Deguchi's Civilian Service Rally [Deguchi / Recoil]

Deguchi realized that, on second glance, something was clearly wrong with the Youth of Japan she was trying to poll. He was wearing a hoodie in this heat and yet his body language suggested he was shivering. A fever? Nerves? Or, perhaps, the very likely possibility that a hooded guy slinking away from her rally towards the docks was a druggie? She didn't want to consider that possibility, given that it would make her singling him out as the youth and future of Japan rather embarrassing, but if life threw that lemon at her, she would find a way to intercept it and create some midair lemonade.

Of course, the young man wasn't just going to come out and say what was wrong, but at least he hadn't turned and pretended she didn't exist like the rest of this crowd. As such, she was eager to grasp at any loose thread of enthusiasm he offered her and yank the whole thing free. A grin set above her metal jaw; they probably looked quite the pairs just seemingly smirking at each other. "Why, sure, sure! Consider this your platform, yes? Tell us all about how you use your quirk- or whatever else you'd like!" she offered, handing him over the microphone, this time, handle-first. She thought about adding on "good luck getting anybody to listen, kid," but that would be disrespectful to the good people of Japan she was trying to sing the praises of.

As she waited, she began to shrug off her suit jacket, as his hood made her cognizant of the heat. She noticed a few sweat stains on the underarms of her brightly colored shirt and thought the better of it, slipping her narrow shoulders back into the sleeves.

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WC 292

For a moment, Hotarubi Deguchi dared to imagine the young man was putting on a mask to demonstrate that he, himself, was a hero. What better luck could she have than to encounter a hero or hero student right here, to interview in front of all these people?

Then again, if Deguchi had better luck, she wouldn't be wearing a metal jaw prosthetic right now. Along those lines, Recoil revealed his reason behind donning the mask to be villainous, rather than heroic. Well, for a certain measure of villainous anyway. People looked more annoyed at the volume or amused by the concept, possibly thinking it was some kind of show. The budding politician watched with an uncharacteristically confused expression as the young man wiped himself out with a flip. "Eeeh...?" she muttered curiously, as though waiting for him to do something that would explain his behavior.

Of course, the mother who's child's candy was targeted was less amused than the rest of the people. No sooner had he taken it then he found himself slapped and promptly surrendered the candy back again. "Eeeeeeh?" she asked no one, narrowing her eyes in a suspicious glare with upturned eyebrows. She was starting to feel sorry for the apparent evil-doer.

As he proclaimed his lofty intentions, to denounce heroes as a whole, Deguchi began to come back to her senses, realizing that this was plainly a call for her to step up... only for Recoil to go flying into a nearby wall, as if struck by a hero. Only, there was no hero... had he done that to himself? "Eeeeeeeeeeeh?!" she asked, looking a bit like herself her old gang days as she clenched her hands into fists and began walking in his direction with a confused look on her scary face.

Hotarubi Deguchu wasn't going to beat Recoil up. That Deguchi was long gone and didn't mesh with the politician of today. She was, however, agitated and determined to get to the bottom of the stranger's agenda. Putting on a deceptively smiling face, which looked, actually, a bit nicer than the one she usually wore for crowds, she slowed her walk and reached out to help the seemingly non-threatening villain up. She wasn't scared of him, at least not yet... rather, she was slowly coming around on the opportunity presented here. Her face seemed to twist into an evil expression as she lifted him back to his feet.

"Are you hurt? A real villain! Oh my! Here in broad daylight! Recoil-saaaan, what are the odds? Kihihihi!" she chortled, sounding every bit a villain herself. "Well, I'm no hero, but perhaps you'd like to speak to me? It's just, you got me so riled up just now when you talked about the frailty of heroes! I'm a big fan of heroes! So I was thinking, how about we have a little meeting of the minds? You tell me aaall the things you hate about heroes and I'll give you my perspective as a proponent of the offend system as well as to the rationale of Japan's government. It will be a little like a debate, keeheehee..."

Her grin appeared to be a mixture of malicious and conniving... and it was, a little. In Recoil, she thought to herself she may have found a minor-league villain she could publically humiliate in an effort to denounce that whole lifestyle. She adjusted her tie and gestured towards the soapbox where she had been speaking earlier. "Join me, Reee-coilu-saaaaan?" she goaded him, sticking her tongue out in a taunting way, that was really just her airing out her steaming hot mouth.

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WC 604

"... An honorable villain? Do villains like that truly exist?" Deguchi thought, her strange, smirking facing hiding her confusion about Recoil's opening statement. "I suppose it only stands to reason... even when I was a rough and tumble street tough, I had my own code and would never have thought of myself as 'evil.' Still, I never would have called myself 'honorable!'" she thought, feeling indignant. This baffling message might not be such a great thing to expose the citizenry of Japan to after all...

She watched in silence, either respectful or dumbfounded, as Recoil briefly attempted to scale a wall, before giving up. "Know when to fold em," Deguchi mentally agreed with this decision, closing her eyes and nodding sagely, though she couldn't make the connection as to why he'd tried to start mantling that wall to begin with. The boy finally got around to his stump and Deguchi stood, grinning with overt, evil intent like a cartoon villain, as he spoke. As he kept going, her eyebrows tilted up and her shoulder slumped. Her mouth began to hang open unconsciously, though that wasn't part of the confused expression, just a "normal" part of her face. Still, she had a duty to do as a debater and hopeful for office, so she made mental notes of the speech to address during her turn.

Recoil was nothing if not energetic, though... she'd never heard this specific viewpoint addressed before, fervently or casually. When he was finished, she straightened her ties, smiled a thin smile, and motioned for him to hand over the microphone. "Thank you, thank you, Recoil-san. I think we can all say you brought up some points we never would have considered ourselves," she spoke in her syrupy political voice, which was almost as bad as her cackling, faux-villain one. "Let me also say- though we may be on different sides of the aisle in this debate, we share our views on vigilantes! Remember, citizens: only licensed heroes should perform acts of heroism! Japan's hero system is not fragile, as my opponent contends, but it is vulnerable in one way: if we go outside the system and try to step in where qualified, official heroes are better suited, we jeopardize the system and endanger lives! Do not support vigilantism in your community!" Sure, Recoil had been arguing from an aesthetic point, but it was still funny to see them share some common ground.

"As for heroes. Well! Recoil-san, I believe thissss-" she hissed for a moment, pausing to let her tongue hiss against her boiler plate of a chin, before continuing, "ought to be obvious, but heroes have a duty to the people of Japan and that duty starts with treating every threat as a present danger. This means responding with expedient- yes, timely!- force in many scenarios. There is certainly no way they would allow a plan to work, nor allot villains time to succeed in their machinations, be that crime or pre-crime monologue!"

She had a sense that Recoil would see this as just as stuffy as the heroes he hated and would likely retaliate with the same line of attack he'd started with. She decided to modify her angle of attack a bit and see if it produced a result that extended their debate a bit, even if that outcome was a bit unpredictable. "Recoil-san! Let me ask you this: as a real villain, you want to be taken seriously, do you not? You feel disrespected when heroes act with immediate and, in your opinion, brutish effectiveness. However, try using this logic: if an opponent were to see you perpetrating your villainy and allowed you to speak your entire spiel, would that not, in its own way, be somewhat disrespectful? Here you two are: he, a government employed hero, and you, a career villain, and the two of you break in the action to introduce one another! Gentlemanly, perhaps, but just as likely, a belittlement of your efforts as a villain, showing they need no quick-draw or element of urgency in order to defeat you!" she explained, pressing one fist to her eyes as if in imitation of Recoil's woeful pose. "Would that not agitate you?"

She passed the microphone back over to her stomping opponent, unsure of where she was going... but she liked the way Recoil had tossed that in, the idea of villains surely, decisively being defeated by heroes as a matter of course. This could be a pretty surprisingly effective way to get a message across after all, even if she had to go through some twists to get there!

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WC 678

Recoil's slow start coupled with her natural sense of caring for young people once again made her feel a little guilty for singling out the young man just for the purpose of rubbing her heel into him in a debate like this. She was a career politican- well, soon to be one- and he seemed to just barely have the makings of a career villain. It was pretty rude of her, she thought, to bring the full brunt of her debating prowess, such as it was, against him.

Once he got going again, he recovered his spirit. It seemed he indeed felt very passionate about the cause of villains' rights- a cause that was pretty rarely championed- and wanted to make sure that they all got a fair shake to introduce themselves. Deguchi felt herself becoming slightly agitated, to see her own, in her opinion, dire and urgent cause juxtaposed next to Recoil's, in her opinion, completely fabricated one. She wanted to snap back that she'd never even heard of a jelly baby or a frogman, but she simply kept her jaw open in a slight grin, with her eyes narrowed into smiling slits.

Her smirk turned into a wince as the microphone feedback caused everyone assembled to flinch. She began to reach down for the microphone, then turned her eyes up as Recoil grabbed it before her, leaving her hand hanging over the empty spot on the pavement. Even she couldn't hide the confusion on her face as Recoil argued for fare wages for villains, by way of necessitating heroes. "Wait... isn't he making me look terribly foolish after all?!" she finally realized, noting that, rather than the crowd sympathizing with her message and rallying against the villain, they were likely thinking that the two were both goofballs that deserved each other. That said, it was unusual enough that the crowd was still sticking around to see what happened next. At this point, she almost wished that they'd leave...

Gritting her teeth at a second drop of the microphone, she snatched it up with both hands before he could think of a third point he'd like to add. "Well, you certainly have a-" she began speaking, then realized the microphone was no longer projecting. Grinning, but with a twitch in the corner of her smile, she hit the thing a few times, creating the same awful noise Recoil just had. "There we are!" she chuckled, as her voice began to reverberate once more. "You certainly have an interesting worldview! However, perhaps due to personal bias, you've given villains a more elevated role than they deserve. Heroes would still have a place, even without villains. There are always natural disasters to intervene in. There are people in need of medical attention! There are burning buildings to put out, broken dams to repair, malfunctioning trains to heroically stop! Heroes will still touch lives and hearts long after you villains have given up!" she announced, then threw one hand out to the crowd. Only a few caught on that they were supposed to be clapping at this point. Deguchi found herself wondering what the average politician did to garner applause during a speech... it probably meant having someone else to start the rally. She made a note to herself.

She raised one finger, then spoke in a more nurturing tone, like a school teacher. "Recoil-san, we aren't going to pay villains for doing villainy any more than we'll pay criminals doing crimes. The exchange of goods and services requires a service and, as I've just explained, villainy is no service," she sighed, shaking her head. "The reason you're living in your apartment- although I hope it isssss-" she paused, rolling her tongue back into her mouth, "isn't as bad as you make it sound, is simply this hobby of yours. I certainly hope it's a hobby and not a vocation, anyway. Why don't you set aside this strange idea of villainy, and move on to something that benefits both yourself and Japan as a society?" she asked, wearing that same creepy grin that she always adopted, as if Japanese civil service was some kind of grand, evil scheme. "Right here, right now! Let's all help Recoil make the pledge!"

She began clapping her hands in rhythm, causing a few of the children who didn't know what they were clapping for to join in, at least. "Now say it with me: I, Recoil-san, renounce my villainous ways and want to help my neighbor!" she urged him, then, against all logic, handed him over the microphone. The people in the crowd were already beginning to preemptively cover their ears. "Or, if you still wish to champion this cause of villainy you seem so avid about, then walk away... but if your devotion to monologues is so dear, know that this may be the last platform someone gives you to make one..." she spoke, not into the microphone this time.

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WC 825