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CHAPTER START---
"This is really the list, my god these people suck," Horizon says while looking through some papers. "That moron Deku can beat half these Pros..."
He and Pantu were sitting in a small meeting room on the upper floors of this building, discussing some important matters before the ceremony begins just over an hour.
She was at the head of the conference table with him to the right.
"Power isn't everything, lots of these Pro Heroes lead teams and agencies which efficiently protect their own communities. They make people feel safe which is why they also get recognition from us."
"You say that, but I see Rocklock on this list," Horizon looks over at her, "we both know he sucks."
"It was unavoidable," Pantu says, not reacting to his childish antics. "Need I remind you that he knows exactly what happened with Overhaul, the popularity from working with you on the case as well as his diligence in keeping that secret earned him a small boost."
"Small, going from mid two hundreds to number 47 is small?"
"In the grand scheme of things, and in comparison to maintaining your image for the citizens, its most inconsequential..."
"Well, when you put it like that, yeah," Horizon leans back in his chair and continues looking at the listings. "Hey, did you raise Ryukyu's ranking because of popularity because of me, or was there more to it?"
"Concerned about your girlfriend?" Pantu asks.
"Not my girlfriend," Horizon says, and she doesn't detect any lies. "Its been bothering her so I'm just curious."
"She's done good work, and the public trusts her, she earned the promotion."
"Mhm, what kind of bonus does being #1 get you?"
"Is the man who always donates his monthly pay to charity actually concerned with money now?"
"No, I'm just curious."
"There isn't a bonus for rankings, but companies are naturally more likely to reach out to you for sponsorships and products, it simply makes your name more valuable. But more importantly it shows the public there are people willing to risk their lives to protect them."
"So its useless, got it."
"From where I'm sitting you're enjoying the celebrity aspect of being a respected hero," Pantu says. "Or at least you enjoy other people knowing you're better than them."
"Because I am better than them, no reason to hide it."
"You are many things, but humble clearly isn't one of them."
Horizon continues reading the listings for a moment until the doors open, and Hawks walks in, holding a can of black coffee in his hand.
"Sorry I'm late, had to get a drink," he gives them both a casual wave and moves to sit opposite Horizon.
"Hey, did you make this guy rank 2 because it makes his job as your little weapon easier? I mean he just suddenly appeared on the scene years ago and started his own agency, and got into the top ten that same year, would make sense."
"Oh please," Hawks rolls his eyes. "As if I'd need any help getting so close to the top..."
"I artificially boosted his ranking and popularity," Pantu says.
Hawks frowns and deflates into his seat, folding his arms. As he was sitting all his feathers separated from his wings and hovered behind his chair individually so he could get comfortable.
"Hawks is part of a program where we take especially powerful children and train them to become Pro Heroes that also keep an eye on the more corrupted members of our society."
"And you're telling the kid all of this because?" Hawks asks.
"Because if he really wanted to know, he would find out. Not to mention he knows your true name, so he likely knows a lot more than he wants me to think he does, this saves us all some time and puts us on the same page," Pantu says. "Because Dabi was part of the class with Hawks."
"We never did learn about how you got my name," Hawks says, then pauses for a moment as he processes what she just said. "Wait! Dabi was in my class, so Dabi is Toya?"
"95% chance that's the case," Horizon says. "So I guess you can add him to your list of people to investigate while you're spying on them."
Hawks rubs his chin for a moment, "Dabi was the member I had to least info on, and he's the least trusting. After I handed Yoroi Musha over to them I got to meet Toga and Spinner a few times but Dabi still keeps his distance."
"Your priority is still to get locations for Kurogiri and Twice," Pantu says. "If we can secure Dabi that's good, but we'd have to find any data caches he has, if something gets released connecting him to Endeavor it'll cause problems we don't have good answers to.
The words of a villain that heinous won't carry much weight, but anything is possible. Your main target is Kurogiri however, that remains unchanged. Once we get him out of the way, Horizon can operate freely in whatever manner he deems necessary to deal with the others."
"Well the last time he operated in 'whatever manner he deems necessary,' it scared them so much they went into hiding while building power," Hawks says. "They're preparing some kind of weapon to deal with Horizon, and won't be out until its ready, for good reason."
"Good reason?" Horizon asks.
"Well, I met Toga, and she's still in a wheelchair."
"Really?" Horizon was genuinely surprised. "I broke her spine in ways she shouldn't be able to move anything below her neck...whoever is making the Nomu is naturally able to solve something like that, but if she isn't fully healed yet then they aren't quite as good as me."
"That's still a long list," Hawks says. "And after we checked everyone that matched it in Japan, we still came up empty handed. Either this person isn't an official doctor or is in another country, which makes sense since they've got Kurogiri to make travel easier."
"I'm sure you'll find us a lead when they trust you some more," Pantu says. "Right now I simply need both of you communicating and on the same page. The League of Villains has tasked Hawks with keeping track of where you are, so you'll have to give him daily updates as to where you'll be."
"I still think you should just let me take care of them," Horizon says. "I'll have it done within a month."
"And the person making the Nomu for them won't be found," Hawks says.
"I'd find them, everyone talks when I put hands on them."
"Violence isn't always the answer, and unlike you I don't like killing innocent people."
"I don't enjoy killing innocent people," Horizon says, and Pantu detects no lies. "And violence has never failed me, when applied correctly."
"Well I'm not surprised you think that considering who raised you," Hawks snaps at him.
"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You know exactly what it means," Hawks narrows his eyes at him. "What Arsenal did in Los Angeles is the most horrific act of terror in the past century at least, she killed nearly 80,000 people in an afternoon, if that person raised you its no wonder you're so messed up."
"Hey!" Horizon raises his voice, yet Hawks nor Pantu react. "My parents are perfect alright, collateral damage is just part of the job, it just happened to be part that mom liked using to distract heroes and cops. Plus she toned it down after I was born...mostly."
"That doesn't change what she is," Hawks says. "Plus your dad is a traitor to the oath he swore as a doctor, I mean who literally steals a patients heart? You were raised by monsters who think might makes right, and that's why they're both locked up in a deep dark hole for at least a few more years..."
Horizon doesn't respond.
No yelling, no screaming, not even moving.
Instead the tension in the room continues to grow and grow, until suddenly Hawks was bombarded by a strange sensation.
Nothing, for the first time in 18 years, he couldn't hear anything beyond his ears. As if he'd been completely stripped of his extra sense provided by the feathers.
"What did you do?" Hawks asks.
"Oh, so when they're 10km away you can't connect to them," Horizon says.
Hawk's features twist into a horrified expression as he spins around in his chair, seeing where his feathers were, there were simply floating leaves.
His eyes widen as he jumps to his feet, and look over to Pantu, who was gone, warped away somewhere in the building, so nobody can stop what's about to happen.
He turns back to Horizon, only to see him gone as well, then a large hand grasps his shoulder.
Before he can turn around to properly see Horizon, the man palms his face and lifts him up, slamming him down onto the conference table, breaking the table and taking him to the floor beneath.
"MMMMM!" Hawks tries to claw Horizon's hand off his face, barely seeing Horizon looming over him through his own yellow tinted visor.
With practiced ease he reaches onto his belt and talks out a combat knife, and swings it at Horizon's arm, only for the weapon to stop, as if it were stuck in space.
He pushes as hard as he can but it wouldn't dare to move,
Horizon lifts him up and slams him back down, cracking the back of his head against the floor.
Hawk's vision gets blurry, the yellow tint of his visor only makes it worse as he sees Horizon look at the knife he tried to stab him with.
"Thanks for the knife, but to operate on you, at least to start, my hands are enough..."
Horizon immediately grabs Hawks's face with both hands, crushing his skull like a apple.
Hawks feels his brain being squeezed as his visor gets blocked by Horizon's thumbs, then before his eyes the reinforced plastic begins to crack, as both thumbs press down.
"No no no no!"
SQUELCH!
"Ahhhh!" Hawks scream bounces off the wall of this heavily soundproofed room as Horizon hollows out his eye sockets with his thumbs.
Hawks immediately black out, only to jolt awake as a current passes through his body.
Still completely blinded he screams and begs for it to stop.
But the same pattern happens over and over for almost ten minutes.
The feeling of Horizon holding him, then tightening his grip until bones started to creak and snap, until bone fragments were piercing skin.
Until pain was the only thing to exist in his world.
Then the cool sensation would wash over parts of him, and he'd feel better for a moment, before Horizon broke them all over again.
"Arhhhh---" Hawk's voice breaks, overstrained vocal cords no longer able to speak.
He silently screams into a hopeless dark void as pain continues wracking his body.
And just when he thinks its all over, finally some relief was coming.
He felt his very same knife tracing the skin on his belly...
END CHAPTER---
Discord: https://discord.gg/t7bHrdRY7Y
pat.reon: Keanu_Eugene (Unlimited chapters ahead)
CHAPTER START---
"Mmm, that feels so much better..." Horizon takes a deep breath as he steps out of the meeting room, looking around the hallway and only seeing two security agents standing nervously, staring at him.
One of them men touches his earpiece, not taking his eyes off Horizon as he speaks, "yes ma'am, he just stepped out of the room."
Horizon looks over at the man, tilting his head. Doing a quick Scan he can sense Pantu walking through the building trying to get back here, constantly having to deal with people stopping her to talk while she's talking to this agent through her earpiece.
"Understood ma'am," the agent says as he raises a hand gesturing for Horizon to stop. "Sir, I must insist that you wait here for Lady Pantu."
Horizon looks at the man who was clearly nervous and not getting paid enough for this, and sighs, "I'll pretend you didn't just say that to me..." he says before walking past both men.
Neither of which tries to stop him.
Walking down the hallway Horizon finds the person he's looking for and takes a sharp turn into the stairway, avoiding anyone trying to speak to him.
For the first time in a very long time, he felt truly relaxed.
After over a year, he's finally done something he always wanted to do, but accepted he'd never get the chance to do.
Get some payback on Hawks.
Yes, it does go against what he was taught and even what he believes in, pursuing revenge is not useful and should not have been done in this case.
'But damn did that feel good...'
While casually walking down the stairs he takes out his phone and sends Jiro a quick text.
'The ceremony will be starting in an hour, I'll be at UA around 5 PM so be ready...'
Seconds later Jiro responds by sending him a selfie of her and Momo in one of the labs at UA, during class.
Both were happy and smiling, although Jiro was sticking her tongue out at him.
Horizon smiles beneath his visor and puts away his phone, making it down to the third floor of the building and opening the door.
'I should try to spend more time with them honestly, Momo's sexy and Jiro's cute, keeping them around is worth a bit of time. Especially since as time goes on I'll be called to do Hero Work less and less.
That's the main benefit of being in the media propaganda as some invincible superhero, no villains actually want to make me get to work, so I get more time with my women, and speaking of my women...'
Horizon focuses his thoughts as he sees Ryukyu speaking to Best Jeanist and Edgeshot.
"Oh, Horizon," Jeanist politely waves at him, causing both the other Pros to turn around to see him approaching. "Here to support Endeavor?"
"Sure, if that's what people want to assume," Horizon says as he joins them. "Really I'm just here so Shigaraki doesn't show up and disintegrate a crater into this portion of the city..."
"That certainly has everyone on high alert," Edgeshot says. "I've never felt so helpless as a Pro hero, well, not since All For One, but Shigaraki isn't as bad as that thing was."
"But now Horizon can probably handle All For One from Kamino," Ryukyu says. "Right?"
"Ofcourse, but," Horizon puts an arm around her waist and pulls her to his side, "weren't we just talking on the roof about how you don't need to depend on a man to protect you?"
Ryukyu rolls her eyes, but doesn't look bothered by him holding onto her, which the other men notice, "I'm a Dragon, I can only do so much. It takes monsters to fight monsters after all."
"Sure, Dragon, if you say so Kyukyu."
"Kyukyu?" Jeanist asks. "So you even have pet names for each other, so the rumors are true after all."
"No he's just being annoying," Ryukyu says. "He thinks I'm not a Dragon because I can't breathe fire, it's stupid."
"Well, he does have a point," Edgeshot says.
"Dragons do historically breath fire in all their stories," Jeanist mentions. "But at least you do look like one."
Ryukyu just looks at them as the traitors they were, "and here I thought you two were my friends, damn traitors," she shakes her head, mostly playfully.
"Anyway, enough with the small talk, you three need to be on stage in just over an hour, so until that, I'm gonna be stealing away this woman," Horizon quickly scoops Ryukyu up into his arm.
Both men look at this with wide eyes as she tries to squirm out of his grasp, but it's like trying to claw at a steel vice.
"Hey, put me down!" Ryukyu yells. She then looks at Jeanist and Edgeshot, "get me out of here, he's kidnapping me!"
Horizon turns around and begins walking away with her in his arms.
"Hey, I need to prepare to go on stage!" Ryukyu says as she still fails to get out of his grasp.
Jeanist chuckles, "honestly, young people show affection in such strange ways these days."
"Much too shamelessly for me," Edgeshot says.
"Yeah, even when we were in UA, you were always a serious prude," Jeanist says.
While those two friends were catching up, Horizon kicked open the door to a secluded conference room, still holding Ryukyu in his arms.
Now she had her arms folded and was sulking, entirely helpless to escape his grasp since her Quirk is either human form or Dragon form, she has no ability to manifest only particular traits.
Meaning if she actually did want to escape she'd damage the building by transforming into a large dragon.
But as much as she'd deny it, she was happy in his arms.
As they enter the conference room they see a massive table lined with leather chairs.
All the windows were closed and the blinds were shut, giving them some privacy, and after a quick Scan Horizon made sure there wasn't any technology spying on them.
"Now can you tell me what the hell you're doing? I have to be on stage so this had better not take long," Ryukyu says as he pushes some chairs aside and sits her down atop the table.
"Well, today I crossed something off my list that's been there for a while, figured why stop at one of those today," Horizon shrugs.
"Oh, and what might the other one be?" Ryukyu gives him an expectant look...
---15 Minutes Earlier...
Warped down into the press area between a few Pro Heroes and security agents, Pantu was immediately ambushed by reporters.
Keeping her icy façade she answers dozens of questions, all while her mind is reeling trying to imagine what Horizon is doing to Hawks upstairs.
"President Pantu!" One of the reporters in the back gets her attention. "There is a growing faction of the public who believe the international Pro Hero License regulations should be lifted in the case of Horizon, do you have any comment on this matter?"
"Those laws were made after a century of tragic and avoidable deaths caused by young and unprepared individuals being given Pro Hero licenses because their Quirks were deemed as powerful.
To make an exception for anyone is absolutely never going to happen, not in Japan, and not in any nation that is recognized by the United Nations Quirk Security Board. Making an exception would set a bad example and cause a chain reaction that would claim the lives of countless children across the world.
Regardless of how powerful and capable Horizon is, do remember he is currently only 16 years old. Even Star and Stripe, the only other Mystery Class Quirk user wasn't giving a Pro Hero License until she was fully trained and already an adult..."
"But what abou---"
"I'm sorry but I don't have time for any more questions," Pantu cuts off another reporter as she holds her earpiece and begins briskly walking away.
Entering a connected hallway she signals three agents to follow her on the way back to the top floor.
"Did anyone else leave the room with him?" She asks through the earpiece.
The agents around her don't react even as they all enter the elevator.
"Then don't let him leave, and don't let anyone enter that room," Pantu says, completely void of any emotions in her voice.
Arriving on the top floor Pantu quickly makes her way to the meeting room they were in, and gets another message through her earpiece.
"Horizon and Ryukyu were seen entering a conference room on the third-floor ma'am."
"Just tell me if anyone leaves," Pantu says as she gets to the door.
As her hand is on the doorknob the faint scent of blood reaches her nose.
Pantu sighs and looks around at the agents, "Don't look inside, and don't let anyone near this room."
She then opens the door and the strong scent of blood rushes into the hallway before she shuts the door behind her.
As she enters the room, for the first time in a long time she was genuinely mortified by what she saw.
Her entire career she's dealt with the aftermath of monsters having their way, but she's always had Pro Heroes at her disposal to deal with them, so there was never any real risk of them going entirely rampant across Japan.
But now there is no All Might, and even if he was here she wasn't sure it would matter.
Now she looks around and sees Hawks, feathers scattered about the ground, and his shirt and jacket were torn apart, his body appeared entirely untouched, simply laying on his back in a massive pool of blood in the middle of a broken table.
He looked perfectly fine, but she could tell he wasn't.
She knew Horizon could heal people better than any other, she knew he had a vengeful, violent, and sadistic side to him.
That's to be expected when his mother is Arsenal, arguably the biggest monster of recent history.
But now as she approaches Hawks she finds herself stepping over pieces of him.
Guts, livers, what appear to be pieces of his heart, no... hearts. She could casually count 9 eyeballs scattered about the room entirely whole.
Looking closely she sees fingers scattered on the other side of the room, and the floor was covered in more teeth than he could possibly have in his mouth.
Arriving at Hawks she gently taps him with her foot, and he doesn't respond, but she can see his chest slowly rising and falling.
He was breathing, even as she could see what appeared to be a whole lung laying on the floor.
Now Pantu finally came face to face with the depths Horizon can go to, and has to seriously consider a terrifying question.
What do you do, when your strongest protector, is the biggest monster of them all...
END CHAPTER---
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