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Published:
2025-09-28
Completed:
2025-09-28
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3,600
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2/2
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A Horse Walks into a Bar

,

Summary:

Team's Spica's trainer was drinking the night away, when something unexpected came through the door.
or
Agnes Tachyon is a single mom venting at a bar.

Notes:

This fic is fanfiction of "The Creation of an Umamusume" by noiku. Go check it out it's really really good!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Team Spica's trainer was at the bar he usually goes to, wondering if any of the other trainers would grace him with their presence today. Then he heard the door open.

 

“Yo! How’s it going…”

 

He expected to see Hana, the other heavy drinker of the group, or maybe another trainer, but what had just entered the bar was nothing he could’ve expected.

 

“Agnes Tachyon! Didn’t expect to see you here.”

 

What is she doing here? Isn’t she supposed to be on campus? How does she even know this is a trainer meeting spot? If she doesn’t, why is she coming to bars? I’m not one to judge, but getting drunk on a weekday when you’re an active racer is… well, it’s certainly a choice.

 

“Why the long face? I don’t usually see umamusume at bars, let alone one as niche as this.”

 

Tachyon took a seat next to him before replying. “I simply wanted to relax! My guinea pig is running the classics and everyone knows how stressful that can be…” An exaggerated sigh and pout by her informed him of her playful tone.

 

“Guinea pig?”

 

“Yes! Agnes Marie, you’ve probably heard of her.”

 

Indeed, he had. It was hard not to, with how the media flocked to her. Now, why Tachyon had called her guinea pig he did not know. But he figured she called most of her friends that, one of Tachyon’s quirks.

 

“She makes me so very proud…” He noticed Tachyon say under her breath.

 

He thought that was a little weird but it made sense for a senior to be proud of the junior they took under their wing.

 

“It’s almost like you’re her trainer.” He mused, a light chuckle gave away the drinks he had already drunk that night.

 

“Speaking of…” he continued. “Where’s your trainer? I don’t see him around and I’d love to talk with him again sometime. Last time we talked it was all work stuff.”

 

She seemed to wince at the word “him”. What was that about?

 

“My trainer isn’t cut out for social matters, I'm afraid.”

 

“Hmmm, yeah, I get that. By the way, you seem a little tense.”

 

“What makes you say that?” She replied with a breath slightly sharper than she intended.

 

“You haven’t ordered a drink yet.”

 

“Ah.” She noticed how silly she looked with no drink at a bar. “I’ll have sparkling water with lime, I don't plan on getting drunk.”

 

“I was gonna say. Not a good idea to get drunk as a still active racer.”

 

“That and I have to take care of my dear guinea pig.”

 

“You two are very close, aren’t you?”

 

“Yes, I suppose she feels indebted to me.”

 

“Oh yeah, cuz of her condition, right? How did she get past that?”

 

Tachyon glared at him.

 

“Oops, sorry! Didn’t mean to sound like a reporter. You two are just interesting, is all.”

 

“Worry not. I’m flattered that you take such interest in me. I did come here in search of your expertise, after all.”

 

“Really? I’m honored. And more than happy to help.”

 

Tachyon took a deep breath. “Marie struggles a lot with self-confidence. She thinks she doesn’t deserve to run, hell, she thinks she doesn’t even deserve to be an umamusume! I try to reassure her as best as I can but… Insecurities so deeply rooted are not so easy to deal with. Now I know you’ve dealt with plenty of insecure runners, Special Week didn’t scream ‘confident’ at the start of her career, and I can't imagine what three fractures do to someone’s self-esteem, so I was hoping that you’d have some sort of advice when it comes to this.”

Spica’s trainer was slack-jawed. He didn't expect Tachyon to spill her guts out just like that. He didn’t mind it though, he knows how hard this kind of thing can be.

 

“I’ve seen many umas say they “don’t deserve to run” but I’m pretty sure what you’re describing is a little different, isn’t it? In any case, I don’t know how useful it’ll be in this situation, but I do have a couple of methods I used when my trainees got in a bad mood after a loss. Like after Special Week lost the Satsuki Sho, and she was crying into that tree stump, I started screaming into it too. Show her that, as a trainer, I'm not a flawless authority figure. That I have vulnerabilities too. That her failings are also partly mine. Or with Teio, well… I didn’t do a lot for Teio aside from just being there as a trainer as best as I could. What really helped her was getting a rival, finding her reason to run and all that.”

“Hmmm…” Tachyon furrowed her eyebrows. “I think I could use some of that, not too much of it, but I understand Marie’s situation is… unusual. Bartender, give me a bottle of Irish cream!”

“Never mind not getting drunk huh?”

“Unfortunately so… Hopefully I don't get as infatuated with this as I am with tea.” A long sigh betrayed her built-up frustration.

“That’s what they all say.”

She waved her hand in thanks as the bartender handed her the bottle.

“Quite the sweet one you’ve chosen…” Spica’s trainer commented.

“Yes, I am quite fond of sweets. If you think this is too sweet, you should see how much sugar I put in my tea!” Her sentence punctuated with a hearty laugh.

She tried to chug down the liquor, failing with a cough and gag. Almost choking on it.

“First time drinking alcohol?” He asked with an amused chuckle.

“Indeed it is…”

“Don’t rush yourself. Getting drunk isn’t too much fun.”

“Oh no, I can handle being drunk. I’ve experimented with far worse on myself, what gets me is the aftertaste. If I didn't want to get drunk, I'd say it’s unbearable.”

 

“Same. Honestly, I'm not sure if anyone really enjoys alcohol for the taste.”

 

“Funny”, Tachyon mused. “It’s just like Marie’s self-doubt, she knows how bad it is for her. How nonsensical it is. And yet…”

“She just can’t help herself.” He completed.

“Exactly…”

“At least training’s been going well enough. Making her hang out with Jungle Pocket was good for her, I think.”

Tachyon took another sip of alcohol, the aftertaste made her grimace, but she had spent too much money, foolishly buying the entire bottle before tasting it. And did not want to waste it.

 

“You know it’s usually better if you put it on a glass with ice…”

“I care little for the taste. However… I will indulge you.”

She followed the advice, quickly being handed a glass with ice by the bartender. She took a slow sip from it, seeming to analyze the taste.

“So… taste any better?”

“No, still hate it”

“Tough luck… If you don’t want it, can I have the rest of the bottle?”

Tachyon could only stare dumbfounded at the lack of shame displayed by him.

“Your financial status is none of my responsibility. If you are too poor to afford alcohol, perhaps you should not indulge in it so very often.”

“Figures… Guess I'll have to wash some dishes again tonight…”

After a brief pause of neither saying anything, Tachyon spoke up again with a frustrated groan.

“Why can’t Marie just accept she was born to run? She wants it. I’ve given her the opportunity to. If she would just stop being a stupid– UGHH” She chugged the irish cream, visibly struggling to keep it in.

“Goddesses, I hate Irish cream.”


“I’d ask why you keep drinking it if you hate it but… I’ve been there. Whiskey isn’t exactly tasty either.”

“By the way. Do you know how she came to be so insecure in the first place? I still wanna help. Also, I'm curious but that’s not as good a reason to be nosey.

 

“…” Tachyon looked at him, deep in thought.

How do I convey to him that Marie is an insecure tranny without outing her…?

 

“Well… she was born in a city without many umamusume, so she’s not really used to… anything umamusume. Not helping her was also the fact that she grew up rather weak and unable to run as well as most umas, leading her into a spiral of self-doubt and hatred, wondering if she was even supposed to be an uma to begin with.”

 

“Interesting…”

“So… any idea on how to deal with that? Trust me, I've been mulling this question over for quite some time now. I'd appreciate anything.”

“Can’t say I do… I'll talk to Teio about it later. She’s good enough friends with Nice Nature, and I'm pretty sure that girl has plenty of advice on this kinda thing.”

“I appreciate it.” Tachyon said with a tired sigh, it was good to let out her frustration, but in a way, it was more frustrating to not be able to do anything about it.

Another chug of the Irish cream, another cough, trying to keep it in.

This was honestly beginning to make the trainer feel uncomfortable. It felt like watching someone punch a wall when they’re frustrated or something. He wouldn’t stop her though. He had seen this many times before. One of the less fun parts of frequenting bars so often.

“It’s nice to be able to talk to someone about this. Not like I can just go up to my trainee and tell her that her insecurities piss me off.”

“She’s your trainee?!” He seemed too surprised at this for someone who had been having trainer talk with Tachyon for this long.

 

“Yes! Officially!” She flashed her trainer license at him. “It’s almost Ironic–” She stopped herself.

Oh no

 

“It’s almost ironic…?” He urged her to finish her sentence.

 

“Never mind that…” She swallowed hard. She’d better kill this specific topic of conversation quickly.

“Right… anyway, how does you being her trainer even work? I can’t imagine it’s easy to train someone while worrying about your own races. Also, how did you even convince your trainer to let you do that? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just start a team?”

 

“My guinea pig wouldn’t accept anyone other than her so-called ‘saviour’. That and I wanted to see what being a trainer is like. I figured it couldn’t be that hard, and I can't exactly run forever, so this is a nice introduction to what I was planning to do post-retirement.”

“Hey. Being a trainer ain’t that easy. Or at least I hope it’s not. I’d be really bummed out if it was… Though I guess it’s only fair that it’d be almost second nature to you.”

 

She leans her upper body into the table, letting her forearms lazily support her. “I wish… I’ve just been mirroring my trainer’s methods on her. Though I think I'm improving. I hope so at least. I have an idea for her training for the derby, and I'd hate it if she lost because of me.”

 

“She’ll win.”

 

“Huh? How do you know?”

 

“I don’t. But you gotta believe she will. It’s not exactly motivating for a horsegirl if their trainer doesn’t believe in her.”

 

“That’s… You bring up a good point.”

 

A light grin is visible on the other trainer’s face. “Of course I do. You think I'm a trainer just for show?”

 

“I’d certainly hope not!” She says with a choked, nasal laugh.

 

She looks a little drunker. Did she drink more when I wasn't looking? Oh, wow, she finished the bottle. When did she even do that??? Guess her disdain for Irish cream wasn’t as strong as her desire to get drunk…

 

She sprawls herself out on the bar table, face down. She’s really drunk now…

 

“I’m sleeepyy…” Her voice rings out in a low-pitched whine.

 

Almost as if in response, he checks the time. Holy shit, it’s way past curfew.

 

“Hey, Tachyon.”

 

“Yeahh…?”

 

“Do you want me to drive you back to Tracen? It’s way past curfew, but I'm sure Fuji will understand.”

 

“Don’t woorry about it~. I’m literally as strong as a horsegirl! I can take a liiitle bit of alcohool.” She says as if she hadn’t drunk a whole bottle of what is essentially chocolate milk with whiskey.

 

She tries to walk off and trips on her own foot.

 

“Ok, maybe I do need a ride,” She says, voice sounding significantly more sober.

 

He laughs a little. “Well, as long as you don’t mind the vehicle of choice being a van…”

 

She laughs way too hard for the caliber of the joke he just made. It was not that funny. She’s trying to keep it contained by muffling it under her far too long sleeves, but every so often comes up for air and can’t help but laugh harder.

 

She tries to walk once again. “Ok, help me out. I’m too drunk for this…”

 

My experience with carrying blackout drunk people is finally paying off, I guess.

 

He gets tachyon into his van after some struggle. At least she’ll have a lot of space for… drunk people stuff… back there. He starts up the vehicle with more difficulty than he’d like and drives off.

 

 

The drive back is mostly uneventful, though he does hear Tachyon send audio messages to Jungle Bucket(?). Is that what she calls Jungle Pocket? Kinda funny, honestly.

 

He knows she’ll regret texting anyone while that drunk, but to stop her, he’d have to be an irresponsible driver, never mind the fact that he’s drunk, and the last thing he needs is to lose his driver’s license. He hates the DMV as much as anyone else, and goddesses forbid having to take a driver’s test again.

Chapter 2: Chapter 2

Summary:

Team Spica's trainer had a sneaking suspicion, one that he thought too unlikely to seriously consider. Any way he could try to prove it would be insane, however he is insane.

Notes:

Second chapter!!! I didn't have too much stuff in this chapter but i think it's significantly funnier, first one was like kinda tame. (this chapter puts the crack in crackfic in a bad and good way) (I'm sorry this chapter is so unserious it was fueled by me skipping class)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The next day, Jungle Pocket wakes up to find her phone spammed with messages.

 

Who the fu— oh, it’s Tachy.

 

It’s all audio messages? What a drag…

 

As she finds a place with enough privacy to listen to an audio that Tachyon of all people sent, she starts the first one up. It’s… well… it’s… very uhhh… very interesting to say the least. She listens to the second one. Oh my god, they’re all like that. She’s pretty sure she heard "I need you, Pokke…” and “Ughhh, I’m so drunk…” at least 20 times each before the audios turned into actually incomprehensible rambling.

 

So that was an interesting start to her morning for sure.

 

However, one question still ate at her.

 

Where the hell did she go to sleep??? There’s no way she got in the dorms at like 2AM, right?

 

She figures checking Tachyon’s lab is a good place to start.

 

She makes her way over, hopefully fast enough that she won’t be late for class. Seriously, what was Tachy thinking??? Going out for drinks on a Tuesday…

 

She checks her phone again before going in the lab. She sees that Tachyon is deleting the audios from their DMs.

 

Oh, so now you get embarrassed?

 

She flings the door open. Tachyon is curled up on the couch, frantically deleting messages before she abruptly stops to look at Jungle Pocket.

 

“POKKE!? HEY! UHHMMM…”

 

“Yes, Tachy, I saw the audios you sent.”

 

Tachyon dramatically puts her hands on her face with a half-sob, half-groan as she leans back. Regret oozing off the action.

 

 

Since hanging out with Tachyon, Team Spica’s trainer had a sneaking suspicion. One he thought too absurd to be true.

Is Marie Tachyon’s trainer? Or rather, did Tachyon’s trainer turn into Marie?

 

The obvious answer was no. There were no known methods for transforming a human into an umamusume. But if there were… Tachyon certainly would be one of his first guesses as to who did it, and it’s not like Tachyon would let anyone know.

Lots of things seemed suspicious too. Like how Tachyon, when talking about being Marie’s trainer, said “It’s almost ironic–” and then cut herself off like she accidentally leaked a national secret. Or how Tachyon seemed to dance around talking about her trainer. And how her trainer went missing suspiciously at the exact same time Marie started showing up around her. 


He wasn’t convinced. But the suspicion was too strong to ignore.

 

“Teio! I need you to stalk someone!”

 

“...What?”

“You heard me, Teio.”

 

 

It had been a few days after the derby. Marie was reading… refined romantic literature (yuri) in the library. That’s what she remembers, at least. Apparently, she took a nap strong enough to knock her out cold.

 

The yuri would, unfortunately, have to wait. She packed it into her backpack. But as she did, she noticed something that wasn’t there before…


HUH??????

 

That and her old trainer notebook was gone—.

Just her luck.

She looked at the back of the small slip of paper that had… That… printed on and it was… ominous “Ritto dorm. Rooftop. 6pm.” scary stuff…

 

She anxiously waited for the time to come. Thankfully, the weather was rather comfortable that day. She didn’t want to have to wash the cold sweat out of her clothes.

As the dreaded time finally arrived, she went to the rooftop. Heart pounding so hard in her chest it threatened to jump right out. Who was it that put that in her bag? What did they know? Ok, that one was pretty obvious. But the more important question was how did they know??? In all fairness, she wasn’t super secretive about it. But nobody had been this ominous about it before.

 

She finally reached the top of the stairs, only to be interrupted by a duffel bag. A duffel bag, which she was shoved into.


She struggled against her kidnapper. Unfortunately not making much progress.

Eventually, she was let out. The harsh lights hitting her maladjusted eyes.

A tall figure held a notebook in front of her.

“Yo! How was the kidnapping?”

She had a hunch who that could be when she saw the silhouette, but the voice confirmed it.

What does team Spica’s trainer want to do with me…

Out of all the people she could garner the attention of, this was definitely one of the worst ones. It’s not like he was a bad trainer at all. Just too eccentric for most people. Including herself.

 

He spoke up again. “So… I’m gonna cut to the chase. I have a growing suspicion that you were Tachyon’s trainer.” He leaned forward slightly, his expression growing sharper and raising an eyebrow. “Are you?”

“Uhhhhhhhh” She squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. “I… might be?”

“C’mon...”

Marie was very used to not giving straight answers. She was gay after all. That and her past was something the media couldn’t know about and something she’d like to keep private for the most part. However, when faced with such a sudden confrontation that was unreasonably spot on, her attempts came off as stalling at best.

 

“Now, at first I thought I was crazy, I won't lie. Because there is no way a human could become an umamusume. Simply no way. But… The suspicion bothered me too much, it kept me up at night, so I told Teio to stalk you for a little bit. Very conveniently, you fell asleep. And Teio found some interesting stuff in your bag…” He pointed to the notebook in his hand. “I used to know a guy… and he owned a notebook that looked kinda exactly like this…” He dragged each word out.

“And curiously enough, when I checked. Lo and behold, it had all his notes. Even the stuff I told him about Teio and Suzuka’s recovery. So correct me if I'm wrong. But you used to be Tachyon’s trainer, right?”

 

Marie looked like a deer in headlights. She couldn’t do anything but stare at him wide-eyed.

Eventually, she pulled herself out of her daze. Finally coming back to the land of the living.

 

“Well, I am still technically Tachyon’s trainer… I’ve got the license and all. Not that I remember where I put it…”

 

He furrowed his eyebrows. “If we were still coworkers, I'd scold you…” He paused, looked at Marie like he was contemplating something, then finally said, “Though to be completely honest, being an uma suits you way better. You always seemed like you were slightly uncomfortable with… something before, i just assumed your clothes were too tight or something. It’s nice to see that’s not the case anymore. You should still keep better track of your trainer ID, but that’s besides the point.”

 

“And what is the point?” At this point Marie just wanted to get this over with. Being kidnapped isn’t exactly fun.

 

“I just wanted to confirm my suspicion. That, and we should hang out sometime again. I’ve been meaning to ask you, but you kinda went missing, now I know why.”

 

A long pause.

 

“You’re free to go now.” Marie heard a recognizable high-pitched voice behind her.

 

“T-TEIO!? Were you behind me this whole time???”

 

“Who do you think kidnapped you?”

 

“I… didn’t really think about it…”

 

A smirk fades onto Teio’s face as she slowly turns to her trainer.

He sighs, hands already pinching the bridge of his nose. Though no words were spoken, a conversation just took place. Something along the lines of “You owe me $5.”

 

 

Back in Tachyon’s lab, Jungle Pocket straightened up her uniform. She would have to skip class today. Not that she minded. Spending time with Tachy like this was worth it.

 

As Marie headed out of Team Spica’s shared breakroom, she heard the Trainer speak up. “Oh yeah, by the way, don’t let Tachyon drink in public like, ever."

“I’m being serious.” He held back a laugh. “On a related note, I know the perfect christmas gift for Tachyon.”

Notes:

What did y'all think of the image?
Also abt poketaki yes they FREAKED!!!

Notes:

Hi!!!! This is my first fic ever! I'm really excited but also really nervous, especially since this is fanfic of someone else's fanfic and also not really that serious.