Monomania
Monomania: pathological obsession with one idea or subject.
It started with the sports festival. Or maybe before that, seeing the news of the USJ attack. He wondered if it really began several years ago, on that playground on a sunny afternoon. But no matter the origin, it had become a monstrous thing, seemingly controlling his very reason for living. And it was only growing stronger.
Pale blue eyes tracked subtle movements, focusing on quiet mutters. A stray breeze ruffled fluffy green hair, the mutters pausing as the boy looked up to listen to his teacher’s instructions.
Nieto reluctantly did the same, though his mind never left the idea that was Izuku Midoriya. The boy fascinated him like nothing else before, so much so that his very presence set all of Neito’s senses alight like fire. Even with his eyes somewhere else, all of his attention was on Midoriya. On Izuku. The primary reason he always antagonized class 1A. The boy who was slowly becoming his reason for getting up in the morning. The one who was totally oblivious to Neito’s growing infatuation.
Today the two hero classes were put together for a training exercise - apparently they were going to be randomly split up into four groups of ten, with two heroes acting as hostages and the other eight split up as heroes or villains.
In front of the teachers were two boxes, the first of which the hobo-looking teacher of class 1A rummaged through before pulling out a slip of paper. “Group one: the first member is Kirishima.”
He noticed the red-haired boy walk up to the front and stand slightly off to the side. He remembered that the boy, Kirishima, had a hardening quirk similar to Tetsutetsu. He had a similar personality, too.
He listened as names continued to be called, vaguely keeping track as it continued. Kirishima, Honenuki, Kodai, Shoji, and Testsutetsu (the two “manly” bros cheered as they got out together). The next name was the one that caught his attention, though.
“Midoriya.” The green-eyed boy joined the others, sticking closer to his classmate with the four arms. Neito crushed the small bit of jealousy that welled up at the action, refusing to let himself turn into a possessive creep like those he’d seen stories about on the news.
Sure, he was obsessed with Izuku, and he might know way too much about him, but it wasn’t like he wanted to actually act on his feelings, let alone do anything that might unintentionally hurt the boy.
He’d done his research when he realized how unhealthy his fascination had become, and vowed to steer clear of any actions that would actually affect Izuku. Just because he was messed up in the head didn’t mean Izuku needed to be burdened by that knowledge.
Still, he listened raptly as the rest of the names were called for Izuku’s team. Jiro, Iida, Tsuburaba, and “Monoma.”
He paused mentally even as his body moved, his feet carrying him to stand beside his classmates. Internally he was conflicted, one part of him ecstatic at being on the same team as his obsession no crush no as Izuku. The other part of him was worried about messing up, acting wrong around the boy and somehow alerting him of Neito’s emotions, or worse, hurting him.
Sadly, he hoped they wouldn’t be very near each other during the exercise, lest he do something he’d later regret. He decided to pay closer attention as the papers with their team members' names on them got dumped in the second box. After shaking it up a little, the same hobo-teacher drew a slip of paper.
“First of the heroes: Kodai.” The girl nodded as she was handed a badge to stick on her suit with the word ‘HERO’ on it in bold letters. The loud redhead was called as the second hero next, and so on until the heroes consisted of Kodai, Kirishima, Tsuburaba, and Iida.
“Next are the hostages. Those left will be the villains. First hostage: Monoma.” The blond accepted the badge and attached it to his uniform, somewhat grateful - it was highly unlikely that he would encounter Izuku now. “Second hostage: Midoriya.”
Oh, how the gods hated him.
Nieto felt his heart rate increase as the shorter boy stood beside him, fixing a matching badge to his chest. The rest of the team stepped forward to receive their ‘VILLAIN’ badges as Kan-sensei began to describe the rules. Neito fixated on his words instead of the boy beside him, willing his heart to be calm.
“Today’s exercise is meant to test how you handle multitasking in the field. The villain team will have a base in an undisclosed location and will repeatedly attack the city - how you choose to do so is up to you. The two hostages will be restrained and kept in a room at the villains base. Your goal is to escape and return to help the heroes.
“The villains may choose to obstruct you as much as possible, and the heroes will have to focus both on the rescue of the hostages and fighting the rest of the villains. There is a time limit of an hour and thirty minutes. Whichever team had captured or ‘killed’ more of the other team wins. For the villains, this includes the hostages. This red tape,” he tossed a roll over to Honenuki, who caught it with two hands.
“Will indicate if a hero is ‘killed’. You need to wrap it around a hero’s limb fully, so just sticking a strip to them won’t work. This green tape,” he tossed another roll to Iida. “Indicates when a villain is captured. Again, you need to wrap it fully around a limb for the villain to actually be captured.”