Photophobia

"I can't believe it, earlier I was dying in a hospital bed, but now, now! I'm just like the pros, like All Might!" Izuku couldn't help but cheer like the little child he was. Izuku launched himself into the night air with sloppy, powerful leaps. There was no technique, no grace, just instinctual explosions of light blue energy erupting from the boy's feet as he jumped from rooftop to rooftop. The energy coiled around the boy's legs, coating them in a bright aura that augmented the lithe muscles for the superhuman task. Concrete shattered where the boy landed, the energy carrying shards of stone with each expulsion.

Izuku cackled with glee as he went from building to building. His thin hospital gown offered no protection against the night air as it billowed with each jump, but he didn't come close to caring. The air whipping through his hair, his heart pumping in excitement, even the cold sting of the wind against his injured face all served to invigorate him. In an action that was fueled by pure adrenaline and joy he leapt at the side of a tall hotel and began to scale it like a strange lizard. He struggled to maintain a firm grip lest he be sent tumbling up the wall by the force of his own enhanced legs, his hands reinforced by the same energy that gave his legs their overwhelming power. When he finally reached the top, having left many gouges in the white siding, Izuku threw himself over the railing and landed very hard on his head in his overexcitement. A coating of light similar to the one on his legs protected him from harm.

"Wow, I gotta be more careful," Midoriya noted as he shakily got back to his feet, the aura diminishing greatly, but not disappearing. "This… this is amazing! I feel so great! I feel So ALIVE!" He panted in near ecstasy from the power-high. As calmly as he could, Izuku slowly approached the ledge opposite the one he had vaulted over and braced his hands on it. "I must be a million feet from the ground," He breathed in awe at the busy streets far below him. "The people look like grains of sand from up here…" After a few seconds of contemplation, a realization struck Izuku.

"I have literally no idea where I am. How am I supposed to actually find home?" He had been so excited over his new powers that he never really thought about where home was. The scorched youngster groaned, the aura around his legs going out completely as he sat down and fell on his back. "Great, I should have waited for mom in the hospital… At least I got to jump around rooftops really cool like All Might," Izuku giggled in glee. "Maybe I could- *CRASH* WOAH!"

Izuku was broken from his thoughts by something very heavy landing next to him, kicking up a cloud of dust. Without thinking, the aura flared once again, this time around Izuku's hands, and he slammed his fist into the object. His fist met something hard and flat and caved it in with minor resistance.

"ARGH!" a short scream of pain came from the cloud, which dispersed as a very large washing machine fell forward and almost onto Izuku. The boy let out a squeak of surprise as he dove to the side to avoid a couple hundred pounds of washing masch- "… Is that a person? OH MY GOSH! IT'S WASH THE CLEANING HERO!" Izuku's eyes grew wide with shrunken irises. "I just punched pro-hero Wash in the groin."

"Oooohhh, are you-are you alright, sir?" Izuku whipped his head to the source of the voice: a woman in a very revealing outfit that showed far too much skin, though this didn't really register as sexual in the prepubescent boy's head. She had wild blue hair and a red pair of glasses. She quickly ran over to the metal clad hero and patted him comfortingly on the back as Wash clutched his groin, forehead buried in the floor. Izuku normally would have been fanboying over the presence of actual pros right in front of him, but a woman in borderline S&M gear and a guy dressed like a washing machine cradling his washers were pretty hard to take seriously.

'That is the weirdest sentence ever.' Izuku mused in his head, unsuccessfully stifling a giggle.

"You are in serious trouble young man!" Midnight, the heroine in the revealing outfit yelled at him with shark teeth, misinterpreting the boy's giggles as unrepentance.

"DO BE FAIR, HEHEH, IT'S KINDA FUNNY," a new arrival with hair that matched a cockatoo laughed out. Despite finding it laughable, Present Mic was holding his groin in sympathy pain. Wash's suit was heavily armored, if weakened from a fight earlier that same day, so there must have been so much force behind that blow.

"My pods~" The laundry themed hero gasped out as he continued to clutch himself, earning more childish snickering from Izuku and Present Mic. "The dent in my suit is. squeezing. Them," Wash ground out in agony.

"HAHAHAHA! My stomach! HAHAHA It hurts! I'm sorry, I'm *snck* so sorry Wash-sama, but it's so funny" Izuku cackled in his gravelly (never gonna get used to that) voice.

"IT REALLY IS WASH," Present Mic snickered as he tried to pry the man's metal suit loose. Izuku continued to watch as Midnight and Present Mic pulled at the lower half of Wash's suit to try and save the poor top 10-er. A few weeks ago, he would have been frothing at the mouth in absolute fangasm, but now, seeing these three pro-heroes trying to undo what was essentially the world's cruelest wedgie? It was better than the circus. Plus, Izuku needed a good laugh after all that he had been through.

The plating finally gave way and Wash cried in relief as the pressure on his genitals finally released, which would have brought Midoriya into further hysterics, had a fourth person not alerted Izuku. He spun around as he sensed the intruder, and came face to about waste with a shaggy, hobo-like hero that even Izuku could not recognize. The shaggy man took one look at the stooge-esque shenanigans of his fellows and just pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "Kid," he began in a tired voice, "Please tell me you'll come quietly. We were just supposed to find you and bring you back to the hospital and your mom."

"… How did you guys get up here?"

"Ugh~"

"Yeah, yeah we found the kid… What do you mean how did we find him so fast? The kid literally glows with power. He looked like a running blue fireball! Even if he wasn't jumping through the air like a flare you would have to be near blind to not notice him climb up the side of the Canto Bight hotel," Erasurehead paused as indistinct babbling came through the phone.

"How many people called about that? Oh, it is going to be a pain to explain the damage… I know kids can damage things when they awaken quirks, but an eight-year-old carving the side of a prominent casino like a scratching post is going to be as painful as pulling teeth to explain."

The voice on the line continued to babble.

"We didn't set up a team. We all just either got the alert or noticed the living beacon performing parkour over the city. I saw him ten minutes before we caught up, but he was too fast until he finally slowed down climbing the hotel and Air-Raid dropped us on the roof with him.

Izuku watched on as Erasurehead debriefed the police over his phone. Present Mic had bought him a novelty mask to cover his face and not disturb any people they may have passed on the way back to the hospital. It was a green medical mask styled after a creature from an old movie: light green with a black-lipped mouth full of white fangs. 'I could get used to this' Izuku mused in his thoughts. He would be obligated to wear them whenever he left the house all things considered, but he could honestly learn to love wearing masks.

"Thanks again for letting me wear your jacket," Izuku thanked Present Mic. The Voice hero nodded, with alight discomfort on his face that he couldn't quite hide. Hearing a heavy-smoker's voice come from a 4' child was very disconcerting and he couldn't hide it completely.

Still, he couldn't help but smile as the kid hid behind his high-collar and waved the too-long sleeves around like flags. The kid smiled with his eyes and let out a gravelly giggle (weird) as one hit himself in the face. The jacket was long enough to cover him to just above his knees, leaving his legs bare. The oversized black crocs they had given the boy thumped as he skipped next to the heroes.

Overall, he looked a spectacle. It was like someone had let their child run wild in a clothing store and he was so enamored by an awesome jacket that he ran out of the changing room without his pants.

Present Mic and Eraserhead were forced to escort the child back alone as Midnight had stayed behind to tend to the injured Wash, who they needed to take to the hospital as discreetly as possible. Hizashi winced at the thought: The poor man was really injured by the kid's super punch.

"Wash was injured when the kid sucker-punched him in the groin… No, it didn't seem to be intentional, more a reflex when Wash landed next to him… When Air-raid dropped us off Wash kicked up a cloud and the kid just punched it, he can augment his arms with that energy like he can his legs… He's still on top of the hotel. I thought Midnight called for a medic already?"

Aizawa pinched the bridge of his nose as he recalled the Washing Hero's state. They had to keep his injuries, or at least their source, secret. If the community found out that an emaciated, prepubescent boy who had just awoken his quirk, had laid out a top-40 hero, then the faith in pros could nose-dive. The sheer power the boy had wouldn't have done much to salvage Wash's reputation. Crime always spiked when a well-known pro got hurt or showed signs of weakness, and Aizawa could only image how bad things would get if they didn't keep this secret.

That wasn't even going into what could happen to the kid. Aizawa looked back at the boy in question, who's skipping and appearance gave off an air of childishness that belied the sheer power he exhibited earlier. Children who exhibited anomalously powerful quirks always become targets of some kind.

They were sometimes scoped out by agencies and railroaded into hero work, taking away most of their choices. Heroes like Hawks, who were scoped out very early almost always ended up under the commission's thumb due to financial, and what they felt as personal, debts brought about by special training.

Others became targets for criminals or quirk marriages.

The super-human slavery rings popped-up around the second or third generation of quirks, but thankfully fizzled out around the fourth. Realistically, a business centered around capturing and enslaving giftedly powerful individuals ends when most involved die in the first six months. Anybody with a quirk powerful enough that there would be an actual market for them is either already heavily trained, like Best Jeanist, or too old to raise and indoctrinate as villains. The cost of raising a kidnapped child with a promising quirk to the level of an A-rank villain was too high to be done en masse, and kidnapping a person with an already powerful quirk was very dangerous and costly. Keeping a teenager with a quirk like Dragoon or Red Riot's Sky Piercer weak enough to contain them and break their will and then rebuild their physical capabilities was far too risky, time and money consuming to yield anything other than a severe deficit. Keeping someone that strong imprisoned without weakening them was practically impossible. Attempts to find a method that was still profitable usually resulted in the very violent escape of the victim, and anyone weaker than that level wasn't even likely to be bought. The only scenario where quirk-trafficking would be viable would be for major terrorist organizations, the kind with a large enough scale to challenge governments, and the Meta Liberation Army was the last one in decades.

'Fortunately, the alternative would almost certainly fail on this kid,' Aizawa mused silently.

Nowadays, those with potential were approached by the most charismatic recruiters the gang had. Older children and teens with violent streaks and powerful quirks were brown-nosed and bribed into joining larger gangs that would provide money, drugs, women etc. to keep the criminally gifted under their employ. Looking back at the kid, who Mic had let try on his spare sunglasses, Aizawa was reassured that the offer of the moon itself could not corrupt the kid.

Quirk marriage were the real bear-trap in the path.

They were supposed to be illegal but- "IIIIIZZUUUUUUUUUKKKUUUUUUUU!"

"GAH!" Aizawa startled as a green-haired woman charged past him and practically bowled over Mic, leaving huge rivers of tears in her wake. She snatched up the kid and nearly snapped him in half with a bearhug. The boy glowed once again, this time around his arms and midsection where the woman was squeezing him; his quirk most likely reinforcing him by instinct.

Aizawa looked back to the woman's origin point and belatedly realized they had already reached Hosu General.

And there was already a team of medical and security staff ready to rendezvous with them. A particularly large doctor came forward.

"What were you thinking young man?! You woke up after so long in the hospital and the first thing you do is run around like a maniac. What if you had gotten hurt worse! I don't- I don't know what I would do without you!"

"Hi mom! I- uh, I tried to find you, but I got lost. I'm so sorry, please don't be mad at me." Izuku apologized to his mother, doing his best to hug her back with his arms pinned.

"Izu-Izuku! *sob hic* Your voice," Inko sobbed as she hugged her son. She pulled back enough to look Izuku in the covered eyes. "At least you can still talk."

She was trying to be strong, but the way her voice cracked tipped Aizawa and Mic off that she was about to break down again.

"Mrs. Midoriya, I am Dr. Shinogi. I'm so sorry to interrupt, but we need to conduct some tests on Izuku," A very imposing doctor interrupted the reunion. The man was a mountain; standing at just barely over six feet and built like a heavy-weight boxer. He had a surprisingly androgynous face with feminine lips, longer lashes and narrow brown eyes. His long brown-red hair trailed to below his shoulders and two bangs framed his face. Izuku marveled that such a man was a doctor and not a pro-hero, he could only tell he worked for the hospital by his uniform.

Aizawa silently thanked the fact that Midnight hadn't come with them, lest she openly lust over the man.

"Despite the amazing vitality he's shown in just the last half hour, Izuku's vitals were weak and he was dangerously underweight, especially for a developing child. We need to make sure he won't just keel over or cause any irreparable damage to himself," He directed his attention to Izuku. "Come along young man, we need to take your vitals and you'll most likely need another IV to replenish yourself. I don't know where all this glowing energy is coming from, but if it's sourced at all from your body, you're very likely to faint from malnutrition," Two other physicians came forward to back up Dr. Shinogi, just in case.

"You can stay by his side the entire time Mrs. Midoriya," A very tall and busty nurse assured the mother. The nurse was absolutely stunning: she stood at a statuesque six feet and sported E-cup breasts. Her deep blue hair was pulled back into a spiky ponytail and her dark red eyes contained cross shaped pupils. She wore a standard nurse's uniform, with a button or two opened, most likely because she couldn't close them over her cleavage.

"We will have to closely monitor him the entire time though. It's simply procedure for when a patient does something like escape using their quirk, sorry," the third physician stated. She was by far the most unique of the three. Her skin color reminded Izuku of roadwork: Her face and hair were black as asphalt, with a solid white stripe divided her face in half vertically and a yellow zig-zag circled her face about the nose. She had two bolt-like appendages adorning her shoulders, exposed by her sleeveless coat. She obviously had some form of mutant-quirk, possibly machine related(?)

Izuku nodded and dropped to the ground, lightly landing on his feet. The Mutant-quirk doctor's eyes widened in shock and the blue-haired nurse tried to stifle a giggle with her hand. Dr. Shinogi merely raised an eye-brow at the walking rummage-sale. 'Well, it was better than letting the child come back here naked except for a robe," Izuku skipped past Shinogi and took the hand of the blue haired nurse, Ms. Valentine.

Inko let out a mix between a choked sob and a chuckle as she began to follow the team into the hospital. Seeing Izuku skip hand in hand with the nurse reminded her of all the times she had played with her son, and how cute he wa- is. Thankfully, even after all that had happened lately, Izuku was still her darling little boy.

"This has been the longest night,"Aizawa tiredly noted. He already wanted to go to bed.

"We weren't even on this case for more than twenty minutes. I don't think it's even 11 o'clock yet," Present Mic noted as he glanced down at his watch. "Oh crap!"

"What is it now?" Aizawa said as he redonned his goggles, reluctantly getting ready for another assignment. He then blinked in confusion as Present Mic ran past him towards the hospital doors.

"Hey kid, I need those sunglasses back. They're prescription."

"… Ooooh the indignity. I am friends with that man."

"… and then Present Mic bought me this cool mask and I love it! Then he let me try on his sunglasses too, but he needed them back," Izuku excitedly recalled as the nurse moved the stethoscope around his chest and the doctor squeezed the pump.

"I know sweetie," Inko let out a small giggle," I was there too."

"Everything looks good, Mrs. Midoriya, which is very surprising all things considered," Nurse Valentine said, pleasantly surprised, as she pulled the stethoscope away from Izuku's chest and Dr. Shinogi removed the cuff from his arm.

"That's- great,," Inko agreed slightly distracted. She had finally begun to unwind after the rollercoaster that had been the last few hours and finally noticed something.

Both doctors Shinogi and Nurse Valentine were intimidatingly attractive.

She found herself lost in the nurse's cleavage. Really how could they grow that big? She let out a surprised squawk as they suddenly seemed to get even bigger. Shepulled her attention away from the nurse's cleavage and saw that the woman had crossed her arms under her bust and pushed it up and forward. The giggling she didn't bother to hide made it clear how much she enjoyed it.

"Okay Izuku, now that we've gotten your blood pressure and pulse, we need to take a blood sample," Dr. Shinogi explained as he ignored the flirting and led Izuku to an odd contraption hovering over a chair. The chair was an average stool with a table to place one's arm for the blood sample, while the machine looked like the top part of an old sewing machine. It was white and boxy, shaped like a fat L-block, and had a metal tube hanging from the overhang.

"You see Izuku," The black skinned doctor, Dr. Atroe, began," Considering the fact you seem to instinctively reinforce your skin, meaning that energy makes you super tough without you trying, we are going to be using this sampler. It is designed to be used on people who have mutation quirks that make their skin too tough for a doctor and normal needle. With this, a very small, indestructible needle will very carefully overcome any resistance your quirk puts up."

Izuku looked at the machine in worry, like most children would. He couldn't help it; the thing looked like it would sew his arm to the table!

"No Izuku, it will not sew your arm to the table, and no, you did not say that out loud. It's just that everyone thinks the same thing," Dr. Atroe explained without turning away from the screen on the machines side.

Inko, who had done who knows what with the nurse in the short time the others looked away, took Izuku's hand to support him. With a reassuring smile, she led Izuku into the chair and Dr. Shinogi secured his arm with a set of straps.

"Don't worry Izuku, this machine is top of the line. Once Dr. Atroe has finished the diagnostics, this will take only a minute to complete," Dr. Shinogi reassured the boy with a smile. "Now, we can begin when you're ready.

Wordlessly Izuku tightened his grip on his mother's hand and nodded.

The machine lowered the tube down onto Izuku's arm at the vein. A soft whirring sound filled the air, the machine's needle descending to the boy's vein.

When the needle actually touched-down, the skin began to glow with a now familiar energy. Predictably, the needle failed to penetrate and simply stopped in its tracks and the machine let out a long beep. With a louder noise, the machine began to apply more pressure on the needle.

The light on Izuku's elbow only grew brighter, the energy starting to manifest as a small cloud of particles. Nurse Valentine pulled a clipboard out of her cleavage and began writing observations down as the cloud continued to grow in size and intensity.

"Interesting, but not unexpected at this point," She noted both aloud and on the board. She lifted her arm to shield her eyes as the cloud grew once more, its light becoming too bright to look at directly. She felt her bangs move slightly, and averted her gaze to the side and saw Dr. Shinogi's hair flowing softly. The energy was gaining enough strength to physically affect things nearby.

Dr. Shinogi, for his part, just watched with interest as the cloud began to move and flow. If he had to compare it to anything, he would describe it as branches swaying in strong wind. Fitting as the wind given off by the mass was now strong enough to begin stinging his eyes.

Inko managed to remain fairly stoic, but squinted strongly at the glowing brightness. On the inside, she was practically falling apart again with worry as her son's unexpected power. When he was just four, the doctor said there was a 96% chance that he would never develop a quirk due to having the extra toe joint, and now he was the glowing baby 2.0!

The wind was much more intense now, whipping the hair of everyone in the room.

Dr. Shinogi brought his arm to shield his face, the wind having grown too strong to ignore. He gulped softly as a feeling of unease entered his chest. The cloud was thickening and becoming opaquer, like it was trying to form a solid object. It was still indistinct, but the edges began to form rough spikes, like it was growing thorns or serrations.

'This is troubling. We have no idea what this energy is or what it can truly do, and there seems to be no end to how much he can produce," Dr. Shinogisubconsciously backed away, as did Valentine. Both couldn't help a rising feeling of dread as they continued to look at the cloud. Dr. Shinogi couldn't look away even as small lack spots entered his vision, amplifying his discomfort. He just grit his teeth and decided to attribute his dread to nerves.

Inko managed to avert her gaze to her son's face. While the cloud didn't fill her with the same fear as the doctors, she needed to check how Izuku was handling it.

Izuku just watched on with fascination that was still clear through his mask.

She managed a smile, somethings never change.

"Ow," and a particularly bright flash pierced the air, causing both Shinogi and Valentine to lurch backwards, startled. Izuku winced as the needle finally pierced his skin and began drawing his blood.

"Wow, I've only seen the force go that high on people whose quirks made them into living metal!" Dr. Atroe finally tore her attention away from the screen and cocked an eye-brow in confusion. "Uhh, what happened?" She asked when she saw the other two nearly backed up to the wall and some papers scattered around the room. "Hey, cool," The bright light around Izuku's arm had settled down to about the size of an egg, like it had given up now that the needle had made it through.

"Did you really not notice any of that?!" Dr. Shinogi demanded.

AN: Please leave a review, I will answer any questions.

The slavery rant was to show how Izuku could have a semi-normal life despite his quirk and is my personal view on how a quirk trading ring would logically fail in this world. I hope one day it will end up on tv tropes, it is my dream.

If you want to see my other works they include:

It all turns Black at Midnight

The Lotus Blooms for a Boy and his Cat

The Enigma of a Hero

Volare Via Giovane Pilota

and Angel on my Shoulder One-shots.

As always if anyone wants to make fanart I would love to see it.