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He didn't tell Gen to leave. He told Ruri to leave him, so he could have a moment, but he hadn't actually meant for Gen to go too. He didn't want him to stay enough to speak up when he heard Gen's quiet steps, but it was... good, maybe. It was something that Gen hadn't left his side until he asked for space at his father's grave, and it was a related kind of something that Gen had lingered that brief moment before following Ruri. It was hard to say what he was feeling, perhaps he was feeling so much he had gone numb from it, but having someone around who was from the twenty-first century had been important. He'd rather it was Taiju or Yuzuriha, or anyone who had met his dad, really, but at least Gen was a friend.
Ruri had wanted to bring Senkuu here alone. He'd grabbed Gen's arm and said it was better if they went together since Gen had been such a great help while listening to the story of the village's origins. Gen's observations hadn't interrupted often, he only spoke when Senkuu was nearing his limit. How Gen knew that Senkuu was hovering on the edge of emotional overload that first time he cracked a joke, when even Senkuu himself could hardly identify what he was feeling, was probably a trade secret Gen would never tell.
Kohaku snapped at Gen not to interrupt, but Senkuu had wheezed out the most pathetic laugh known to man and told her to ease up. Story time was supposed to be fun, right? The sarcasm hurt, and even Kokuyo saw right through him, but after that Senkuu would only need to glance over in Gen's direction and the mentalist would speculate about something less heavy than the awful, horrible truth. Gen even did an impression of Lillian Wineburg's hit song, making a fuss about how his impressions were far better at regular speech than singing when Chrome complimented him. Meanwhile, Senkuu had time to process the concept of his dad rowing out to get the second capsule before everyone inside suffocated.
It wasn't all jokes and silly speculation to lift the mood. Gen's way with words and gift for understanding people had let him read between the lines. He'd gotten very serious when his attempt to give Senkuu a minute to think after hearing about the deaths of the 'first ancestors' was answered by shouts for him to shut up. Four of the six survivors had died before their children turned ten, which wasn't directly stated but Gen laid out all the supporting details hidden in the story so far. Lillian had only lasted a bit longer, and the story implied Senkuu's younger siblings had been less than five at the time. So instead of yelling at Gen for not respecting Ruri, how about everyone be more respectful to Senkuu who is hearing all this for the first time instead by having some water and a stretch before the tale continues.
Fuck it but that hurt. His whole chest felt ripped open and he'd blinked out a pair of tears when Gen tore away the vague way dad had always danced around uncomfortable things to expose the brutal truth that Senkuu became an older brother, and his family had needed him, but he wasn't there to help because he was petrified. Everyone finally stopped trying to shush Gen after that, but it was a while before Senkuu asked Ruri to continue the story. The other five astronauts dying so young left one old man completely by himself to finish raising the first post-apocalypse generation on a small island that had never had much modern technology on it to begin with.
His dad was a fucking hero of legend, no asterisks.
He'd known that, but it had only been between them. Byakuya was Senkuu's hero. He was proud of his dad. He'd always been proud of his dad. He always would be proud to be an Ishigami. It had been good luck before, to be adopted by someone so supportive of Senkuu's gifts and willing to do anything to help him along despite his faults. Now... it was an honor he couldn't quite wrap his head around. Six legendary beings fell from the stars and birthed humanity, and Senkuu was the first son of the oldest, wisest, and longest lived of them.
Dad was the paternal god of wisdom and stories, a mischief maker who glimpsed all that was and would be but didn't take it too seriously. Lillian Weinberg was the delicate goddess of artistic beauty and song, both ageless and fleeting. Darya Nikitin became the mother goddess associated with summer, both fierce and protective and willing to sacrifice all for others. Yakov Nikitin was autumn, the god of exploration and wild places, brave and aggressive when needed despite his fears and worries. Connie Lee was the shy goddess of love, youth, and renewal, who ruled the spring. Shamil Volkov was a pragmatic god of winter, punishing with his harsh standards that demanded respect but gifted with a gentle heart that melted when his wife arrived.
Ginro said it made sense that Senkuu was born in winter, because his spirit was obviously kin to his uncle Shamil's given all the grueling hard work and obedience Senkuu demanded from them. Senkuu had been in too much emotional pain to respond. Senkuu was an atheist, but he'd thank the universe for Asagiri Gen's shameless petty nature as he oh so conveniently lost his balance and jammed his uninjured and rather pointy elbow into Ginro's lower gut before the idiot could keep babbling, and then instead of apologizing he listed out all the ways Senkuu was far more like his father than some random dude he's never even met.
The grave in front of him was more of a shrine than anything, there had obviously been offerings of little carved things and flowers placed around it, and it was noticeably an odd shape compared to the other graves. Dad believed in Shintoism. Not to any kind of extreme, but they were proudly Japanese and even in the face of Senkuu's budding atheism turning devout, Byakuya insisted there was a lot of wisdom and connection to community to gain from their traditions. Dad was the only reason Senkuu dressed up for festivals, for connection to his community. After about age eight Senkuu hadn't wanted to, and he thought it was kind of dumb to dress like people from a century ago to watch fireworks and eat a bunch of junk food. Now that he didn't have that community, now that he was the only one around who looked at Gen wearing western pants and a Chinese collared shirt under a haori with the kimono on top and recognized it as flamboyant and unusual, he missed that community. Thanks to dad making him dress up every time even when dad was overseas because he wanted pictures, Senkuu was the only one who could correctly tie Gen's obi for him now that his right arm was injured. Gen had even commented on it, clearly feeling the same oddly lost way Senkuu did about it.
Shintoism... it wasn't quite the right word for how the villagers were. How can a religion survive when all its original myths and stories were replaced? But it wasn't quite dead either. Honoring ancestors and nature spirits as gods and being descended from supernatural beings who once held incredible power but became diminished the longer they spent on Earth wasn't entirely off the mark. The hundred tales was its own thing, but it rhymed. It was derivative. He could ask Gen about that later, maybe. Anthropology was his wheelhouse. Senkuu preferred fields where the correct answers could be calculated mathematically.
Senkuu cried. Properly, audibly, and without restraint instead of the few loose tears he shed while doing his best to hold it together in front of everyone. It took a while after Ruri and Gen left to start, but he'd been feeling the signs of it coming for ages now. He supposed there was no shame in it, even if it wasn't exactly news that his father was dead. A son should cry at his father's grave, right? Even if Senkuu had known dad was gone for ages now and had already had this breakdown when he was still wearing leaves and figuring out how to make a rock into a knife. There were no rules about how much or how little he should cry, and since he was alone nobody could judge him either way.
There were only two logical possibilities. If dad had been petrified, he would have been incinerated by reentry and then whatever was left would get smashed to dust by the impact when the International Space Station fell out of orbit. There was never any chance of finding his father petrified somewhere in this stone world. If he hadn't been petrified, well, turns out that was what happened. Dad married a pop star and had kids. Those kids had kids, and on down through three thousand seven hundred and twenty years to now when even his bones would be long gone. There were probably other villages full of astronaut descendants. No, there had to be, because by the end of the story it was clear they hadn't made it to the mainland in Dad's lifetime. They would have populated the island until it was full, then done what crowded people always did: leave, explore, and settle new land.
What he said to Kohaku was correct in every logical way it could be examined. After so many generations they weren't really family anymore, and he wasn't Byakuya's kid by blood in the first place, but he was having a hard time moving that fact from his brain to his heart. The file simply wouldn't copy over. Whatever he knew logically, he couldn't set aside how he felt about it. He did want to help these people before, above and beyond his own needs and Tsukasa being out for his blood, but knowing what he did?
They were family. Distant, sure, too distant to matter in any biological sense, but nieces and nephews all the same. He wouldn't think of them as primitive children, and he wouldn't treat them that way. That was elitist, infantilizing, and just plain wrong. He knew better. Kaseki certainly wasn't some kid he needed to protect. On the other hand, he was the village chief now. Protecting all of them as a group was his job. He could channel the stupid emotional responsibility he felt for them into something productive instead of insulting.
He stopped by the river to wash his face and then walked to the lab for a moment before he went back to the party. Even from there, he could hear people laughing and celebrating. Three days of celebration for the new chief was standard, but it seemed like the count hadn't started until today. Some people really hadn't celebrated that first night while the antibiotic was being made since he had left, and then Ruri had gotten worse after the first dose which put a damper on everyone's mood the second day. It was already day four of the week countdown Gen was given when Ruri started improving. She insisted on telling Senkuu the story of his father's life, then taking him to the graveyard to tell him the final message. He warned her that even if she felt good now, she would have to take the antibiotic for two weeks to be sure the pneumonia was gone and should keep resting, but she wouldn't take no for an answer.
Since they were really just celebrating Ruri's improved health, Senkuu let them carry on. Gen told everyone who would stand still long enough that the first attack was scheduled to launch six or seven days behind him while Senkuu was busy making the medicine and performing follow-up care, and there were a bunch of preparations done from extra jugs of water around to trimming bushes along the shore and the dock on the main islet that might help conceal an incoming attack, which Senkuu had offhandedly approved using his authority as chief while most of his attention was focused on the chemical reactions ongoing in the lab. Gen knew their plans, so any ideas that came out of his conversations with the warriors were probably good.
Senkuu had missed Gen's reaction to finding the cola, but he hadn't wanted to wake the injured spy when it was time to deliver the first dose. It was hard to tell with Gen, but most of the time when he spoke of the people Tsukasa had revived it sounded like he was well-liked by several powerful people. There was also a fondness in how Gen spoke of Tsukasa, even though Gen derided his outlook and thought him a horrible leader. He'd mentioned the name Ukyo a few times when he was more relaxed, almost seeming to forget that Senkuu didn't know who that was once, and that certainly sounded like a friend. He deliberately did not associate with Taiju or Yuzuriha much, to the point that he complained about not having a pair of shoes because there was no convenient time to ask Yuzuriha to make him a pair, but had paid enough attention to them somehow to get some of Senkuu's snarky jokes about Taiju's stamina.
He was thinking a lot about Gen. Maybe he was distracting himself from the whole child of destiny bullshit his dad made of him in the story. He knew Byakuya loved him, but shit, dad, a guy could get some kind of god complex from this. He chose to believe that dad hadn't really thought Senkuu specifically would ever hear the story in that form, or that it was trying to inspire future generations to be more like Senkuu. Then he'd inspired Senkuu's siblings and the other kids enough to have the same tenacity that Senkuu learned from him and they'd kept not just understandable Japanese but a hundred stories his dad wrote intact enough that Senkuu could imagine them spoken in his voice.
"Wow, Senku-chan, how does it feel to be the second coming of this culture's father god? Perhaps I ought to change my title to priest, or should I clip on some ears to become a kitsune? I think I'd like to be a magic trickster fox when the next set of one hundred tales is finalized. One born under an Empress Tree, to remind people how to write the name of this superficial man." Gen had joked partly in English when it got to that part of the tale, breaking the heavy atmosphere and earning himself a swat from Kohaku for teasing Senkuu while he was obviously having an emotional moment.
Being called -chan right then felt the same in his chest as how his arms felt when Taiju grabbed more than half the books out of a heavy stack Senkuu was carrying. The memory of the teasing tone moved over his shoulders like dad brushing soot and debris off him when he'd blown up an engine in his room. The absurdity of the suggestion was as startlingly improbable as when a NASA scientist started emailing him back speaking to him like a university student instead of an overwhelmingly intense little gremlin, telling him exactly the things he needed to know to get himself unstuck from his failure loop.
"What will really boil your brain later is knowing that my ability to manipulate your perceptions and make you think a certain way about a targeted subject is completely unharmed, and often enhanced, by the certain knowledge that I am a brilliant mentalist..."
It did. It was. Gen had been interrupting and teasing and prodding him the whole time and it was so obvious to Senkuu what he was doing. It was so deliberate and ham-fisted. Senkuu wasn't sure if his friends were mad at Gen for trying to manipulate and distract Senkuu while Ruri was reciting what amounted to sacred scripture, or if they had somehow missed what was so obvious and thought the magician had just been bored or annoyed at Ruri for being Senkuu's ex-wife and the center of attention.
Thinking of stupid things his dad shouldn't have instructed Senkuu's siblings to parrot that related to Gen, there was a rule that divorced people shouldn't remarry for a year after they were divorced. Senkuu knew this because people kept asking if Senkuu was certain Gen would live that long without his love returned. The hanahaki disease in the hundred tails sounded like an allegory for fair treatment of other people's feelings without compromising your own instead of what it really was: slow deaths from tuberculosis while sailors were away from their girlfriends processed through a global game of telephone during the Victorian era and finally fictionalized with Japanese morals and culture in mind to become coughing up petals instead of blood. Senkuu knew this, because his father had liked Hanahaki romance novels not only enough to know the origins of the trope, but to explain all that to his then-thirteen-year-old son. There were historical things behind the fluffy romance, maybe research it, maybe... gods, but he hadn't wanted to deal with all that gross stuff. He'd never read even one of the books, and now they had all rotted to dust.
Despite being an obvious allegory to Senkuu, the people of the village took the story very literally. Since Gen apparently walked around with an entire flower shop's worth of botanicals in his clothing, hitting him during the Grand Bout was a bit like smacking a floral-themed piñata. Gen was graceful enough to avoid hits and rather good at throwing things or doing yo-yo tricks, but that didn't make him a sturdy or skilled fighter. Gen got the wind knocked out of his lungs and the flowers knocked out of his pockets at the same time in a way that looked like he had Hanahaki disease to the villagers. Then, Gen just had to have to have some kind of epiphany that painted the most beatific smile on his face while zoned out looking in Senkuu's general direction.
Senkuu thought he had a right to ask what it was Gen figured out that put that look on his face, considering how everyone else took it, but now it was three days later, and it felt like he'd missed his chance. Gen didn't seem to mind at all that people misunderstood what they saw. It got Senkuu out of a marriage he didn't want to be part of with zero hassle, made most of the village sympathetic to him despite his outsider status, and hushed any doubts about Gen's true loyalty, so for Gen it was a win-win situation. As for Senkuu himself...
He shouldn't blame Kohaku for having a bad day and wanting to hang out with Chrome at the end of it. They were friends. It just sucked that Senkuu had been making actual progress that evening on a problem he'd been ignoring for probably more years than was strictly healthy. Senkuu had only just barely put together, while watching Chrome and Ginro trying to wrap their heads around the hows and whys of kissing a girl between the legs until she squeaked, that he was deeply uninterested in ever touching a vagina. He hadn't taken any time to think seriously on the subject after that evening because he had priorities and there are lives on the line. Figuring out what his dick wanted him to do about his sixteen-year-old hormones was rather low on the list. Now, with everyone thinking that Gen was in love with him and Senkuu had bluntly turned him away, he kept feeling like he needed to correct them but had only a vague idea what he should be correcting. It was uncomfortable and wrong and Gen didn't think that way about Senkuu but Senkuu thought way too much about Gen, so if anyone should be spitting flowers it was him!
He missed Gen when he went back to Roppongi Hills and woke up every Wednesday anticipating Gen's return even though he knew Gen couldn't come every week. He missed the jokes only he got, which Chrome and the guys usually asked Senkuu to explain after Gen left. They led to all kinds of lessons about what life was like back in the twenty-first century, which Senkuu probably wouldn't have bothered talking about so much if he wasn't prompted. School dress codes were rules without a point to them; movie theaters had everyone reverse-engineering a regular stage play as something they might be able to do sometime; television had blown their minds. Senkuu hadn't quite managed to explain origami well enough for them to understand that Gen couldn't make a living frog if given the right material to fold. Even though those discussions mostly happened when Gen was away, it kind of made it worse. The longing he felt for things from his old life mixed up in wishing he wasn't the only one there who understood and Senkuu ended up just... wanting.
What he wanted was a lot harder to pin down. Taiju and Yuzuriha could help answer all those questions too, but Yuzuriha was just someone Kohaku had seen at a great distance once and everyone was already talking about Gen. Sometimes he wanted them to shut up and stop reminding him of things that were still so far out of reach or so far down the priority list he'd be better off not thinking about them.
Even the dress code discussion had him feeling wistful and needy. He liked his school clothes, they were easy. Fashion just wasn't a thing he spent brainpower on, but he missed structured shoes that could properly protect his toes if he dropped something. While his hide coat and kilt set did the job of covering his body, he had no illusions about the initial quality of the craftsmanship and every time it got wet it degraded further. He had to be sparing about how often he washed it, or it would fall apart on him before he could source a big enough hide to make a replacement. A nice button-down shirt made of cotton would be a dream. He'd gotten used to the rough feel of rawhide on his skin, but that didn't mean he liked it. Pants were so fucking complicated to make he'd ruined four deer hides before giving up the attempt and just rocking the kilt life. Any time he became aware of the fact that he didn't have underpants on under the clothes he'd made he'd feel awkward for the rest of the day, and sweaty weather plus compulsory free-balling in uncured hide clothing was not a comfortable combination. He was ten billion percent sure that once Yuzuriha was safe and sound and the dust cleared he'd swallow every molecule of his pride to beg her to make him a couple pairs of undershorts and maybe please an improved undershirt.
It wasn't just the company of someone else who understood what had been lost that had Senkuu so hung up, either. Ninety kilometers between Roppongi Hills and Ishigami Village, with about a ten percent margin of error since Senkuu had gotten a little lost on the way south, and Gen could just march up and start helping Kaseki after maybe a cup of water and some summer squash as refreshment. Gen could cry all he wanted about being delicate, and maybe his arms were roughly as strong as the bean sprouts Senkku had for arms, but the man had stamina and boy could he move. When Senkuu asked if he was sprinting the whole way in an attempt to catch Gen out in a lie, the older man admitted he didn't sleep on 'marching days.' He went all night, using the stars, because the lions were asleep at night. When Senkuu said that wasn't right, lions slept in the heat of the day, Gen looked very confused for a minute before asking Senkuu if summers in Japan were as hot as their original native habitat.
Which was a brilliant question, because the answer was that Japan was a completely different habitat to what lions evolved in, and then Kohaku got to explain about how lions in Japan act in this biome. They huddle up together to stay warm at night and hunt mostly at dusk, but roam around during the heat of day looking for carrion or injured animals they could easily pick off. They adapted to Japan over thousands of years so now they acted differently than their African ancestors. Gen, having no knowledge of lions before petrification, had simply observed the lions and made his travel choices based on what was safest for him. Twilight was when the most predators were the most active, so he'd nap a bit after dinner and head out immediately after the sun was fully set. Technically when he told Kaseki he left before dawn he was being honest, it was just a gross understatement. Fifteen to seventeen hours to cross that many kilometers of distance was still beastly. Gen had pants made by Yuzuriha that were a bit baggy around the ankles and Senkuu had never been so interested in what a pair of legs looked like before realizing that Gen also foraged for stuff on the way. Senkuu couldn't make that hike in less than twenty-four hours if the only thing he did was walk in a straight line, and here was Gen zooming along while browsing the local botanicals like one of those grocery store game show contestants to deliver a mix of nutritious veggies and interesting looking oddities when he reached the finish line.
Knowing that the times Gen slipped away from doing manual labor were probably used for naps after that power walk told Senkuu that Gen probably made those fake blood packs before he came south the first time. Logically, and given the time it would take to craft them, it just didn't make sense unless he was afraid enough to make them while living under Tsukasa. Gen seemed most scared of this Hyoga person, but Senkuu didn't think anything Gen said to Kokuyo was inaccurate. He was vulnerable and uncomfortable living there, and if Senkuu had some ulterior motives for wanting Gen to just stay in Ishigami village that was fair play given Gen's whole... everything.
It felt incredibly selfish to want more company when he already had a half-dozen friends here, but decided to give himself permission just this once. He was lonely without Taiju and Yuzuriha, and Gen helped that in a way Chrome, Kohaku, Suika, the gold and silver brothers, and Kaseki just couldn't. There was no point in trying to deny plain facts, and stressing himself over things he can't change would reduce his efficiency. He'd really pushed himself over the summer, and part of that push was wanting to have a lot of progress to brag about to Gen. His reactions to the crazy things Senkuu achieved were always so satisfying. There was surprise, sure, but while shocking the mentalist was nice those reactions seemed exaggerated, and it was hardly the best part.
The best part was quiet way Gen would look around just before or after Senkuu explained, that air of expectation with confidence that Senkuu was fully capable of doing whatever he set his mind to. There was no real disbelief in Gen's exclamations, just surprise that it had been done so quickly or with such primitive tools. The lack of any genuine disbelieving shock in Gen's loud posturing wasn't because Gen thought any of it was easy or that he took it for granted that these things could be reinvented from scratch. There was nothing flippant in the reactions, nothing patronizing. There was also the casual support of not just asking what Senkuu's next orders were, like Chrome did, but making a guess about the next step or a suggestion of what might improve whatever they were up to. Even if he was dead wrong, some of the comments were funny or creative, but usually it was something only a little off the mark.
That first big project, when Gen started wrapping the copper wire around the soon-to-be magnet before Senkuu had really explained, still played in Senkuu's head whenever Gen acted like a vapid, silly idiot. Gen talked himself down as much as he talked himself up, and it was true that his knowledge base for hard sciences was very superficial, pun intended, but that centimeter deep understanding stretched out for a thousand kilometers in every direction. Even when Gen couldn't remember why something was good to have or could only barely identify what something was, he still turned up with brightly colored copper-bearing rocks, medicinal herbs of all kinds, and even some hard-to-find natural dyes. Gen claimed his memory was shit, but Senkuu wondered if that was just because he hadn't really been paying attention to all those nonfiction podcasts and audio-books Gen used to help him sleep.
Senkuu had made his slow way back to the village during all this thinking. Pretty much everyone was around the central campfire of the main islet having a party. He settled down a bit away from everyone, just close enough to feel some heat from the bonfire. He'd been distracting himself from the revelations of the day by thinking about the mentalist, but now that he was back he couldn't help looking for traces of his dad's genetics in the village population. A nose here, slanted eyes there, that woman's cheeks, that man's body type... Dad was the only Asian person in the crew, so pretty much anyone with Asian features had to be expressing dad's genetics.
Gen appeared and settled next to him, wordlessly setting down a dish of roasted boar with a mix of sides in front of Senkuu. There was no wedding to go with the celebratory feast, but at least the food wouldn't go to waste, and then everyone would be past the food coma and all fueled up by the time Hyoga attacked. Senkuu looked over at Gen properly just in time to realize that he'd balanced a second plate on his head when he walked over. Gen absolutely would malinger over a serious injury if it served his purposes, he was just that kind of guy, but Senkuu was sure his busted elbow was still more purple than his clothes. The food on Gen's plate had been arranged to be easier to balance, with the chunk of meat in the middle and everything else around it. It looked like the kind of plating done in fine dining restaurants, but in this case it was practical.
Gen didn't say anything. Not even a greeting. He moved his plate from his head to his lap and pulled out two pairs of chopsticks from one of the many pockets he had added to his clothing. Senkuu took the offered chopsticks, picked up the plate in front of him, and started eating. He wasn't hungry, but he knew he would regret it later if he didn't eat. Emotional crap was such a pain. This was probably one of the best meals the village could produce, and it tasted like dust because of some dumb neurochemicals messing with his perceptions.
Senkuu ate mechanically while he watched the villagers interact. He was getting to know more of them. After Kokuyo came out to meet the leader of the Kingdom of Science, people started to come out to check out what Senkuu, Chrome, and Kaseki were doing. He estimated he had properly met about two-thirds of them, if only briefly. They hadn't really included him as part of their village before the Grand Bout, but when Chrome needed a new headband after his got singed in a lab accident, he'd come back with a belt for Senkuu as well. It was a much softer material than the ropes Senkuu made for himself, but even with the softness it was a sturdy upgrade to the fraying belt he was wearing. The woman who made it had noticed the poor quality of Senkuu's clothing when she escorted some kids up to see what Suika was having so much fun doing.
Little acts of kindness like that meant a lot when he had so little, and the culture here was interesting. They may have a lot of foreign physical traits, but the culture seemed to be mostly Japanese in a way that was sometimes uncanny and at other times deeply comforting. He'd overheard an argument between two older people one day when he and Chrome were distilling water on a cleaning day between rounds of processing rocks into reagents. The middle-aged women had just come back from foraging and were trying to out-do each other's generosity, each offended that the other one might have obliquely implied they were at all stingy, and that felt like home. Senkuu had been to several different countries and come in contact with a lot of cultures and attitudes through his volunteer work in Africa, but that argument was as Japanese as the national anthem.
And now he knew why. The other astronauts hadn't lived very long, but dad had the privilege of reaching old age. He'd have been known by his grandkids and possibly even great-grandkids, would have been the oldest human alive for... half his life, if he made it to eighty-four. He'd been in excellent health and survived the pneumonia, so that was certainly probable. If the kids took care of him as arthritis and all the other frailties set in, and why wouldn't they pamper their old man, then he might have made it well into his nineties. Lillian would have died around eighteen years after petrification. There weren't exact times in the story, but his marriage couldn't have lasted longer than one decade. That wasn't fair. Dad deserved so much more than that, he was such a sappy romantic guy.
"Three days left, if we're lucky. Two if we aren't," Gen said, pulling Senkuu's attention back to the present. Chrome and Kohaku had sat down in front of him without him noticing. He looked around and saw the rest of his friends had made a little circle around him, including Kaseki. "Now you have as much labor as you could possibly want. I've read Sun Tzu, and the Art of War was surprisingly salty. The whole book reeked of as I have already stated several times, you idiot, but I suppose it was written for its audience. Which is good, because being written for idiots made it easy for me to understand."
"Yeah?" Senkuu asked, keen to tear his thoughts away from long-ago things he couldn't affect and talk strategy for the upcoming battle. "What does the ancient wisdom say we need for this war?" Gen affected a thinking pose, a fake serious look on his face. The old chief and Jasper clearly heard Senkuu and stood up to join them.
"Sieges are the worst, don't do that ever because even if you take the town it won't be worth the cost. Make opportunities to frustrate enemy plans, take their territory without fighting by breaking their spirits as much as possible. Treat prisoners well so that they will eventually join you gladly. If you dispute the loyalty the state inspires or the authority of the leader of the enemy empire then, without losing a man, you can be triumphant through strategy. Prepare well, and calculate your enemy's strength carefully. Never fight when outmatched, flee if necessary, and press every advantage" Gen said, his tone light.
"Those are wise words," Kokuyo said as he sat down.
"It's advice as generic and free of detail as you can expect when someone didn't study for the test," Senkuu teased. Gen's whole body shifted from his well-practiced affectations to an uncharacteristic steady seriousness. When he spoke it was obviously his natural voice, which was noticeably deeper and richer than what anyone was used to hearing from him.
"If you know the enemy and yourself, you need not fear the outcome of battle. Right now we have an overwhelming information advantage, but that won't last long. I won't be able to maintain my cover much longer. That's why I brought that big basket with me this time. I left nothing of any great value behind, only the blanket on my bed and enough clutter that it won't be suspicious at a glance, but I really doubt that I will have my cover intact by the end of the first battle. The real trouble will be in giving orders. It will take time to get any messages across any distance, and we will have to use indirect tactics to beat their superior martial skill, so coordination between different teams will be key. I may not be strong, but I can cover distance well. Ginro has similar endurance for swift and stealthy long-distance travel. Unfortunately, one well-aimed arrow would be the end of either of us, and I don't know how Ukyo will take my defection. We've had some interesting conversations and I think he is unsettled by Tsukasa breaking living statues, but like all the lieutenants he was dissatisfied with the old world and had troubles in his old life that Tsukasa has promised will no longer bother him under his rule. He's a skilled archer, have I said that before? Even just me reporting what I know of Tsukasa's Empire is so tedious and clunky, and I've already lost track of what I have and haven't already said. You don't know how many days ended with me wishing I could lounge in bed texting you instead of saving it all up for when I could safely visit."
"A phone with a message app isn't something we could easily make." Senkuu couldn't help the smile that crept over his face. He'd already been planning to fix the communication issue, but Gen came at it from a completely different angle than how he'd arrived at the idea. "I didn't read the original book, but my old mentor was very military minded, and he suggested I study a modernized version of The Art of War. I'd already planned to fix our communication issues; the road map is all drawn up back at the lab ready to go first thing tomorrow. We're going to make a cell phone." Senkuu took another bite of his meat. For a meal made without any spices, it was pretty good.
"What is a cell phone?" Chrome asked.
"What about guns, or maybe explosive artillery for the village?" Gen asked, voice flat and Senkuu choked on his food. Did the silly clown man just request a fucking howitzer? "I know, I know, I hate having to ask. I hate blood and violence, and I really don't want anyone to die, but a show of force would make a lot of them stand down. If we pair that threat with enticing glimpses into the luxuries and comforts science can offer, we can have a classic carrot and stick approach. We wouldn't need many, the katana should freak them out plenty, but if you had a small sidearm just in case I'd sleep better."
"I can't make a gun," Senkuu said flatly.
"As... as a knowledge issue or a moral one?" Gen asked, his tone gentle. "I will respect it if you refuse to create something so easily misused. They were illegal for normal people to own for good reason."
"Neither, it's a resource issue. Any kind of firearm requires black powder made from saltpeter, which we can only get in large amounts by synthesizing it from nitric acid. Nitric acid is the main ingredient of the revival fluid, which Tsukasa has control over," Senkuu said.
"That's..." Gen looked up sharply, leaning back on his good arm. His voice was thick when he continued. "How poetic. The miracle that can restore life to the dead is also the scourge that can kill a man with the twitch of a finger, and we must choose to either make life or cause death with our limited resources."
"This is some fearsome weapon?" Jasper asked.
"There are moral concerns. I don't... making something like that isn't..." Senkuu trailed off, then took a deep breath and started again. He rocked a bit, to release some of the nervous energy in his body. At least he wasn't being as sensitive as Gen, who still had his face tipped up toward the stars and seemed to be trying not to cry. "I was going to. I... I did start to do it. I caught Tsukasa smashing statues, killing people I could have revived from the stone, and I called him a murderer. Tsukasa was going to kill me for that, and I had no chance of stopping him with these noodle arms. Taiju defended me, but while he can take a beating he's a total pacifist who has never once done anything violent, so we ran for it. It was an emergency, and I did make black powder before he caught up to us. That was the day Kohaku met me, when he said he'd kill Yuzuriha if I didn't let him strike me down. I didn't have any time to think about it, to consider what came next or if I'd just melt it all down to make something harmless after it served its purpose. The crossbow I made wasn't enough, I couldn't make it strong enough to hurt him, even with a design that took the upper limit my strength to draw."
"You made a crossbow," Gen said, his voice still odd. Senkuu only nodded even though Gen wasn't looking at him, feeling oddly ashamed of himself. After a moment Gen continued, "For the average opponent, a crossbow would be enough to kill. For Tsuklasa and Hyoga themselves... with the element of surprise and a good aim we could do it, but they would block the hit otherwise. They are too OP for any direct assault. If we shoot them they might die, though, and while we could fire a warning shot with a gun and scare a lot of people into surrendering a crossbow absolutely would not have the same psychological effect unless we shoot to kill once or twice."
"Isn't the point to kill the enemy?" Kokuyo asked.
"Any loss of life that could have been avoided is immoral," Senkuu said, still rocking a little. "I've got a few ideas, all geared toward shock and awe tactics. Make them run away, surrender, so we don't have to kill more than we absolutely have to. Just enough force to make them see reason, and if they don't surrender even then... we do what we have to."
"I know how to make a revolver," Gen said, his voice so quiet Senkuu wasn't sure he'd heard him correctly. "I've got a decent grasp on the basic theory behind how firearms work generally, but I could draw the designs for a revolver, specifically."
"Unless you also know how to make the bullets and have a source of nitric acid, a revolver is less useful than that little knife you used on Mantle," Senkuu said. Unease churned in his gut. Why did Gen know that specific bit of engineering? The way he said it sounded like he'd deliberately studied it, but it seemed wildly out of character. He had so many secrets and layers, a mix of brilliant insight and vapid nonsense Senkuu just couldn't predict, and sometimes Senkuu wished he could peel him apart to see what was going on inside like he was a malfunctioning rocket.
"If this man is a murderer who has taken two or more lives on two or more days, he has earned death," Jasper said.
"The rules are the rules," Kinro agreed with a nod.
"He isn't only a murderer. Tsukasa-chan is a soft-spoken and gentle young man most of the time. That's the worst part of all this: he isn't evil. He thinks he's doing the right thing, and he cares about all the young people who lived in Tokyo, but he's just wrong," Gen said to the sky. "Imagine the most loving big brother in the world, who will protect you from anything, but he starts protecting you from something that isn't a threat. He has a convincing argument for why this is a potential threat, but at minimum there are better ways to deal with the problem, and at most there is no real problem. That's Tsukasa."
"You really care about him," Senkuu said, going still.
"He's charismatic, handsome, generous, gentle, and has a very pleasant speaking voice," Gen said, a hysterical giggle fizzing out of him. "Practically the perfect man, provided you ignore that he wants to kill everyone over forty years old."
"Tell me the two of you aren't fucking," Senkuu pleaded. That was a complication he didn't need. If there was that kind of motivation, if he wanted his lover back to have or to punish, then winter's harshness wouldn't stop Tsukasa from attacking the village relentlessly.
"Of course not, and not only because flirting with him would make me the target of a lot of angry rivals. I wouldn't touch someone like him with gloves on. He's liable to snap my delicate body in half by accident for a start," Gen said, not quite offended enough by the question for Senkuu's taste. "Despite all the charisma, he's as azycray as they come, and I'm too smart to put my dick in a mess like that."
"Well, the whole gun question doesn't matter. Unless I could get my hands on some platinum, I can't make a lot of nitric acid and there are better uses for the little bit of it I can make," Senkuu said, hoping to put the whole thing to bed and move on to the next topic.
"Platinum?" Gen said, an odd hesitance to his voice.
"Yeah but finding any of that would be next to impossible," Senkuu said, flapping a hand dismissively. "Most of it comes from igneous rocks containing sperrylite mined in South Africa, Russia, or Canada, which are all many thousands of kilometers away. Japan is my home, and it's got a lot of great things about it, but when it comes to mineral resources, especially the exotic ones, we're a broke-ass nation. We began specializing in exporting high-quality goods manufactured from imported raw materials for a reason."
"If you had some, just ten grams for example, how much nitric acid could you make from that?" Gen asked, his voice gone delicate and airy. "In terms of how many lives you could revive from stone."
"Infinite, all of them," Senkuu said, excited by the idea of building a permanent manufacturing setup to produce nitric acid. "Theoretically, anyway. The Ostwald process uses the platinum as a catalyst, not a reactant, so it isn't consumed. It can keep going as long as I feed it ammonia, which we can get naturally, or I could set up a Haber reaction to make a ton of it. I'd only be limited by how careful I am not to let it overheat and melt the..." Senkuu stopped talking when Gen surged to his feet and dashed away.
"He seems really upset," Kohaku said.
"I don't think he really wants to make these gun things," Jasper said. "Hearing that you could possibly make an infinite amount of this substance that gives you the power over life and death isn't very comfortable for me, either."
"Yeah. Being able to make an infinite amount of anything sounds totally bad, but he started out talking about how we could win without losing a single life," Chrome said, bouncing his knee nervously.
"The thought of making such a thing, that could kill a man with only the effort of moving a finger..." Kaseki trailed off and took a deep breath. "I'm not even sure exactly what these things are, but I don't think either of you really want to make one. Gen sounded like he was confessing to some great sin when he admitted to knowing how to make the these weapons."
"Are you talking about what happened to Hiroshima?" Senkuu about jumped out of his skin, spinning around so he was crouched on all fours to look up at Argo, his dinner plate scattering when he kicked it.
"Shut up!" Senkuu barked, and leaped up to his feet to yell right in Argo's injured face. Or, as close as his less impressive height could get him, anyway. "What the fuck are you accusing me of? Is that something dad put in the hundred tales, because if it is you must have misunderstood the entire fucking point. There's no way he'd frame that as anything but a tragedy."
"Hey, sorry," Argo said, holding his hands up. "Gen said that was where his family was from, that something terrible happened but I should only ask about it if I wanted nightmares. It sounded like you were talking about the same sort of horrible weapon, is all."
"He... when?" Senkuu asked, trying to reign in his adrenaline.
"When he drank that stuff you made for him. I was the one asked to wait for him to wake up while you tended to Ruri. He asked the gods to forgive him, because he planned to ask you about science weapons that could kill a lot of people and help win the fight against this Tsukasa person," Argo said, reaching up to scratch his face but checking himself. Even with the eye-patch covering the worst of it, there was a lot of gruesome bruising visible. "He was really torn up about it."
"What happened there?" Ginro asked quietly.
"There were two cities destroyed by nuclear bombs, Hiroshima was one of them. It's fundamentally impossible to know exactly how many died, the destruction was that complete," Senkuu said. His hands were shaking. "The only survivors weren't anywhere near the blast when the bomb hit, total destruction."
"You know how to make something that could destroy an entire village in one blow?" Kokuyo asked.
"I won't. I wouldn't," Senkuu said. He was trembling all over, and everyone was staring at him. "I don't really know how to do it, it's just the idea of how it might possibly be done, and it's way too dangerous for experimentation. Just being near Uranium or Plutonium in their enriched forms can kill you, and there where several times people died from a few seconds of exposure that should have been warning enough that they were doing something... unwise. Even after all that, there was the demon core incident, which was essentially a third one of the same weapon that was being studied and the scientists got careless."
"Demon core?" Kohaku asked. Senkuu translated the name and refused to elaborate further.
"Is this black powder stuff related to that?" Chrome asked.
"No, no it isn't," Senkuu said, sitting back down. "It's dangerous, but has nothing to do with atomic energy or radiation. It's a blend of potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal. Nothing radioactive, and nowhere near the destructive power."
"Is that the powdery stuff you used to make those wheel-things that pulled the tree off me?" Kohaku asked.
"Yeah," Senkuu said, taking a breath and feeling a little better. "It's explosive, but there are uses for it other than killing people. Mining, for one, or terraforming projects and construction. You can use it to break up rocks so it is easier to find and separate valuable minerals from the ordinary rocks, or to flatten out an area where you want to build something big, to change the shape of a riverbank, or even to crack down to dig a well in areas where clean drinking water is scarce."
"There you go, then," Kohaku said decisively. "This black powder has productive uses, but the demon weapon that killed so many doesn't, so..."
"That's not accurate," Senkuu said. "Uranium powered reactors can produce electricity using the exact same energy that is so deadly. It wasn't a popular thing because of the history we have here in Japan, but in other countries there were a lot of nuclear reactors making electrical power from the exact same materials. Instead of making it explode out of control, it is tamed enough that it just boils a lot of water, which spins the generator."
"The water spins it..." Chrome muttered. Senkuu looked over at him, but Kohaku patted Senkuu's arm to keep his attention.
"Alright, so even something as evil as that can be used responsibly by good people," Kohaku said when Senkuu made eye contact again. He wished she would stop touching his arm, he was jittery enough just now.
"Objects aren't evil." Senkuu said, trying to focus past the invasion of his personal space. Today was just too much, he was overstimulated and worn down, but on this point he was ten billion percent sure of himself. "People can use them for evil purposes, and some things are designed in way that make it easier to do immoral things than good ones, but the things themselves are still just things. Only human actions have moral weight, and there were a lot of rules and laws for how certain things could be designed to ensure a baseline of safety."
"Gen said guns were illegal," Jasper spoke up. "It was one of the first things he said about them, in fact, that regular people were not allowed to have them."
"I don't know what the laws for guns were exactly, but there was special training and requirements to get permission to have one. Basically, you had to be a guardsman and learn to shoot accurately before you were allowed to touch one outside of the training grounds," Senkuu explained.
"If you made these things, you would have similar rules for them," Jasper said, as if Senkuu had already made those laws as chief.
"Yes. If you don't know how to use and maintain it properly, it is just a matter of time before you hurt yourself with it, and only pure luck would keep you from harm."
"Like a spear or a knife," Kokuyo said. "If you don't respect the stone when you make a new spearhead or sharpen a blade, you can be blinded by the chips."
"I like the thing Gen said to me, that day after the Grand Bout when he was worried about asking for science weapons," Argo said, and Senkuu looked at him expectantly. "Figure out how strong the other guy is, attack him with something just a little bit more powerful than you think he's got, hit him just enough to make him yield, then be friends with him after. It worked on me, I've got mad respect for that guy now."
"He was testing us," Jasper said. "I think we failed to meet his expectations. I should have asked about the law he mentioned earlier. That was a very important detail, which would have ensured the conversation did not degrade into discussing such madness as the summoning of demons."
"He also began by saying we should break their spirits and tempt them to join us gladly," Kokuyo reminded them. "That should have been our focus, and the great feats like curing Ruri's illness that science can create to tempt them away from their rejection of wisdom should have been the entire point of our conversation."
"Yet, we fell into the trap of discussing weapons of greater and greater power, with only the lack of resources holding us back," Jasper said with a sigh.
"It's been a long day, and there is a lot of work we need to get done tomorrow. I'm going to bed," Senkuu said. He'd had enough emotional outbursts today, and frankly enough introspection to last him the rest of the year. He was not going to stay and speculate about if and how they had failed Gen's test. It was as obvious as basic addition. Gen wanted to know if Senkuu would go that far, and Senkuu had been too excited by the chemistry to realize he'd started saying creepy shit, and then he was so overstimulated by the roller-coaster of seeing Ruri walking around in better health than she'd had in years, then hearing about his dad, and then all of this that he'd reacted like an idiot to Argo's stupid question.
Of course, when Senkuu climbed up into Chrome's hut to go to bed Gen was there, curled up in his bedding in a tight little bundle. He went about washing up and setting up his straw-packed futon and stiff plant fiber pillow as quietly as he could, but Gen was rather obviously not asleep. The silence was awkward and Senkuu was so done with everything even just the feel of the bedding on his skin was irritating. When the silence stretched too far, Senkuu had to speak.
"I was excited about the chemistry, and reviving people, not the gunpowder," Senkuu said, his voice clear but low enough that if Gen had fallen asleep in that position, he shouldn't be bothered too much by it.
"Promise me that if we ever tell you that you are going too far, you will listen," Gen answered, just as quietly.
"That's easy. I may not let hard work or difficult odds stop me, and sometimes I say shit that's a little over the line because I'm not thinking about the phrasing, but if you tell me I messed up, I'll listen. Being a scientist isn't just about being right, it's about changing what you are doing when you get it wrong until you find what is right. I messed up tonight, Jasper pointed it out after you left, so, yeah. I'm sorry for saying a bunch of insensitive babble when I should have noticed how upset you were getting, and I promise if you or anyone in the Kingdom of Science tells me I've gone off the rails I'll listen."
Gen rolled over so he was facing Senkuu, who had claimed the middle spot tonight since Gen was huddled off to one side. A pale hand slid out from under the blanket and set a diamond engagement ring in between their pillows. Senkuu stared at it. It was chunky and masculine, easily six milimeters wide and at least four millimeters thick. It must have cost a mint. Perhaps once it was crisply shaped into a smooth square-edged band, and there was what might have been a V shape framing where the stone was set, but now it was raggedy and worn all around. It was impressive the square-cut stone was still in place.
"Gold is rare, and we will need pretty much all we have for what I have planned, but you don't have to give up..."
"It's platinum, not white gold," Gen whispered. Senkuu just stared at him. It was so dark with only a little sliver of light peeking through the curtain, and Gen's shoulder cast a shadow over his face. Senkuu could only see the ring because the stone caught the light so well and the metal was so bright, but he remembered what it looked like in full sunlight. Of course it wasn't white gold, the worn parts would have faded to a yellow color over the centuries, but this ring was still a bright tin-white color even on the roughest edge.
"It's precious to you," Senkuu said.
"It's the lives of every person currently petrified weighed against a few silly emotions," Gen whispered, and Senkuu wasn't sure if he was being so quiet because he was scared of what Senkuu might do with it or because he was trying to hide how he felt about something so sentimental being melted down.
"No. It's a shortcut I could take at the cost of hurting a friend and valuable ally," Senkuu whispered. Then louder he said, "If you can't say it normally, if you can't give that to me in the light of day with no regrets and have to whisper in the dark when I can hardly even see you, then don't bother offering it to me."
A petite, pale hand crept spider-like out of the folds of the blanket. There was a long moment where it didn't move, and then it snatched up the ring and darted back into shadow. All Senkuu could think of for a while was that Gen's strong but nimble fingers were much too thin for that chunky ring, and how big the hand it was made for must have been. Senkuu was still awake when Chrome came up to sleep half an hour later, but he felt he'd made the right choice. There was no reason to be cruel, and he wouldn't let himself become the kind of monster Gen was so obviously terrified of.
He was absolutely going to start stockpiling ammonia, though. He wanted that ring, and if he had to earn Gen's trust and respect from zero a second time in order to get it, then that was exactly what he was going to do.