Rejected Stones

To Be Lawful, Or Good

This document beta'd by Poliamida and kylekatarn77

To Be Lawful, or Good

Heroism means doing the right thing regardless of the consequences.

-Brandon Mull

Stumbling into the rubble of the camp, Izuku looked around, feeling sick and dazed. His eyes burned and his lungs still ached from the combination of smoke and gas. His head pounded and his body was sore from being compressed, but that wasn't what made him feel truly sick.

Mei was gone.

They had retrieved Tetsutestu and the two other girls from their hiding place, but Izuku barely noticed when Mandalay ran over and began giving first aid. She dismissed him quickly enough, noting that he could wait at least a little while.

The list of wounded was long, with Akai being the most grievously injured. She'd been teleporting her classmates out of harm's way with the aid of Ragdoll when Moonfish had fallen on them. Akai had been stabbed in the abdomen, but Ragdoll was missing and couldn't be found. Most of Class B had serious smoke or gas related injuries and a few had suffered burns.

Shinso, as it turned out, was fine. He had run back to camp, just in the knick of time to save Akai from Moonfish.

"He came out of nowhere," Shoji explained. "I thought we were dead. Akai was down, and I could only dodge while carrying Kendo and Yanagi; they'd been knocked out by the gas. Then his voice echoed out of the woods like a spirit's, demanding if he wanted more flesh. Moonfish answered, and then it was over. His teeth retracted, and he just lay there. Shinso came out of the forest, and we managed to get away."

"Where is he now?" Bakugo demanded. Shoji wearily pointed into the camp, and Bakugo and Izuku ran on.

"The hell were you thinking, running off like that?!" Bakugo demanded of Shinso when they came upon him sitting on the smashed ruins of the bunk house. He was holding his phone, staring at it with a dazed expression.

"It's all my fault," Shinso said, still looking at his phone. "Everything...it's all my fault."

"It's not your fault that Mei was...was taken," Izuku said, biting back a choked sob.

Shinso looked up, tears running down his cheeks, his face a mask of anguish. "But it is! Don't you get it? They were here because of me! I was bragging about coming to this camp on the message boards! I told them where I was!"

"Yeah, we know," Bakugo said wearily, sitting down by Shinso. "You screwed up."

Shinso knelt before Izuku, grabbing on to his shirt. "It was my fault! Mine! I am a villain, like they always said I was! I'm-"

"No you're not!" Izuku cried, grabbing onto Shinso's hands. "You're a hero! Uraraka told us how you saved Bakugo from Muscular. And Shoji told us that you saved him, Akai, and Kendo and Yanagi! You could have left them to die, or handed them over to the real villains."

"You don't understand!" Shinso wept, burying his face in his hands as he let go of Izuku. "I told the villains about this! I bet they have all sorts of information from me that they've gathered! I thought I was using them for information, but they were using me the entire time."

"You were getting information from the villains?" Bakugo demanded.

Shinso nodded dumbly. "They told me they'd recruited some elites, Muscular and Moonfish. I thought it was just rumors on the internet. But...but now I think I was in contact with the League of Villains."

Izuku sank down next to Shinso, his mind reeling. How, how could Shinso do this?

"Don't be weak," Bakugo spat, a bit of blood and phlegm shooting into the dust at his feet. "You screwed up, yeah. But now you get a chance to make it right. Make it count. Don't be an idiot like I was. I couldn't save Mei, even though I was right there. I thought I had failed to save you too."