Mind Boggled

Chapter 15

Basically an awkward filler. It's three in the morning. This isn't edited, and I was heavily sleep deprived while writing it. You've been warned.

Third person pov

Really, Harper didn't have the energy to even think about whatever was going on in the mind of Izuku Midoriya. The rise in the voices in his head lasted only a moment. For Harper, they were clear, but something blocked them off from Izuku. From where she sat, she could somehow tell he wasn't hearing their voices. Maybe wisps of what was being said, but no full, solid phrases. A bucket of encouragement, fondness, and reassurance was being dumped over the freckled boy, and he had no idea.

He snapped out of Shinso's control anyway, after breaking a finger. Harper had to groan out loud at that. How self-destructive could a single person be? She didn't understand his mentality at all. The little-to-no self worth he held for himself was startling even to her. Sure, he had dignity. Like her, he held some small amount of value for himself. But aside from that, there was nothing. Harper recognized her own rights as a human being. She knew that, no matter how shitty she was, she impacted the people around her, and that she meant something, whether that was a good or bad something. Izuku... he didn't see any of that at all.

"Look at him go!" One of the many voices crowding within Midoriya's head without him even realizing they were there crowed, loud enough that it rang clearly even in her ears. It was a male, gruff but genuine, and so, so alive despite not seeming to belong to a body. "Kid's got spunk. I like that."

"You said it. Toshi really knows how to pick 'em, don't he? I'm proud of the little sprout." That voice was a woman's. It was earnest and incredibly fond. She could only assume Toshi meant Toshinori, as in Toshinori Yagi. The man most people knew as All Might. Harper shivered slightly, wondering just what secret she'd stumbled upon. It felt... old. The more she prodded at it, the more she realized that these voices-- these mentalities-- seemed more mature than anyone she'd come across. While the earnest woman's was the youngest, the gruff man's appeared to be wise, old. An antique, Harper might describe it.

She could usually gauge a general age based on the state of their mental development. She wasn't sure how, but she could. Harper could easily see that her classmates were teens without even looking at them. Just like the brunette didn't need to look at a Third Year to know they were just that-- a senior. The jump in mental growth was immense enough to place it. Just like she could tell younger children placing in the preschool and kinder levels apart from those who were in third-to-fifth grade. 

People in their twenties were the same way. They were different than teenagers, but not as mature as someone in their thirties or forties. That being said, late thirties to early fifties was hard to place in. The brain was completely and fully developed, and learning had slowed down considerably. Not in the same way someone who was in, say their eighties, might have, but in its own way. 

"Hey, Harper, are you okay?" Ochako checked. "The match ended, but she's still staring down there. Is she worried about Iida?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Harper didn't look away from the field, her intense gaze focused on the dirt. This was truly too much for her small, aching little mind to handle. God, she doesn't want to deal with this. Of course she doesn't. Harper doesn't even wanna deal with shit, but what does she end up doing every time? What does fate force her into? It forces her into dealing with, that's right, you called it, shit. It'd ridiculous how much of a mess her life has become lately. She's separated from her parents, living with a police detective who doesn't even know what the words "healthy" and "lifestyle" mean when put together, and the League is on her tail because she was a dumbass.