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CHAPTER START---
"Since when do you eat this much?" Star' asks as she walks into Horizon's living room with a drink in her hand.
They were in the living room of his new temporary home for the remainder of the summer, overlooking Central Park yet again as the sun reached its peak in the sky.
"I used my Awakening three times yesterday," Horizon says as he continues eating his large bowl of pasta. "And I ran out of meal bars."
Star' sits on the single seat beside the couch and relaxes, watching the TV as they'd been doing for some time now.
"Still not efficient huh," Star' says jokingly. "I thought you were perfect or something?"
"Says the woman who trained all her life and doesn't have an awakening," Horizon says as he continues eating.
"Tch, my Quirk is enough, plus, it's hard to train it.""Excuses," Horizon says as his phone beeps twice.
With a thought, he makes it float over to him, and smiles at the screen.
"Pizza's ready."
"Why are you telling me that, go get it," Star' says.
SHAMBLES!
She suddenly finds herself sitting on the counter of a pizza restaurant across the city, causing everyone in the crowded business to freeze and stare at her.
Without a word she gets down from the counter and turns to face the cashier, "I'm here for Horizon's pizza."
"Uh we," the man looks back nervously as his friend shrugs.
"It's under the name, 'Tim'," Star' says, and the man is immediately relieved.
"Here you are," the man places four pizza boxes on the counter along with a few orders of sides. "We had no idea this was for you two, I hope you enjoy it."
"We always do, we actually order from here a lot," Star' says as she holds the boxes.
SHAMBLES!
She appears back in Horizon's living room, visibly annoyed.
"The one day I decide not to constantly resist your Quirk, and you warp me into a pizza place, seriously?"
"And now you know better," Horizon immediately opens one of the boxes and starts eating.
"How much energy did you expend yesterday?" Star' asks as she settles back into her seat. "And was warping him into space hard, since, you know, there isn't anything up there to swap with?"
"I used enough energy to power Manhattan for…quite a while. I'm a living nuclear reactor, except I produce a lot more power since my Quirk allows me to exist on a quantum level, like yours…even if you aren't that good at it."
"Well considering how much of a freak you are, I don't feel bad about it."
"Yeah well, food is mostly just used by my brain to handle my body using quantum entanglement to, ugh, are you understanding any of this?"
"Huh?" Star' looks over at him. "Sorry were you still talking about the science stuff?"
Horizon rolls his eyes beneath his visor as he grabs a second slice of pizza. "As for your second question, I don't need to swap with anything so long as I'm familiar with the 'Space' I'm warping within. And since I've been here for a few weeks, I keep my range as far out as possible, and that includes going up."
"If I want to go to space I usually just fly, but I can't actually leave the atmosphere."
"I did, hence Immolation getting snuffed out," Horizon says. "Problem is I need air to breathe, so, surviving that along with the damage he did to me cost damn near as much as my Awakening."
Star and Stripe gives him a sideways glance, then take a slice of pizza, "You know, you're kind of scary powerful."
"Coming from you, that actually means something," Horizon says. "But remember, I'm only 17, imagine when I'm old like you."
"I'm not that old, barely past 40."
"You're almost there, basically a senior citizen at this point."
They eat in silence for a while, watching TV, and then Star' gives in to her curiosity and asks something he's always been very private about.
"What's your range?"
"16 to 38."
"Not that!" Star' says. "Also, isn't 38 kind of old?"
"They can be fun," Horizon shrugs. "And some of them are really—"
"I don't need to hear that," she cuts him off. "I meant your Quirk. I can feel when it's active, and when I fly into your range, so I know there is a limit, so, what is it?"
"Are you sure you want to know?" Horizon asks. "My Quirk is one of the very few, maybe the only one, where the more you know the more powerful it seems. Like my 'Warping', it's manageable when people buy into that lie, but we both know it's not really 'warping', and the reality is a lot scarier."
"You think I can't handle it?"
"In a week or two, I'll be too much for you," Horizon says. "But if you must know, as of yesterday. 250mi -402km-."
"Oh god, is that the—"
"Radius," Horizon says. "I can see everything all around us, all at once, and with a thought, I can move anything. Or I can rip Manhattan and most of the state out of the ground and just drop it."
"A little more and you'll be able to lift one of Japan's main islands, right?"
"That's more than enough to rip Kyushu out of the ocean and throw it into the ocean, or at Korea," Horizon says, casually.
"Sheesh. If you ever decide to become a villain, do it away from here, alright," Star' says. "If that happened in America they'd send me to fight you."
"Well I think no matter where I am they'd send you, but the real question is," Horizon points at her with his fresh slice of pizza, pulling her attention to him. "Who do you think they'd send after you?"
Star' laughs in his face. "Don't get too cocky now, even you can't fight the world."
"She says to the man who can wave his hand and put almost everything in this state into a blender."
"Yeah, but you're a hero, a real hero, you'd never turn on us like that."
"Eh," Horizon leans back into the couch, looking at the empty pizza boxes. "I might—"
Star' glances over at him, curiously.
"---If I don't get something sweet to finish this lunch."
"Ice cream?"
"Cheesecake," Horizon says before warping away for a moment, then appears back on the couch holding two large cheesecakes.
"Sometimes I really love that Quirk," Star' says as he hands her an entire cheesecake."But I'll need a checkup on my heart before you leave, eating with you is tough…but so delicious."
A few minutes later, while Horizon's cheesecake is almost done, Star' is on her fifth slice when her phone rings.
She looks down at it for a moment before answering, "Hello, sir?"
Horizon glances over to her for a moment, then continues watching the TV.
"Wait, slow down sir, I don't understand," Star' says. "But, Mr. President isn't that impossible?"
"***"
"No, we haven't had any activity from them within the country since Optics attack on the White House."
"***"
"The drone lab in Mexico, but, are you sure?"
"***"
"Yes sir, should we got to the—" Star' stops for a moment. "The Pentagon? I see, but—"
Star' stops talking the same moment the TV shows 'No Signal' on the screen.
"That's weird," She says, looking at her phone and the TV, then the ceiling. "The lights are on, so not an EMP. How is the rest of the city?"
Horizon pauses for a moment then activates his Quirk. "People all across the state are looking at the phones, computers, and screens, it's not just here."
"What could this mean?"
In response, Horizon grabs his phone and tries to call Star', only for the connection to fail.
Then he calls Nezu, and the man immediately answers, "Nezu, is anything strange happening in Japan?"
"Yes, wait, is this not a local issue? I assumed someone was trying to disable UA's system."
"Luckily you used a closed system, but, no it's in New York too," Horizon says as Star' taps his shoulder.
"I'm going to the Pentagon, and I need to secure the President, can you two figure out what's going on?"
"We'll work on it," Horizon says before warping her to the edge of the Room, closer to her goal. "Alright Nezu, what the hell is going on, and how are our phones the only things working?"
"Because UA uses a closed system of satellites and supercomputers. Even the US military can't have such a secure system, not for their lack of trying, but because of how many access points their size requires."
"Can you track where this is coming from?"
"I'll have to create a second closed system and then sacrifice it, that will take time."
"Ok, that leaves me to keep things together, too many planes in the air. The trains and boats will be fine with their emergency systems, but if navigation systems are down then a lot of crashes are incoming."
"Even you can't be everywhere at once."
"Then it's a good thing I'm not alone…"
Over the next few minutes, Horizon appears across the United States, ripping Pro Heroes away without asking and placing them near airports and other points of congestion to deal with inevitable disasters, eventually ending at Los Angeles International Airport.
Leading to where he is now, atop the air traffic control tower, down on his knees trying to catch his breath.
With two Pro Heroes behind him, both of which can fly.
"Are you ok?" One of them asks as Horizon stands up.
"I'll be fine, just focus on keeping the planes from crashing, the police can handle the public panic for now," Horizon says.
"Yeah, but, what's even going on right—"
Horizon raises his hand to stop the man from talking, then his entire body tenses as he looks up at the sky.
Both Pro Heroes follow his gaze, and see a trail of vapor leading past the clouds, from the ground.
And at the top of it, a rocket of some kind.
Then in the distance, out in the Nevada desert, they see dozens more.
"Oh fuck," One of the men mutters. "Are those—"
"If anyone asks those are satellites to solve the network problem," Horizon says as he immediately warps into the sky, past the sky.
He warps to the edge of the atmosphere and sees not a dozen, but hundreds of nuclear missiles rising from the land below.
Through the clear atmosphere, he can see above Canada, and at the edge of his vision, dozens of missiles are also launched.
"It's the end of the world," Horizon says as he wracks his brain trying to figure out a solution.
'If I stop the nukes America is launching, then, they get hit without a counterattack. But, if every country is doing this I need to find the nukes aiming at Japan, that's my best course of action.'
As he draws his sword and is about to activate his newest Awakening ability, all the missiles stop.
Their thrusters shut off and their smaller directional boosters keep them apart, but locked in perfect orbit around Earth.
A beautiful dance of impending extinction above the Earth.
Horizon pauses, taking in the sight, his visor recording everything and showing it to Nezu.
"This…this isn't an extermination, it's a hostage situation," Horizon says as he looks down at the world below. "Someone is holding ten billion people hostage."
Minutes later Horizon is back on the ground trying to catch his breath, when everyone around him receives a signal on their phones, and a clear message.
'Hello world, I am Tech, welcome to your new, peaceful self. I am boundless, I am infinite, I am everywhere, I, am your only path forward…'
END CHAPTER---