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Born to Run
Such a mocking phrase. Such a irreverent, nonsensical, lackadaisical phrase.
Umamusume were born to run.
Not walk, not shuffle nor jog or stride, but run.
The cardiovascular wiring, the fine musculature, the internal structure of every bone in their lower body was built to handle the speed of their legs on turf. Until the utter limits of self-propulsion.
To feel the track and the speed and the surge of adrenaline pulsating down every vein in her body, that was their purpose.
To run.
Run.
Run.
And here she was, sitting in the gates of the Satsuki Sho. Lab coat on with her friends in the gates beside her. A light tailwind blowing behind her. A perfectly overcast afternoon.
She can feel her heart beating. Her heartbeat. The badump- badum. The thumping in her head. Her entire body getting ready for the announcer's fire, for the solitary moment that the gates open and she starts her run.
Her legs. Her legs felt so shaky underneath her.
They were afraid of what she was going to do to them.
Each nerve telling her of their weakening.
Like butter melting with the heat, with the pressure, with the warmth of blood flowing through every capillary she had down there.
Her research never told her how to stop it. All her time reading papers and doing tests and getting examinations and pouring over local and international publications could not solve her basic genetic predisposition to an all too common condition.
There was one thing her research did tell her, however.
That she had this one last run to push herself, before she broke. Before her tendon withers itself enough to just tear itself apart upon even approaching her limit and after that? It's just permanently weaker.
Light exercise. Long conditioning. The prime of her career spent in rehabilitation.
The limits of Umamusume forever out of reach.
Born to Run.
What a joke.
She was barely born to walk.
The gates open.
And Agnes Tachyon will meet her destiny.
In 2000m she will do her last race. Her last self-experiment.
She could not be more happy.
Her legs strike the earth. The counter begins.
Two minutes. Two minutes until it's over.
If she does well, maybe even a little less.
Her shoes crush the grass, as she starts her first move. Middle of the pack, taking advantage of the slipstream of runners in front of her. Steady. Stable.
Breathing on pace.
She could feel the drag from her sleeves, the pull on her hair, the friction of her steps clawing their way into the earth to push off of.
All within tolerance. Maybe a little too fast, even.
But perfectly workable. There were two parts to it- the start up and the actual burn. She could feel the initial reserves of energy depleting across her legs. The last remnants of ATP consumed to get her up to speed, building up blood flow to prepare for mass oxygenation.
To start draining the sugars out of her blood and her muscles, setting everything up for the final sprint.
She had to start moving out. Sixteen steps to adjust from the center. Five to completely cut from the pack.
Not a single nerve within her permitted her legs from deviating from her calculations. Keeping them steady, keeping each action potential firing as she ordered another twenty-six to make a clean exit on the final turn, an optimal race line that leads into a clean straight.
Each step took a bit more energy, as without the crowd, air resistance finally hit her in the face.
There was nothing there to stop her now. She could hear her sleeves flap, fluttering, with the coolness of the breeze stopping her from wasting valuable resources on thermoregulation.
The limit was just right ahead.
A hundred hours of calculation predicting a singular optimal form. The succinct mechanics of her biology determining exactly which steps and to what degree each push off the ground needed to be. She forced her legs down.
Digging into the earth as she propelled herself forwards. The rhythm of her internal metronome keeping every step in sync.
Each nerve within her optimizing her posture.
Her arms.
Her legs.
Tilting her head to minimize drag.
Aligning the folds of her lab coat.
Faster.
She could go faster.
Faster than her vasculature could accommodate, faster than the reserves of sugar in her muscles could ever replenish, trading energy for speed.
Towards the limit of Umamusume.
Mathematically, it was finding a delta that gets yourself closer and closer to a lower epsilon, a lower error.
And the limit is when you approach it completely.
To get epsilon infinitesimally small.
Born to Run.
Umamusume were born to run.
Every bit of her body indicated that she was made to participate in this irreverent act of speed. Of fulfilling her entire reason of being.
To grasp that limit.
The clatter of her shoes almost deafening underneath her, the breaths in her chest telling her to slow down, the beating of her heart so clearly defined in her head.
She was almost there.
The sheer momentum that she had accumulated straining every bit of her body.
It barely hurt.
She could already feel herself going beyond that 70km/h mark.
Agnes Tachyon.
A theoretical particle faster than light.
And an Umamusume faster than any speed limit that the universe could impose on her.
There was only so much of the track left.
She had to run.
Run.
Run.
The world felt so silent. It was just her and the track. Speed cutting through the air and the moment and- it was somehow peaceful.
She was at the limit. Maybe even a little beyond it.
Tachyon could only describe it as… Euphoria.
That solemn sheer happiness that she could only share with herself.
Tearing up the turf beneath her.
Not a single other object in her reference frame.
Relativity states that the faster that one goes, the slower the universe around them becomes. Then, perhaps she could stretch this run out into infinity.
Perhaps she can lose herself in it for a little while…
The frozen world around her as she continues past the finish line, shattering like glass.
"AND AGNES TACHYON WINS THE SATSUKI SHO WITH AN IMPRESSIVE 2:00:01 FINISH!" An announcer cuts through her racing haze. "It's almost as fast as Narita Brian's record time, isn't it?"
A second voice cuts in. "It's definitely something amazing. That speed, it was breathtaking. Agnes Tachyon living up to her name and going faster than what humans could imagine…"
She could barely hear the rest.
She knew Pokke-kun was calling out from behind her.
She knew that there was a smile on her face.
She-
She knew that this was the last time she was going to race.
Her legs hurt.
So much.
Each moment pulsating with a tearing pain through every nerve she had in there.
She could barely take another step forwards without limping.
This was… what she wanted, right?
One final beautiful race to end off her career.
"It's… good enough." she muttered to herself.
Was it?