Red Herring

Formidable Opponents

Ah, hi guys! I finally got this chapter done after so long. I've been more focused on work since I now have two jobs so I haven't had that much time to right. You know, gotta save up money for college and such. How fun :| Anyway here's this chapter, I hope it's good!

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TO SAY THAT THE KARASUNO CROWS WERE fired up about their upcoming tournament was an understatement. After their game against Nekoma and their training camp, just about everyone had kicked it into high gear to start work on their practicing. They all worked to improve their spikes, blocks, and, of course, their receives.

Currently, Ukai was spiking balls at the team to work on their receives. "Follow-through when you block! Staring won't cut it!"

Shōyō grunted and got back onto his feet, "Sorry, Sir!"

"You must go after every ball as though it's your last!" He hit yet another ball at Shōyō, who tried his best but was unable to save it despite his dive. "'Cause if you don't, the ball you ignored will be the ball you cry over at the end of the game!"

Sakura laid out on the ground by the wall, a book in her hands. It seemed to be a literature book, most likely one that Takeda recommended to her at some point. She seemed to be a bit more invested in the book that she was reading than watching the boys practice. After all, she's seen the guys do this stuff all the time. So reading seemed like the ideal thing to pass the time. Though as she was reading her literature book, she thought back to the discussion that she had seen the night they all got back from the training camp.

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After the training camp and their journey back to Miyagi, the Karasuno team were all gathered around their coach and club advisor as they stood before them. Sakura was sitting behind Ukai and Takeda near the whiteboard, though she was still listening in on their conversation. Once again, it's not like she had much else to do. All she can do is just sit around and wait for the practice to end so she can head home with her brother.

"Everyone," Takeda clapped his hands, "well done playing against Nekoma today! So getting right down to business, the Inter-High preliminaries begin next month, starting June 2nd."

Ukai nodded his head, "Miyagi has no regional prelims, so we launch straight into prefectural. Only one team out of approximately 60 in a prefecture proceeds to the nationals. Lose once, that's all she wrote. If you want revenge against Nekoma you must by becoming first in Miyagi. Second won't cut it. Although there's the small issue of them pulling their own weight to represent Tokyo."

"Don't worry!" Tanaka called out, "I know they can do it!"

"Yeah, they were tough!" Nishinoya agreed as they huffed through their noses.

Endo nodded his head and smirked, "That cat captain doesn't seem to be the slacker type, he'll get his team there." Sitting beside him, Asahi didn't appear too happy to have his friend mention Kuroo yet again.

The team all talked about what's to come now that they have the preliminaries to look forward to. Soon enough their practices will have to ramp up quite a bit. They'll have to focus a lot more if they wish to make the cut for the tournaments after all, though it seems like Ukai would push them far enough to get there.

Sakura knew that going to the practices was going to annoy her quite a bit. Waking up in the morning is already a hassle. She hasn't even worked up the nerve to tell Shōyō that she'd rather sleep in and ride her bike to school on her own instead of watching his practice. On one hand, she doesn't like waking up so early. On the other hand, she quite likes getting to see how happy Shōyō gets that she's there. So it's a bit of a toss-up whether or not she would want to be involved in this. Though that's the usual internal debate that she has every once in a while. Nothing totally new for her.