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“This is safe? Are you sure?” Dantsu Flame stare at the neon green color liquid that Agnes Tachyon was offering them.
“I’m 99’9% sure that is not gonna cause any kind of damage to your body.” Tachyon had one of her characteristic crazy smiles. “This serum should revert the aging process in the muscle cells, also making the recovering after an injure easier and faster.”
“Sounds good to me.” Jungle Pocket didn’t look worried in the slightest. She grabbed one of the vials and drank its content in one swig. “Ugh, you have to work on the flavor! It tastes like dirty socks!”
Dantsu took a deep breath and imitated Pocket, drinking the weird liquid in one go. “Aagh!” She couldn’t help to make a face. The bay uma was right, it tasted horrible.
“The flavor is something that can be fixed later.” Tachyon attention turned to the silent uma sitting on the sofa, Manhattan Cafe. “What about you, my dear Cafe. Would you like to participate too?”
Cafe lifted her eyes from the coffee she was drinking, meditating her words. “You feel too comfortable using us as test subjects. You should lead with the example and try it yourself.”
“Does that mean that you will be willing to participate if I include myself in the control group?” Tachyon’s mischievous smile reappear, Cafe felt like she was walking into a trap. “Sure…”
“Wonderful!” And without any kind of hesitation, Tachyon grabbed one of the vials and drank it. “Ehgm, it’s true the flavor is not… ideal.”
“I told you!” Pocket looked smug after seeing the face the scientist made after drinking her concoction.
“Now it’s your turn, my dear Cafe.” Tachyon took the remaining vial and offered it to Cafe, who was now regretting it. She had expected Tachyon to refuse, like she always did, but it seem this time was really excited about testing her creation. She tentatively took the vial and brought to her lips, trying to also drink it all at once.
Goddesses, the flavor was indeed awful.
She tried to repress the impulse to vomit. “If this send us back to the infirmary, I will finish you.” Even with the feeling of bile creeping in her throat, Cafe managed to deliver her threat.
“I can reassure you that that’s not gonna happen!” Tachyon was back at her desk, writing something in her laptop. “The formula this time is perfect!”
“Didn’t you said the same last time?” Pocket’s comment made Tachyon blush, making her to stutter a little. “That… erm… We should get to the training track, we’re losing valuable training time!”
Tachyon practically ran out of the door, making Pocket chuckle as she followed her. Cafe just shook her head and drank what was left of her coffee while Dantsu waited for her at the door, then they also went towards the training track.
By the time they finished training, no one was acting weird. Tachyon’s analysis confirmed that nothing strange had develop in their system and all of them were able to go back to the dorms to rest, even the scientist went to her room to sleep instead of going back to the abandoned classroom. All seem to be going well…
.
.
.
“Pokke-chan! Wake up!” Narita Top Road, Pocket’s roommate, was gently shaking the bay uma with urgency in her voice.
“Ah!? What’s going on!?” Her roommate was giving her a look full of worry, but when Pocket try to get up from the bed to try to find out what was wrong, she noticed that her clothes felt baggier than usual. And then she realized that her bed also felt bigger “What the hell!? When did everything get so big!?”
“Umm… No…” Top Road had a tinge of apprehension in her voice. “You just… became small over night…”
“WHAT!?” Pocket ran to their common bathroom and took a look of herself in the mirror.
She was, in fact, smaller. But more in the sense that she also looked younger, around nine or ten years old. Tachyon’s experiment went wrong again.
Before she was able to panic more, someone urgently knocked at their door. They looked at each other and Top Road opened the door. There, she found an also panicked Yukino Bijin and Hishi Miracle and, behind them, Cafe and Dantsu in a similar state to Pocket.
“Good morning, Top Road. Is Pocket ok?” Hishi Miracle looked around their room. “We kinda have a…” She turned to look at her own roommate. “...situation.”
Pocket exited the bathroom, almost tripping with her pants. “Yeah, we have the same problem here.”
“I’m gonna strangle her with may bare hands.” Cafe had a slight dark aura surrounding her and was mumbling to herself other kinds of punishment she was going to inflict onto Tachyon. Dantsu, on the other hand, was trying to adjust her now baggie uniform.
“We went to the Agnes’s room first, but there was no one there.” Yukino Bijin rubbed her hands together, nervous. “So we decided to check on you before going to search for her in the academy.”
“We told them that Tachyon-chan is probably in her laboratory, but they fell a little bit…” Dantsu seem to be looking for the right word. “...intimidated.”
“I don’t like that place either.” Top Road’s ears fell as she spoke. “It always felt a little bit creepy with all those machines and weird liquids.”
“Once you get used to it, is actually pretty comfortable.” Pocket had taken the clothes of her closet that looked to be the smallest and was trying to get dress in the bathroom in a way that was functional. “Well, I think this is the best I can do!” She looked like a child that tried to use its parent’s clothes, but there was nothing else she could wear.
As they approached the class turned laboratory, the sound of glass hitting glass and the beeping of machines could be heard. Carefully, Hishi Miracle knocked on the door. Agnes Digital was the one that opened it.
“Is… Is Tachyon here?” Before Digital was able to respond, Cafe took advantage of her current small stature and went into the room. “YOU! I knew that new concoction of yours was gonna cause us problems!” And went strait after Tachyon to make her previous threats a reality.
“KYAA! More small umas! Digitan’s little heart can’t take so much cuteness.” Digital sudden reaction made Cafe anger turn into genuine confusion. Despite Digital being Tachyon’s roommate, the black hair uma didn’t had a lot of interactions with her.
“Nobody has to go to the infirmary this time, my formula worked as I intended.” Tachyon seem to be unimpressed with her roommate reaction. “The problem is that the formula is stronger than I was expected, leading to unpredictable results.” She was wearing her oversize labcoat, that looked even bigger on her now even smaller frame.
“Are those results permanent? Because I doubt we will be able to race like this.” Pocket sat at the sofa, as Dantsu tried to encourage Top Road, Hishi Miracle and Yukino Bijin to get into the room, but the three umas looked clearly nervous.
“Why there’s so many boxes sent from outside Japan?” The grey hair uma made her question more to herself than to Tachyon, but Tachyon answered anyway. “Not all the materials I need can be obtain in Japan, obviously.”
“OI! You didn’t answer me! How long are we gonna have to stay like this?” Pocket was laying over one of the sofa’s arms, trying to get Tachyon’s attention. “I’m not sure yet, my dear Bucket-kun, but hopefully one of the tests I’m running will offer an answer soon.”
“Eh!? This one is from Switzerland!” Top Road had also started to look at the variate amount of boxes laying through the laboratory. The ears of the red eye uma perked up. “Ah, that one. It’s actually something for Dantsu…”
“For me?” The aforementioned approached the box. “Why? What’s inside?”
“A sign of appreciation for helping me with my experiments.” Tachyon said, without taking her eyes from the weird machine she had put some beakers in. “Open it, it’s yours.”
Dantsu opened the box (with a little bit of help from her roommate), she found a weird metallic instrument, a sealed plastic bag and a paper pamphlet. When she opened the bag, a peculiar smell filled the room…
“IT’S CHEESE!” Dantsu exclaimed, ecstatic. With her tail wagging extremely fast out excitement, she took the pamphlet. “This is ‘tête de moine’! AOP!?”
“I don’t know anything about cheese, so I figured that buying something with those kind of specifications had to be of a pretty high quality.” Tachyon got down from the small step she had used to be at the same high as the experiment table. “Do you like it?”
As a respond, Dantsu proceeded to hug Tachyon in such a manner that both of them ended in the floor, as the cheese fanatic thanked her profusely. Digital let out a strangle noise and mumble something about an overloading of cuteness and how it was too much for her, the rest of the umas, minus Cafe, laughed at the scene.
Cafe turned towards Pocket, squinting. “Tachyon also gives you something for participating in her experiments?”
“Yeah! She pays for all our dates and sometimes takes me to specialty pastry shops!” Pocket’s ears perked up and looked at her with starry eyes. “Last weekend she took me to this place that serves super fancy parfaits!”
“Dates!?” Top Road and Digital asked at the same time, but with very different intonations, the first one confuse and the second, excited.
“Did I forgot to tell you?” Pocket turned towards the purple-yellow eye uma. “We started dating soon after her last failed experiment!”
“Afihsndvfheoiuh! My OTP is finally true!” Pink hair uma’s reaction caught everyone, but Tachyon, by surprise. “This is happiest day of my life!”
“How did she do that with her mouth?” The rural uma whispered as she stared at Digital in confusion.
“Tachyon…” The red eye uma looked at Cafe. “… I’m really the only one that doesn’t get anything from helping you?” She sounded more hurt than offended.
“Is not like I don’t wanna compensate you for your aid.” Dantsu helped Tachyon to stand from the floor. “It’s just I… don’t know what will adequate.” She sounded surprisingly apologetic. “The thing that you like the most is coffee, but you acquire that by yourself…”
“I also like cats…” The ears of the black haired uma lower slightly.
“Would like cat theme merchandise as a compensation for helping with my projects?”
“I guess…” Cafe’s voice was barely a whisper, but Tachyon seem to be able to heard her just fine. The smile that appeared on her face was genuine. “Perfect! We have a deal!”
“Are you sure about this?” The chestnut uma looked at her roommate unsure. “You often complain about her experiments when we talk…”
“Only when they have a catastrophic result, and mostly because I felt a little bit underappreciated truth be told.” Cafe had turned towards her coffee maker and had started to prepare some. “I don’t mind it that much as long as is nothing weird.”
“All of you have turned into children tho…” Top road had also sat on the sofa, but still looked nervous.
“This mishap is not proper representation about how my experiments usually proceed!” Tachyon looked a little bit offended. “And I always find a way to fix it if something goes wrong!”
“And how do you plan to fix the current situation?” Miracle looked up from the coffee table where she was helping her roommate to put together the estrange thing that the cheese needed to be serve with. The red eyes uma turned back to her experiment table. “I should have the results of the analysis soon, and I will be able to assess the gravity of the situation then.”
“How long is gonna take? I wanna go training!” Pocket rested her head onto her hand, looking bored. Tachyon just shrugged. “It may take a few more minutes to an hour.”
Top Road, both wanting to help and to leave the laboratory, offered a suggestion. “Maybe some of Nishino Flower’s clothes will fit you!” Pocket looked at her, excited. “That’s a great idea, she’s the smallest uma in Tracen!”
“I can go with you to ask her.” Yukino Bijin, who also wanted to leave, immediately offered her help. Don’t get her wrong, she really appreciated her roommate, but Tachyon running around the room with weird liquids was starting to creep her out a little bit.
“I think I can go to the cafeteria to get some crackers for the cheese.” The gray hair uma also didn’t want to remain in the room, but had more to do with the weird faces that Digital was making than a problem with what the other Agnes was doing.
“Eeeh!? Does that mean that Digitan can stay with the mini version of JAMD!?” She had sparkles in her eyes. “This day keeps getting better and better!”
“Maybe you can go to the cafeteria when Top road and Bijin are back…” Dantsu looked at the pink hair uma with a little bit of worry. Before Miracle was able to respond, Tachyon spoke. “I can reassure you my roommate is harmless, nothing is gonna happened.”
“We will be fast!” The three umas exited the room, their the sound of their steps quickly fading away. The room was left in silence, the machines beeping from time to time.
“Finally, I was getting a bit suffocated with so many people here.” The scientist went back to her laptop, analyzing the information the machines were sending.
“You complained about the same when Dantsu and Pocket started hanging around more.” Cafe took a sip of her coffee.
“But it was because Pokke-kun can be really loud!” The comment made the bay uma laugh. “I didn’t complained about Dantsu-kun directly!”
“As loud as I am, you still fell for me.” Pocket left the sofa, took a chair and approached where Tachyon was. “And we’re dating, so I mustn’t be that bad!”
“You certainly have traits that make you a desirable romantic partner, my dear Pokke.” Tachyon didn’t move when Pocket sat by her side. She, in fact, turned to face her. “Even with some of your more peculiar traits.”
“That’s funny coming from you!” Pocket’s face got closer to Tachyon’s and…
THUMP
Agnes Digital was on the floor, mumbling incoherent gibberish, with a huge smile on her face.
“DIGITAL-SAN!” Dantsu immediately jumped to try to help her.
“Is that why you didn’t tell her that we were dating?” Tachyon looked at her fallen roommate. “Basically.”
“She has a nosebleed!”
“Don’t worry, my dear Dantsu. It happens often, she will be fine.” Cafe looked at the red eye uma. “The passing out part or the nosebleed part?”
“Oh, both.” Tachyon shrugged. Cafe shook her head and continued drinking her coffee.
“Maybe we should call Miracle and ask her to bring an ice pack too…” Pocket had gotten up from the chair and was helping Dantsu to put a cushion underneath Digital’s head and to clean the blood from her face.
.
.
.
Just like they had promised, Top Road, Yukino Bijin and Hishi Miracle were back ten minutes later with the training uniforms, the crackers, the ice pack and some extra snacks. All of them were pretty confuse when they saw the himejoshi laying unconscious on the floor.
After a short explanation from Pocket and putting the ice pack where Digital had hit the floor, while Tachyon keep doing her tests, they sat around the coffee table to eat the cheese and the snacks. Dantsu did a little happy dance when she tried the cheese, making Cafe and Miracle smile.
Suddenly, Tachyon jumped out of her chair, her characteristic smile on her face. “I finally have the results! I can make something that will return us back to our age!” The rest of the umas, except for the unconscious one, reacted with cheers. “The only bad news are that I have to leave the antidote rest for 48 hours, but after drinking it we should be back to normal in less than 12 hours!”
“There’s no way we’re able to hide this for two days and a half!” The former delinquent screamed.
“That’s why our dear roommates are going to tell everyone that we’re sick!” The scientist was already mixing a bunch of colorful chemicals. “It’s a perfect plan!”
“As one of the class representatives, I don’t feel very comfortable with the whole lying part…” The blonde uma had a nervous smile. “I think if we explain the situation, they will understand.”
“I’m with Top Road, you just want an excuse to skip class.” Cafe looked at Tachyon inquisitively. “I think the last time was worst, since your ‘invention’ made us drunk!”
“Maybe it’s because she doesn’t want to lose her laboratory privileges again.” Dantsu said, as she took another cracker with cheese.
“I think it’s both.” The light bay uma shrugged. “But I don’t like the idea of hiding in the room for two days so I vote for telling the truth too.”
“You should be on my side!” The red eye uma stopped what she was doing, turned towards them puffing her cheeks. “You’re a terrible girlfriend! You only want to go training!”
Pocket jumped from the sofa and ran to comfort her. “That’s not true! I just don’t want to make Fuji angry!”
“Oh, so you care more about her than me?” Tachyon started to fake cry, making the light bay uma start to panic. “NO! No! That’s not what I meant!”
The commotion made the pink hair uma get up from the floor with a jump, scaring everyone but Tachyon and Pocket. “I feel a disturbance in the universe! One of my ships is in danger!”
“If you’re talking about those two, this is just routine.” Cafe looked tired.
“They fight often?” Bijin looked at the two small umas that were away from the group, Tachyon was now curled in her chair, sulking and refusing to look at Pocket, while the aforementioned was pulling at the labcoat sleeve and trying to make the other listen.
“I wouldn’t call it fighting, it’s more like…” Dantsu rubbed the back of her head and lower her ears. “...Bickering, yes, that’s what’s happening!”
“You two deal with this daily?” Miracle had a look of amusement. Cafe managed to gave her an even more tired look, Dantsu just smile awkwardly.
“...I ALSO WANNA SPEND TIME WITH YOU!” They had to cover their ears as Pocket shouted, she was a little teary eye. That seem to be enough for Tachyon.
“Ok! Ok! I’m not mad!” She grabbed the golden eye uma’s face. “You can stop now!”
“Am I really a bad girlfriend?” Pocket’s ears lowered sadly.
“No, you’re not.” She was smiling. “I just like messing with you!” The light bay uma didn’t respond, only looking slightly annoyed and puffed her cheeks like a hamster.
“This adorable! KYAA!” As Digital was twirling and having one of her fangirl moments, she tripped with the table, lost her balance and fell on it, tipping it over.
Then, chaos.
The drinks, the snacks, part of the cheese and other miscellaneous objects were launched into into the air. Miracle ended cover in carrot juice, while Cafe’s coffee cup smashed onto the floor into a hundred pieces. Dantsu and Bijin were mostly spared, the later only having a little bit of soda splashed on her skirt, but Top Road was holding her hand and had an expression that combine panic and pain.
In an effort to avoid anyone hurting themselves, she had try to grab the knife. But to her bad luck, She had grabbed by the blade instead of the handle and had cut her hand, that was now bleeding but didn’t look severe.
As fast as she was able, Tachyon jumped from her chair to look for the aid kit they had in the closet. Pocket went to see if Digital had gotten hurt too, as she had hit the table pretty hard.
It seem like the visit to the infirmary was unavoidable in the end.