What if Izulu got De-aged

So, some ideas I started before finishing the whole series. In this case, I started before I'd even finished with the anime episodes, which were in the middle of the Licensing Exam arc. I figured that this universe would have plenty of room with someone who had deaging powers. I worked intensely on a fiction with one. Then I looked at other fanfictions and a certaib character…Eri…kept getting mentioned. So, I dove into a manga for the first time. Thus, BNHMA became the first manga that I'd ever read in depth and sparked my interest in Manga reading over just watching the anime.

I also abandoned my original story for this and swapped to trying other versions. Unfortunately, when I wrote these later ones, I thought that because Izuku didn't remember what happens when Eri used her quirk on him (thus why he had to figure out how he ended up in the air after using his quirk to escape Overhaul and shoot out from underground). So, the first one that I post will not be true to the series but the others will be.

I will be beginning with the oldest version, which I started before I read about Eri. It's probably one of the favorite stories that I dropped.

I ended up using the opening below in each of the stories for this section. It's the only big consistency between them.

'All men are not created equal. This was the reality I learned about society at the young age of four. And that was my first and last set back.'

It's been four years since then.

Izuku sat by a fountain, watching as the police slapped a pair of quirk suppression cuffs on a villain who was being held in place by the sidewalk. Cementos, a hero who recently became a UA teacher, now patrolled their city in the mornings and evenings between. He had been on patrol and been the one to apprehend the Villain that was now being passed off to the police.

Although Izuku was always excited to see heroes in action, he had already seen him a few times and today's events hadn't revealed anything that was worth adding new notes for.

The villain on the other hand, was a different story. He was a robber with a suggestion quirk that made people want to ignore him.

Izuku himself was doing everything in his power to do the opposite as he wrote in 'Hero Analysis for the future, Vol 5. He was writing notes about the fight he'd just witnessed, and specifics about the quirk. Tonight, after he finished with his homework, he'd consider the implications of such a quirk: Quirk Classification, strengths, weaknesses, possible uses outside what he'd witnessed today, and anything else he might think of to study for later.

But he wanted to make sure he got as many notes as possible, because if the quirk had long term suggestion abilities, he might just forget before then. That would be horrible. He'd have to take note if that happened and add that to the quirk's description. Still, the fact that he was thinking about it so intently now might negate that effect… He supposed that he would just be adding it as a possibility for the extent of the quirk's ability either way.

He sighed and went to rest his arm on his leg, only to wince as he rested the weight on a bruise. The kids at school had gotten better at hurting him in ways that weren't as easy to see over time. Although, to be fair, the teachers couldn't care less. No one really cared about the only quirkless boy in the school.

Honestly, he was surprised that he hadn't been forced to move to another school on that merit alone, considering how obviously discriminatory his was. On top of him being the only quirkless kid who attended, there were also no kids with extremely obvious mutation quirks.

Most kids his age didn't notice such things, but Izuku Midoria couldn't afford to ignore it. Not if he wanted to survive. He'd been careful to read up on statistics for quirkless people, as ugly as they were. If he was going to be a hero, his first obstacle was the wrong end of those numbers. To overcome them, he had to know what he was up against.

Izuku knew that even things like his tendency to stand up to bullies and desire to walk around town on his own, studying fights between heroes and villains he came across all the time was risky. But he couldn't help it. Helping people was just something he needed to do and on top of training himself for the future, seeing quirks in action just made him feel alive.

In the distance, Izuku could hear kids laughing and playing. It was almost enough to distract him from the scene before him.

Izuku recalled the days before Bakugo had developed his quirk and he had been told he would never get one of his own. Instinctively, the green haired boy reached up to wipe a tear running down his cheek. He missed being welcome around other kids, being able to approach them without them lashing out at him. For seeing him as something less than they were. Nothing. Useless.

Deku.

"Hey there. You alright?"

Izuku looked up to see Cementos had come over to him. He instantly perked up; a hero was talking to him! Then he processed what the cement hero had said and realized that he was crying again. He rubbed the tears off his face and said, "It's nothing big, really."

The cement hero looked at his watch and stated, "I have a few minutes, if you want some company."

"Really? I wouldn't want to distract you from important hero work."

"I'm sure I've been here long enough seeing to that villain's arrest for everyone in the area to know I'm here. I doubt any villains will try anything."

Izuku chuckled and said, "You would think." Then he looked down at his Quirk Analysis journal and back up at the hero and asked, "If you have a few minutes, I don't suppose you could give me some tips about learning to be a hero, could you?" He lifted up his journal and said, "That's what I've been doing here, taking notes about today so I can look over them to help me look at how heroes deal with villains."

Cementos smiled and said, "You got lucky then, seeing an actual apprehension, didn't you? One with minimal danger to civilians."

Izuku cocked his head and frowned in confusion. "Actually, this week's been kind of slow. Usually, I'd have seen at least two or three by now. This was the first one all week and it's already Thursday."

"You shouldn't be seeking out hero-villain confrontations. They're dangerous."

"I don't seek them out, I just happen to be there when they start. So, I study them." He flipped through his pages and showed Cementos a picture of himself. "I've seen you deal with three other villain attacks. One of them was that bank robbery where you caught the four villains by trapping their car in the road and folding it up into walls around them." He spun the journal around and added, "You're really good at catching villains without damaging property or putting other people in danger, but I guess your medium would help with that, considering you can make it hard enough to deflect bullets or soft enough to mold around anything with nothing more than a thought. Hey, I've wondered, since you probably have to have some sensory application to your quirk in order to know how to shape it, are you able to sense people's movements through it?"

Cementos studied him for a moment before stating, "You sound like you're already well on your way. Your observation and analytical skills will serve you well, although you should try to keep your distances from the big fights."

Izuku looked down sheepishly at the statement.

Cementos sighed before stating, "But yes, I can sense people's movements through the cement. Conventional construction work gives me a headache."

Izuku tapped his pen on the journal and said, That's why you changed your general patrol pattern last month."

The hero looked surprised and opened his mouth to say something but changed his mind and instead asked, "Is this related to your quirk?"

Izuku blushed and looked down. "No. I don't actually have one. I'm hoping that rule for hero schools not accepting quirkless kids finally gets overturned before I'm old enough to apply. I've been watching the proceedings on that really closely. If it doesn't happen, I figure that I'd try asking one of the lone hero agencies for an apprenticeship when I'm a little older. It would be a lot harder but I'm willing to put in the extra work."

He glanced back at Cementos who seemed to be trying to come up with something to say when a beeping filled the air. A look of relief crossed his features as he pulled out a phone and said, "I need to get to the other side of town. A villain blew up a section of road while trying to make an escape."

"Going to reshape it for them?" Izuku asked happily.

Cementos nodded. "Take care of yourself, don't get too close to fights."

"I hope I'll see you in UA."

The hero was already gone. Izuku suspected that if he had stayed, he would have warned Izuku that being a hero was dangerous and tried to talk him into another profession.

He smiled, happy at having gotten to talk to a hero but couldn't help but think it would be nice if someone would believe in him every once in a while. Even be there for him. The few classmates who'd step up for him were soon silenced as they were exposed to a portion of the bullying he suffered. Others, he rescued from bullies, often purposely drawing the attention onto himself. These kids either shot him sympathetic looks or pretended he didn't exist afterward but didn't step in again.

The teachers. Ha! What a joke. They watched it, sometimes they even encouraged it, saying things to draw negative attention to him. But surely they wouldn't do that on purpose.

Only his mom was there for him and he didn't want to bring his troubles down on her.

Izuku looked up at the sky and noticed how low the sun was. Had he really sat here that long, thinking and probably mumbling to himself? He frowned, knowing he needed to head home. His mother had only consented to letting him be out on his own, walking to more places between home and school, only if he promised to keep her updated on where he was and came back before the sun set. It was more out of concern for worrying his mom than any fear of getting in trouble that he made sure he followed her rules to the letter. Even if wandering the streets after dark was dangerous.

Izuku hooked his pen in his shirt and closed his journal before texting his mom to let her know he was heading back. He stood up and stretched. He started walking back, quickly adjusting his gait so that he moved normally despite his injuries from school today. He'd had a lot of practice at hiding it, almost daily.

He clutched the journal in his hand, taking comfort from the feel of its spine against the palm of his hand. It represented his lifeline, his hopes and his dreams for the future. It was the physical proof that despite whatever everyone said, one day he could become a hero.

Izuku looked up at the setting sun as he stepped onto his street and started walking towards his house. He felt the slight breeze as he walked in the golden light of the evening, his shadow stretching out before him down the street and his house coming into view.

Suddenly his world lurched and there was a shift of colors and light around him. He felt nauseous from it. Then as quickly as it started, it stopped.

Many de-aging stories bring up the kid not knowing what happened and how they got where they were, not really realizing that they were actually made younger. I wanted to explore that from the kids point of view, because it seemed like it could be an interesting one, especially with someone like Iuzku, who seemed to already be quite self aware from a very young age.

As mentioned in previous chapters, for some time, I played with the idea of Izuku having a subtle quirk magnetism/agitation quirk and hints of that idea pop up in my stories, such as the mention of overexposure to hero/villain confrontations here.