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CHAPTER START---
SHAMBLES!
Horizon swaps places with President Skyline, surprising Sentinel and Mind Hacker.
The man immediately notices Horizon's gloves showing slightly larger grooves between the armor plating than at the UA Sports Festival, now the grooves were rivers of softly glowing blue energy.
Sentinel takes a careful step back, glancing at the new blade behind Horizon, an Odachi that matches Horizon's height of 194cm -6ft4-. But he sets aside the troubling thought of the sheathed weapon hovering just behind Horizon.
"You aren't allowed to be here, at least not here and using your Quirk," Sentinel says. "You've broken countless crimes by simply warping, much less into the Whitehouse, getting involved any further could cause Japan to look bad..."
Horizon raises a hand and opens it, then Sentinel has to fight his instinct to flinch as a small card is warped above his palm, hovering in place. With his enhanced vision he easily scans it, and the sweat on his forehead worsens.
With the existence of a simple metal card, his entire dream fell apart."Why did they give you a 50 State License?" Sentinel swallows nervously.
Behind him, Mind Hacker is already leaning against the far wall, rigid with fear as he hyperventilates.
To the surprise of no one, Horizon speaks in perfect English.
"Well, I had nothing to do in Japan, so why not?" Horizon warps the card back into his wallet. "Besides, Chris' told me you were planning something but all your plans for getting Star and Stripe out of the way failed, so he figured he'd remove her for you."
Sentinel glares at Horizon, "he knew about our plan, and created an opening by sending her out of the country for the first time ever, after you'd already agreed to help out."
"Personally, I think you should have attacked when she was here," Horizon admits. "This is effective one big hostage situation, which is much more my style."
"Would it have mattered?" Sentinel asks bitterly.
"No, but honestly, I figured you'd be happy about this," Horizon says.
"Happy, about what?"
"Well, this is what you wanted, right? A world where the powerful rule, where the weak don't get to decide their fate," Horizon leans forward slightly, looking into Sentinel's confused eyes. "You just didn't count on ever being the 'weak', right?"
Sentinel's eyes glow brighter and brighter as his rage builds, a sight that would make most people cower in fear.
But Horizon simply hums curiously, looking directly into the glowing laser canons.
"I've always been so fascinated by those, eye beams, they always look cool," Horizon says before he leans to the side slightly, looking past Sentinel, looking at Mind Hacker. "So you're the telepath, and that's the device, right?"
Mind Hacker just silently cries, not feeling the tears flowing down his face as his vision blurs in and out, so overwhelmed by the situation.
Horizon steps to the side, leaving his sword floating in place as he walks around Sentinel.
"Sorry but I'll need to cut this short," Horizon says as he walks toward the telepath, ready to prepare him for an interrogation later.
After all, Sentinel would never tell them anything, but this terrified person certainly would. And considering how integral he was to their plan, the chances were high that he knew important information.
Sentinel also came to this conclusion, and turned around so fast that a gust of wind ripped through the office.
His eyes locked onto the back of Horizon's head as he swung with a right hook, aiming at the back of his Visor.
His fist shattered the air as he pushed himself to his limits, and with his enhanced vision he could see it.
Horizon was frozen in place compared to Sentinel's speed, yet, when the fist was less than an inch away from contact.
SHAMBLES: Flicker!
Horizon's form flickered for barely a moment, and while his body couldn't move to match the speed of that attack, to Sentinel's eyes his entire being flickered in place once, as if he glitched in real life.
Then when he reappeared, his new blade was drawn and blocked the fist with its flat.
The hilt and grip were the exact same as his previous, smaller swords.
But where Scalpel had a standard blade with only the edge being blue, Sunder had an entirely blue blade with a white edge, an unintentional side effect of the alloy mixing with Horizon's DNA.
Yet Sentinel saw the moment before his fist connected, the entire blade began glowing a matte blue, as if it drank Horizon's energy.
The entire Whitehouse shook as the collision occurred, yet neither gave an inch.
Sentinel kept adding more and more strength to his effort, yet even as he began to struggle Horizon didn't tremble in the slightest.
'This isn't just his physical strength, his body isn't feeling the recoil,' Sentinel noticed. 'Must be using telekinesis on the blade.'
Realizing this Sentinel withdrew to the air, hovering above the floor as he moved backward.
He immediately locked his eyes on Horizon, intending to blast the man with his eye beams.
But before the beams could form he realized the error in his plan.
'If this comes down to a battle of attrition, my beams against his energy, no way do I ever come close to winning that. I should keep feeling him out until I find the flaw I need...'
With his mind made up Sentinel rushed toward Horizon with another powerful punch, however, this time Horizon had enough time to swing his blade in response.
The glowing blue blade collided with the fist in the exact same way, and a loud crack echoed through the room as Sentinel was knocked back to where the desk was.
The pain wracks his right arm for just a moment before it disappears completely.
He opens his eyes in a panic, looking down at his arm, surprised to see that it was still there, then taking a second to realize what just happened.
He sees some of the fingers on his right hand completely shattered in multiple places, he doesn't feel anything from the entire arm, yet he finds no blood there.
'He didn't cut my arm off, he used the flat of the blade again, he's playing nice for the cameras outside,' Sentinel realizes. 'Heh, to think he's such a softi---'
Sentinel's thoughts are cut off when he looks up to see Horizon standing there looking at him, sword in hand.
And behind Horizon is Mind Hacker, cut into dozens of little pieces, perfectly alive and well, but scattered across the floor.
"What the hell is under that mask, you can't be human, right?" Sentinel asks.
"Well, you could, and should, surrender," Horizon says. "Or you could come try to take it off..."
"You ruined everything!" Sentinel rushes forward and swings wildly, but Horizon simply warps a few feet away to avoid it.
"You shouldn't be here!" Horizon uses his blade to parry the attack.
"You shouldn't exist!" Sentinel fires his eye beams, and the flash of light blinds him for just a moment.
He suddenly feels the cold and wet sensation of water on his body, flowing into his nose and mouth.
He instantly stops his attack, then exhales and holds his breath before looking around.
He couldn't see anything, it was all absolute darkness.
'This taste, fresh water, he warped me into the river maybe,' Sentinel thinks as he flies directly upward.
"Gah!" he takes a deep breath as he rockets out of the river, "I was right, good, I'm still close by," he sees the Whitehouse in the distance.
He flies right back to the Oval Office while raising a finger to his ear, "Horizon is in the Whitehouse, I need backup!"
As he finishes giving the command he's only a few kilometers away, close enough to see Horizon through the windows.
To see him inspecting this Faux Nuclear Football device.
The briefcase-like device was floating off the flood for Horizon to inspect, then Sentinel saw him warp the sword into his hand, and without looking away from the device he raised the blade.
He aimed it through the window, directly at Sentinel.
'A ranged attack, I just need to---'
Sentinel sees the glass between them suddenly break, a perfect hole with the thickness of a finger was punched through it, and before he could react, faster than any projectile could move.
There was an immense pain in his collar bone on his right side, as if a piece of it had just been ground into dust while still inside his body, without breaking the skin.
"ARGH!" Sentinel loses concentration for just a moment and stops in the air, looking at his collar in shock. "So it really isn't just a fancy invisible air bullet, the air didn't even distort between the blade and me, he just makes holes appear in things."
He thinks about it for a few more seconds, "No, that would mean...no," he tenses, then takes a deep breath.
Sentinel looks at all his true believers around Washington DC's Mall, then resigns himself to what he's about to do, even as he sees them disappear one after another.
"All fliers, look up, and come to me," he commands through his earpiece, before turning around.
He sees Horizon there, standing in the air just a few hundred meters above the ground, above the Whitehouse lawn, sword in hand.
"I'm surprised you let me give that order," Sentinel says as he gets ready for the real fight.
"Call all the Pro Heroes you want, unless she is with them, it won't matter," Horizon raises his sword to Sentinel. "Because, I am here..."
END CHAPTER---