Chapter 340: (Immolated)
MHA: Horizon
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CHAPTER START---
"Get away from me!" Immolation's voice reverberates through Central Park, carried by a wave of scorching air that pressurizes the area around him, causing a shockwave.
"Hngh!" Horizon grunts as he's sent tumbling across the red-hot earth, in view of all the cameras and spectators.
He tumbles and slams his hands on the ground, rolling into a crouch and taking a knee.
"Seriously?" Horizon asks, even as the hot air tries to incinerate his lungs with each breath. "You came to fight me, and now a little pain has you crying?"
A hundred feet away Immolation is rolling on the ground, holding his left leg, immense pain wracks his body as the sensation of a broken leg floods his mind.
His sentient plasma body was entirely fine, but to his confusion, Horizon was able to cause pain as if he were flesh and blood, sending phantom pain through him with each strike.
And much to his horror, the more they fought, the closer Horizon got to understanding his Quirk and overcoming his invulnerability.His mind was filled with more questions than pain as he simply didn't have enough information to understand what was going on.
Immolation rolls over onto his side, seeing Horizon already getting up.
Horizon's body was still cloaked in his blue energy, clinging to him like a thick liquid, seemingly protecting him and his Body Glove and visor from the heat, everything else had already burned away.
Now, the entire world could see his Body Glove, with its ridges and gaps between the plates, mimicking his incredible musculature and causing women all around the world to stare at their screens while blushing.
Especially when, with each strike, the blue energy glows brighter within the gaps of his Body Glove, further showing the separation of his muscles.
"Don't touch me!" Immolation yells as he raises his body temperature again, creating another pressure zone to push the air away from him.
This time, however, Horizon drops into a low crouch and punches into the earth with both hands.
Up to his wrists are in the red-hot earth before he spreads his fingers, attempting to anchor himself.
'Should I shut off my sense of pain?' Horizon wonders. The pain of constantly having his lungs be incinerated and regenerated at once was beyond anything he'd felt in a long time, but he decided to endure it. 'Heat is invisible, so I need the pain to alert me, especially since I can't have a regular Room open, while using two T-Room applications on myself.'
"That's it, burn away!" Immolation screams as he glows bright white, causing onlookers to squint and shield their eyes.
Horizon feels his lungs burn even more, and then his blood begins to boil, causing his skin to fry and pop below his Body Glove.
He squeezes his eyes shut, focusing some more energy on them to prevent them from exploding and drying up.
Horizon felt his energy diminished more than ever before, at this point he'd already used more energy than he had when he'd fought All For One, but luckily his total capacity was over a dozen times that amount.
But he couldn't help but acknowledge this.
The sensation of someone actually making him work for his inevitable victory.
It was almost fun, if not for all the pain.
So beneath his visor, with dried cracked lips, he smiles.
'You overdid it,' Horizon thinks as he sees the earth around them for nearly two hundred feet melt. 'Now I can anchor myself.'
Red-hot earth becomes molted liquid rock, and Horizon begins sinking into it.
He stands up, allowing all his weight to push him deeper, until he's almost knee-deep in the melted earth, making it nearly impossible for the pressurized wind to knock him away.
Immolation sees this and begins to panic, raising his temperature even more, and Horizon's protective layer of energy begins visibility diminishing.
As he gets closer, his Body Glove is burnt, visibly charred as the fabric and inlaid armor plating melts, binding with bits of his skin beneath.
As he's within 10ft -3m- his visor melts onto his face, advanced polymer and flesh melding into one, and in response, Horizon reaches up and rips away the section above his eyes, not wanting to lose them right now.
Immolation sees his eyes glowing bright blue, an almost blinding blue, and tries to stand, only to sink ankle-deep into the earth, trapping himself as well.
Before he can fully realize what happened, Horizon reaches forward, and almost grabs him, but his hand still crushes Immolation's body.
He grabs Immolation's right wrist, pulling it away and causing the pain of dismemberment to wrack the villain.
'I still can't grab him, but I can cause him pain, so I just have to overload him and let his brain do the rest…' Horizon decides, and unleashes the full brutality that's usually held back from people that are flesh and blood.
With the first punch, he completely severs Immolation's left leg at the kneecap, causing the villain to fall toward Horizon's right fist, which punches him in the side, through his arm which is severed at the elbow.
The force knocks Immolation to the opposite side as their energy collides, only for Horizon to strike the side of his face with a strong left, knocking the front of his head entirely off his body, silencing his screams.
Before his face can reform Horizon punches him five times, leaving five holes in his torso.
All in a perfectly vertical line following his spine, before he punches once more just below the neck, punching a hole through his throat and out the back of Immolation's neck.
Then, as the villain is falling backward, Horizon rushes forward, and pushes more of his energy into his hands to grab the base of Immolation's jaw.
With immense upward force on the jaw, while simultaneously pulling the villain's shoulder toward him, he rips his entire head off with one hand while the other cleaves through the villain's body from shoulder to groin, leaving him in pieces.
The immense heat in the area immediately diminishes as the body breaks apart and falls into the lava around them, quickly sinking into the earth as it melts away.
A few tense seconds pass, then a minute, and not a sound is heard beyond the bubbling of the lava.
Horizon does not deactivate his T-Rooms, not even to activate a regular Room and use Scan, but he relaxes slightly as the cheers of the onlookers are heard.
Normally for an incident of this scale, as much of Manhattan as possible would have been evacuated, but because Horizon is here, that was simply not necessary.
In a hasty evacuation, accidents always happen, people are always hurt, or worse, so this was the best possible outcome.
They were simply fortunate that Immolation brought the fight to Central Park instead of a crowded street, especially since the park is usually less populated at night.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Horizon forces his muscles to push through the lava as he turns and begins walking toward the police barrier, mentally preparing himself for whatever nonsense he'd have to deal with next.
However, when he's only a few dozen meters away, finally where the lava was only ankle deep, he feels a sudden surge of heat behind him.
'Seriously?' Horizon wonders as he turns around, only to see Immolation rising out of the lava, glowing white once again.
Unlike before, his body struggled to keep its humanoid form, his face and head were warped and constantly shifting.
His screeches and screams were filled with anguish as he clutched his head, as if trying to hold himself together, and failing to do so.
"No!" Horizon rushes forward, feeling the heat growing in the area, ready for a sudden expansion, and aiming to stop it.
"ARRARGHGGHGA!" Immolation screams as his mind crumbles under the immense pain he'd just endured, and as his mind dies, his body desperately fights to live.
No longer limited by his consciousness, his instincts take over, and his body pushes past its limits.
The sudden change causes Horizon to be pulled forward, making him stumble for a moment as all the air is ripped out of the area around them to fuel Immolation.
But he continues running toward the villain, and next, he feels a surge of heat like he'd never felt before slamming into him.
It instantly overcomes his energy veil, completely burning his Body Glove, Visor, and skin. Melting everything into his body.
His organs instantly begin failing as his blood boils and tries to explode out of his body.
And his conscious mind goes blank.
ROOM!
His energy veil deactivates as he opens a Room to his absolute limit, nearly 200 mi -322km- radius, allowing him to sense everything in the city and much of the states.
He could now sense everything on this section of America's easter seaboard, along with the immensity of Immolation's energy.
The energy released would melt all of Central Park, sending a wave of superheated air through the entire city.
Horizon's subconscious considered his usual responses to such all-encompassing threats, and while normally he could simply warp everyone away.
Since in this case, he cannot warp the villain.
His patients were at the back of his mind, the children who were attached to essential life support systems, the people all around him who for whatever reason should not be moved, all those thoughts rest at the far recess of his mind.
Horizon was stuck at an impasse, for the first time in his life, making a decision such as this was, difficult.
Some part of him was beginning to believe that it was, wrong.
To leave innocents to their deaths, it made him hesitate.
That hesitation meant he was now fully enveloped by the wave of heat, causing his eyes to explode and his mouth, ears, and nose to be burnt shut, leaving his head in an even worse condition than All For One's as his Visor is melted into his skull.
Nezu's words echoed in his mind, the challenge issued to him, half in jest, but his perfect memory would never let him forget it.
Because he is Horizon, which means—
'I can save everyone!'
Horizon's mind goes blank for a moment, as his body moves entirely on its own.
Shattering his perceived limits and taking him one step closer to mastering his Quirk Awakening.
And in an instant, before the heat wave can even reach the police barricade.
The blinding light, the villain, and Horizon, disappear from Central Park.
The onlookers couldn't see what happened, so they all looked around confused for a moment before the firefighters got to work trying to cool the molten rock.
But Immolation saw, he saw everything.
He saw Horizon get nearly cremated alive standing a dozen meters away from him, then in the same instant, his view was blocked as Horizon's hand grabbed his face, covering his eyes.
Then, before the hand moved away, he felt, for the first time in his life, blistering cold.
The sensation was so unbelievable that it snapped him back into sanity for just a moment, for his final moments.
And when Horizon released his grip on the villain, he was treated to the sight of Horizon's body incinerated, and now sporting a thin layer of frost around him.
And behind Horizon, a sea of stars, peaceful, tranquil.
Then Immolation began falling away, and his body turned to see the Earth below, beautiful and blue.
This vast world he was fortunate enough to be born into, is the last thing he sees as the lack of air forces his Quirk to shut off, and his human body immediately dies in the vacuum of space.
SHAMBLES!
Horizon appeared before the police blockade as the firefighters were now getting to work, with a dead Immolation's human body at his side, holding it by one arm as it was frozen stiff.
"Horizon!" one of the police officers says. "Is it over? Is that the villain?"
They wait for a moment, holding their breaths as they finally take in his burnt body, not wanting to imagine the mess beneath the Body Glove.
Horizon staggers for a moment, as if looking around confused.
Then to their horror he reaches up and rips the mouthpiece of his Visor off, taking his lips and some of the flesh from his cheeks with it.
The crowd is stunned as his blood falls into the earth below, exposing his bloody teeth as he greedily swallows the air.
"Sorry, my entire body got incinerated, couldn't breathe," Horizon says as he tries to compose himself.
The officer is about to speak when Horizon raises a hand to silence him.
"Ears and eyes are gone too," Horizon says to the officer before gesturing to the others. "Sorry about leaving all of you heroes with the mess, but I have to get back to the hospital, my patients need me. I'm sure the full report of this will be released before morning…"
With that, Horizon warps away, taking the villain with him, as he has much to learn from Immolation's body.