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CHAPTER START---
BOOM!
In the observation area all the students and teachers cover their ears as a shockwave pushes wind and light past the borders of the training zone.
They feel a small blast of heat wash over them as they take cover, Deku and Kirishima immediately stand in front of Eri to protect her as the sensation rolls over them.
Seconds later everyone shakes the ringing out of their ears and watches the screens, waiting for the dust to settle.
"That's insane!" Midnight yells. "Was he trying to kill Horizon?"
"Horizon isn't who I'm worried about," Deku says, drawing all their attention onto his words, even as they keep staring at the screens.
"After an explosion like that?" Uraraka asks."Monoma's plan was to stay inside Dark Shadow and use Kacchan's explosion to get one good shot in, but he isn't Kacchan."
"So the explosion wasn't big enough?" Jiro asks.
"The explosion was fine, but he can only do it once, that was the plan, right?" Deku asks Juzo.
Juzo nods, "Monoma doesn't have the years of using Explosion like Bakugo, so his resistance to the recoil isn't anywhere near Bakugo's level. But this isn't the final step of the plan..."
Everyone looks surprised at that.
"You planned even further ahead?" Aizawa asks, genuinely surprised.
"Yeah, and everything has gone according to plan right now, Horizon is even scarier than I expected, but that's what I'm counting on," Juzo admits. "But I can't say much because Horizon could be reading our lips right now, even if I doubt he'd do that just to win this fight."
"No wonder he has such faith in Team Horizon," Midnight says. "You're all quite talented..."
Sero laughs and drapes an arm around Juzo, "That's our Mudman, Horizon brought him in as a secondary strategist after all, he's basically vice-captain!"
"Hold crap!" All Might yells as the dust finally clears and they see what remains.
Monoma takes a few deep, desperate breaths as he's still down on his knees.
Deep in a crater surrounded by rubble and dust, the Hero Costume on both his arms was completely blown apart, along with most of the skin on both arms.
Exposed muscle and flesh were visible to the camera, but the damage wasn't anywhere near what they expected.
With every breath, Monoma feels pain wracking his body as he forces himself to stand up.
Behind him, dozens of meters away Tokoyami was completely knocked out, clutching the sash even as he sleeps.
Beside him, Ibara is trying to recover her hair again after shielding them from that explosion, everyone waiting for the real results of that blast.
"Three timers," Horizon's voice reaches them as he walks out of the dust.
Monoma just frowns, not even surprised that Horizon was still conscious.
But what did surprise everyone is the fact that he was entirely spotless.
"How?" Monoma asks. "You didn't put the shield up, I made sure you were too close..."
BOOSTER SHOT!
"Yeah, well, I've been working on something different," Horizon releases blue energy vapor that begins wafting off him. But it becomes more dense and clings to him, moving more like a liquid than a solid. "Not efficient since it's pure energy, but it works in an emergency."
"Tch, you Mystery Class people really aren't normal."
"Says the man using Copy to wield three Quirks," Horizon says.
Monoma looks a bit surprised, "how can you tell?"
Horizon stops releasing the energy vapor and relaxes, while Monoma takes a fighting stance. He lifts his skinless arms up into fists, ready to give it his all once more.
"Well, you used Kuroiro's Quirk to fade into darkness, and gave yourself the void black look," he gestures to Monoma's skin which absorbed all light. "Bakugo's Explosion to try and surprise me with a big hit, that didn't work. And Kirishima's Hardening, to help you with the recoil, that's why your arms didn't get blown off entirely, right?"
Monoma glares at Horizon.
"It wasn't that hard to figure out, plus the Hero Costume gave it away," he points at Monoma's belt which had stopwatches on it. "Only three of those are active, I could sense them moving and knew how many Quirks to expect. It's a good plan, and I'm glad I didn't bother to stop it, but I'm just too much for you to handle..."
Monoma grits his teeth and looks around at all the damage and destruction his attack caused.
Looking down at the state of his arms, then over his shoulder at Tokoyami who was passed out, and Ibara who had to recover for at least a few more seconds before they could try the next phase of the plan.
Taking a deep breath he clenches his jaw and straightens his arms, activating Kirishima's Hardening Quirk to lock them in place.
He could still feel the wind raking against the exposed muscle and nerves, but for now the bleeding would stop, and that was enough.
Before he could consider an approach, Horizon rushes forward.
BOOSTER SHOT!
The concrete beneath him cracks as he rockets toward Monoma, swinging faster and hitting harder than before.
After all of this, they'd yet to do any damage to him, unable to overcome his senses, defense, or cope with his relentless assaults.
'He can't be human...' Monoma thinks as he rushes forward.
He swings his stiff arms like clubs at Horizon, matching his fists and feeling the Hardening cracking already.
After the first volley of blows Horizon visibly changed his stance, now used to the strength of Monoma's defense.
CRACK!
"Ahhh!" Monoma jumps back as the next hit shatters the Hardening and breaks his right forearm.
Just like Bakugo's Explosion Quick, Kirishima's Hardening needs time and training to develop. He was nowhere near Kirishima's current level of Hardening, and it was showing.
With his right arm hanging limply he continues to back up, keeping it away from Horizon while fighting with one hardened arm.
'Why is he still fighting, do they have something else planned?' Horizon wonders as he's quickly beating down Monoma.
"I'm ready!" Ibara yells out, and Monoma immediately perks up.
He leaps back a few meters, "Now! Ibara!" Monoma commands.
Feeling something is off Horizon doesn't bother to indulge them any further.
"Your vines are annoying," he points at Ibara, then flicks his finger upward. "Takt: Celestial Body!"
Ibara barely reacts in time as all the rubble, pieces of buildings, and concrete ground are hurled toward her.
As if she suddenly became a point of gravity pulling them toward her.
The girl wraps herself in the thickest sphere of vines possible as they batter her, but instead of shattering and falling apart, they keep pushing against the sphere.
Eventually, the ground below her is torn from the earth and rises high into the air with her, holding her dozens of meters above the battlefield as the rubble is attracted to her.
A small moon-like object nearly 30m -100ft- wide quickly forms and hovers above the training area, casting a shadow over everyone who sees it.
It all happened so quickly that Monoma lost his momentum and stared up in wonder and fear.
"This is the part where you surrender," Horizon says, drawing all their attention back to him.
All aside from Eri who was still staring at the little moon with stars in her eyes.
"You control gravity?" Monoma asks.
"No, it just looks like that," Horizon shrugs.
"Tch, well sorry but I'm sticking to our plan, and surrendering isn't part of it."
Horizon looks at Monoma and shakes his head, "I know all your tricks, and your arms can't do any more explosions unless you want to lose them, just give up..."
Monoma immediately rushes forward.
"Exactly!" he yells while closing in on Horizon. "You're so sure of yourself that you'd never consider," he swings his left arm forward, "that you don't know everything!"
Monoma's entire left side explodes into a massive raging fire.
Searing heat washes over the battlefield and Horizon is genuinely surprised as Monoma blast a wide cone of fire at him, point-blank.
As the heat continues to escalate, Monoma's flesh begins burning up more and more.
The heat burns away the still somewhat wet dye in his hair to reveal a head of half-white and half-red hair.
Horizon's figure disappears in the roaring inferno and everyone waits for Monoma's attack to end.
Juzo's plan was much more layered than anything they would have come up with otherwise.
He had Momo make hair dye so Horizon couldn't tell that Monoma had Shoto's Quirk.
Then he had Monoma only set 3 timers, further misinforming Horizon and playing on his absolute confidence in his Scan ability to collect information.
Send Bakugo out alone so he could go wild, and Horizon wouldn't expect them to use two of the same Quirk on the battlefield, that worked well enough that Monoma managed to build up enough sweat and get a point-blank hit on him.
They didn't expect him to be able to seemingly freeze Ibara's vines, or imprison her that easy, but Tsukuyomi was able to stall and entertain Horizon just enough for Monoma to be ready.
And finally, when Horizon thought all their cards were used, they'd hit him with the strongest fire blast Monoma could muster.
A genius plan that most people cannot survive, much less overcome.
Enough strategy and firepower to take down some of the current Top 10 Pro Heroes if they were in Horizon's situation.
But unfortunately, their opponent isn't a mere top Pro Hero.
It's the third most powerful combatant in the world.
Standing behind only Star and Stripe, and more recently Shigaraki's new secret weapon, Gigantomachia. Of course the public only knew of the former.
So they weren't even surprised to see Horizon's outline walking through the flames, casually strolling toward Monoma.
Monoma flinches, then redoubles his efforts. His flesh begins turning black as it burns away, but he ignores the pain and keeps pushing further.
He's only now using the Quirk, so he can't balance the elements or even simultaneously use them, this was his absolute best.
Yet Horizon simply walked through it until he was standing in front of Monoma, and with a massive wave of fire crashing into him he reaches out.
Hand covered in the blue energy liquid of Booster Shot, and grabs Monoma's neck, lifting him off the ground.
The flames immediately cut off as Monoma is being strangled with one large hand.
"Annoying," Horizon's calm voice says. His entire body was cloaked in the same energy which now quickly faded away. "Standing beside Endeavor when he gets serious in a fight, is like sharing a battlefield with the sun, compared to that, Shoto is nothing, and you're not even close to Shoto...but it was a good plan."
Seconds later Monoma loses consciousness and Horizon simply drops him on the floor.
Looking around Horizon sees Tokoyami's unconscious body still gripping the sash, even now he refuses to give up.
"And then there was one," he looks at the small moon hovering in the air with Ibara at the core, then points at it. "Takt: Skyfa---"
"STOP!" Vlad King's voice echoes through the speakers as the buzzer goes off. "Horizon wins, now can you please get Ibara out of there and heal Monoma, you don't need to hurt my students anymore!"
Horizon lowers his hand and sighs, "That move was gonna be so fun, but fine, I'll fix them..."
They then got everyone healed, cleaned up, and back to the dorms.
The entire time Eri never lost that look of admiration for Horizon she'd gained during the fight.
Finally realizing that the man who Aizawa would often hand her off to was on a completely different level.
Realizing that when she's with him, nobody could ever hurt her...
END CHAPTER---
500K words in and semester 2 is finally closing, bye bye canon from this point onward...