"That's the only thing we could never do."
Tsukasa let out an audible sigh. "Right, I knew that would be your answer."
"Don't give me that crap," Senku chuckled. "No matter what I said, you would have killed me someday. Just in case."
"Perhaps."
"YUZURIHA!! SENKU!! I'M COMING!!!" The group heard Taiju's voice from a distance, but all ignored it.
"Try to finish me in one hit, 'kay?" Senku said, cracking his neck slightly. "It wouldn't be logical to have blood gushing everywhere. Plus, Hana will puke at the sight of it."
"I will not," Hanako huffed, trying to mask the fear in her voice. "You're the one who always got dizzy when you looked as blood as a kid."
"That was you, Hana."
"Oh."
"Don't worry. I'll snap your cervical plexus in one blow. You'll lose consciousness and die instantly," Tsukasa explained. "I won't make you suffer. And I won't miss."
He walked over to the leek-blonde, and Yuzuriha had to restrain Hanako from trying to run in between them. She'd only get hurt in the process. "Senku, if only we'd met 3,700 years sooner," the brunette spoke with remorse etched in his tone. "If we'd met before this planet became a stone world... You and Hanako might have been... my first real friends ever."
"Maybe."
Hanako covered her eyes, she couldn't look. All she heard was a cracking sound and Taiju's loud footsteps, approaching them. "SENKUUU!!!!" he yelled, catching the body just before it fell. The emeraldette dashed to them, taking Senku in her own arms. She checked his pulse, his eyes, looking for any sign that somehow he was still alive. Maybe Tsukasa had missed after all?
But no. There was no trace of life left in the scientist. She'd double-checked four times before finally bursting into tears. "Senku! You idiot! Wake up!! Say something, please!!" she tried to wipe her tears but more only fell. "You can't die, not here!! You can't seriously die on me like this, Senku!!"
"He felt no pain," Tsukasa said as though it would help the situation somehow. "And I trust that as his friends, you will give him a proper burial." He turned to leave but froze when he heard Taiju scream. Turning back around, he saw the oaf carrying a large rock. Taiju... If Senku's death throws you into a blind rage, he thought. Then I'll have no choice but to kill you too.
Readying for attack, he watched as Taiju launched the rock into the air. An over head attack? Or a diversion? He kept his eyes on the rock while not moving them from Taiju as well. The only thing he didn't think to take into account was. Yuzuriha. His mistake. The girl threw the entire pot of black powder before him without him noticing.
Confused, he tried to find the purpose of it but the rock dropped before he could. The last words he heard we're "Goodbye, Tsukasa," from Taiju before there was a loud explosion, setting his clothes on fire. He quickly removed them. not minding the burn and waited for the smoke to clear, only to find that all four of them had disappeared.
*-*-*-*-*-*
The odd couple bolted through the forest even as rain began to pour, Taiju carrying the body of Senku and Yuzuriha dragging a broken looking Hanako along with her. They settled near a large tree where the first thing Taiju did was try to perform CPR. "Hana-Chan! Am I doing it right? I have no clue, but it's all I can do now!! WAIT!! What about mouth-to-mouth!?"
"Stop! His neck!" Yuzuriha stopped him. "It's probably best if we don't move him like that!" She knelt down beside him, tears threatening to fall. "Tsukasa hit him there... Senku sacrificed himself, in exchange for my and Hana's lives."
Taiju froze, then looked at her, confused. "Senku sacrificed...himself?"
««Modern Day
"It's a psychology test," a boy in class held up a book. "Imagine there's a terrible accident. You can only save yourself, your best friend or you significant other. Which do you choose?"
"I'd have a hard time picking between my best friend and boyfriend," Yuzuriha answered, flustered.
"You'd pick yourself in the moment, wouldn't you?"
"There's no good choice!" Taiju exclaimed. "Kind of a nasty quiz, don'tcha think?"
"All of us," Senku acclaimed, examining a beaker of some strange fluid.
"Right!" Hanako beamed, taking it from him and retaking the measurements of the quantity. She didn't like being imprecise. "From the very start, Senku and I would find a way to save everyone!"
"That's the sort of answer we'd expect from the president and vice-president of the Science Club, huh," the boy chuckled.
"Wait, that's an option!?" Taiju asked. "I pick that one too!!"
"Anyway, what this test really reveals is who the most important person to you in your life is."
Well, that's ten billion percent obvious," Senku scoffed. "What garbage dumb did you find that book in?"
"That's mean, Kuu. Who wrote it?" Hanako asked, glancing at the page. "Asagiri Gen? Sounds dumb too."
"And here you're calling me the mean one."
Stone World»»
"Senku would never go the suicide route," Taiju denoted. "He'd avoid any sacrifices altogether! Think back about Senku!! We're his friends, there's gotta be something, anything! He has to have left us a hint or something!!" He turned to the emeraldette, finally shaking her out of her daze. "Hana! We have to think."
But that's what she'd been doing the entire time. Thinking back all the way to when she first met Senku again in the Stone World. She'd tackled him in a hug, he'd only cracked his neck and smiled. When the miracle fluid finally worked, Taiju and her rejoiced while he only cracked his neck and chuckled.
She thought back to every invention, every experiment. He hadn't given any signals even before Tsukasa turned on them. There had to have been something. She thought hard, even to the point of doing math! Fortunately, somehow, math was how she found her answer.
The hint had to be some kind of gesture. Since I woke up, Senku has chuckled only about 231 times, which is the average amount considering the amount of time that has passed. He twirled a pencil in his hands 54 times, when blueprinting. Held his chin when thinking 30 times, and cracked his neck at random intervals 17 times...
If you add the six months it took for me to wake up then that makes the chuckling 924 times, the pencil 216 times, holding his chin 120 times and cracking his neck 68 times. Sixty-eight. That's an odd number. I've never calculated something related to Senku and found that number. Oh... he cracked his neck just before he died. So that makes it 18 times. Wait... cracked his neck?
"That's not a habit he's always had," she thought aloud, gaining the two brunette's attention.
"You figured out something, Hana-Chan?"
"His neck," she pointed. "Check his neck. He's been cracking it since he woke up, probably. And he was drawing Tsukasa's attention to hit just before he died. There has to be something... Check!"
The brute did as told and flipped Senku over to reveal there was still a little bit of stone on it. "Right there!" Taiju exclaimed. "On his neck, there's a little bit of stone!"
"That's it," Hanako acclaimed. "Now it all makes sense! Yuzuriha! The revival fluid!" The girl tossed it to the oaf you immediately poured it onto the the partly-petrified neck. It dissolved instantly, leaving only his blonde locks in its wake.
"The petrified part is gone!" Yuzuriha yelled. "So maybe..."
"WAKE UUUP!!!!" Taiju screamed at the top of his lungs. "I KNEW IT!! I KNEW YOU WEREN'T GONNA LEAVE US LIKE THIS!! OPEN YOU'RE EYES! SENKUU!!!"
There was no response for a while, and the rain had suddenly stopped so the three turned their gazes towards the sky. "The rain," the brunette girl thought out loud. "It's suddenly stopped."
"The thunderstorm was helping mask our voices. We'd better keep it down now. If Tsukasa hears us, it's game over."
"Of course," Hanako nodded, still keeping her gaze on the sky. "Taiju's yells moved at 300 decibels, but the thunder moved at 500 approximately," she was getting deep into it. "But he's naturally loud. At normal volume it only 250, trying to get him to speak under his breath could bring us down to about 175. Whispering would be 0.32% less which is 150 if I'm being generous. If we could find some way to...." She trailed off.
Wait...."Who?" She looked back at the ground to see the scientist already up and standing.
He chuckled. "Nice job noticing my neck like that, despite only having a crappy hint to help you," he smirked. "Taiju, Yuzuriha, Hana. Ten Billion points for you."
"Sen..
Kuu."
"SENKUU!!" Taiju dashed and grabbed him in a bone crushing hug. "We knew it! We knew you wouldn't leave us!!"
"At least the other guy was only trying to crack my neck!!" Senku protested. "You're trying to break my whole body, ya big oaf!!" He managed to wrestle him off, leaving him tired. He turned and smirked at Yuzuriha, "I'm sure you know, I'm not one for teary-eyed thank yous. So don't expect one."
"I know," she smiled, her own tears falling. "Welcome back, Senku."
Last but not least, his pesky lab assistant. Hanako only stared at him, trying to convince herself that this was real and that she actually had brought back her best friend from the dead. He chuckled again, "Don't think you're seeing ghosts, Hana. That would be completely illogical!"
"You're... actually back?" she just had to ask. "Because there's a 86.92% chance that I'm living in denial, causing me to hallucinate. Which means there's only roughly a 13.8% chance that you're actually alive. The odds are in the hallucination's favor. Let's not forget that the probability that Tsukasa might actually have killed me as well to be safe is approximately..."
"You did a lot of nerve-wracking math, trying to figure out the hint, didn't you, Hana?" the leek-blonde cut her off, patting her head. "In your state of shock, you probably slipped up somewhere too. Maybe missed one or two. Sorry about that."
"So...." Fat tears streamed down her face and she too hugged him for dear life. "You actually are alive."
"Yeah, I guess I am."
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
~✨Blu<3✨