Author's Notes: TW: This story includes mentions of severe child abuse. I will always avoid describing things in extensive detail but if this sort of thing is triggering for you please take care of yourself.

A couple quick warnings before we get started! 1) This is my first published fanfiction, I've written for years across a wide variety of fandoms but I've never had the guts to post before unlike my best friend Alex. 2) The paragraph that describes the abuse is blocked off with ***...*** so you can skip over it if you want 3) Written text is in italic to help make it clearer what is going on. 4) Crossposted on AO3 under the account TinyWritingBean. Take care of yourself and read the things you like! Fandom is supposed to be fun!

Aizawa sighed as he turned over the file the police officer had handed him when he entered the station. Blazoned across the front was a name he had only heard a few times, Nakamura Mizuki.

Aizawa knew Mizuki was still a little girl, after all she was his cousin's child, and he knew that his cousin wasn't old enough to have a child much older than ten. If he remembered the conversation he'd had with his father two years ago correctly, Mizuki was probably only seven or eight depending on when her birthday was, and yet the file in his hands was thick- painfully so.

On the few occasions Aizawa had had to handle a child's folder, usually a child who he rescued during his work as an underground hero, the file would almost always be only a page or two long depending on how much contact the child had with the authorities outside of school. This file was thicker than most criminal files he'd handled, meaning either the girl was a hardened criminal before age ten (a distinct and disturbing possibility given his father's extended family's history) or she had been victimized to the point of regularly coming into contact with the justice system and most of this was court documents (also a distinct and disturbing possibility given his father's extended family's history).

"Thank you for coming so quickly Eraserhead," an officer the hero was not particularly familiar with said with a nod towards the file. "We brought Mizuki-san and her service animal with us to the station so we could question her about what she saw today. But we needed a relative or guardian to be her before we could really talk to her about it."

Aizawa looked at the officer tiredly and then back at the file in his hands, if he was being called to do this that meant that the police were desperate. He was not a close relative; she was his father's niece's only child and he had had almost no direct contact with any of his father's family. He'd never even met the girl despite her living with his parents for a couple weeks while the courts decided whether or not her mother was a suitable guardian. "What happened?"

"Oh! Officer Akiyama didn't tell you when he called?" The blue haired officer looked taken aback before settling on a somber look, "I'm sorry to have to tell you this sir but your cousin, Nakamura Kasumi, was murdered sometime this afternoon, we don't know who did it, but it would have been sometime while her daughter was in school. Mizuki-san was the one who found her." The officer looked away awkwardly, it was clear to Aizawa that he was inexperienced and uncomfortable.

Unsure how to proceed after that admission the pro-hero opened the folder he was holding. The first page was exactly what he was expecting- a basic rundown of who this girl was. Every folder he'd ever opened had been like this.

"Right so while you look that over, I'll give you the summary of the other pages?" It was more of a question than a statement Aizawa noticed so he nodded indicating for the man to begin speaking, the police probably felt it was best to get a family member in there as quickly as possible so they could question the girl before she forgot anything.

Name: Nakamura Mizuki

Birthdate: 8 July 2160 (If Aizawa were any less used to masking his emotions he would have winced; this poor girl came home to her mother's corpse a week before her eighth birthday.)

"So Mizuki-san is seven years old, and if her school records are anything to go off of, she is incredibly bright despite her horrific past. Like seriously this poor kid's life has been a shitshow since the beginning." Again unprofessional, but probably warranted knowing his father's family.

Quirk: Clones- able to produce solid copies of herself, when the clones are dispelled the original and all remaining clones gain the dispelled clones' memories. The clones can only be dispelled with lethal force or through the will of Mizuki unless they run out of energy. While she does not gain any physical injuries or muscle gain from the clones, she does feel any pain they experienced when they dispel and if more than one dispels in a short period Mizuki suffers from a massive migraine. Materials derived from living things, such as cotton clothing, multiply with her and if still touching the clone when they dispel will dispel with the clone, while materials such as metal or most rock will not multiply.

"When she was three years old she was removed from her mother's custody after she informed the quirk doctor about how 'okaasan's special medicine' sometimes caused her to leave her alone in the apartment for days at a time, and that occasionally she would hit her or scream at her for little mistakes when on said 'medicine'." The officer actually used air quotes on the word medicine.

"She was placed in her uncle's custody since nobody knows which of her mother's clients was her father. This was a mistake." Aizawa almost snorted at that, he could have told them that when he was nine years old, after having meet Nakamura Hiroshi for the first and only time. The man was volatile, abusive towards his sister, creepy, and gave off incredibly bad vibes.

Mother: Nakamura Kasumi, former prostitute, former drug addict, former gang member, small business owner- seamstress, quirk: quick recall, can quickly remember images of anything she had ever seen status: deceased 1 July 2168

Father: unknown

Previous Guardians: Nakamura Hiroshi- status: alive, serving life sentence, Aizawa Shouhei- status: deceased 17 April 2167, Aizawa Yuena- status: deceased 2 April 2167

***"Nakamura Hiroshi forced her to use her quirk every night so that he could sell the clone, and then later clones, to men that," the man paused and looked pained, "child molesters, violent child molesters who enjoyed taking advantage of how solid the clones were while also knowing they would disappear without a trace. They could do anything they wanted until the clone died, sometimes after hours of torture. The trial notes in that folder go into some pretty explicit detail, uhhh…"***

There was another long pause from the detective and Aizawa flipped the page over finding her school information, height, weight, and a rundown of her vaccination record. The next page was a summarized medical history, where two things truly stood out to the pro-hero- "sight loss and stunted growth consistent with severe childhood malnutrition". The police kept tabs on the girl, which made sense considering how much she had been through. The pages after the medical records were trial transcripts so he closed the file as he waited for the man to finish, knowing from experience reading everything left would take significantly longer.

"I'll be honest more than one officer had to leave the room to either cry or throw up when she was questioned after being rescued. So, uh, Mizuki managed to get one of her clones out of the building she and seven other children were being held in, and the clone ran into the pro-hero Spectacular Owl," that was a name Aizawa recognized despite having never met the hero personally. She was an older hero that been crushed by falling debris while trying to assist in a rescue operation three months ago. "Spectacular Owl along with some back up managed to rescue the real Mizuki, the other children, and hold Hiroshi and most of his gang until the police could arrive to arrest them. Most of the rest of the file is trial transcripts for all of the cases her testimony has been used in or case notes of potential suspects we are observing based on her testimony."

The officer began to rush through the rest of what he wanted to say, "After spending about two weeks with your parents, her mother was deemed a worthy guardian- having left her previous life and become a seamstress. The girl was returned to her mother and afterward besides appearing at trials to give testimony she's lived a fairly uneventful life until she returned home from school today and found her mother's dismembered corpse."

And with those last few words Aizawa gave into the impulse to wince in sympathy for the poor kid. That was bad, and the poor girl had to be distraught. For a moment he considered calling his husband, Hizashi was better with kids than he was- and definitely better at emotions- but he discarded the idea as quickly as it popped up. Aizawa was always better at staying calm in rough situations, and calm was probably what the poor kid needed in that moment. Plus, Hizashi was trying to finish making his written exam for the Yuuei students and he only had a few days left to do it.

"So, uh, Mizuki-san is down the hall in Detective Iwata's office, if you could… if you could go join her that'd be great." The officer looked away as the pro-hero gave him an unimpressed look.

"Do you want the file back before I go?" Aizawa held the folder out to the blue-haired man.

"Shit! Yes, I need that back," the man got quieter as he took the folder back, but the pro-hero still heard the officer cursing at himself for his forgetfulness as he walked towards the Detective's office.

Author's note: I made some small edits on 2/24/2020. These changes were to help make things easier to read and follow- small grammatical things, two added phrases to help clear something up as a friend told me it was a little confusing, italicizing writing, and making it clear where the triggering content begins and ends.