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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---