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CHAPTER START---
"These things are a lifesaver," Horizon says, standing in his Musutafu apartment watching the rain beat down on the city, including UA off in the distance.
In his hands are three of his custom meal bars, which he carefully places into his jacket pocket. The thousands he bought were already scanned for anything suspicious before he brought them into this property for storage.
"Room..."
SHAMBLES!
He suddenly appears in his seat, only a few classmates quietly chattering about, not even batting an eye as he warps his card back into his hand and puts it away. He immediately shrinks his room down from a 5km radius to 20 meters, just enough to know when Eraser was close.
Behind him, Momo was reading a book, quietly enjoying her morning and waiting for class to start. At the very back of the room stood Sero and Tokoyami with a few other classmates, he could hear them excitedly talking about people recognizing them from the sports festival three days ago. And in her seat closer to the front Jiro was listening to music, her Earphone Jack plugged into her phone.
But all the chatter suddenly stopped the moment Iida entered the room, Deku one step behind him. Horizon spared him a glance before leaning back and ignoring him, but most of the students got up from what they were doing to give their condolences.Over the past two days, Ingenium had been on every news channel, it would be impossible not to know about his death by now.
Their first taste of what they truly risk by becoming a hero.
Listening in on the conversation Horizon hears Iida's cheerful responses, telling his classmates that he'll be alright no matter how many times they asked, and he doesn't think anything of Iida's responses.
"Eraser is coming," Horizon announces, and everyone scatters back to their seats immediately, sitting quietly and waiting for their teacher.
ROOM.
He shuts off his Quirk and leans back, expecting to fall asleep during math class this morning. Thus far he's slept through almost every single class that wasn't geared toward heroics.
He even sleeps through Midnight's 'History of heroics' classes, and since UA doesn't grade the Hero Course students on class work, he doesn't bother with in-class work.
To compensate for the life of their Hero Course students UA doesn't give any kind of project or group projects to them, or grades on classwork, only exams. This is entirely because students will likely be getting Provisional Licenses and have to take days out of their school week to do hero work, missing classwork would be unavoidable, so everything is staked on the exams instead.
Because of this everything you need to pass the mid and end-of-semester exams is in the textbooks, and since those exams are all that matters, and Horizon has already read the books...he can sleep all he wants in class.
Only the afternoon classes would even need his attention, so until lunchtime he can just relax.
Thus far only Mic keeps waking him up, and that's almost entirely because of how loud the man can be when he's teaching.
"Good morning class," Eraser says in a tired voice, hearing a chorus of polite responses from most of the students. Unlike his usual walk to the front podium, this time he turns to glance at Iida, seeing the boy as studious as even he just gives him a short sympathetic look before continuing on.
"So by now I'm sure most of you have had to deal with the public," Eraser says. "UA gives many advantages, this is one of them. Every department is about either training heroes, supporting heroes, or teaching people to manage heroes, but this has caused the effect of us having all eyes on our Hero Course students.
Because of this students tend to get famous before going pro if they really stand out, and since your class is already more famous than most hero students, some more than others," he glances at Horizon and Todoroki. "I'm sure you've had to deal with people wanting to talk to you or get pictures."
He sees most of the class nod, either having people they know call them or dealing with fans while traveling to school this morning.
"Well, how you deal with this is important, having your identity out there can be good to build a legacy or fanbase, but privacy is also valuable. In a society of celebrity heroes most people just lean into the fame side of things, whatever you choose, just think very carefully before you commit. You can't be officially listed until you get a Provisional License and completely the three-year probation period with it, at that point you could completely reinvent yourself, but remember, some things you just won't be able to hide or bury, so your careers have already begun..."
Many students nod along nervously, genuinely never having considered these things before, still committed to being celebrity heroes...because that's just how most pros do it. And most of the top 10 Pros -with the exception of Hawks, All Might, and Yoroi Musha- have public identities. Not to mention that only Yoroi Musha has a proper mask, the other two have their face exposed and are in their hero person 24/7 -before All Might got injured-.
But Yoroi Musha is literally known as 'the senior citizen hero,' so of course most people think he's old-fashioned for separating hero and personal life.
After a few more minutes of talking from Eraser, Ectoplasm politely knocks on the door and opens it, ready to begin their day with an intense math class...or in Horizon's case, nap time.
---9:15 AM...
Hearing the bell Horizon wakes up and stretches, sitting up in his chair just in time to see Ectoplasm leave the room and everyone getting up, ready to do whatever it is they do during recess.
"Hey Horizon," Sero gets his attention. "Since it's still raining, are you coming to the cafeteria with us? Can't imagine you'd wanna go up on the roof in this weather..."
"Sure," he says, normally he'd have to go force down an entire meal shake at this time, but thankfully that isn't the case anymore.
"Actually I was hoping to speak to you about something," Iida interrupts them, leaving Deku and Uraraka to approach Horizon. "Privately if possible."
Horizon just sighs and nods, turning in his chair to face the walkway. Sero smiles awkwardly and quickly moves to catch up to Tokoyami, Momo, Jiro, and Shoji, who were waiting at the door for him and Horizon.
A few seconds later and only Iida and Horizon were in the room. Iida carefully takes a seat on Tokoyami's chair and swivels to look at Horizon, hands in his lap and a complicated expression on his face.
"Ok, what do you want?" Horizon asks.
"I assume you heard the news about my brother..."
"Yeah, Stain got him," Horizon says casually. "I'm a doctor, but not the therapy kind, if that's what you're looking for."
"Well, actually, I'd like to know how you do it."
"Do what?"
Iida takes a deep breath and slouches slightly, for the first time Horizon sees him not being stiff as a board. "At the sports festival, you spoke freely about how you lost your parents, that you're alone in the world...but you're still moving forward. My brother was the most important person to me, I'm not like you, I still have my parents, but it still feels all hollow without him, how did you fix that? How did you keep going when it felt like part of you is missing?"
"That's actually easy," Horizon says, causing Iida to look at him in surprise. "You don't fix it."
"What?"
"You don't fix it, because you can't." Horizon's voice becomes surprisingly gentle as he continues, "every day it will hurt, and it'll never stop, no matter how many people tell you it will get better, it doesn't. But you grow, and the more you grow the smaller that hole in your chest seems in comparison. It doesn't stop hurting, you just get bigger and stronger so the pain seems like less, but it will always be there, at least that's my experience with it."
Iida looks down at the floor between them, letting his words sink in, realizing that maybe he wasn't crazy for thinking that he'd never be able to move on from this as he'd read about.
"But what if Stain is still out there?" Iida asks, looking up at Horizon.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, what if I can't let that fact go, that the monster that killed my brother, that killed a true hero, is still out there and will kill more people," Iida grits his teeth, a look of fury on his face. "What if I need to know that he will never do this again, not to anyone?"
Horizon sighs and shakes his head. "Look, I don't really believe in revenge for things like this, I mean your brother was a Pro Hero, this is the risk of the business. You can't get mad when someone trains and signs up to fight killers every day, then one killer gets lucky."
"You expect me to just let it go?!"
"No, but I expect you to understand the risks and consequences of actions, you can't act surprised when a soldier gets shot just because he was your brother. Heroes die every day, that's the job, that's literally what all the government propaganda convinces people to do, why should it be any different just because it's someone you love?"
"But my brother was a good person," Iida argues.
Horizon rolls his eyes beneath the visor, "the world doesn't really care about that, but I can see you're too invested to think about this logically so how about this, what's your plan?"
Iida looks confused, not sure where this is going, "my plan?"
"Yeah, you seem like you have one, probably a stupid one."
"I...I don't think I should tell you."
"If you tell me, I promise I'll keep it between us, no matter what," Horizon says. "It's a contract between us, and I never break a contract."
Iida looks at him skeptically, but decides to trust Horizon, he's never once seen him be dishonest, and he does value his opinion very highly.
"I'm going to kill Stain," Iida says, a look of rage flashing across his face at the thought.
"I figured...since I promised I would keep this between us then I won't report it, not that I would either way. What you want to do with your life isn't my problem, once I'm not there it can't bite me in the ass," Horizon shrugs.
Iida looks taken aback at this, he was expecting a lecture on how wrong killing was, that's what any other Hero Course student would do at the very least, but Horizon barely bats an eye at his plan.
"Thank you for understanding," Iida says.
"Ok but let's play the scenario out," Horizon says. "Are you gonna wait until you get a Provisional License?"
"I can't wait for that," Iida says.
"Ok, so illegal Quirk use, that's grounds to get you expelled if it's done to intentionally harm or kill someone. Basically anything but an absolute emergency, or if a Pro Hero gives you permission to engage while you're working under them, that's technically not legal but once you don't get hurt nobody would cause a fuss. But they'll never let you actually fight a villain before you get your license, so you'd have to go solo. And the cops will immediately know you went after Stain because of the obvious motive. So bye-bye hero career.
But all of this is assuming you get caught or someone interrupts the fight, which is super likely since Stain only hunts in the abandoned edges of big populated cities.
If you don't get caught it's all fine...well, if you live, which you won't."
"But---"
"No," Horizon interrupts him. "No way around it, he will kill you. He's killed dozens of Pro Heroes, including your brother who has the same Quirk as you, but with an extra what, fifteen years of experience and probably more power, do you really think you can kill someone that your brother couldn't?"
Iida just deflates, falling into silence for a tense moment as he quickly comes to the same conclusions as Horizon, but then he gets an insane idea.
"What if you help me?" Iida asks.
"No, not worth the risk of getting expelled."
"But he's killed dozens of people, including my brother, think of all the people we'd be saving," Iida pleads.
"Not my people, not my problem," Horizon says. "All that matters is my contract with Nezu, and I'm not fucking it up for anything, especially for some revenge crap, leave me out of it."
Iida just sits there for a moment, then eventually agrees. "You're right, this is my fight, not yours. I'm the one who inherited his Ingenium name, I should be the one to avenge him, to prove that I'm worthy, for Tensei."
"Whatever, just leave me out of it, and if anyone asks I didn't know anything," Horizon says in a serious tone. "Because I promise if you tell anyone about this conversation, they'll never find any of your pieces..."
A single bead of sweat rolls down Iida's face as he nods stiffly. And a moment later the bell rings as everyone begins flooding back into class...
END CHAPTER---