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“We could take advantage of their desperation.” Gen suggested. “But you know if we do this Ishigami Senku and Asagiri Gen are going to hell together.”
“God has been absent in the world of science for ten billion years.” Senku smirked, “I’m in.”
…
Kohaku’s mouth was agape “You’re planning to defeat them with sound?!”
“How would that even work?! Is it mind control?!” Chrome questioned. “How do you keep it from also working on us?”
Senku cackled “Mind control huh? I guess you could call it that.
“Don’t worry, it can’t affect you. You have no idea what any of it means so to you it’ll be completely irrelevant.” Gen explained. In contrast to Senku, the smile on his face was serene. Somehow it was no less intimidating.
…
Senku grinned maniacally “Hit it Yuzuriha!”
Yuzuriha was quite possibly the least suited to the battlefield. Her gentle face and lack of weapons, as well as being sequestered out of sight, had led to people overlooking her.
Subsequently, No one was prepared for the attack she unleashed.
“Never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down. Never gonna run around and desert you…”
The song hit Tsukasa and his empire like a ton of bricks to the face. 3700 years later, almost all modern media lost, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘦𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘬 𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥?!?!
It’s wasn't the original but it was close enough. It broke something in the hearts of tired frightened children, people screeched, some in outrage, others in glee. It forced them to acknowledge the reality they’d so unceremoniously stumbled into.
Then someone from the crowd that sounded suspiciously like Gen screamed. “SCIENCE MEANS THE INTERNET!” and suddenly the strongest primate high schooler was being body slammed by over 50 people.
Tsukasa wondered if this was his divine retribution for only waking up teenagers.
…
Kohaku watched in surprise as the entire Tsukasa army went collectively insane. She’d been skeptical of Senku and Gen’s master plan but watching how effective it was in real time was mesmerizing.
Now that it was all over she had to ask “Hey Senku, up with that song?”. In the span of a few seconds all the villagers in earshot were also listening, curious about the odd phenomenon.
"Imagine for a moment that you woke up one morning in another world with strange grey monoliths that reach all the way to the sky towering over you. You don't know how to get food, water, or shelter in this place. You're surrounded by people people but you're confused and they all look at you like you're the weird one here. Alone with out anyone to help you and no way back home. How would you feel?"
"Scared probably," She admitted.
"Fast forward a little now. You've been there for a year. There's a place for you now, a job you do every day. It doesn't quite fit but doing it is the only way for you to get all the things you need to survive. Then one day you meet someone who knows the hundred tales. They tell you they can take you home and all you have to do is denounce the life you've made for yourself in this new world. Would you take the deal?"
"That's it? That's all they wan-?" Kohaku sucked in a sharp breath. "-Oh. I see what you mean."
He nodded “In the modern world that song was a joke, a common one. And at the end of the day Tsukasa's army was just a bunch of scared kids. Our biggest fears went from exams to trying not to die in a post apocalyptic world. We’re barely holding it together. If someone told us we could go back home, we wouldn’t be able to refuse.”
“Even you Senku?” Suika asked.
In the fire light his eyes held a look of deep somberness, one that reminded them he was both 3716 and yet a measly 16 year old, “Especially me.”
“Is that why you're rebuilding everything? So that things can go back to how they were before?”
Senku looked up at the sky, more bright than it ever could’ve been in the modern era where light pollution drowned out the stars. A shimmering full moon hung in the sky, just like it had been the night before the world had turned to stone.
He thought of the large hand that he’d swat away every time it tried to bury itself in his hair. He tried to remember that comforting weight but found that while he could recall the memory, the feeling of it lingered somewhere just beyond his grasp.
“That’s not possible. After something this big, things can’t ever be the same again.”
He pushed down the sorrow that welled up in his heart, afraid that it was Pandora’s box. He still had work to do, a mission left behind implicitly in the 100 tales. To wake up and rebuild science.
His dad had faith in him. Who was he to disappoint?
“It won’t be the same but maybe it'll be enough.”