Chapter Text
Agnes Digital (or Digitan, or…well, one of her many Oshis could call her just about anything, and she’d be over the moon, and possibly dead) was, as usual, in heaven. As a Dream-Series racer, she had a far more forgiving schedule than in her Twinkle Series run, even with her international exploits.
Which meant that she had more time to simp.
Known as the Hentai Horse, for her ability to race on an unusually wide variety of distances, on both Turf and Dirt, she was sometimes called a freak of nature. It was more often that she was called just a freak, an observation that she did nothing to discourage-especially not in the moment, where she was hiding in a bush and spying on her fellow students.
Her pink tail stuck out of a bush, the sunlight glinting off of a pair of binoculars on the other side. Passerby steered clear of said bush, on account of her dramatics occasionally being hazardous to be around (not that she would ever allow herself to harm an Oshi…), what with the flailing limbs and eardrum-rupturing squeals.
At the moment, her attention was solely on the center of a bit of nearby greenspace, an area tucked off to the side of one of the campus’s secondary paths. There were a few trees around, with a particularly majestic-looking one atop a small hill.
And there, at the base of the tree, nestles between the roots, was a gift to Digitan from the Three Goddesses themselves.
There was Seiun Sky, leaning back against the bark, her eyes half-lidded as her entire body oozed laziness. Indeed, she was the very pinnacle of Uma indolence, to the point where non-digitan onlookers found themselves yawning in sympathy.
At the epicenter of this effect was the diminutive (if very, very slightly less so than she was in her Twinkle Series days) Nishino Flower, who had settled down against Sky’s side for a nap. Keen-eyed observers (Digital) might’ve noted a faint pinkish cast to the taller Uma’s face.
Flower cracked one eye open to confirm the effect she was having on Sky, before closing it, and nuzzling against her girlfriend.
Oh yes, Digitan was eating good.
Quiet giggles emanated from the bush, which earned it a few more sidelong glances, but nothing more.
Yes, the Hentai Horse’s antics were well known amongst the student body, faculty, and so on. Only newcomers and the occasional guest paid her much mind, so long as her attention was on somebody else. Some even took advantage of her skills-an especially overworked trainer was looking to hire her as an assistant, and some of the bolder students would ask her where to find an Uma they were looking for (she always knew. Except for that one time, but Marvelous Sunday was involved).
Her sense for her Oshis was truly honed to the point where only the supernatural could hope to interfere, and even that was far from guaranteed. Not even Aston Machan could escape her simping gaze, nor the grand shrine of her memory.
She did, however, have one particular blind spot. She put her fellow Umamusume-all of them-on a pedestal. Angels, she called them, blindingly beautiful messengers of the heavens. Beings of grace and fortitude.
She did not react well to being reminded that she, indeed, was one and the same-and a rather impressive example at that. Having human fans was more than a bit of a shock to her system, though she’d come to terms with it. She saw them as, ultimately, fellow simps, using her as a vessel through which to support their true Oshis. Any evidence to the contrary was swiftly ignored.
But if her fans were Umamusume?
Asxeyrcttykfgvhkghj! Ridiculous! There was no way that a perverted, sinful creature like her could draw the eyes of the Purehearted Angels of the Goddesses! It was beyond absurd to even contemplate! Heretical, even!
So, she didn’t notice how, across the walkway from her, another bush had grown three tails.
“Ah, her perversion is so enthralling!” Said Great House, the redhead sounding almost refined as she rested her head on one hand, staring across at her beloved Digi-tan.
“Her passion is contagious!” This came from It’s Calling, the blonde appearing to be a normal lovestruck girl while she admired the all-rounder.
“She’s so cute when she’s simping!” Came One Inch of Love’s squeal, the pinkette wriggling her entire body in delight.
Yes, the Agnes Digital Fan Club, Tracen Academy Branch (ADFCTAB) was quite enthusiastic in their activities.
The Hentai Horsegirl really had no sense of her own appeal-in One Inch of Love’s own words, she was “slender and cute but also super strong and cool when she gets motivated and she’s always so excited to help other Umas and OMG I need to have her babies!”
Her two fellow simps had, upon hearing this, agreed wholeheartedly. Thus the branch was born.
Meanwhile, beneath the tree, Flower snuck a kiss onto Sky’s cheek. The seemingly-sleeping Uma’s face reddened.
Some Digitan noises came from the other bush, and the three fans sighed wistfully.
“Oh, to be the apple of her eye…”
Calling nodded in agreement, but Inch got a strange look on her face. Whatever had come upon her was set aside, however, when two pairs of legs blocked her view. She followed them up to see two of her teammates, Imagine Success and Imagine Losing.
Success raised an eyebrow.
Inch blinked. Then blinked again.
“Hey, you know, I don’t try to mess with your hobbies, but-”
Losing interjected with “But we have training in ten minutes.”
“Guh! Sorry guys, see ya later!”
Showcasing impressive acceleration, One Inch of Love erupted from the bush, spurting back towards their team’s room-not the largest of affairs, but it was enough for their trainer to go over all their plans, host their Unity Cup teammates, and (most importantly here) keep a few extra sets of training gear.
“Huh,” Imagine Success mused, “Maybe she should try running more sprints.”
It was some days later when Great House and It’s Calling waited in their clubroom-that is, their shared dorm room.
It was, like most such rooms in the academy, divided by its denizens. Unlike most, however, it was divided into three.
On the left was It’s Calling’s side, which was kept fairly sparse, save for the walls. Nearly every inch of it was covered in pictures-some photographs, some drawn or painted by the girl in question. All of them had a similar focus on something distant-the horizon, mostly. Others, dark interior shots, looked into eerie hallways-or in one case, down a deep well.
Great House didn’t like looking at them. They stared back.
The only permanent fixtures on her nightstand were the obligatory lamp and alarm clock, as well as a white noise generator. Calling preferred ocean sounds, but they’d compromised on rain noise.
Her own side, on the right, was a bit more conventional. Her desk and nightstand were far less bare than her roommate’s, which was not to say that they were cluttered or messy! They merely possessed the expected detritus of life that Calling’s tended to lack, somehow. There were a couple extra pencils on her desk, a few sticky notes here and there, a collection of miniature ceramic houses that her friends had started getting her as a joke, some cold medicine from the last time she’d fallen ill, a personal massager for various aches and pains and nothing else (she may be a simp, but she was also an athlete, and such things tended to accumulate), a tube of hand cream, a box of tissues, and a backscratcher that she had no memory of getting.
Her walls weren’t so heavily furnished as Calling’s, but did host their share of family photos, newspaper clippings, a couple academic awards, even a copy of her family tree (Great House’s great House of House, as Inch once said. She thought herself amusing).
And the third section? The one directly across from the door, greeting anyone who entered? Why, that was their shrine to Agnes Digital, of course.
The entire back wall was dedicated to photos, newspaper clippings, a couple magazine covers, and even hand-drawn art. A table sat before the window,, piled high with goods and offerings-a giant plushy she’d won in a crane game, autographed copies of Digital’s Doujinshi, a carefully-preserved lock of hair, a couple worn spikes from their oshi’s cleats, a bit of thread that’d frayed off of one of her socks, the shell of a peanut she’d eaten once, the tag of her mattress, a straw that had once been in her mouth, a notebook full of poetry written to her as a muse, and so on and so forth, with official merchandise sharing space with fanworks and creepy stalker stuff.
This was not the entire extent of their collections-Calling had a body pillow, Great herself had a small army of plushies, and Inch had another giant plushy and more photos over in her own dorm-but it was a shrine that they took pride in as a group.
Speaking of, Inch was about to be late-
Calling opened the door. There stood Inch, who had been about to knock, judging by how she had to stop herself from knocking on Calling’s forehead.
“Hi I’m-oh! Hi Call, hi Gre-chan. I have a plan.”
Great House blinked as Inch entered, then exchanged a glance with her roommate that assured her that they were both equally confused.
After a moment of dead air, she figured that it was up to her to keep things going.
“A plan, Inch?”
The pinkette nodded rapidly, a wide, almost goofy grin on her face. “A plan to draw our oshi’s eyes to us!”
“Oh?”
Great couldn’t help but be intrigued. The three of them had, upon the founding of the club, agreed that they should not interfere with Digi-tan’s life directly. Just speaking to her fellow Umas-even those like them, who rarely placed in graded races-could leave her near-catatonic. This was cute, but also pretty disruptive, so they had reluctantly agreed not to throw themselves at her like especially bold heroines in a bodice-ripper (all three of them in coordination-they’d long since agreed to share, if the opportunity ever came).
Inch would not be eager to break this particular rule-she was the one who suggested it in the first place. Which meant…
“Indirectly, yes?”
Inch nodded rapidly, her pink hair (not the same shade as Digitan’s but still quite lovely, she supposed) swinging wildly in her wake, her tail held high in what she was pretty sure was excitation (there was no universal Umamusume tail language, but she’d been close to her fellow simp for long enough to recognize her general trends…and the rest of her body was quivering in a barely-contained commotion).
“Of course, of course, we wouldn't want to be all crude about it! Nonono, my idea is-well-what does Digi-tan like?”
Great exchanged another glance with Calling.
“Manga?”
“Umamusume?”
Inch jumped upon the second suggestion.
“And what does she like watching Umamusume do?”
“Everything?” Great ventured.
Inch made a ‘come on’ gesture with her hands, like they were a pair of cogwheels circling each other.
“Racing?”
“Breathing?”
“Stepping on her?”
“Yuri?”
Both of Inch’s hands struck out, grabbing both of Calling’s shoulders. The blonde leaned back a bit, face flushed in…embarrassment, she guessed?
“Yes! Yuri, lesbianism, being gay-if we want to get Digi-tan’s attention, then we just need to be gay to each other!”
Inch kept shaking Calling, the blonde having gone quite still otherwise.
“What.”
Inch let the poor girl go, and instead held her fists up like an overeager boxer, bouncing on her heels.
“You heard me, we’ll get her attention by being, like, super gay to each other! We’ll hold hands and watch the sunset and sit on each other’s laps and make out and stuff!”
Great House went blank at that, her mind resisting the sudden assault by simply turning itself off and on again, leaving Calling to properly react.
“...Inch, you do realize that there’s an issue with this plan, right?”
The pinkette stilled somewhat, cocking her head. “Wait, really? I think that it's pretty foolproof, really!”
Calling shot her roommate a hopeful glance, but her mind was still spooling back up.
“Well, for one, we would have to actually…do those things.”
Inch blinked.
“And?”
Calling stared. Inch stared back, an innocent expression on her face. Great House finally regained her wits.
“Are you saying that you want to kiss us, and…and stuff?”
Now Inch was the one who looked confused.
“I mean, yeah? Doesn’t everyone want to kiss their super-pretty best friends?”
What.
What, just what?
Huh?
Like, what?
How. Is this-why?
When did she-
What?
It took a rather long time for Great House to realize that Inch was still talking, and a bit longer to actually register it as meaningful language.
“...like, I see Machan and Vodka and Scarlet kiss all the time!”
Calling, the poor dear, was trying her best to keep up.
“...they’re dating.”
“Huh?”
“Those three are dating, Inch. They’re a polycule.”
“Oh, really? Well, I saw Nature and Palmer-”
“Also dating.”
“Wait, since when?”
“Last week. You were there, though our Oshi’s fainting spell was pretty distracting.”
That finally gave Inch pause, though only for a moment.
“Oh, well. Still. It's perfectly normal to want to kiss your homies! Like, I’m constantly thinking about how much I want to kiss you two! And my roommate’s always talking about how much she wants to make Make You Gasp gasp. Like, with tongue.”
She did not need to know that about Daddy’s Boots.
Calling sent her a pleading look, and Great finally felt up to rejoining the conversation. She just needed a way to talk her down…oh!
She crossed her arms.
“Well, if you’re so certain, then go ahead and kiss me.” She declared, opening her arms to the side in a ‘come at me’ pose.
No matter how readily she talked about this stuff, she would certainly falter when it actually came to doing it, and that would give them room to talk her down-
“Okay!”
Great House, scion of the House of House, had precisely 2.31 seconds to realize her mistake. By that time, One Inch Of Love’s hands-so soft and delicate-seeming, but a few callouses betrayed the fact that she was, in fact, an athlete-were cupping her cheeks.
The ones on her face, to be clear. She wasn’t sure whether or not she’d prefer the alternative-it would be cruder, but also less startlingly intimate.
Her warm pink-ish eyes squinted a bit in concentration, focused on her task. On her.
A warm exhalation tickled her face, her lips ever-so-slightly parted.
Her friend’s slightly-oval, not-quite heart-shaped face leaned in close, closer, until she was her whole world.
Their lips brushed, ever-so-slightly.
Great House, or sometimes Gre-chan or Grea to almost exclusively the person kissing her and her roommate…well, she hadn’t exactly done much kissing in her life, aside from chaste ones, on the cheek. And a few not-so-chaste ones with a cousin, but they were both too young to understand what exactly they were doing and she hadn’t even though about that in years and goddesses, Inch was kissing her.
She’d read enough literature on the subject to know the cliches, and she supposed that the most apt description was electric, in that it was sending shocks of warm tingling feelings through her.
Her thoughts raced. Got shorter. Messier.
Lips. Warm. Soft. But pressing hard.
Nose a bit smooshed, teeth clinking-but, Goddesses, tongue.
Weird. Almost ticklish?
…she liked it.
Inch finally pulled away, smiling and a little dazed, leaving Grea all but catatonic on her feet.
There was a flash.
“Oh, Call, did you just take a picture?”
“Several.”
Inch smiled as she skipped over to the blonde.
“That’s a Grea idea! We can use them as references later!”
Great made a small, choking whine.
“But first, we should get some practice in, too!”
Calling had only a moment to begin to panic, before her lips were claimed by the energetic pinkette.
Great stared at them, finding that there was, indeed, room for her to blush even more.