"And so, here we are at the answer to all of your questions."
"All of them?" Taiki Shuttle asked.
"Yup, all of them."
"I don't think you can answer every single question I have." Shakur told me.
"Well, when you split hairs like that, yeah. I might've gotten a little full of myself. But I've definitely found the truth behind what each of you asked me for. I think."
A meek voice spoke up before I could spiral into uncertainty.
"Is there salvation?"
"Yup, exactly that."
"Hurry up and get to the point, truthseeker." Gimlet ordered me. I don't know how much longer I can hold this back for."
"You're still holding onto your face?" Shakur asked her. "Why?"
"Because it must be covered."
"Then get another eyepatch."
"No, only that one will work."
"Just cover it with something else. Like some bandages or something?"
"No, that's an entirely different style."
"You just need it covered, you never said anything about an eyepatch in particular."
"Only eyepatches can fit someone like me."
"Hold on." Shakur looked like she was ready to object to that, but I just had to ask this question. "You don't have any others? Just that one eyepatch?"
"Of course."
"That sounds very bad for your health." Taiki told her with a completely neutral expression.
"...Ok, I'll admit it. I have a few of the same type. But I washed the rest just before the one I was wearing was stolen, so I can't use them right now."
"Just to be clear, it would probably be a good idea to thoroughly clean this one once you get it back. I don't think you'll be wearing an eyepatch for a while no matter what happens."
"It doesn't matter as long as this matter is finally put to rest."
"Well don't you think it'd at least be a good idea to relax your arm?"
"No."
She sounded annoyed.
I heard quiet mumbles of "...Meto…" from behind me, reminding me to stay focused.
"So, if you'd just follow me. It should be back by now."
"What should?"
Instead of answering I went around the corner, indicating for them to follow.
The black cat from earlier lay slightly ahead of us, resting. Near it was the eyepatch.
"Ah! So it was you!"
"Wait a minute and be a bit more quiet, I don't want to wake it yet."
"So what's the deal with this thing?"
"I'm just going to explain that. This cat is the answer to all three of your problems."
"First, let's start with definitions. The things that you are both looking for did not go missing, they were stolen. There's an important difference there. Well, everyone should know something like that, I shouldn't need to say it. But I guess there are two distinctions to be made here. When things go missing it's often the responsibility of the one who lost it. But for something to be stolen, that requires the involvement of a second party. And while things often go missing by accident, things aren't often stolen by accident."
"So what does all of that have to do with this?"
"Nothing really. It just felt right to start with something like that. I'll move on to the point. When I was going around asking about cats, some people mentioned that while they hadn't seen him they had seen others. This cat here is the one that came up the most when that happened, so I don't think it's that unreasonable to assume he lives around here. So let me present my theory. This cat is a stray that just moved into this academy. He's probably only a few months old at most. So with no one to depend on, of course he's eating whatever he can get. Though he must be a particularly bold one to consider stealing food directly from the kitchen."
"Then why did he steal my eyepatch?" Asked Gimlet. All I could do was shrug.
"I dunno, maybe he just felt like causing problems. I wouldn't expect a cat to have morals."
"So, what about Meto?"
Shakur was the one who asked me that, obviously naturally expecting the answer to the final mystery remaining.
I glanced at her, then the still fragile looking Doto.
At that moment, I wished more than anything that I could give an answer.
To be perfectly honest, I was drawing a blank. I'm pretty good with cats, but I'm definitely not a cat expert. Argh, what a mess. I thought I could work something out but I've really got nothing here.
I just called everyone over because it was the end of the day. It definitely had something to do with this other cat, but I couldn't say with any confidence what kind of relationship the two had.
"Hey, something's coming."
The most basic of all stock dramatic lines, delivered personally by Tanino Gimlet. True to her words, something was coming. Meto appeared on the other side of the alleyway we were staring down.
As he stepped closer, the smaller cat turned to face him. Both stopped completely, only staring at each other.
"Maybe he started acting like that because he was concerned about the other cat?" Doto finally sounded somewhat hopeful for once.
I did my best to give a "Mhm." that sounded somewhat affirming, as though I had known the answer the entire time, but still being careful not to sound like she was completely right. For some reason I had a foreboding feeling about the two.
Meto stepped closer. The other cat didn't move.
Meto took another step. The other cat turned its head. While no words were exchanged, not even a meow, it felt as though it was asking Meto whether he was approaching it.
Meto didn't say anything in response, but kept approaching.
Meto closed in. The other cat stared at him.
Meto continued closing in. The other cat kept staring at him.
Meto did not stop closing in. The other cat did not stop staring at him.
Meto approached. The other cat did not move.
An unstoppable force known as Meto and an immovable object that we didn't know the name of.
The tension reached its peak as the two cats stood next to each other.
"This is just like a cowboy showdown." Taiki Shuttle observed. I personally would've compared it to a duel between samurai, but maybe those two things were closer than I initially thought.
No matter what it was compared to, this was undeniably a tense showdown.
Finally, the smaller cat hissed.
Meto slapped it on the head.
The smaller cat tried hissing once more, only to get slapped once more.
It ran away at top speed.
With the duel over, Meto seemed to notice us and wandered over.
"Expecting a cat not to act like a cat was a bit too unrealistic." Observed Shakur.
Meto lept towards Doto, climbing up her shoulders. He seemed rather relieved.
"See, there it is." I tried my best to sound like I knew what I was talking about. "He was acting like that because he didn't like the other cat being around. With it gone, he's fine again. Probably."
And so, like that, the case was over.
Taiki and Gimlet both found out who stole from them, and the latter had her eyepatch returned. Shakur and Shakur's roommate had their cat returned to them.
And while I didn't hear anything about it until much later, that black cat did end up being adopted as the familiar of a local witch. Apparently.
"Happy endings are good, aren't they?"
While I did agree, I very definitely wasn't the one who said that. A voice that I couldn't see the origin of was at the very most a cause for concern and at the very best a guessing game.
The voice was definitely familiar. One that I'd heard often at my time at this academy. That wasn't to say it was the voice of someone that I'd talked to often, but simply someone that I'd heard speaking many times.
It was because it was so familiar and so distinctive that I dreaded turning around and checking my answers. Even so, I had to eventually.
"President."
Tracen Academy's student council president.
Japan's only undefeated triple crown.
The Emperor.
"How long were you there for?"
"The whole time."
Does that mean from when I was saying goodbye to everyone, or from when I gathered them all up? No, the whole time would've been when this day started, right?
Surely the student council president of a location of as much renown as Tracen Academy, even if she wasn't already busy with being the Emperor, would have better things to do than follow someone like me around all day. It wasn't as though I was doing anything interesting, it was all just wasting time looking for answers.
To be honest, I was afraid. Of being reprimanded for wasting time like this. If I were to be told that I wasn't able to win races because I spent my time on trifles like this instead of training, I had the feeling that I would immediately agree and give up forever.
"I have something important to discuss. Would you mind coming with me to the student council room?"
Ah, I see. A suspended sentence for me.
"No problem."
For some reason or another, I'd never found myself inside the student council room before this. It wasn't that unusual, I suppose.
As a completely normal student, I'd never been exceptional or terrible enough to find myself summoned to this room. I didn't have any special connections like Teio did that resulted in it being normal for me to hang out there, either.
I certainly wasn't a part of the student council myself, which gave me absolutely no reason to ever approach it.
I wasn't even sure who the members were. I knew the identities of the president and the vice president, because everyone knows. But the other members were a complete mystery to me.
Are the roles of a student council even fixed? I suppose I would have to go to every school in the country to work this out. If manga and anime had taught me anything, it's that other than the president and vice president there should always be a secretary, a treasurer and a general affairs manager.
What was the job of the general affairs manager, exactly? I'd never thought to question it before. The answer would obviously be general affairs, but I had not a single clue as to what fell under the category of general affairs.
Now that I think about it, isn't that Narita Brian part of the student council? I just can't picture her fitting into one of those rules? Maybe she's just there to be a monster? The student council might need a bouncer, after all.
Though if that was her job then she clearly wasn't doing it, since it was just I and Symboli Rudolf in that room. The sun was starting to set, illuminating the room in a soft crimson. Even if the sun hadn't been directly behind the president at that moment, I would've still probably found it difficult to look in her direction.
I scanned around, desperate for any other object of focus, but failed to find anything that caught my interest apart from the words written in English. I tried reading them, but found absolutely zero success.
This really was hopeless.
"So, you're going around solving mysteries?"
"Just about. That one wasn't really much of a mystery, you know? It was just cats being cats."
"Hmm, I did notice."
So she was there from the explanation, then? That's kind of unnerving.
"I suppose that to avoid something like this in the future, we'll have to warn all students about that cat. Maybe some kind of guide to all the cats that seem to live around the academy would be helpful.."
She paused for a few seconds, smirking at me.
"Yes, that's it. In order to inform everyone in the most efficient manner possible, we'll have no choice but to produce a cat-alogue."
Everything except my mind felt like it was frozen. The vibrations that reached my ears permeated through my head, eventually being processed as words.
It was impossible for me to quantify how long that process took, it was simply too quick. Slower than that but still comfortably within the realm of "too quick for me to keep track of" was the time spent understanding the pun.
At the moment I understood, I felt as though I was exploding.
The president's puns are dangerous. I'd known this for a long time, but at least before the only place I'd heard them in assemblies and other public situations.
For some reason, no one other than me seemed to get them. For the sake of not standing out, I was able to hold back there. I may have laughed at them privately later on, but no one had to know that.
But here, with only the two of us in this room, it was different.
It started as just a small chuckle.
I felt as though my body wasn't under my own control anymore, as though I were a puppet being pulled around by strings.
"Good. You seem a little more relaxed now."
And so, the strings of the puppet were cut.
"So is this about the detective thing? I'll get it out of the way so we don't have to drag this conversation out. I'm very sorry and I'll never even consider doing it again."
"Eh?"
"...What?"
"That wasn't what I was going to bring up at all. Why would you be apologising for that anyway?"
"Because it's a pointless waste of time, right? I thought that's how this was going to go."
"Why would it? All that you're doing is volunteering to help other students out with their problems."
"They're just small problems, it's not that big of a deal."
"But you still help them, don't you?"
"I think it'd be pretty much the same whether I get involved or not. You saw what happened there, right? Meto would've driven off the cat and gone back to normal eventually, whether they were there to see it or not. It's not like Taiki can get back what she lost, and Gimlet's eyepatch was so dirty after being dragged around that she's still going to be without one for a while. So I don't really think I helped with anything.
"Well, it's playing detective, right? So maybe saying helping isn't accurate. Detectives don't help people, they clear up mysteries. Something won't be undone even if the truth is known."
"I guess. But time like that would be better spent training, right?"
"Time spent resting is just as important. What students occupy themselves with in their free time is of no concern to us, provided that it's not against the rules and isn't detrimental to their training. If you were skipping training to play detective that'd be a problem, but that would be for your trainer to resolve. Which brings me back to what I wanted to discuss."
"Huh?"
Having placed all bets on the topic of discussion having been what I was just doing, I found myself slightly bewildered. Thinking rationally, I guess that her explanation made sense. The student council president of Tracen academy wouldn't have time to concern herself with a single student's behaviour.
Well, maybe she would for some of the more exceptional ones, but that would certainly never be me.
Wait, stop for a moment. Why is my trainer what's being discussed here?
"So, um, what is this about really?"
"Do you know how many members are required for a team?"
Ah. That.
"I don't know, what was it again?"
"Five."
It was helpful to know that it hadn't changed since the last time I'd checked. To be honest, I didn't need to continue talking past this point, I'd already gotten what the problem was. But I wasn't foolish enough to interrupt Symboli Rudolf of all people.
"There's some leniency for teams that have just been established or have had members recently leave, but your team is approaching the limit for that. If you can't acquire an additional member by the end of April, I'm afraid that Team Canopus will have to be closed down."
It wasn't anything that I hadn't known about, but it was still quite a shock to hear. It had hung over for me since the team had been formed as a distant threat, but it always seemed so distant.
I guess that believing that all things must end one day is one way of looking at things, but I don't think it's one that most people like to accept.
To say that I didn't want things to end was underselling it. The idea made me sick. The very notion was repulsive.
It should've gone without saying that the idea of Canopus being no more was too much for my mind to bear.
Especially when we hadn't even gotten close to beating Spica yet.
Denial was impossible. I couldn't exactly get angry. That fast-forwarded us to bargaining.
"Isn't there anything we can do to change that?"
"Recruiting new members this Spring would be the obvious solution, wouldn't it?."
Yes, the obvious solution. Not very applicable to our situation. For some reason, our number of members had been fixed since last year.
Not even one new student had been interested in joining us. We spent an entire week out there swinging our signs and didn't receive much more than a confused glance.
Harsh, I know. But what else could a newly formed team, without even a single member who had won any kind of G1, expect?
Basically, it was over. Sure, looking at it objectively, there was a chance. In the same sense that there's a chance of winning the lottery.
"Something… other than that."
"Hmm. Well, there are certain exceptions to the rules I just mentioned."
Yup, it was really over. We were definitely not an exception.
"So why did you decide to bring me here to say this, anyway? Hayakawa was the one who sorted out everything team-related before."
I would've liked to have some kind of leading question to rely on here, but that ask was completely genuine. Did she want to break it to me softly? I doubted it, which left me without even a single guess as to what to say.
"There are no specific guidelines on what counts as an exception to this rule. That means it could be anything, so long as it seems there is value in the team continuing to run. Do you understand?"
I didn't.
"Yes, sort of."
"If I, as a representative of the academy, were to make a request of you in the same way others have been doing, then that would allow Canopus to be counted as an exception for the time being."
Huh. Huh?
"Huh!?"
"It would be the same as what you've been doing until now, mostly. Just on a larger scale. I won't be so unreasonable as to impose a deadline, as mentioned earlier it would be a problem if it interfered with your training."
"No, wait. Before saying anything like that, what exactly is it that you want me to do? We should start with that, shouldn't we?"
"I suppose. What I want your assistance with is this. In the past year, three students have dropped out from this academy in similar circumstances."
She paused.
"All three were in the midst of their racing careers. All three were considered successful. And all three abruptly left this academy behind without any explanation as to why."
"So, they're missing?"
"No, they're not. I'm not asking you to find missing people, if they'd disappeared this would be the job of the police. I'm not asking you to convince them to return to the academy, that wouldn't be your responsibility. What I'm asking of you is the same as what you did today. I simply need the reason why."
"...But why me? I've been trying to tell you that I'm not really anything special."
"I can't do it."
"I… see."
If she couldn't do it, how was I meant to? Is what I thought to myself. The other thought occupying my mind was that this was a joke of some kind.
With the seemingly infinite time limit, this seemed more like an excuse to keep our team running.
So essentially, a joke.
But that raised the question of why the president would even bother with that.
She didn't have any reason to be that nice to us. A part of my mind suggested that maybe she at least thought that our rivalry with Spica was a healthy one that encouraged both parties to get stronger in order to not lose to the other.
The rest of my mind reminded it that there was no way she was delusional enough to see it like that.
Spica already had that sort of dynamic fully covered within their own group anyway.
So then did that mean she was genuinely asking this of me? Making this request with the hope that it would be fulfilled? Counting on me to solve an important problem?
I didn't know what to make of such a sentiment. All that I could think was that it was ridiculous.
No, it wasn't right to just call this ridiculous. This whole scene was. No, further back. From the very start, hasn't this all been far too absurd?
But when I looked back and considered it as such, I had a revelation. I really should've expected something like this.
I'd heard that hindsight is always 20/20, but this really convinced me of it. How could I have not seen something so unpredictable coming?
To be more specific, I couldn't have predicted this exact turn of events. But I really should have expected to be faced with a completely unexpected problem.
It was the third day of the year, after all.
(this is the end of the chapter the author's comment starts here)
And so it begins.
You might've already read my Uma Musume Danganronpa crossover which also had Nature as its protagonist, in which case you'll probably think this is familiar.
If you haven't, then maybe you're familiar with the concept of Nature being a detective anyway.
I was inspired in a dream to write the first story, then about an hour or so later I remembered the detective Nature episode of Umayon. In the time that I spent turning over that crossover story in my head I ended up having many more ideas, which caused that to mutate into the current story we have here.
So if you have the time to read it and the patience to put up with something that jumps so far away from what Uma Musume is meant to be about, I hope that you can enjoy this completely pointless fan work.
Hm? What's that you say? If this was inspired by that episode, then shouldn't this be more like Columbo?
I suppose that makes sense.
Anyway, I want to clarify that the team size rule is something that I completely made up for the sake of getting the ball rolling. But it does have its roots in something real, since in the first chapter of the main story of the game Hayakawa mentions team Sirius getting closed because it doesn't have enough members. Five horse girls seems like a plausible enough number to need and there's nothing that currently contradicts me.
I'm specifying currently because I'm at least ninety percent sure that Capella will completely contradict me once season three starts. My personal prediction is that everyone on the poster that isn't a Spica member will be a part of it. Unfortunately, that's still less than five.
I also feel it's possible that Sounds of Earth may not be part of any team and may just be there to hang out, which would make things even worse for this invention of mine.
I also recognise that it's entirely possible she could join Canopus because they were recruiting in the first anniversary pv and Canopus is a team for jobbers so if that is revealed less than two weeks after me publishing the first 3 chapters of a story meant to focus on Canopus I will most likely cut all of my fingers off and never return to the computer again. Or at least reference it in a snide way in the next chapter.
But moving on from that, in order to future proof it I'm just going to say now that if Capella has less than 5 members in season 3, they're an exception because of the backing of the Satono group.
For the other part of this chapter I feel the need to address, the mystery of Meto's disappearance was based off real cats that I know. The nicest and most affectionate cat that I personally know always completely switches up when she senses the presence of other cats nearby, which is a bit of a problem when she's one of three cats that lives on my street. There's also a secret fourth cat who doesn't live here but shows up almost every day.
Said secret fourth cat has a bell collar, so she usually hears him coming before I do. One time last year I was petting her before she abruptly scratched me and ran off, then about half a minute or so later I saw the cat with the bell collar. That was the basis for this chapter. It wouldn't make any sense to anyone who hasn't had the exact same experience I have, so don't feel bad if you didn't guess that could be the case.
Also the initial date I wanted to have this out by was the third of September, which was the same day that the Northern Lake posted about adopting a new kitten. So to be clear, as far as I know there is no animosity between that kitten and Meto that this chapter is a reference to, I based it off my own experiences.
If I'd made it to the original deadline it would've been a funny coincidence, but now it's just confusing. This section ages more poorly with every day I delay publishing this.
As a final tangent to tie together both "cats" and "season 3 of the anime", where is Sweep in the season 3 promotion? I'm getting a bit concerned at this point. You can't have Kita but no Sweep, it just doesn't seem feasible. She's already made her appearance in the anime, but she's nowhere in the trailers.
I saw people doomposting about the lack of Duramente but I'm a supergenius so I'm more worried about this instead. The lack of Bakushin is concerning but she at least showed up in her proper form in the first anniversary anime, I need my friends who are anime onlies to experience true Bakushin.
Rickey as well but she's the last priority here.
Alright, that's enough rambling. I'll probably stick to batches of chapters for this (since it's easier to not mess up the foreshadowing that way) so I don't know when the next one is dropping.
