Today, Oguri Cap asked Dyna for the day off. Slinging her bag over one shoulder, she skipped class entirely and, once the sun had fully risen, made her way to Wada's training room.
With a horse girl's keen hearing, she could clearly catch the sound of Wada inside, laying out Kireijun's final rehabilitation training plan. At last, she took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
This seemed to be the first time Oguri Cap had ever knocked on another trainer's door for the sake of a different horse girl.
Wada, who had been wiping down the whiteboard, heard the knock. Opera O and Kireijun were both already inside, so who else would come knocking here without an appointment?
Though puzzled, he still put down the eraser, wiped off his hands, walked to the door, and pulled it open. The moment he saw the gray-haired horse girl standing there, he had to admit he was badly startled.
"Good morning, Trainer Wada."
Oguri Cap was as ikemen as ever. To people who did not know her well, she carried a tremendous sense of pressure. Wada froze a little.
"Retainer Wada—! Who could possibly have you standing slack-jawed in the doorway... Senior Oguri Cap?!"
The moment Opera O saw the benefactor who had once changed her fate, she instantly became reverent. If not for Oguri Cap, there would never have been the Overlord she was today.
After stepping into the training room, Oguri Cap set her shoulder bag on the table. She did not quite understand why everyone had stiffened up like that. Since she was not good at idle chatter to begin with, she chose to get straight to the point.
"I want to ask Trainer Wada to help Miss Shining Dyna create a race plan."
"?" x3
That single sentence contained an astonishing amount of information. Wada was the first to process it.
"Wait... Miss Oguri Cap, are you saying you want me to serve as Miss Shining Dyna's assistant outside the academy?"
"Assistant? That's probably close enough. Because the most suitable person I could think of was Trainer Wada. Nishizaki, Tōjō, and Ikezoe don't fit. More importantly, Boss Lady's impression of you is fairly good."
Opera O understood immediately and had no objection. Even if they could not drag the boss lady into Central, if Wada trained her outside the academy, that could still be counted as a success. Kireijun Grandma understood too, but did not really know how to join the conversation. An old soul's thought process was, after all, a little slow and steady.
"This is... a bit sudden. With so many teams in the academy wanting to recruit Miss Shining Dyna, for something like this to suddenly come to me..."
Wada felt an enormous amount of pressure. If he agreed, he would likely end up bearing pressure from both the academy and the JRA. It was not that he was afraid of that. What he feared was that his own ordinary ability might end up holding back such an exceptional horse girl as Dyna.
Oguri Cap replied with complete certainty:
"Trainer Wada doesn't need to worry about whether the plan will actually be carried out. Boss Lady's self-discipline is beyond anything any horse girl at Tracen could compare to. On this point I can... mm, guarantee it with lunch."
Guaranteeing something with lunch—Oguri Cap was staking everything!
"That's not what I'm worried about... It's just..."
Wada was about to say more, but he stopped cold when Oguri Cap tilted her head slightly and looked at him without any emotion at all.
"The one a trainer should trust most, aside from the horse girls under their care, is themselves, isn't it? If you can become a Central trainer, then there must be something extraordinary about you."
Even Oguri Cap did not know how she had suddenly managed to say something like that. Maybe she had unconsciously learned it from watching the boss lady deal with children in the shop. It seemed that this sort of child psychology worked on adults too.
Perhaps adults were just bigger children?
Oguri Cap did not understand it herself. After saying all that, she took out the data she had organized in her bag—things like Dyna's speed figures from the Prix Marcel Boussac—and placed them on the table.
"Boss Lady wants her next race to be the Shortwave Cup at 2000 meters. If Trainer Wada agrees, then please accept this."
The words Oguri Cap had just spoken were still echoing in Wada's chest, but before he could respond, another hand slammed down hard onto the table on top of the file.
With an arrogantly brilliant smile, the Overlord declared,
"I'll accept this commission in my retainer's place! If it is a request from Senior, and the target is a horse girl favored by the Overlord herself, then why should my retainer have any reason to shrink back?!"
At that moment, the aura radiating from Opera O carried an unmistakable echo of the old days when she had once confronted Tamamo Cross head-on. Oguri Cap, whose fighting spirit had lain dormant for so long, showed a rare smile too—a regal smile that only ever surfaced on the racetrack.
"Thank you. I'll come back when I have time to collect the finished plan."
Watching Oguri Cap leave, Opera O turned immediately to Wada.
"Retainer! Let us begin the work! Do not underestimate the Overlord's instincts on the track."
"Yeah, let's do our best! Since it's a request from our benefactor, then we'll have to put in one hundred and twenty percent effort."
Inside the room, Kireijun still held a thermos cup with half a serving of flower tea in it. Just moments ago, she had still been immersed in the training plan her trainer was giving her.
—
Shining Dyna blinked. In her hands was a thick stack of documents. She looked up to see Oguri Cap still pulling more and more notes out of her shoulder bag, piling them onto the table.
"This is...?"
"Boss Lady needed a professional, reasonable plan, so I used a favor from long ago to get one for you."
Dyna opened the file. The title read:
Training Plan for Miss Shining Dyna
Beneath that, in smaller print, was an annotation:
Optimized recommendations based on data from the debut race and the Prix Marcel Boussac. Please combine with real conditions in practice.
"Speed training, strength training..."
The analysis was incredibly detailed, almost identical to the status panel Dyna herself could see. This was the first time she had truly felt the terror of a Central trainer.
As she flipped roughly to the end, one particular note caught her eye. The handwritten text stood out sharply against the printed pages:
At present, the area Miss Shining Dyna most urgently needs to strengthen is her fighting spirit in the final straight when battling other horse girls. Her current competitive grit is too weak, which is extremely disadvantageous for a late-closing style that relies on prolonged head-to-head contention.
"Competitive grit..."
Dyna had seen that term more than once by now. But she hated losing. Was that still not enough? How exactly was a horse girl's competitive grit even measured... and how had the trainer seen through it so clearly?
At the end, another small note read:
If Miss Shining Dyna is willing, then until one week before the Shortwave Cup, we will wait for you by the riverbank. Training side by side with horse girls who have actually raced is the best way to improve competitive grit.
And not only was there a training plan.
There was even a full dietary plan prepared for her as well.
Miss Shining Dyna's body showed weakness when engaged in physical confrontation. Her body weight is too low and can only be improved through nutrition. As for excessive softness, that can be corrected through training.
Looking at the densely packed meal chart, and seeing portions twice as large as what she normally ate, Dyna could already vaguely feel her stomach swelling.
"May I ask... which trainer made this?"
Closing the plan, Dyna was already calculating in her head what groceries she would need to buy.
Oguri Cap stacked the documents neatly into a pile and answered,
"Trainer Wada and Opera O. They owe me a favor, so they agreed. Since I acted as the intermediary, no one will know about it."
The Hat God is great—nothing more needs to be said.
All hail the Hat!
Join here to read ahead.
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Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
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From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 99
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Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 92
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Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 47
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 44
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 43
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 26
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 32
Uma Musume: From Beginner 26
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