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It started with a video on ClikThru, one which went largely unnoticed for quite some time. It was titled “body language practice for the future, part 1” and was by a pretty new user, one who had liked and commented on a variety of posts and videos before posting their own, with interactions dating back two and a few months before the first video. The channel had no followers, though they followed a variety of people including hero accounts and random comedians. The user was called NotSoDeku.
The video opened with the supposed person behind the account stepping away from the camera, likely attached to a phone and propped slightly off kilter. It had obviously been poorly cut, as NotSoDeku was just taking the last half step and turn to face the camera after presumably walking into position. The boy was short and had a nice blazer and vest on, but nothing that would be considered too inappropriate at an informal event or a large family get together. His hair was cut close, but neat aside from the fly-away curls that somewhat framed his face and ears.
Taking up the center of the screen is a miniature video playing from a somewhat known ClikThruer, Shift_into_my, who specialized at the time in skit comedy revolving around his minor shapeshifting quirk and impersonation skits of popular heroes and celebrities. Fixing his vest unnecessarily, the first and only physical tell of nervousness, NotSoDeku began to calmly break down the skit for the first three minutes or so of the video.
It was a simple skit, about how Gang Orca must have had trouble picking up dates, and how the first successful match he’s had was with Selkie. There is a cutaway dialogue between the user and himself, portraying Gang Orca and Selkie having a slight laugh at the irony of an orca and a seal matching, given that orcas are known for being ruthless carnivores with a track record for killing seals on sight. Awkward silence descends, with a few cuts between the two characters shuffling awkwardly or coughing into their hands, before Selkie comments seriously how it’s best they not proceed with the date.
NotSoDeku gives a little bit of background and insight into the normal relationship between orcas and seals in the wild, displaying some blurred images and quoting researchers and fishermen who have had the displeasure of seeing such interactions. At one point, for a few seconds, the central video is replaced with another clip, this time showing an orca launching a seal into the air, and smacking it once more once it has landed and became disoriented. The clip ends with a still of the seal, motionless. This cuts back to the thumbnail of the other user’s video.
Following the explanation and contextual background behind the skit, NotSoDeku then spends the next 26 minutes breaking down the body language, intonation, editing style, quirk, history, and online presence of the user, and how they have shaped the skit. More specifically, how this user followed numerous heroes, specifically those with mutation quirks, on his various public social medias. On his otherwise anonymous and separate account on Pressto, he was instead following multiple previously canceled or low ranking heroes, political leaders, and vocal mutationist extremists known to have mutationist or anti-mutation quirk opinions.
How the user’s parents were emitter and transformation quirk holders, who while not vocal did still express mutationist political views when observed, and whose coworkers have largely attested to hearing as such in personal and professional settings. How the user was capitalizing on the smaller but more concentrated market for explicitly mutation friendly content to achieve likes and popularity, when they were in fact in possession of an emitter quirk capable of partially altering the perception of their appearance and or voice in people. How when a random selection of their videos were fed into an AI programmed to replicate a video’s content in 3D space, they possessed no physical mutations.
At one point, NotSoDeku even created an alt account to message the user on their alt Pressto account with anti-mutation rhetoric. The user responded in kind, and NotSoDeku showed all of this with screen recordings, screenshots, and even bringing up the account and message history on his laptop to validate the truth of them.
The last five minutes were spent citing sources for all the data, accounts, research papers, and clips used or referenced in the video, with a link to the publicly accessible document located in the video’s description, and addressing the user that he should educate himself and read up on or talk with people with mutation quirks about their experiences with prejudice.
The video abruptly ends, with no call to follow, like, or subscribe on any of NotSoDeku’s social medias or accounts. Just with a sudden cut to black before the autoplay function kicks in for the person watching it.
For two, three days the video was seen by maybe ten people, with a total of 31 views. Then, a third user, one more popular than either NotSoDeku or the person he was analyzing, put out a video addressing it. More specifically, how she saw the video, watched it, and then proceeded to do a deep dive into all the sources, media, and points referenced only to find that nothing cited was wrong or doctored. Nothing.
Overnight, the total views, followers, likes, and mentions of NotSoDeku’s channel grew by hundreds on the low end, tens of thousands on the high end.
The only issue is: that was all fake.
The user mentioned exists, and has been doing skits for a couple of months. Their videos, when put through the same or similar software to what NotSoDeku used, does show someone without visible mutations or any at all. The parents mentioned do have a son very similar to the one seen in these videos, and have been known to use mutationist rhetoric. The anonymous account cited and talked about does exist, and has a history of mutationist views, with every other point discussed proving true. When eventually confronted, the user admits to not knowing who the person they conversed with was, and further points hint that none of it was scripted or planned.
And yet.
At some point, the person behind Shift_into_my got a new account on ClikThru, and put out a video explaining that he did none of that, and how he didn’t even know about it until his parents came storming into his room, pissed. His messing around on social media had cost them promotions, made people hate them, and even forced both of them to go into mandatory sessions with HR.
He claimed that it wasn’t him, and how his parents had a strict rule with no or almost no social media because they didn’t want him to ruin his future by doing something stupid while young. He claimed that his quirk did work like how it was described, but it wasn’t him. How he is trying to work through the mutationist views he’s grown up hearing, and has actually talked with people with mutation quirks and is learning more about their history, most of the places and sites he mentions being cited by NotSoDeku at the end of his, by now, infamous video.
A week later, Gang Orca and Selkie both condemn the user and person behind Shift_into_my for their harmful actions and words, state how they are disappointed in people like them, and how they both hope people will learn and grow past these harmful beliefs. It is at this point that the larger existence of news networks, popular HeroTubers, ClikThruers, and society learn about the video and escalate the issue into a new frenzy.
Someone doxed the person behind Shift_into_my, Hayashi Sachiko, so his home was vandalized with graffiti, signs, and soon was swarmed with reporters, professional and amature alike. His parents became liabilities and problems for their employers, and so were let go and fired from their companies.
One day, when Sachiko turned up at school whilst the teacher was late, he walked in to find a single red spider lily on his desk, the rest of the class silent and looking pointedly away.
Within two weeks, the family had packed everything and found a small apartment in rural UK to move to, with plans to commute into London or any nearby city for work, and to live off their now very depleted savings account until they could pin down a stable and moderately good job. Hayashi Sachiko, would be homeschooled for the next year, at minimum.
Sachiko would look over the videos for years to come, analyzing them, breaking them down. Going through the past videos of the account Shift_into_my, and the Pressto accounts belonging to him. Scanning and analyzing and digging as deep as he could into them that it even began to worry the few friends he’d managed to make. All of his mannerisms were there, his usual hesitations and anxieties, his views and opinions at the time, the edits that the account made that fell right in line with how his quirk worked then. Everything lined up, but he had no memory of this.
If every sign points to an answer, then that must be it, no matter how absurd. Right?
No, the quote goes: “when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Not everything was eliminated, he knew that. It had to be something else, right? Right?
He must have made that channel and done those skits, his past self would have found them funny certainly, but blocked out the memories. Everything points to it being him, so it must just be something he didn’t want to remember and blocked out. He was already losing elements of the weeks leading up to their departure from Japan, so it just made logical sense that he blocked both out due to trauma and fear, a desire to be innocent, at least to himself, when everyone hated him…
But every user and account that the scandal focused on was made by NotSoDeku. Every interaction, every piece of media shared between the accounts, every video made by user Shift_into_my, everything was fabricated by him.
And so Japan calmed down and the incident dimmed and faded, receding into the domain of social media, as new trends and issues began to emerge. In six months, the incident was forgotten or relegated to a vague memory in most people’s minds.
At this point, NotSoDeku released his second video, titled “investigation practice for the future, part 2”.
Midoriya smiled.