This was their street now, inconvenience be damned. Most of the drivers were not happy with the several thousand people parading towards the capitol building. One of the city bus drivers honked at them... but it seemed that man was actually quite pleased with the situation. He opened the bus doors, put his feet up, and pulled out a magazine.
Izuku hadn't known quite how angry his sign ought to be. Calling legislators Nazis was always tempting when they started doing Nazi-like things, singling out groups to oppress and forcing silence, but tempting as that kind of name-calling was, it had to be resisted because it was pointless. You didn't win by making the other side angry with you. You won by making moderates angry with the other side. Calling the governor a Nazi--although it was certainly true--wouldn't convince anyone of anything. Rather, his sign read "Is American Freedom Just Freedom to Oppress?" which was a bit long for the cardboard he had painted it on, and perhaps too abstract, but he hadn't been able to come up with anything else. That was embarrassing given that he was technically one of the organizers of the march, hence one of the individuals in the lead.
The long line of protesters snaked down the street towards the marble steps leading to the legislature's den of injustice. "Whose freedom?" Izuku called out, still not used to the idea of wielding a bullhorn, "everyone's freedom!" the crowd replied. "Who are humans?" Izuku chanted, "meta humans!" The crowd filled in around the white pinnacle of the capitol, spreading out over the trim lawn, occupying every spare section of street.
Chris handed his edge of a banner to Kuma. "You'll do great," Kuma told their friend.
"I hope so," Chris grimaced. "I've never done much public speaking. I wish I hadn't been named first speaker..."
"It'll be fine. Go get 'em," Izuku said, even as he spied a crowd of police officers accumulating in the background, a dark wall like thunder clouds on the horizon.
Chris jumped up on a marble block beside a long set of stairs, standing high above the crowd. "Governor, what are you afraid of?" he asked the governor--who was probably miles away in a safe house. "Most people here have been mistreated terribly. A friend of mine," he nodded to Izuku, "was forced to attend a church where the priest told him every single week that he was a misborn demon who could be cured and his sins cleansed if only he were willing to change. Genetics do not work like that." There was no hitch, no hesitation, barely the hint of his accent. He was born for public speaking. "I have friends who have been assaulted in the streets. I know someone who was murdered in her bed by a neighbor who broke into her apartment and then escaped any punishment by pleading self defense. After all, the victim was a meta human. Who knows what she could have done? With her meta ability... which allowed her to extract stains from upholstery. Good heavens, she might have cleaned her neighbor's jacket!
"Her neighbor had no cause to be afraid. What made him afraid? You did, governor, you and your fear-mongering laws that paint meta humans out to be monsters come to corrupt society, twist children, subvert norms and eliminate 'our family values,' and I'm really not sure what you mean by that last one given your own conduct in the private sphere of your life." Chris spoke calmly and the crowd calmed with him, emotion simmering beneath the surface. "Your rhetoric, your policies, your decisions, the bill you just signed into law, these are things that hurt people constantly. These are things that get people killed for no reason save irrational fear. Explain to me, governor, why you think it's alright to hurt people like this? This is a lesson most of us learned in grade school. It is simply staggering to me that you, that anyone, finds it acceptable to injure or kill people because you fear something they hypothetically could be able to do.
"Are we not your people too? Or are you like a dictator who says 'people' but means 'my supporters only.' What gives you the right, governor, to decide which people count, which people should have rights, and which should not? Who told you, governor," he raised his voice to shout, and god he had a powerful roar, like a dragon in the vanguard of an army calling his troops to arms, "that you should be allowed to choose who lives happily and who lives in misery? Who gave you the right to incite violence against one group, choosing who lives and who dies? Are you a god, governor? Are you a messenger of god, governor? Have you been given a divine right? Or are you a madman, claiming power over life and death to be your right while stripping us of our right to merely live in peace?
"You need not fear us, governor, but any man overreaching, drunk on power, ought to fear the wrath of God, who does not take kindly to such arrogance." The crowd cheered along with him now, the energy electric, infectious in the air. "We are nothing to be afraid of! We are just people, your people, like everyone else in the state. You need not fear us but we will not take this attack on our rights laying down and we are going to stay right here. Right. Here. Until you come down from your high tower and explain yourself! We deserve better from you, from our state, from our home!"
"Who are humans?" "Meta humans!" "Whose freedom?" "Everyone's freedom!"
The foreboding cloud of police officers stared them down, swarming steadily closer, more like a group of hornets now. The calm crowd of meta humans and supporters grew larger as the day grew
older. Perfectly peaceful... and still destined only for sorrow.
The Hosu Uprising started the week Izuho arrived at the Citadel. TWRR played it down, tried to act like the fighting was just a scant few Chain black ops agents stirring up trouble... but that definitely wasn't the case. This was a large-scale, civilian uprising, just ordinary people trying to force the PLF out of Hosu and turning the abused city into a war zone yet again, but when your options were living in a war zone or occupied territory held by an enemy that surged over the land like ravenous, winged sharks wantonly committing crimes against humanity... well, Izuku would prefer the war zone. So would many people in Hosu, apparently. The Uprising was surprisingly resilient so far. Hopefully their luck would hold.
There was a lot more to be read between the lines in the paper, but there was more still to be learned from Citadel gossip. "Loose lips sink ships" was the motto, but as a guard passing through the PLF's central facility a hundred times a night, he picked up on incredible rumors. According to one of Re-Destro's low-level supply clerks, a group of combatants which was almost certainly an Isomorph team had rescued a large group of detained civilians from one of the PLF's auxiliary "research labs." The exact location of the facility wasn't clear. Isomorph was not truly an army all be it they had a shocking amount of resources for a private venture. Opportunistic strikes against undersecured PLF facilities was the most they could, or would, do. Getting deeply involved in a whole-sale civil war could wipe them out.
Izuku savored the pages of his Vangaurd book and bided his time. Most labs had two sets of doors arranged in an airlock of sorts. Credentials were required at both stages. Sneaking in behind an exiting scientist was all but impossible. Fossa had another plan to get in, a good one if more than a little crazy, but he had to get access to the security recording room first to infect the system with the virus that would allow him to control the cameras. Eager as he might be to get down there and get up to no good, rushing things would bring his doom. In the meantime, he memorized scientists' schedules and privately debated the merits of taking pictures of sensitive laboratory equipment versus setting sensitive laboratory equipment on fire.
According to Re-Destro himself--shouting in fury behind a wooden door that ought to have been sound proofed better--the PLF was trying to produce more heavy artillery and armored vehicles to counter the Chain. One of the prototypes had worked splendidly, but the other had burst into
flames. Oh to have been a fly on the wall for that. Documents pertaining to the functional prototype were once left on an unattended desk for nearly thirty seconds while their owner fetched some water from the cooler. Fossa made good use of those thirty seconds and his miniature camera.
When was enough information enough? When should Fossa sacrifice this little device to the dead drop in the gutter, hoping it would be picked up by a more mobile agent? Not yet, certainly. It only had a few trifles stored up so far.
"It's so weird, isn't it?" Arashiro asked him one afternoon as he fretted about how few chapters he had left in his book and tried to slow his reading speed to a crawl.
"What?"
"I mean... we're here, in the heart of the PLF and yet... we pretty much have normal jobs. It's like we've just become nightwatch people."
"Huh. I suppose... maybe it's weird that I don't feel weird?" Izuho mused aloud.
"What do you mean by that?" Arashiro peeked down at him from the upper bunk.
"I never felt any shock to suddenly not be actively fighting anymore. You're right. We do pretty much have normal jobs. Yesterday we went to a farmer's market. There were actual farmers. I mean we were like... real humans." Arashiro giggled. "But it wasn't jarring to me at all." Although now that he thought about it carefully he was certainly feeling some mood whiplash. Maybe he'd just had too many other things to think about, no room to process this.
"I guess you're just well adjusted," Arashiro suggested.
"Or maybe so crazy that nothing can phase me anymore," Izuku muttered.
Arashiro quirked an eyebrow at him. "You? Honestly, you're like... the sanest person here, except maybe Wakiya..."
Oh if she only knew... "Not Nishida? Is Nishida not sane?"
"You were on shift the one time he went on the rant about taking revenge for his daughter, weren't you?" The Citadel guard was partially changed every few hours to avoid the chaos of a full shift change or the disadvantage of a full retinue of tired security staff, thus Arashiro and Izuho were rarely off duty for precisely the same window on any given day.
Izuho couldn't recall ever hearing more than silvers of information about Nishida's child or her tragic fate. "I guess not."
"It was... wild."
"Wait... are you not sane, Arashiro? You didn't put yourself on the list either." She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know sometimes."
That was a bit too relatable for comfort.
According to Toga--who had come by to irritate Magne--Endeavour had been seen at a skirmish a week ago. "I don't care what Endeavour is up to!" Magne yelled in a fit of pain-induced rage, sounding more like a mad dog than even Re-Destro in his worst fits of temper. "I'm not involved in that war anymore. You've all made that clear. Now, unless you happen to be able to pull rations for twenty-thousand displaced people out of your pocket or otherwise are willing to lend me some resources to help all the people we are Liberating, get out of my way. I have work to do!" Magne sounded like she really meant it, like she actually cared about those people she couldn't feed. Izuho, forced to continue his rounds, did not hear Toga's reply in detail, but what little he heard was incredibly patronizing all be it clearly intended to be sweet.
It wasn't clear from Toga's scant detail whether Endeavour had actually fought, and, really, it was more likely that the former number one pro hadn't been present at the skirmish all. It was far more probable somebody had mistaken Zuko or Fire Wheel for the elder Todoroki.
It really was oddly... he wouldn't quite say "domestic" and "normal" didn't capture the sharpness and depth of the feeling. Here he was in the very heart of the most central military installation of the PLF and yet... he just went in as a watchman every night like any shift worker in the country before the war... the fact that he worked in a facility straight out of nightmares notwithstanding.
There were rumors of sabotage at a motor manufacturing plant. The affair practically reeked of False Flag... and if one of the more fantastic rumors was to be believed, someone had been torn to shreds by War Dog only two kilometers from the Citadel. What the vigilante had been doing this deep in Chain territory, let alone at that useless little refueling station, nobody had the slightest idea.
"Give us a hand would you?" called a scientist, Dr. Mura according to her lab coat's tag, a young woman with blue hair. She was trying to maneuver a cart out of one of the less secure labs. A man, a few years older, but likely her elder brother given the matching name tag and matching hair, was
trying to hold the door but had chosen an unfortunate place to stand. Izuho turned to aid them as demanded and Fossa forced Izuku's feet forward smoothly despite the explosion of horrified nausea all through his guts.
Sprawled out on the cart were the corpses of three nomus. One was naked, covered only by the bodies of the others. Not even the dignity of a sheet had been given to their broken, and in one case emaciated, bodies. Only the smallest was really recognizable as human anymore, a young girl half mutated into something of scale and sinew.
Fossa maneuvered himself to hold the door because Izuho could not have done it with a straight face. The cart slipped through.
"Probably wouldn't have turned out well, anyway. This one was quirkless. What can you really expect from them?" the woman commented off hand. "I suppose it wasn't really her fault. Mother used to say hate the disease, not the diseased."
"They can't all be good test subjects, but don't worry. We'll get it working. You just need a break, get you thoughts together," the man replied, putting a soothing hand on his presumably-sister's shoulder. She sighed, giving him a wan smile.
Were they trying to rile Izuku up? Was this a test of some kind? Was someone trying to find out how deep his loyalty ran? The depths he would sink to in the PLF's name? Even Fossa couldn't keep his lip from curling at the depraved sight. It was odd how nobody else could see it, the incongruities between the PLF's words and the PLF's actions. Freedom, they promised, Liberation... Where were that little girl's Liberties? What the PLF really meant was freedom for "us," freedom for "us" to oppress "them" and take "their" freedoms, and lives, away. The same fire that had ripped through Fossa when he beat Nagant to death and threw her body into the storm sewers threatened to rear up and consume him once more. He could strangle both of these bastards to death right here and--he couldn't. He had to wait. He had to wait again. Always waiting, always... there would be time for revenge later. There would be a reckoning for these two. There would be a reckoning for everyone in this building.
Fossa escorted the scientists and their gruesome cargo to the room with the special, "Sensitive Materials" incinerators and, at their pointed requests, dragged the cold bodies onto the conveyor belt, trying not to look, listen, or smell too closely. "I need to continue my rounds or I'll miss my check in point," Izuho told them.
"Thanks for your help, sorry to keep you," the woman waved him off.
Thank god he wouldn't have to watch that little girl or her two faceless companions discarded like medical waste. He couldn't help but think of Bit Weasel mercy killing the quirkless girl the MLA had dragged out of a pit mine when the generals led by a Switchblade of Destro rescued Fractal from a death camp. So long ago, an atrocity swept away by the endless river of history, and here it was, happening all again.
Fossa would shove both Drs. Mura down the incinerator after their victims if he could. Calling them scientists was an insult to science. Animals. No, sorry. Comparing them to animals was an insult to the vast majority of animals on the planet. Nedzu certainly didn't deserve to be in a category adjacent to these horrible specimens of humanity. Fungi and plants were much better behaved, too, on average. Viruses? Yes. That would do. Viruses, nasty little parasites killing not for necessity but because they could, because it was easy to be wasteful and reckless and care nothing for what one consumed.
He'd made up his mind. It would be fire. He would get into these labs and he would torch them .
There would be nothing left. He'd find the fire suppression systems and disable them so the whole place would go up. Purge it all.
At the end of the month, Re-Destro--whose uncanny mannerisms continued to disturb Izuku almost as much as the tamer nomu experiments--dropped a huge stack of documents on the floor after tripping on an extension cord of all things. The swearing that followed taught even Izuku--veteran of two wars now--some new words. Fossa managed to get pictures of a dozen immediately actionable pages, including the locations of manufacturing facilities and reports from an undercover operative.
Fossa lost his softball on the roof of the appropriate training equipment storage building the next day and, in the process of retrieving it, left his camera in two sealed plastic bags beneath the rock specified as a dead drop (well, hopefully; there were actually quite a few rocks in that gutter of a similar color). Hopefully someone would retrieve the device before all the information became moot. Hopefully this set of pictures was worth giving up such a useful little gadget.
Almost five weeks into his tenure at the Citadel, four weeks into the Hosu Uprising that the TWRR kept trying to pretend wasn't happening, he was finally assigned a shift monitoring cameras rather than patrolling the hallways. Knowing that the schedule occasionally resulted in such shuffling, it had seemed wiser to wait for an organic opportunity to commit cyber warfare than to manufacture an excuse to get into the secured room.
The crowded closet did not contain the state of the art system he had expected.
The whole surveillance apparatus was cobbled together from a half dozen old laptops and a tangle of cables. "Whatever you do, don't press any buttons on that keyboard unless one of the techs specifically tells you to," the gruff sergeant he joined told him.
"It's... a..."
"Mess," the sergeant replied dryly. "There used to be good stuff up here, but the people downstairs made off with it all months ago. You watch those screens. Let me know if you see anything weird, or if you don't see the guards when they check in. You know the drill from the other side."
"Yeah. Got it."
This was too easy. Was someone watching him? Did someone suspect him? Were they spying on him right now?
The sergeant definitely glanced at him and checked over his shoulder from time to time, but slipping a USB into a port should be trivial. His next opportunity to infect the system could be months for now. He just had to go for it.
The only sign of a successful program transfer was the momentary appearance of a smiley face in a non-descript pop-up window in the lower right corner.
Fossa slipped the USB drive back into the folds of the handkerchief in his pocket. Well then. Show time.