Hawks selected the first video and the room filled with static. While he investigated how to reduce the display to only one screen, a grainy film crackled in the darkness. There were nine mirrors of the same child, dressed in rags that had once been a hello kitty t-shirt, hair in matts, whose eyes darted everywhere except the camera. She was clutching a pair of yellow goggles to her chest like the cameraman might try to snatch them off her.
"Is it alright if I ask you a few questions, Maeve?" A soothing male voice asked, off camera. The little girl flinched, and Hawks noticed the movements of her hands were odd. She kept them palm down at all times, and only touched the straps of the goggle with her fingertips.
"Yes," the creature answered softly, barely speaking. Even with the awful quality of film, her pupils were clearly dilated with terror. She'd practically curled into herself to form an animalistic ball; Hawks realised she was on a stool in a police interrogation room.
"How old are you?"
"Five."
"I have a little girl who's four. She just started elementary school."
The child stared off screen blankly. Her expression was utterly dead, and Hawks felt a chill.
"Maeve, I know you've had a very hard night. I'm sorry that you were put in a scary position, but you're safe now. We all want to make sure you're okay."
"You shouldn't. I should never have betrayed her," the girl choked, body physically seizing up with panic. The fear in her face was indescribable, yet he knew in his core. He knew.
"Talking to Eraserhead was the right thing to do. What she's been doing to you is wrong, and we care about that. We care about you."
Maeve shook her head, sobbing silently.
"Please don't say that, please, the people who care about me get hurt," she gasped through tears, using the goggles to cover her small face.
"Your mother can't hurt anyone else. You're safe."
"No, that's what she wants you to think. Your daughter - keep an eye on her, please," the little girl commanded, with such specific purpose the man went quiet.
"The things you told Eraser Head helped us to lock her up. If you wanted to make sure nobody else gets hurt by her group ever again, anything you know about her main bases would be incredibly helpful. But if you don't want to, that's also fine, Maeve."
The video continued, with Recovery Girl steadily descending into such distress she ended up crying out for Eraser Head, who Hawks assumed was the dark haired youth ushered in soon after. He knelt beside the girl, and she looked at the grunge of a man through her tears like someone seeing sunlight for the first time. Eraserhead held out his hand. She handed him the goggles, and he grasped her hands by the fingers, as if afraid to properly hold them.
"I told you I'd come back for these. I'm not going anywhere," the emo kid said quietly, indicating the goggles, and Hawks wondered how old he was. Younger than the winged hero was currently, most likely.
The video crackled into static again. Hawks sat quietly in the darkness, with a hand over his mouth, for an age. The next files, photos, appeared mirrored in screens after a while. They contained forensic images of hands, palm facing the camera. Tiny fingers and wafer thin wrists indicated those of a child. He had seen horrible, horrible things in his line of work, yet still clenched and relaxed his fists in response to grotesque wounds twisting the skin of her palms beyond recognition.
Then a clip of the toddler's hollowed collarbone, which was so red and swollen it practically looked like a tumour. She was huddled on a hospital bed covering her skeletal torso. Even though her dark hair was brushed and she looked cleaner there was still a haunted, wild look in her eyes that reminded him of trapped animals.
Then a shot of her lower back. Jagged slashes, he imagined from a knife, tore apart its minefield of bruises. They were so savage, even mostly healed, that the wounds seemed inflicted by more beast than human.
Further videos followed of interviewers painfully coxing Maeve to release information regarding Greyhound's criminal activities. She was cleaner and dressed in normal clothes, but those made no difference to continuous darkness behind her eyes. When the toddler finally cracked, under pressure to save lives nobody could ever legally prove police had put on her, the breadth of detail she divulged left Hawks even more shell shocked than he already was. He knew she was a genius, of course he did, but seeing a toddler's face screwing up in childlike concentration to then discuss the inner workings of blackmarket deals involving murders was unsettling to say the least. It was clear she'd witnessed some of those killings personally.
There was a palpable shift in attention from whoever was sitting behind the camera after that, and question after question were directed at her regarding her quirk, whether Shota Aizawa was an adequate foster father, and if she'd be interested in 'training programmes for gifted children.' It was near painful to watch the toddler realise she was being backed into a corner, but being too shy and frightened to do anything about it.
A sudden time lapse occurred, and Hawks assumed the sudden drop off in footage was when UA offered Recovery Girl protection in return for her services.
Snippets followed of an older girl nearly entirely in laboratories. She'd gotten better at hiding shadows behind her eyes, but they were still there.
"Tell us what you've been working on with animal studies."
"I kill them."
"Maeve, you shouldn't joke-"
"I'm not joking. I sit here and kill rats in convoluted ways. Been doing that for weeks. Can you ask Professor Kyoshi about that on camera, actually? He won't let me bury them."
"Why don't we talk about what you've learnt instead? I hear you might be working on spinal cord injuries, have any stories there?"
"Mmm... stories. Well. You can't fix something that isn't broken, so for my research they paralyse the rats and I try to reconnect their spinal cords. I saw one climbing out of its crate once, before the procedure, and I thought 'that one is too smart to live in a place like this.' So I let it go, but in a couple days it just ran back and waited for me to open its cage. Looked at me like it had just accepted it's fate instead of trying to face the world outside. If I have to feel one more of them die I'm quitting the programme, tell the professor that from me. I don't care about the contract anymore."
She seemed to learn over time to keep the painful thoughts to herself. They progressed instead to dark humour, with her explaining the mechanism of puke pints, then to cheerful absurdity.
There was a skip for several months. Hawks double checked for any scrap of information regarding that period but came up blank. It itched a part of his mind that could never just let things be. Internet. Nothing. University archives. No trace. Hospital records. Classified.
The shadows were darker when she came back to the point her aqua eyes were nearly black. Recovery Girl's movements were stiffer and had lost the assuredness she'd spent all previous footage gaining. Up until that point she'd perked up whenever asked about her plans for heroics. After, the child seemed distracted and her face struggled to conceal utter disgust at the concept even though she never removed her distinctive bodysuit from that point on.
Fragments of film passed, and the only thing that seemed to genuinely give her enthusiasm was when she talked about dance. Hawks found a video clip of one of her competitions - her last, as a matter of fact- in which a 14-year-old Maeve stood awkwardly on stage. She was wearing a cheap superhero costume which sported a red cape reminiscent of All Might and looked like she'd gotten lost on the way from trick or treating. Hawks knew it was going to be embarrassing, cute, or both and frankly was ready for some light entertainment.
Music boomed from speakers. David Bowie's 'heroes.' Good lord. This was going to be good; it was begging to be brought out in future.
Those thoughts sputtered to a stop as the girl's body transformed before his eyes. She'd been possessed by the spirit of a marionette puppet, thin arms raising above her head attached to strings imaginary yet so well acted they felt like a prop in their own right. Recovery Girl had impossibly managed move exactly to the rolling beat of the music, giving the impression of stop motion as she lurched around the stage, cape rippling at the unnatural movements. The rhythm meant she was always kept stylistically off-kilter. There was an inhuman fragility to this new creature he found instinctively off-putting.
I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be heroes, just for one day
Invisible hands created dozens of minute adjustments to her body as she made her way back to centre stage, making her wave and push her own face into a myriad of expressions eventually landing on a triumphant smile. The utter control she had over her body to achieve something like that was on par with friends who were world class dancers.
And you, you can be mean
And I, I'll drink all the time
'Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact
Yes we're lovers, and that is that
Recovery Girl finally turned to the audience, her expression one of equal parts yearning and mistrust. It was a brief glimpse of humanity behind the mindless puppet, which was snuffed out at the last line back to a toothy smile.
Though nothing will keep us together
We could steal time just for one day
We can be heroes for ever and ever
What d'you say?
Her dancing evolved, becoming more complex, the flittering movements nearly too fast to follow as different parts of her body moved independently to each other. There was a sense of increased agitation, and the girl fought against invisible forces controlling her. She made an attempt to rip off her cape, but fell to her knees with the effort.
I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, for ever and ever
Oh we can be Heroes, just for one day
Her hands seemed to be working against the rest of her body and eventually beat the rest into submission, physically forcing her mouth up into a smile. She was pulled up to stand and for the life of him Hawks couldn't conceive how her twig-like limbs had the strength to pull off a move like that. Recovery Girl then assumed All Might's triumphant pose with a tiny fist raised above her head for the word 'king.'
I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can be Heroes, just for one day
We can be us, just for one day
She strode across the stage in a mocking impression of famous pro hero stances, her body twisting grotesquely to reach each new pose which for that point in time, looked very near genuine. It was almost as if there was an entity possessing her hands as they made constant stop motion adjustments to her position and expression.
I, I can remember
Standing, by the wall
And the guns, shot above our heads
And we kissed, as though nothing could fall
And the shame, was on the other side
We can be Heroes
We're nothing, and nothing will help us
The dancer pulled herself into a painstakingly slow bow made up from a flurry of tiny movements.
Maybe we're lying, then you better not stay
But we could be safer, just for one day
She remained at the lowest point of the bow for an age in silence, the cape hanging limply behind her. Then Recovery Girl smiled at the audience and took a genuine bow which was jarring in its smoothness as a natural movement. She gave a small salute, walked off the stage just as awkwardly as she'd come on, and a spell was broken as he remembered her body had the colt-like appearance of adolescence. There was an undercurrent of anger, however, that few kids had reason to possess.
She came last. Just like every other competition since she'd started learning hip hop. What people failed to notice was that she failed not only at local competitions, but national and international level events. Maeve Aizawa, Hawks read, had been a running joke in the dance community. She would turn up late in ugly full body leotards, hair a disaster, skinny as anything, and give performances that put professional dancers to shame. They were always offensive to one party or another and were one of the things that labelled her as an anti-heroic.
UA had encouraged her to begin lessons for early heroics preparation, hoping they would install flexibility and strength needed for combat. She instead used dance as her escape, throwing mind and body into that instead of medical school or seeking any kind of pro hero license. Even after she was strong armed back on track, Hawks could clearly see the impact hip hop had on her life. The darkness behind her eyes finally faded. She held herself with the confidence Recovery Girl was known for today, the easy laughter, and Hawks finally understood the warmth people always had in their voices when describing her.
He needed to meet this girl.
***
Unusual movement on what he'd affectionately called the 'baby monitor' caught his attention after a while. The current iteration of Recovery Girl had paused from scribbling on her office blackboard and was examining a light shade containing one of the cameras.
Oh, fuck.
However, it seemed to be a false alarm. She just flicked on the light and set a pair of wireless headphones atop her mess of curls. Then, as if reading his mind through the screens of the monitors, she began to dance. Hawks couldn't help but smile slightly as she leapt around in pyjamas, reappearing occasionally on frame with additions to her outfit such as sunglasses and a feather boa. She was such a good dancer it nearly broke his mind, transitioning between bizarre moves with an effortlessly fluidity purely for her own enjoyment.
However, when she moonwalked along the bottom of the screen and paused to push at the edge of the monitor, as if performing a mime show, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. There was no way...
He opened up the rest of the cameras. There was a way, apparently. Several merely showed darkness, and Recovery Girl jumped between screens with clear knowledge of the locations of every camera. She was putting on a sarcastic fucking show for him, and he'd thought the whole time she'd been doing it for fun. The surgeon played around jumping between screens. Eventually, she would pop her head very close to one, grinning like a maniacal bumble bee behind bright sunglasses, and pulling the finger, reduce it to static.
She continued with that strategy until there was only one left. The girl proceeded to seamlessly include every rude gesture she could think of into her dance, which seemed to be an extensive collection. Then, he was staring at a room full of crackling grey.
So much for the commission building trust with her. But Hawks needed to look at the positives. At least he didn't need to organise a team to remove the cameras.
***
The next week was spent in a similar manner. He trawled through every scrap of information on Dr Maeve Aizawa, Dabi, and other members of the league of villains. New video recordings from Recovery Girl's police interviews came through each day, which he watched with Robin. It was an odd feeling, investigating someone you'd never met. You felt like you'd known them for years, and they had no idea. He found himself getting invested in spite of himself: the hero swore appreciably when she blew up a nomu's brain in UA's USJ attack, shouted abuse as the screen when she had her quirk license removed, laughed when she thrashed the commission in the first round of the provisional license exam, and Robin screamed when Recovery Girl tore up Shoto Todoroki's insides.
When asking Robin if she saw any appeal in the portraits of Dabi, she'd shrugged.
"I'd fuck him. She wouldn't."
"Even as a smooth faced bastard?"
"I've seen hundreds of clips of Recovery Girl from her lectures to what ply toilet paper she uses, and I still don't know what kind of person she is. But one thing I do know is she has too much self respect to go for a guy like that, even to save her life. Which may just get her killed."
"Dabi came from money," Recovery Girl mused, perusing a national geographic she must have picked up from the police station offices.
"I thought you said he's spent his life homeless?"
"No, I said many years. But before then his family was wealthy. Did you know that on average a half-dozen new primate species are discovered every year?"
"How could you possibly know that?"
"It says right here-"
"No, that Dabi was rich."
"My oven," she shrugged, flipping a page with a bored expression.
"Your oven?!"
"He knew how to use it. It's this futuristic convection thing I- I of all people- still couldn't work out with an instruction manual. He used it like it was second nature. And I dunno, I can just tell from the way he carries himself. Rich kids have a very distinctive confidence someone who's grown up with nothing can smell a mile away. If he was from a poor background he would be less at home in my cottage."
"So a wealthy family, perhaps involved in crime-"
"No. Law-enforcement. His father will be a policeman, or commission officer. Potentially a hero. Abusive, obviously. Multiple siblings. I'd wager 10 espresso shots Dabi's the oldest, he's clearly been involved in care for people younger than him. What I can't work out, and will be most important, is his attachment style with his mother. That one's complicated."
"I really don't think-"
"No, you don't. Of all the primates discovered they still haven't found which species you belong to, inspector."
Apart from Maeve's speculations, all investigations into the cremation villain's past merely dredged up shades and phantoms. All Hawks had was the portrait, which seemed to mock him with cold eyes. And a number. So the winged hero decided to call Dabi to find out for himself.
It lead him to the events of that night.