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CHAPTER START---
---Fukukoa Japan, 9PM...
Soaring through the sky on his hoverboard, Horizon is now entering Fukukoa, Japan's major city on the main islands that is closest to South Korea.
He'd never actually been here before, but it is a hub for associates of his other life.
May it be taking a boat to South Korea, or importing equipment and people via cargo ships. Since the last war, Japan's northern naval port mostly sends cargo toward the USA or South America, but in Fukukoa its one quick ride to South Korea.
And from there, anywhere in Europe or Asia.
Which is exactly why its such a transit hub for the underworld.
Flying above the city Horizon weaves through some skyscrapers to see the modern port, a man-made island just miles beyond the bay.
There were dozens of monolithic ships docked, currently being loaded and manned.
Metal shipping containers stacked high atop each other, set out in blocks containing hundreds.
The island itself was over a mile -1.6km long and half as wide, and the lights on it could be seen from anywhere in the province.
High above the massive stacks of shipping containers and the ships themselves were the cranes, gargantuan feats of engineering that load hundreds of containers each day.
Billions of dollars of investment and commerce simply sitting in the ocean, and Horizon was flying toward it.
"Hello?" he answers a call directly into his visor.
"The other ports are clear," Vlad King says. "You were right, he has to be at that one."
"Yeah, good thing I fed them some intel that the coast guard was patrolling extra heavily tonight, they'll be stuck there until tomorrow at least."
"How did you even manage that?" Vlad King asks.
"That's none of your business, keep the other ports locked down until I get the girl back---" Horizon hangs up.
As he makes his final approach to the port island, only a few miles away, Horizon sees the lights on the island flicker.
On the cranes, the roads, even the ships. They went out for a moment before coming back on, then there was a massive clang sound.
"This is gonna be annoying, isn't it..." Horizon mutters while turning on the camera in his visor.
The sound of metal grinding against metal echoes across the water, all the way to the city behind him.
His Room was already open, using Scan to focus on the port island, but there were so many people he couldn't easily locate Wolfram.
"Gotcha," he says as he finds Melissa. With a flick of his wrist he warps one of his metal cards into his hand, "Shambles."
He commands it to swap places with her, but nothing happens.
"Ok, that's a problem," Horizon says, then he looks into the distance, and sees a gargantuan cargo ship rocketing through the air directly toward him. "So much for a easy job, guess its one of those nights..."
SCAN!
He checks the contents of the ship, locating all the men on board in an instant.
As if time froze he could see them all stuck to walls from the sudden acceleration, and above were the ship the shipping containers scattered about but also rocketing toward him.
'If I warp them out they'll keep their momentum and just shatter against the water. Time to get creative.'
AMPUTATE!
He slices apart some of the containers from range, while casually standing on the hoverboard.
SHAMBLES!
He swaps all of the men with some of the parts, and then begins flying off to the side to avoid the ship itself.
TAKT!
The ship and most of the containers crash into the ocean after rushing past him, causing a massive splash and sending ripples all the way to the nearby shores.
The water splashes so high that it nearly reaches him, but he simply looks at the impact to make sure nothing else unexpected happened.
But all he hears and sees is the ship crumpling in on itself and breaking apart, slamming into the ocean floor like a spear, obviously unable to maintain its form.
Looking off to the side he sees 5 shipping containers floating over to him, with a few men on each one.
He's caught the men with them and slowed the acceleration bit by bit to safely rescue them.
Most of them were laying flat, either holding on for dear life or heavily injured by the ship suddenly being launched.
With a thought he calls the containers over and connects them side by side, allowing the men to feel a bit more comfortable as he hops onto it.
"Horizon? What happened just now?" one of the men asked, he was barely able to sit up with the blood pouring down the side of his head.
Horizon begins moving one by one to heal all of them, "just another psycho villain, I'll take care of it don't worry. Right now I just need all of you to stay seated as I get you to the shore, alright?"
"Uh, yes sir," the man nods.
"Good, now I should get everyone else out of the way too, before fighting that."
"That?" the man asks.
"Yeah, that," Horizon gets up and faces the port island, seeing a swirling maelstrom of metal and concrete.
Like a tornado has started to grab everything on the island as it continues expanding outward.
Horizon looks around at the closest shore, then expands his room even farther, 16km -10mi- in every direction from him. Enough to encompass the edge of the city and the port island.
Focusing his mind he raises his hand, as if reaching out to grab the island itself.
"Shambles!"
He thrusts his hand to the side, and in one smooth motion the men sitting around him on the containers disappear.
Swapped with blade of grass or leaves, as do all the people still trapped on the island.
All but two.
SHAMBLES!
Horizon suddenly appears inside the maelstrom as it envelops the entire island, feeling winds pulling him in every direction as metal clashes around him.
But he was in the eye of the storm, where no debris was flying.
He could sense every small piece of debris in the vortex, but seeing it from the inside was an entirely different matter.
As if if were a wall of shrapnel ready to shred anyone who touched it.
Scalpel is immediately in his hand as he looks around, then a moment later he focuses on his target.
In the middle of it all, there was a large opening with metal structures and cables, clearly pulled out of the ground, shipping containers, and cranes.
It flowed through the ground of the entire island like roots of a tree, and now thousands of these 'roots' were reaching upward and connecting directly into a tall, muscular, red haired man.
He had pieces of metal all over his body with a device which appeared similar to the Mechanical Quick Amplification helmet David Shield made.
It was thin, with narrow arms extending outward from the main core at the back of his head, but it seems to sink into his skin and fuse with his skull.
Just as all the 'roots' have done to his limbs, back, and parts of his chest.
The roots were holding him in the air, just as they did for Melissa.
She was wearing a pair of jeans and a pink frilly top, her forehead was bandaged and she had a bruise on her cheek. But she was also fused with these metal roots, making herself, Wolfram, and the entire island into one big body.
'No wonder I couldn't warp her out, shit...'
Horizon suddenly throws Scalpel to the side before swapping with it, then warping it back into his grasp.
At his previous position the anchor of one of the massive ships slams down into the floor, then is easily picked up by the storm and begins swirling around them once more.
"Amazing what a little thing like this can do, huh?!" Wolfram yells down at Horizon. The roots begins taking him and Melissa higher, until they were 20m -60ft- above Horizon. "Took my Quirk from just manipulating metal I touch, to all of this!"
"You know I can't let you leave with it!" Horizon yells back.
"Doesn't matter either way, Tech made this one, he's already figured it out. I'm just collecting this girl because its what I got paid to do, can't leave a contract incomplete after all, not that a Hero like you could understand that.
But in my business, our word is all we are. So why don't you just leave, let me turn her in, then maybe the boss will let her go since she's useless to us now, huh, Hero?!"
"Well, I promised I'd protect her, so I can't got back empty handed," Horizon points Scalpel directly at Wolfram's head.
"Bad idea," Wolfram says. "You kill me, and who knows how far all of this will get launched," he gestures at the maelstrom around them. "Can the mighty Horizon really hold all of this metal in place? Can you protect the entire city from it?"
Horizon considers it for a moment, destroying Wolfram's brain from here would be easy, not that he'd simply kill a villain and ruin his image. Plus, the fallout could make him look bad, it would set his reputation back for at least the next few months.
'The destruction of this port is already gonna get me into some trouble with the public, and Pantu, having the city get caught in our crossfire will only lead to more problems. And if I kill him then people could find out and I'd be in even deeper trouble...fine, guess I'll play along.'
Horizon lowers his sword.
"That's more like it! Make this fun, let me test out my new power!" Wolfram yells as he gets a manic look in his eyes. "I'm sure you're used to it, being so powerful there isn't anyone in the world that can beat you, but this is new for me, so I'm gonna enjoy it!"
"I've actually never felt invincible before, because everyone can be defeated, even me...but not by you."
"ARGH!" Wolfram angrily swing his hand, and a buckshot of metal launches out of the maelstrom and at Horizon.
A dozen shipping containers and a massive rudder.
CURTAIN!
All the metal slams against Horizon's translucent blue shield, and continues to press against it.
"This is my kingdom, and you're gonna die in it!" Wolfram yells out, and a stream of metal from the opposite side is hurled at Horizon.
TAKT!
The ground all around them breaks apart even more as rocks shoot upward and begin floating in place.
SHAMBLES!
Horizon swaps with one of the rocks and arrive on the opposite side of Wolfram.
"No wonder your head is worth so much, ha!" Wolfram has the entire root system turn for he and Melissa to face Horizon. "And my prices are going way up after this!"
'Well, that makes my life a lot easier,' Horizon realizes. 'Keeping him focused on me until he pulls all the metal inward, then I can just get close and end this.
Especially since if I just use Amputate he'd pull himself back together, this guy must have spent quite some time coming up with this plan. Making himself and Melissa into one massive body that he controls with a thought.
I break the device and who knows how the maelstrom will react. I cut them up and he'll use the metal in them like puppet strings and bring them back together. I kill him and the metal could go haywire, same as the device being broken. And he's making sure there isn't anything near him I can warp to.
Fuck, this guy actually has a brain. Makes sense since he's a mercenary and not just a moronic Villain...'
"Alright!" Horizon points his blade at Wolfram. "Lets see how strong you really are!"
END CHAPTER---
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CHAPTER START---
"Now die!" Wolfram says as he commands pieces of metal from the maelstrom to rocket toward where they are in the eye of this storm.
All directed at Horizon.
He doesn't expect to actually hit him on the first try, but he certainly wasn't ready for what happened next.
As shrapnel closed in on all sides, Horizon disappears, swapped with some floating rock.
And as if it was automatic, more and more shrapnel was fired at railgun speeds, causing sparks in the air and the scent of iron and ozone to spread out.
SHAMBLES: Flicker!
Among the metal storm Horizon begins warping faster than anyone else could keep up with.
Faster than the metal could hit, faster than the rogue sparks made from the magnetic storm could hit.
So fast that he appears in dozens on places simultaneously to Wolfram.
"Won't work, this is my world," Wolfram says as he narrows his eyes.
Instead of trying to lock onto one location or predict Horizon's absurd warping speed, he decides to rain hell onto this battlefield.
The entire 50m circle they were fighting in that had been scraped apart and cleared out, that had hundreds of small floating rocks spread out among it.
Became a dartboard for Wolfram.
And the darts? Thousands of pieces of metal, ranging from the size of screws, nails, bolts, or other fragments.
To entire crumpled up vehicles or pieces of the destroyed ships.
The sparks in the air kept growing and growing, until eventually large arcs of electricity appeared like lighting, constantly bouncing around the battlefield.
The entire battlefield was hit at once, and he could see a change in Horizon's after images.
There were about a dozen less of them, which still meant at least 20 were up simultaneously.
He suddenly felt the metal fused to his spine disconnect at the waist, then at the knees.
For a moment his eyes widen in fear, terrified that his contingency for Horizon wouldn't work. That the months of collaborative effort between himself, Tech, other mercenaries and villains, was for nothing.
"NO!" He increases the fire rate of the metal storm, and is relieved when more slashes don't come for a few seconds.
Precious seconds he used to magnetically control the metal in his body and the metal roots connecting him to the ground to reconnect himself.
He still saw Horizon's after images flashing around, and his mind continued racing trying to figure out what was going on.
But Wolfram is a world class mercenary, he wasn't as effective as Arsenal, nor did he enjoy cruelty and bloodshed as much as that monster.
But he was still at the upper levels for a reason, so he immediately figured out what was going.
All while constantly speeding up all the projectiles being sent at Horizon, and picking up more from around the island to keep his ammo supply healthy.
'He knows he can't slash me apart properly,' Wolfram thinks. 'He does that and my bluff about all the metal being shot into the city if I lose control could happen, at least in his mind.
That risk is too big for any Pro Hero to take. He has no choice but to wait for me to exhaust myself, and since he's a Quirk Specialist he knows this device is exhausting to use.
But all this warping must take some kind of energy toll on him, so its a battle of attrition, and if he retreats away from me I'll just rain metal onto the nearby city and bring it down.
Can't imagine why anyone would want to be a Hero, its so easy trapping them in shitty situations like this, now he's forced to keep warping until he makes a mistake or gets exhausted, then my metal storm will shred him down to nothing.'
"Agh!" Wolfram flinches for a moment, causing the metal rain to slow for an instant, then he grits his teeth and ignored the sudden pain in his chest, speeding up the metal even faster than before.
The sound of what are effectively thousands of bullets hitting the ground every second wakes Melissa before long.
"What kind of Hero, does that?" Wolfram asks as he's somewhat struggling to breathe now. There was a bit of blood on his lip as he kept exhaling more.
Melissa sees this, then meets his gaze for a moment.
With a thought he has a piece of metal fly by and not-so-gently tap the back of her head, knocking her out.
'The last thing I need is some annoying kid screaming in my head, can't even hear myself think here,' he struggles to take a few deep breaths.
By the second he tastes more and more blood on his lips.
'He used that 'Injection Shot' Quirk to fire a hole through me, piercing my lung. Probably not enough to kill me, or maybe just enough to kill me since---'
"AGH!" Wolfram winces as he feels the same sensation in his other lung.
'This kid, he doesn't fight like other Pro Heroes, he's trying to get me to near death, because he knows he can just heal me right after the fight...he's definitely no 'True Hero', I might be in real danger here.'
Wolfram flinches again, this time feeling the main artery in his right leg get torn apart, along with the bone and muscle in line with it.
The pain pisses him off, so much that he grinds his teeth hard enough to almost crack them against each other.
With a wave of his hand he calls for the stream of metal to continue raining from above while a horizontal sweep of shrapnel covers the battlefield.
CLINK CLINK CLINK!
The sound of metal bouncing against something different catches his attention, and he commands the metal tree holding up him and Melissa to turn.
Then he sees Horizon in a dome of pale blue energy, just like his shield earlier.
ANTIBACTERIAL CURTAIN: Barrier!
He narrows his eyes at this and focuses more and more on it, calling massive pieces of the ships and cranes to rain down onto this dome.
'Got you!' he thinks as the metal is about to make impact, only for Horizon to disappear.
But so do the massive pieces of metal he hurled at him.
He didn't think anything of it in the moment, but during the entire fight, the more threatening and larger pieces of metal have been disappearing from the battlefield.
But Wolfram's Quirk doesn't province a Scan like Hand of God, it simply lets him control metal, and with the new device, control magnetism like streams.
He has absolutely no idea exactly how many pieces of metal are in the maelstrom, or how big they are, or even exactly where they are.
He simply makes magnetic fields in the air and manipulates them that way.
But Horizon knew, in fact, from the very beginning Horizon has simply been stalling him.
Stalling him until either his injuries cause him to pass out, or till Horizon could warp enough of the larger pieces of metal down below the seabed.
Using Scan to find loose rocks that he could swap them with to send them all the way to the bottom.
Because, 'if he's so focused on me then he won't be reaching far for metal,' Horizon thought at the start of the fight. 'He'll be more focused on exerting control on the pieces he has than on collecting more or tracking where they are...'
In addition to using Scan for constantly tracking every piece of metal and searching the nearby seabed, he's also using it to predict where the lowest concentration of metal will be at any moment, before using Shambles to put himself there.
All while also using Takt to barely slow down or alter the trajectory of the shrapnel at his desired location so he won't get shredded the moment he arrives.
Which explains the question Wolfram couldn't find an answer to, 'how the hell isn't he dead yet? I made the concentration of attacks too close for anyone to survive, even a rat couldn't dance between them this well.'
After nearly a minute of this dance, Wolfram noticed something different about the after images.
BA-DUM!
As if they began glowing blue.
'Are they releasing blue mist, what the hell? Does he have a water Quirk too, this could be bad with the ocean right there...'
But in truth the combination of mental strain and adrenaline was quickly getting to Horizon, it took much more than before, now power that has been bubbling below the surface was punching the barrier.
And his higher functioning mind wasn't quite ready to process it just yet.
BA-DUM!
Luckily, it was time for him to act, all the larger pieces of metal, namely the pieces torn from ships and cranes, as well as many of the whole shipping containers, were at the bottom of the ocean nearby.
So Horizon went on the offensive.
There wasn't anything near to Wolfram, and he needed to knock him out, as to his knowledge killing him could cause problems for the nearby city since the smaller pieces of metal were still swirling.
TAKT!
With much mental effort Horizon launches one of the smaller rocks from the side of Wolfram, out of the floor, carefully weaving through a path of shrapnel, directly toward the villain.
Wolfram doesn't even notice it, so focused on his Quirk even as his nose was already bleeding, until the pebble is directly in front of his face.
He'd made such an effort to prevent anything from getting this close to him that he couldn't miss it, his fear of Horizon being able to warp to him was now realized.
SHAMBLES!
Horizon swaps with it, sword held, blade out but to the side.
The last thing he wants is to touch Wolfram with the blade and lose his sword because of it, so in his other hand he already had a fistful of blue lightning.
But as he's about swing his fist into Wolfram, the man's skin begins glowing bright red and releasing steam.
His fist makes contact with the man's chest, and his bones shatter as if he punched a wall of iron.
BA-DUM!
"Weak!" Wolfram says as small sparks erupt over his body, then an invisible force slams into Horizon.
He's sent hurtling backward into the rain of metal, before warping away.
He appears nearby, and his dome barrier is already active, constantly being battered with metal.
"Before Tech, my previous employer paid with a pretty handy Quirk, Muscle Enhancer!" Wolfram says. "Even if you get to me, you can't win. And now that my electromagnetic barrier is up, you'll never get anything close enough to warp to me again, just die already!"
Horizon hears this as his barrier is being beaten more and more, the strain on his mind feels like it'll break his brain in two.
BA-DUM!
His barrier itself begins shrinking, causing Wolframs eyes to widen, preparing for the euphoria that he's sure will come from this kill.
BA-DUM!
Being the man who killed a Mystery Class will put him at the top of the world.
Except it would never come, in fact, the person who enters a state of euphoria is Horizon himself.
BA-DUM!
The power bubbling below the surface manages to spill out for a moment, brining a wave of euphoria and adrenaline with it as his entire body begins releasing the blue energy vapor.
Wolfram sees it and every instinct screams at him to run away, but he's in too deep.
So he sees the Hero down on one knee, hands up as if he were trying to physically hold up the dome barrier that was constantly shrinking and cracking around him.
BA-DUM!
Pouring more and more energy into it, losing himself more by the second to a power he wasn't quite ready for, yet.
Wolfram lets this fear fuel him as he focuses, and within the barrier Scalpel shatters into hundreds of pieces and begins swirling around.
BA-DUM!
When Horizon was hit with his electromagnetic barrier earlier, he'd taken control of the sword, and this was the time to use it.
Horizon doesn't react as the bits of his own sword swirl around for a moment, but as they begins rocketing toward him.
His head snaps up, as if he was staring into Wolfram's very soul.
BA-DUM! BA-DUM! BA-DUM! BA-DUM! BA-DUM! BA-DUM! BA-DUM! BA-DUM! BA-DUM!
Wolfram doesn't even have time to react as Horizon's face is suddenly inches away from his.
The villain doesn't even have time to realize it, but Horizon warped into his barrier.
Into a area where he made sure there was absolutely nothing to swap to.
He swapped with nothing.
Breaking a fundamental rule of Hand of God, at least when not in space he was familiar with.
But just as human conventions never applied to Horizon.
A fully realized Horizon will completely shatter the limits and rules created by his previous self.
And now, looking at this Horizon, with thick blue energy vapor poring off of him, then clumping together like a layer of liquid and clinging to his hand, the hand that was moving to grab Wolfram's face.
This villain was the first to experience the reality of a fully realized Horizon.
The first of his many, many victims...
END CHAPTER---
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