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pat.reon: Keanu_Eugene (30+ chapters ahead)
CHAPTER START---
"What an unexpected outcome..." All For One's deep and shrill voice mutters quietly.
He was sitting in his dark room atop the large and comfortable chair, multiple life support devices plugged into him to help keep him stable.
And off to the side was a screen playing the final moments of Horizon's interview between himself and Chitose.
The entire interview took just over an hour, but for the future demon lord of Japan, it gave enough answers for a lifetime.
Standing beside All For One at the moment was Kurogiri, the most essential of all their Nomu, currently waiting patiently for any command his master gives.
"Call Ujiko," All For One commands, and the screen hears his voice and obeys.
"Master," Dr. Ujiko answers, his camera shut off so only his voice was coming through."I assume you saw that interview doctor..."
"Of course, and once again I must insist that we do away with those pathetic League Of Villain children. You only took control of the Paranormal Liberation Army weeks ago when this interview was announced, and look at how well they did with your instructions.
Perfectly executed, they got all the answers we needed out of Horizon, without alerting him of any villain involvement."
All For One sighs, once again having to deal with his friend being sick of sinking precious Nomu resources into Shigaraki's little games.
Kurogiri speaks up, "shall I transport Gigantomachi to terminate the League Of Villains master?"
All For One shakes his head, slightly annoyed that he seems to be the only person interested in keeping Shigaraki around. "No Kurogiri, I still have use for Tomura Shigaraki."
"Do you still intend to stick to your original plan?" Ujiko asks.
"No, we now have confirmation that the plan is unnecessary. I no longer need any successor, transferring my original Quirk into storage until Tomura is ready for it is pointless. And I certainly prefer using the superior original than the cloned version I would have had."
"Then why do we need the brat if you don't plan to pass everything down to him?"
"Because, my dear friend, I will live forever. But before that, I will use Tomura as an ace to wrench All Might's heart, my greatest heinous act to spite him, and Nana Shimura. Until then we shall keep Tomura in the dark about the Meta Liberation Army, so long as they don't clash we shall be fine."
"I shall inform Tomura of this new rule," Kurogiri says.
"Yes, now doctor, shall we discuss the exact contents of that interview? It seems Horizon is already lined up to the next Symbol Of Peace, I'd like to do something about that if possible, after I get healed."
"Hmm, do you still believe he can heal you?" Ujiko asks. "The risk is quite immense, exposing yourself to someone so close to All Might, it could be detrimental."
"Has he not proven his genius time and time again doctor?"
"Well, he has. Although I still believe my Quirk Singularity theory is correct, I can admit there is much merit in his analysis. His mind is wasted as a hero, just imagine all the things he could do without those silly things like 'Human Rights' and 'War Crimes' limiting him, nonsense ideals only made to hinder the progress of science...he could be truly great standing beside us."
"True. And he clearly has a deep understanding of Quirks and medicine. Not to mention his terrifying intellect and intuition, Aoyama was able to confirm many things, but listening to those many recordings of him talking in school is nothing compared to the way he so easily figured out our goals."
"He's a problem master."
"No Ujiko, he's the one and only solution. Because I now know that for certain he can heal me..."
"Hmm, perhaps we should sacrifice the spy and have him ask for some sort of confirmation. The moment you make contact they will surely find him, so it makes no difference. Not to mention the risk involved in revealing yourself is too great, they'll instantly be searching for you."
"A problem if I followed our backup plan. But now I shall retain my original Quirk, I have nothing to fear. But of course, this is assuming they'd ever find me. I have purposely kept crime low in this area since Horizon entered the scene. His omnipresence is quite problematic, I can't afford to have him anywhere near me."
"I see, and what exactly did he say that has you so sure that he can perform this operation?"
"Because he said he can."
"What?"
"You still fail at understanding people Ujiko, Horizon is a being of arrogance and absolute certainty in himself. When asked if creating a perfected Nomu was possible, his exact words were, 'they can't do it...', so he must think that he can."
"And with his track record, it wouldn't be that far of a stretch. But rebuilding someone from the genes up, even with a century of practice I'm still working on the process."
"Yes, but as brilliant as you are my friend, you aren't Horizon. Do remember that he's a living miracle doctor, you should try to have some faith..."
"Sigh, alright, but only because this man is our only hope at fully healing you."
"Thank you."
"But that leaves an even bigger problem now," Dr. Ujiko says. "Now we know he can heal you, how do we make an appointment?"
"Hmm," All For One falls deep into thought, considering his hundreds of contacts in and out of Japan that had enough leverage to make most people in the world do whatever he wants. But none of them could affect people like Nezu or Horizon.
They were the kind of individuals that nations would have gone to war for just centuries ago, they cannot be pressured by political or financial means. And he knew physically threatening Horizon wouldn't work, it would be the same as if he was threatened, and it would end very poorly.
His usual offer in cases like this would be a Quirk. Giving someone a second Quirk, a minor one that wouldn't overload their brain. That was enough to make most people do whatever he wants.
'His arrogance would see that as an insult, and we'd get into a pointless fight...'
"We need leverage," All For One says. "Aoyama reported that Horizon has no family, and from what he said during the interview I detected no lies."
"Classmates?" Ujiko asks.
"He doesn't particularly care about them."
"What about Principal Nezu? With an army of Nomus, Gigantomachia, yourself, and Kurogiri, it's possible."
"But unlikely, not to mention holding a hostage doesn't work with Horizon. I believe the best plan is to wait. One of my friends in the Hero Public Safety Commission gave me some interesting information and I'm trying to make certain connections. But it will be a week or more before any answers are found."
"That would leave two weeks before he heads to the training camp to meet up with his classmates, a perfect place for an ambush."
"Not an ambush doctor, just a chat. I have nothing to gain from fighting him, but everything to gain from bringing him to our side."
"I see, Shakedown is almost ready for such an encounter, either way, that is, it should be ready in ten days."
"Good, but I'd like to have as much information as possible before going into a potentially dangerous situation, at least now that I'm not as powerful as I once was, how about we provide a little exercise to Horizon..."
"Hmm, what do you suggest?" Ujiko asks.
"Let's just send a few demolition squads of Nomu into Tokyo and see how he does. Such an intense situation should force him to show more of his cards."
"Standard Nomu?"
"Mmm, no, I think it's about time he had a rematch with the Brainless, let's see exactly how much stronger he has become since the USJ..."
"This should provide useful information," Ujiko says. "Kurogiri, warp all the Nomu from lab 17 into Shibuya, I'm sending them a command to destroy everything and kill everyone..."
"Understood," Kurogiri says before expanding his Warp Gate and leaving the room...
While these plans were being made, just above the Shoowaysha publishing building, standing on his hoverboard 100 meters above the city, was Horizon.
Currently, he was apparently looking out at the massive Tokyo area, the skyline expanding beyond the reach of his vision, brightly lit to the point where he couldn't see any stars in the night sky.
But an important conversation was taking place in his visor at the moment.
"And you're sure about this?" Nezu asks from the other side of the call.
"Of course," Horizon says. "Cloning takes a lot of power and requires these preservatives and chemicals in bulk, track those shipments and you'll be one step closer to finding the Nomu production facility."
"Hmm, alright, I'll forward this to the police, but how did you figure out that they were cloning."
"How else would they have so many copies of Super Regeneration? It's a one in 300 million Quirk but they've had multiple Nomu with it, seems fishy. Not to mention at the rate they're burning through genetic material it makes sense to invest in cloning.
Cloning sentient beings is against humanitarian law, but clearly they don't care about those laws. And since only around 5% of Quirks can be used offensively in any useful capacity they can't just destroy every useful Quirk when a Nomu dies, they need spares."
"Curate as many useful Quirks as possible for when they operate on Shigaraki...how terrifying."
"Pretty much."
"But I must ask, what if a person was born with multiple Quirks? Would all of this be necessary?"
"What? That's a weird question," Horizon says.
"I'm simply curious."
"Ok, well...if you were born with multiple Quirks your body would have a safeguard so all of this wouldn't be necessary, not at all. You'd just exist like that and be fine," Horizon shrugs. "But it's not like that's possible. The way Quirks work there can't be one person with multiple Quirks."
"What do you mean?"
"The best way to describe it is like this, Quirks aren't attachments onto a person, they're part of a person. It's like adding a scope to a gun, the scope is the Quirk. Then you add a laser sight, in a sense that's another Quirk.
But the entire thing, the entire person is still one weapon, with appropriate attachments. That's why it all works together. So suddenly instead of a scope and a laser sight, the Quirk is just 'attachments' or something like that."
"Like Todoroki?"
"Exactly. If he was a Nomu he'd have Endeavor's Hellflame Quirk, and his mom's ice Quirk. But since he was born like that his genetic structure made it into one Quirk, half-hot half-cold.
Compared to that, Nomu is like the gun but instead of proper connectors you use tape to hold it all together, that's why they aren't fully stable, because the tape is always falling apart.
A person cannot be born with multiple Quirks, because when you're being made from the genes up they'll be treated as one Quirk, even if you have multiple abilities."
"I suppose we've grown so accustomed to Quirks that we identify abilities as Quirks rather than the Quirks themselves," Nezu says.
"Yeah, that's why Shoto's Quirk name is so stupid, Endeavor was clearly thinking of it as his Quirk and his wife's being in one body, but it's an entirely new Quirk..."
"I suppose I should add this to your Quirk Specialist data, along with your breakdown of the Nomu structure."
"Yeah, that'll----"
BOOM!
A loud explosion rattles the area, reaching all the way to Horizon from nearly 20km away.
"What was that?!" Nezu's panicked voice asks.
"Check the news, I'll call you back later---"
Horizon hangs up and begins racing into the city on his hoverboard, moving 100km/h.
Toward a massive skyscraper that was on it was down, about to flatten the streets around it that were already on fire...
END CHAPTER---