Chapter Text
Three sets of eyes watched Tsukasa as he entered. Around the map stood Senku and Ryusui. Unexpectedly, Taiju was beside them. It shouldn’t surprise Tsukasa; He and Senku had always been close friends.
Senku glanced around. “That’s all of us.”
Whatever he had to say better be good. Tsukasa had no idea who Senku saw first in the underworld, but he knew who he saw.
His sister.
Mirai sat in the sand, tracing little circles with her finger. When she saw her brother, her head lifted. Tsukasa was too far away to see her face, but she looked so happy. “Brother!” She cried out in a voice he missed desperately. “Tell me a story!”
Tsukasa was shook. Was this how his sister died? In her sleep, like the doctors always said she would centuries ago? Would this underworld be the last time he saw her?
He would still honor her last request. He opened his mouth, already coming up with some variation of her favorite tale. But he stopped himself as the boat drew nearer. Her face was blurred. That wasn’t her , not really. His sister wasn’t dead yet.
But that was her fate if he couldn’t get out of this awful dream.
“I never told you how we got into this mess in the first place,” Senku started. Mentally, Tsukasa corrected Senku to “how I got us into this mess.” “On our first day in America, Gen said he’d been having problems sleeping. I had a bit of extra time, so I started looking around for something to help. I took the oaf as a pack mule and just looked a kilometer or so out from camp.”
“Oh, I remember that!” Taiju announced. “We found some passionflower, right?”
Senku nodded. “A whole field of it. Taiju here took five boxes of it back to camp with us. Traditionally, it’s been used as a sedative.”
Tsukasa was already connecting the dots.
“I used a few petals to brew a tea. We tested it on a rabbit, who fell asleep pretty quickly. Since that worked, I gave the cup to Gen.” Senku began pacing around the narrow room.
“Oh, and then you asked me to get rid of the rest of it,” Taiju remembered.
”Yeah, and what did you do to accomplish that?”
”I just threw it in the river.”
Senku stopped abruptly and sighed. “The river that everyone drinks from. Including Stanley and Xeno, apparently.”
The room was silent two full seconds before everyone started asking questions at once.
”How did a few flowers do all of that? ”
”Who are Stanley and Xeno?”
”You still didn’t explain who you saw.”
“The flowers must have evolved into a much stronger sedative than they were in our time. The whole river turned into a giant coma–inducing tea. Since we all drank from the river, we all suffered the consequences of the new adaptation.” With that, he began pacing once again. “Dr. Xeno was my mentor back in the day— Taiju, remember that NASA engineer that I emailed from time to time?”
He nodded enthusiastically.
“He mentioned Stanley in one of his emails. He’s his partner. Worked in the U.S. Army or Navy or some other branch. Can’t remember right now. Anyway, he’s quite proficient with the gun.”
That was quite obvious, given how he murdered half the crew with a literal water gun.
”And Tsukasa, when we were in the underworld, first I saw my father.”
The room fell into a stunned silence. Tsukasa felt a pang of guilt for pressuring him to answer such a personal question so quickly.
”Much more importantly, we all saw Gen. That’s the reason we’re talking right now. The crew that ‘died’ might not be dead yet in the real world. In this dream, I thought that if you died you would lose consciousness. Since there’s no reason for your real body to keep operating while in the coma, losing consciousness means death.”
”But since Gen was in the underworld, that means he’s still alive,” Tsukasa finished.
”True, but don’t get your hopes up. Collectively I give our real bodies two, maybe three months left on the energy we have. Then we’re all dead.”
”We need a plan to get out of here fast then,” Ryusui announced.
”Yep. Luckily, I have one. Ukyo said that the musical ends in Ishigami village. All we have to do is get there.”
”Why would that solve anything?” Tsukasa asked.
”Oh, I have no proof that it would. This is going purely off video game logic.”
Everyone stared at him blankly. He just asked them to risk their lives based on video game logic of all things. Tsukasa was starting to question the sanity of their head scientist.
Senku let his words sink in for a few more seconds before continuing. ”And I don’t know if you heard the man, but only one or two of us get to that island. It’s a risky plan—“
”I’m in!” Ryusui shouted.
Tajiu didn’t hesitate. ”Me too! I trust Senku on this.”
Tsukasa was not so quick to agree. He wanted to save as many lives as possible, but sitting around doing nothing would just lead to their bodies decaying. Still, he was an active man. If given the options, what was best for everyone? And then the memory of his sister in the underworld resurfaced. It really wasn’t a choice at all. ”When do we start?”
Senku grinned wickedly. “Less than an hour.”
Less than an hour to Ishigami village, and all the peril that lies in its way.