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CHAPTER START---
---South Bend, Ohio, USA, 8 PM…
"I didn't take you for a football fan," Star' says, sitting beside Horizon atop the stadium while the teams come back onto the field.
"Sure, 'Football'," Horizon says.
"When you're in America, you call it football," she says as the second half of the game begins. "Do we come to your country and try to change things?"
Horizon slowly looks at her, "Yes, that's what you people are most famous for…being obnoxious is part of your culture."
"Psh, whatever," she says as one of the cameras finally turns to them, showing them on the massive screen and announcing their presence to everyone.
Both Horizon and Star' politely wave to the people before the cameras return to the game.
"Do you plan to go shake hands and pander to the crowd after the game?" Star' asks as they return to their quiet conversation.
"We won't be staying for the whole thing, my target should be coming back to this city soon, as soon as he's in my range we'll warp out of here."
"Oh great, am I going to have to watch one of your infamous torture sessions," Star' frowns at the idea.
"Hey I didn't ask you to come find me, you can fly back to your base if you want."
"Are you saying you don't like my company?"
"You aren't my type, but the free food is nice."
"Don't like blondes?"
"Don't like 'Heroes'," Horizon says. "But it is nice talking to someone who isn't completely terrified of me."
Star and Stripe gives him a smug look, "Maybe if you figured out that Awakening I'd have something to be scared of, but you've still got a bit of work to do with that."
"I'm close, just needs the final touches, and studying your Quirk is exactly what has helped me get this far," Horizon says. "
"Oh, really?" Star' raises a brow at that. "And what have you figured out about my Quirk?"
"You impose your will on the world around you to force temporary change, the concept is simple, the quantum implications are…much less so, but you and I are beings of will, we just apply it differently," he says. "Would be helpful if you told me the name, for my personal records."
Star and Stripe sighs, "It's called New Order, and yeah it's basically what you just described, but I'm not giving you any more info on it."
"And I would never ask."
After a few more minutes of friendly conversation, Horizon stiffens and taps her arm.
"He's here, we should get into position," Horizon says.
"Damn, and I was just getting into the game," Star' grumbles.
SHAMBLES!
Star' tenses as she's suddenly in an expensive kitchen overlooking a small private lake in the backyard.
"I expected to feel, something," she says.
"Don't be stupid, you know how my 'Warping' works, why would you feel anything?"
"Yeah, I guess you're right," she says while looking around, seeing Horizon looking through the fridge. "Where are we, you said we were going to ambush someone, shouldn't we be on a rooftop someone waiting for them."
Horizon grabs a bottle of water from the fridge and then moves to the cabinets, rifling through them, "the best place to ambush people is where they feel safe, for this person, that's in his home."
As he's rifling through the kitchen Star and Stripe walks around, looking at the family pictures on the walls.
An older couple, and from what she could tell their daughter had already graduated college.
"Do you do this often?" she glances over to see Horizon walking into the living room with a box of cookies.
"All the time," he sits on the couch and puts his feet up. "They've got some cameras in here but I looped the footage from before we arrived, they'll be here soon enough, and we'll surprise them."
Star' gives him an uncomfortable look, noticing how relaxed he is, sitting on his soon-to-be victim's couch, eating their snacks, scrolling on his phone.
Eventually, with a sigh and roll of her eyes, she takes a seat beside him and turns on the TV.
"Is this seriously what people watch?" Star' asks.
"When was the last time you watched TV?"
She shrugs, "Back when I was a kid, my sister and I were watching cartoons on the plane when…"
Horizon glances at her, seeing the uncomfortable look on her face, "bad memories?"
"Yeah, something like that," Star' says before flipping to the news channel.
"Yeah, figured you'd do that. Everything else is Pro Hero propaganda bullshit anyway, especially the idiots who have their reality TV shows."
"Probably half the reason that Stain guy wanted to kill people," Star' says. "Oh, sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned him."
"Why?"
"Didn't he kill one of your friends?"
"Oh, that," Horizon shrugs. "I told the idiot that would happen if he tried to get revenge for his brother, but he didn't listen."
Star and Stripe turns to him, shocked. "I thought that was just bad luck, your statement was—"
"A complete lie," Horizon says. "He wanted revenge for someone he loves, which is something I can completely understand."
"Revenge isn't what Heroes do."
"If someone killed a person you cared about, you wouldn't want them dead?"
Star' frowns and turns back to the TV, "I guess I was being a bit of a hypocrite. If I had the chance, I would have done anything for revenge, but…it turns out I didn't need to."
"Wow, so you do have a dark side, who could possibly bring out that side of you?"
"I'd rather not talk about it," she says.
"Whatever," Horizon shrugs. "The target is almost here, now is your last chance before things get messy. I'd hate for Star and Stripe to get stained with blood because of me."
"I'll be fine, besides, I'm handling the Pro Hero side of the traitors…that's why I needed this break."
"Too many fights?"
"Too many former allies, too many traitors, too many reminders that I can't drop this mask for anyone."
"Heh, no wonder you like spending time with me," Horizon says as he gets up. "I'm honest about what I am, and I don't care about what you are."
"You know, some would say that makes us friends," Star' gives him a mischievous smile. "But I can't be friends with someone who prefers pizza to burgers."
"I thought we agreed to settle on steak."
"It's about the principle," Star' scoffs and folds her arms, jokingly. "I wear this cape for a reason, you know."
"And that reason is because your government isn't very creative, so they just wrapped you in their flag."
"It works when your flag is undefeated," she gives him a cocky smile.
Before Horizon can respond they what the front door open, and an older couple enters the home carrying some travel bags.
They hear the couple chatter from the hallway before the woman walks into the living room, removing her coat.
Only to freeze as she sees Horizon standing there, casually, while Star and Stripe are sitting on her couch, bashfully waving at her.
"Hi," Horizon politely waves, and her phone flies out of her pocket into his hand.
"Robert!" the woman yells, not taking her eyes off the heroes for even a second.
"I know I know!" The man says from down the hallway, Horizon can sense him struggling with their bags. "But I'm just saying I'd like to see my grandson more than twice a year, it's not like her law firm will collapse if she takes a few days off to—"
The man freezes as he sees Horizon and Star and Stripe in his living room.
"Honey, you should go wait upstairs," the man says, and his wife begins taking shaky steps back.
"Sorry but, that's not how this works," Horizon says, causing the woman to freeze. "Would you mind asking your husband where Senator Silvers's money is?"
"Robert?" she turns to her husband, getting more scared by the moment. "What is he talking about."
"I uh…I don't know what he's talking about, I—" The man suddenly warps in front of the couch, and with a wave of his hand Horizon uses Tack to control his clothes and shove him down onto the couch beside Star and Stripe.
"I'll take this," Horizons says as the man's phone flies over to his hand as well.
He deftly connects the phone to the device on his left forearm with a small cable before turning to the woman.
He casually gestures for her to walk over to him, and as if sensing the impending danger, she slowly begins to back away.
"No," Horizon uses the same trick to pull her over to him, grabbing her shoulder and turning her to face her husband.
"Don't you touc—" the man tries to get up, only for Star' to casually place a hand on his shoulder, keeping him seated. "Damn it! You're supposed to be heroes, why are you threatening innocent people?!"
"I haven't threatened anyone," Horizon says. "But innocent…the only innocent person here is her," he points to Star'.
"You're a traitor who did a lot of secret accounting for senators, stealing money from the federal budget and funneling it to them, so they can give it to Sentinel—" Horizon pauses, and turns to the man's wife. "And the fact that she barely reacted to that news, means she knew."
"I swear she didn't know until after I—"
"It doesn't matter," Horizon says. "For better or for worse, right? You're married, you're in this together. You had the better when you were living lavishly, and used some of that money to help set up your daughter's Law Firm…now I'm the worse."
"Wha—what are you going to do to us?" The man asks, barely getting the words out.
"Anything I want, until you start talking," Horizon grips the woman's shoulder, causing her to scream out and claw at his hand before he begins lifting her into the air by her shoulder.
"Stop it!" the man yells, and Horizon surprisingly drops the woman, allowing her to crumple to the floor and hold her shoulder.
"See, this is why I don't have anyone I love, all it does is invite weakness for my enemies," Horizon says.
At his words, Star and Stripe used all of her training to fight the emotions that almost showed on her face.
Feeling a profound sense of deja vu, as if watching a younger version of herself, who said the exact same words.
"I'm going to get some air," Star' says as she gets up and walks away.
"Wait, wait!" the woman begs. "Don't leave us with him! Please!"
Star' ignores her cries as she steps into the backyard, leaving Horizon to his heinous work.
---20 Minutes Later…
"Star', get in here," Horizon says as he steps into the backyard.
"What's wrong?" Star' asks as she steps into the living room, seeing a bloody mess left on the carpet and walls as the couple cling together, terrified. "Jesus Christ!"
"He's not here right now, obviously," Horizon says. "Can you just get her to shut up, I can only focus on one this at a time for this."
"Fine, whatever it takes to get this over with," Star' says as she walks over to the woman and gently places a hand over her mouth, pulling her away from Horizon and her husband.
"Now, this is going to hurt, a lot, so if you want to tell me the address, this is the time," Horizon says as he kneels in front of the man, the crying, blood-drenched man.
The man looks over to his wife, who is staring in horror, "If I talk, they'll know, and they'll kill them all…I'm sorry."
"Protecting your family, I can respect that," Horizon says, his voice surprisingly gentle. "But I'm a bit annoyed that you're more scared of your traitor friends than me, especially since I'll do much worse than just killing your kids and grandkids."
"Wha—" Horizon grabs both sides of the man's head, holding him in place.
"Hold still, I'd rather not fry your brain too soon," Horizon says as the man's eyes begin to flicker white and roll back into his head.
Star and the man's wife watch, in horror, as Horizon slowly moves his hand away from the man's skull.
But streams of electricity leap between his palms, through the man's head, burning the man's hair and skin as his body trembles and nose bleeds.
After almost a minute of this horrific show, the man's eyes pop and are burnt shut.
And after a few more seconds of spasms, the corpse falls back onto the floor.
The woman in Star's arms was frantically kicking and screaming, with her hand muffling her, with tears flowing down her face.
"What did you do?" Star' asks, not sure what she witnessed beyond the clear murder.
Or more accurately, execution.
"I um…whew," Horizon tries to get up, but strumbles and drops to one knee. "Wow, that's a serious headache. I need a minute," Horizon sits on the floor, removing his visor for Star' and the woman to see his masked face beneath.
And the blood flowing from his nose, which he quickly wipes away.
"So god bleeds," Star' says.
"Shut up," Horizon says, struggling to get up.
After a few deep breaths, he puts on his visor, and takes a moment to sort the new memories.
"What was that?" Star' asks.
"I'm thinking of calling it, Bioelectric Mimicry, what do you think?"
She raises a brow at him, "You copied the signals in his brain to get some of his memories?"
"Surface thoughts, but he'd been thinking so hard about not giving me that information, that it was at the surface, I have what I need," Horizon says as he stretches his limbs, trying to relax.
"Did he have to die?" Star' asks as she releases the woman, who rushes over to her husband, desperately trying to shake him awake.
"It's a new move," Horizon shrugs. "I have what I need so we can get out of here, let's go."
"What about her?" Star' asks, gesturing to the woman. "We need to send her to a police station."
"No, the people I'm hunting are well connected, she gets arrested they'll know I'm after them using this route," Horizon waves his hand, and the woman and her husband disappear, swapped for two small rocks.
"Where did you just send them?"
"Down, a few miles," Horizon says as he takes out his phone. "I need to make a call to have this place sterilized when we leave, give me a minute…"
Star and Stripe stands there, stunned, as he casually walks into the other room to call his connection in the US Government, the team assigned to help him hunt down the traitors.
Part of her was concerned about how coldly he acted toward people. How casually he took the life of others.
It was almost, familiar.
But she shakes her head, banishing the thought.
'No, I won't let her haunt me anymore, he doesn't have anything to do with her,' Star' quickly convinces herself.
Simply happy that she finally had a friend, a real friend who wasn't using her because of what she could do.
"Yo, I managed to get a name for the address, it's in Florida," Horizon says as he casually enters the room.
"Oh, are you going there tonight?"
"No there isn't anyone in there right now, I got access to the camera around that entire block, how about we head to Manhattan?"
Star' raises a brow at him, "I thought your enemies would be smarter than to go to Manhattan, where you spend most of your time."
"They are, but there is a restaurant I've been missing and tonight is the grand opening of the first location outside of Japan, you coming?"
"Sure, let's go," Star' says as she walks over to him. "What's the name, I'd look to look up the menu before we get there."
"Golden Hearts, they've got food from all over the world," Horizon says. "But I personally just pick something at random every time, it's all good."
"Ohh, is it that good?"
"And it gives people like us privacy away from the fans and cameras," Horizon says before warping them both away.
END CHAPTER---