Mind Boggled

Chapter 11

Third person pov

Harper was pretty sure she was dying. This was something she'd assumed in the past, of course, but this time she was positive. Her head felt literally ready to explode as she waited for the obstacle course to start. Between the roar of the crowd and the nervous mental chatter of those around her, she was going to keel over. Harper nearly felt like she was choking. The thoughts were so overwhelmingly stifling that she felt light headed and near passing out completely.  

"I've got to do this. I have to at least get past the first part of the festival." Iida was determined. He was setting his self deprecation aside for the time being to try and get into the mindset needed to participate. Harper was glad his depression hadn't consumed him so far that he couldn't function in a high-stress event such as this. Some people just ceased function all together, though Iida wasn't that type. He was the kind who bottled it up and tried to hide it from everyone. Even worse, he was succeeding. His acting skills were truly something to behold.

Harper raked through the thoughts of her peers, trying to find something that would help her. She didn't really care about passing. In fact, she'd begged Nezu to let her sit this one out. He'd insisted it would only draw attention to her if she did. This way, Mic could announce her quirk as being a reflex one to the world. Not just her schoolmates would assume her to have the predictive quirk. The entire world would. However, to get announced in such a manner, she'd either need to pass or at least make it towards the front. If it helped her with the league, she was here for it.

Sort of. 

The physical part of this whole festival thing was going to be her undoing, not to mention the crowd. She could barely hear Iida, and he was right next to her, his thoughts more booming than most. Harper couldn't exactly get the upper hand on people if she couldn't hear them over the roar of the audience. It would take a whole lot of focus, and she wasn't sure that's something she had. Not at the moment, anyway.

Harper searched anyway, gritting her teeth. Honestly, she knew deep downs he probably should have stayed back at Tsukauchi's apartment today. They could sleep in, lounge around. Kick back with some junk food and watch her classmates suffer on TV. Maybe they'd even laugh at their failure. The possibilities had been endless, and yet here she was, probing around people's brains in search of god knows what. Even she didn't know.

Kaminari's Wii remix evolved again, sounding more like trap than anything else at this point. Harper could barely heard the Wii part anymore. Some kid, she had no idea who, was checking out the ass of the person in front of her. Shoji was thinking of sock puppets for some damn reason, and she really didn't want to know why Tsuyu was wondering if you could use a water balloon as a condom. Seriously, there were several questions there and Harper hoped she never got the answers to any of them. Ever.

Harper didn't want to be here, in a giant stadium at fuck o'clock in the morning, wondering how she'd gotten to this point, and more importantly, how she was supposed to get back and away from it. She was in desperate need of a nap and stuck invading the privacy of everyone around to try and be a step up from the competition. She wasn't expecting to actually find anything of use. Luck didn't usually hand out favors to her like that, but she was pleasantly surprised when she hit Todoroki's thoughts.

"If I'm fast enough, maybe I can trap a majority of the competition in my ice... yes, they're all bound to get stuck in the narrow exit." Todoroki's mind mumbled. "This way, I don't have to use my fire to try and ward them back. I'll have to time it carefully, and make sure I'm first out of the tunnel to make it more effective."

Okay, so that was great information, totally dandy, very helpful. Issue: how was she supposed to avoid a shit ton of ice aiming to freeze her feet to the ground? It'd have to be pretty thick and strong to hold a lot of these people. Maybe if she jumped at the exact right moment she could, but that wouldn't be easy to pull off. Perhaps it would be if she actually had a reflexive quirk like she claimed to, but she didn't, so here they were. Suffering.