| Seven's a Crowd, Eight's a Party | BNHA OC Story

Chapter 10 - This Was a Bad Idea

Viola was totally fine. She wasn't at all dying inside, her life slowly draining away, what do you mean? Okay, maybe she was being overdramatic. At least they hadn't failed. Yet.

She and Sunila were currently perched on a roof, watching the street below where Cementoss patrolled.

They'd spent most of the match so far tailing him, Sunila using her quirk to keep them concealed. Constantly glitching around was taking its toll on Sunila, who helpfully informed Viola she was running out of pixels, but without Saffron they had no way to track the competitors.

Their plan was dependant on either Casey or Sakura striking first, so they were relegated to waiting for now.

She and Sunila moved in sync, dropping down from the roof and swinging in through a window. They crouched under the windowsill as Viola prepared to switch over.

Why were they even doing this? Viola didn't want to be a hero. I mean, Miyuki and Clementine did, but for everyone else, this was just so they'd have something to do while Ruby and Sunila argued on what the best course of action was.

(Really, it was a miracle Rubes had managed to get Sunny to allow them to see a therapist in the first place, let alone attend regular therapy sessions.)

So much for 'heroic ideals', huh, Yuuei? At this rate she was gonna turn into the Hero Killer's next victim.

Viola's thoughts occupied her attention, and as Sunila stepped up to let her check the area again, she was unaware.

'Vivi- wait, she's-!' Clementine stuttered out.

She tried to turn, dark blue and seagreen eyes surveying. She blinked at the clattering of metal and looked down. A small device with an ominous blinking red light had rolled to rest at her feet and, with memories of the collapse echoing through her head, she jumped back.

Clementine shouted frantically, and for a split second, their other eye changed to orange and Clem used the sudden control to move them as far away as possible.

When the explosion came, she hadn't managed to get Viola far away enough, and so they had no choice but to cower, arms covering her head. The building shook, and something crashed into her side, knocking her over.

Her ears rung and she blinked wearily as she tried to process. Clem pushed herself up.

Footsteps followed and she looked to an entrance opened by the bomb, fully prepared to fight off any villains. Sunila faltered at the familiar person standing in the door, another identical device in hand.

"-Casey?"

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Sakura wasn't sure what to think of Miyuki Rayan. Their encounter in the cafeteria was a pretty bad first impression, on all accounts, (Sakura cringing hard at the memory of her tantrum, though her reasoning was justified.)

The embarrassment of being stood up and lingering anger over the incident had definitely influenced her during the second stage.

Sakura's fairly violent sabotage attempts, while not breaking any rules considering the whole competitive nature of the exams, probably garnered her some resentment from the poor girl.

So, she was confused when the most her appearance after the third stage garnered was slightly more jittery behaviour from the already quiet girl.

She hoped the fourth stage would help explain, well, anything about the girl, but the accident only muddled things further.

She had wanted to approach Miyuki after the stage, maybe to clear up some things, but was a little too nervous to interrupt. Especially when Recovery Girl told her Miyuki was talking with her therapist at the moment.

As for other apologies, everything between her and Class 1-A had now, hopefully, been resolved.

While talking to the other students had been nerve-wracking, she was glad that her apology had been accepted. She appreciated Kaminari's maturity in apologising for his behaviour as well.

So, after a few introductions, she could now officially say there were no hard feelings between her and the class. She could feel her face turning red at the memory of Uraraka's gentle smile. 'That's pretty gay, Sakura.' She thought to herself jokingly.

But anyway, her recent reconciliation with Class 1-A and observations of Miyuki had brought with it a realisation of sorts.

That realisation, of course, was that Casey was a shady bitch.

Her blow-up at Class A was not, like Miyuki likely thought, baseless. Nor was her own distaste towards Miyuki.

When, after the first stage, Casey had approached her nervously, with a rather unnerving number of bruises and a story to match, she had been blinded with anger.

How dare Rayan? The nerve, to even think about seriously injuring another contestant just to be the 'winner', what kind of a person did that?

Lashing out at the Yuuei students who had asked to sit with her, after one made a comment about Casey's appearance and added a badly timed pickup line, wasn't planned.

She likely would have cooled off after a few moments and reconsidered everything, but then Miyuki stepped in. A pretentious, clearly self-motivated move (in Sakura's fury riddled head, anyway), that simply escalated the entire situation.

But, after hearing what the Yuuei students had to say about Miyuki, she had begun to doubt Casey's word. Especially after seeing her get so buddy-buddy with Miyuki during the third stage.

(Besides, bruises don't shimmer like that. Had she taken a few seconds to actually think, she might have prevented everything.)

Which led to the present, where she was following Casey. The girl who was headed in the opposite direction of Cementoss. Because that's not at all a weird and sus thing to do during a combat exam.

It was possible that she was just lost or scoping out the arena, but there were a lot of other things off as well. Casey was routinely stopping, taking out and checking a small phone-like device, before continuing again in a new direction. Her very un-Casey-like impatient sneer was another, almost surreal sight.

Sakura had hoped to find Casey completely innocent of any wrongdoing, to be able to accuse her behaviour like with eliminating Joshua, but this only solidified it for her.

The suspicion that Miyuki's 'accident' wasn't as accidental as she thought.

Sakura started to move just a little faster at the sight of Casey's impatient expression shifting into something more malicious.

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The cameras had gone down. There was a panic in the control room, the teachers stuck between going to the arena and staying here to see if they go back up. Even Nedzu seemed to flounder slightly.

Eraserhead had no hesitation, ushering his students out of the room before rushing off to inform Cementoss and the examinees.

He refused to fail his job as a hero again, exam and Nezu's plans be damned.