Izuku POV:

As Hado and I brought the little girl towards the hospital, her bandages and exhausted look started to get me thinking. 'Just what brought this little girl to where she is now.' I thought about this as I remembered one of my quirks that I could use. 'Maybe I should....No. It's rude to do something like that and it's an invasion of privacy.'

"Please....stop..." The little girl shook in my arms to make what her dream was about worry me. "Stop...Stop it....Overhaul..."

Hearing that man's name, I couldn't take it anymore. 'If she said Overhaul, I need to know.' Whether for better or worse judgement, I decided to use a quirk called 'Mind Read'. To make a long story short, I can see everything that the person had felt that I touch. The problem with this one though is that I can feel any pain they may have felt at the time as if it was my own. When I touched her head and used the quirk, I was mortified. Images of the poor girl being strapped to a torture chair practically flooded my brain. Overhaul stood in the background as several scientists began prodding and slicing into the girl's arms and legs. Each cut felt like they were hitting bone for the sounds of the girl's screams to be heard. When it felt like she was on the verge of death, Overhaul walked over to place his hand on her head. Knowing what this was, I stopped not wanting to envision what he was doing to know exactly what was going to happen.

"Hado. Take her." I passed the girl to Hado before turning and throwing up in a garbage can that I saw beside me.

"Are you gonna be ok? You just threw up out of nowhere."

"Bluegh!" I kept vomitting for a few more minutes before taking my head up and turning to my upper classmate. "I'll be fine. But she needs a doctor from what I've seen of her memories. Maybe also a psychiatrist or five or something."

"Wait. Why a psychiatrist?"

"I'll explain later." We returned to our travel to reach a hospital. Hado explained what was happening to have a doctor bring the girl in and allow us to follow down the hall. We had to stop though when we reached the room he was going to offer the girl treatment. Hado and I waited outside on a bench with the memories of the girl continuing to play in my head.

A silence was between us with Hado speaking up. "Poor girl. I hope she'll be alright."

"She's got a long road ahead." I kept fidgeting my thumbs around with a thought coming to my head. "Hado. Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"...If you were subjected to torture and had to deal with it for enough time where you're almost thinking it's normal and given a way out to a normal life, would you take it even if you find out your action damned someone else to a similar fate?"

"That's a tough one. Hmm....If I had to deal with the torture regularly...I think I would. It's hard to accept it, but I'd be desperate to make it stop. Why do you ask?"

I held my head down while answering. "A while back, my father mentioned to me that someone else is making his plans possible and thrown into a similar hell I escaped from. You already know that my father was...messed up, in pretty words. *ahem* But the issue I had with hearing this was someone else was dealing with what I was because I chose to leave."

"Ok. But what does that have to do with this?" I gripped my fists before answering.

"The girl we brought in. Eri. She's that replacement. The fact it was someone else made me sick knowing, but a child? I...I just want to know if I could've done anything to avoid this."

"Well, if you want me to answer that then no." Hado said this bluntly for me to glance at her. "Bad things happen. You can't change that. Ryukyu mentioned to me that feeling guilty when there was absolutely nothing you could've done to avoid someone getting hurt isn't what you need. You can't win everything and everything can't turn out right. Anyone that thinks it can is delusional to the truth and needs to know the truth the world isn't always fair. Yes this might've happened because you left whatever your dad put you in, but you didn't do this to her. If we're being honest, I don't think you did anything wrong or reason to deserve to be judged. I've seen terrible things people have done. I've made bad choices on the field and people have gotten hurt cause of me. But here's the difference. You at best, didn't directly make this happen. If Ryukyu was here, she'd probably tell you that you have no reason to blame yourself for something someone else did because you wanted to live. You helped save her and this is what matters."

I leaned back in the seat trying to keep this thought in my head. I let a deep sigh out before closing my eyes. "To be honest, I think you hit Ryukyu on the mark for what she'd say. Thanks. I think I needed someone to say that."

"Glad to help." A doctor came out a few minutes after this conversation for him to glance at us.

"You the heroes that found the girl?"

"Yes. How is she?" Hado spoke up for the doctor to go down a clipboard.

"As far as we can tell right now, she's suffering from malnutrition, so we're trying to pump her body with some nutrients to fix that. There's a notable amount of scaring that's around her arms and legs to indicate some kind of torture. Adding to this, she seems to have a heightened heartrate from extreme stress. I'd prefer that to go down before we do any further prognosis, preferably on it's own, but we will medically induce it if need be."

"Any idea what the injuries were made from?" I asked for the doctor to look down his charts.

"Some deep cuts that were made by a scalpel from what looks like a trained doctor. Outside of that, we can't analyze her mental state but can assume she may hold a form of PTSD just from what we can assume she went through."

"Thank you for this." We both bowed for the doctor to nod before heading out. There was once again a silence between us as Hado decided to ask a question.

"So I heard you friend zoned Shiozaki. Why?"

"I just think it's better for her not to deal with me. I already hurt her a lot and I don't want to hurt her more."

"You honestly told her there's no way because you thought you'd end up hurting her?"

"Yeah. Even if she hates me for it, I'd rather that than force her to deal with problems I put her through due to my past." There was a somber feel in the hall now with Hado trying to ask me a few more questions before I told her that I'd rather sit in silence now. This was broken probably about 10 minutes later with Uraraka running down the halls fast enough to slide directly into the wall without stopping to go face first in it.

"OW! THAT REALLY HURT!"

Hado was on the verge of hysterics while I blankly stared with a smile. "Well I'm not gonna laugh at that, but that did make me feel a little better watching."

"Oh very funny. Let's all laugh at the person wanting to make sure Eri's ok." Hado stopped holding back her laughter when Eri's name was spoken.

"Ok. So how do you know Eri?" Hado asked with Uraraka holding her arm.

"I uhh...left her to fend for herself basically." She explained the patrol she did and how Eri ran away with some guy from the Yakuza going after her. They tried to take him off her trail, but couldn't go back for Eri. She felt sick to her stomach leaving the child, but it could've jeopardized what Nighteye was doing. However, things turned out probably for the better that we found her since that would make Eri's protection be for Ryukyu's agency and not Nighteye's to put more attention on us. At least, that's what Ryukyu mentioned to her when she explained the situation to Nighteye and his agency. "So how is she?"

"She's malnourished, has a lot of scars from what looks like torture and most likely has really bad PTSD."

"Yikes. That's not good." Uraraka winced hearing what we found out while sitting beside me on my left.

"It uhh...it get's worse. This is also the person that my father said replaced me."

Uraraka went wide eyed hearing this before trying to continue. "I...I'm sorry you had to find out this way."

"Trust me, I'm not happy either." I continued to think of what we found out for Nighteye, Ryukyu, Tsu, and Togata to come in soon after. We explained the situation to them with now a serious question coming into play with all of us.

"Well it seems that now Overhaul will try and stop at nothing to get Eri back. If that is the case, we'll need to think of something to help keep him from doing that. As such, I suggest having the Ryukyu agency look after her. Since they aren't openly working with us, that will keep problems from arising as well as they were the ones that saved Eri and brought her to the hospital."

"I'd love to keep her myself, but my apartment complex isn't as kid friendly as I'd hope it to be." Ryukyu voiced her opinion with it definitely being a problem. "Thinking on the most logical thing, UA would be the safest place to keep Eri, but the possibility of PTSD happening is a major threat. I'd rather not add another person to this, but perhaps if we have someone like Aizawa or Hound Dog protect Eri, it could help us tremendously."

Looking back at the room, I felt nothing but empathy for the little girl. Eventually, my mouth opened on it's own for me to  speak. "I'll look after her."

"Midorya. You don't have to. You also have your own problems to deal with." Ryukyu tried to deter me with what logic she could.

"I know that I'm not probably capable of doing this, but there's a difference between me and our teachers. I know what it's like to be in Eri's shoes and nobody saved me. That means I can relate to her. If she can open up to me, I can at least help her understand what she went through is wrong. I...*ahem* I also don't think my conscience would be able to willingly tell me to walk away from this knowing her torture is indirectly responsible for my acts."

"Look if this is you telling us you need to fix wrongs, you don't have to since this isn't your fault-"

"That doesn't mean this isn't happening at all due to my actions. Yes. I wasn't the one that did this. But my fleeing of my father's captivity is what led Eri to be put through what she did. Some responsibility still has to fall on me and if that means I have to be a guard dog for her, then fine."

"But you're missing what we need to give her entirely." Ryukyu pinched the bridge of her nose before answering. "She needs a home. Not a bodyguard. Somewhere she knows is safe and feels accepted. Placing her in a home doesn't make it her home. All you'd be doing is making her feel as if she's held hostage by another person. Not in a terrible way mind you, but still not what we want her to think."

"If it helps, I've done some babysitting before I was part of UA." Uraraka raised her hand up for everyone to look at her. "Eri's also a girl, so it'll be harder for Midoriya to care for her entirely due to the gender difference."

Nighteye glared at Uraraka for a moment before giving a comment. "You still have issues with Midoriya however. Is that at all wise to do?"

"For the most part, we've flattened everything out. It's not like we're close friends, but we're a lot better than the last time you saw us."

Both pros thought of this before Tsu raised her hand. "I can help out if needed too. I'm used to taking care of kids cause of my siblings, so this isn't much different."

"...Keep us up to date if something happens. Don't let her off campus and whatever you do, do not make her feel as if she's a hinderance to any of you." Nighteye gave these orders for the three of us to nod.

"Nejire. If need be, I'd like you to help them."

"You can count on me, Ryukyu."

The doctor came back with some papers for him to look at our group. "Ok, so I have the papers for the girl to give you all. This is to help us understand what happened to her as well as what was the leading cause for you all to bring her here. Once you're done with that, we'll keep the child for observation for the next few days."

"Actually, is there any chance that we can bring the child to another place. She's involved in an investigation that we need to keep hidden, so the less information on her the better." Nighteye suggested this for the doctor to seem extremely irritated by this.

"I don't think you all understand. This girl was put through a nightmare that personally, I think needs a place where she won't be induced to so much stress."

"And we understand that. Which is why she's going to be on grounds with a medical professional as well as a licensed psychiatrist that to of our work study students will bring her to regularly. We know you're trying to do your job right, sir. But right now, we can't let you fully do your job so we can do ours by keeping that child safe."

The doctor groaned a bit before answering. "I'll fill out what I can and withhold as much under the confides of pro hero protections protocol. But after the need for it is up, I will declassify it."

"Thank you." Ryukyu bowed before being handed the clipboard and circling what needed to be classified before writing it down.

"Pro hero protections protocol?"

"It's a protocol similar to witness protection. It's done if there is threat of an underworld crime organization threatening the life of a person we as heroes bring in. It allows pros to classify any and all information on a patient up to a specific timeframe and outside of some of the specifics such as names and ages. It's not commonly used in Japan since All Might took out most group villainy, but it's still taught and is used on occasions such as this one. Not surprising that you don't know about it since it's one of those, 'you're in the loop' things to know."

"Ah, ok then." I was handed the clipboard and pen before shown where to sign. I did as I was told before Uraraka was given it to do the same. "So what now?"

"Now, you and Uraraka will go and explain to Eri what's going to happen. I'll make a means of transportation and we will be able to move her the second she wakes up." I nodded before glancing at Uraraka who began walking towards the doors to see Eri.

'Let's just hope this works out in the end.'

And that finishes this chapter. See what happens next time with Eri being taken into UA. Hope you all enjoyed and thanks for reading.