On a Pale Horse (Umamusume/Youjo Senki)

[Tonyloco]

The Silver Standard​

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I love the title, Tanya has the potential to become the fearsome Middle/Final boss of every new racer calling her the silver standard feels a lot heavier if she becomes like the final test/hurdle that differentiates the great runners from the legends.

I can easily imagine having a reputation of only being beaten by the truly great, she would either be always gold or silver, with many opponents breaking before her.
she could be the test of temperament and discipline of many.

The pale horse who never seems to tire, relentless in her own way if you are trying to catch up to her, but even worse if you are ahead of her, feeling the pressure and the burden of having her just right behind you pushing you little by little to either a victory or a breakdown.

You would probably have racers having their best recorded racing times against her by pressure alone, with only a few of them managing to endure and win.

I wonder if anyone will ever find out the truth about her, she isn't a race horse, she's a warhorse one who used to carry heavy armored riders, used to charge with a heavy burden without the choice to stop or slowdown, since that would most likely mean death.

I feel like that the kind of story that Umamusume fans would love.

 

[TheSmallSauce]

Eh ...a better comparison imo would be Agnes Tachyon and Jungle Pockets one sided rivalry on the latters part.

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Yeah, I suppose that is a more accurate comparison based on what's written. I haven't watched the Beginning of a New Era movie, so while I know that Pokke wins the Tokyo Yushun, I don't know how she eventually ends up overcoming her mental block of Tachyon. But based on what I have seen, she does overcome it and her rivalry could generally be considered a good thing that pushed her to do better. I don't know if the feeling got through or if I stopped too short, but I wanted to convey that Merry wouldn't ever get over the loss and that she was taking all the wrong lessons from it.

Spoiler: Bit with Merry's teammate

Vivid View rubbed the sleep out of her eyes as she sat up in her bed, roused by the sound of her roommate hunched over her desk, scratching away at her notebook.

"Merry—" she yawned while fumbling for her alarm clock. "What time is it even...?"

"Seven."

She rubbed her eyes again, just to make sure she wasn't seeing things. "No, I'm pretty sure this says it's four in the morning."

"She beat me by seven lengths."

Vivid View sighed. This again.

"Listen Merry, nobody wins every race, alright? Come on, let's go back to sleep and you can worry about it when you're thinking straight." She got up to see what her teammate was writing.

The notebook pages were crammed edge to edge with split times, lane positions, stride counts, and hastily drawn track diagrams. Margins were crowded with recalculated scenarios, sections crossed out and rewritten until the paper had begun to fray. Across the newest page, underlined so hard the pencil had nearly torn through it, was written only one thing.

Seven Lengths.

"Oh, Merry…"

She lowered herself onto the chair beside Merry. Up close, the damage was harder to ignore. The skin beneath Merry's eyes had darkened into shadows, and her grip on the pencil trembled each time it touched the page. She reached forward and turned back through the notebook. Two pages earlier was Merry's own win from last week.

The page was nearly blank.

Only the finishing time had been written down, small and neat in one corner, as if it belonged to somebody else.

Vivid View looked back at the fresh page, where Seven Lengths gouged itself into the paper.

"Merry… you won your last race."

"It didn't matter."

The answer came at once, flat and certain.

"You still won."

"She wasn't in it."

Merry finally lifted her head. Her eyes were red from strain, but steady in a way that unsettled her more than tears would have.

"If she's not there, what exactly did I win?"

I think if I added some more bits that showed her self destructive behavior, it would have come across clearer.

 

[ScarredPunLover]

Merry and Vivid

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My, my! Such wonderful work, and definitely not a perspective I'd considered. Honestly, I wonder if we'd see some racers come to loathe Shiro because of the way their teammates start to obsess over her, because of the despair she brings them to. The lingering effects of being so near to the bird of prey, leaving her a permanent fixture in their heads.

… I'm imagining a Racer who once had a fierce rival- but said rival starts to fall apart and/or give all their focus to Shiro, and thus leaving the racer behind. You can play into it as a shipping thing or jokes about relationships in general, though I think there's more fun to be had in the racer watching their rival fall apart, self-destructing slowly but surely, "because" of Orzel.

 

[TheSmallSauce]

… I'm imagining a Racer who once had a fierce rival- but said rival starts to fall apart and/or give all their focus to Shiro, and thus leaving the racer behind. You can play into it as a shipping thing or jokes about relationships in general, though I think there's more fun to be had in the racer watching their rival fall apart, self-destructing slowly but surely, "because" of Orzel.

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Man that's evil. Hyakuemu immediately came to mind when you mentioned the rival falling apart, specifically the scene where Togashi loses his mind. Actually, looking at it again, that's almost exactly how Merry might breakdown too.

I can also imagine how she starts to replace her rival.

Spoiler: Rival bit

"Merry." Legadonia's gaze lifted as her rival came into view.(Is this name too much? But it sounds like a racehorse name, kinda like Regaleira.) "It has been some time since you last came to practice. Have you been unwell?"

Merry looked preoccupied, her attention fixed on something Legadonia could not see. She noted it as something to bring up to her trainer at a later date, as distractions were dangerous on the track, though for now there were more pressing matters at hand. They had a score to settle.

"Shall we race?"

Merry walked straight past her, muttering under her breath the entire time. That was unusual. Merry was not the type to refuse a challenge, especially not from her. Legadonia hesitated only briefly before, against etiquette, she turned and followed her rival. They walked for a while before she finally spoke up, unable to hold her curiosity any longer.

"My rival, if I may be so presumptuous, but who or what are you looking for?"

That was enough to make her stop.

Merry had brought them to the river a short distance south of the campus. From where Legadonia stood, she could see a pale-haired uma on the opposite embankment performing what she could only assume was an extreme variation on the sprint drills her own trainer had introduced recently. Something about endurance for poor weather, she mused.

"Shirogane-san, then?"

"I need to observe her training."

"Truly?" Legadonia did not think there was much to be gained there, her rival's style was too different. Still, it was possible she was overlooking something. "I confess I do not see what could be gained that could not be gained by racing me instead."

"I've beaten you before," Merry replied immediately, almost absentmindedly.

That drew a faint huff from Legadonia. A statement of that sort was imprecise, and therefore improper. Their record was even, hardly a matter of being beaten, but she would let it pass.

Merry continued after a while, still looking away. "But I can't catch her."

Across the water, Shirogane maintained her pace without the slightest hint of fatigue.

"That's all there is to it."

Yeah okay, Legadonia is probably a bit too on the nose. Still I maintain that it sounds like a racehorse name, like Regaleira or Calandagan!

 

[Wild Transient]

I haven't watched the Beginning of a New Era movie, so while I know that Pokke wins the Tokyo Yushun, I don't know how she eventually ends up overcoming her mental block of Tachyon.

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Watch it when you have time.Its awesome.

 

[TheSmallSauce]

… I'm imagining a Racer who once had a fierce rival- but said rival starts to fall apart and/or give all their focus to Shiro, and thus leaving the racer behind. You can play into it as a shipping thing or jokes about relationships in general, though I think there's more fun to be had in the racer watching their rival fall apart, self-destructing slowly but surely, "because" of Orzel.

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Your evil idea gave me an evil plot bunny that I couldn't stop thinking about all day. I have no choice but to write it all and make Merry and Legadonia (I'm keeping this dumb, cool name) suffer even more.