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CHAPTER START---
Within Horizon Tower there is no shortage of luxury. From the massive entertainment room to the entire floor dedicated to its indoor pool, it has everything a person needs to unwind after a week of fighting crime.
But arguably its greatest asset, is the gym.
The gym in which Horizon currently sits.
Within this massive room filled with both traditional equipment for the more normal users, and more high tech weights and machines for individuals like Horizon and Dark Shadow who can easily move about weight by the tons.
He sits on the sparring mats with his legs crossed, wearing only his body glove and visor, showing off the intricacies of his newly upgraded body glove to the missing audience.
Now sporting even more defined plating layered atop his muscles, designed to accentuate his physique, while also having a blend of his own hair.
This was added recently just incase the new bursts of power gained from his Quirk reacts poorly to things outside his body, and it makes him releasing massive amounts of energy more apparent and flashy.
Even now, with both hands out, palms upward, Scalpel rests across his hands, blade out laying flatly on his palms.
His Room was small, only covering a meter around him, and his focus was entire on the sword.
His body glove showed flowing blue rivers of energy moving between the plates, but there was no obvious origin for the energy.
It was as if every cell in his body produced it at once, but the flow was clearly moving up his body, along his hands and toward Scalpel.
When the blue energy flowed through him and reached his palms it becomes the energy vapor, a direct evolution of Booster Shot.
This vapor is cool to the touch and heals anyone that comes into contact with it, granting them temporary minor cellular regeneration.
With the blade laying flat across his gloved palms, the energy rose up and clung to it under his command, shrouding it in blue energy that appears almost liquid, if not for small bits of it floating away and dissipating in the air.
Focusing his mind he coats the blade in layer upon layer of this energy, until beneath his visor he began to sweat.
Not from the amount of energy being use, that would be absurd for the organic nuclear reactor he was slowly becoming.
No, the focus was stressing his mind, controlling every movement of his energy down to the molecular level.
It demanded all his focus.
But this is the norm for any ability he is developing.
When he created Curtain, that was his first attempt at controlling energy that would be exposed to the atmosphere, but even that was different.
That was simply forcing the energy to be attracted to itself and bind together.
For him, it was as if he had to get bricks to attach to each other, but each brick was magnetically attracting the next.
It came as easy as breathing.
But this, to weaponize this same energy within the atmosphere, it is akin to getting a sea of magnets to stick together, but they all carry the same charge, pushing against each other.
He is forced to individually layer the magnets or change their polarity until his masterpiece is made, until he has the ability to Divide in the most brutal of ways.
And from this, he would lay the foundation of the next stage of his progress, for the abilities that would take him beyond the realm of Heroes.
For those that would come after his Ascension, a slew of abilities he'll create and shackles he'll break free of to become a truly liberated superhuman.
But first, he must solve the matrix of energy for this variation, no, this evolution of his Incision ability, he must first solve, Divide...
A few minutes later, the energy coating the blade becomes thick, like a thin coat of water gripping onto the exposed blade.
He noticed the energy shaking in an unstable manner as he opens his eyes, seeing the ripples within the energy.
ROOM!
He shuts off his Quirk and the liquid energy immediately splashes onto the sparring mat, forming a light blue puddle.
As Horizon catches his breath he looks at it, and after a minute it begins to quickly dissipate into the air.
"Well that's interesting," Horizon says as he takes a small break. "Maybe I can make something out of that, put it to use."
As he ponders that thought Ryuko walks into the training room, wearing a pair of blue shorts and a matching sports bra, long blond hair in a ponytail and Scalpel in her hand.
Not the Scalpel he has currently, but the exact copy he leaves in Horizon tower, just incase he has to go from Law Matani to Horizon and can't afford a quick trip to UA.
And ever since she found the secondary sword in his office months ago she's been training with it.
"Ready for your lesson?" Horizon asks as she walks over.
"Have you seen the news?" Ryuko asks, walking over to the large monitor built into the wall.
"No I've been busy doing more important things."
She turns on the monitor, and they both see an interview from almost an hour ago starring Mudman.
There was a massive collapsed robot behind him, some parts of it and the ground obviously softened and hardened again judging by the deformations, and how some of its legs were in the earth.
Pro Heroes were in the background being treated by medics or helping to clean up the rubble, torn down buildings and cratered roads filled the background.
But that was hardly noticed when they both saw the state of Juzo's suit, the visor was cracked as were many of the armor plates, and the way he held his arm was telltale sign of a hairline fracture.
"Mudman," the reported asks, a older man with three eyes. "Before Team Horizon arrived the Pro Heroes on the scenes were uncoordinated and scrambling about, but you were able to take charge and focus everyone on the enemy, is there anything you can tell us about how you did that?"
"Well...I just figured if we stop the robot then it'll destroy less of the city and less people will get hurt. Horizon did pick me for his team since I'm good at coordinating people during chaotic situations and constantly adapting my plans.
That's why I'm suppose to lead our team on any case if he has to step away for a bit, but we still have to take the specifics into account for this.
For example, of the Pro Heroes that were already here, none of them really have Quirks made for this kind of situation, so the best choice for them was definitely to evacuate and rescue people.
I just happen to have a Quirk that works great on giant robots," he says politely.
"I see, and is there any particular reason why Horizon himself didn't show up?" the reporter asks. "I imagine this situation could be handled within seconds by him."
"Oh it definitely could be, but Horizon was busy," Juzo immediately raises his hand to stop the reporter from speaking. "I can't say what he was doing so please don't ask, its delicate Hero work."
"I see," the man says. "Well if---"
Ryuko shuts off the monitor, "it goes for another twenty minutes of them praising your team, mostly Juzo obviously."
"Good for them, worked out perfectly," Horizon says as he stand up.
"700 people died and even more were injured. It took them half an hour to bring that thing down."
"So?"
Ryuko gives him a tired look, "so...you could have dealt with it in seconds and saved a lot of lives, but, you didn't."
"Ofcourse not, pain is a good teacher, and Japan needs to learn not to always depend on me to run around solving its problems," Horizon shrugs. "That's the same attitude that led to the situation we're in right now with All Might retiring and crippling our Pro Hero system with it."
Ryuko raises a brow at that, "I thought you wanted the entire country to be dependent on you so you could become president or something, did that plan change?"
Horizon chuckles, "the plan was never to be president, just to be untouchable, and that's still in effect. But occasionally people need to get hurt, so they can better appreciate how good I am at stopping them from getting hurt."
Ryuko narrows her eyes at him for a moment, "are you sure you're a Hero? Because that didn't sound very heroic to me..."
Horizon chuckles and walks up to her slowly placing a finger below her chin and raises her head up, "have you really not figured it out yet? I'm just a supervillain that wants a Quirk License."
Her hands instinctively reach up to his shoulders, ready for him to warp that visor off so she can kiss him, "oh yeah, and what would that make me?"
"Mine, that's all you ever need to be," Ryuko begins leaning forward as Horizon immediately pulls away.
Ryuko pouts and follows him onto the mat after taking off her shoes, "just so you know, you really aren't subtle with the way you just let bad things happen that you could stop."
"And yet you're still here, madly in love with me..."
Ryuko rolls her eyes, "I just figured, with a Quirk like yours, if you weren't some selfish cold hearted jerk---"
"Hey!"
She sticks her tongue out at him, "you'd never rest, because with a Quirk like yours, if anything bad happens you'd blame yourself, so either you be...well, you, or you'd go insane with guilt."
"That's a lot of mental gymnastics to justify me sleeping in instead of going to fight the robot."
"Its something I've noticed for a while," she takes a fighting stance with her Scalpel. "I was a bit worried when I did."
"Thought I was a villain?"
"Thought I was crazy for not caring that you could be..."
She rushes forward, starting another of their practice sessions, metal clashes and sparks fly, until an hour later Ryuko is laying on the mat drenched in sweat.
"One day," she pants, still catching her breath, "I'll land a hit on you."
"You're still hesitant," Horizon says, standing above her.
As he takes a seat beside her on the mat she explains herself.
"Its a sword, its sharp, and I...you know."
"Am madly in love with me, I know," he teases.
"You're the worst."
"And you love me anyway, but hey you're the one who wants to learn this."
"I know I know," she sits up beside him as the both look out the large windows at the Tokyo skyline. "But swinging a sword at people still goes against my Pro Hero instincts. One wrong move and I cut cut their head off."
"True, but that's what training is for. And that's why you have to use a real sword, to get over that mental hurdle."
"I don't know, still seems weird, and unsafe."
"Its how I learned, and I turned out great," Horizon shrugs.
"Uh-huh, sure. But aside from that?"
"You're much better than last week, I like those new moves."
"Thanks, I've been researching a lot to surprise you, didn't work thought," she frowns.
"Ohh, you meant with the swordsmanship, I was talking about last ni---" Ryuko shoves him hard and he immediately beings laughing.
"You're the worst!" she gets up completely red faced and stomps away.
As she's a few steps away Horizon's phone beeps, stopping both of them. They both look over to it beside the sparring mat before he raises a hand to the side of his visor, answering the call.
Ryuko frowns, knowing this means his day off just got cut short, but she patiently waits for his call to end.
"So much for taking it easy," Horizon says as he gets up.
"Anything big?"
"Got some intel on a Nomu Lab, I'll be going over there tonight with some Pros to clear it out, and this one should have a mainframe with good intel for us."
"I feel like you aren't suppose to tell me that," Ryuko points out as they begins walking out of the training room.
"Eh, I'm not worried. I've got one spy trying to get intel on me, and you aren't her, plus at this point I mostly trust you," he shrugs.
Ryuko stops walking and turns around, raising her had to gently tap his visor, "mostly..." she continues walking.
"Well, some things can't be helped."
"I know," she says sadly. "But we've still got some time, how about we take a shower then I make us some lunch?"
"That sounds perfect..."
END CHAPTER---