Because Tamamo Cross spaced out, her HP dropped hard. She managed to claw it back for a moment, but as the stages ramped up in difficulty, she was the first one eliminated.
"Gah!!"
Watching her character get chomp-chomp-chomped by a T-rex, Tamamo let out a strangled yelp.
Oguri Cap didn't last much longer either—one dinosaur lunged straight into her face, and she was out.
"…I died," she said flatly.
Takayama Gamu lowered the gun.
With both teammates gone, he finally followed in Tamamo's footsteps and got chomp-chomp-chomped by some unknown dinosaur.
"So—what do you want to play next?" he asked.
He liked that shooter a lot, but he'd brought his two trainees out to have fun. He couldn't just play what he wanted and ignore them.
"A dance machine?" Gamu tilted his head.
A small horse girl was on the dance platform nearby, moving with the music—stepping cleanly onto each arrow with perfect timing.
Gamu suddenly realized something: he'd never actually seen Tamamo or Oguri dance.
"Want to try it?" he asked.
Both of them clearly looked interested.
The small horse girl finished her routine and stood there, breathing lightly. Her tea-brown hair looked immaculately cared for, and the white square marking on her forehead glittered like a diamond.
…Do horse girls just really like dyeing their hair?
Gamu had the thought, then shook it off.
He stopped wasting time on questions that didn't matter, and after getting an enthusiastic yes from his two trainees, he walked over.
"Hi. Can we use this together?"
"Oh, sure."
The small horse girl politely stepped aside—then turned and saw Gamu's face.
She froze.
"E-excuse me… are you Mr. Takayama Gamu?!"
Her tiny body started trembling uncontrollably. She rushed forward and grabbed his hand.
She wasn't fully developed yet, so her strength wasn't that far beyond a normal person's—but Gamu still didn't try to shake her off, worried he might hurt her.
From her hand, he felt something scorching hot—like pure, burning intensity.
"I'm your fan!" she blurted.
Satono Diamond was practically vibrating with excitement.
...
"Did it fail again?"
"It's like fate itself…"
"The Satono family's misfortune…"
Satono—a surname wrapped in bad luck.
But the bitter fruit of that misfortune wasn't poverty.
It wasn't illness.
It was something like a curse twisted around the legs of the family's horse girls—an unavoidable destiny they couldn't shake.
Even now, Satono Diamond could still remember the first time she sat at a computer and typed the word "fate" into a search bar.
She remembered her father, usually quiet and expressionless, wearing a grief so heavy it wouldn't fade—back when she ran for the first time.
"May you one day break free from the Satono family's misfortune, and shine like a diamond… Satono Diamond."
Top-tier training facilities.
Experienced trainers.
As a famous horse-girl racing family in Japan, the Satonos provided their own with training conditions that didn't lose to any other household.
And yet—
"Not a single Satono horse girl has ever won a G1."
No matter how they trained.
No matter how desperately they ran.
Once they stepped onto the turf of a G1-grade stakes race, Satono horse girls would always—always—lose by a hair, for some reason or another.
It never changed.
Generation after generation.
And at some point, among Japan's racing families, a phrase began circulating:
"The Satono family's misfortune."
It spread and spread, and no one ever disproved it—until it started to feel like there truly was something called "fate," anchoring a future where a Satono horse girl could never win a G1.
But Satono Diamond refused to accept that future.
There is no such thing as destiny carved in stone.
Bad luck, curses—whatever.
If the Satono horse girls of the past lost to something like that…
Then I'll be the one who wins anyway.
Slowly, seriously, she searched through everything she could find about "fate," "destiny," "the future," and anything adjacent—
until she stopped on a science program.
On the screen, a young man spoke with absolute certainty:
"The future can be changed."
He was the greatest genius born in the past decade.
He was the Alchemy Star.
He was—
"Ta… ka… ya… ma… Ga… mu."
Satono Diamond spoke the name one syllable at a time, pressing both hands to her chest.
"The future can be changed."
Now, in the present, Takayama Gamu repeated those words—speaking to Satono Diamond, who stood in front of him with a bright, energetic smile.
She was filming him with a digital camera she'd produced from who-knew-where.
"Is that enough?" Gamu asked.
"Yes! Thank you—I recorded it!"
"I didn't think I'd have fans in this world too…" Gamu scratched his head.
Back on his original Earth, once his identity as Gaia Ultraman got exposed, he'd basically become a global celebrity—and it had caused him a mountain of trouble.
But here, he was just a normal scientist.
Or so he thought.
"Big brother Gamu is actually really famous," Satono Diamond said.
"Big brother… Gamu?"
"Can I call you that?" She made an unbearably cute face.
"…Sure, I guess."
Gamu instinctively turned his head.
Behind him, Oguri and Tamamo were battling the dance machine together.
For some reason, Tamamo's steps had become an absolute disaster.
Just now… it felt like something dangerous flashed through the air for a split second.
Gamu frowned slightly.
Something was off.
"If you pay even a little attention to tech development," Satono Diamond continued, "Big brother Gamu is super famous."
She leaned closer—she was even shorter than Tamamo, barely reaching his chest.
If he died right now, she thought, he'd instantly become the next Einstein—synonymous with "genius."
"But I'm not a scientist anymore," Gamu said casually. "Being famous doesn't really matter to me."
"I'm a trainer now."
I already knew that, Satono Diamond thought.
She kept a flawless smile—then, without leaving a trace, glanced past him at the two gray-haired horse girls struggling against the dance platform.
I'll become Gamu's trainee too.
Satono Diamond didn't believe in "fate."
But she was completely certain that Takayama Gamu was the trainer she was meant to find.
That pulse in her chest—that quiet, insistent thrill—had been there since the moment she learned he'd come to Tracen.
"Big brother Gamu…"
"Hm?" Gamu turned back from watching Tamamo and Oguri dance.
"Thank you… for telling me the future can be changed."
"…Huh?" Gamu blinked, utterly confused.
"What are you talking about?"
.....
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