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It had been a few months since Henry was dethroned and he had wasted no time in setting his plan for revenge into action. He tracked down the general he had originally been kidnapped by and offered that in exchange for a pardon, he would leak as much information on the clan as he could, thus making it much easier to take them down completely and not leave any small factions of the clan that could try to rebuild. The general took the deal without hesitation, knowing that the former leader would have known much more than anyone else and his recent dethronement would make it less likely to be a lie or trap.
Their plan was simple, rig the rocket to lock everyone in instead of taking off before anyone on the airship even got there, and wait nearby in the jungle trees to quickly come in and arrest everyone in or around the rocket with a lessened ability to resist as there was nowhere for the Toppats to run to. It all went almost as the two had hoped, managing to arrest most of the higher ups as well, as a few had to be killed since they wouldn’t let themselves be caught and decided that they preferred death. All that brought Henry here, standing outside of the new former right hand’s interrogation room as he awaited to be moved to the Wall.
“You traitor! You sold us out!” Sven screamed, as the former leader stared back blankly while the handcuffs dug into Sven’s wrists, probably leaving marks. He had become Ellie’s right hand as he was the 3rd in command before Henry showed up and knew a fair bit of things that could help her, including the clan’s politics.
“Why wouldn’t I? It was the perfect revenge. I was dethroned on what was essentially a lie, all she did was boost me up. She hardly did a thing.” Henry stated bitterly. He didn’t really hold any personal grudge against the man, but him becoming the right hand to Henry’s usurper didn’t exactly make the disgraced leader hold a positive view of him. Even before any of this mess went down, the two never truly got along very well as he moved down the ranks when Henry took over and moved people around and acted quite cold to the man, which irritated him to no end.
“We would have brought you back! You could’ve been the leader again. We didn’t know she was exaggerating what went down and we only acted so quickly because Reginald had sounded like he knew what went down, like she had somehow contacted him and told him what you had done.” The first part was probably a lie and the second part was absolutely one. Henry’s reputation was not doing so well to begin with when Ellie showed up, but was even worse when it was learnt that Henry’s escape caused the deaths of both Reginald and the Right Hand Man. At best he would have been thrown in the cells, and at worst dropped back at the Wall, leaving him to the warden who would be fully prepared for what the man might pull if sent back a second time. Not to mention how much he struggled with clan politics, although it was really his fault since nobody even offered any help.
“Why would I want that,” the former leader turned traitor asked sarcastically, “Why would I go back to the people who sent me to what was meant to be my death on the words of a stranger with no chance to tell my side? You did this.” Sven shifted uncomfortably, knowing he had a fair point. It set the precedent that Henry’s word would never be acknowledged and that he was at the mercy of everyone else, one accusation away from having his life flipped potentially permanently.
For a while, it was silent. The door opened behind him, and the general walked in. He had been watching the whole time, both to make sure he wouldn’t need to step in, since he could see Henry punching the man out of anger, and to make sure Henry wasn’t pulling the ultimate power move of faking an entire civil war in his clan before getting them all captured and then broken out of the Wall since that was something that Henry was probably capable of.
“Was that all you needed to say to him, or is there anything else?” He asked, completely able to see the answer on the former leader's face. He seemed much less prideful than the man who had been leading the most infamous gang of criminals and much more tired and just over it all.
“That’s all.” Henry stated, somehow drained despite not truly having done much that day. The arrests were all made the day before, and Henry hadn’t been anywhere close to involved with that. He had just stayed behind, not wanting to see his former clan mates and the people who he had once been almost able to call friends.
“I just needed to see if he realized that this is the consequence of his actions, or lack thereof. There’s nothing else I want from him, and his behavior is luckily more than enough so I don’t have to look at him any longer.” With just those final words from Henry, Sven was then taken to join almost all of the rest of his clan, minus those who had died during the raid, in the Wall.