Strategy
After Dsekene's competition, which was the last of the duseken ones, came the mayin courses. They were the last challenges of the day. Not surprising, considering they were the mayins. And unlike the other challenges, they were split up not by age group, but by academic level, since the mayin obstacle course focused more on strategy than actual physical ability, and the high-level mayins, like Myini, had a distinct advantage over even the mid-level ones, let alone the low-level ones.
The mayin course was a team effort in which groups of boys with all three mayin powers used their bodies, minds, and powers to get a particular object from one end to the other. It required strategy, imagination, and a good deal of cooperation, and it was well worth watching every year, even if just to see the sheer amount of preparation the teachers had put into the course that year. The high-level challenge, particularly, was amazing.
The teams were allowed to set up their strategy as they liked, though there were certain roles that were always filled, every year on every team. There was always a single leader, who coordinated the entire team and stood with a small group of mindspeakers at the top of the course, where he could see everything that was going on and make his plans with that knowledge. The rest of the mindspeakers always served as communications, and were scattered among the course.
The 'ports served as backup communications, as well as transport around the course, though the course was always wired with electronics that interfered with 'porting, making it impossible to do any 'port over long distances. Otherwise the course itself would be pointless; all the 'ports would just take the object from the start point to the end point. The electronics interfered with the other mayin powers as well, increasing the need for strategy and judicious use of powers.
And the mindmovers... Well, they tended to be the wild cards, and the ones who did most of the actual moving around in the course. Not that they weren't useful, just that it was really up to the leader as to what sort of things the mindmovers did. Proper use of mindmoving in the course could make a huge difference, but it could also bring everything crashing down.
Myini, as a mindspeaker, was on communications up top. He was not the leader, mostly because it just wasn't one of his strong points. He was better at taking orders than at making them. He was better at observing, and at relaying his leader's plans and orders to others. After all, he was very good at being loud, but also very good at being private. So he was up top, one of the handful of mindspeakers who helped the leader stay in contact with the rest of the team.
No one ever came out and said it, but I always thought there was another reason he was up top. Myini's alternate hearing was based in mindspeech, so it was very good at hearing people's speech and thoughts. It wasn't so good at hearing things, to the point where if he wasn't paying attention, he never noticed sounds other than people talking. He barely "heard" noises made by inanimate objects, like chairs scraping on the ground and such, and sometimes that was a distinct disadvantage for him. I had the feeling that the leader of Myini's team thought that it was enough of a disadvantage that it was better just to avoid having him down in the course, where alertness could mean everything at times. But, of course, I had no proof of that, and I wasn't about to ask anyone about it.
I always had mixed feelings about watching the mayin challenges. By rights, I should participate in them, along with Myini, though Jalki's forced non-participation indicated that I probably wouldn't have been allowed to participate, even if I could act as the she-mayin I was. I was still "blind." But even so, when I watched those challenges, I wished I could join in.
Watching them was fun. I would be the first to admit that, and there were plenty of spectators who were there only for the mayin challenges. But it was also frustrating. Maybe not for most of the others, but for me it was. I couldn't help but think up my own strategies when I watched them, and I itched to be able to go down to the field and try them out.
After years of watching the challenges, I was convinced that, given a chance, I could lead a team to victory. I would never get the chance, for sure, but I was sure that I could do it, even with a tiny team. And actually, it would have to be a tiny team, since I knew better than anyone else how much most of the other students, especially the mayin ones, hated me. I wouldn't be able to get more than a handful of them to follow my lead in the first place. Still, I didn't just want to win, I wanted to lead a team to victory.
So just watching left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. But I watched anyway, partly to cheer Myini on, and partly because it was interesting. Well, and because I had no real explanation for Mother and Dua as to why I didn't want to sit there during the mayin challenges, when I was perfectly willing to sit there for the other ones.
That year was harder than usual. I sat there, pretending not to look while I watched, all the while feeling something gnawing at my stomach. Mother and Dua cheered on Myini's team, while various people around us cheered for other teams, sometimes the same one. I just tried not to get angry. And tried my hardest not to wish I was down there, in the middle of it all.
Myini's team, led by a guy named Kastny who hated us freaks, but didn't have enough pull among the rest of the mayins to avoid getting "stuck" with Myini, wasn't doing the greatest. Kastny was the best strategist on their team, but compared to the leaders of the other three teams, he was pathetic. Within the first five minutes of the challenge, he had gotten himself stuck, and he just made it worse with every new move he made. It was clear that he was getting frustrated... and taking it out on his teammates.
It was enough to make me want to scream. As we all watched him try to back himself out of his corner, he made yet another wrong move, getting a group of little mindmover boys stuck, literally, between a rock and a hard place. I couldn't hear what was said at that point, but apparently Myini was involved, because a few moments after that, the entire field heard his response.
"Just stay out of it, you fucking freak!" We all heard it, and we all saw the blood drain out of Myini's face, leaving him ghostly pale. We even saw how a few of the other mindspeakers, not fans of us freaks, tried to stick up for him, but got similar treatment, at a lower volume.
And with that, it was just too much for me. I couldn't just sit back and watch Kastny attack one of my friends like that. Especially not when he was just taking out his own frustration on someone who was just following his orders. Something had to be done, if only to stop Kastny from yelling at Myini again.
Can I help it that the easiest way to help Myini involved partially taking charge of the team? Taking my chance to not only get involved in the challenge, but to lead? The way I looked at it, I was doing something good for everyone. Except Kastny, maybe.
On the tightest channel I could manage, I contacted Myini. It wasn't perfect, but Kastny was a mindmover, so he wouldn't be able to hear me. I just hoped that the other mindspeakers would be too distracted to notice the extra "voice" in the mix, and that Myini shouldn't have been talking to anyone.
"Hey, Myini," I said, crossing my fingers and praying that he wouldn't be too obvious when he heard me.
"Kinda busy right now!" he shot back, mentally shooing me. "You should know better!"
"I can help. You have to admit that I'd be a better leader for the group than he is."
"Kiya, you can't do this."
I set my face. "Try me."
I felt him sigh heavily. "Kiya, please. Kastny won't let it drop if he catches someone interfering. And when he finds out it's you..."
"But he won't do it. Because when things start going better for him, he'll jump on the chance to make it seem like it was all his idea. He'll never make a fuss about interference then, since he'd have to admit that it wasn't him making things go well if he did. Please, let me do this?"
I could almost see the frown on his face, even from where I was sitting. Then, just as I was about to push at him again, I felt him sigh again, and he sent a sort of mental nod my way. "Fine. But you're done the moment Kastny starts yelling again."
I sighed, but smiled. "I guess that's as good as I'm gonna get. Okay, to start with, let's get those little ones moving again..."
As I orchestrated an impromptu construction session, using some boards that were lying around, probably for just that reason, and several mindmovers in and around the area where the little ones were stuck, I briefly felt Kastny's annoyance spike. For a moment, I was afraid that he was going to do something, but he didn't. Probably because I had things moving again almost immediately. I did see him glance toward the stands, but not in my direction. As far as I could tell, he was looking at Jalki. He didn't look happy.
But he didn't do anything. He kept giving his own orders, and the team kept moving toward the goal, despite being severely behind. I kept up with my own efforts as well, though Myini forced me to stick to only involving the boys Kastny wasn't using at the time. That was probably a wise idea, even though it annoyed me a little. Still, I managed to get quite a bit done, despite the huge disadvantage I started with and despite having less than half of Kastny's team to work with.
As the teams worked their way through the course, I noticed that there was a large open space right before the goal, with heavily obstructed strips of land to either side. Actually, I had noticed the space before, but I noticed it again as the first groups hit that area. Every single person who stepped into that space turned back almost immediately, and all three of the teams ended up sending their teams, object at all, into the strips to the side. I couldn't see anything about that space that would explain why no one wanted to go through it, but there had to be something about it.
And I wanted to know what it was.
"Myini, has anyone said what's up with the land right in front of the goal?" I asked, hoping maybe some of the team's scouts had said something about it. "All the other teams are avoiding it."
"Something about feeling scared to death the moment they stepped past a certain point. No one knew why, but it happened to everyone who tried."
I thought about this for a while, trying to figure out what might cause them to get frightened for apparently no reason. The easiest, most obvious, reason would be a sort of mental "wave of fright" or something like that, set up by one or several mindspeakers working together. But another mindspeaker, such as myself, should be able to feel the presence of such a field, and I couldn't feel anything like that. When I cast my mind in that direction, I picked up nothing whatsoever.
As I thought about it some more, a part of my mind dug up pieces of the physics textbook I had been practically married to just a week earlier, while studying for finals. There was something in there about sounds, and how certain frequencies could evoke various reactions in humans. In some cases, actual nausea. And in some cases... fright.
My first reaction was to dismiss the idea right away. After all, it was way too convenient, especially since I was in contact with someone who, theoretically, wouldn't be affected by such a thing. Myini couldn't hear at all, so I had to assume that if this was some sort of frequency that caused fear in people, that it wouldn't do that in Myini. But it was just too convenient.
Except that right on the heels of that thought came the one reminding me that Myini was on Kastny's team. That Myini was one of us freaks, and that none of the other mayins really liked him all that much. It would be just like the teachers to build in a simple way of winning the challenge, if only the leader of Myini's team would realize it and be willing to let Myini win it for them. They knew just as well as I did that it would never happen. Most of the mayins, especially Kastny, would rather die than have his team's victory be because of Myini.
And because of that, I had the sudden suspicion that I was right.
"Myini," I said to him, trying not to sound either too excited or too unsure. "I have a theory about that field. But in order to test it, I need your help. Rather, I need you down in the course itself. It'll piss Kastny off, but if I'm right, you'll win everything for him. You game?"
I felt his surprise, and his fear at the thought of what would happen if I was wrong. As it was, he would have to commandeer a 'port long enough to get him up to the top and back down to the field. That would take a while, and Kastny would know right away that something weird was going on. He would be screwed from the moment he started a 'port toward him until he showed something decisively good for the team. And even then, there was the possibility that it would be too much for Kastny.
"Explain first."
I didn't blame him for that. I would want to know what the idea was before agreeing as well. So, I explained my thoughts to him, and why I thought it would work. And, to my surprise, he actually agreed. He wasn't completely sure about the thought that it was a sound, but he did agree that it was the kind of thing the teachers would do, given the status he had among the other mayins.
With that, he caught one of the fastest 'ports on the team that was free at the moment and called him up to where he was. The way the course was set up, it was easier to 'port when the object wasn't nearby, so getting the 'port there in the first place wasn't too hard. In a matter of a few seconds, Myini was down on the field, and he and the 'port were making progressively smaller hops to the edge of the open field. And Kastny was fuming.
Then they arrived at the edge of the field, and the 'port abandoned Myini there, called back by Kastny just as they got there. The uneasy grin on Myini's face was strong enough that it reflected in his thoughts. He flashed a mental thumbs up at me, and I crossed my fingers desperately as he took his first steps into the open area. I hoped he had his fingers crossed too.
He paused and looked around, then took a few more steps. He didn't seem to be affected by anything, unless he was really pushing himself. Worried, I reached out for his mind. "You okay?"
He flashed a mental grin at me. "Perfect. Don't feel anything. Pretty sure I'm far enough in, too."
"Then get in touch with someone and get that object to you! Screw Kastny, go for the boys on the field instead. If you aren't scared of whatever's there, then you have a straight shot for the goal."
I felt the glee fill him as what I had just said sank in. He could win it for them. He just needed to get the object. Kastny would hate it, and we both knew it, but neither one of us really liked him anyway. This way Myini could steal the show, just like Dsekene had stolen hers, and we both thought that sounded better than being stuck on the last place team.
He sought out the group with the object, which was almost to the open field at that point, and told them he could run it for them. They weren't happy about contradicting Kastny, but it was clear that winning was more important to them than making Kastny happy. Before we knew it, they were at the edge of the field, just before where they started to feel scared. Myini was a couple of feet beyond that point.
He ran back to where they waited and took the object, a battered book for his team this year. Then he started for the goal as fast as he could go. Even though he had a straight shot, the other teams had been on the side strips for a while, and the one in the lead was nearing the end. It would be close.
We all held our breath as Myini dashed across the open field, book in hand. He was almost there when the boy with the lead team's object broke free from the last obstacle and started his own mad dash for the goal. For a moment, it looked like Myini might make it, but the lead team's boy was taller, and faster.
I didn't even think about it. I just reached out with my mind onto the field without considering what might happen if anyone noticed. I felt the interference the electronics in the course set up, and the interference from the objects themselves, which were also heavily wired. But I pushed through them. I only needed a little bit of influence, just enough to catch at the other boy's foot and trip him.
It wasn't against the rules. At least, it wouldn't have been had I been part of Myini's team officially. As long as they didn't cause any serious or permanent harm, it was more or less a free-for-all. The course and the objects provided heavy amounts of interference, though, and it was hard for anyone to do much of anything to someone carrying an object. Still, it wasn't against the rules.
I crossed my fingers and sent a silent prayer out to a god I didn't actually believe in as I pushed my mind harder against the interference. Then, with a sort of snap, I felt my mind go through, almost like I had punched through a particularly hard sheet of something. My mind caught against the other boy's foot, and he went sprawling face first on the ground. His object slid out of his arms, but not quite far enough to go over the goal line.
And Myini rushed forward across the goal line, book still in his hands. I both felt and heard the roar of surprise, and delight in some cases, as everyone realized what had just happened. Kastny's team had won, despite being in fourth place through the entire challenge. And Myini had done it.
I heard Mother and Dua exclaim happily, turning to tell me what had happened. But I didn't really hear much after that. Instead, I felt the interference snap back at me. Whatever I had punched through, it was resisting, and before I knew it, I was stunned, and the world around me was going black.