Summary: Bakugo and Curious bring Izuku's fate to the attention of two leaders, the symbol of Peace, and the Leader of the Meta Liberation Army respectively. Hearing of her fate, both have their opinions on what actions to take, but who will she pick?


Chapter 5: Seeds of Recruitment

"You rarely call an unplanned meeting, Curious. You're normally far too busy chasing down another story." A calm and cultured voice spoke up from their seat at their desk. Like the woman who had organised this meeting, he was seated in a Highrise, but far grander and taller than her own, as was expected of the CEO of Detnerat. On the screen of his desktop, were three other windows which pictured his lieutenants.

"I was also surprised to receive the message, came right after a rally." A well-dressed man on one of the screens stated as the background and sounds of traffic implied he was in a car driving away from the beforementioned event.

"It was rather abnormal as I didn't find this information in my normal sources," Curious replied to their inquiries with a smile, though they all knew she was often in a good mood, especially when it came to indulging in her passion.

"Oh? Do tell." The man said and allowed her to give the meeting a rundown of what she had learned in the past couple of days while interesting, he wasn't sure if was as interesting as Curious thought it was, but he would allow her to state her case. She was, after all, one of his trusted lieutenants and rarely made mistakes-especially when it came to judgements of character and worth.

"That's it? You called a meeting because some girl with no meta-ability of her own was being stalked by a low-level villain?" The man with the turtle neck and hair that covered his eyes asked, clearly not having the same patience as their grand commander but he was never one for it.

"Now, Skeptic, be reasonable. There was more to her story than just the fate of this…Midoriya Izuku?" Trumpet asked as he turned to face Curious's screen and once she nodded her head, he smiled back at the group. "She was being stalked because she was trying to help a little girl, one that seems to be being fed lies about her meta-ability." Here, all four frowned as they were, to put it mildly, displeased to hear about what the girl was being told. The little dark patch on the grand commander's head grew just a little as he thought about it, but with a calming breath-it receded as he focused on how Curious framed her story and picked up something.

"You're right about there being more, but wrong in how many ways it is." He spoke up, Curious' smile growing just a little bit as she no doubt expected that he would catch on to what she was implying.

"How so?" Trumpet asked as the Grand Commander leaned back into his comfortable seat, closing his eyes as he recalled a memory.

"I recall you talking about this girl in the past, Curious. She's been a regular member of your company's chat room for…around 3 years now, correct?" He opened his eyes to see the woman nodding as she, more than the others, would talk with him about the relatively smaller things happening in her neck of the woods. Things that caught her eye.

"4." She corrected him as he chuckled.

"Oh yes, pardon me for forgetting, things do slip your mind now and then, right?" His amusement lowered what little tension was left after they discussed this Kai's foolish and outdated attempts to indoctrinate his child.

"I'm amazed someone that active wasn't made a moderator then, or was she a critic of quirks?" Trumpet joked while Skeptic remained silent, but listening to the conversation.

"Quite the opposite. She loved them," Curious leaned into the camera, a little of the manic curious energy she had to keep locked on in day-to-day life bleeding through as she flashed her white teeth at them like a hungry shark. "It didn't matter that she didn't have a meta-ability, or that she implied she was bullied for it. if it involved meta-abilities, she could match my curious spirit blow for blow, and has a talent for breaking them down and analysing them." That was rare as Trumpet and Skeptic both leaned in.

"Yes, it was that talent and passion that saw her win one of your writing contests when she was only 10, yes?" Their grand commander asked, hiding his amusement as the other two men looked at him with surprise.

"Contests? Do you mean your young writers project? You said she was barely 15, how could she have won when they're for middle schoolers?" Skeptic asked, not buying that a mere child could have won those contests. They were open to the public, and just one of them could receive well over eight thousand entries. For her to stick out of such a crowd would be remarkable, but to win? She would need to be a diamond in the rough.

"She was just that dedicated as I read her essay after it was selected for the top 10. She very much earned that top spot." Curious told them, giddy as she remembered reading over the report the girl had written. Like so many others, she had chosen to write an essay about heroes. However, where others would have just talked about what that hero did, what they meant or how cool they were, she went a different route and wrote about the current 7th-ranked hero, Crust.

Sure, she threw in the common hero worship one would expect, but that was practically a footnote in comparison to the real meat of the essay which was about his quirk, how it worked, what kind of diet it must keep, exercise, possible ways to improve it and its effectiveness. There was even a section where she came up with possible support gear that the equipment adverse pro could use. "And she's made scored that same title more than once, winning it four times since." Curious smiled as that wasn't the only time Izuku had done that. Her next essays about Ingenium, Ryukyu, Endeavour and Hawks were just as intriguing to read through.

"I do recall you being quite impressed with her last one. You even gave me the pleasure to read it myself and I must say, it was of the quality one would expect of a high school student, with points that fused the viewpoints of a hero, support and business student." The grand commander added in as he too was quite impressed with her work. So much so that he was sure that if she kept it up, he would offer her an internship with his company as he was sure she would thrive in R&D, if not for hero gear, then for everyday items that his company was built on.

"Oh, now I see, you believe she would be a good pick for our revolution?" Trumpet caught on to his other meaning and while he, for a lack of a better word, was sceptical about allowing someone without their gift into their organisation, it was also not every day that someone earned both the grand commander and Curious interest and praise.

"I know she would be a good pick. Her attitude towards this Eri girl only confirmed what I already suspected. It's a shame she doesn't have a gift of her own, but she's well attuned to our goals." Curious replied, she knew that their organisation didn't have the best history with the quirkless, as it was when they were still the majority that they came to blows and also when many of the laws they sought to appeal were established, but their goals are never been build in hate, or a sense of superiority over those who didn't have a meta-ability.

It was always about freedom of expression, the freedom to be one's true self, to love what one was even if society said that their quirks had to be suppressed, kept in the dark. From what Curious had dug up, Izuku had good reason to think otherwise, to despise quirks for her lack of one and how others treated her, but her essays and her actions made it clear that she loved them as much as she did, she loved to ask questions as much as she! She loved to learn about them, to study them, to understand them. Even when she met some random little girl on the street, she didn't just show tolerance, but understanding and acceptance.

The grand commander could already see that she was sold this girl, but he would be lying if he said he wasn't also eager to meet her himself. "Well, then can I assume you're already made moves to secure her and Eri?"

"I'm nothing if not proactive, Grand Commander." Curious smile grew as she opened up a drawer at her desk and pulled out a fairy thick file. "She vanished from her home around 2 days ago, no evidence of a break-in but one of my reporters managed to interview her mother, who was more than eager to get the word out." 2 days were quite fast, far faster than one would take to acquire enough information to create that file, at least, if they did so through legal means.

"And?" Skeptic asked.

"She claimed that she had her house keys when she left, but sometime later she had lost them. What are the odds of her losing her keys the same day her home was entered with no force?" Curious asked them as they all realized what had happened.

"Clever for a bunch of criminals. Have you found any leads on who they are, and this Kai person?" Trumpet asked as if nothing else, the method proved that these weren't the run-of-the-mill villains that seemed to thrive on showy, public displays of power and destruction as those kinds rarely lasted a few days. Something like this spoke of planning, patience, and the ability to suppress that pointless urge to fight heroes in the streets for the world to see like cartoon characters performing.

"Some, it'll take time to chase down all of them and confirm them, you know how it is. But things will go faster if Skeptic were to lend some help, his expertise with tech would speed things up." Curious looked at the man in question before the grand commander replied for him.

"I believe he's already working on something else, but he shouldn't have any issues with this, right?" He had already given the man a task to do some time ago, and he would appreciate it if that was done before they moved on to something else.

"It'll take another 2 weeks till I'm free, but yes. I could spare you some help after that." Skeptic replied, reaching for a cup of coffee at his desk.

"Wonderful, I hope the two of you have good fortunes in crashing those backward criminals and saving those poor girls from clutches. Now, is there anything else?" When none of them said anything, he moved to end the call. "Then I shall see you all soon, I have my own meetings to get back to."


Now alone, with his computer off, the grand commander, Rikiya Yotsubashi learned into his seat, chuckling at the novelty of what he had just learned. "How would have thought? A quirkless girl who loves quirks, even having a talent for analysing them." He wasn't thrilled about a quirkless person entering their ranks, but he wasn't against it either as even in his ancestor's time, those with and without meta-abilities marched and fought side by side for a change. Perhaps it was time for them to do so again.

"Yes, she would do quite nicely among our ranks." He nodded his head as he reached for the phone on his desk and pressed a button, calling up his secretary. "Miyashita, please have my car readied, I wouldn't want to be late!" He said with a chuckle and joy in his voice.

"Of course, sir, it wouldn't do if let your competitors think you, grasp, tardy!" His assistant, Miyashita, matched his amusement as the man had long gotten used to how he liked to act with his closer employees, no sense in making work boring, right?

"Can't have them thinking I'm anything less than a boy scout. Then they'll start swearing when I'm around!" Both laughed at them, the earlier conversation seemingly forgotten as the man went back to work.


Toshinori Yagi wasn't a young buck anymore, he had accepted that after he celebrated his 40th birthday and now at the end of 54, there was little that could surprise him, a moment that could stick out from the others he had seen and done over his long life. Meeting young Midoriya, though he hadn't known it at the time, was one of those moments. After all, it wasn't every day that a child latched onto his leg as he took off, all to ask a simple question:

'Can I be a hero without a quirk?'

He couldn't recall the last time he had met a quirkless person, outside of Melissa, he was sure that those he did meet once every blue moon were his age if not older. He had told her no at the time, he had told her how being a hero, being him meant taking on threats both physical and emotional that could break you. That didn't mean he had to like it, as he could see how much she wished to hear him say the other thing because he had once been in that spot decades ago when he had the fortune of meeting his master and had been seen as worthy in her eyes to inherit the power of One for All.

She proved him wrong not even 20 minutes later when with no powers of her own, and against a villain that she herself needed saving from, she rushed in to rescue that boy. While she didn't succeed, it was her efforts that galvanise him and made him throw aside his excuses so that he could follow her example, the example that he should have set. In that one action, he had known she was the one, that she had the courage and selflessness that he wanted in his successor. He had decided then and there that she would be the 9th.

But fate worked against him as by the time he had shaken off the press, she was gone. He had wished to search for her, there was the elephant in the room of how he'll approach her.

He couldn't just show up at her school, it would attract too much attention. Same if he went in his true form as surely her friends would find it suspect if she went off with this strange, sickly man. Same if he just appeared at her home. Then there was the issue that if he run into her parents at her home, it would be hard enough to explain the situation to Izuku herself but to include a parent, one that would naturally be cautious and concerned would only make an already complicated situation worse.

Then there was his reason for being in town, to begin with, while it hadn't been announced yet and won't for some time, he had taken a job at UA for the stated purpose of searching for his successor. This left him with two problems, the first being that he had already found them months before the new class could even attempt the entrance exam. The other issue is that thanks to his words, Izuku may very well not attend UA at all. It would be awkward, to say the least, if she decided to attend general studies at a school like Shiketsu. With his hero work taking up most of his time, he hadn't had the chance to really sit down and try and figure this out, but after a little over 2 months had gone by, he decided to act, and the best way to do that was to get help.

"Toshinori, you were pretty vague on the phone, what is it?" Tsukauchi asked as he closed the door behind them. The two men met in the police station after Yagi had called him to meet, saying that it was urgent.

With the man in question, he was in his true form at the moment, having entered the station like that as to draw little attention. Not that he needed to as it was well known that the two were friends so most didn't pay him mind as he was led inside. "I need your help finding someone, quickly if you can." Tsukauchi raised an eyebrow at that, but it wasn't the first time the symbol of peace needed help tracking down the lucky villains that managed to escape from him.

"Well, if they can avoid you, then they'll be a pretty hard villain to catch." The detective moved for his computer to access the police database, but Yagi stopped him.

"They're not a villain, Naomasa. They're a student." The man stopped as he turned to his long-time friend.

"Student?" He asked him, prompting him to explain the reason he had asked for his help, and how he saw this girl as his successor. "I see, and you think she'll be the best person for it?" He had known the man was on the hunt, but he had figured he wouldn't hear anything about this till next year, but leave it to Toshinori to do it months early.

"Even powerless, she still chose to rush in to save that boy when the pros didn't…" Yagi told him, thinking back to when he had seen her do it, how it reminded him of himself and the few others he had met over the years that truly carried the hero's spirit.

"It was because of her that I had the inspiration to get off my butt and stop hiding behind the excuse of my limit. Though I'm not sure she'll like to speak to me again if she saw me there." The man signed as he fell into his chair, feeling as old as he was as that was another issue he would need to face, how would he even get her to speak with him?

"Why would she-she didn't." The detective was confused for a moment, why would this girl not want to talk to him? Even if she wasn't the biggest hero fan, which was highly unlikely if Toshinori picked her, surely, she would wish to speak with the strong-

"She did. She saw me in my true form, it was before she asked her question which I cruelly denied. My master must have rolled in her grave when I said that." He placed a hand over his face, wondering just what he was thinking that day and how if he could, he'll go back and change his words.

"You said what you believed to be best, it wasn't like you could just pass on your quirk just because she didn't have one." Tsukauchi tried to cheer him up but the man wasn't having it.

"That's no excuse for my actions. Even if I hadn't decided to pass it to her at the time, I could have been gentler with my words, but instead, I let my own frustrations over my time limit and stress get the better of me." He allowed his own negativity to infect his words to her. He had meant to lead her away for her own safety but rather came off as bitter.

"I see…" The detective could tell when his friend wasn't going to listen and had grown to accept when he was in one of those moods. But they did have the chance to make things right as he went back to his computer. "Well, you can worry about how you're apologising to her after we track her down. What was her name again?" He asked, opening her browser

"Midoriya Izuku." The man nodded as he typed in the name into the database, hoping for a quirk hit in the local school registry but found there was more to it as while she did appear there, listed as a 3rd year of Aldera Junior High, he frowned when he saw that she also popped up on another database.

"There's a problem." Yagi frowned here, noting how concerned his friend looked as he read through whatever was on his screen.

"What is it? Is she not in the system? Surely she's a student." She was in a uniform when they had met, and it was sometime after they were let out for the day too.

"She is, and she does pop up in the national student database," He turned to him, his face grave. "But that's not the only database she's in." He gestured for the man to look for himself.

"Missing persons?" Yagi felt his concern grow as he saw that she had recently been listed and that there were no known leads concerning her case yet.

"According to this, she vanished from her house around 2 days ago. No signs of a break-in, fight for stolen items." Tsukauchi read through the file, his frown deepening when he saw that it was notably shorter and lacking in details. He knew that 2 days wasn't long, but surely there was more that should be here as often was. "It's been ruled a runaway case." He glared at the screen when he finally saw the reason at the end of the short 4-page report, written in large red letters.

"Are they sure? I can admit I didn't know her well, but I don't think someone willing to grab onto legs just before I leap away would just…run away." Yagi was starting to panic, and grow angry as he saw that the report just ended.

"Report says her mother agrees with you and was insistent that while she had been going through a rough patch, she was getting better." The detective read the part where whoever the presiding officer seemed to have emphasised that the girl in question was going through a rough patch as if trying to hint that she merely gave up and vanished to end her life somewhere unseen.

"Rough path?" Yagi's brow creased at that. But to their shared annoyance, the report was lacking in actual details about what that was.

"This isn't my case and the officer in charge has concluded she runs away." The detective told him, as he hadn't been involved with this one which seemed to have been closed in record time.

"How can they have concluded it? It's been only 2 days?" Yagi asked him, surprised and furious that they'll close things this quirk. Even when he was working with the police, it was normally too longer to find and capture villains.

"Her quirkless status and the apparent history of bullying and discrimination at school must have coloured their eyes," The detective made a mental note to speak with the officer in question and see if he couldn't discipline him if that was the case. "Or they didn't care to look too hard for her." If it was the second theory, then he'll be having strong words with them and their chief about having them thrown out of the force, they wouldn't and shouldn't tolerate such behaviour from those who wore the badge.

"It'll take time for me to reopen it just to be sure." For now, he'll have to focus his energy on getting the case transferred to him and reopening it.

"I'll assist you in any way that I can. I already failed that girl once; I won't fail her again." All Might told him, bulking up as he placed a hand on his friend's shoulder.


It was as All Might was leaving, that he heard yelling coming from the front of the station. Now, this was normal as concerned friends and family, angry criminals being booked, or just people that were too intoxicated to fully understand the situation was common for the police, but there was something off about this as it wasn't so much the volume, which was louder than most, but the topic at hand. "What the fuck do you mean, 'what note?'?! The note I fucking gave to that police chick!" Exploded a young boy, one fairly familiar to Toshinori, though he couldn't place why.

"I'm sorry!" Whimpered the officer behind the counter, if this was any other time, the number one would have it funny that an officer of the law far taller and larger than the pissed-off blond was scared of that same blonde. "I don't know what you're talking about, sir-"

"The fuck you don't! De-Midoriya Izuku has been missing since Tuesday. She left me a note and I gave it to the one chick, but apparently, the case is a 'standard runaway child' because of a lack of evidence. That's bullshit! It literally had the name of the guy who kidnapped her on it! Fuck!" Having heard more than enough, Toshinori stood and made his way over to the angry blond, tapping on his shoulder politely and getting a response he wasn't quite expecting. "The fuck do want, Skeletor?"

A little taken aback by the dated reference, Toshinori blinked, then said, "Were you a friend of Midoriya's?" He didn't look this gift horse in the mouth, this was something that could help them. For the boy, he narrowed his eyes at him, looking over and seemingly not being impressed by what he was seeing but he still responded.

"Ya, so? Why do you wanna know?" With the point being clear that the boy put as much stock into respect and manners as All Might put into punching babies, he ignored that part and skipped the point.

"You mentioned a note? And you… read it?" This was the first he was hearing of any note, the frustratingly short hadn't said anything about a message, not even a suicide note that could support their rushed conclusion.

"Ya. Except apparently, I'm the only one who has, 'cause these idiots lost it or some shit." He turned his pissed-off glare towards the officer who surely had nothing to do with whatever was going on. However, his non-existent gut told him that this boy had some crucial information.

"Would you follow me, then young- er, pardon me, I don't know your name." All Might asked, getting the boy to tick but still replying, stating his name was Bakugo Katsuki. "Young Bakugou then! Please follow me." Toshinori led Bakugou into Naomasa's office, where he knew Naomasa was busily working. Knocking, he let them in before the man could respond, closing the door just as quickly as the detective looked up from his desk, wondering why his friend had this teen with him.

"Naomasa! Sorry to interrupt, but it sounds like we have a lead after all. Young Bakugou, would you mind repeating what you said earlier?" Toshinori asked the boy, who looked at him before his gaze turned to the detective.

"To you or the officer?" Bakugo was at least happy that it seemed he was getting results to his demands as things had been hectic over the last couple of days. First, there was Deku pulling out of school that Monday, which came with the whole freak out which still unnerved him, almost as much as the hate in Auntie Inko's eyes when she saw him. When he got home from school, the old hag was waiting and was more pissed than he had ever seen as she had learned about how he had treated Deku over the years.

If he had thought that his summer was ruined with his punishment being no going out, video games or training, then he was stripped of that stupidity when Auntie Inko had called them the following day, barely understandable over the phone but they had heard enough.

Deku was gone.

He had remained at home, his father not thinking that seeing him would do her any good, a point he would agree with if not verbally. They had stayed with her for hours, helping with the police report he had heard, when they got back, the old hag had gone straight to bed without a word while the old man told him the gist of what happened. When the cops had shown up yesterday to speak with them, he passed along the note that Deku had dropped at school, one that said in plain Japanese that she was scared someone was after her, along with a fucking name and basic description so he was damn sure the cops would have something, right?

Wrong again as when he came in today to speak with them about it, hoping that they made some progress in finding the damned nerd, his anger shoot through the roof when he heard that 'no note existed' As fucking if! He didn't know what they thought of him, but it was pretty fucking low if they thought he would even entertain that bullshit for even a single second. But as much as he was still pissed off, he reined in the worst of it to keep up with the conversation.

"Both, if you would!" He didn't know what the skinny half-dead guy was here for, he didn't dress like the rest of the cops, but he had gotten him to someone who at least looked like he could do something useful so he'll repeat himself.

"Fine. I'm De-Midoriya was my childhood friend. She'd been acting really weird for around 2 months now, then she stopped going to school for a week and came back a wreck, scared of her own damn shadow. She was fucking terrified of someone, so she wrote me this note. I gave it to one of the officers yesterday when they came to speak with my folks, but apparently, it never got to anyone." The detective's gaze never left him, but it did narrow when he heard that last part as he had been using his quirk on the boy from the moment he opened his mouth, and everything he said was true, at least to him.

Filing away the theory that someone might have tampered with evidence, he reached for a pen and paper. "You wouldn't have happened to have read this note, would you?" When he got a nod from the boy, he pushed on. "Would you mind recounting what was in the note?" And Bakugo did. He didn't recall everything in the letter but he did recall the crucial parts of it. Namely that she was scared someone was going to come for her, that this person was named Kai, a basic description of what they looked like, and the fact they had a daughter named Eri and a basic description of her. After some time passed, the man placed the notebook down and quickly typed the two names into his database and while he got no hits for anyone named Eri, at least no one younger than 20, he did get something for Kai.

"There's something going on here." The detective mentioned as he looked through the information.

"What do you mean? I gave you all I fucking know!" Bakugo nearly jumped out of his seat if not for Toshinori holding him down in his surprisingly strong grip.

"That you did, and I thank you for it. But I'm referring to the information itself as according to this, there's only one Kai that would match the description, and they have no known family, including children." He didn't let them see the page, as that would violate policy but he wasn't lying as the only things they had on the guy was the standard stuff, nothing that would be present if he had been arrested for anything in the past. This set off red flags as if the boy was right, which his quirk seemed to point to, then there was no way this Chisaki Kai was as innocent as his file would suggest.

"Impossible, Deku might have been an annoyance even at the best of times, but she wasn't a liar." Once more, his quirk didn't go off from Bakugo's declaration.

"Which means that perhaps she didn't have the full picture. Did the name ever say if the girl referred to the man as her father? This could be a case of a kidnapping spilling over." He asked. He had seen such cases before when someone claimed familiar connections to the person they were trying to kidnap, was this a similar case to what Midoriya left in her note, the girl was scared.

Bakugo thought about it for a moment, trying to recall if he read anything like that from Deku's note, but had to shake his head as he came up short, as annoying as that was. "I don't think so."


3 days.

If Izuku was keeping track of time right, it had been 3 days since she woke up in this place. Though, as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she also considered that it could have been longer, or shorter as she was basing her time off her sleep schedule, and their meals. Speaking of.

She turned to her side, where Eri was still asleep, from she wasn't foolish enough to think she was having anything but nightmares as she held onto her like a lifeline, her face twisted and scared from whatever she was seeing. The two were sharing her bed, as Eri still had her bed in the corner, she had woken up screaming on their first night together which got Izuku to rush over to her, soothing her, holding her close and singing to her before she finally, after an hour, fell asleep. But she didn't dare let go of her and simply took her back to her own bed with her. And that had been the deal ever since.

Holding her close to her body which was covered up in some pyjamas that…Overhaul had provided for her, she held to her for another 20 or so minutes, trying to keep herself together as mentally got ready for the day as she didn't have much time to waste as when their dinner the previous night, Overhaul had passed the message that they both needed to be ready for something today, though that masked fiend, Chronostasis hadn't deemed it important to tell her what that was. Not having much of an option in terms of refusing, she swapped herself out with a pillow before she quickly grabbed some pair of clothes, which like her first outfit was also a kimono, if a less fancy one clearly meant for housework, and walked into the joining bathroom.

25 minutes later, she was out and dressed even if her hair wasn't done up yet. Having prepared herself, it was now time for Eri to do the same. "Eri. Eri, sweetie, it's time to wake up." She nudged the sleeping girl, and while one would expect some resistance from a 5-year-old being made to wake up at 7 am, Eri didn't as she quickly rose, Izuku just knowing that it was born out of fear of Kai and what he would do if disobeyed.

"Okay…morning, Izu." Eri rubbed her eyes as she looked around as if searching for the man in question before she relaxed, if not a little bit once she confirmed it was just the two of them. Keeping that frustration locked away as she had done with everything else, she gave the little girl her brightest smile.

"Morning, Unicorn. It's time for your bath, don't worry, I made sure the water is just right." When Eri lifted her arms, she picked her up and held her the entire walk into the bathroom where she helped the girl bathe, brush her teeth and even clean up her hair, putting it into the same dual pigtails that Izuku used to wear her hair as when she was her age, down the All Might ribbons used to tie it. It was short, but she cherished these moments as it was one of the few times that Eri seemed to smile.

Afterwards, as they ate their breakfast, with Eri's being a much healthier and larger meal than what Overhaul would have normally served thanks to Izuku's continued pestering, Izuku held her the entire time, letting her sit on her lap as she ate. When she had finished the meal and set the trays aside, she didn't let go of her as she moved them to the bed where she continued to envelop the little girl in her big hug. She always tried to hug the girl, whenever she could to make sure she knew that there was one person that cared for her, one person that loved her. One person that saw her for what she was, not a curse…

But a blessing.