SSD III: Silver

70. Young One

"I put her at about four earlier, maybe five, then six or seven now, it's hard to be sure, we didn't exactly keep much of an eye on how old we were."

"She changed a lot in that time." Outwardly, she'd gone from afraid, terrified and desperate, to cold and false. For all that to happen in what Keenan seemed perfectly happy to say could have been as little as a year, none of them liked it.

"Kids'll do that," Keenan said with a limp shrug, "especially us." It felt so wrong that he expected nothing different from this.

"But, she was hopeful before-" She'd thought they'd rescued her- "now..."

"That same hope scares her," Keenan finished for him. "At five, she'd only been there for a year, she was still a kid, give her a little hope and she could go right back to who she was." A traumatised version of who she was, but who she was nonetheless. "By seven, two or three years in, I'm not sure what we were, but we weren't kids, not anymore."

Aizawa wasn't the only one to grimace.

Nezu had decided Silver would continue in her classes at the school starting tomorrow despite her memory issue, which meant the teachers seeing her over the next few days had to be made aware, as would her classmates. How she would spend her evenings had not yet been set, but it would have to be soon now that the school day was over. She was currently still sat on the same bed in the nurse's office, now playing a game of top trumps with the kindly woman (Chiyo had had to explain the rules for her before they could begin but she'd learned fast and it had been a good few rounds since Silver had lost). Other than the card game, she hadn't moved an inch unless specifically asked to by Keenan or Chiyo.

Everyone present was aware of the childhoods Silver and Keenan had been forced through— not in detail, but a broad idea was enough. The world trusted heroes to save innocents like the kids Silver and Keenan had been. Instead, here they were, a bunch of heroes, seeing the extent of the damage caused by their failure.

"So what do we do with her?" Snipe asked.

"Essentially," Keenan spoke up as the one who knew her best, "ignore her. If you give her work, she'll do it. If you ask her a question, she'll answer unless she considers it stupid, but even then it's unlikely she won't answer any of you. You're all adults, if you tell her to do something, it's likely she'll take it as an order no matter how ridiculous, take advantage of that and when this is over you will have broken bones." Whether the broken bones would come from an attack by Silver or Keenan was left unspecified. "In other words, for however long this lasts, she is a robot with no qualms against killing. Be careful."

A robot with no qualms against killing. That was how they were being told to think of a girl whose active memory told her she was six years old.

"And avoid sarcasm," he rushed to add, "she won't get it."

A robot. Emotionless. Lacking in the intricacies of social interaction. Without morality.

"And under no circumstances should you let her spar or fight with any student for any reason."

They didn't want to know why Keenan spoke that last one so gravely, but Aizawa had a feeling he already knew. When Keenan first arrived Silver had been firm in making sure he not be allowed to spar with any of the students, but Nezu had left the decision in Aizawa's hands. To demonstrate to Aizawa the danger of allowing her brother to spar with the students, she'd fought the young man herself and lost, yielding milliseconds before a final blow could be delivered. She'd put herself at risk to make sure Aizawa did what was necessary to protect the students from her brother. Her brother didn't need to endanger himself to protect them from her.