CHAPTER 277(The Gigantomachy III)
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CHAPTER START---
"Ouch," Horizon mutters as he pushes some rocks off of himself, sitting up in the rubble of Dagga City, surrounded by massive bits of ruptured earth and the broken satellite.
Looking around he sees some dust clouds in the air, and extends his Room farther than he'd ever done before with complete ease, sensing all the corpses buried in the dirt.
In the distance he senses four broken bodies, faintly moving, struggling to breathe, but ignores them for now as he focuses on himself.
He stands up, Scalpel in hand, and looks down at his exposed right leg.
He looks down at his Hero Costume, now reduced to only the body glove, and sees holes and tears in it exposing the flesh below.
Raising a hand to his visor he feels the entire right half of it missing and the mask below shredded to show some of his face.
"Pantu," He calls out, then raises a hand to his communicator, hearing no response. "Broken," he says while looking around.
His eyes can't even see past the miles of destruction he's caused, and when he looks to the ocean the sea is muddied with the fallout of his attack.
He stretches his body, feeling pain wracking him as he groans.
"Dropping a small moon onto myself, not my brightest moment," he says. "But considering I was just moving on instinct and couldn't think...dropping a small moon, pretty cool."
Taking a few steps forward he senses some of the news drones that survived the harsh winds of his attack flying toward the impact site, and immediately activates Booster Shot.
All of his exposed skin glows blue, hiding himself as a much thinner energy mist wafts off his body.
"Ok, earning back my public image is gonna be harder than killing this thing," he looks off to the other side of the city where large pieces of rubble are moving.
Machia' slowly rises from beneath the rubble, using his Mole Quirk to dig through the rubble and reveal his new metallic skin, adding a silver hue to his dark purple Nomu skin.
Machia' sniffs the air and immediately looks toward Horizon.
"He just doesn't quit," Horizon mutters as the titan begins sprinting toward him. "I'll deal with you in a minute."
Around the world, even on public streets, this fight is being shown on digital billboards, and anyone who could watch, was devoting their full attention to this clash.
As if the entire world was holding its breath, knowing that the winner would decide the fate of all their lives.
Because if Horizon could overcome this monster, what villain could stop him?
And if Gigantomachia could kill Horizon, then one could imagine eventually they'd create a monster to kill Star and Stripe.
When the drone broadcasted Horizon standing in the rubble, stretching his limbs as Machia' was miles away sprinting at him, their hearts both sank and rose.
They'd hoped the villain would be dead, and feared Horizon had ended his own life in that absurd attack.
Yet both combatants got up, ready to continue.
Seeing the energy pouring off of Horizon, his exposed flesh glowing bright blue, they grew concerned that the battlefield would spread even further.
Then nearby cities were already heavily damaged, and now the berserk Horizon was standing yet again.
And only some of the viewers realized, at one point or another, their fear had moved from being placed on Gigantomachia, over to Horizon.
But much of it was relieved when Horizon looked at the drone, and casually waved, as if to signal that he was back in full control.
SHAMBLES!
He disappears from the scene, causing Machia' to skid to a stop and sniff the air again.
A few seconds later, he turns and sprints off south-east, toward one of the small nearby cities.
SHAMBLES!
Horizon appears in the parking area of a small hospital where a field of tents were set up, people who couldn't walk are waiting for helicopters of Pro heroes to come to collect them.
Injured Pro Heroes were under many of the tents getting healed by the few healing Quirks that were available here, ready to get back to helping the evacuation.
And on the nearby streets were thousands of people marching out of the city, forced to walk due to all the highways collapsing after that last attack.
The mountains beyond the city were clearly broken, having suffered massive landslides due to the quakes, and the buildings in the city were all cracked, many of them were completely collapsed.
Yet this noisy place became completely silent, as if the world itself froze when Horizon warped into the middle of it.
Behind him were the broken bodies of Ryukyu, Nejire, Mt. Lady, and Kamui woods.
Ryukyu and Kamui Woods were in the worst health of the group, having taken most of the damage onto themselves.
All the Pro Heroes in the area, healthy or not, get ready for a fight, but Horizon just drops Scalpel, letting it clatter to the ground.
"I'm just here to drop these off," he gestures to the Pro Heroes behind him. But the crowd is still petrified.
"Go back to what you were doing!" Endeavor's voice roars through the silence. "Get back to work, now!" he yells while walking up to Horizon.
He had an IV Pole with bags of blood and drips connected to him as he walked, moving it along in his one remaining hand as his left stump was burnt shut.
"Sorry about the---"
Endeavor raises a hand to stop Horizon's apology, "you can fix it later, Machia' is coming this way, we don't have much time before you need to warp away again."
"I know," Horizon says as Scalpel hovers back into his grip. "I just came to drop off these four, I stabilized them, they'll be waking up any second now."
"Good, and Machia', do you have a plan?" Endeavor asks. "Those slashes you used before weren't effective, neither was throwing a moon at him."
"Brute force can't really work on him, but I wasn't in any state of mind to think clearly enough to realize even that obvious aspect of the fight," Horizon looks around, still seeing people keeping an eye on him, more scared than anything else. "And a lot of people suffered for it."
"Problems for later, first you need to destroy that Nomu," Endeavor says. "Do you need backup? I can provide a distraction to buy you a few seconds if needed."
"Not in this kind of fight you can't," Horizon says. "And I think enough people have been hurt so far in this disaster, focus on the evacuation, let the monsters fight it out."
"Nishiya!" Horizon turns around to see Mt. Lady wakes up and kneels beside Kamui Woods.
"I stabilized him," Horizon says, and the moment he speaks she turns around and glares at him. "When I'm done with Machia' I'll start healing everyone---"
As he's speaking she stops up to him, fist clenched, and punches him directly in the face, cracking the left side of his visor.
He doesn't move, and doesn't try to block it, and for a moment he just sees the hate and anger in her eyes as the tears don't stop flowing down her cheek.
"---Yeah, I know," Horizon says as he just reaches up and takes her earpiece out before warping away.
Arriving on the battlefield Horizon sensed Machia' reverse trajectory, following him back to where Dagga city once stood.
"Pantu," Horizon says after replacing his broken earpiece with Mt. Lady's.
"Finally," Pantu sounded actually relieved, the first time he's heard emotion from her. "I hope your brain is working again."
"I've adjusted, so yes,and I can promise you that won't happen again."
"Good, you've already created a big enough mess as is," She says. "Do you have a plan for Gigantomachia, do you need anything?"
"No, I am enough, but about, all of this," he gestures to the destruction around.
"As a National Asset, I'm limited in what I can do to punish you, depending on how the Supreme Court rules, well..."
"I know, not looking good," Horizon admits. "Either way, this is on me, you don't have to worry about anything, I'll deal with the consequences."
"Right, we'll finish this conversation later, this is still a public channel after all," Pantu reminds him. "Now please, finish this fight, by whatever means necessary, I need to apologize to the people of South Korea."
"South Korea?"
"Dagga City is only 120 km from South Korea, and whatever you did to the sea, plus the earthquakes you caused, damaged their coastlines."
"Uh, did I---"
"No tsunamis, not for a lack of effort, but Japan is about to get a large bill for flood damages," Pantu says.
"Put it on my tab I guess," Horizon sighs as he sees Machia' only a mile away.
Taking a deep breath he steps forward into a combat stance, gathering blue energy around the blade of his sword.
"Time to really test out the new ability," he slashes out at Gigantomachia in the distance, and a slash of blue energy leaves the blade.
One slightly taller than him it soars through the air and harmlessly slams into Machia', completely ignored.
Horizon looks down at the sword and nods, "ok, now I get it. I just need to make the energy dense and infuse it better...enhance it," he chuckles. "Guess it did have a use after all."
SHAMBLES!
He warps a few miles away just as Machia', strikes his location with a massive open palm.
One of the other cameras instantly locks onto him, seeing him already charging another slash.
But this time, the energy becomes denser and thicker. Clinging to Scalpel and seeping into the blade as it shifts from a bright blue, almost white, to a dark blue.
It pulses and builds as the titan gets closer, before Horizon slashes upward, vertically in the direct middle of Machia'.
"Divine---"
He takes one step forward, pivoting with all this as he slashes upward.
"Divi---!"
CLINK!
The energy dissipates harmlessly into the air as he completes the slash, and half of Scalpel's blade goes hurtling forward, snapping in half from the strain of his energy.
Horizon sighs and looks down to examine the blade, seeing it completely broken in two.
"Of course that would happen today," he says as the last of the energy dissipates into the air. "And I'm not efficient enough with that attack to make another one right now---"
SHAMBLES!
He warps away as Machia' gets to his new position, still looking down at the blade.
Horizon takes the hilt of Scalpel and throws it as hard as he can, high above the destroyed city before closing his eyes.
The cameras see him take a new stance, holding his right hand out, palm to the sky, and the other holding onto his wrist.
The viewers are both curious and terrified at what he's about to do, and Pantu's words only build their fears.
"If you do that, with enough power to take him down, can you manage the fallout?" Pantu asks.
"Yeah, I've been practicing a lot," Horizon says as shimmers of green energy begin flowing toward his palm.
Machia' closes the distance with each second, yet Horizon remains unmoving.
He shrinks his room, keeping the damage as low as possible while gathering enough radiation to put down this monster.
8 km -5mi- away, frost begins forming in a circle, creeping toward Horizon in the middle of the Room.
Motes of green energy begin to manifest at the edges of the Room, hovering in place like fireflies all about the battlefield.
As Machia' is at point black range with Horizon, he warps away, now able to maintain his focus on preparing this attack while warping.
The hilt of Scalpel appears in his previous location, and Machia' wastes no time turning to the sky to get a view of Horizon.
"RAAAAAAAARGH!" Gigantomahia roars as it strikes out with a massive fist.
"GAMMA---!" Suddenly all the motes of green energy collapse into the middle of the battlefield so quickly that they appear as streaks of light.
The frost spreads inward from the edges of Horizon's room as he drains all the heat from miles around him.
The ice seems to chase the green radiation and heat as it gathers in his palm.
All across Japan alarms go off as the national Geiger counters spike, picking up what would usually be a nuclear bomb detonating.
But less than a second later all the radiation seems to disappear as Horizon strikes out at Machia with a glowing spear of solid radiation.
"---SMITE!"
He pierces Machia's fist with the spear, shattering it, and a blinding green light explodes outward, brightly visible even from space.
The entire world seems to fall silent, where people took cover, expecting an explosion, they only heard a ringing in their air and the sound of static in the air.
A moment later the light disappears and the air smells scorched in the area, and when the cameras focus on where Dagga city was, they only see a molten pit of slag, miles wide.
In the middle of the site is Gigantomachia, or at least that's what it was called.
Now they see a charred skeleton, brittle and broken apart.
So frail that the ocean breeze was breaking pieces of it away and scattering them about.
And standing in the middle of the skeleton, floating on the molten rock, was Horizon.
His entire Body Glove scorched and burnt, visor and mask below entirely destroyed.
Identity only hidden by the fact that he still had a blue glow about him, no longer releasing energy as mist because of how exhausted he was.
He takes one painful step forward, and can feel Hand Of God about to deactivate.
'Oh no,' he thinks as the blue glow begins fading away, and soon his features would be made visible.
He looks down at his scorched fist and takes a deep breath, 'not enough energy to warp away, might as well make it look good.'
And as he clenches a fist, moving to raise it to the sky, to mirror All Might's last stand, a wall of orange fire erupts around him, hiding him from all the cameras.
END CHAPTER---