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CHAPTER START---
Walking through the dark hallway Horizon eventually enters Training Ground Beta. Sword magnetically attached to his belt, phone in his left hand, and his set of throwing cards in his jacket pocket.
'Fast' he thinks as he feels All Might rushing out of the main building and toward him.
He doesn't flinch when the giant of a man appears beside him, making a note that the speed isn't impossible to deal with, but certainly difficult, at least once he already has a ROOM active.
'If he catches me off guard without a ROOM up, I'm dead,' he concludes. Situations like this is exactly why he'd never reveal his ROOM requirement to anyone, not even Nezu.
"Young Horizon!" All Might's cheerful voice rings out, the man walks beside Horizon and moves to pat him on the back, but freezes a few inches away.
'Crap, that could have been bad,' All Might thinks. Awkwardly lowering his hand to his side as they continue walking.
'He's avoiding touching me...' Horizon notes, but doesn't react, still just scrolling on his phone.
"All Might," he finally greets the man as they exit the tunnel, a fully built concrete jungle, five city blocks by ten city blocks. One of the many massive training grounds at UA, all paid for by Nezu, and constructed by Cementoss, Power Loader, and a small army of drones.
"I assume Nezu knows about the Warping."
"Naturally," Horizon says.
"It is quite incredible, I've never encountered a Warping Quirk before," he admits. "I've only ever heard stories, but they all work by emitting something, either a portal or something else, yours seems to simply be instant."
"It is instant," Horizon says, putting the phone away to look up at All Might as they wait in the training ground, on a street just outside the tunnel entrance. "And undodgeable, once I want something to move, it will move."
"Quite the formidable ability," All Might holds his chin as he takes a proper look at Horizon's hero costume. "A simple white and blue suit, the visor you always wear, and a Katana. I understand the sword, it works well for quick decisive blows since to my knowledge your Quirk doesn't provide any damaging abilities. And considering how much Nezu brags about your combat smarts you'd do well with a simple but versatile weapon, but why the rest of your costume."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, heroes are meant to be inspiring symbols," All Might places his hands at his side and puffs out his chest, cape suddenly bellowing behind him with no wind at all. "Your costume is quite...normal."
"I'm not wearing some stupid cape and spandex monkey suit," All Might feels an arrow hit his pride at those words. "Plus my costume serves its purpose, and tells people what I'm all about. I'm all business, no wasting time, just get the job done and move on. Everything from the sword to the colors I chose were picked for very specific reasons, I thought about my costume a lot..."
"I see, still think you'd look good in a cape though," All Might nods a few times. "Some of your classmates requested support equipment, do you have any, aside from that life support visor and body glove of course."
"Yeah, just the sword and these," he takes out the small stack of cards. "They're a super-durable alloy, and sharp."
All Might holds one of the cards, and Horizon notices how careful the man was not to touch him, looking at the white card with Horizon's blue logo on it, noticing how sharp the edges were, "so you plan to use them like shuriken?"
"Something like that," Horizon says, as the card disappears from All Might's hand and rejoins the deck.
"Well, I suppose you won't need much to stand out, the worlds' first and only Warping hero is enough to sell you to the public. But I'm sure you realize, Nezu has high expectations of you, and because of this everyone at UA has the same expectations, you've got more eyes on you than everyone else... aside from perhaps young Todoroki."
"Just don't stare, looking at divinity is a bad idea," Horizon turns to face down the tunnel, 'seeing' everyone approaching them. "Only four of them have full masks, and the invisible girl is mostly naked...well, I guess that makes sense," he sighs.
Only Sero, Sato, Iida, and Deku had full masks.
"You can see them from this far away?"
"It's a bit complicated, don't worry about it."
"Hmm, alright, but why does the mask issue bother you so much, most heroes have public identities these days. Plus, not everyone can hide their identities, like Young Shoji."
"True," Horizon says. "But being a hero means you have a target on your back, the higher the rank the bigger the target. And even if it's a one in one hundred chance, you don't want to be the hero that goes home to find his family killed by some revenge-hungry villain. Protecting your identity is the easiest way to avoid that, and by extension not going to UA, since the sports festival kills any chance of that."
"I see," All Might thinks back to his master, Nana Shimura, how she lost her husband to this exact situation, how she had to put her son into an orphanage to protect him, all because she didn't bother to protect her identity. "Honestly that's not something most people think about, I guess the idea of helping people, or whatever else drives heroes to do what they do, it blinds us," he says solemnly.
Horizon turns to look up at him, "you sound like you speak from experience."
"It happened to someone I once knew, nearly broke her, but I guess most people just think they'll never be the one in one hundred that's unfortunate enough," he says quietly.
It was odd seeing someone always apparently brimming with positive energy look so vulnerable, but Horizon didn't believe anyone could genuinely be that positive all the time in the first place. "What about you?"
"Huh, what do you mean?"
"Your face is the most famous, have villains ever attacked your family?"
"I don't really have any family, I never did, and I spend so much time on my hero work that it wouldn't really be fair to them," All Might says with a smile, already having made peace with the life he chose, and the fact that he was given away at birth for not having a Quirk.
Horizon chuckles darkly at that which catches All Might off guard, "you know, my mom warned me that I could end up like you one day, just another lonely god... and I guess right now I am."
"I'm sorry to hear that..."
A few moments later and the other students arrive, interrupting another quiet conversation between Horizon and All Might.
Both men stop talking and look toward the class, Horizon takes a look at all the costumes, noticing a few that he actually likes..
'So Sero has the best of them, froggy is thematic and effective, and Bakugo's is loud but appropriate... that means the worst one is definitely... Momo, just another pair of tits in a bimbo suit, but not like she needs the money...guess she's a Midnight fan.'
He then glances over at Toru, only seeing pair of baby blue gloves and boots. Everything else is exposed to the elements, and subsequently, as the only person who can actively see her, his eyes roam her body.
Short white-green hair falling just past her shoulders, with a petite body that's obviously toned with all the right curves, the horny 16 year old part of his brain takes over for a moment before he snaps his eyes back onto All Might.
All Might takes a few steps back so everyone can focus on him and begins explaining.
"Today we'll be doing indoor battle training! Statistically, most villain encounters happen indoors, backroom deals, home invasions, secret bases, that kind of thing! Smart villains stay hidden as long as possible, so for this training exercise you'll be split into pairs, one hero team, and one villain team, to have an indoor battle."
"Isn't this a little advanced?" Asui asks.
"I agree," Iida says, raising his hand stiffly. "Wouldn't it be proper to better familiarize ourselves with each other's Quirks before entering such a scenario?"
Horizon groans loudly and rolls his eyes, "don't be such a pussy, villains won't give you time to familiarize yourself with anything, and UA has Recovery Girl, just try not to kill anyone, plus experience is the best teacher, painful lessons are rarely forgotten."
"Well said," All Might nods to Horizon, "although you should speak to your classmates a little nicer."
"No."
All Might just fake coughs and ignores that, "right, so let's begin."
A flurry of questions is pelted at All Might causing him to wince.
"Alright listen up," he takes out a small booklet and begins reading word for word. "The villains have hidden a nuclear device somewhere in their hideout, the heroes must stop them. To do that you must either use the Capture Tape provided to catch the villains, or recover the device, simply touching the objective will count as removing it. The villains win if they protect the device until the fifteen-minute timer is done, or capture the heroes with Capture Tape."
"How will the teams be chosen sir?" Iida asks.
"Teams will be selected before each match by random lots in the control room," All Might says.
"But wouldn't it be better to group us by comparative skill for more of a challenge?"
Horizon groans loudly, causing many annoyed glares to shift toward him, "you don't know enough about each other to judge that, and life isn't fair, sometimes you get an opponent out of your league, get over it."
"Exactly," All Might says. "Heroes are always at a disadvantage because we have to extra careful while villains can let loose with their Quirks, and sometimes we get placed into situations where we're outmatched or a bad matchup, but heroes always have to pull through in the end! This best simulates that," he adds.
"I see, I hadn't thought about this as a proper simulation and only training, my apologies," Iida bows politely to All Might.
"No problem, now follow me to the control room and we'll get this started!"
Everyone walks behind All Might to a building attached to the outer wall of the training grounds.
On the short walk there a few people were mulling over the short briefing, begrudgingly coming to a conclusion that they wish wasn't the case. 'Horizon is a jerk but he definitely knows his stuff, and his Quirk is insane...how do I beat Warping?'
A curious look from Todoroki and the heated glare from Bakugo didn't go unnoticed by anyone.
And as they enter the room, a large room with a massive holographic screen on the far wall, with a guard rail and control panel. A small yellow box resting on the control panel with 'Lots' printed across the front waiting for them.
"Alright, time to decide the first team!" All Might picks up the box and turns to face everyone, digging on hand in and grabbing a ball. Half the class get nervous, not wanting to be the first team, and certainly not wanting to get a bad matchup. And All Might is also nervous. 'C'mon, theirs are different so just make sure you save those for last!' he reminds himself.
Taking out the first ball "four," he reads aloud. "Seat number four."
Iida steps forward.
"You'll be paired with number...seventeen," Bakugo steps forward.
"And the next team is, five," Uraraka steps forward. "Paired with, eighteen," Deku steps forward to stand beside her.
"Alright, teams have been decided!" All Might opens a compartment under the control panel and takes out four rolls of thin tape and four earpieces. "These are Capture Tape, each of you get one, wrap it around your opponent and they're out. Each team also gets a pair of these earpieces so you can talk to each other," he hands them out.
Everyone puts in their earpiece and stores away their tape.
"You'll also get these," he reaches back into the compartment and takes out two booklets. "We've prepared a few buildings, so each team works with a different map, these are yours, the villains have five minutes to go get set up, then the timer starts, and the heroes wait outside until then."
They all nod and begin moving out.
As Bakugo and Iida are setting up as the villains Deku and Uraraka are chatting outside the building seemingly reviewing the floorplan.
All Might activates the cameras inside for everyone to watch.
"Will we be able to hear them?" Horizon asks.
"Only I can hear them," All Might says. "I have a control earpiece connected to theirs, the surveillance in the building doesn't have audio. I suggest you all take note of how they approach this situation and begin thinking of how to use your Quirk to complete the scenario."
Horizon shakes his head, 'warp to the bomb and touch it if I'm the hero, or just have some fun testing people then touch the bomb...yeah, that sounds a lot more fun, I should let them know what I'm all about...'
"START!" All Might announces as the timer begins counting down from fifteen minutes.
'I'll have to make sure Horizon is the villain because of his Quirk,' he decides, forming the same conclusion as Horizon now that Warping was revealed. 'I wonder how Young Todoroki and Yaoyorozu will deal with Warping...'
END CHAPTER---
pat.reon (5 Chapters ahead): Keanu_Eugene
Discord: https://discord.gg/K7f8qGpvuk
pat.reon (5 Chapters ahead): Keanu_Eugene
CHAPTER START---
"So who do you guys think will win?" Kaminari asks nobody in particular.
Horizon glances over at him then turns back to the screen where Deku and Uraraka are still reading the map and strategizing.
"Bakugo and Iida seem like a strong duo," Asui says. "Plus Midoriya hurts himself when he uses his Quirk."
"Yeah but his Quirk is super strong!" Sato adds. "It would probably only take one hit to take one of them down, or both if he gets lucky."
"Or Uraraka could float them into the sky," Shoji says.
"Yeah but she has to touch them," Mina taps her chin, brain working overtime to consider the combatants. "Getting close is a no-no with Bakugo, taking a grenade to the face isn't a good idea."
"It's starting..." All Might says as the timer begins and the heroes enter the building.
'They already failed,' Horizon shakes his head in disappointment, something All Might noticed in the corner of his eye.
ROOM!
He creates a room three hundred meters wide, easily covering the building they were in.
SCAN!
He keeps a constant 3D map of the building and people moving in real time in his mind, lining it up with the five camera feeds on the screen.
Noticing most of the cameras empty he feels Bakugo moving slowly, creeping up on the heroes.
"Sneak attack incoming," Horizon says, causing everyone to look at him confused, including All Might.
"Whaddya mean?" Mina asks.
"Three...two...now."
BOOM!
Deku just barely dodges an explosion to the face.
All eyes are glued to the screen.
"Dude how'd you know that?" Kaminari asks, eyes still glued to the screen but very creeped out.
Horizon only shrugs in response.
Watching the fight he ignores his classmates impressed cheers as Deku performs some of the most basic -admittedly sloppy- moves.
Horizon rolls his eyes beneath his visor, not at all impressed, as expected of someone trained by Arsenal, who most combatants consider a close combat monster.
Keeping his mental map up he sees Uraraka begin searching the upper floors for the bomb while Deku and Bakugo play cat and mouse on the second floor.
"Bakugo looks feral," Horizon chuckles as he sees them brawling once more, or more accurately, Deku barely dodging blow after blow.
"His pride is immense," All Might says, "much like yours, but he's much louder about it..."
"Probably because unlike me he can't back up his talk, so he always shouts," Horizon shrugs. "Both these teams are honestly disasters, let's hope something exciting happens...oh..."
They all see Bakugo yelling and aiming his gauntlet, and All Might immediately begins yelling to stop him.
The entire building they're in shakes from the shock of Bakugo's explosion an entire block away.
All Might gives another warning, before the fight continues, and Horizon is again disappointed by what he sees, until he notices something strange.
Bakugo throws another big right hook, and in the moment Deku dodges Horizon puts the pieces together.
Focusing on his map instead of what he sees from the cameras he notices Uraraka dancing around with Iida, constantly keeping herself at the edge of the fifth floor. And looking at it on the cameras it's impossible to tell, but with his map showing the building's five floors stacked he could see Deku constantly leading the fight to the middle of the second floor.
'So neither of them can win 1-on-1, so what's the play if Deku can't get away from Bakugo? If he hits him with his Quirk he also takes himself out and they lose, he needs to help Uraraka...or take out Iida, and he's got the power to do it, oh, I see...'
All the pieces brought together in 0.01 seconds, the monstrous power of a brain developed to handle the information flow from his Quirk.
"Man the heroes don't stand a chance here," Kaminari says, joined by a few others asking All Might to call an end to this brutal beatdown.
"Too bad the villains are meatheads, so the heroes win," Horizon says, suddenly silencing all the requests from his classmates to end the match as they see Deku get pummeled.
"Dude, are you even watching?" Sero asks, looking entirely confused.
"Listen, because I'm only saying this once," Horizon says, even getting All Might's attention as the battle rages on. "Deku is pulling Bakugo to the middle of his floor while Uraraka is trying to bait Iida into the middle of floor five while staying at the edges. Heroes can't win 1-on-1 or in a team battle, they need a 2-on-1. But with a few floors between them, the only way to do that is..." he gestures for anyone to fill in the rest.
And everyone stares at him looking confused.
"Ugh," he sighs. "The cripple boy needs to punch the ceiling below Iida, if he hits Bakguo, even if he manages not to kill him it takes both of them out and Uraraka loses her fight, so they lose. Take out Iida or the floor below his feet and she can jump across and touch the bomb, easy win," he shrugs.
They all stare at him as if he's lost his mind.
"They've been lining it up since the first time she tried to touch the bomb," he says. "The one good thing about Deku is that he knows how worthless he is, so at least he'll focus on the objective victory instead of a combat win..."
He earns a dozen glares with that last statement, 'even when he's given a compliment he's a total dick...' they all thought.
A couple of minutes later and the observation room is silent as it plays out exactly as predicted.
And everyone slowly turns to stare at Horizon in horror. "Told ya...I should have taken bets," he chuckles as All Might rushes off with two medical drones to collect the students. Horizon turns back to the screen, seeing Deku being loaded onto a stretcher, "honestly he did nothing right and somehow won, but at least it was a bit amusing..."
"You know if you weren't such a jerk you'd be pretty cool," Asui bluntly says.
"Yeah, and how did you even know their plan anyway?" Jiro asks, voicing the question that everyone wanted to ask.
"I just considered the battlefield, Quirks, mentalities, and all the information I already had," Horizon shrugs as if it were nothing special. "It helps that meatheads are predictable..."
'So much for recommended students supposedly being the top,' Momo glances between Horizon and Todoroki, who was also staring at him with a focused expression.
Todoroki considered all his classmates during the Quirk apprehension test, and not one of them seemed like any competition, until today. 'Healing, Warping, and he's some kind of genius strategist, I need to be careful oh my surroundings, and be cautious of any other abilities he may have...' he turns away from Horizon and sees All Might entering the room with Uraraka, Bakugo, and Iida.
As everyone gets settled All Might names Iida the MVP and asks for anything people noticed during the review session. And everyone immediately turns to Horizon.
"Figure it out yourselves," was all he said, dismissing them.
Momo scoffs and raises her hand, volunteering and giving a decent breakdown of the battle, and standing across from her Bakugo has his head down, feeling his ego get more and more crushed with each word she says.
"Horizon, since you were able to predict every action in the match---" this gets Bakugo, Iida, and Uraraka staring at him bewildered, "is there anything you'd like to add?" All Might asks.
"Not really."
"Oh, because she said everything, or because you didn't spot anything that she didn't? I honestly expected that genius brain of yours to have noticed something..." All Might challenges with a wide grin.
'He's playing on my ego...but if I just answer this one I can get them off my back for the other matches, and it'd be good for them to just know I'm better and not question me in the future...'
Horizon grumbles and turns to him, "I know what you're doing, trying to play on my ego...and I'll only allow it this once, then they can figure out everything in the other matches, got it?"
"Great!" All Might gives a joyous thumbs up.
"Alright," Horizon sighs. "Let's start with the villains. Honestly, most of what you did was correct," most of the class, including Bakugo, look surprised at that. "With Bakugo's Quirk, a 2-v-2 fight is out of the question since Iida is melee, that's just asking for friendly fire since none of us are familiar with each other yet. And he can't be in the bomb room since his Quirk would just set it off.
Sending him out to deal with the heroes makes the most sense, especially considering he's the fastest person in the fight."
Iida immediately raises his hand to correct that but Horizon cuts him off, speaking directly to him.
"Consider your Quirk, Engine. High top speed but shit at cornering, in a five-story building full of narrow hallways and a cramped stairwell to the top where the bomb is. Compared to that Bakugo is good at cornering and can fly, meaning he can just hop out a window, fly to the top floor and get back inside, outpacing everyone.
That's what he should have done the moment Uraraka got away and Deku got a bit hurt, then you capture her and wait for Deku, easily winning, but he got tunnel vision and overcommitted."
"I see," Iida and everyone else nods along, understanding what Horizon meant, while Bakugo just feels his ego get ripped apart more and more.
"Like I said, the villain did everything aside from not regrouping right," he shrugs. "The heroes on the other hand," he turns to Uraraka. "You two failed literally the moment you step inside."
"What?" she asks, looking confused and ashamed.
"Use your head, your Quirk is making things and people float, yet you entered through a window on the first floor. The bomb will obviously be at the furthest point from the entrance which is the top floor, just float either both or one of you up a few floors to get the drop on them, would have been perfect in this case since Bakugo was already down on floor three when the timer began."
"Oh..." she looks down at her feet, ashamed that she didn't think of that.
"Aside from the lack of any thought toward the verticality of the battlefield from both teams, the heroes clearly look up to a certain meathead too much," he looks directly at all might, causing the man to nervously freeze.
"What do you mean?" All Might asks.
Horizon sighs, "what I mean is, you get away with being just one big veiny bicep because the difference in power between you and the people you fight is so vast, they didn't have that advantage, and even if they did they shouldn't try to deal with everything head on, because the one time they can't overpower the enemy they will suffer for it, its a terrible habit."
Horizon turns back to the class as he continues. "If you try to just duel every enemy eventually you'll lose. Use the uniqueness of your Quirk to your advantage in any situation you can, basically what I'm saying is find a way to cheat. Instead of just focusing on brute power, focus on mastery."
"That's the difference between people like All Might and Endeavour," Todoroki flinches at those words.
"All Might has an insane amount of power, if you try to replicate that you will fail, and it will cost you. Endeavor doesn't have that, so in exchange he makes up for it by being what I consider the only person in the world with perfect Quirk Mastery. Master your Quirk and utilize it to give yourselves every advantage, at least before it comes down to some brawl, and if brawling is all you do, then you'd better be really damn smart about it, got it."
Everyone nods along.
"Good, your job is to be quick and efficient, not look good for the cameras, so less All Might, more Endeavor," Todoroki flinches again, balling his fists at his sides. "Aside from that, well, the heroes were pretty much trash at everything else too, they were overmatched, and Deku still has to break himself to use his Quirk because he's pathetic so there's that too, the only person who actually deserves a win here was Iida, the rest of you need to get your shit together."
"Excellent points," All Might says. "But again, it wouldn't kill you to be a bit nicer."
"Well I've never done it before, so it could," Horizon shrugs, "best not to take the chance..."
All Might sighs and announces the next match...
After three more matches, each ending with Horizon not contributing anything to the review, near falling asleep with how bored he was at the simple battles.
"Time for the final match!" All Might says. "Only four people are left, so let's see how they'll be paired up," he said, already knowing what teams Nezu chose.
Horizon, Todoroki, Momo, and Ojiro, those were the final four.
"The teams will be, Horizon and Ojiro as the villains, and that leaves Todoroki and Yaoyorozu as the heroes," he gives everyone the basic items, Capture Tape and earpieces.
Horizon places the earpiece in a small compartment at the side of his visor and syncs to it, only taking a glance at the map before handing it to Ojiro and walking away.
"Finally I get to do something..." he says while stretching his arms out to wake himself up. Placing one of his metal throwing cards face down on the control panel he turns and leaves the room, Ojiro a few steps behind him still reading the map.
All four students leave the control room to prepare, and everyone in the control room waits with bated breath for the most exciting match to begin...
END CHAPTER---
pat.reon (5 Chapters ahead): Keanu_Eugene
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