[18:Physics Break]
(A/N: USA wins gold in women's hockey! Suck it, Canada! RAHHHH! Three chapters to celebrate!)
"It's time for the next event! Only the top 42 who finished in the obstacle course can advance, but don't worry if you didn't make it, there'll be other moments to show off." Midnight brought down her whip as the holographic screen began to randomize before landing on the cavalry event. "Who called in the cavalry?"
"For this event, you'll need to form groups of two to four people. Each person will get a headband with points corresponding to how they finished in the race, starting from the lowest and increasing by five as the positions go upwards. But there's a special exception! The first-place finisher is worth ten-million points!"
All eyes turned to Eleanor the second Midnight mentioned the ten-million point value.
"Why is everyone looking at me? I know I look good, but this is a sports festival, not a modeling thing. And no, I'm not interested in all of you." Eleanor said, purposely acting oblivious to the various stares.
"You'll have 15 minutes to form teams and strategize. You are not allowed to purposely knock a team down or use your quirks maliciously! That's all! Your time starts now!" The timer on the holographic screen behind Midnight started to count down.
While others were scrambling to form teams, Eleanor stood there in thought. What was she thinking about?
/\\//\\//\
'Maliciously. Hmm…what does that mean exactly? What makes something malicious? How can I abuse this and take it further without getting in trouble? Let's see…by definition, 'malicious' means intending or intended to harm. Okay, so what does 'harm' mean? 'Harm' has several definitions: damage to physical health or to material things. It's safe to assume that 'damage to physical health' is what they will focus on. Alright, I think I know what I can do while being able to argue my way out of it if issues do arise.'
That's right, Eleanor was thinking of how far she could bend the rules and get away with it. Definitions are very important to her. But her ideas would make even a lawyer proud. She called it "Non-lethal lethal attacks."
With her thinking finished, she now had to look for a team. Ideally, she wants a two-person team. It would make things a lot easier. And being the horse would be her best fit.
But who? Who could she choose? It's a good thing she had some time and space, since people don't exactly want to team with her because of the difficulty involved in being with someone who had a massive bounty on their head.
"Excuse me, want to join my team?" Except for some people.
'It's the brainwashing guy. I think it was Shinso? Or Hitoshi? Which is which again? No matter, just ignore him and walk away.' Is what Eleanor thought as she walked away at a brisk pace.
"It's rude to just walk away. This is Japan, not America. Or is everyone in America like this?"
'This guy's kind of good at the bait, but not today.' Eleanor thought. She walked away quickly, and Shinos stopped his attempt. It was obvious she wasn't going to talk to him. But it left Shinso wondering if she knew what his quirk was like, or if it was just a coincidence.
'Let me think…who would be good? For my ideal of just a two-person team, I need someone light, small, flexible, or agile. Weight is usually the most important, but I have enhanced strength, so that's not a problem. My most important criterion is size. I need someone small. Okay, I got it. It's going to be either Tsu or Toru.'
Eleanor looked for a bit, and then "saw" her before running up to her. "Hey, it's Toru, right?" She asked her.
"Eleanor? Do you want me on your team? Um…I'm not sure if I can help much." It was weird talking to a gym uniform, but Eleanor rolled with it.
"Looking" at Toru, Eleanor suddenly got curious about her invisibility quirk. Her curious mind, filled with the scientific knowledge of her past life started to work hard as she analyzed Toru's quirk in a scientific way. She smirked a little. "Trust me, Toru, a bit of science knowledge, and you could theoretically be the strongest one in this class."
"Huh?" The gym clothes jumped around a little bit, as Toru was surprised. No one really thought that she would be the strongest one. Even Toru hereself knew.
"What's your quirk, Toru?"
"Invisibility."
'Invisibility. Sure, yeah, I don't buy it one single bit.' Eleanor thought to herself before she asked Toru the most important question that would blow open the door for what her quirk actually does. "Are you blind? Can you see?"
"What? Yeah, I can see. What does this have to do with my quirk?" Toru answered.
'She can see. By this fact alone, her quirk can't be only invisibility.' Eleanor thought to herself before she started mumbling and ranting, "Very interesting, because if your quirk truly was invisibility, then you shouldn't be able to see anything. You should be blind, but you're not. And if you are able to see, then light photons are hitting your eyes, therefore they should be reflecting back to everyone, and making at least your eyes visible. But it's not. And to be invisible as you are, you must also replace the background light perfectly. So, you're either breaking fundamental rules of the universe, even factoring in superpowers, or it's not 'light' that's letting you 'see' things, or maybe your quirk is transforming different wavelengths and reflecting them back as another form of light. Maybe that's why you can see normally, but others can't see you; perhaps the light you reflect can't be detected by human eyes. But then there's the problem that the clothes you wear are visible, but that could be more of a control or user issue. Wait, no, that also can't be right. If you absorbed all visible light and reflected it in a way that human eyes can't detect, then you should just be a pitch-black silhouette, which would be very obvious. And it doesn't solve the background light problem. And then there's the amount of energy and control needed. Since quirks are biological, it would mean your biology is vastly beyond human limits and thresholds, and your brain would need immense power to handle the constant input."
Toru decided to interrupt Eleanor as she was getting too into this, and she hardly understood anything Eleanor was saying. "I don't get this. Isn't light just light? You're talking as if there's more. And you're mumbling as Midoriya does sometimes."
Eleanor smirked. "Toru, what do you know about the electromagnetic spectrum and the properties of light?"
"Uh…not much."
Eleanot saw that they were standing in the sun, which also gave her another big clue, and another train of thought to go down. She asked her another question. "Toru, do you feel hot right now?"
"No, I feel fine."
"Okay, so that answers my question about the energy conservation problem if you were to radiate infrared," Eleanor mumbled to herself.
"I don't understand what you're saying at all." At this point, Toru felt that Eleanor was in her own world. She didn't know if Eleanor even wanted her to join her team.
"You'll learn. Look, Toru, the 'light' people think of is visible light in the EM spectrum. If your quirk is more on the side of manipulating light than just invisibility…then the implications are massive. Even quantum physics gets involved in this. Assuming my previous guesses are even close, whenever you shift light into another form, you're manipulating the quantum energy levels of photons. By the implications of this, you can probably also manipulate the wave-particle duality of light, and even the quantum mass, to treat light as a physical object, basically forming solid light constructs."
"Huh? I have no idea what you're talking about at all." Toru to stop Eleanor, but she just kept on going as Eleanot kept ranting and mumbling, more to herself than to Toru at this point.
"But that's not fully possible. There's an entirely different system at play here." Eleanor thought hard on this, pulling all knowledge from all the related fields she knew in her past life. "I think I got it; this could work better. Given what I know so far, you show signs of electromagnetic phase manipulation. Instead of absorbing light, you shift the outgoing photons, cancel reflected visible wavelengths through destructive interference, and re-emit background light patterns. Or maybe a localized electromagnetic field that detects incoming light direction and projects matching light on the opposite side, which means an active EM camouflage system. The physics is cleaner, but this is so advanced."
'I think she's way too smart for high school,' Toru thought to herself as she kept listening.
"But then maybe also perfect EM-spectrum camouflage by wavelength shifting plus field manipulation. This would mean you have quantum-level control over photon interactions; you could convert, redirect, and emit EM radiation with precision, and your power would fundamentally be electromagnetic field control. And by going further beyond, you could emit EMP-like pulses, microwave bursts, and a lot more." Eleanor finally looked at Toru. "Toru, you could be one of the most powerful heroes." Eleanot put her hands on Toru's shoulders and shook her slightly. "I've decided! You're on my team! Thanks for volunteering; I'll buy you an ulu knife as thanks. The non-tourist trap version."
"What's going on?"
"Okay, here's the plan. I'm going to quickly try to make you manipulate light to the point where you can bend it. Use this trick to hide the headband. That's all you have to do, besides holding on for dear life while you're on top of me."
They both paused after what Elaenor said. Eleanot couldn't see her, but she could feel the awkwardness of the situation. Her words may have come out a bit wrong, but she'd be lying if she said she didn't also think of it. A girl like Toru on top of her? For Eleanor, that would be sensational.
'Focus! Now is not the time for that!' Elenor rid herself of those superfluous thoughts.
"And if I can't?" Toru asked.
"Then it's okay. I have my own method. Your quirk has given me inspiration."
"I have?"
"Do you know what metamaterials are, Toru?"
"I didn't even know that was a word."
"It's okay." If only she knew how much money was being thrown around to research this stuff in Eleanor's last life.
"Do you usually talk like this when talking about quirks?" Toru asked now that Eleanot seemed to go back to normal a bit.
"Well, I think about it, but talking about it to someone else is different. Maybe I can get a bit carried away," Eleanor said.
"Yeah, just a bit. Have you done this to others?"
"Yeah, with Shoto and Bakugo. To keep it short, they should both be dead because of their powers. And for Shoto that's only with his ice side; don't even get me started on his fire."
Toru decided not to encourage it any further and changed subjects. "We should move on. Who else would join our team?"
"Do you want me to be honest?"
"Yes"
"Probably no one. They might not want such overwhelming attention, and combined with you on the team, they'll think our strength is weak; you'll be seen as too much of a weak link. At least…not now. Again, assuming I'm even close to being right about your quirk."
"You didn't have to be that honest. Can we really win with just us two?"
"You saw what I did at the USJ, right? Trust me, we got this."