Thump. Thump. Her body shook with every whack. Thump. Thump. Blood ran wet and hot down her face, poured in rivulets down her body. Her hair was soaked red with it. Still she smiled. Mommy was looking at her. There were tears mixed in the blood, but Dyzz didn't understand why. She wasn't old enough to think of such things in complex terms... and the damage to her brain was so fierce, so harshly repeated, before her quirk had truly manifested... she never would be. The officer watched the quiet toddler sitting in a nursery room by herself. She sat on the floor, red hair curtaining and blocking her features, a small tusky smile barely visible beneath the shadow of her bangs. He'd never seen something so horrifying. They'd arrested her mother, a notorious villain, caught in the act of abusing her daughter in a case that would go down in history. She'd caved the child's skull in, blood and splattered brains everywhere. The child sat and took it, without a word, her brain growing back as quickly has her mother could smash it in. It was one of the most astoundingly powerful quirks anyone had ever seen... but it was young, undeveloped. Her brain didn't heal back perfectly, and she'd never grow much, mentally. Not to mention her violent tendencies.... understandable, given the horror she'd lived through. And yet she was a bubbly, sweet, innocent child otherwise, looking for nothing more than affection, for playmates and recognition, for love. Officer Eomon had seen many things on the force, less when heroes had taken the world by storm with the advent of human evolution called 'quirks'. Police received criminals, instead of pursuing them, as policing went private, nigh mercenary groups taking on the job of dealing with crime, monetized far more than any policing body had ever been. It was a social galvanizing point.
But for every hero out there, there was someone sick, twisted, and given powers far more mighty than they should be allowed to bear. Dyzz had been in the retaining nursery for nearly two weeks now, and hadn't moved a muscle, and neither had child services mustered the ability to remove her. No personnel was willing to touch the case. Each reviewed cases inwhich child quirks had manifested vigorously, because of the inherent risks in the profession of dealing with mentally ill children with super powers. It didn't help that Dyzz's mental evaluation had shown her to be beyond damaged. When confronted with distress, she responded with mindless violence. There was no place for her in normal society, Eomon knew. She would be relegated to a life of misery within a barely maintained system designed to keep juvenile delinquents alive... and little more. Euthanizing her would be more merciful than what lay ahead. She'd be treated like the young criminals she was forced to live around. Worse, even, because they would not accept her, knowing her innocent of any crime.
Eomon had had too many sleepless nights, from watching that child sit perfectly still against the wall, day after day. According to the reports, it's what her mother had made her do since birth. She'd never wandered away from the corner to which she'd been delegated. Any time she heard the phrase 'good girl', she checked to make sure the wall was there, to her back. When they'd managed to drag her away from it without panicking her, that phrase had always managed to reactivate her need to go back to it. They had strict orders never to say it anywhere near her. It'd only been done once, though... Dyzz had panicked every time so far, once growing violent when they tried to take her away. She seemed to waiting for her mother to come back, convinced that if she was a good girl, mommy would come back, and praise her.
It wasn't until halfway through the second week of watching her that Eomon broke. He entered the nursery room, devoid of other children ever since Dyzz had been introduced, and sat beside her. He wrapped an arm around her, and pulled her into a tight embrace. She trembled. He'd seen her tremble before... before nearly tearing an officer's throat out with those deadly tusks jutting from her lip. He held her tighter. Dyzz cried. Loud, wailing sobs, she cried, and she fell into his arms, clinging desperately to him. He took her home that day, filling out the paperwork overnight, and never took her back to that place again. He quit the force two weeks later, and devoted his life to fixing the horrors left in the wake of villains, by helping take care of the children thrown into an uncaring system that wouldn't allow them to grow with souls in their bodies.
