Chapter Text
I feel a sudden stabbing pain shoot simultaneously up my spine and down my legs as something small and light collides with my back. I hear two simultaneous thuds and a small sound of glass breaking, and there’s a distinct aroma of something harsh and chemical in the air. I recognize one of the thuds as my own shoulder colliding with the firm turf below me, and as my head tilts I can see what caused the rest: Agnes Digital, as pale as a ghost, has tripped and landed on her butt after bumping into me, a look of absolute horror on her face.
“Oh no oh god on no, sorrgy… I mean sorry… Shoot, oh no, oh no, oh NOOOOOO, awawa, Tachyon is going to boil me down into glue!!”
I reach out to try and comfort her but she recoils from my hand before she can catch herself. I take comfort in seeing that despite her obvious distress, it’s clear she’s not physically hurt.
“Uh, um… uhm… Trainer Isumi… are you okay? Do you feel any, um, erm, how do I put this… oh jeez… do you feel… faster?”
I finally manage to right myself. Reaching up, I can feel that my shoulder is probably going to bruise quite badly, but everything else seems fine. “Faster? What on earth does that mean, Digital? And what is that smell?” I look down to the source of the sharp aroma and see the remains of a small brittle glass container and a glint of metal. A glass vial…? There’s a trace of a dark liquid clinging to the glass, pink or maybe red.
Agnes Digital stands up, straightens her bow and her skirt, and bows apologetically to me. “Um, it’s probably nothing. If you do end up feeling strange, you should come see Tachyon. I’m about to go get told off for sure, she’ll probably make me swallow some weird medicine as punishment… tie me to a chair… probe my body… uwawawa… I gotta go. Sorry, Trainer!” And then she’s off like a bullet, sprinting towards the school, which was unfortunately the opposite direction that I was headed. I wasn’t going to be able to ask her any followup questions.
Despite the stinging pain, I stand up, picking up a small notebook she forgot in the grass. I didn’t want to pry, so I put it in my back pocket to return to her later. Unfortunately I was probably about to get told off as well, but I headed down to the practice track to face the music.
—
When I arrive at the training ground, Sirius Symboli is already waiting for me, tapping her foot impatiently, looking like a darkening stormcloud on the horizon. She was leaning against the guardrail in her sweats, a scowl on her face that blooms into a wolfish smile upon seeing me.
“Seven minutes late, Puppy. Aren’t you the one always drilling me on punctuality? You made me wait seven minutes, so you have seven seconds to explain why, or else I walk. Start.”
Damnit, she definitely meant it. I’d had to basically chase her down relentlessly to become her trainer in the first place, and I knew she really would rather have stayed unscouted, rather than waste her time with a trainer who wasn’t in line with her ambition.
“Sorry, Sirius! I got run into by Agnes Digital, I had to make sure she was okay.” She was already mad at me, a sob story about some weird chemical wasn’t going to cut it. Evidently that explanation was succinct enough, because Sirius gave me an arched brown eyebrow but didn’t appear to be leaving. There was no doubt in my mind that that if she really wanted to leave, she wouldn’t have even spared me this much time.
“...Fine. It suits a puppy to be worried about the other small dogs running around, you always seem to have a moment to spare when it comes to the girls around campus. Are you sure you’re really a trainer here and not a student yourself? Actually, are you sure you’re not Digital’s trainer instead of mine?” she drawled, giving me a predatory look, like a shark sensing blood in the water. “Regardless, I’m going to make you feel how long seven minutes really is. Get on the track.”
“On the track?” I say, biting my lower lip, my voice a lot smaller and less confident than I would have liked. “Like… as in running? Me?”
“Oho, so you plan on wasting even more of my time with questions? That’s fine. But can you really last eight minutes?” She strides forward, poking my chest with her finger as she boldly slips the stopwatch from around my neck. “You haven’t stretched properly, I doubt you’ll last a ten minute run. So do you still feel like pushing me, puppy? Or are you going to get out there?”
The line between a tease and a command was razor thin when it came to Sirius, but the look in her blood red eyes made it undeniable which this was. With only a moment more hesitation, I sigh and slip my suit jacket from my shoulders, folding it over a nearby bench as I hopped over the small boundary and onto the dirt practice track. With one last, almost pleading, look back at Sirius’ iron gaze, silently begging to be let off the hook, I find no quarter in that smirk, and so I start to jog.
“Ahahaha, good boy, Trainer. Get going!” Her ‘good boy’ made me wince, but her cruel laughter spurred me on. I wasn’t wearing athletic clothes at all, so I already knew these laps were going to be hell, but I still had some pride in my running form. Back in high school I’d been on the track team before being forced to quit. I’d show her what I was really made of. One foot in front of the other, breathe in, breathe out… you knew how to do this.
“Ho, not bad, Puppy, I can almost see your tail wagging!” Sirius called after me, her mocking voice carrying across the track. “Try to set a new course record!” She was having way too much fun. I sped up. Faster and away from the derisive laughter. Eyes on the track in front of me. As I ran, her alto faded into the background, drowned out by the beating of my heart and the pounding of my feet. Just like I was back in track. Just like…
“Isumi, stay back and clean up the towels and coolers, will you? Coach is taking us out for burgers. I know you feel awkward when it’s ‘boy time.’”
“Oh my god, Rei, did you seriously get purple running shoes? Isn’t that kinda gay?”
“Do you really even want to be in this club, dude? We do real running here, not like those Umamusume girls you’re obsessed with.”
“Okay, time, time! Puppy, take a break!” Sirius Symboli’s voice cuts through the fog as I realize that my lungs are on fire and my pantlegs are covered in dirt and sand. Had I really been running for eight minutes already?
Sirius whistled as she glanced at the stopwatch. “Really not bad, Trainer, I underestimated you. Not that you can keep up with me, but not bad for a human. I’m genuinely impressed.” She hands me a towel and a water bottle, which I gratefully accept, slumping down on the bench as she starts stretching.
“Today is practicing your inclines, so take the outer track,” I state, less out of breath than I expected. Sirius nodded, running her hand through her long umber hair, flicking it out behind her. She was a proud Symboli racer and had trained herself for years. Any more guidance than that would be pointless. Our dynamic worked best when I planned her regimen and then let her manage herself. After taking a deep breath, she was off like a bullet as I watched her back recede into the distance, tail flicking back and forth rhythmically. Her form was impeccable, as usual. Sirius managed to look majestic no matter what she was doing.
After just a minute of hydrating and relaxing, I had to admit that I felt completely fine. If not for the evidence of dirt on my shoes and lingering sweat on my back, I wouldn’t have been able to tell I had run at all. I was proud of my form, but was I really that skilled? Shouldn’t I have been out of practice…?
A small voice echoed in my mind. “If you do end up feeling strange, you should come see Tachyon.” Did this count as feeling strange? Was this the result of whatever Agnes Digital had spilled on me? I pick up my suit jacket, only to notice a small hole in the back of it, and a small pinkish-red stain lingering on the fibres. Suddenly the scene shifted in my memory. Digital hadn’t spilled a liquid on my back. I think she had accidentally injected me with something. And knowing Agnes Tachyon, it couldn’t be anything good.
Pounding footfalls announce that Sirius had completed her first two laps, as she hopped smoothly over the guardrail to hydrate.
“You look concerned, Puppy,” she said casually. “More than usual, I mean. You’ve got a look on your face that says you’re worried about something.” She was always expertly perceptive, especially of peoples’ feelings, and double especially when they were struggling internally. “Tell me what happened with that Otaku.”
I grimaced. She really had read me like a book. I turned my jacket around to her, showing her the telltale rip. “I think she was carrying something from Tachyon’s lab. I think it was some sort of drug.”
Sirius snorted, suppressing a derisive laugh. “What, so you got dosed with something on your way here? Is that why you looked like a damned rocket on the track out there? What’s next, then? Planning on growing wings and flying away? What is it they say about that one girl? Anything but training? Now come on. Pay attention this time, I’m gonna set a new PB.”
—
We trained until it got dark. True to her word, Sirius set a new personal best time on the outside track, and then wouldn’t call it a day until she beat that time too. I’d watched a lot of Umamusume run, but Sirius’ level of improvement still felt unreal to me. Despite the fact that she was my own trainee, she still blew me away.
“Nice work, Puppy,” she taunted, pressing a finger into my chest. “Now, you’re going to see that mad scientist, right?” It seemed like an unusually thoughtful question from the usually flippant racer, but something about how she was looking at me didn’t brook any argument. When I nodded, she grinned, her teeth bared like a hungry dog. “Good boy. Text me tomorrow morning. Don’t you dare cancel training last minute, or I’m going to make you run for real.” Once again, something about being called ‘good boy’ got under my skin, but I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat.
“Yeah, I’ve got it. I’ll talk to her. I have something to drop off anyway. Good work out there today. At this pace we should be on good terms for Hakodate.”
We parted ways, and I dragged myself towards the wing of the school where Tachyon’s ‘lab’ was, which was to say the abandoned science club room that she and Manhattan Café had been squatting in. Maybe it was just because it was getting late, or maybe it was the absence of the cool evening air, but my head felt fuzzy as I made my way down the hall.
I knew I’d reached the right classroom as I heard muffled muttering coming from within. “...binary… cross-species… blood type… oxygen levels…”
After knocking (with no answer) I slid the door open. The lights were dim, and Agnes Tachyon was sitting in the corner lit only by her computer screen, which was displaying a graph of some kind, charting data that I couldn’t even begin to guess the nature of. Café was here too, asleep on a futon in the opposite corner, a cold cup of coffee on the table in front of her. In response to the door opening, Tachyon’s head slowly turned to face me, her eyes wide and unblinking, and her pupils dilating to adjust to the darkness.
“Aha! Trainer Isumi Rei. Let’s see… You’re the trainer of… Sirius Symboli, correct? Her performance in the Mainichi Okan recently was quite excellent. Next time you come around, bring her with you, will you? I have deep suspicions about her plasma levels, though if you could bring me some accurate measurements of her calf circumference, I would settle for that as well.” She grinned broadly, as though what she had said was completely normal.
I clear my throat, stepping inside quietly so as not to wake up the sleeping girl in the corner. “I’ll, um, I’ll see what she says to that,” I say flatly, quite sure I already knew what Sirius would say. “I’m here about something else.”
Tachyon rolled her chair over to me, closing the distance between us and pressing the bell of a stethoscope into my chest with no warning, listening quietly for a moment. “Turn around. 180 degrees,” she barked. Maybe it was from spending too much time with a bossy trainee like Sirius, but I didn’t question the order, turning around as instructed. I felt her hands on my back, poking and prodding, and flinched as her prodding dropped alarmingly lower, below my belt line. More than the shock, though, what furrowed my brow was the dull pain that came with her poking at that area. I was sure I hadn’t bruised my lower body in the fall, and I certainly hadn’t felt anything while I was running earlier.
She made a sound that suggested that she was as surprised as I was. “Bend down, show me your hair,” she instructed, without giving me any time to ponder it, and I complied. She poked around my head, tugging at my hair and prodding my scalp, and to my surprise, I felt that same bruised feeling.
Tachyon rolled her chair backwards and I straightened up. She started typing furiously into a document of some kind. “Yes, well, they should come in tomorrow, I think,” she said simply.
“Um, sorry, what should come in?”
She stared at me with those wide unblinking eyes for a moment. I couldn’t tell if she was assessing something or whether she thought I might come to the conclusion on my own. Once it appeared that I was not about to conclude anything at all, she blinked once. “The ears and the tail, obviously.” As I stared blankly, she continued. “...From the growth formula. That’s what you’re here about, isn’t it?”
I tried to control just how flabbergasted I looked, but I was doing a poor job of it, apparently, because she continued explaining. “The growth formula that Digital accidentally dosed you with? The Umamusume Genetic Expression Formula? I’m telling you, you should see visible results by tomorrow. You’ve bought your new wardrobe already, right? It will be troubling if you haven’t. Oh, and take some pain medication before bed tonight, hopefully you won’t need it, but better to be safe than sorry. I have some in the cookie jar on the shelf by the door, next to the sugar cubes. Help yourself!”
Her words washed over me as my mind tried and failed to actually process them. “Um, I came to return a notebook to your roommate…” I pull out the small notebook from my pocket, placing it on the counter next to me, but Tachyon waved her hand aggressively towards me, or at least I assumed that was a dismissive motion. Her cascading coat sleeves made it difficult to know for sure.
“Do you see any bedazzlement on that little book? Is it pink? It’s clearly not Digital’s, that’s mine. And you should keep it, actually. Those were my lab notes to date about the serum. But I have a copy here, too, and it’s more current. Plus those notes should help you know what to expect from the changes. It’s not as though I have all day to sit around filling you in on every little thing, though if you do have some time tomorrow before dinner, you should come by. Did you order a uniform? You should take mine if not. I’m not planning on attending classes tomorrow anyway. How tall are you?”
I can barely squeeze in an answer. “I’m 175 cm…”
Tachyon frowned as she looked at me, grabbing a measuring tape and sliding her chair over once again, taking my height. “Well, not anymore you aren’t. I have you at 172 presently. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were 160 by morning. Café will be too short for you but mine should fit nicely. If it ends up working out, you might as well keep it. I’ll order a new set myself. Easier, I should think.”
Finally, finally, I hold my hands up to stop her. “Tachyon, please, hold on. You lost me, like, twelve steps ago. Please start from the beginning. I know you’re busy, but… please.” My head was swirling. I was… shorter now? How? And why did my head hurt so bad?
Agnes Tachyon pauses for a moment, tapping her chin with her sleeve, considering how best to explain it to me. Then, slowly, as though she were talking to a child, she starts over.
“Digital was delivering a special formula from my lab today. That being an ampoule of Umamusume Genetic Expression Formula I had concocted from various things I had lying around. It has the genetic records of myself, Digital, Café, and others. Oh, this should excite you, I did manage to get several of Symboli Rudolf’s hairs, so you should be able to count on your stamina after the transformation."
“Genetic… expression… huh?” She was losing me, even at this slow paced (for her) explanation.
“The idea being a serum to answer the question ‘What if we could make an Uma that was, genetically speaking, more Uma than anyone else?’ Theoretically, that person should be faster than anyone else as well, right? So went my idea, in any case. However!” She shouted, leaning dangerously forward in her chair, her face scant inches from mine as she practically vibrated with excitement. “Now that the subject of the experiment is not an Umamusume but in fact a human, and a male no less, I absolutely cannot wait to see what happens. I hypothesize that, at the very least, the powerful Umamusume genetics will dominate your existing structure. Now - and this is the fascinating part - Umamusume are, you’ve no doubt learned, exclusively female in demographic. A demographic that you most certainly do not fit into.”
It took this long, but the fundamentals of what she was saying finally sank into my foggy mind. “I’m going to… become an Umamusume?”
Tachyon never once lost her broad smile and unblinking excitement, now rocking back and forth in her chair. “Now you’re asking the right questions. It’s impossible to say for sure! Hypothetically, yes! Probably, even!”
I felt dizzy, I felt like I was going to be sick. Me, an Umamusume? Sure, I had loved to watch them on TV since I was a kid, and after dropping out of Track I had immediately enrolled in Trainer School, studying exercise science. But being able to run like that myself? It felt like static electricity was zapping my brain every time I tried to complete the thought. All I could stammer was “It’s… not possible, though, right?”
With a rustle of fabric, Tachyon seized my shoulders, having finally stood up from her chair to get right in my face, those wide red eyes filling my vision. “We’re going to find out…!” She whispered, a quiver of excitement in her throat. I stepped back. My eyes flicked to the doorway. I needed to get out of here. I turned back, but bumped into something small on my way out. Manhattan Café stared up at me with unsettling yellow eyes that seemed to look past me as she handed me a small cloth bundle.
“Your new uniform. Congratulations on finally reaching her…” She muttered. I couldn’t even tell if she was talking to me or something past me. I grabbed the fabric and the notebook and fled. Back through the sliding door, back down the dark hallway, and down to the trainer accommodations. It took me three minutes to find the correct key to unlock my door, which I slammed behind myself.
I kicked off my shoes, which had seemed to become more loose than I remembered and practically threw my jacket across the room, collapsing into bed. Today had been strange, and Agnes Tachyon was even stranger. While the pain in my head and my spine assured me that I wasn’t dreaming, that didn’t mean that the things Tachyon had said were real, either. Tomorrow I would wake up and it would back to a normal day. I would do my usual paperwork, I would head down to the track, and I would find a partner for Sirius to run with, since it was partner running day. I should see if Nakayama Festa was busy…
I drifted off quickly, despite my throbbing head, forgetting the advice to take pain medication before bed.
That’s right… Tomorrow would be fine. Tomorrow would be normal…