Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A klaxon blared throughout the Sector C Bioengineering Section as the doors to Chem. Lab G-42/b burst open, revealing a rolling red cloud that quickly began to pour into the hallway, alongside several researchers who were scrambling to get away.

Behind them, in the middle of the chaos and clouds, stood the research associate who had caused this mess to begin with. With wild fervor, she noted down the results of her latest experiment, seemingly unconcerned with the turmoil around her.

Unfortunately, she was soon forced to divert her focus away from recording the fascinating behaviour of her newest work-in-progress combat stimulant as a security guard who had drawn the short straw and was hastily stuffed into a hazmat suit to go and get her, tried to catch her attention.

“Miss Tachyon, you really ‘oughta get out of there. Probably isn’t a good idea to stay in uh.”  he motioned towards the thick red clouds that surrounded her, “Well, that stuff.”

Her head shot up from her clipboard, red eyes, wide and manic, focused themselves on the interloper that dared to interrupt her Very Important Research. The guard (She hadn’t really bothered to learn the names of the security personnel) flinched slightly under her sudden gaze.

She considered the guard’s warning for a second before suddenly bursting into a small fit of laughter. Much to the bewilderment and horror of the man sent to retrieve her.

Catching herself somewhat, she began to explain herself.

“Ahhh, your concern is appreciated, I suppose, but utterly unwarranted. You see, there is nothing even potentially dangerous about this reaction or its gaseous byproducts!” To prove her point, she took in a deep breath of a stray red cloud floating by.

“See? Perfectly fine, well, according to my simulations at least,” she mumbled more to herself than him before returning her attention to her clipboard to note down more Very Important Research data.

But the guard continued to pester her, despite being thoroughly unnerved at this point. “Well, that’s…Nice, but you should really get outta’ there still before-”. 

The continued disruption of her experiment began to grate on her.
“Are you perhaps deaf? It. Is. Fine! Now leave me to my work, I can’t waste more time on your baseless conce-” 

Tachyon’s attempt to dismiss the security guard was interrupted, not by him, but by the sprinkler system above her, which suddenly decided to douse the room in a chemical neutralizing agent, which was closely followed by the fume hood going into overdrive and sucking most of the clouds away.

”Chemical. Hazard. In. Sector. C. Biological. Engineering. Laboratory. Decontainment. Measures. Active. Clear. Area. And. Await. Cleanup. Team”

The announcement system helpfully informed her as she stood drenched over the now unusable remains of her experiment.

Agnes Tachyon left Lab G-42/b and the Bioengineering Section with a disappointed look on her face. The source of her awful mood wasn’t, of course, the abysmal state of her ruffled and stained clothing or the reprimand that she expected to receive soon, but the destruction of her Very Important Research.
After being given the all-clear to leave by the previously summoned cleanup team. She walked past a group of her labmates, some of whom sent her sideways glances, which she tactfully decided not to care about.

Just out of sight now, she began to limp awkwardly, taking care not to put any unnecessary pressure on her right foot as she made her way to the nearest locker room. The pain usually came in waves; on days like this, it was almost unbearable when she wasn't focused on her research. But now that she was ripped out of focus, there was nothing to distract her from it.

She endured it while making her way through the labyrinthine steel corridors of Sector C, before finally arriving at the women’s locker room. The door slid open, revealing her target: A bench.

She winced as she lowered herself down. Now, finally rid of the pain, she sighed while staring into the air.
‘So, Pain Blocker-Θ has revealed itself to be a disappointment as well, then. An unfortunate result, especially since Experiment 21-1 is about to enter its critical phase today…”

In monotonous, practiced fashion, Tachyon quickly rolled up her pants and began to replace the bandaging around her right leg; the old gauze, stained with a sickly green substance, was promptly disposed of. Before she fastened on the replacement, she first applied a minor painkilling ointment, an older and less experimental concoction of hers, to hopefully lessen the burden for the rest of the day.

With some difficulty, she changed into a fresh set of mostly company policy-compliant clothing, another minor annoyance with her work here. She was never one to pay much attention to fashion, but she did have a certain amount of respect for a decent tie, which the black and red abomination she had just tightened around her neck was decidedly not. At least her lab coat retained a comfortable sleeve length, a result of modifying the truth while filling out size forms with the requisitions department, a small victory for her peculiar sensibilities, but a victory nonetheless. 

Just as she finished up, the announcement system made itself known once again.

“Research Associate. Agnes. Tachyon. Report To. Anomalous. Materials. Operations. Center.”
A smile began to return to her face, “Almost as planned, then, this will be a crucial moment for my research!” She exclaimed with bubbling excitement while she shot up from her bench. After a quick stop to let her foot adjust itself to the weight, she began to hobble towards her next experiment.

‘First, some refreshments, though, I need to be in top condition for this.’

—----

The Operations Center was abuzz as the Anomalous Materials Laboratory underwent its final preparations for an experiment of unprecedented size. Amidst the chaos sat the ever-grumpy Doctor Richard Keller, who directed his staff of pocket-protected scientists like a general before battle.

Unfortunately for Doctor Keller, the stress of managing such an operation was aggravated by certain members of his staff possessing a limitless penchant for causing trouble. The newest such problem-causer being none other than-

Agnes Tachyon quietly entered the control room and made her way to Doctor Keller. She leaned to her left side while supporting herself on one of the consoles in the room with a wide and confident smile on her face. Doctor Keller, who was busily berating someone over the comms system, did not notice this.

“- and I need not remind you of the mess we’re all going to be in if we have to delay because of that, now, do I, Doctor Birdwell? Get the Interchange active before we move into final standby, regardless of what standard procedure says!” He slammed the receiver into the console and began to massage his temples, hoping for even a second of relief on this taxing morning.

What a perfect time to make her move, Tachyon decided while leaning forward. “Sounds like things aren’t going optimally, Doctor Keller.” Her slightly mocking voice caught Keller off guard, who quickly flinched as he swiveled around.

“Guh!--ooohhh It’s you…” He coughed and straightened himself upright. With his composure regained, he began to speak.

”Well, Miss Tachyon, glad you have decided to finally make an appearance.” 

“The inefficient hallway layout and frequent security system mishaps in this sector must have held me up. You really ought to look into that, you know?” She excuses herself in a light and airy tone while continuing to smile down at her superior.

Doctor Keller drove his chair backwards a bit, reclaiming some of his personal space, and eyed a thermos can sticking out of her oversized lab coat with some suspicion in regards to her delayed appearance, but ultimately decided to ignore it.

“Yes… Yes… This morning is just filled with mishaps, isn’t it? Including certain events that occurred in the Bioengineering Section earlier this morning. Speaking of which, you might be able to guess why I called you here.”

She pretended to think for a moment, “It is true that today’s exaggerated response to my research did cause somewhat of a stir. I suppose you wish to hear and criticize my methodology for that experiment?”

“Doctor Bennett preferred to call it a ‘miniaturized catastrophe’, rather than ‘stir’ when he gave his account. But what I actually wanted to address here is the bigger picture.”

She raised a single eyebrow, almost as a challenge, and asked, “Oh? And whatever could you mean by that, Doctor Keller?”

The man raised his voice slightly in response, “26! That is how many notable reported incidents you have caused within the last month of your employment here, all of which fall back to me to deal with!”
He took a breath deep before continuing, “That kind of track record is quite the embarrassment for this Sector, as it should be for you!”

As his reprimand began to move into the territory of a rant, so did his talking pace quicken.

“But of course you don’t seem to mind, do you? And why should you? I have had some conversations with the administration about possible remedial actions recently, and it seems like the same benefactors that managed to place you in a research team without a doctorate-” the seething tone with which he said that part was enough to surprise even Tachyon, “-have also seemingly conspired to shield you from any actual foreseeable consequences.”

Exhausted from his little outburst, he slumped back in his wheelchair before looking back up at the source of his current frustration.

Tachyon’s smile, meanwhile, remained perfectly serene.

“Just- Just what is it exactly that can be done with you? Because I am at a loss on what to do at this point.” Frustration and a hint of defeat had now seeped into his voice.

“I realise that my methods for obtaining data are perhaps not wholly aligned with your definition of “safe-” she added finger quotes to that last word, treating it like a foreign substance, “-but they are undeniably effective in generating results, no? I was hired to improve the H.E.V. Suit, and that I did! My combat stimulants have improved the performance metrics of even an untrained scientist to military levels! The mechanical engineering team is still in wonder over the kinematic optimizations I made to the joints! The possibilities of the morphine derivative I was testing this morning alone are so tantalizing! so beautiful! A new limit to be breached! Surely you can see the value in that?”

Her eyes were once more wide and manic, and focused intently on something seemingly far behind one unimpressed Doctor Keller, who, at this point, had gotten accustomed to these disturbing ravings of hers. She shook herself a little as she snapped out of her episode. She made a mental note to investigate these outbursts at some point; they had been intensifying ever since she started working here.

A moment of silence stretched between them as she leaned back, now in a more reserved and commanding tone, she amended, “I can not limit my research for your little safety concerns. I would need a new source of data to amend the tremendous loss inflicted by respecting the confines of procedures and protocols.”

That last part caught his attention. Doctor Keller looked at her with suspicion, though also with the slightest bit of hope. Surely it couldn’t be easy? Cautiously, he asked. “New data? Elaborate.”

Agnes Tachyon ginned while raising a finger upwards. “I require, at a minimum, at least an hour a week of unrestricted time inside an H.E.V. suit. My current limited access is insufficient to pursue multiple ambitious projects of mine, you see.” She steeled herself for what she was about to promise. “In exchange, I will adjust my experiments to cause a statistically significant reduction of incidents that would incur administrative, reputational, and or financial difficulty!”

Her offer sent Doctor Keller into a contemplative silence. ”We would be down a suit for months if these tests of yours damage one; their high cost and Lambda’s tendency to get priority access to any new unit coming out of manufacturing make the waiting list a nightmare”.
He repeatedly squeezed the armrest of his chair as his mind struggled with the decision. Tachyon continues to stare at him with a taunting smile; the console reminds him of how little time he has left to get the Anti-Mass Spectrometer into shape.

He folds.

“Fine, an hour, under the supervision of at least 2 trained H.E.V. suit operators. There’s a hazard course decathlon scheduled for this evening, perhaps after that? Talk to Doctor Cross and Green, or even that boy Freeman, if you insist.”

Her smile managed to grow even wider, with excitement in her eyes. She slowly stopped leaning on the console and turned around. “Very well! Oh, the limits I will breach. I can hardly wait!” She laughed as she left the Control Room.

Doctor Keller stared at the ceiling for a moment. He wondered if all Uma Musume are that difficult to deal with in academia; he rarely saw any during his college days, and there were even fewer of them here in this facility.

A shrill alert woke him from his idle musings while his console lit up with a security alert from the reception area. Though it stopped as quickly as it had started. The voice of the receptionist guard follows soon after.

“Ah, apologies about that, sir. Freeman just came in, pressed the alert button, and ran off just like that. I uh- guess he should be in the chamber soon?”

Doctor Keller simply stared at the console for a moment before sighing.
This was going to be a long day.

—

For her part, Agnes Tachyon couldn’t be happier as she slowly walked out of the Anomalous Materials Operation Center, sipping sickeningly sweet tea from her thermos can all the while. She passed through the airlock towards the interior of Sector C, while her head was up in the clouds.

Her psychological experiment on using environmental stress factors to influence the decision-making of a human had been a stunning success! And the fruits of her research couldn’t be more rewarding.
Her mind raced with all the new possibilities that her extended access to the suit has given her. The power of an uma musume combined with the best research the military industrial complex could pay for. Unstoppable! Unbeatable! Almost Unquantifiable! 

Her walking picks up in speed, the promise of unleashing her theories onto the Mark IV H.E.V. blinds her to the throbbing in her leg as she heads back to her main laboratory in Sector C.
But truthfully, none of that was why she had decided to go through with the plan. The real reason was something far more personal and, she had to admit, emotional. 

It was to quench a certain thirst to run. A desire that had been burning in her without release for many months now. Her initial hiatus in the wake of the Satsuki Sho had been different; At the time, she managed to simply dismiss her feelings towards the prospect of having someone else run in her stead as an unimportant variable, until she was overwhelmed while watching Pokke-kun during the Japanese Derby. 

Now though? It was almost unbearable; she found it hard to focus at times, and the desire to finally break out into a sprint again was always in the back of her mind. She couldn’t let that desire distract her from research, and that’s where the suit came in. It might not be the same as unassisted running, especially since it lacked some of the psychological stressors of real racing, but it might just be enough to calm her mind, to help her focus on her true goal in this facility.

She could hardly wait for the evening decathlon; there were preparations to be made, of course, variables to be adjusted, assistants to be recruited, and theories to be double checked. But her largest obstacle had just been cleared. 

Today was going to be a glorious day.

Chapter Text

The cheering of the crowd and the excited voice of a commentator blared inside a long defunct classroom of Tracen Academy.

In the midst of haphazardly stuffed boxes, forgotten experiments, and miscellaneous trash sat a girl, curled up on an office chair, listlessly staring ahead towards her screen.

“Symboli Kris on the outside, going for the top spot in the final stretch! She’s on the move, closing and closing! Her competition is spread wide, plenty of space to overtake! Here she comes! Symboli Kris gets it done! Into first! Symboli Kris is in the lead for the Arima Kinen! Passing the finish line, Symboli Kris takes it home!”

She was barely paying attention to the race at this point. None of the runners had displayed the potential to go past the limits of Umamusume that most took for granted, certainly no one worthy of carrying on with the sheer natural power that Pokke-kun once displayed, who had just crossed the finish line on the screen, in distant seventh place.

The camera zoomed in on the winner, and the crowds cheered her on, drowning the room with the transmitted sounds of celebration. Junk data, she shut the TV off with a quick motion. Within the comforting ambiance of her makeshift laboratory, she continued to stare ahead in contemplation while a breeze began to pick up through the window.

She should be hatching plans to inspire the next era of runners to push beyond their potential, towards something that her own legs had failed to take her to with a crushing finality. But the prospect of merely seeing someone reach that place wasn’t acceptable anymore. She had long admitted this to herself, but until today, she still maintained at least the facade of caring for Plan B. Yet the hollowness during her observation had made it clear there wasn’t any point in continuing that act either. Every successful research endeavor requires an appropriate level of investment, which she simply was not able to summon forth anymore. A waste of time then.

She opened her laptop and booted up her biometric monitoring program. Charts and graphs plastered her screen. In combination with her knowledge, they painted a comprehensive overview of her own body’s physiology. She navigated through options and windows until the familiar readouts for her leg appeared.

Microfracture recovery rates, muscle thickness, mean performance, echo intensity, and more. All displayed elegantly and efficiently in columns and rows, week by week, day by day. Much of her racing career had been spent studying every aspect of these accursed muscles, fibers, and bones while she was playing a balancing act of maximizing her race performance without slipping over the edge of permanent injury.

Now that she had fallen past that point, she spent even more time studying this window each day. Every new desperate method for recovery had to be analyzed and eventually discarded like the rest. Today was no different. She had performed the usual measurements on herself just before she began observing the Arima Kinen and would have to sift through that data now.

Her gaze flew over the figures on screen with the expectation of the usual disappointing results already firmly in her mind.

But instead, her eyes widened slightly, and she began to lean forward a little. She struggled to process what she was seeing. She began to breathe rapidly, eyes the size of saucers now. In a frenzy, she began to dive through the chaotic sea of folders and boxes that piled around her desk.

Naturally, she remembered the exact spot where she had left it, the disorganized piles served as an effective enough system for her, despite what others might think.

She promptly retrieved a black case from behind a small vat of questionably legal chemicals. She opened it, revealing a single vial with a thick yellowish-green liquid inside.

If her measurements were accurate, and she was sure that they were. Then this mysterious substance had, somehow, achieved an unprecedented recovery effect within the immediate area in which she injected it.

She knew very little about the vial or its origin, much less what the substance itself was supposed to be. Despite her best efforts to determine its properties, every method of analysis that she had access to delivered inconclusive or contradictory results.

The case appeared on her desk just last week, without explanation of how it had gotten there or who had sent it. Her reckless curiosity eventually got the better of her, and she had injected herself with some just yesterday, perhaps not the safest course of action, but the risk had certainly paid off. She studied the remaining liquid within the vial. Not much of it was left at all, barely enough to run any experiments with. She needed more, much more. Whatever it was inside that vial had suddenly revealed itself to be her best chance to recover from her injuries.

She must pursue this avenue of research at all costs.

But how?

Without a single clue to go of off, she was left with very little to track down the source of the mysterious substance. She began to evaluate options and drafted up potential courses of action. Maybe she could blackmail someone from the Tracen administration to uncover who delivered it? They still owed her for that one time she produced a truth serum for them to uncover indecent Trainer-Trainee relationships. Though given the fact that her own personal video surveillance inside her lab inconvenitently failed at just the time when the delivery occurred, she couldn’t help but think that nobody else on campus would have had more luck in the matter…Perhaps-

Her scheming screeched to a halt as her laboratory fell into utter silence. Something felt deeply wrong. The breeze through the window had stopped in an instant. The soft whirl of her laptop was no more, yet the screen remained lit. Not even the ever-present sound of her lab equipment could be heard.

The air was heavy.

There was something to her right, near the entrance to the room. She hadn’t seen it, but she felt that it was there. A presence, anathematic towards normality itself, burned itself in her mind.

She turned to her side and was alarmed to discover that there was indeed something, or rather someone, inside the room with her

.

A man stood stiffly between several towers of discarded cardboard. He wore a light blue, had the appearance of a middle-aged foreigner, carried a briefcase, and looked straight at her with eyes that, perhaps due to a trick of the light, almost seemed to glow.

She was transfixed. She felt he was appraising her, almost funny, since it was usually her who did that to people. But her desire for information outweighed everything else, so despite the deep-seated feeling of unease that filled every corner of her being, she began to speak.

“And who might you be? You could almost pass for a trainer, but I don’t think that’s quite right. Security isn’t too fond of trespassers, you know?”

The man took in a sharp breath.

“There will be no need for that… I have come here merely to offer something.” Despite a lack of accent, it seemed almost as if speaking Japanese, or perhaps any language for that matter, was a laborious or even alien process for him.

“An offer of what kind? I assume I would be providing something in return,” she said in reply.

“I require a set of talents. Talents that you have displayed under observation. There is a certain number of… holes that need filling. Despite some objections from my employers, I have come to believe you to be a suitable candidate to do just that. And as for what I can give in return. Well, I am sure you will find it to be more than adequate.”

He motions towards her desk.

She looked down only to see a thick set of documents had appeared there, alongside a vial of what appeared to be the same miracle substance.

“I trust you will make the correct… choice. Agnes Tachyon”

When she turned back to look at the man. She found him to have disappeared as quickly as he had come. Her gaze stayed fixed on where he had been just a moment ago, until a gust of wind knocked her out of her stupor.

She returned her attention to the seemingly conjured items on her desk, tucking the fresh vial into a secure storage space before picking up the set of documents. A cursory glance revealed them to be nothing less than a fully fleshed-out employment contract. A bit mundane after what that man, if it even was one, had just pulled on her.

She recognized the logo and name, Black Mesa. An American research facility, if she recalled, which dealt with a wide breadth of different fields. She once tried to order some materials from them for a more out-there experiment of hers, but was unceremoniously rebuffed at the time. What did they want with her now, all of a sudden? Did that man, or thing, even work for them?

She began to read through the contract in detail. While the minute detail of the regulation for paid time off was fascinating in its own right, what stood out were several mentions of her access and work with “Unidentified Substances and Chemicals” over the course of work, should she choose to accept the job.

Could that be it? It certainly wasn’t out of the question that a research titan such as Black Mesa could be the source of the wondrous green liquid. She would get a regular supply to test with! She only needed to sign in a couple of spots. Then she would leave behind Japan for a while, which wouldn’t be too difficult, move to, where was it again? She rummaged through the document… Oh, New Mexico, well…They’ll surely have air conditioning, so even that won’t be a problem. Neither would her family be too upset with it. They might even welcome it. If their eccentric and “anti-social” daughter moved away from the public light for a while, it would surely help their reputation as a racing family to let the incident at the Tenno Sho fade out of memory.

Would anyone in Tracen mind if she left for a while? If all went to plan and she developed a permanent cure for her leg, then she would be back anyway at some point, so it couldn’t be too bad. Manhattan Cafe and Jungle Pocket might take it badly, but perhaps some distance would even do them some good. Especially, Pokke-kun had been… erratic as of late

The rewards far outweighed the costs here. The mere prospect of a cure had reemboldened her with a sense of optimism that she hadn’t felt in months. Impulsively, she picked up the nearest pen and began to place signatures and information everywhere that the documents demanded them at, sometimes in triplicate. By the end of the day, she had worked through every page and placed the entire block inside an envelope, ready to be sent once it was time.

Over the following days. Her actions across the campus drew many questions as she began her final preparations to move. Resignation letters were written, experiments that would never be finished now were disposed of, and rumors quickly started to circulate, but she had even less reason to care about them than usual.

Soon enough, she would enter a different world, one of science and industry, and from it, she would be born again.

To live up to her name as the superluminal particle, theorized to go even faster than the unbreakable speed of light.

Agnes Tachyon dared to hope.