CHAPTER 221(Blood and Dust)

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CHAPTER START---

"I've never actually been this far out this way before, so this is the city he was protecting huh," Cellophane says as he sits on the hoverboard, legs hanging over the side as he enjoys his food.

They were hovering just above the skyline of a small city, built in the valley of two small mountains. On either side was nothing but forest, but the city has highways along the coast and a bustling port.

Almost entirely due to the silver mines that were in these mountains and helped to establish the trade routes, long run dry, and unoccupied.

The same mines Horizon was currently checking.

Standing silently he has a Room open, 38km -23mi- wide -diameter-, he can sense everything in the city and the mountains at once.

Focusing just enough for the human sized being, so he doesn't get flooded by ever leaf and pebble, he carefully uses Scan to search for any villains.

His Room is much larger than when he joined UA, even now it's grown noticeably since the new semester began.

At this size he feels the drain on his energy, but nowhere near as bad as before.

And no sudden headache attacking him.

'I'm getting used to it,' he thinks. 'But something is still holding me back, that final push. Or maybe I just need to keep training and I'll break past that limit naturally...'

Exactly as Dr. Garaki said, a logical mind like Horizon's will never come to the realization of such an illogical solution on his own.

To align his mind and heart.

To unite his entire being in the singular primal purpose.

To---

"They aren't here," Horizon says. "No villains, and the mines in these mountains are all collapsed so they can't be in their either."

"They must have warped all the stuff back to wherever their hideout is, but it had trackers on it, right?"

"They got fried during the attack, but they had a Nomu with a Radio Quirk that acted like a jammer and EMP during the summer camp, probably just used something like that to fry it."

"Makes sense, but that's what you assumed already, so why even check out this place?" Cellophane shrugs. "Would be pretty dumb to come here instead of just warping away, right?"

"Yes, but its fine to assume villains will make such sloppy mistakes. They've recruited a lot of people, and most people are morons. If we got lucky and even one villain was out here, that'd be all I need to rip info out of him, then I'd get my hands on Kurogiri---"

"---Then their entire operation falls apart without him."

"Yeah, but its possible Twice can just make a double of him so they'd still have a warp gate, so in a sense Twice is an even higher priority target."

"No wonder he's S Rank," Cellophane says as he finishes his food. "Hey, weren't we in a rush to get to the base?"

"No, the corpse isn't going anywhere, I was in a rush to get here and catch any stragglers from their group. There won't be any villains at the base, best we can hope for is a ID from the cameras there."

ROOM!

Horizon shuts off his Quirk and they being flying inland, away from the city and over the mountains where the small base was.

"Soo, you going to the ceremony they'll have?" Cellophane asks.

"Why would I do that?"

"Because someone died, duh."

"Its in the job description, heroes die all the time, what makes this any different."

"Yeah but that doesn't make it any less tragic man."

"He was almost 90, if the moron would have just swallowed his pride and retired he'd be sitting on a beach with his grandkids right now."

"That's not a nice way to speak of the dead."

"Good thing he's dead and can't do shit about it," Horizon says. "Besides, maybe it would be a tragedy if he was young, but he was super old, at that point it doesn't really count. Killing a 90 year old is like giving nature a little nudge."

"What about for the soldiers at the base?'

"Its part of the job, I'm sure they did their best."

Beneath the visor Cellophane rolls his eyes, "just make sure to use your nice words when the press asks how you feel about this."

"I always do."

"But you have to go the to memorial, you do know that, right?"

Horizon sighs, "yes, as the next #1 Pro Hero and leader of our generation, I unfortunately have to attend the memorial for every stupid fuck that dies in costume...what a pain in my ass."

"Honestly, the most impressive thing about you is how well you act on camera, consider---"

Cellophane is stunned silent as the soar about the mountain, slowly rising up to view the next valley where only the military base was.

Where it should have been.

Instead they see a massive crater, filled with dust. Consuming much of the valley and parts of the small surrounding mountains.

A 3km -1.8mi- crater filled with white dust.

The telltale sign of Shigaraki's Decay.

"---Shit," was all Cellophane could mutter as they hover in place and look out at the destruction.

"This explains why they so badly want to keep this a secret, and didn't want to send me any pictures. If the public knew Shigaraki could do this, even if it took everything out of him, there'd be chaos..."

Cellophane nods along, "well if we didn't have you I'd be considering retirement right now, so yeah."

"Wow, even after all the money you'll get from your work in that raid."

"I'm willing to risk my life for money, not get turned into dust and actually die for it."

They look at the crater for a few more minutes as Horizon uses Scan on the surrounding area, picking up nothing that interesting.

Looking around Cellophane sees the road leading up to the crater, where dozens of vehicles and tents were setup to investigate.

"Let's go, they only left one thing, but we need to check on the people first..." Horizon says as they begin flying toward the medical tents.

As they approach he sees a few scientists in full protective suits using any apparatus they can, including Geiger counters to investigate the dust without touching or even approaching it.

They hops off at the tents, seeing the cots empty and most of the people just standing around anxiously.

"What's going on, where are the injured?" Horizon asks, walking into the tent to approach the commander.

"There aren't any, nobody made it out," the man says. "I'm captain Hiko, JSDF. I hoped to meet you under better circumstances Horizon."

"That's unfortunately the usual case, not that this is usual at all," they begin walking out of the tent as the man leads them to the crater.

"How many people were in the base?" Cellophane asks.

"Not many, mostly due to JSDF funding being reallocated to Pro Heroes for the past few generations, but the bases guarding the raid loot were well manned. This one is the smallest but that didn't mean they didn't put up one hell of a fight."

"I'm sure they did," Horizon says. "Going down fighting is an honor in itself. Its a real tragedy what happened here, but I'll be sure to give Shigaraki more than enough payback for what he did to these good men captain."

Then man nods, "I'm sure we'll all appreciate that, and thank you. Now, until my superiors can figure out how to handle this with the public, I'm taking the lead on the ground here, seeing as there isn't much to do but sit around and wait," he gestures to the boring temporary checkpoint they've setup.

"Did anything survive this?" Horizon asks.

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Camera footage, anything. If even a few seconds got uploaded into the military servers then that could be the lead we want."

"My superiors are already looking into it, I'm sure you'll be the first person they call, after all, who else could put down this monster," the man turns to look to the crater.

Horizon begins walking toward it and they both follow.

"Don't you mean arrest, captain?" Cellophane asks.

The man glances back and gives him an annoyed look, "son, you're a hero, I'm a soldier. You take villains down, I take terrorists out..."

Cellophane wisely decides to keep his mouth shut.

And a moment later they walk past the scientists, and even the captain ignores their suggestions to stay away from the site, deciding that if Horizon doesn't say he should stop, he'll keep tagging along.

Horizon squats down at the edge of the crater, seeing the low winds blowing the white dust about ever so gently.

Thankfully it wasn't light enough to simply get blow into the sky by a gently breeze.

"This is the first time I've been able to study Decay, so I can's waste the chance," he carefully lowers his hand toward it.

"Wait, that could be dangerous!" one of the scientist yells out, but neither Cellophane or the captain back away.

His fingers enter the dust, and he immediately uses Scan, focused on the particles, determined to understand them.

"We were wrong about his Quirk," Horizon says as he removes his hand.

"About Decay?" Cellophane asks.

"It's obviously not limited to organics, and considering he's improved this much he probably doesn't have to use all his fingers to trigger it any more. Cutting off his hands is still the best plan, if you can't just kill him."

"Bullet through the skull hasn't failed me yet," the captain says.

"How does Decay work?" one of the scientists asks.

"Its Tactile Telekinesis," Horizon says, seeing some of them look confused. "Think about when All Might would lift a bridge, part of it would crumble trying to support its own weight. But if Captain Celebrity does it the bridge doesn't crumble under its own weight.

Touch based telekinesis, but this is different. Its more like Shigaraki just commands things to fall apart. And judging from he size of this crater, if he's still actively commanding it, the decay...no, the disintegration of matter won't stop until he's stopped or satisfied.

At least that's my thoughts since I don't sense any energy in this dust, no invasive elements. It simply self destructed under his command.

But the good new is at least we know he still has to touch things to activate it, and that it won't work on my body, since my Quirk blocks any other Quirks from telling me what to do, even if the commands is 'Fall apart' or something like that."

"At least we learned something about him," the captain says. "Too bad this didn't give us any leads on finding him..."

"Not necessarily," Horizon warps Scalpel into his hand from where he left is with his board. "I'm hoping Yoroi Musha left us one lead on his blade---"

SHAMBLES!

Scalpel swaps for a broken katana, almost as massive and covered in bits of flesh and blood.

Along with some white dust.

"How the hell did that survive?" Cellophane can't help but blurt out.

"It was toward the edge, but if I had to guess...he probably threw it as high as possible before Shigaraki finished the attack."

"So he skipped the wave," the scientist says. "So flying counters the wave of Decay on the floor, that's good to know."

"Yeah," Horizon raises the sword and looks at the blood, "Takt."

The blood and only the blood is pulled off the sword and hovers in front of him, separated into little drops.

"I'm hoping he cut someone in our national database and not just some brainless Nomu..."

END CHAPTER---