Firefly Wishes
Pacing the length of the room he'd been shut in, waiting for one of the teachers to come back to where he was waiting to take the "special" test that had been set up for him, Neito Monoma folded his arms and glared at the door. The fact that he'd even needed to take this test in the first place – the fact that he couldn't take the same test that everyone else did – was just one more reminder that his Quirk was all but worthless on its own. When one of the other teachers came into the room, leading another kid – this one with messy green hair, chubby cheeks, and a spray of freckles across his turned-up nose – Neito found himself equal parts curious and annoyed.
It almost looked like there was someone else who had to take this impromptu test; Neito found himself wondering just who this new kid was, and how he'd ended up with the bad luck to end up with a Quirk just as useless as the one Neito had ended gotten.
The new kid introduced himself as Izuku Midoriya, and even as Neito did the same, he wondered just what the pair of them were going to have to do, now that they were both here in the room that had been set aside for them. As it turned out, Izuku kind of had the same type of Quirk that he'd been stuck with, though more than a few people – all of them stuck-up, elitist bastards as far as Neito was concerned – would have probably said that Izuku's was the better one. Izuku didn't say anything like that, thought.
More and more, it was looking like – besides having the kind of Quirk that paired so perfectly with his that the pair of them almost seemed to be made for each other – Izuku Midoriya was the nicest person that Neito had ever had the chance to meet. He was also pretty wild on the subject of Quirk analysis, but that kind of thing was pretty much what someone could expect, considering what kind of Quirk Izuku had. Neito had considered getting into that kind of thing a few times, himself, but he'd always stopped just short of actually doing it.
Honestly, it just seemed all but calculated to drive him crazy with the thoughts of what he could never truly have.
Still, Izuku was nice enough that Neito wasn't going to bring that kind of thing up to him. Heck, Izuku was nice enough that Neito found himself hoping that the pair of them would end up being in the same class together. No one else seemed to understand him as well as Izuku. No one else seemed to want to take the time to understand him that well, either.
Finding Izuku's arms around him, Neito blinked in surprise.
"Sorry," the green-haired boy – the perfect partner Neito felt like he'd been searching for all his life without even knowing it – said, pulling back slightly so that the pair of them could look at each other again, though his hands still rested lightly on Neito's shoulders. "You kind of looked like you needed a hug."
He chuckled, wrapping his own arms around Izuku in turn. "Yeah. Thanks, partner."
As the pair of them held each other for a long moment, Neito found himself thinking back on the test that he and Izuku had taken together. One of the many things that'd helped him was the fact that while he couldn't really make use of Mutation Quirks with Copy, Izuku had stocked up at least one of them since he could grow a pair of large, green, batlike wings. The pair of them had flown through parts of the obstacle course that'd been set up for the pair of them to show off what their respective Quirks could do.
Izuku had let him use a fire-breathing Quirk, a Quirk that had allowed him to use blasts of wind as actual cutting blades, and also some kind of shielding Quirk for when they'd needed to deal with one kind of projectile or another.
As he laid his right palm flat against Izuku's back, Neito found himself recalling the way the green-haired boy's Quirks had felt, back during the test they'd both been taking. They'd buzzed just under his skin; it'd reminded him more than a little of the way people would wish on fireflies when they could catch them. If he could, Neito would make a wish on each and every one of Izuku Midoriya's stockpiled Quirks.
As he pressed his right hand against Izuku's cheek, Neito smiled; he knew just what he'd wish for first…
