also since prince is talking about deck’s “ quirk ” , i’ll talk about tooru’s under his puppeteer persona , as well ; namely that he ... well , he doesn’t have one , either . he’s quirkless , but given the prejudice against quirkless individuals , people have the mindset of , “ there’s no way someone quirkless would have that kind of skillset ” . tooru’s strength derives entirely from the training he underwent even as a young child in order to further hone his quirk when he first had it . since it was not a physicality - based quirk , he had to sharpen his fighting abilities , and also find a way to work around his quirk’s limitations ( i.e. the fact that he had to limit his senses and thus had to figure out how to battle people while being blind / deaf ) . when he lost his quirk , this training helped come in handy because his senses had already been sharpened to a very uncannily high level . he’s able to deduce a target’s position by their footsteps , has better vision in the dark due to his eyes constantly being blindfolded ( he had to swap out blindfolds later on because his eyes became too adjusted , and he’s the kind of person who would instinctively open his eyes when he feels danger impending ; it took him a long time to repress that natural reaction so he wouldn’t accidentally turn his quirk off ) , etc ... so while tooru’s abilities are rooted in his hero training , he’s very proficient even when he loses his quirk .
the public , of course , has no idea that he’s quirkless . thus , they’ve dubbed his quirk to be called “ manipulation ” , on account of him using red puppet strings to fight . they surmise that it’s a quirk that allows him to control people’s quirks , as it’s been noted that many pros have had their quirks rendered useless when caught in these strings . however , that’s not entirely true ; what actually happens is that tooru’s strings are made from a fibre extracted from a beta version of the quirk - erasing drug that deck is developing . they were given to him by deck as a sort of test run , and tooru just thinks they’re a temporary way to stop people’s quirks to kind of nail in the philosophy they share that society relies on , and judges , others based on their abilities rather than who they are as people , so he has no idea what he utilizes in battle is actually the key to a countrywide epidemic waiting to happen ... his main battling style is to evade and dodge attacks and catch people in his strings before they even notice it . he’s very quick on his feet and often maneuvers in such a way so as to entrap the person within his strings and then incapacitate them . for example , he’d dodge their attacks and leave the strings on the ground with every move , and when the person’s guard is down , he wraps them around something like the piping on the ceiling and ensnare them in the strings , using the pipes as a makeshift pulley system to leave them hanging . since the strings are taut and render one quirkless , it’s really hard to escape from them , and this gives him the perfect opportunity to leave the premises before help arrives . after all , puppeteer’s M.O. is to do what needs to be done and leave --- he isn’t the type to be super flashy or do more than what’s needed from him . it’s why people have such a hard time catching him : he’s much too slippery and too clever to let himself get carried away .
