The chip shortages were less critical behind the Chain lines than behind the PLF lines, but the idea that everyone would have a cell phone... or even a home phone... was now ludicrous. Fortunately, pay phones had made the expected comeback. Despite the three available phones, though, there was a bit of a line.
It took Izuku fifteen minutes to get his five minutes in the phone booth, not that he really minded. It gave him time to plan out what he would say and who he would try to say it to.
"I'm sorry, this number is unavailable." Well, there was no reason to assume Aizawa would still have the same number.
"I'm sorry, this number is unavailable," and there was even less reason to assume False Flag would still have the same number.
"I'm sorry--" this might never have been Nedzu's number in any event.
"I'm sorry--" No Tsukauchi.
"I'm sorry--" No Kesagiri Man. Izuku was pretty sure he'd dialed one number off, anyway. "Hello?" somebody's grandmother asked hoarsely.
"Sorry, wrong number."
He was running out of options. He couldn't just call Katsuki or his mother out of the blue. He'd give them a heart attack and cause chaos. Three of his five minutes were up already. The line behind him wasn't too long, but he didn't fancy waiting for another turn. Here was an idea...
"UA Support Department troubleshooting," a young man's voice droned. Oh thank goodness.
"I need to speak to Hatsume Mei urgently," he began, "I'm on a pay phone and I only have two minutes left and it's extremely important."
"Okay. Name?"
"Mihara Izuho," he said. He would not give his real name out to just anyone yet.
Thirty seconds ticked by in silence. Come on, Hatsume. "Hello?" she asked, voice squeaking with confusion and trepidation. "Did something explode? I'm so sorry. Is everyone alright? I'll fix--"
"Hatsume it's Midoriya Izuku," he broke in. "I'm outside in front of the theaters at the mall where class 1-A once attended a terrible movie about the MLA war and I really, really need somebody who knows I'm alive to come pick me up. I'm about to run out of time on this call, please let Nedzu or False Flag or Aizawa I guess know that I'm here and need pickup. I'm not hurt, just tired, oh and I have a motorcycle that I kind of want to keep."
"Okay," she rushed out and moments later the dial tone returned.
Izuku sighed, hung up, and vacated the booth for the next caller, a haggard young woman with a lifetime of pain in her eyes.
The spy perched on a short, brick wall, resting one foot on his motorcycle, and waited. The phone booths churned through caller after caller. Birds fought over a few french fries somebody had spilled in the center of the largely deserted parking lot. Most of the stores had closed down. Some of them had been damaged during the Battle of UA and boarded up haphazardly. Chances were the majority of them would never reopen.
"Was it really worth all this?" Izuku asked nobody. "What did anybody gain? I lost my name and my home and friend after friend. Monoma lost his parents. Countless people lost their livelihoods and their homes. Plenty of others lost their lives, or if not that at least their innocence. And in the end Shigaraki, who thought he had everything to gain, only had his head to lose. Heh." He almost laughed at his own gruesome joke. "What a pointless waste of time, blood and energy. So dumb. It's all so stupid." He kicked a pebble into the street, watching it scatter others of its own kind in a chaotic whirlwind.
A black van pulled up slowly and Aizawa stepped out. Student and teacher stared at each other. Fossa slowly got to his feet, clasping his hands behind his back and standing at attention as Eraserhead looked him over with dark, unreadable eyes. "Problem child," Aizawa said at last, hanging his head so that he was immediately forced to push long, greasy hair out of his eyes.
That wasn't a question. It wasn't even a statement. How was the spy supposed to respond? "Sorry," Izuku said for lack of any better idea.
Aizawa's head snapped up, gaze suddenly fierce as an eagle's. Izuku would have stepped back if not for the wall at his heels. "Don't you dare apologize for not being dead."
"Um..."
"Bike in the back, problem child," Aizawa said, moving to open the doors and lend a hand with
moving the machine.
Moments later, Izuku hopped into the passenger seat, pulling the door closed with a bit more force than necessary as he slumped against the backrest. Aizawa pulled away from the curb and they began their crawl through the military installations that now surrounded UA.
The buildings that had been replaced following the PLF's attack were all practical constructions, hulking apartments meant to be impermanent housing for displaced people, command headquarters, weapons manufacturing, vehicle hangers, support labs... Everything was ugly, erected on a tight deadline and tiny budget with long-term viability being irrelevant. Bare concrete walls and bars on tiny windows gave the whole city the aura of a giant prison. The husks of destroyed buildings yet to be repaired or replaced only added to the gloom.
It reminded him of the Citadel only on the most superficial levels. In the PLF's central installation, nearly everyone was active duty military. Here civilians were still in the majority and plenty of children--unheard of in the Citadel--played in municipal parks or trotted close at their parents' heels.
The streets, unlike the buildings, had been repaired, pavement fresh and shining, and there were so many plants . There were flower beds and trees everywhere, clearly attended to by individuals with quirks that provided the greenest of thumbs. People still cared about this place, still had high hopes for it. That was a refreshing difference from the sterile Citadel or Aldera and its surrounding neighborhood which had been abandoned to the whims of the weeds. Nobody had real hope for those places.
"Where have you been, Midoriya?" Aizawa asked him quietly and the name wasn't a shock anymore. The week of travel had been good for him. He'd managed to get some of the most disastrous parts of his head in order and the sound of his birth name didn't hit him like a lightning strike anymore. He'd even spent a few minutes practicing introducing himself to a curious crow. "I heard a rumor that somebody had seen you fleeing PLF territory nearly a week ago," Aizawa continued, "but there were no details. We weren't sure if you'd made it or not."
"War Dog told you she saw me?"
"What?" Apparently not. So War Dog wasn't working closely enough with the Chain to give direct reports, only closely enough to pass on rumors.
"Well, the information must be from her one way or another. She's the only one who saw me, the only one who's not a PLF soldier and also dead, anyway."
Aizawa gave him a side glance as they waited at a red light, opening and closing his mouth a few times. "What?"
That probably sounded a bit wild without any context. "It's a long story." "Make it short."
"I was driving a truck and Stain was chasing me on a motorcycle. I crashed. I found War Dog. War Dog ripped Stain to pieces and sent me on my way."
The light was green and Aizawa was holding up traffic. "What... the actual hell, Midoriya?"
Fossa couldn't help the hint of an amused smile that crept across his face. "Wait 'till you hear the rest of it."
"You're doing wonders for my anxiety, Midoriya," Aizawa grumbled under his breath as he finally rolled through the green.
A missile defense system now took up most of the city block to the left. This place used to sell furniture. Izuku would never have bought one of their ugly couches, but he would have preferred the furniture store to the missiles. "Who knows that I'm alive?" the spy asked eventually.
"Me, False Flag, Nedzu, Tsukauchi, Nighteye, Hatsume, a handful of military intelligence officers you've never met, and War Dog I guess."
"So not my mother or my classmates."
"No, and you know why." Yeah. Telling them would have been unconscionable for a number of reasons. "On that note, you should probably know that Midoriya Inko formally adopted Monoma Neito about a month after his parents were killed."
"Oh. Huh." That... somehow he wasn't surprised and certainly wasn't disappointed. It was comforting that they'd found each other in the aftermath of their tragedies. "Good." Back in the days when Kacchan had first turned against him, right after he'd learned he was quirkless, Izuku had sometimes fantasized about having a sibling to play with. He was happy to acquire a brother, but it would be nice if the circumstances weren't so miserable.
"What's going on in regards to the war?" Izuku asked. "I haven't had a chance to see any news in... I guess it's been five days now." He'd been avoiding the news, in fact. It had been easy enough given his traveling habits and there wasn't anything he could do about what he might read in the papers other than drive himself mad with worry at every headline.
"Shigaraki was killed five days ago under... unclear circumstances. The official PLF announcements--or, the most official given that there are multiple factions vying for control--say he was assassinated by a Chain spy, but the rumors we've heard are... extremely bizarre. Somebody said that Destro killed him, like the original Destro, not Re-Destro."
"Of course it was Destro not Re-Destro. Dark Shadow killed Re-Destro long before Shigaraki died." Aizawa made some kind of choking sound and the car slowed sharply.
"Dark Shadow, but--"
"You probably don't want to know," Izuku broke in. "I... I'll give the report, it'll be in the report, but it's not--there's no good news there. I'm the only student you're going to get back."
"Oh." If a single word could crush a soul, Izuku's would be in shards. "I'm sorry."
"You mean that as in--you know it wasn't your fault, right? What happened to Tokoyami and Dark Shadow. You understand that."
"We all blame ourselves," Izuku shrugged. "But yeah, I know it wasn't... I thought you blamed me, though," he admitted.
"No," Aizawa hissed. "No, I never blamed you. I blamed me both for what happened to Tokoyami and for what I thought happened to you afterwards and I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am that you spent the last half a year thinking I was disappointed in you. I am not disappointed in any of you. Understand? None of you." They stopped for another red light. Two tanks and an armored car trundled through the intersection with what appeared to be an elephant close behind. A helicopter
landed on a neighboring building and two people in black leapt out of it like ninjas. "I'm proud of all of you, the ones who came back, the ones who didn't," Aizawa added the final words in a whisper.
Oh. Fossa was being prompted to ask an unfortunately relevant question. "Who else died?" Izuku said dully. It had been too much to hope that Tokoyami and Dark Shadow would be the only fatalities among his yearmates.
"Ashido. Almost two months ago now. Class B lost Shoda only a few weeks into the war, and Tokage and Rin were killed about two weeks ago. Fatalities were higher in other years," and he wasn't going to list them all.
"Oh." Ashido... he never quite knew how to read her, what to make of her wild eyes or her strange smiles... She was so oblivious but so unerringly caring, a little like Camie in some ways. He barely knew Shoda, Tokage and Rin. He'd have to leave all of that mourning to others. He didn't have grief to spare for acquaintances. "I'm sorry I didn't get to see Ashido again. She was really sweet."
"Yeah. I'm sorry you don't get to see her again, too."
"And she died thinking I was dead."
"Yes."
"I'll never get to set the record straight. Somehow that's the thing that makes me want to cry right now," but he couldn't quite find the tears.
UA came into view at last. It looked almost the same but more. More buildings. More fences. More gates and checkpoints. Cameras and lasers and beacons to thwart teleporters filled the campus like a forest. Armored vehicles trundled in and out of an underground bunker and there was now a small airfield just behind the dorms.
"False Flag thinks you killed Lady Nagant," it wasn't quite a question. "We found her body in the sewers laying in a puddle of shattered glass."
Fossa huffed. "She had it coming, and she'd realized I was a traitor. I beat her half to death with a piece of rebar."
"I didn't believe Flag," Aizawa admitted. "I thought it had to be somebody else, a heavy hitter with a strength and speed enhancement. I mean... I wouldn't be sure I could win a fight against her."
"You beat Stain. You could have beaten Nagant in a close-quarters fight. I got to stab her before she managed a single move against me, and she wasn't expecting me to start swinging rebar at her head."
"Crazy," Aizawa muttered.
"Wait 'till you hear about the other things I've done."
"I'm not sure whether I'm looking forward to this debrief or dreading it. Well, I suppose it will probably Nedzu who debriefs you and I'll only hear the things he decides I need to know. Maybe it's better that way."
"So," Nedzu put down his tea, "to summarize, you spent months undercover without support during which you killed more than a dozen soldiers, largely those in key positions during critical battles. You killed a high-ranking MP in order to steal his code book, then assassinated the PLF's most skilled sniper. You photographed and passed on dozens of top secret documents, sabotaged the PLF's central labs, unleashed vengeful nomus who killed dozens of PLF soldiers including Re- Destro, then prevented the PLF from resurrecting All For One and sicced Destro on Shigaraki Tomura leading to the PLF commander's death, before finally feeding Stain to War Dog."
It sounded a bit ridiculous when phrased that way. "Uh... yes." Izuku took a long sip of his own tea. So much delicious sugar and cream... the strudel was amazing, too. He'd forgotten how much he loved fruit pastries, or perhaps he'd never realized it in the first place.
"And you have your kidnapped squadmate in your pocket."
"Yes." Fossa set the globe on Nedzu's desk gingerly. "I... I really liked her. We were friends, but I doubt she'll ever want to see me again."
"We shall see." Nedzu nodded to himself, inspecting the globe. "Well. I think it is safe to say that you are by far the most successful undercover agent of the war, beating out False Flag by a hefty margin."
"Utsushimi Camie did pretty well, too," Fossa murmured. Nedzu hadn't known about her; he'd known of the advance warning of the attack on UA she had managed to slip into Chain hands, but not the warning's origin.
Nedzu sighed. "Her fate is regrettable. I wish that were a rarity in this war. I will see to it that her former classmates at Shiketsu are informed, as well as her parents I suppose." Her classmates were far more likely to care.
"Has my class or family been told about me yet?"
Nedzu nodded. "Your mother has been informed. She is waiting for you at her apartment. We thought it best to let her know first. You may reintroduce yourself to your classmates when you are ready."
Izuku stared down at his remaining tea, suddenly dizzy, not sure what to say or feel. What would his mom think of him now? After everything he'd done? After he deceived and abandoned her? After he lost track of all the lives he took, his victims' faces blurring into an ugly collage like a watercolor painting hurled into the ocean? "It's confusing," he said at last. "I... I have trouble remembering exactly what my mom looks like. For so long I couldn't think about her, or Katsuki or any of my friends. I can't quite picture them in my head. I... I don't remember quite what I looked like, either."
Nedzu steepled his fingers delicately. "I meant to ask you about that. Nobody has seen the Face Fixer since the Angband raid, but there... is a possibility that we might be able to find someone capable of restoring your appearance."
Izuku curled his lip. "No. That was his--I mean it doesn't fit." He'd spent so long getting used to
his new face. This was him, now, the version that had lived through the war, fought and suffered and seen unspeakable things, done unspeakable things. It wouldn't be right to wear the innocent face of his past self and bear the scars of a dozen battles and assassinations. He didn't want to cut his hair, either. Taking off the PLF uniform had distanced him from Izuho. He didn't need to change his body. His appearance was his and he liked it and he needed some stability in his life right now.
"Alright. I will not worry about it for the moment. If you change your mind let me know." "Is that all?"
"That is all for now. I do not expect you will be called on to fight again," which meant the war effort was going well, "but I will warn you with all notice possible if circumstances take a turn."
"Thank you."
Nedzu grinned, ears perking up as his thoughts lightened. "I must say, it is an absolute pleasure to have you back safe, Midoriya. You cannot imagine how thrilled I was to learn I had been entirely wrong about your fate, and here you are, back alive and well and quite possibly the most successful and important single agent in the entire war." Izuku's cheeks burned and he tried to bat the compliment away with a series of spluttering denials but Nedzu just shook his head and spoke over him, "welcome home, Midoriya Izuku."
He didn't know what to say to his mother. He knew what to say to Nedzu, how to give a report, but his mom... words failed Izuku. Fossa was no help on that front, either. Fortunately, words were unnecessary. His mother grasped him like a tourniquet and pulled him down to the couch beside her then grabbed him and kissed his hair without saying anything at all, tears running freely down her face.
"They knew. They knew since the Battle of UA and they didn't tell me," she whispered, broken words hiding fury.
Now he knew what to say. "They couldn't," Izuku explained. "They couldn't let anyone know, because if word somehow slipped out about me it would get me killed and because... I doubt any of them really expected me to make it back alive." Fossa hadn't expected to make it back alive. Up until the very last moment, up until Destro made his speech, Izuku hadn't even been trying to make it back alive, not really, because why try to do the impossible? There were other things to focus on, achievable things. "How cruel would it be to tell you I was actually still alive and then tell you I had been killed just a month later? You can be mad at me for not coming home, but it's not fair to be mad at Nedzu for not telling you I was alive."
His mom cradled his head against her shoulder and he allowed himself to slowly, slowly relax into her touch. It had been so long since he let himself really let his guard down. Relaxation came with a fresh wave of exhaustion. He might well fall asleep in her arms.
He was fooling her, sitting here all sweet and cuddly just like he had before the war. She had no idea what he had become. "I've done terrible things," the spy told her. He couldn't let her keep hugging him when she didn't know the creature she held in her arms. It wouldn't be right.
"I'm sorry," she whispered in his ear. Her tone reminded him of the day he found out he was quirkless. "I'm so sorry, Izuku, so sorry that I couldn't protect you, so sorry that my generation couldn't protect you."
"What?"
"The adults couldn't hold the country together and the children suffered for it. This should never have been your war," she sniffed. "We all failed you, and I'm so sorry."
"I killed people." "I know."
"I don't even remember them all. Do you understand? I killed all those people and I don't even know who they were," and it was so easy to say it, so easy to let Fossa take the reigns and explain the facts with objectivity cold and cruel.
"You don't have to tell me about it if you don't want to," she drew back to look him in the eyes, "but you're not going to scare me away from you, Izuku. You can try all you like, again and again until you're convinced that nothing you say will make me turn from you. I'm not going to run away, no matter how much you try to scare me." Was that what he was doing? Testing her? Trying to see how much he could tell her before she ran from him in fear? "I'm not going to abandon you. You are my child and I love you, no matter what you had to do."
The words were terribly gentle yet they evoked a response terribly violent. Something snapped beneath his thoughts and suddenly repressed memories surged to the surface of his brain--face after face, dead and dying men and women, scene after scene of unspeakable violence and cruelty, misery after misery he had never let himself feel before because there wasn't room or time, because the ever practical Fossa turned his mind to other priorities.
The poor victims of Nagant in Hosu, how they must have suffered in terror, how humiliated and gutted they must have felt to see thousands cheer for their brutal deaths, how unbelievably unfair it was that their friends and family would never have a body to bury.
Camie, betrayed left and right again and again, friendless despite her brilliant mind and lion's heart, hated by everyone, PLF and Chain alike, her deeds, her fate, and her life so unfairly swept away into history's waste basket.
Tokoyami, persevering and kind and fatally loyal, dying for nothing beside two doomed lovers and leaving his poor companion to suffer a fate worse than death at the hands of humans even boogeymen would fear.
Ashido whose unknown fate called forth nightmares from the darkest regions of his imagination... Midnight who fought so hard to keep fighting and only died for her herculean tenacity... Hound Dog who went out to save lives and couldn't even save his own in the end... Wakiya who could have been so much more if he'd been given half a chance... how many more? Too many to count, too many to understand.
Somehow it wasn't any of those grisly fates of friends and teachers that brought on his tears, though. It was the fate of the woman he knew nothing about.
"There was a woman they kidnapped," Izuku began hoarsely, "they made her a nomu but she wouldn't do what they wanted so she was locked in a cell in a lab with all the failures. She remembered that she hated the PLF. She used to be a lawyer, or she thought she was... but she
couldn't remember her name. She said she wanted to fight them, kill them until she found someone who knew her name. She never found it. She died nameless. She never found-never--" There would be no gravestone for her, no memorial, no eulogy or obituary in the paper. Izuku would never know who she was and when Izuku himself died she would be entirely forgotten.
Why was it this fate that suddenly crushed him with sorrow? Dark Shadow's fate was objectively much, much worse. Why was this thought, the idea of a woman who could not even have a gravestone, the one that set him bawling?
His mother tucked him against her chest and stroked his hair as he sobbed. He couldn't stop thinking about the nameless nomu, wondering who she was. He couldn't remember exactly what she looked like; his memories of that night were filled with fire and feathers, but somehow her story was the one that haunted every one of his thoughts. The forever nameless nomu, willing to fight and die to earn back a sliver of her human self. She fought and she died and she got nothing for it. She failed. Failure had been her only option. There had never been any hope for her.
"I'm sorry," his mom whispered in his ear.
"Everyone's always sorry!" Izuku bawled. "Always! But we keep doing these things! Why?"
The question is unthinkable to the mourners but easy enough to answer for the power-hungry. The ones that start wars, after all, are rarely the ones that suffer war's consequences.
His mom had no answer to the cruel question, but she didn't need to provide an answer. That wasn't what Izuku needed. He needed a shoulder to cry on and that she could provide.