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CHAPTER START---
"Well, this is…snug," Horizon says as he climbs into his seat in the plane.
All around him were data panels, and his chair was noticeably uncomfortable, all to make room for the large coils around him.
They were designed to conduct massive amounts of power without frying the systems.
His seat was toward the middle of the plane, to act as a backup generator if needed.
At the front Nezu and Agpar were in the cockpit, the heavily modified cockpit which had much of what would have been the weapons bay behind and under it hollowed out to make Nezu's command centre.
"Are we ready?" Horizon asks as Agpar and Nezu do the final checks.
"The meeting has begun, so let's get moving," Agpar says.Horizon closes his eyes, feeling every component of the plane, all the technology he doesn't understand but now has to move in perfect sync.
He then opens his eyes and looks down, seeing a special screen containing black iron sand for him to use via Takt.
"Alright, Shambles," Horizon says.
In the connected room, everyone who worked on this project is seated in a massive area, with David Shield and Power Loader controlling the terminal at the front.
The screens above show what the plane sees, and their feeds suddenly swapped for that of the sky and middle America below it.
"Everything appears fine, we're good," David Shield says as he wipes his brow.
"We've got lift and engines are operating as expected, now let's go hunt this villain," Agpar says as they begin the flight west.
As the massive jet-black aircraft soars above the clouds at 35 thousand feet above ocean level, Star lands on top of it, standing proudly with a wide smile on her face.
"Your Quirk really is incredible," she says.
"All I did was move it, building it took a million times the effort," Horizon says as he taps a few of the screens around him, getting a visual of the outside world.
"How long until we're in the marked area?" he asks.
"With these drafts, and with Star's help, we can get there within two hours," Agpar says.
Hearing that Star and Stripe kneels atop the aircraft, disabling her flight Order and activating her magnetic boots to maintain her footing.
NEW ORDER: This Aircraft's weight shall be reduced by 70%!
They all immediately get pushed back into their seats as they rocket off toward the west coast.
"What a ridiculous Quirk," Horizon mutters as he prepares for the battle ahead.
A few minutes later they get a call, and Nezu connects them.
"I stalled as much as I could," President Skyline says. "But Tech acted exactly as you predicted, he'll be expecting an assault of some kind, either physical or virtual. And he will wipe out whoever is responsible for this."
"That won't be a problem," Horizon says. "We won't fail."
"For all our sakes, I hope you're right," President Skyline says before hanging up.
"We're in the middle of the red zone now," Agpar says. "He definitely knows about us by now, it's only a matter of time before whatever weapons systems he has access to fire on us."
"I'm ready," Star' says.
"No, that won't be necessary," Horizon says. "He won't do that since it would confirm that we're going in the right direction, he's confident no technology can find him, so he'll just let this blow over and then drop some nukes afterward to send a message."
"And even if he does, no conventional weapons systems can reach us with these two on board," Nezu says.
"Exactly, so just focus on getting us to the marked area, we'll handle the rest."
Agpar glances at the map, seeing that they're still en route to the area south of Hawaii.
"We'll get there far ahead of schedule, within an hour."
"Nezu, the delays?"
"Holding up better than expected," Nezu says. "The initial program was to isolate the nukes from him for three hours, and currently he was only able to get it down to two hours, but I need to continuously change the codes to keep stalling."
"Hacking a roided-up Technopath and we have that much time, impressive," Horizon says. "Now let's go rip him away from his keyboard…"
---50 Minutes Later…
"We're here," Agpar says. "Radar is clear and there are a few small islands, no inhabitants, and no infrastructure."
"Do some laps around here, and take us down to 20 thousand feet -6km-," Horizon says. "Principal Nezu will keep scanning for any signal interference, and I'll Scan for everything else."
"Setting route now," Agpar says as they descend and begin to fly in a large circle around this area.
To cover as much area as possible, the circle shrinks with each lap, leaving a maximum of 300km gap between their tracks, giving Horizon more than enough range to sweep everything.
"Maybe it's cloaked," Star' says after a few minutes of searching, getting slightly nervous as she sees they have less than 45 minutes before Tech has access to the nukes again. "Should I go fly around and see if I spot anything?"
"No, stay in position and be ready to defend," Horizon says.
Nezu sighed and rubbed his forehead, "My systems are still picking up nothing, we may have to search a different area.
"We're hunting a Technopath, we can't just rely on technology," Horizon says. "That's why I am here."
Nezu hears the confidence in his tone and smiles, "Did you get something?"
"Everything," Horizon says. "Marking a location now, do some laps but give it some space, I need to focus on this. I don't sense anything wired in so, getting him out of the water should be fine."
"Focus on what?" Star and Stripe asks, only to look over the side of the plane and see a massive shadow growing beneath the water. "What the hell is that? It must be half the size of Manhattan."
"A bit bigger than that," Horizon says. "And I'm not quite sure what it is, but from what I'm seeing it's like a massive computer, and Tech is fused to a chair in the middle of it."
"Oh my god, how did he build this without us knowing?" Agpar asks as he looks out the window, seeing a massive citadel ⅔ the size of Manhattan rising out of the water.
Its entire structure was made of dull grey metal which has some sealife and rocks now attached to it, showing that it'd been under there for quite some time.
And to their further amazement Horizon lifts it up to their altitude of 20,000 feet -6km, 4 mi-.
"Horizon, whatever you do, don't break even a single part of that thing," Nezu says as he can now begin his scans.
"What? Why not?" Star' asks. "Isn't crushing it and Tech the easiest way to end this?"
"If we want to set off the dead man's switch on the warheads, yes. And that thing is one giant supercomputer, the repercussion of breaking one part could mean mission failure," Nezu says.
"I'll make a map and send it back to base, Power Loader and David Shield should be able to find some hardware weaknesses, you focus on the software side of things."
"Already on it," Nezu says.
Horizon then focuses on the structure and the black sand within his special device, using Takt to control each grain and build a perfect 3D map that's transmitted back to the base.
"I don't see any point defenses," Star' says. "Can we warp inside?"
"Only one room," Horizon says. "And all it has is Tech fused to a chair, and nothing else, I can't warp into there since I've got nothing to swap with."
"Shit, alright, I'll wait up here in case anything happens," Star' says. "I feel pretty damn useless right now."
"Yeah well, we may not be able to break the main thing, but the drones should be fair game," Horizon says.
"Drones?" she asks.
She then sees thousands of drones launch out of the structure and swarm above, before rushing toward the plane.
"Oh, that's a lot," Star and Stripe says as the drones almost block out the sunlight from above.
"Too much for you to handle?" Horizon asks playfully.
"Just focus on that map, tell them to feed you intel on where these drones are coming from so we can stop the swarm," she says before jumping off the plane.
The Order making the plane lighter instantly cancels as she prepares for a new one, punching the air behind her and launching herself at the swarm.
"He must have fabrication and manufacturing facilities on board, we need to crush those or this will never end," she says. "The map will tell us how to safely do that, but until then I'll keep them off of you guys and whatever gets past me, you can handle."
"Try not to let that happen, this is already taking a lot of focus," Horizon says.
"I know," Star' says as she punches forward, sending an air cannon as All Might and Deku do, shattering hundreds of titanium drones and detonating some of their explosive rockets.
NEW ORDER: The atmosphere will gather into an avatar around me, 2000 times my size!
While most people cannot 'see' the difference, Horizon can clearly sense it.
The air around Star and Stripe, including many clouds, was suddenly pulled toward her and formed an invisible avatar of her naked self in the sky.
She was held in the chest, where the heart would be, and with a single wave of her arm, the 4km -2.5mi- tall avatar perfectly copies her movements and swats away thousands of drones.
'Seriously? She has an air Gundam mech but she calls me ridiculous…'
END CHAPTER---