The Last Thing I Needed [Deguchi and Libra]

Deguchi craned her long neck around to see Libra approaching, files in hand. Her tongue hung from her mouth, giving her a sloppy or at least a little crazy look, as she greeted her lawyer with a smile. The nervous leg kicking didn't stop; perhaps Deguchi felt comfortable doing it, thinking her acquaintance wouldn't see it. Or perhaps she'd just drank too much dang coffee. It was probably a little bit of column A and B.

Libra couldn't have missed the heckling at the rally where Deguchi had been confronted about her possible role in an arson at the cherry blossom park in Tokyo City. Either she wanted some clarification, as a professional, or she wanted to make Deguchi say it, as a sadist. Deguchi assumed the former, having no reason to assume the latter. Putting on as casual of a smile for her friend, forgetting that said friend was blind, she shrugged the padded shoulders of her suit and gave a sigh. "Ah, well, it shouldn't really be an issue at all, but I've been tied up in this whole arson conspiracy. Some of my detractors- Higashide-supporters, to be sure- are pinning it on me. You've heard about it, riiiight? The cherry blossom tree that burned down, almost spread to the whole orchard, yada yada... They place me there at the time, but if you ask me, it's all anti-quirker sentiment that's got them whipping themselves into a frenzy," she sighed, shaking her head like she was above it.

She hadn't meant to keep stringing Libra along, but it was just too embarrassing to admit she'd set that tree alight with an allergic sneeze. With an awkward expression, her tongue hanging out and one eyebrow raised, she held both hands out, palms upright, upon the table. "But say, hypothetically, that some sort of testing finds out that the tree did perish by some sort of, I don't know, laser weapon, similar to the one my tongue emits. That could reflect very, very poorly upon my campaign! People would be asking me why I didn't come forward, is my quirk a danger to others, all that rhetoric! Anti-quirker sentiment would be stoked... ruinous for the people of Japan, not just for my campaign!" she shuddered, pressing one hand to her forehead as though to perish the thought.

"So, I was thinking I should prepare myself. That Higashide-san... he always takes the low road and he'll take this one too. He will most certainly wield this hypothetical scenario against me! So I ask you, Libra, as my legal council: what steps can I take to get out in front of this? What sort of liability do I have, if the worst comes to worst? Does the law cover a case like mine, where an accidental misfire of my beam could, theoretically, reduce a tree to ashes?" she inquired, her tongue making a smoking noise against her jaw as though to punctuate the point that her laser was capable of doing such a thing.

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WC 502

If she was being honest, Deguchi had expected a much more kid-gloves approach from Libra, hoping they'd share a few good-natured chuckles at the expense of how desperate her opponents must be to trump up an arson conspiracy against her. This wasn't quite that. Libra basically stressed that this single case would be easy enough to get over, even if they had to fall back on calling it an incident on her behalf, but that the difficult part might be if Higashide or others worked to pin it on her as deliberate. Beyond that, Libra correctly guessed that this might not be a one-off; it was not as if there was much keeping Deguchi from burning things down all the time, given her erratic quirk. "What is she, my lawyer or my therapist?" Deguchi thought to herself, feeling her mood sour now that they were discussing one of her least favorite topics that could possibly be discussed.

Not letting it show on her face, she kept her eerie smile and rubbed her hands together meekly. "That's an issue I've had to live with for a long time, of course. Typically circumstances aren't as dire as you might imagine, but it's true: I ordinarily try to arrange things in my favor to avoid that kind of scenario. I hold rallies or debates outside. I don't ask to be invited in places. I- usually- avoid any place with conditions that might cause me to sneeze, like, say, a park full of various flowers and blooming seasonal foliage," she rattled off; the last bullet point was especially relevant, since that was essentially what had gotten her into this mess. "As long as I'm not eating something peppery or suffering from a cold, I can typically keep it under control."

Sighing, she adjusted her tie and leaned back in her chair, seeming increasingly weary despite all the coffee. "Of course, it's an obstacle in my daily life, and one that will be inflated even further by my opponent. That's why it's ideal that this not be put on me. If people think I'm going to burn down the Diet building- or even just the mayor's office in Komae- with a sneeze they're not going to believe my message about the positive effect of quirks in Japanese communities, let alone vote me into office..." As if to demonstrate the severity of the issue, she was briefly forced to let her tongue hang out again, creating a hot crackling noise of laser-tongue on metal. "So yeah, I'm worried about what might happen in the future, but to be honest, I'm a lot more concerned about how that bastard can speculate to make the present sound worse than it is."

Deguchi rested her head on her hand and leaned on one arm of the chair, her smile momentarily dropping to make a face that looked more like the one she'd often worn as a thug, fed up with adults, school, society, and everything else that her rebellious heart rebelled against. "Oh, here's another fun addition, not sure if you've read up on my history anywhere yet: I used to be in a street gang. The Ssss-" she began, then clicked her tongue irritably, shooting off an almost imperceptible red beam as she did, "-Striped Snakes. We weren't big time. Ordinarily nobody would remember, but this sort of thing comes back on a person running for office," she grumbled. She stared at the ceiling for a moment, then turned her beady, bright-red eyes towards Libra. "I pretty much resigned myself to play it straight and honest on that one and tell people the real events where one of my street brawls ended up becoming the catalyst that turned me to social service. What do you think? How would you approach it?"

She leaned further back in the chair, showing the underside of her angular metal jaw and staring at the ceiling. "Oh, before you ask, his history's clean as a whistle... I checked. Besides anti-quirker activism during his university days which is like... a positive, for the constituent base he's courting," she pointed out, rolling her hand as she spoke. Her contempt for the guy, on both a personal level and as he stood in her way as an obstacle, was obvious.

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WC 714

If Deguchi and Libra had been able to really ponder their comparitive situations- one, a blossoming politician haunted by small-time crimes from the past and the other, a recent murderer holding a respected profession as a legal representative- surely, they would realize the irony therein. Of course, any amusement at the irony would be faint, compared to how Deguchi would react to the context itself. Instead, her mind was all on her own past misdeeds.

If Libra was inwardly critical or Deguchi's career as a gang member / civil servant / political hopeful, Deguchi found herself somewhat irritated with Libra's demeanor as well. Wasn't an attorney supposed to be all smiles and pleasantries, like she herself affected as a civil servant? Then again, maybe she had thrown that out the window herself when she started slouching in her chair and showing her exhaustion.

"I guess I'll just stay the course. It's all uphill, though," she sighed again, pinching the knot between her brows with two fingers as though she was staving off a building headache. "I don't think he killed anybody. I didn't either, just injured a lot. A lot." She had repeated the statement, but any amount of emphasis probably would have just sounded quaint to Libra, to whom injury was just the build to a deadly climax. "Besmirching his character is going to be difficult, at least unless people reject his anti-quirker sentiments more than polling indicates they will. Hopefully I can win on policies instead..."

She grabbed the folders and began to flip through them, making an effort to study, like a student who can't stand the coursework but knows they can't afford to fail the test. Perhaps out of curiosity, or perhaps to better serve, Libra asked about her past. There were parts of it that would make her smile, but right now, with the election hanging over her head, they didn't evoke any good feelings. "Keh heh heh... we were a wild bunch alright. It started as a bunch of kids habitually truant, but of course, when you skip school that often, you find ways to amuse yourself..."

Deguchi began counting off her fingers while her tongue hung out her mouth, sizzling. "Lessseee... we did a lotta vandalism. That's the easiest one, of course, especially when your tongue shoots lasers. Stuff like blowing up fire hydrants or melting water sockets or shooting down traffic lights. Breaking vending machines for soda and parking meters for change. The whole world is a shooting gallery for a bad girl with a quirk like that," she smirked, spreading her arms to either side as though inviting judgment. "As a kid, it was a victimless crime. Just something to blow off steam."

"Once that got old the gang decided we wanted to start throwing our weight around, espessssshially since there were other gangs of jackasses in Komae looking down on us. So we started, you know, just picking fights wherever we could. We'd beat people up for looking at us funny, shake 'em down too if we wanted the cash. Usually other gangs, sometimes just unfortunate folks that didn't deserve it," she murmured repentantly.

"Anyway, it kept spiraling. I found myself targeted by another gang leader, part of a gang called the Gold Grip. I always thought Golden woulda been better, but what do I know? Our gangs clashed all the time, until finally, their leader jumped me. The two of us tussled, he got me in a stranglehold, and blam, just like that, my laser half-killed both of us," she exclaimed, pointing at her jaw for emphasis. "That was the end of my wild youth and almost the end of my life as well. If some good citizen hadn't seen me bleeding out there and alerted the EMTs, I'd be dead."

As if remembering them, Deguchi turned her eyes back down to the papers and thumbed through them more hurriedly. As she did, a strange burn mark on the corner of one caught her eye. Had she done that? Perhaps a miniature laser had slipped out during her reminiscence... but that was unlikely. Maybe it only made sense for an arson photo to have a burnt corner?

Dismissing the thought, Deguchi tried to turn the discussion back to her campaign. "Yeah, this is the kind of stuff I used to see in my nightmares, when I worried about burning down my school building, back when my quirk started coming in," she admitted. "That said, that does make me wonder if this could just be treated as uh, the ssssss-" she hissed, then rolled her tongue back in with some annoyance. "-same as when you burn your kitchen making French fries in some kind of grease fire. It's not really arson, right? Or does it fit the definition since it's public property?" she pondered, rubbing her metallic chin thoughtfully.

Puffing up her chest with a point to make, Deguchi sat up and entered speech mode. "This is why we need the government to incentivize and sponsor quirk-related drugs and pharmaceuticals! Something like a quirk repressor or more effective allergy medicines, could have prevented this whole situation! Unfortunately, the government is too focused on gearing up to shoot quirkers on sight or capture them as test subjects to focus on humane projects with benefits for quirkers and citizens alike!" she railed. Unfortunately, with context, it came off as a more self-centered message than she had wanted it to be.

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WC 906

"Ha ha, thank you. There is no good way to get a prosthetic like this, is there?" Deguchu joked, rapping one fist on her own metal chin. "But again, I owe it all to the fine, upstanding folks of Japan, who cared for me more than I myself did. Without that token kindness, recovery would have been impossible," she pointed out again. It was part politeness, part core of her message of civic responsibility that thereby needed to be repeated whenever possible.

She nodded along with Libra, never suspecting her devious inner monologue. "Right? I would never suggest anything so barbaric as trying to remove a quirk, just something to help those of us with less convenient ones not be so much at their mercy. I'm sure there are others out there with even more unruly mutations," she sighed, though one had to doubt quirks got much more self-harmful than her own. It was also possible she was thinking how a quirk suppressant could help law enforcement officials fend off quirked criminals... but that sort of bullet point was not in-line with her pro-quirk, small military message, so she left it unspoken.

"Well, let me think on this accidental fire some more. If I think of it like an accident, it doesn't seem so bad. More like... a potential fine to be paid than any kind of scandal," Deguchi sighed, kicking her leg again. "Walking down memory lane always makes it hard for me to put myself back in the mindset for being a politician, and yet, I do it so often. Those formative years, you know?"

Idly, staring at the woman across from her, Deguchi made small talk as her thoughts stewed. "How about you? What sort of past drives you to be a lawyer? I'd imagine you have to have a sense of..." She had started to say justice, but that was a bit corny. After all, justice was the role of the judge and jury, not the attorney. "Hmmm... reliability. It takes self-confidence, I bet! And the ability to compartmentalize," she proposed. "Not so different from the life of a bureaucrat, really." After all, a lawyer had to be able to live with certain harsh feelings, such as doubt towards their clients or anger towards their opponents. "How'd you decide that was what you'd do. Was it just the money?" she joked, wearing a big, crap-eating grin that would make the joke obvious to people with sight but would theoretically be hidden from a blind person.

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WC 419

"Hm, that's not a bad idea. I was planning a few donations... not that I have money to do much in that department," Deguchi shrugged, still kicking her foot up and down. "Maybe putting in some face time with parks and recreation wouldn't be a bad idea either." She thought about adding that putting in face time sometimes backfired on her... but if she couldn't be personable for that goal, she'd have a hard time making it far in the political realm. The difficulty of making people buy in, given her strange appearance, was just another hurtle she had to get over.

The civil servant sat back in her seat and folded her hands; Libra's answer hadn't given her too much to think about. That seemed to be the point, though whether Libra had something hidden away and didn't want to make a distraction out of it, or perhaps it was personal, Deguchi couln't say. Of course, not everyone blows their jaw off in some street fight and gets rescued by the kindness of strangers; Libra might really have just wanted to be a laywer to help people, like she said. Or maybe she was just some crazy mass murderer who gets off on moonlighting as a defense attorney?

Whatever the case, Libra and Deguchi would spend another half an hour or so going over some of the less interesting parts related to preparing a defense against a hypothetical arson charge. By the time it was over, Deguchi felt more reassured in her ability to fight back any accusation through thorough prep-work, coming out in front of it, and framing it as an accident for which reparations had already been made. "And, key phrases to avoid... 'potentially greater damage'... 'all things considered, we were fortunate'... I think that covers it!" she resolved, shutting her notepad and sticking it inside her jacket's inside pocket, just behind her handkerchief. "You've been a great help," she finished, rising back up to her feet and extending her hand for a handshake. Deguchi thought about telling Libra that she was one of Japan's finest citizens, but it didn't seem like Libra liked political platitudes like that and preferred the informal touch. "Hopefully, I can return the favor some day."

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WC 374

Deguchi felt like slapping herself on the forehead once she realized she had been expecting a blind person to pick up on a handshake. She should have gone for the double-handed mayor handshake she often performed. What a gaff!

Thankfully, it seemed Libra was taking it in stride; she made up for her earlier blunder by grabbing the hand now and shaking vigorously. "Thank you again for working pro-bono today. You're a little like the helpful citizen from my story! An altruistic force where none is obligated, really. It seems I owe the citizens of Japan another great debt," she chuckled, almost like it was her strange idea of a catch phrase. Going around indebting yourself to Japanese strangers all the time would be a pretty exhausting way to live.

With handshakes extended and farewells given, Deguchi left Libra's office. For Deguchi, her mayoral candidacy was the only thought on her mind... fun and hobbies had to be pushed to the wayside. She was the type, however, who was so passionate that her work became fun (well, when it wasn't about fending off arson charges). Libra, on the other hand, had perfected the work/life balance even further and thoroughly enjoyed both sides of her paradoxical lifestyle. Perhaps once this was all over, Deguchi could find a hobby of her own, though one would have to hope it wouldn't involve murder.

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WC 231