear the captive traitor to pieces.
"Today you repay us for your crimes with your life," Shigaraki hissed, fingers at Camie's throat--
Dabi, hands glowing with flame, Hawks lunging for Tokoyami--a burning building swept away on the acrid breeze--blood all over the forest floor and flesh charred like a barbecue steak--dust blowing life away on the wind. Building after building returning to the rubble from whence it came and burying who knew how many in the tomb of progress. All For One grinning down at him "Let me see your pretty face." A little girl's body laying beside a pit mine--Ashes to ashes.
Fossa stumbled and barely caught himself, the dizziness fading only slightly as he wrenched himself back to the present, blinking furiously to keep the tears at bay. Somehow, amidst the sudden onslaught of memories, he'd missed his friend's death proper, not that it made anything easier to bear. He had to keep himself under control. He couldn't be seen to cry for Camie or the PLF would forever suspect him of colluding with her, regardless of the fact that he'd apparently fooled The Reader when they interrogated him to determine his allegiance. He couldn't cry for Camie. He couldn't help her. He couldn't save her anymore than Tokoyami or Hawks or Tripswitch or anyone.
"That is what awaits traitors in our ranks," Shigaraki snarled. "That is what awaits those who would pretend to be friends and send good people to capture or death by twisting and manipulating. We will not have them in the PLF."
Liberation... All hail to the Liberator.
How Izuku made it back to his tent afterward that horror show would forever remain a mystery. Wakiya might know, but it would be weird for Izuho to ask him about it.
On the surface she had been nothing exceptional. Many people saw Camie as an airhead and yet... Izuku could not imagine standing up in front of a crowd thousands strong, knowing he was about to die surrounded by nothing but malice, not a single friend left in the world, and speaking those kinds of truths, those kinds of insults, straight to Shigaraki's face. She was incredible, beyond incredible. Superhuman. His hero. Her ideals were certainly twisted, her path dark as she wandered far into the territory of extremism, the self-reinforcing world that eventually led her to the modern MLA and the PLF, but despite that she did the real MLA proud. That kind of conviction, that kind of power and bravery, was a rare and precious thing. Destro would have liked Camie. He would have made a general out of her.
What would Izuku say at his own execution when the time came?
He would not let it be soon. He had plans to play the executioner himself first.
Fossa remembered vividly strangling Misaki to death, the garrotte tightening about the man's throat as the MP struggled and vainly searched for the breath to cry out. That twisted, horrific, evil memory in which Fossa defiled his own soul by sinking to the PLF's level had been carefully shunted to the back of his mind, hidden to protect what remained of his morals and sanity. Now, Izuku stared at the dark roof of his tent and dug the memories up. He ripped Misaki's face from the recollection and shoved Nagant's in its place, reveling in the satisfaction of revenge, allowing the rage to run through him so his jaw clenched and teeth ground together with the force of the emotion's maelstrom. When Izuku tired of killing Nagant, he substituted Geten or Shigaraki, adding in quirk cuffs as necessary to avoid stretching his suspension of disbelief. The revenge fantasies played through his mind again and again as the night dragged on, becoming more detailed and graphic with each reenactment.
This was beyond disturbing and unhealthy and he should stop himself before it went any further but somehow he didn't have the will.
"That's for the USJ," he hissed in Shigaraki's ear as he slammed the man-child's head against a tree. "That's for Utsushimi Camie," he crushed Shigaraki's nose against the bark, blood dripping down onto the ancient conifer's roots. "This is for Kamino Ward!" he tightened the deadly wire still further about his captive's throat. "And this is for everything else!"
The rage grew and grew until it exhausted him and vanished all at once, a forest fire burning through every available shred of fuel, nothing left but smoke and ashes.
He still couldn't sleep.
"Arashiro?" he asked, finding his friend leaning against the tree where only a few nights ago she had found Izuho passed out after Fossa's adventures with False Flag. Arashiro glanced up, took a hitching breath, and stared resolutely back at the ground, trying futilely to hide her sobs. "Hey. Hey!" Izuho sank down beside her. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"
"It was my fault," she whimpered.
"...What?"
"Camie!" she interrupted almost before he had finished his inquiry.
What in the world was she talking about? "I'm pretty sure she made her decision to betray us without any input from you, Arashiro," Izuho said wearily.
"No--not like--I saw her." Izuho waited, wrapping an arm around his friend's shoulder. "I saw her giving papers to somebody, and they played it off but I knew it was weird and I--I turned her in, Mihara."
"Oh," Izuku whispered weakly.
"How am I supposed to feel? She betrayed us! But I betrayed her! She was my--was she only using us? Why do I still care then if we were never friends?"
"I--" Izuho choked, at a loss. "I don't know, Arashiro."
She buried her head against his shoulder and sobbed. "If I--if I hadn't said what I saw--I didn't want--I didn't want her to--she was my friend! Even if I wasn't hers!"
Tears began to trickle down Izuho's cheeks, too. How was Arashiro supposed to feel? Hah! That was an easy question with a simple, if long, answer: guilty, betrayed, lonely, regretful, confused, miserable, angry. How was Izuku supposed to feel, though? Here he was, a dear friend crying in his arms because she had outed another of his friends as a traitor resulting in a public execution, and Izuku himself was another traitor. The irony might kill him before the war or the spy hunters at this rate. "I don't know," Izuho finally answered Arashiro's question.
"That's not helpful!" she hissed.
"I know it isn't. I can't... I can't help. I don't know what to say. I don't even know what..." "Please," she begged. "Tell me you forgive me!"
Forgive her? For what? For being vigilant? For doing her duty as prescribed to her? For lending her loyalty to monsters like Nagant and Geten and Shigaraki? For not being a Chain spy herself? "I... you didn't have a choice. You had to say what you saw."
"I had to. You forgive me." "I..."
"Please!" she demanded, looking up from where she had hidden her face against his shirt. "Say you forgive me."
"I forgive you," Fossa said easily. He wasn't the one whose forgiveness she needed to beg, after all.
Arashiro stared at him, eyes still overflowing with tears. "You can just make yourself say it like that?" she whispered, "even when you don't believe it?"
"Even if I... somehow blamed you, even if there were something that I couldn't forgive," Izuho mumbled, "what would be the point in saying that to you? It wouldn't be fair, you know it wouldn't be fair."
"True is not fair," Arashiro mumbled, whatever that meant in this ambiguous context. "No. It isn't, is it?"
Arashiro's sobs faded slowly. Some irritating insects chirped louder to compensate. The moon gleamed through a gap in the clouds. "Do you think she was right?"
"What?" Izuho hissed.
"What Camie said. About... the things like the HPSC, like, you remember at the Hosu executions- -"
"Shhh!" Izuho hissed. "You can't... even out here in the dark, you can't ever say things like that, alright? Not because they aren't--not because Camie didn't believe them. Everybody in their right mind knows that Camie believed what she said, but because if you believe them, too, you'll always be under suspicion. They'll be watching, thinking you'll do the same things she did. She gave all those thoughts a bad name. You can't have them."
Arashiro shook her head violently, "I would never betray--"
"I know. I know. You would never do anything that could hurt me, or Wakiya or Nishida or... you
care about us. I know."
She sighed, calming some at last. "I can't believe Camie would do this. All those people dead in the battle..." What about all the people on the Chain side, many of whom were teenagers because the PLF had specifically targeted a hero school? What about all the civilians that got caught in the crossfire because there hadn't been any time to evacuate the battleground?
"I can't really believe it either," Izuho admitted. "But it's the truth, fair or not."
Arashiro started crying again. Izuho took a seat against the tree next to his friend and got some of his own mourning out of the way. Sometimes a sorrow shared really was a sorrow halved. In the rest of the division, Camie's name would be spat like a curse but here Izuho and Arashiro could indulge in their heartbreak unhindered and without suspicion. Here someone at least shared the pain.
Camie was a topic of furious conversation for precisely one day during which she was, in the court of public opinion, accused and convicted of every depraved act a human being could possibly commit. After that furious trial in absentia, Izuho never again heard her mentioned by name.