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CHAPTER START---
Walking through the dark hallway Horizon eventually enters Training Ground Beta. Sword magnetically attached to his belt, phone in his left hand, and his set of throwing cards in his jacket pocket.
'Fast' he thinks as he feels All Might rushing out of the main building and toward him.
He doesn't flinch when the giant of a man appears beside him, making a note that the speed isn't impossible to deal with, but certainly difficult, at least once he already has a ROOM active.
'If he catches me off guard without a ROOM up, I'm dead,' he concludes. Situations like this is exactly why he'd never reveal his ROOM requirement to anyone, not even Nezu.
"Young Horizon!" All Might's cheerful voice rings out, the man walks beside Horizon and moves to pat him on the back, but freezes a few inches away.
'Crap, that could have been bad,' All Might thinks. Awkwardly lowering his hand to his side as they continue walking.
'He's avoiding touching me...' Horizon notes, but doesn't react, still just scrolling on his phone."All Might," he finally greets the man as they exit the tunnel, a fully built concrete jungle, five city blocks by ten city blocks. One of the many massive training grounds at UA, all paid for by Nezu, and constructed by Cementoss, Power Loader, and a small army of drones.
"I assume Nezu knows about the Warping."
"Naturally," Horizon says.
"It is quite incredible, I've never encountered a Warping Quirk before," he admits. "I've only ever heard stories, but they all work by emitting something, either a portal or something else, yours seems to simply be instant."
"It is instant," Horizon says, putting the phone away to look up at All Might as they wait in the training ground, on a street just outside the tunnel entrance. "And undodgeable, once I want something to move, it will move."
"Quite the formidable ability," All Might holds his chin as he takes a proper look at Horizon's hero costume. "A simple white and blue suit, the visor you always wear, and a Katana. I understand the sword, it works well for quick decisive blows since to my knowledge your Quirk doesn't provide any damaging abilities. And considering how much Nezu brags about your combat smarts you'd do well with a simple but versatile weapon, but why the rest of your costume."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, heroes are meant to be inspiring symbols," All Might places his hands at his side and puffs out his chest, cape suddenly bellowing behind him with no wind at all. "Your costume is quite...normal."
"I'm not wearing some stupid cape and spandex monkey suit," All Might feels an arrow hit his pride at those words. "Plus my costume serves its purpose, and tells people what I'm all about. I'm all business, no wasting time, just get the job done and move on. Everything from the sword to the colors I chose were picked for very specific reasons, I thought about my costume a lot..."
"I see, still think you'd look good in a cape though," All Might nods a few times. "Some of your classmates requested support equipment, do you have any, aside from that life support visor and body glove of course."
"Yeah, just the sword and these," he takes out the small stack of cards. "They're a super-durable alloy, and sharp."
All Might holds one of the cards, and Horizon notices how careful the man was not to touch him, looking at the white card with Horizon's blue logo on it, noticing how sharp the edges were, "so you plan to use them like shuriken?"
"Something like that," Horizon says, as the card disappears from All Might's hand and rejoins the deck.
"Well, I suppose you won't need much to stand out, the worlds' first and only Warping hero is enough to sell you to the public. But I'm sure you realize, Nezu has high expectations of you, and because of this everyone at UA has the same expectations, you've got more eyes on you than everyone else... aside from perhaps young Todoroki."
"Just don't stare, looking at divinity is a bad idea," Horizon turns to face down the tunnel, 'seeing' everyone approaching them. "Only four of them have full masks, and the invisible girl is mostly naked...well, I guess that makes sense," he sighs.
Only Sero, Sato, Iida, and Deku had full masks.
"You can see them from this far away?"
"It's a bit complicated, don't worry about it."
"Hmm, alright, but why does the mask issue bother you so much, most heroes have public identities these days. Plus, not everyone can hide their identities, like Young Shoji."
"True," Horizon says. "But being a hero means you have a target on your back, the higher the rank the bigger the target. And even if it's a one in one hundred chance, you don't want to be the hero that goes home to find his family killed by some revenge-hungry villain. Protecting your identity is the easiest way to avoid that, and by extension not going to UA, since the sports festival kills any chance of that."
"I see," All Might thinks back to his master, Nana Shimura, how she lost her husband to this exact situation, how she had to put her son into an orphanage to protect him, all because she didn't bother to protect her identity. "Honestly that's not something most people think about, I guess the idea of helping people, or whatever else drives heroes to do what they do, it blinds us," he says solemnly.
Horizon turns to look up at him, "you sound like you speak from experience."
"It happened to someone I once knew, nearly broke her, but I guess most people just think they'll never be the one in one hundred that's unfortunate enough," he says quietly.
It was odd seeing someone always apparently brimming with positive energy look so vulnerable, but Horizon didn't believe anyone could genuinely be that positive all the time in the first place. "What about you?"
"Huh, what do you mean?"
"Your face is the most famous, have villains ever attacked your family?"
"I don't really have any family, I never did, and I spend so much time on my hero work that it wouldn't really be fair to them," All Might says with a smile, already having made peace with the life he chose, and the fact that he was given away at birth for not having a Quirk.
Horizon chuckles darkly at that which catches All Might off guard, "you know, my mom warned me that I could end up like you one day, just another lonely god... and I guess right now I am."
"I'm sorry to hear that..."
A few moments later and the other students arrive, interrupting another quiet conversation between Horizon and All Might.
Both men stop talking and look toward the class, Horizon takes a look at all the costumes, noticing a few that he actually likes..
'So Sero has the best of them, froggy is thematic and effective, and Bakugo's is loud but appropriate... that means the worst one is definitely... Momo, just another pair of tits in a bimbo suit, but not like she needs the money...guess she's a Midnight fan.'
He then glances over at Toru, only seeing pair of baby blue gloves and boots. Everything else is exposed to the elements, and subsequently, as the only person who can actively see her, his eyes roam her body.
Short white-green hair falling just past her shoulders, with a petite body that's obviously toned with all the right curves, the horny 16 year old part of his brain takes over for a moment before he snaps his eyes back onto All Might.
All Might takes a few steps back so everyone can focus on him and begins explaining.
"Today we'll be doing indoor battle training! Statistically, most villain encounters happen indoors, backroom deals, home invasions, secret bases, that kind of thing! Smart villains stay hidden as long as possible, so for this training exercise you'll be split into pairs, one hero team, and one villain team, to have an indoor battle."
"Isn't this a little advanced?" Asui asks.
"I agree," Iida says, raising his hand stiffly. "Wouldn't it be proper to better familiarize ourselves with each other's Quirks before entering such a scenario?"
Horizon groans loudly and rolls his eyes, "don't be such a pussy, villains won't give you time to familiarize yourself with anything, and UA has Recovery Girl, just try not to kill anyone, plus experience is the best teacher, painful lessons are rarely forgotten."
"Well said," All Might nods to Horizon, "although you should speak to your classmates a little nicer."
"No."
All Might just fake coughs and ignores that, "right, so let's begin."
A flurry of questions is pelted at All Might causing him to wince.
"Alright listen up," he takes out a small booklet and begins reading word for word. "The villains have hidden a nuclear device somewhere in their hideout, the heroes must stop them. To do that you must either use the Capture Tape provided to catch the villains, or recover the device, simply touching the objective will count as removing it. The villains win if they protect the device until the fifteen-minute timer is done, or capture the heroes with Capture Tape."
"How will the teams be chosen sir?" Iida asks.
"Teams will be selected before each match by random lots in the control room," All Might says.
"But wouldn't it be better to group us by comparative skill for more of a challenge?"
Horizon groans loudly, causing many annoyed glares to shift toward him, "you don't know enough about each other to judge that, and life isn't fair, sometimes you get an opponent out of your league, get over it."
"Exactly," All Might says. "Heroes are always at a disadvantage because we have to extra careful while villains can let loose with their Quirks, and sometimes we get placed into situations where we're outmatched or a bad matchup, but heroes always have to pull through in the end! This best simulates that," he adds.
"I see, I hadn't thought about this as a proper simulation and only training, my apologies," Iida bows politely to All Might.
"No problem, now follow me to the control room and we'll get this started!"
Everyone walks behind All Might to a building attached to the outer wall of the training grounds.
On the short walk there a few people were mulling over the short briefing, begrudgingly coming to a conclusion that they wish wasn't the case. 'Horizon is a jerk but he definitely knows his stuff, and his Quirk is insane...how do I beat Warping?'
A curious look from Todoroki and the heated glare from Bakugo didn't go unnoticed by anyone.
And as they enter the room, a large room with a massive holographic screen on the far wall, with a guard rail and control panel. A small yellow box resting on the control panel with 'Lots' printed across the front waiting for them.
"Alright, time to decide the first team!" All Might picks up the box and turns to face everyone, digging on hand in and grabbing a ball. Half the class get nervous, not wanting to be the first team, and certainly not wanting to get a bad matchup. And All Might is also nervous. 'C'mon, theirs are different so just make sure you save those for last!' he reminds himself.
Taking out the first ball "four," he reads aloud. "Seat number four."
Iida steps forward.
"You'll be paired with number...seventeen," Bakugo steps forward.
"And the next team is, five," Uraraka steps forward. "Paired with, eighteen," Deku steps forward to stand beside her.
"Alright, teams have been decided!" All Might opens a compartment under the control panel and takes out four rolls of thin tape and four earpieces. "These are Capture Tape, each of you get one, wrap it around your opponent and they're out. Each team also gets a pair of these earpieces so you can talk to each other," he hands them out.
Everyone puts in their earpiece and stores away their tape.
"You'll also get these," he reaches back into the compartment and takes out two booklets. "We've prepared a few buildings, so each team works with a different map, these are yours, the villains have five minutes to go get set up, then the timer starts, and the heroes wait outside until then."
They all nod and begin moving out.
As Bakugo and Iida are setting up as the villains Deku and Uraraka are chatting outside the building seemingly reviewing the floorplan.
All Might activates the cameras inside for everyone to watch.
"Will we be able to hear them?" Horizon asks.
"Only I can hear them," All Might says. "I have a control earpiece connected to theirs, the surveillance in the building doesn't have audio. I suggest you all take note of how they approach this situation and begin thinking of how to use your Quirk to complete the scenario."
Horizon shakes his head, 'warp to the bomb and touch it if I'm the hero, or just have some fun testing people then touch the bomb...yeah, that sounds a lot more fun, I should let them know what I'm all about...'
"START!" All Might announces as the timer begins counting down from fifteen minutes.
'I'll have to make sure Horizon is the villain because of his Quirk,' he decides, forming the same conclusion as Horizon now that Warping was revealed. 'I wonder how Young Todoroki and Yaoyorozu will deal with Warping...'
END CHAPTER---
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