MHA: Horizon(Ope-Ope No Mi)

Chapter 94: (Puzzle Solved?)

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CHAPTER START---

"Well, there won't be any competition by then..."

Horizon's words strike fear into the hearts of millions, and sets a sinister smile on the face of a few heinous people.

"What do you mean? Is All Might planning to retire?" Chitose uses all her focus to sound worried and not let her excitement surface.

"No no, he's determined to be a hero as much as possible," Horizon says. "But All Might just turned 50, do people really expect him to be their hero for another 50 years?"

"Oh, so then what exactly are you saying?"

Horizon sits back for a moment and considers how he should word this, then he nods and just speaks honestly.

"The fact is, All Might is 50, he does so much work, an insanely disproportional amount in fact. That other heroes have slowly become complacent and weak.

Even if they don't realize it, they've started just depending on All Might to do most of the work himself, but he's only one man.

Everyone thinks he's invincible, but time is undefeated, and eventually, it'll beat him too, and this country isn't ready for a world without All Might. Minato Tokyo is a perfect example of that.

Villains are becoming more populous and bold there every day because he's teaching in Musutafu now, that's a microcosm for what'll happen in all of Japan within ten years maybe. And heroes aren't ready."

"But Japan has 116 thousand Pro Heroes," Chitose says.

"Yeah, a good number on paper. And those same papers will tell you that our society is oversaturated with Pro Heroes, but none of that data matters when the people are useless.

I was appalled by what I saw at my license exam. The government is going for a quantity-over-quality approach, allowing in thousands of people who have no place on a battlefield, especially not as heroes.

Obviously not everyone is a combat-oriented Hero, Thirteen and Uwabami are the top search and rescue heroes for a reason, but a lot of people are going to be in combat-based environments and have no business being there.

Our society is too over-reliant on All Might holding us up on his shoulders, and the moment he steps down everything will descend into chaos. Nobody wants to think of a world without him, but if you don't accept this reality then how can you prepare for it?

The only Pro Hero who never accepted this status quo, who kept pushing to do as much as he possibly can, is Endeavor, and that's why I'm working with him and nobody else.

Half of all the Pro Heroes aren't worth the plastic their license is printed on, just sitting in their office or walking down the street collecting money and attention.

That's why the Nomu attacks on the other Hero Courses have been so successful, most of those Nomu aren't anywhere near as strong as the USJ Nomu. Yet dozens of Pro Heroes are dying every time they show up.

The League of Villains realized this status quo and is punishing us for it, because they know All Might can't be everywhere. So yeah, there is no competition, and apparently, I'm the only one seeing this problem and taking steps to prepare for the eventuality.

All Might is 50 and Endeavor is 46...who is gonna be your Symbol Of Peace after them, some lazy hero like Hawks? Tch, I don't think so..."

"I see, that is a scary reality to accept for most people," Chitose says. "People around my age have never even known a world without All Might protecting us..."

"Accept it and prepare for it, that's all you can do."

"I agree," Chitose was both excited at the idea of a world without All Might, but also terrified at the thought of a more powerful and mature Horizon taking his place, someone who they seemingly can't even hide from. "And how would you recommend this be done?

Some people have always been pushing for the Quirk restrictions to be lifted to an extent so they may take a more active part in stopping villains, do you agree? Should those with what society deems as 'heroic Quirks' be allowed to use them?"

Horizon takes a moment to understand the question. Realizing immediately that she was asking about a few different issues.

"No I don't think that's the right way to handle this at all, because then you'd just get the same problem with more collateral damage," he says. "Allow me to make it clear that I don't believe in these nonsense labels. There are no inherently 'heroic' or 'villainous' Quirks, only Quirks and the people who use them.

If you gave All Might's Quirk to a bad person you'd have a supervillain. So the Quirk doesn't make the person into a hero or villain, only what they chose to do with it.

Putting people in these stupid brackets, especially as children, is how you get villains. Because if all your life people are telling you that you were born to be a villain...why would you bother trying to become anything else?"

"I couldn't agree more," Chitose says. "For both my appearance and my Quirk people always expected me to become a villain, I've had to overcome a lot of adversity to get here because of how I was born."

"And I wish the world would stop doing that, and allow people to become who they want to be, instead of simply expecting them to conform to a hero-centric worldview. And clearly, you've overcome all of that to be the head of a massive publishing company, well done Chitose."

"Thank you," she gives a polite nod. "But why don't you think people should simply be allowed to use Quirk, and what about if the Quirks were harmless?"

"Because that's how you cause chaos and villains. Allowing people to use their Quirks will cause chaos. For every person that can fly a house will burn down because some kids were playing with a fire Quirk.

This will lead to only some Quirks being publicly accepted. Not to mention some people without flashy Quirks will begin to feel left out as everyone around them is using a Quirk while they can't, the same problem some people have now with the Quirk License system.

The alternative would be making only the harmless Quirks legal to use, but that's just another form of discrimination for things that people cannot control.

Discrimination and envy will lead to resentment...and that's how some of the worst and most horrific crimes happen.

In this world, some Quirks are the equivalent of being born with a gun for a hand a few hundred years ago. Our society works as a superhuman society because everyone must assume unless they know otherwise, that if they're in a room with strangers, at least one person was born with a gun for a hand, or some other dangerous Quirk.

This subliminal fear and understanding keeps people in line, that's why more people don't go around using their Quirk. Villains tend to be people either stupid, desperate, or arrogant enough not to care about this unspoken rule."

"So you're saying a world with open and unrestricted Quirk use would devolve into chaos, and a world where only harmless Quirks are allowed to be used would build more villains?"

"Exactly, the best way is the current system, where nobody but the Pro Heroes are allowed to use their Quirks. Therefore everyone has a path to get a Quirk License that they can choose to take."

"But not everyone has a Quirk that can get them there," Chitose says.

"True, but life isn't fair. And at least this way they're part of the 99% of the world that isn't a Pro Hero and don't feel as left out, even if I'm sure some of them will still try to become villains in some attempt to prove they don't need a license.

Atleast until an actual Pro Hero puts them in jail..."

"I see, but what do you recommend we do to prepare for whatever the country will look like in twenty years?"

"Well, you'll have me here, so that handles a lot of major threats," Horizon says jokingly. "But the problem is that we're saturated with useless Pro Heroes.

Like Compass Kid...he literally points in cardinal directions, that's his entire Quirk. Or Leaf Man...he throws leaves at people, and they aren't even that sharp, if you can't even stop a corner store robbery why are you even a Pro Hero?

The 116 thousand Pros in Japan need to stay as is for now, but the license exams need to be improved.

One thousand people passed at my venue alone, and everyone has six tries in their time at Hero Courses, or they can even be held back to try again later.

I think they should only pass around 50 to 100 people for each exam, preferably 50. Making it more competitive to weed out less valuable people.

A more competitive environment will force improvement. Right now Japan is relaxed because we have All Might and that's what'll ruin us. Make the exams more competitive as well as the actual environment outside it.

Set a percentage of incidents resolved per region, and if Pro Heroes working in the area can't do their part, kick them out. Do it gradually over time so you don't have an influx of unemployable citizens but over ten years it should be done.

Currently, a lot of Pro Heroes deal with one incident per week because they patrol in the middle of nowhere out in the country and just accept a government salary every month. That behavior is only tolerated because All Might does so much work that his presence suppressed crime across the country. Currently, we can afford to have them slacking off, but the world won't always be peaceful.

We need to crush those pathetic parasites before they get us killed..."

"Wow, you're clearly very...passionate, about this," Chitose says.

"I don't like people who do things like that, sitting on the sidelines and allowing others to do all the work but still getting a piece of the prize...I don't believe in participation trophies. You either do the work or you get nothing."

"I completely agree," she nods along. "But as a Quirk specialist, aren't you concerned about what such a difficult environment will do to us as a species?"

"What? I'm sorry I don't understand the question."

Chitose takes a deep breath, knowing exactly how much was on the line, how close she and the other executives came to death just so she'd be forced to ask this one question.

"Quirks are said to be an evolutionary product of a plague centuries ago, humans adapted faster than ever before, leaping hundreds of years ahead in one generation.

Because of this, some people are worried that we can't actually keep up with that adaptation. Your Quirk Mastery Thesis has been publicly adopted by Hero Courses around the world and was even approved by the United Nations Quirk Research department.

However, a popular theory was rejected by them a century ago and has become something of a dark rumor or myth, I was hoping as a Quirk Specialist I could get your opinion on it."

"The Quirk Singularity Theory, right?" Horizon asks in a bored voice.

"Yes, that's the one..."

"Well, that matter is quite simple. You're worried that people will instinctively breed more powerful Quirks because of the suggestions I just made. And since the theory said this type of instinctual breeding will create Quirks that the human body can't handle...those generations will eventually begin to, self-destruct, for lack of a better term, Right?"

"Precisely."

"Well, contrary to what some fringe cultists and fanatics will have you believe, that theory is actually a pile of garbage."

"Really?"

"Entirely. Whoever wrote it was a pessimist with no faith in humanity as a biological lifeform, they clearly saw Quirks as a deific gift of some kind that was so far beyond us, and that adoration of Quirks lead to negligence of the obvious.

We adapted to Quirks in one generation.

Yes some of us are born with mutations that make it difficult to safely use our own Quirks, but mutations happen in every species. Only ten in every hundred million people have those, and it's almost always because of a hereditary gene issue from a recent relative like a grandparent who was Quirkless.

As the generations keep going on there will be fewer Quirkless people. In my generation, less than 0.01% are Quirkless or born with such a mutation. Humans are annoyingly resilient, the earth wants us gone more than any other species, but we're stubborn.

Our bodies will naturally adapt along with Quirks, we won't just suddenly start being born with Quirks we can't handle, at least not on a large scale. There will only be a very rare few that have that issue. And I'm actually a perfect example of why this theory is garbage."

"You? How so?" Chitose asks.

"Think about it. Of all the people in this world, don't you think if this theory was real the two people with Mystery Class Quirks, would be the first to die..."

"Ah, that's an excellent point, I hadn't even considered that."

"Assuming reproduction rates remain as they are and all the people with the absolute strongest Quirks only have kids with each other. If we ignore the side effects of inbreeding, I've already estimated it'll take nearly 1300 years before the first person outside of a freak mutation, is naturally born with a Quirk comparable to mine or Star and Stripe's. Humanity will be fine."

"Well, I'm sure many people will be happy to hear that," Chitose sounds genuinely relieved, especially since it would now be easier to get people into the Meta Liberation Army. "So, is it entirely impossible?"

"In a world of superhumans nothing is impossible, especially when you consider that you're talking to the guy that can warp around and divide reality."

"That, was not the answer I wanted to hear, if I'm being honest."

"You don't have anything to worry about, the only way for a Quirk Singularity to occur would be if---"

Horizon freezes. Then leans forward, clearly deep in thought. All the pieces came together in his mind. Something so far-fetched that he didn't even consider it, especially since as far as he knows, he was the only person that can make it possible.

He completely forgets about the cameras on them as all the puzzle pieces come together...

"The Nomus," Horizon says in a low voice.

"I'm sorry but, what do you mean the Nomus?"

He sits up and looks at her, "the Nomus are the key. We've been looking at them all wrong. The cops and heroes think that the League of Villains just wants to destroy all heroes, but that's not a realistic plan.

They want control. Nomus aren't weapons or a labor force, at least not intentionally. That's why no two are the same. They're experiments, intentional and focused experiments.

Because people think that the Quirk Singularity will make people strong enough to end the world, and the only way to make that theory into reality is...to force multiple foreign Quirks into one body."

Chitose's eyes opened wide, horrified that not only had he figured this all out so quickly, but that someone was actually attempting this insane plan. "Can they pull that off?"

"It's not impossible, but I'll never be stable unless---" Horizon considers what they'd need to do, then shakes his head. "No, they can't do it. The best they'll be able to do is make stronger Nomu."

"So they plan to make an invincible Nomu?"

"No, Nomus are just failed trials...they plan to weaponize the Quirk Singularity, they plan to upgrade Shigaraki..."

END CHAPTER---