Chapter Text
The sun blazed down on the Tracen Academy track, and for once, no one was watching the race. Not because it wasn't exciting; in fact, it was. Just... not for the usual reasons.
Heart Seizer collapsed at the finish line, gasping, covered in dust, and the pounding in her chest so noticeable that she might as well have been having cardiovascular issues. Five seconds later, Compromise tripped over her own feet and face-planted into the turf.
Both of them were last. Again.
"Two minutes slower than the next runner," mumbled Mini Orchid, a slight edge of despair in her voice as the stopwatch dangled aimlessly from her index finger. "What are we ever going to do with the two of you?"
"Hey!" Heart Seizer's face couldn't exactly get any redder, considering all of her huffing and puffing, but it was clear that she was embarrassed. "At least I beat her."
Compromise, meanwhile, slowly brought herself to her knees from where she'd fallen into the grass, a small clump of mud still stuck to her cheek. "By half a length, Seizer. And that's only because you shoved me in the last stretch!"
"It's called strategy, Compromise," Heart Seizer said, turning her nose up in the air. "As my rival, I'd expect you to at least know that much."
Compromise, in a move that would have been unexpectedly childish had one not accounted for the fact that this particular interaction was with Heart Seizer, stuck her tongue out. "It's called cheating. As my rival, I'd expect you to own up to it."
Heart Seizer, caught off guard, simply avoided eye contact. "I... well, uh... you've got mud on your face," she responded lamely, seeming not to have any idea what to say. "Right here." The umamusume motioned to her own left cheekbone.
"Here?" Compromise attempted to wipe it off by herself, but her thumb swiped too low.
"No, idiot, it's--" Heart Seizer sighed. "Fine, I'll wipe it off for you. C'mere for a second." Compromise, slightly unwillingly, leaned closer to her rival.
Sax Rhythm, who'd volunteered along with Mini Orchid to help their underclassmen with this exercise, sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose as Heart Seizer wiped the mud from Compromise's face in an unexpectedly gentle manner.
Dumbasses, the both of them.
Mini Orchid leaned toward her fellow volunteer, whispering, “Should we, like… say something?”
Sax Rhythm didn’t even look up. “What would we even say? ‘Good job on losing less than usual?’ ‘Congrats on publicly flirting in the middle of a race cooldown?’”
“That wasn’t flirting,” Mini Orchid said uncertainly, watching Heart Seizer rub the mud from her fingers onto her red shorts. “Right?”
Sax gave her a sidelong look. “You don’t rub dirt off your rival's face like that unless you’re in love.”
The other senior umamusume's mouth fell open unceremoniously.
"...You think they’re dating?"
“No, worse," replied Sax Rhythm, deadpan. "My younger sister, Piccolo, is roommates with Heart Seizer. Apparently, she talks in her sleep."
Mini Orchid winced. "Ah, so they're like that. My condolences to Piccolo Rhythm; being stuck with a hopelessly pining roommate who won't do anything about it is awful."
"Speaking from experience?" asked Sax Rhythm, raising an eyebrow. Her friend just nodded wordlessly, a vaguely haunted look remaining in her eyes.
By the time the two had finally stopped bickering and limped their way off the track, the rest of their class had already finished their cooldown laps, cleaned their spikes, and were halfway through their protein drinks. Sax Rhythm was fairly certain that even the grass underneath Heart Seizer and Compromise had given up trying to grow.
“They need extra conditioning,” Mini Orchid said, flipping through the clipboard and checking their split times again, as if doing it twice would somehow reverse the shame of the numbers.
Sax didn’t even bother to glance over. “They need divine intervention.”
“I could suggest them for Symboli Rudolf’s boot camp next week,” Mini suggested, perhaps the slightest bit sadistically. They both knew that the underformers would fail miserably.
“Do you want them to die?”
Mini Orchid paused. “…Maybe a little.”
Sax chuckled, slightly startled. "Mini, that's awful! You can't just say that!" It was clear that neither of them were taking it seriously, though, a joking tone carrying through the conversation.
Across the field, Heart Seizer was peeling a sports bandage off her ankle, looking far too proud of herself for someone who had tripped twice in a 2000-meter run. “Well?” she said, arms crossed, sweat-soaked bangs sticking to her forehead. “Admit it. I was amazing today.”
Compromise blinked at her. “You were red in the face and breathing like a broken wind instrument after the first turn.”
“That’s just part of my charm,” insisted Heart Seizer, undeterred by her rival's insistence on their mutual incompetence.
“Your shoelace came untied and you tripped over it.”
“Another strategy! A misdirection!”
“Seizer, you fell face-first and took out a track cone.”
Heart Seizer crossed her arms tighter, then huffed. “Whatever. I still beat you," she mumbled, pulling her ponytail tighter from where it sat at the back of her neck.
Compromise smiled slightly, brushing hair from her eyes. “Not for long.”
“I wiped your face and everything! You owe me.”
“I didn’t ask you to!”
“You leaned in.”
Compromise flushed. “I was trying to see what you were pointing at!”
“Sure you were.”
Their bickering faded as Sax Rhythm and Mini Orchid approached, shadows stretching long in the late afternoon sun.
“You two done?” Sax asked, arms crossed.
Both girls jumped slightly. “Yes, senpai,” they chorused, like schoolkids caught passing notes.
“Good.” Sax narrowed her eyes at the clipboard. “Because we’ve got a new plan for you.”
Mini Orchid grinned, like a cat about to pounce. “Starting tomorrow morning. Five-thirty AM.”
Heart Seizer groaned. “That’s inhumane.”
“Yeah,” Compromise added. “Even the birds aren’t up that early.”
Sax flipped the clipboard around and pointed at it. “Then stop getting lapped by actual birds. I’ve seen a crow beat you to the finish line.”
Mini Orchid leaned in. “You two are gonna do a customized supplemental training program.”
“Customized?” Compromise asked, warily.
“Supplemental?” Heart Seizer echoed.
“You’re going to become less terrible,” Sax said. “Whether you like it or not.”
Heart Seizer staggered into the training field with a banana in one hand and the last remnants of sleep still blurry in her eyes. Her jacket was zipped inside-out, and one sock was pulled higher than the other, but Compromise was already there. Somehow. Offsetting her goal of arriving first entirely. Sitting cross-legged on a foam mat, sipping a green drink with the serenity of a crabby office worker and the fashion sense of a drowned cat, was her rival.
“You look like someone lost a bet,” Heart Seizer grunted.
“I did. I bet on you finishing a race without crashing into something. Guess how that turned out.”
Heart Seizer dropped her bag and flopped into the dew-covered grass beside her. “They’re gonna make us run until we pass out.”
“No,” Compromise said. “That would be too merciful. They’re going to make us stretch first. Then, we run until we pass out.”
Heart Seizer groaned and tipped her head back. “Why are we doing this again?”
Compromise looked sideways at her, eyes half-lidded. “Because you said you’d beat me. And I said I’d beat you. And we’re both too stubborn to admit we suck at racing.”
There was a beat of silence.
“...Yeah,” Heart Seizer admitted. “That sounds like us.”
From across the field, Mini Orchid blew her whistle. “Let’s go, you two! Warm-up laps, then the circuit. You’ve got hurdle technique today.”
“Hurdles?” Heart Seizer blinked, pushing herself up onto her hands. “Why would we practice hurdles? We're not show umamusume, y'know; we're racers.”
Sax Rhythm raised an eyebrow. “No, but you do fall a lot. We figured you should learn to do it with style.”
Compromise muttered under her breath. “They’re trying to kill us.”
Heart Seizer offered her a fist bump. “At least we're doing it together.” Compromise ignored her offered hand, choosing instead to get a head start, causing Heart Seizer to yell at her in annoyance for being a 'cheater.'
Regardless, though, they both eventually started jogging. Sort of. One tripped on a pebble. The other forgot to breathe correctly.
But they kept running, side by side, grumbling and bickering and occasionally yelling dramatic things like “Don’t touch me, I’m focused!”
And behind them, Sax Rhythm scribbled notes while Mini Orchid averted her eyes, unable to watch the slow-moving trainwreck as it crashed and burned.
...Finally, the girls were done. "Congratulations," said Mini Orchid, looking to be regretting all of her life choices. "You've made it through the warm-up. Now, to the main activity—"
Suddenly, Sax Rhythm pulled a whiteboard out fo who-knows-where. "Right. For the rest of today, during all of your training exercises, the two of you will be chained together."
There was a brief pause as the younger pair processed just what their seniors were implying. “Sorry, senpai, I don't think I heard you correctly,” Compromise said, sounding slightly faint. “We’re what?”
Mini smiled sweetly and held up a resistance bungee cord with two harness loops. “You're going to be tethered. You’ll have to run in sync for tempo drills, then break into sprints. Together. If one of you drags, the other suffers.”
Heart Seizer stared at the cord like it was a cursed artifact. “I thought the Geneva Conventions outlawed this.”
Sax tossed the second kettlebell at her feet. “Oh, and after that, you’re taking turns pulling each other while running laps. Resistance training builds teamwork.”
“And resentment,” Compromise muttered, already mentally preparing for injury.
“Same thing,” Seizer said, but her grin was back in all of its wild, stupid, and impossibly confident glory. “Let’s go, then. If I’m suffering, you’re coming with me.”