Chapter 165: CHAPTER 161(Movie Night)
Discord: https://discord.gg/t7bHrdRY7Y
pat.reon: Keanu_Eugene (Unlimited chapters ahead)
CHAPTER START---
Sitting across from Jiro, Horizon could see her twitching anxiously. Tapping her foot, playing with her earphone jacks, biting her lips.
Beneath his visor, he rolls his eyes, then picks up his phone once more. Scrolling through it he casually asks her, "you ever plan to talk?"
As Jiro is holding her breath, trying to calm her racing heart. She looks up at Horizon to see him sitting comfortably on the couch, scrolling through his phone and paying her little mind.
And the longer she stares the more overwhelming he seemed, and his presence just continues to fill the room, suffocating her.
So her eyes dropped back down to stare at her lap.
Meanwhile, Horizon was checking his messages and the Hero Network, not so patiently waiting for his leads to come in. Hoping to finally clear out some of the cases he's working on simultaneously.
'Great, now all I can do is sit on my hands and wait,' Horizon sighs and puts down his phone.
"I just wanted you to know," Jiro finally speaks up, causing him to look across toward her.
"To know what?"
"That I don't have a crush on you anymore," Jiro says, a quiver of uneasiness in her voice. "I just want you to know that. So we don't have any attraction between us now..."
"Uh-huh...right," Horizon raises a brow beneath his visor, not sure what the fuck was going on anymore. "Is that what you came here to tell me?"
"Y-yes!" Jiro nods a few times. "That's what."
"Well, um, alright," Horizon awkwardly nods. "Well if you're done convincing yourself, movie time?"
"Excuse me?" Jiro couldn't tell if she was more embarrassed, insulted, or annoyed. "What do you mean?"
"Well it's pretty obvious, right?" Horizon asks. "If you really didn't care you'd just move on, like a normal person. But you're here, going out of your way to say it to me, to hopefully burn whatever bridge you think you have, to remove the option. Because you know, for some idiotic reason that I can't understand, you still have an interest in me."
"N-No!" Jiro's voice cracks, but she continues as if nothing happened. "I just figured I should make things clear so there isn't anything weird between us. Especially after Momo told me what you said to her, the night before the summer camp got attacked."
"Mhm, and that's all still true. I've got too much bullshit on my plate to deal with relationship stuff on top of that."
"Good," Jiro agrees. "Me too, between training for the Provisional License Exams next year, studying, and anything else UA will throw at us, I can't---" and she rambles out a long list of nonsense Horizon couldn't care any less about.
But while that was going on that he was looking her up and down, ' she's cute, very cute. And talking to her isn't boring...could be fun. Oh, what the hell, fuck it, what's the worse that can happen...'
Seeing her caught up in her own ramblings Horizon interrupts, "this is a good look for you, you do know that, right?"
Jiro freezes, staring wide-eyed before blinking a few times. "What?"
"You zoned out, started rambling. Talking as if nobody was watching you, I think that fits you, that's when you're at your best... too bad most people will never see it, but I'm glad I did."
Jiro feels her face heating up, heart racing once again, but before her lips can part to give a response her mind couldn't properly consider---
"And for the record, never said I wasn't attracted to you, in some way atleast," Horizon shrugs.
Her eyes open wide as a strong pink blush breaks out on her cheeks, her breath hitches and her face contorts with a mix of emotions.
"Anyway," he once again stops her response. "Enough of this, let's get downstairs, they're almost done setting up."
Jiro's mouth was moving but no words could be formed, and before she knew it Horizon got up and gestured toward the door.
And now she's walking down the hallway beside the boy she couldn't make any sense of.
By every metric she thought governed her life he was... repulsive, to say the very least.
But then seeing him in action completely flips that on its head, the way he operates in the field was admirable to her eyes.
Atleast to what she's seen thus far.
When she and Momo had this discussion after the summer camp they both agreed that these were the reasons they were interested in him. But she'll admit her best friend is much more enraptured by him than Jiro herself is.
For better or worse, her friend is a Horizon fangirl.
"So what kind of movies do you watch?" Jiro asks, and mentally berates herself for only being able to say that.
"I don't really watch movies," Horizon says. "My life is so exciting that they're rather boring now. What about you?"
"I prefer music."
"The rocker girl with earphone jacks for ears and musician parents is all about music...very on-brand of you."
"Yeah, what about it?" Jiro grits out, getting defensive as they approach the elevator.
Horizon hits the button, "no need for the attitude, I never said it was bad."
"Sorry, I've just heard a lot of jokes about it in middle school. Part of being a Pro Hero is to not just be part of the 'family business' or whatever."
"So a rebellious phase," Horizon chuckles as they step into the elevator. "But sometimes being like your parents isn't bad, like me, I'm a perfect combination of mine after all."
"Doctor and soldier, right?" Jiro asks as they begin descending to the ground floor.
"Yes my father was a doctor, but my mother was a polymath, and fighting was just one thing she studied."
"Polymath?"
"Means you know a lot, about a lot of different things," he says as they exit the elevator, stepping onto the ground floor.
As they step into the main common area the entire room goes silent as they stare at Horizon.
He looks around, seeing the furniture pushed aside. Blankets and cushions on the floor with students spread out on them.
Most of students of classes 1A and 1B were gathered here, with a projector displaying the movie onto a large wall. And some speakers set up for the audio, courtesy of Momo.
'I guess more than just Yui and Juzo came over...' Horizon thinks as he sees the crowd staring at him. "What?"
They all immediately go back to their chatter and gathering their snacks.
"I need to go check on Mina," Jiro says. "She was supposed to make some snacks for me too."
"Have fun," Horizon says as she rushes off.
Watching her walk away Horizon takes in the view, "so this is what I do when I'm bored...maybe I need another hobby."
"A hobby?" Momo asks from beside him, causing him to turn toward her.
"I was just thinking aloud, nothing to worry about."
"Oh, alright, I saved you a spot with us if you want," Momo gestures to a blanket where her, Jiro, Tokoyami, and Juzo would be sitting.
"Sure," Horizon follows her over to his seat, but does a quick Scan. Finding Sero and Yui up in Sero's room. Just talking, for now, hopefully.
As they're waiting for the last group of people to finish making their snacks, Horizon looks to his side at Momo.
She was to his right with Juzo to his left. Since they were much shorter Jiro was sitting in front of him, with Tokoyami beside her.
"So was this your idea?" Horizon asks Momo.
"No actually," She says, then gestures to Mina and Toru, who they'd gotten used to seeing visible by now. "They actually thought of this, I had planned to spend the night studying."
"How'd they come up with this?"
"It's the last day of summer," Juzo says. "Well more like the last day of our vacation, the next semester starts tomorrow after all. Too late for us to go out and do normal teenager things, so they wanted to bring some normal into UA."
"Mhm," Momo collects a massive bowl of popcorn from Uraraka. "This is a good way to help everyone relax, atleast for one night. After all the experiences of this past summer, all the training and studying. I admit my brain needed this relief."
"Everyone did," Jiro says from her stop in front of Horizon.
"I'm more surprised this workaholic took a night off," Juzo says, gesturing to Horizon.
Everyone knew Horizon spent most if not all of his time working, so he earned some nods of agreement.
"It's not that rare for me to have fun and relax."
"Yes, it is," Jiro says. "Dude you talk about how uptight other people are, but you almost never stop working."
"Mmm, well, honestly I'm only here because I'm waiting for some info from my sources."
"Exactly our point," Momo says. "That can't be healthy. As much as I admire your desire to help as many people as possible, you also have to take care of yourself."
"I'm fine Momo. Besides, if life gets too stressful I'll figure out a way to relax, it's not like I don't know how to have fun. But these next 4 years are all about me being the best I can be, I've already considered them dead years in terms of my life."
Jiro spins around in her seat to face him, "so you just plan to only work for the next 3 years, nothing else?"
"I might have space for one or two things, but I have a schedule to keep, any suggestions?" he sees her blush slightly, and senses Momo looking at him from the corner of her eyes, a gentle smile on her lips.
"I barely have the next month planned," Tokoyami says bitterly. "Quite commendable that you have your life planned that far ahead."
"A goal without a plan is a dream, and dreams are for losers. You have to plan ahead and do the work to get the life you want."
Momo nods in agreement, but Jiro rolls her eyes, "and there it is, we almost went through one conversation without you calling someone a loser...almost."
"Most people are losers Jiro, there is a reason most people can't be a top Pro Hero, right?"
"Just because it's true doesn't mean you can't be nice about it," Jiro says. "You're already perfect at most things, if you learned to be a bit sweeter with people it would make it complete."
"The movie is starting," Momo interrupts them, prompting Jiro to turn back around as Toru dims the lights slightly.
And Momo scoots just a bit closer than necessary to Horizon...
END CHAPTER---
Chapter 166: CHAPTER 162(Self Diagnosis)
Discord: https://discord.gg/t7bHrdRY7Y
pat.reon: Keanu_Eugene (Unlimited chapters ahead)
CHAPTER START---
---5:40 AM, 1A Dorms...
The basement of each UA dorm building hosts a gym for its residents.
And as expected of a gym for super-humans, the devices and equipment are much more extreme than most of the nation would have access to.
Most people have no interest in training Quirks because they aren't legally allowed to use them, so why bother training a muscle you can never use?
But at the moment Horizon was laying on a bench, aiming to check his personal bench-press record.
The machine was a padded solid metal rectangle rising out of the floor, on either side were large square metal columns.
Perfectly attached to a plate that connects the columns and hangs above the bench, like a massive hydraulic press.
But instead of crushing whatever was on the bench, its role is to resist the pushing force acting upward upon it.
Wearing his body glove and visor, Horizon almost appeared to be in some sort of armor. The image of a muscular and tall person, covered head to toe in a skin-tight white outfit, with blue accents and grooves between the very thin reactive gel pads atop his muscles.
Allowing anyone who sees this to easily imagine the physique beneath it.
Aside from that, his new 'watch', that Mei designed for him, which usually sits under his Rolex, is on his wrist.
Now laying on the bench he takes a deep breath before placing his hands flat on the metal plate above him.
"C'mon," he mutters as he starts pushing upward.
He feels the device move freely at first, then a few inches more it becomes difficult to move.
"Mmmm!" he growls as he pushes harder and harder, feeling his arms burning as his muscles are at their limits.
"NnnAH!" he finally relents, bringing his arms down and away from the device. Both his arms hang at his sides as he takes a deep breath, feeling like fire was coursing through them.
The device stays in place above him for a moment before it slowly descends to the starting position he had set.
While it does that he gets up and paces back and forth, focusing on his breathing as he activates his Quirk.
Now making a Room only a few meters wide, just enough to cover the device.
Booster Shot!
The healing energy begins flowing through his body, focused on his arms which immediately begin to feel much better.
Walking over to the machine's control console, he sees his new record, 1.5 Tons -3000lbs/1360KG.
"Ok, so I can lift a car and my top sprinting speed is almost 50 mph -80kmph-," he cracks his neck. "Now to test the Quirk...again."
Resetting the machine he gets back into position, both hands raised to press against the device.
Now fully healed and recovered he takes a deep breath, leaving his Room active as he begins pushing.
BOOSTER SHOT!
He immediately breaks past 1 Ton.
BOOSTER SHOT!
He hits 2 Tons with surprising ease.
BOOSTER SHOT!
Now he sees blue energy vapor being released from his arms, thin like a light morning fog.
'Just keep pushing!'
BOOSTER SHOT!
He hits 3 Tons, doubling his standard record.
BOOSTER SHOT!
As he hits 3.2 Tons, -6400lbs/ 2450kgs-.
BA-DUM!
His vision goes black for a moment as excruciating pain wracks his mind. He feels as if someone was trying to split his skull in two and rip out his brain with their bare hands.
Then his Quirk shuts off without his consent.
His hands leave the device as he clutches his head, moments like these are why most of UA's machines replaced free weights.
So nobody would accidentally drop the weight of an SUV on themselves while training.
"Fuck!" Horizon yells out, and the pain subsides moments later as he gets up, leaning on the metal column for support as he feels blood flowing out of his nose, ears, and eyes.
Taking a minute to compose himself he stands normally and raises his left arm to look at his forearm. With a flick of his arm, the watch Mei created for him projected a hologram onto his inner forearm, displaying his biometrics for the past few hours.
He immediately begins looking for the moment his Quirk went wild.
But doesn't see anything too unusual in his scans from that moment.
"Heart good, organs fine, blood sugar is fine, then wha---" he fiddles with it a bit to look at the particular brain scans. "Abnormal brain activity?" he sits back on the bench while reading the data.
"Left and right hemispheres had different levels of brainwaves?" Horizon tilts his head slightly, having genuinely never seen anything like that before in himself.
This was different from his previous tests. As he gains more power by constantly improving his Quirk, the effect becomes more and more apparent.
"That doesn't make any sense, the integration was done perfectly, they should all just be Hand Of God already."
He delves even deeper into the scans, then displays a holographic 3D map of his brain from the device.
The display had pieces of the left half in red and sections of the right half in blue.
And it knocked the wind out of Horizon.
"What the fuck..." he mutters quietly, drawing a blank as he tries to come up with any sane solution.
While it took Dr. Ujiko -Garaki-, a century to solve this problem.
It now hovered before Horizon who's only had it for not even 5 weeks.
And while he would naturally flip through his incredible amount of potential solutions. Combining his Quirk, medical expertise, and experience.
There wasn't anything that seemed viable.
The solution Dr. Garaki came up with was to remove the consciousness from the subject, and upon waking them up fully, all the Quirks would harmonize for a mutually beneficial objective.
But he was a mad scientist of the highest order, even sacrificing his own grandchildren to create Nomu for his master.
And since Horizon's subject is himself, he naturally would never think of that solution, and even if he did, he would never commit to it.
Atleast that's what Dr. Ujiko thinks.
He expects the young man to be blinded by his own genius and pushed to insanity by this issue.
But Horizon was far too cold and logical for that.
"So I can't do a partial lobotomy," he says. "If I do that then it could really fuck up my Quirk, and technically there isn't anything wrong with my brain so I can't just use Hand of God to manipulate my body and fix it.
This isn't a physical medical problem, it's something more than that," he ponders for a few minutes before his shoulders slump down. "Fuck..."
He sits back in disbelief as he can't think of a solution.
For the first time in his life, there is no clear path to progress forward.
He just sits there looking at the diagram, hoping for some random idea to pop into his mind.
But he gets nothing, Horizon doesn't have the answer.
There are many people, including Dr. Ujiko, who'd be willing to pay a lot of money or do bad things just to get a glimpse of this moment.
Especially after constantly hearing everyone, even his dear friend and master All For One put this one man on a pedestal.
But aside from All For One, he's the only person who knows exactly why that's being done.
With a loud annoyed groan, Horizon mutters "I hate this hero-villain bullshit," to himself as he gets up.
Walking back to the control console he's looking down at the device on this arm, taps a few options, and opens the connection to his phone.
"None of my sources have anything yet, well isn't that just freaking great," he says in an annoyed tone.
Truthfully that's exactly why he's down here. He hardly ever does a proper workout anymore, and even so he'd save it until after school when he's training.
But this morning instead of following up on information his sources gathered, putting together cases and organizing his work between the Hero work and the Miracle Ward.
This particular morning he just couldn't focus because of how annoyed he was.
Having nothing to do but sit on his hands and wait, something he's always hated. Feeling powerless to guide his own life.
He hated it, so he came down here to blow off some steam.
Only to get even more annoyed.
Shutting down the hologram he taps the console, resetting the device before he walks over to the special heavy bags to practice his striking.
Because while his form is perfect, it was therapeutic, and the only form of therapy he needed.
According to himself, that is.
But before that, he sees an option to add his score to the leaderboard for this machine, which means it must have made it into the top 3.
Tapping the console he sees the current rankings.
Deku- 7 Tons -14,000lbs/ 6350kgs-.
Shoji- 0.85 Tons -1700lbs/ 771kgs-.
Red Riot!- 0.7 Tons -1400lbs/ 635kgs.
Horizon isn't surprised by these records, or the names use to record them, not in the least. If Sato had lived to see the dorms, he's sure that Sato would be a close 3rd place behind himself and Deku.
"Well, it's no surprise you're too strong and fast, physically fast atleast, for me to ever hope to match. You'll be stronger than All Might eventually so it's expected."
He considers entering his own record, if only to show Deku and the others that while he doesn't focus on his physical capabilities often.
Even in that regard, he's well above average.
To show that there isn't anything that he can't compete at, atleast at the moment, even against those whose entire power is their physicality.
But he moves his finger across to the 'rest' button and clears his record.
"I don't need Kirishima asking me to join them in the gym, and I think I'll leave my physical power as a pleasant surprise for now," Horizon says as he walks off to the punching bag area of the gym...
END CHAPTER---
Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
378 Power
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