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CHAPTER START---
Pantu's brain rattles around her skull. Swollen and aching, each passing second like a dozen white-hot nails being hammered into her skull.
Made worse by the bright light of the noon daylight as she opens her eyes, spotting drops of blood on the lap of her skirt-suit as she's slumped forward.
She squeezes her eyes shut, lifting a hand to her face, feeling the dried blood under her nose, eyes, and ears.
"Hm?" The ringing in her ear finally subsides as she opens her eyes, seeing Horizon sitting across the small table from her.
Behind him is the Tokyo Chasm, and looking around, she could see they were on opposite sides of a small wooden table, draped in a white tablecloth.
Warped here from a restaurant a few cities away.
She could see the battered and cracked ground for a mile all around them, the scorched mountains in the distance, and the edge of the Tokyo Chasm.
"You brought us to the floating island, in the middle of the chasm," she mutters, reaching for the glass of water before her and taking a sip.
Horizon has nothing in front of him but is busy typing on his phone, ignoring her, giving her time to adjust.
Pantu doesn't see anything or anyone else around them, and isn't surprised to know she isn't restrained in any way.
After all, Horizon is here, so what would be the point?
"Is this the part where I beg for mercy before you kill me?" she asks.
Horizon chuckles, placing his phone on the table. "You aren't the begging type, and you know better than to think I have mercy in me."
"Then get it over with…"
Beneath his visor, Horizon smiles. "The sky is bright purple," he says.
Pantu raises a brow at this, glancing up to see the clear noon sky in its usual blue. And it takes a few seconds before she realizes what's wrong.
"My Quirk. How?"
"The most reliable way," he reaches into his jacket pocket and removes a still-beating heart, placing it on the table. "Now we can have a more honest conversation."
"Is that what you want?"
"Closure would be good for both of us, don't you agree?"
Pantu glances at his phone on the table, then at his visor. 'Either he's recording or broadcasting. Anything I say can make Japan's situation worse.'
"Not in the mood to talk?" he asks while holding the heart.
"Just crush it."
"I'll start with a small squeeze."
He squeezes the heart, causing it to struggle against his grip for just a second, then releases.
But Pantu only feels confused by the lack of pain. Seeing this, Horizon sets it on the table and relaxes into his seat.
"Right, I forgot to explain. That's not your heart."
SHAMBLES!
Pantu's daughter appears at the table, tied to a chair, gagged, staring wide-eyed at both of them as she panics.
Pantu's eyes widen, realizing the implication. "You kidnapped her?"
"Are we really going to split hairs over that? C'mon? Just get to talking already."
Pantu looks away from her daughter, down to the heart on the table, and keeps her mouth shut.
The woman panics even more, seeing that her mother was seemingly fine with sacrificing her for the greater good of Japan.
And Horizon isn't completely surprised by this. "Wow, part of me assumed you'd only care about Japan, but I have to admit, very impressive."
He warps her daughter away.
"The weight of one life can be worth billions, but not hers. All men are not created equal. You know that better than anyone."
"Then I guess I'll add a few billion to the scale. I will go to all the countries in your little 'Anti-Horizon' task force you attacked me with, and put all their cities into a blender. That enough motivation? Starting with Japan, obviously."
Horizon was lying. The last thing he wants is more geopolitics interrupting his life. Retirement was his goal, and closing this part of his life was necessary for it, but without her Quirk, Pantu couldn't possibly know that.
Instead, all she could see was the unstoppable being in front of her who she'd hurt so deeply, that his wrath could wash over the world.
So she believed him.
"Fine. What do you want to know?"
Horizon subtly starts broadcasting to the world. "Everything, from the very beginning. Without certain personal details…"
"I understand. Then you should know why I even allowed your existence in the first place."
Horizon leans back in his seat, taking in everything.
"Seven years ago, I was informed of All Might's injury. He had less than 5 years to live, even less to be a Pro Hero. Japan was structured in a way that everything leaned on him, so this was unacceptable.
Working alongside Nezu and a few others, I created systems and programs to force the Pro Heroes to work together more often. This birthed more Pro Hero teams, in the hopes that it would be enough to maintain the status quo in Japan after he retired.
But it wasn't enough, not nearly enough. No matter what we did there wasn't a way to get the same effect as All Might, but he also couldn't be healed by the current technology or Quirks."
"Until you found a miracle."
"Yes. Nezu set a trap for Arsenal, your mother, and caught her. Along with your father, and you. He contacted me a few hours later to ask my permission to make a deal. A deal that in any other circumstance, I never would have agreed to.
The normal procedure would be to lock all three of you in Tartarus, but you were out only hope at healing All Might, so he agreed to leave you free if you attended UA. In some misguided hope, to make a Pro Hero out of you.
In exchange for your work on All Might and graduating UA, we'd release your parents with new identities, but expel them from Japan.
That's a deal I did intend to honor. Having All Might was one thing we couldn't refuse, but a Pro Hero that could heal anything and warp. That was also a miracle in itself.
But things changed soon after. Star and Stripe learned we had Arsenal and The Heart Thief. She wanted Arsenal dead for some reason, but so did damn near every government in the world. Your father, by proxy, would also suffer her fate.
We were perfectly willing to lie to the entire world, claiming to have executed them. But she threatened to come to Japan and do it herself if we didn't really do it, and send her proof.
She didn't give us any time to come up with an alternate plan, so we were forced to obey.
We didn't know you were Mystery Class at the time, something Nezu hid to protect you from us. A smart move on his part, but this led us to assume we could simply kill you when All Might was fully healed and there would be no repercussions. Obviously, we were very wrong.
Your combination of abilities and your upbringing leave only two true options for your existence. Either fall in line, or be removed. And all we knew was that you could heal and warp, so the choice was easy, considering you'd never truly join us."
"They were dead before my first day of school."
"Yes. And only when you announced yourself as Mystery Class during the UA Sports Festival did I realize my mistake."
"And you immediately started planning to kill me or lock me up, right? By working with Dr. Ujiko, of all people, the mind behind the Nomu and the person who builds and clones them for All For One."
Pantu frowns. "He is the second-best Quirk specialist on the planet, and was the lead designer of the cell that contained you until you broke out."
"All For One broke me out," he corrects her. "I didn't have enough time to adjust yet, so I suppose Ujiko was good enough at his job. But was it worth the chaos of keeping him free?"
"I knew he was working with Shigaraki from the start, but we needed him. And, the League Of Villains provided a good smokescreen. Something to keep you busy and keep the country, eventually the world, chaotic.
The moment that chaos stopped, you would have asked for your contract to be considered completed, and we needed all the time we could get."
"I never would have done that. I follow what I agreed to, no matter what. Just as right now, All For One broke me out, and I agreed to simply stay out of his way if he doesn't reach for anything past Japan. After all, I'm retired from the Pro Hero business."
"You've truly forsaken Japan?"
"Can you blame me?"
"No, I can't," she says. "But perhaps I should have expected as much. After all, I rigged the case against you after the Gigantomachy, and in your darkest hour, you accepted the blame and loss of your parents because of it. That surprised me, as did your outburst in the courtroom.
The judge was supposed to rule against you. I even threatened the others to have them leave if they wouldn't rule against you. And yet, he crumbled under the pressure. That was when I started getting truly desperate."
"Light shot. That one was annoying. But I did learn a lot from that. Now those kinds of attacks don't work on me."
Pantu smiles, bitterly. "After Tech, I realized the world would never turn against you. The only way to get rid of you, was to kill you. But you were already so powerful. I had Lightshot broken out of prison and brought to Japan just for this.
I knew Light was something you couldn't easily sense, so I ordered a hit on myself, and gave him a bonus for you. Then it was a matter of positioning us, so he'd have to shoot me through you, which he did."
"And you would have died with me. A risk you took, knowing if it worked, your job would be done, and if it didn't, I'd save you. Plus, at the moment, I never even considered it was your plan, especially not when we found records of him being hired by Villains to kill you. I can't help but respect your commitment to the mission."
"My life or millions, an easy choice," she says. "But things got more complicated after that. We had the best simulations on the planet, running every scenario we could against you.
All of humanity versus Horizon, and in every one, we lose, badly. The only option was a miraculous situation where you were vastly weakened before the fight began."
"Flect Turn."
"Pure dumb luck on our part. Manipulating Star and Stripe was easy enough, with how inconsiderate you were toward her trauma."
"Yeah, I can see that. Turns out that people take that kind of thing very seriously."
"It seems you can only understand when it's relevant to you…a remarkably human trait."
He rolls his fingers on the table, urging her to continue.
"During the Flect Turn incident, I constantly asked for more and more Panacea. The fact that you were modifying it to make people immune to Trigger helped greatly.
This exhausted you, and the moment Flect Turn was captured, we would attack, first by using Star and Stripe to either weaken or distract you."
"We?"
"Russia, China, the North African nations, and most of Western Europe. Between your blatant disregard for the sovereignty of nations, the lives of their people, and the fact that you'd be joining the United States after graduation, you were a catastrophic problem waiting to happen."
"So you decided to take me out before that. Creating the task force with special equipment, all the battle plans, then using Star and Stripe to soften me up in my already exhausted state."
"Quite frankly, we never expected you to be that exhausted."
"Well, I was a bit busy trying to make enough Panacea for 7 billion people," he snaps at her. "Not to mention protecting over twenty cities from the gas itself and dealing with Nine, and healing all of Las Vegas. But while I was busy protecting and healing the world, all of you were waiting to stab me in the back."
"It was the best possible opportunity. But we never expected your friends to help us."
"Tch, unlike you, when they agree to a job, they see it through. That's how everyone should be."
"Unlike them, I only saw the cruel, brutal, efficient side of you, so that wasn't an option for me."
"Which is how we got here," he says. "And what do you think happens now?"
"You kill me, then go off to the United States, which will cut the reparations they've been paying all the countries that lost Pro Heroes because of this incident, and Japan for the Tokyo Chasm."
"Wow, you people really made them pay that much. No wonder he was so happy when I told him to stop paying. Blaming Star and Stripe for triggering another mental episode was a good call. And you claimed it happened to both of us and is a byproduct of our Quirks, that left America with no other choice."
"I had years to think about this, which is why it worked so well."
"True, you're very good. But All For One has a few hundred years of experience on you, so you're not the best. That's why he knew the only way to win a game with me, was to not play. He also understands what I want now, better than you."
"Better than me?" she asks, not sure what he means.
"That's right, because I'm not going to kill you."
Her eyes widen, instantly mortified at the thought of whatever else he has planned.
"No, but I'm also not sparing your life, certainly never forgiving you," he places a second beating heart on the table. "No, I'm keeping you alive. You have to survive, to see what becomes of this country with your own eyes. I'm retired now, so I won't be coming to save it.
So, regardless of who rules, I, Horizon, order them to keep you alive to witness everything firsthand. After all, everything that happens now, is all on you."
Pantu stares at him, and a few silent tears flow down her cheeks. "How is it that you can be more cruel than most, even while showing 'mercy'?"
"My mother taught me well…"
While she's reeling within her mind, Horizon places the first heart that was on the table to his chest, and warps it back into himself.
Pantu's attention snaps to him, realizing that he'd squeezed his own heart earlier, meaning her daughter was never in any danger.
She couldn't even understand why he would operate in this way, only expecting malevolence and cruelty from him.
Because she failed to realize that all Horizon wants, is to wash his hands of the Hero-Villain games.
"Was I wrong?" she asks, in the most frail voice she'd ever had. "About the things I did. Was there a better way?"
Horizon pauses and considers his words very carefully, and comes to one simple conclusion, which brought a smile to her face.
"No," he says. "In your position, with the information you had, I would have done the same thing…"
With that, he leaves her heart on the table and warps away, ready to start his new life with all of this behind him…
END CHAPTER---