A/N: Daily check-in... I'm collecting your powerstones. Hand it over now. Don't even think about tax evasion.
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Grani stayed a step behind Silver Tear as they slipped into the corridor, her movements stiff and careful. She kept glancing over her shoulder, ears flicking at every distant sound, as if expecting someone to call out her name at any moment.
"Senpai, you're acting like you're about to get arrested." Silver Tear said, not bothering to look back.
"Of course I am!" Grani protested, her voice aimed squarely at Silver Tear's back.
"Any second now, someone's going to show up and ask why I'm not on the track."
"Yeah, yeah…" Silver Tear replied lightly.
"I'm the first-year here, and I'm not even worried. Why are you the one panicking?"
She kept walking, unfazed by Grani's mounting anxiety.
"But I've never skipped training before!" Grani blurted out, clearly unconvinced.
"So where are we going next?" Silver Tear asked, sounding perfectly casual as she turned to Grani. Her expression was utterly clueless, a sharp contrast to her earlier confidence.
"H-huh?"
"I haven't explored the whole Academy yet, so navigation falls to you." Silver Tear said matter-of-factly.
"So, senpai, where are we going next?"
Grani felt a headache creeping in as the weight of that responsibility sank in.
Why had she agreed to go along with this troublesome junior and skip training of all things?
In the end, Grani gave in and began to guide this clueless Uma Musume through Tracen Academy. This wasn't about responsibility anymore, but it was her dignity as a senpai that was put on the line now!
As they reached near the end of the corridor, Grani raised a finger to her lips without really thinking about it, then froze, realizing how obvious the gesture was. Silver Tear noticed anyway and immediately leaned in, eyes lighting up with interest.
"Are we… doing that spy thing now?" She whispered, far louder than necessary.
Grani flinched and hurriedly tugged her down by the sleeve.
"Lower your voice." She hissed.
"If someone hears us–"
Silver Tear nodded seriously, then crouched a little and tiptoed forward. It was baffling how Silver Tear could do such a thing without feeling any shame.
Grani stared at her back, torn between stopping her and pretending not to know her.
They moved along the wall, sticking close to the shadows cast by the tall windows. Outside, the evening air looked calm, the campus paths nearly empty.
Grani knew this route well enough.
It was the one used for early morning runs, not for sneaking out like this. Her ears twitched again when a distant door closed somewhere above them.
"Okay." Grani muttered, pressing herself against a pillar. "From here, we wait until no one's around the corner. There's a side exit past the equipment storage."
Silver Tear peeked out first, leaning just a bit too far before pulling back.
"Clear." She said confidently, making an OK gesture to Grani.
Grani didn't trust that for a second and checked herself, her heart thumping harder than it should have. The hallway lay empty, filled only with the low hum of the lights and the faint sound of their own breathing. She exhaled, shoulders dropping in relief.
They moved quickly, then halted in front of a door marked by a faded sign. Grani reached for the handle, hesitated, and leaned in, pressing her ear lightly against the surface.
An Uma Musume's hearing was sharper than a human's. Even the smallest sound wouldn't escape her notice.
There was no sound for a while.
Satisfied, she pushed the door open just enough for them to slip through.
After making sure there was no sound of anyone beyond the door, she pushed it open just enough for them to slip through.
The cool air outside hit them immediately.
Silver Tear straightened up, eyes bright, posture relaxing as if a switch had flipped.
"We did it." She said, clearly pleased.
"That really felt like a spy mission."
Grani closed the door carefully behind them, hands lingering on the handle for a moment longer than necessary. Only when it was fully shut did she let out a quiet sigh.
"This is not something I should be getting used to." She muttered, rubbing her temple.
"But you did great." Silver Tear replied, already walking ahead along the path. "Very reliable. Totally senpai-like."
"Praising me won't earn you any leeway. Remember that!" Grani said, turning away as she tried to maintain her composure. Still, the twitch of her ears and the gentle sway of her tail made her quiet satisfaction all too obvious.
Silver Tear just smirked but didn't say anything.
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Of course, no plan was ever perfect, no matter how carefully it was put together. And the flaw in the great escape of the Uma Musume Room 101 came in the form of a short, silver-haired Uma Musume with far too much free time.
Gold Ship. The creature herself.
She was in the same year as Agnes Tachyon, yet instead of joining her classmates for training or attending classes, Gold Ship had long decided those activities were far too boring to be trifled with.
Wandering around Tracen Academy in search of the seven Dragon Balls sounded much more worthwhile to her, even if no one else in her class seemed to have any idea what she meant. They simply couldn't keep up with her way of thinking, and she saw no reason to fault them for it.
Those peasants couldn't comprehend her superior mind, and she couldn't blame them.
By the time afternoon faded, her grand quest had yielded no Dragon Balls at all. What it did give her, however, was something far more intriguing. In the middle of her wandering, she noticed two figures slipping away with movements that were just a little too suspicious.
Gold Ship immediately dropped into a low crouch behind a nearby pillar, peeking out with one eye as she observed the pair, tail swishing with barely contained excitement.
At some point, she had produced a pair of glasses out of thin air and put them on. The oversized glasses perched low on her nose in what she clearly believed was a convincing disguise.
Her instincts of fun things flared up the moment she recognized the silhouettes ahead.
"Two Uma Musume." She muttered under her breath.
"Sneaking out at this hour." Her tail flicked sharply.
She closed her eyes, nodding slowly as if assembling invisible puzzle pieces and sounding very content with herself. "But that's exactly what they want you to think."
Gold Ship straightened, lifting one finger into the air, her stance suddenly rigid and unmistakably familiar. The wind blew dramatically, even though the corridor was completely still.
A dramatic gust of wind swept past her despite the corridor being completely still. It was an inexplicable phenomenon that might have made even the sharpest minds at Tracen Academy pause in confusion.
"There's always only one truth."
She held the pose, glasses catching the light, utterly convinced she had just reached an airtight conclusion despite not actually knowing what that conclusion was.
With a satisfied grin, Gold Ship slipped back into the shadows, ready to tail them further, certain that the mystery was already half solved simply because she had declared it so.
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A/N: Idk how to make Gold Ship sound more like... Gold Ship. Send help ASAP!