2026-07-03: An Unnerving Sudden Dedication to Bike Club
- Log: An Unnerving Sudden Dedication to Bike Club
- Cast: Yua Ijuuin, Maria Sakurai
- Where: Aoba Park
- OOC Date: 2026-07-03
- IC Date: Tue Dec 04 2012
- Summary: Seriously? Tyrrha got a sick bike the DAY after she perked up about Bike Club?! And even though she's a good rider, she rides like crazy! Maria, you've gotta help your kouhai, you're the responsible one here somehow!!!!!
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt0V0_1MS0Q Queen - Bicycle Race
When Tyrrha got home from school, she animatedly asked her mothers for a bicycle because she wanted to join bicycle club. Or help form bicycle club? Bicycle club might not yet exist, but she's surely assured that with determination, all things are possible.
... and because they're very rich, a nice new bicycle is precisely what Tyrrha gets, the following afternoon.
And thus we learn why Tyrrha is biking around Aoba Park, in a white sailor's dress and jaunty hat which is slightly displaced by her high ponytail. She's going fast, but somehow managing to evade all the obstacles in her path...!
The fact that these obstacles are PEOPLE and they're ALARMED really isn't her problem.
Brrrring, brrrring! Listen to her cute little bell!
<Pose Tracker> Maria Sakurai has posed.
There's a bicycle bell jingling merrily not far off at all, but alas, today, Maria lacks the means to join in, for she doesn't have her bicycle! It's a somewhat chilly day, and Maria, unfortunately, is not the sort to enjoy the colder weather: she's a child of the springtime, and the summer, and at least the parts of the fall that aren't quite so brisk.
She just doesn't care for the cold, and that's okay.
But in truth, that's only part of why she's bike-less today: she'd come out to a cram session in Aoba for her after-school, and is taking a bit of a shortcut through the park.
But, wait... as the bike and its rider come into view...
...isn't that...
...
"Ah! Ijuuin-chan!" That's an underclassmate of hers... riding a brand new bicycle! How cute!
Maria, suddenly animate, waves her hand and bounces up and down on her heels. "It's me! Do you remember? How cute, you have a bicycle!!"
Maria has already forgotten about the cram session she was meant to go to...
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"I'm adorabllllllllllllllle!" Tyrrha cries, on her way past Maria. And there she goes, into the distance...
Until...
"WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING, KID--!!"
In the distance, Tyrrha can be seen making an absolutely daring u-turn, her tailwind tossing a salaryman's briefcase into the air as he has to play catch with it to stop it from spilling open all over the park, wildly swerving and careening back--!!
SCREEEEEEEEEECCCHHHHHH go her tyres, as a hundred metres away, Tyrrha puts effort into stopping...
... while she's barreling right towards Maria.
SQUEAAAALLLLCCCHHHHH --
With a backwards push of the pedal, Tyrrha manages to come to a stop just before she would have rammed right into her. Her hat sails off of her head to paff into Maria, instead, as the younger girl grins with that terrifying mug of hers.
"Hey, Sakurai-senpai! Check it out! I got a bike, so now I can join Bike Club, right?!" Is that really what she should be worried about, when finals are right around the corner...?!
It's fine, cram sessions are probably pretty lenient about late marks.
<Pose Tracker> Maria Sakurai has posed.
Tyrrha sure is going fast on that bike as she zooms on away. And nearly takes out a salaryman in the process. "Ah! Look out!" Maria calls.
Oh. Tyrrha is coming back--!
For a point of contrast, there was a time, months and months ago...
...when she hit a boy with a bike. To be fair to her, she tried not to hit him. To be unfair to her, she was stunt-riding at the time. Fortunately, he hadn't been hurt very badly, but her bike...
Maria now finds herself in that boy's position. Oh, how the turns have tabled! She throws up her arms as Tyrrha plows on towards her, not otherwise making an attempt to escape. But unlike Maria, Tyrrha--
--is able to come to a screeching stop! Is this the power of a better bike?! Or at least, the advancements that Tyrrha has over Maria, which are multifold.
Maria at least has the presence of mind to snap up that cap reflexively as it just about flies into her arms.
"Oh!" she says, blink-a-blinking. "That was a good stop!" she continues on, as if she hadn't nearly been taken out by bike. "You must be pretty experienced in riding, right?" She pauses, looking down at the hat in her hands. She stares at it for a moment, before then handing it over. "But, sure!"
Maria pauses though.
"If I can get it started, hehe. I'll need you, and anyone else we can get interested. The more, the better!" She nods, as if in agreement with this very statement. "Though..."
Maria looks at Tyrrha Ijuuin. "I guess, I'll have more time for that after finals? I've been pretty busy getting ready..."
Like, for example, the cram school that she has still completely forgotten about.
"What about you? How's studying going? It's gonna be different this year, huh?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"I'm lookiiiiiiiiing...!!!"
WHEEEEEEEE!!!!
Maria, she of the trick ride, might realise the most shocking thing of all as Tyrrha hops off her bike: she isn't wobbly. After pedalling so fast -- and for how long!! -- the most normal thing in the world would be to struggle a bit to find one's standing moving from a bike-based lifeform to standard human again. Your weight's carried entirely differently, on a bike; your feet sink and rise rather than lifting up and coming down, and while it's still pushing, it's pushing on a chain lock.
Nope, she just kind of hops off, lays the bike down, and saunters over to Maria.
... hey! That hat Maria caught proves something else... she's not even wearing a HELMET!
Heedless of her reckless display, Tyrrha grins, as she takes her hat back and secures it at a jaunty tilt on her head. "Thanks!" She chirps. "It's my first -- uh," PROCESSING -- PROCESSING -- COVER STORY ERROR -- "my first time using this bike, but I rode around all the time back home!" TASK FAILED SUCCESSFULLY. "Mama got me a new one when I said we might make a club! Can't be in Bike Club without a bike, right?"
Phew. Now Maria will never guess that bike-riding is a subroutine Tyrrha loaded up from her library of human pursuits! No one can possibly tell she's weird! Nope, she's a normal teenage girl who was NOT built in a lab.
That's a really nice bike, though...
"Don't say 'if'!" Tyrrha insists, her hands grasping to fists as fire burns in her eyes. (Metaphorically. They are a lovely ruby shade, though.) "Say 'when'! You're totally determined enough to make anything you want to happen, happen!!"
But Maria, who is, in this situation, the responsible senpai, remembers that finals exist...
... and Tyrrha rubs at the back of her head, with another cheerfully ferocious grin. "Does that mean it takes a while? I've never seen how school stuff works for city folk! Back home, we really just take it easy... but it's just rememberin' facts and stuff, right? So it'll be easy!"
Tyrrha, who remembers how to break every bone in the human body, is definitely overestimating how much of her memory bank is devoted to civic facts.
<Pose Tracker> Maria Sakurai has posed.
Tyrrha isn't at all wobbly as she hops off the bike. Even most experienced riders usually wobble a little when they get off a bike after an intense or complicated maneuver. The fact that Tyrrha doesn't is thus something that even Maria notices, which means that therefore, it's really significant! And thus, that means--
"Wow, you must have been riding from the time you can walk!" she gushes, spiraling illusory flowers of delight around her and all. "You've got really good control! And you bounced back like nothing at all!" Wow! That means that Tyrrha will probably grow up to be a super-cool bicyclist, right?
Maria might have noticed, but she's still Maria, and that means that she's drawn the wrong conclusion. The wrongest.
Tyrrha's also not wearing a helmet which, uh. Certain people might have called out as a problem, or at least have noticed the issue, but...
...fact: Maria doesn't often wear a helmet, either. She's even been lectured about it by friendly neighborhood police officers, more than once or twice!
Oh! That makes sense. "It's a great bike," Maria chirps, looking it over. "Sturdy... looks pretty light-weight? But, it's not so light-weight it can't take a few bangs? I've had to pay for bike repairs before?" she remarks, straightening back up. "Hehe, your mom really likes you, huh?" And has a lot of money, some deeper, darker part of Maria's psyche speaks. It's like water off a duck's back, though--
"I'm a little jealous~"
Mostly, that is.
"But yeah, you're right. The school can't pay for bikes, you know? That's what's been hard. If someone doesn't have their own bike, they can't join, even if they really want to..." It's the part that Maria has been mulling over. All you need for soccer is a ball, and crafting, well, it's not hard to get basic supplies? But a bike...
Even as she doubts, though, she is rebuked. "--Oh!" she says, not at all affronted by Tyrrha's insistance. In fact, it's like she's been reminded of something. "...You're right, though?" Maria muses, crinkling her forehead. "I mean-- I've got to try! For my cute new kouhai! I'll do my best!" she says, pumping both fists before her. "It's a promise!"
But first, there are finals.
Does it take a while? "Well... kinda," Maria says, glancing up at the sky a moment. "There's tests for a week on everything we learned... and it's more intense than midterms..."
And her midterms weren't so good, like usual.
...It's just remembering facts and stuff, Tyrrha remarks.
"Ahahaha... yeah..." Maria says, giggling weakly.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Yeah!" Tyrrha grins. "It's like that!" It's definitely not her hydraulics struggling to mimic the wobbly motions of a weak human; it's all skill, baybeeeee. If she could see Maria's flowers, she would surely give her five Social Links then and there just for reminding her of Yua-mama; instead, Maria gets the normal amount of happy notes from her. "Thanks, I work out!"
That's not even a lie! She has started joining Mimama for her morning workouts!
Bike Club doesn't have to be Helmet Club, though. Those things really mess up your hair! Huh? Human skulls are fragile at speed? Well that sounds really interesting...!
"Thanks," Tyrrha grins, quite happy to hear Maria praising her bike. "Yeah, yeah! Repairin' is important! Hey, why don't ya learn how to repair them yourself? Then you wouldn't have to wait or nothin'!" And she claps her hands to her cheeks -- strangely, it makes kind of a GONGGGG sound -- as she exclaims: "Ahhhh, they're both so nice! Ever since I moved in with them, life's been so easy!" Wait, like... them? Plural? Multimamas?
The greatest tragedy of evil, of course, is that one possesses wealth without sharing it; one might then wonder, here, what then delineates the rich from the wicked, when reluctance to share wealth is an intrinsic part of building it.
If one were to expect a metatextual absolution of the wealthy, here, it would tragically be met with disappointment.
But even though she knows wealth is to be hoarded, Tyrrha happily suggests another solution: "Hey, I bet there's lots of bikes people don't use or nothin'! We can just re-home them! Like... a bike adoption service! Hey, hey, if we learn how to fix bikes, we can make them work even if they're broken, too...!" Could some kind of... bike recycling system even work...?
"People leave bikes out everywhere, so it can't be that hard!" Oh no, wait a second, does Tyrrha think -- does she not know a lot of those bikes still belong to people.
Oh no.
"Yeah! I'm the cutest, so you gotta!" Tyrrha agrees, pumping her fists, in turn. "Bike nation, bike nation!!"
Tyrrha tilts her head, hearing the weakness of Maria's giggling. "Hmm... oh! I know!" She declares, brightly. "Let's go repeat facts! That's studying, right? Like you said yesterday! Come on, I know lots of facts! Like did you know that humans eat poisons for fun? But they're weaker when they're having a baby, so they can't eat all the poisons any more because the baby's not strong enough for them yet! I know all sorts of stuff like that, so we'll kick the final's butt, easy! Let's-a-gooo!"
<Pose Tracker> Maria Sakurai has posed.
"That's what I thought!" Maria chimes in, even more delighted than before (apparently such a thing is possible!). "It's important to work on your core strength, too, right? It helps everything, doesn't it?"
That's got to be the reason for it-- Tyrrha's just good at working out and she's super strong and talented!
"Yeah! Basic maintenance is important! I clean mine up and check a few things on my own--" Blink. Blink, blink. Maria stares at Tyrrha. "Repair it myself? ...Repair it myself..." It appears to be the first the thought even occured to her. "Yeah! I could do it myself! I just have to learn how...?" Aren't there online videos about that kind of thing?
But, two mothers...? Is that what she meant? Or, wait, does she mean Yua and her husband? Even Maria, who forgets some facts as quickly as she learns them, knows that her dance teacher is married. That's why she's even expecting!
Maria looks, briefly, a little bit gobsmacked when Tyrrha's face makes a 'gonnng' sound when she claps her face but...
But, maybe she didn't just hear what she thought she heard? Maybe that was someone else with a... a gong, nearby, or something. It would totally be weird to ask her kouhai if she had metal in her face or something.
Maria has watched too many American movies and has a very odd idea of how the world works, but even after everything else and with that little fact in context, she's still not going to go and think, 'my schoolmate is a robot'.
At least, not without meeting Aigis, first.
It's enough even so to even take her thoughts away from the inherent considerations of wealth and its fair distribution thereof, insofar as Maria is considering this fact on some deep subterranean part of her psyche.
"Huh...?"
To say nothing of the second suggestion that Tyrrha makes.
"Bike recycling? Huh... If I learn how to fix bikes, I guess we could get broken or unused ones and fix them? Hmm..." Her gaze turns unfocused for a moment. Now, if the reduced cost of an unused or broken bicycle is so much, and the pricing for parts can fall in the range of so much... account for time and labor...
Maria's inner calculations are interrupted when Tyrrha continues to make a suggestion of:
"Wait, those belong to people?" Maria says, the array of numbers in her head falling away into the void. "I mean, um..." She glances over this way and that, as if in search of a nearby rack. "That's where people leave them? You can't take your bike everywhere in a city?" She's not asking questions of Tyrrha, of course: it's more that Maria tends to phrase certain statements as if they were a question when in fact they absolutely are not.
Rebel against the status quo that binds her and all that, sure, but when it comes down to mass theft, well, err...
"Don't worry! I'll work super hard on that! Just, um, after exams?" Because if she makes her own sempai sad, she'll be super sad!
Tyrrha instead proposes a flash study session. Time for a pop quiz! ...Is this studying?
"Eh?? Poison??" Maria squeaks, startled. "I don't eat poison! I, I don't think my parents, or my granny eat poison??"
She looks absolutely bewildered.
oh wait, it's time for facts, isn't it
"Um, uh..." Maria tries to reach for something, anything, "Did you know that, salty water boils faster?" Tyrrha might want to fact-check this one.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
There are so many questions, but one stands out:
"Sure they do! Like wine, and pipes! And chili peppers!" Those-- those are all poisons?! "And Mimama eats little bits of hemlock so that no one can poison her with it!" WHO IS MIMAMA?!
"But wow, I'll have to tell Yumama about that one... cooking dinner always takes so loooong! See, see? Facts are easy! Come on, let's go study more!"
Tyrrha will walk her bike to go find a place to study with Maria, and amidst their very ineffective efforts...
... she will learn that both Miho and Yua are really her cousins, but Yua's staying with Miho so that she can help support her while she's pregnant since her new adoptive father's got an important police job, so Tyrrha's decided they're both her moms?!
Sure, that's normal.
That's totally normal.
Robot classmates aren't real, after all.