MHA: Horizon

Chapter 98: (Criminal Adaptation)

Chapter 98: (Criminal Adaptation)

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CHAPTER START---

Flying above the buildings in Minato Tokyo, Horizon stands on his hoverboard and listens to music within his visor. Nodding along to the beat as he tilts slightly and shifts from flying above buildings to flying above roads.

Reaching the edge of his Room he makes sure to get eyes onto the trailer truck he's been following before closing his current Room and opening a new one, then he drifts back over the buildings and out of the line of sight for the truck.

"People rarely look up, but better to be safe than sorry, especially when I can sense them anyway. An entire week following these annoying leads...time for me to cash in," he mutters to himself as he continues following the truck around.

A minute later as he's still following the truck, he gets a call from Nezu.

"Shouldn't you be asleep by now?" Horizon asks.

"I was about to get some rest, but I just found this interesting article about you..."

"Well I stopped a runaway car yesterday, but it's been a slow week."

"Not 'you', I meant Law Matani."

"Huh, but I haven't even done anything."

"Then why is there a picture of a certain lady leaving your apartment this morning?"

"The purse designer lady, what about her?"

"It's a bit of a scandal...seeing as she's married to someone slightly famous."

"Shit," Horizon sighs. "Didn't know she was married. Is this gonna be annoying?"

"I doubt it, he's just a baseball player, he can't cause someone at your level any problems, and nobody is foolish enough to challenge the Matani Estate---"

"But this puts me in the public eye, and now people will actually know about the Matani Estate, fuck."

"Exactly, I assume you already had a plan for this?"

"Yeah, most of the things I buy retain their original names and are controlled by subsidiary asset management companies, which are all owned by my anonymous Swiss Vault account, it's all airtight."

"Good, I just called to give you a bit of a warning, if you keep going like this the quiet life of Law Matani will become very loud very quickly."

"I'll be more careful in the future."

"Glad to hear it."

Nezu hangs up and Horizon just grumbles to himself, "of course it'd be my dick that gets me into trouble...I'll just have to lay low until people forget. Some hero will do something and nobody will even remember Law Matani...like take down a big drug operation in the same city."

Horizon sees the truck pull into the port at the edge of Minato Tokyo. As it drives between all the stacks of shipping containers Horizon lands on a tall crane that didn't have any lights on it, allowing himself to stay completely hidden.

He hops off the hoverboard, leaving it parked and hovering in place as he walks to the edge of the crane.

Crouching down he reaches behind his back.

Contrary to the appearance of his Hero Costume, Horizon actually had a few items strapped to the back of his belt, concealed by his flowing jacket draped across his shoulders.

Mainly were a few beads which expand when crushed into a cast, big enough to incase a limb.

Too weak to act as a capture tool but good for a doctor to have.

A small medical pack, with only a scalpel, morphine, needle and thread, bandages, and alcohol for cleaning wounds.

And the item he pulls out, a small digital scope.

As he takes it out and powers it up the sight is displayed inside his visor, making it so he doesn't have to lift it to his face, simply using it like a camera.

Zooming in he sees the driver and passenger, two plain-looking tall men open the back of the truck, and one door to the warehouse opens.

Four more men come out and begin helping them move crates, bland and unmarked, each as big as a backpack, adding them to the rows already neatly packed into the shipping warehouse.

He senses another 12 men scattered about, all carrying rifles, aside from the drivers who had concealed pistols.

'Time to get some probable cause,' he thinks, zooming in on the crate itself.

TAKT!

He focuses his energy on the crate and causes it to slip out of the man's hand, falling on its side and causing the top to pop open, exposing the pale green liquid, packed in small glass vials.

'Gotcha,' Horizon then zooms in on each of them men, inputting their faces for his facial recognition system to sort through.

Yet another upgrade which was suggested by Mei. It's not as instant as what'd you'd find inside a police station, but it can eventually get the job done.

Using his Hero Network access from his phone to gain access to the criminal database.

"Shambles," he warps into the back of the dim warehouse. Still feeling all the men at the front loading boxes he carefully and quietly opens the top of one crate, getting an up-close look.

Rows upon rows of neatly and securely packed vials of drugs.

"Trigger," Horizon mutters to himself, mostly for his camera and mic to pick up his narration.

"Imported from Eastern Europe and sent to Japan. The latest highly addictive Quirk enhancement drug. And since this warehouse is on the dock and a truck just came from inland to add to this cache, I'm betting all of this is shipping to south America.

Otherwise, they would have just gone from Eastern Europe and used the New York port.

A lot of people are gonna die if villains get a supply this big...18 men, all armed. 16 with assault rifles, and two with pistols."

Horizon takes out his phone and does a few simple searches, using his authority via the Hero Network to get the information he needed.

"The dock opens in two hours and the ship beside this warehouse is scheduled to depart in three...I need to deal with this now."

The sound of metal clanging as the warehouse doors close echoes about, and the few lights inside the warehouse go out.

"Huh, complete darkness, that's useful. A bright white three-piece suit really isn't good for stealth anyway," he chuckles lightly

Horizon send a quick alert to the police, receiving confirmation that they'd be arriving after gathering some backup.

Horizon sees his facial recognition system finally get one hit, the driver was the only one with a criminal record.

"Aggravated Assault, Quirk: Contortionist...his entire body is double jointed...well that's something."

Focusing on the man Horizon waits a few minutes until he strays away from the others, then.

"Shambles," Horizon swaps the man with a card and immediately grabs his throat with one hand and his arms with the other, choking out the man as he struggles beneath Horizon's greatly improved physical strength.

"Shambles," Horizon recalls the card to him before anyone stumbles upon it, as the man finally goes unconscious.

"It's Horizon! He warped someone!" Horizon hears from the man's radio.

But he doesn't sense that anyone even noticed this man was gone, and they were all scrambling to get to each other at the front of the warehouse.

"How the hell..." Horizon throws the unconscious man over his shoulder and warps back to the top of the crane, then recalls the card he swapped with to get up there.

He notices the remaining 17 men all taking up a strange formation, obviously trying to keep eyes on each other.

'How the hell did they even know I was here...' he wonders, watching them all gather.

Using the scope he can see a few of them visibly shaking at the idea of being hunted by him.

'Street thugs paid to do the boring job of guarding a warehouse nobody was supposed to know about, and now they have to fight a god...yeah, I'd be shaking too.'

"You there man? Where are you?" Horizon hears through the unconscious man's radio, shrugs, and picks it up.

He keeps an eye on the men while speaking, "so, how did you know I was here?"

He sees all the men stiffen, looking at each other nervously as they realize how real this situation was.

"We aren't talking to you!" The presumed leader yells into the radio.

"You just did, but hey if you tell me I'll take it easy on you, or you could surrender now and save us all the hassle..."

"Why don't you come down here so I can put a bullet in yo ARGH!---" the man drops to the floor as two hits of Injection Shot tear through his thighs, muscle and bone obliterated with ease.

All the other men begin frantically looking around, wanting to help their ally but forced to leave him reeling in pain as they try to cover each other.

"So, anyone else?"

"Ok, I'll talk!" One of the men drops their gun, completely terrified, and raises his hands to the sky in surrender.

"Perfect, so, start talking," Horizon says through the radio.

One of the other guards doesn't like this and raises his weapon at the traitor, "you fucking rat ba AHHH!"

Injection Shot tears through his arms and legs in rapid succession.

"Oh god," the other men drop their weapons and raise their hands to the sky. "Please don't hurt us!"

"Start talking, how'd you know I was here?"

"It's the watch," the first man who surrendered says. "They're new, a lot of people are selling things that they say can help defend against you, most of em are trash scams but our watches alert everyone connected if we skip distance!"

"Hmm, let's test it, Shambles," Horizon swaps one of the men for a gun they threw a few meters away.

The watch at his feet and on all their hands start beeping immediately.

"Ugh, this shit is gonna be annoying, but I can adapt too," he says to himself, then opens the radio connection. "Anyway, just stay like that until the cops come, if any of you move, you'll join your friends on the floor, I'm watching you..."

Horizon calls the police to alert them of the new situation, and not even 20 minutes later a horde of squad cars and armored trucks arrive to cart off these men to prison.

Individuals who don't pose a threat to society on a large scale are reserved for Tartarus, these small-time criminals would simply go to a regular prison, or plead ignorant of what they were guarding and only get an illegal firearm possession charge.

The maximum charge for that alone, 15 years. Since they didn't use their Quirks that will help their case a significant amount.

Now they just had to get their story straight and pretend they didn't know what they were protecting or moving.

'Assuming they're smart enough to do that,' Horizon thinks as he sees the truck with the men driving away.

Now only the lieutenant in charge of this case and the evidence squads were on the scene with him.

"You know you really should have waited for backup," the leading officer says, looking up at Horizon.

"Sorry I didn't want to risk them changing the situation further, but luckily I got them all to surrender peacefully."

"Not surprising, it's you," the officer says. "Any advice for the doctors on how to deal with...whatever you did to those guys?"

"Treat it like they got shot with regular bullets that tore right through them, do you have any info on this?" Horizon says while handing the cop the watch.

"Hmm," the man looks at it for a few seconds then recognizes it. "Yeah, big-time criminal organizations have been showing up with these, but only for the top lieutenants, or I guess in this case when they're guarding twenty million in drugs."

"Apparently it's for warping."

The man gives Horizon a confused look, "what? these let them warp?"

"No, it's to alert the connected watches that someone warped you. Best guess, it uses precise real-time GPS, if you suddenly skip over a few meters it alerts everyone."

"Hmm," the man taps his chin a few times. "One of those Anti-Horizon devices we've seen selling for a fortune on the black market..."

"There are more, what are they?"

"Well, a Horizon-repellant tear gas?"

"Annoying...but I mean who doesn't that crap annoy?"

"True. Big rubber pads that absorb your slashes?"

"That's stupid."

"A special ring that makes it difficult for you to sense and warp people?"

"That...people are actually stupid enough to buy that?"

"We've caught about 200 people across the country with it on," the cop gives a disappointed sigh.

"Idiots, even if any of this crap did work, wouldn't stop me from warping toward you instead..."

"Oh yeah, good point. But yeah the last main one is the most expensive, Welding."

"Welding?" Horizon asks.

"Yeah, the League of Villains is spreading misinformation that you can't warp things that are molecularly bonded to other things, like if two things are welded together you can't just move one piece."

"Ok, so they have welders?"

"The Weld Quirk, they've apparently got like a dozen small Nomu that people can rent to weld their products down so you can't warp it away, it's stupid but people actually believe it since the League Of Villains has a pretty good reputation right now."

'Hmm, Awase from 1B has that quirk, and whoever in Tartarus used it to weld my parents to the prison so I can't warp them out. Shigaraki has a brain after all, not that it takes much to figure something like this out, but still annoying...'

"Yeah that's ridiculous," Horizon says, playing off the idea as another failure. "Anyway since we're just about done here I should get back to patrol. I just didn't want these drugs in my part of Tokyo..."

"Yeah, thanks for stopping these guys. Um, can I maybe get a picture with you?" the cop asks nervously. "My kids would love it."

"Sure thing, I'm always happy to help the cops any way I can. Heroes can throw punches but beyond that, we can't do much, so honestly, just between us, I think you guys are the real heroes..."

END CHAPTER---