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She’s heard, from some of the old hands, that Deku goes through sidekicks in cycles. He’ll hire a bunch of people, one of them will be horribly injured or traumatized or the like, and at that point he’ll find everyone working for him a new job with his extensive contacts and go solo for a month, or a year, or six months, or two years, and then someone will sit down and talk to him about overwork, and he’ll hire a bunch of people again. Inkblot has been in and out of Deku’s staff for a decade and a half, and he isn’t the only one.
She’s not sure she understands it. A stint as the top hero’s sidekick is enough to easily launch a solo career into the top hundred. Why put up with bouncing around jobs just to chase after the number one’s glory. And on top of all that, she finds Deku… unnerving? No, he projects an unfaltering air of safety. A better way to say it: he’s off putting.
His smile never falters, and while it never seems artificial, it does seem to be etched on his face, which does not match his eyes. His eyes look like they see through her, to something under her skin. He’s nice, he remembers her name. But she can’t shake the impression that he sees her as a variable first and a person second.
Fighting by him in the field is even stranger. Deku regularly seeks out villains with quirks that induce pain, cause hallucinations, or any number of other purely psychological effects. He seems to be simply immune. She can’t tell if it’s part of his strange quirk or not. She remembers curling up on the ground, not moving only thinking pain pain pain. Deku got hit with it too, and he just stood there, smiling. No pain in his face or his posture.
Not that’s the worst of it, even. She saw him lose an arm once. Didn’t blink, didn’t falter. Finished the fight, walked to the ambulance and just layed down. He didn’t collapse. He lay down. Calm as anything. While missing an arm. Inkblot says that wasn’t the first arm he lost. But still. Creepy as shit.
Not so bad as the time he got stabbed in the back. Red Flash just pulled a knife and got him, once, twice, right in the kidney. Inkblot says Red Flash had been in and out for a decade. Interned after his first sports festival. And after his third. And she saw him. Saw them both. Deku had turned, and he hadn’t been surprised. Hadn’t even blinked. When Red Flash saw he’d failed, he’d tried to use his titular Red Flash to make his getaway. Deku had been in front of him. With a knife in his back. Not something anyone should be able to do.
Inkblot lost a hand last night. Really not so bad, in the grand scheme of things. Still, it happened like he said it would. Everyone’s off. She turns down Deku’s offered job with Tailman. She’ll start her own agency. Maybe she’ll invite Inkblot when the gene therapy finishes regrowing his hand. Might be a waste of time, though. She knows he’ll just be working for Deku again, eventually.