Dynamite And A Laserbeam - Redux

Vol 8 - 4: The Feeling of Being Under Pressure

[Beta Read by Doc43Souls]

[The Feeling of Being Under Pressure]

Karera was... upset. Heavily so. And it wasn't hard to see why, especially if you knew her well enough. But, for those who didn't know her well enough, the reason why she was so upset was because of Kyoka, or rather, what Kyoka wasn't doing.

Kyoka wasn't answering her phone, her text messages, not even her Discord messages. There was something wrong, and she needed to get to the bottom of it. For a bit of context, before Kyoka left U.A., Karera got all of her contacts so that she could message her whenever it was needed, and so that she could send her money in case Kyoka needed it.

Living without parental support wasn't easy, and Karera knew what that was like, even if only slightly. Karera's mom wasn't dead, but she was extremely busy. Ever since she started living with Josefumi, the only time she talked to her mom was on the holidays. To say that she didn't have the best relationship with her family was an understatement, but that wasn't exactly something she wanted to speak about.

Familial drama aside, there was something else brewing in the back of her mind. Like what could've happened to Kyoka to cause her to drop off the face of the Earth. So, with that in mind, she had decided to arrange a meeting with Josefumi, primarily so she could inform him of what happened.

There was a chance that he had no idea what was going on, as well. If that was the case, that made things exponentially worse, especially considering the fact that her family was killed just a few days ago. That could mean that she was dead, and if she was dead Karera wouldn't know what to do.

However, she held out hope. Hope that maybe he'd have an idea of what was going on. If not, then things were going to get a million times worse. And when she meant worse, she meant worse with a capital W.

Standing underneath one of the cherry blossom trees in the U.A. Campus, Karera waited for Josefumi to show up as she anxiously tapped her foot against the grass. The longer she waited, the worse her worry became.

She knew a lot had happened today, and with Class 1 – B and beyond now put into the "in the know" category of people who knew about Stands, a lot of them were now actively trying to figure out ways to become Stand Users. Especially Monoma. After his humiliation at the hands of Kira, he wanted to get his get-back, and he wanted to awaken a Stand to do that. The problem with that was that even if he did, Karera knew that Kira would walk all over him.

Killer Queen was nothing to scoff at. And while she had never gone against it in a fight, she knew that it wouldn't be an easy battle. Love Love Deluxe was a powerful Stand. If her fight against Stroheim and his Steam Powered Giraffe proved anything, it was that even though her Stand had a pretty useless ability, it was her creativity that got her out of most of her battles alive. But if Killer Queen could beat Soft & Wet as thoroughly as Kira had when she had just fully awakened to her Stand, then Love Love Deluxe stood zero chance against it.

Karera might be dumb, but she knew where to draw the line.

It was actually kind of funny. Apparently Class 1 – A was tearing apart at the seams after the revelation that Stands existed. And while that was horrible to hear, and probably made Kira's and Josefumi's lives a living nightmare, Class 1 – B was more on the side of "yeah, okay, so other powers exist, sucks but because there are ways to get them, let's try and get them!"

Sugimoto-sensei wasn't fond of that kind of attitude, but it was better than the class falling apart. She had no idea why Class 1 – A was self-destructing, but a part of her believed that it might have been because of Tenya Ida's death.