Chapter Text
One would think being appointed as something of a judicial officer would involve difficult conversations, dealing out fair punishments and having to write a short list full of simple instructions. Ukyo had known these uncontrolled gremlins long enough to know that it would not be that easy.
He had only taken the role due to his previous experience, both on a submarine and keeping peace in the Empire of Might. He was used to sharing a small space with a lot of people. He was more than used to the cabin fever and lashing out. He was also more than capable of keeping the crew from attacking each other, which was generally a helpful skill with their crew.
He knew the Kingdom of Science would have a difficult time with being trapped on the Perseus for so long.
Still, even he couldn’t predict the extent of the pure ridiculousness his new position would involve.
As soon as viable, Ukyo was going to demand a week off.
* * *
1) These rules are official and to be followed. Some of these rules only apply to a particular person or group, but it is still advisable not to break each other’s rules or you will be added to said rule. The breaking of any rule applicable to you will have consequences.
2) Only I, (Ukyo), may add or edit rules but anyone is welcome to come to me or Gen if someone is behaving in an upsetting way or you just wish to propose a particular rule and I will consider it.
3) Kohaku: Use the stairs. We are in an enclosed space, one which regularly rocks, and no one wants to live in fear of you randomly jumping into the ship and onto their head. Ginro no longer wants to leave the inside of the ship because of you.
4) Homura: You are not a bird. You do not need to constantly perch on the highest points of the ship.
5) Senku: Unless you can prove that you doing so is completely vital to our voyage or health, do not combine anything explosive while on the Perseus. Kaseki has yet to recover from the last of your ‘side projects’.
6) If you want to have a sleepover in another cabin or switch cabins for any reason, just talk to Gen or the people involved. Do not do any of the following;
a. Sneak into other people’s beds while they are sleeping. If you get hit out of shock for doing this that is no ones fault but your own. The only exception to this rule is Suika.
b. Sneak into another cabin in the middle of night and sit at the foot of someone else’s bed staring at them like a sleep paralysis demon.
c. Lock the roommates you don’t like out of your shared cabin.
d. Lock people out of their own cabin so you can steal their bed.
e. Physically grab someone out of their bed, dump them on the floor and steal their bed.
f. Move all your bedding onto the floor of another cabin and refuse to move.
g. Throw your bed overboard and tell us that it vanished. Beds don’t vanish. We have so little resources here, just why would you do that?
7) Don’t make up cryptids to scare the villagers. Case in point, the American octopus bear. You’re scaring poor Suika with this thing. It is not a real creature, we will not be encountering it when we reach the Americas and the drawing one of you did of it is horrifying, someone please remove it from the mess hall ceiling.
8) Gen: Stop tricking people into doing your chores for you. There is no ‘dish washing master’ and there is a reason Magma and Yo are not on the washing up rotation. You know this. You helped Francois make the roster. It was your idea to have one, even. Don’t act all innocent when they destroy all our kitchenware.
9) Kaseki: Please limit any non-essential hammering until a reasonable time of day. Please.
10) As much as I appreciate that you are all now properly organising sleepovers beforehand instead of just showing up in each other’s rooms in the middle of the night, you have gone a bit too far. The following things are now banned from sleepovers;
a. Pillow fights. I would have no issue with this except some of you are too strong and I would rather not risk more damage to the ship after last time.
b. Tea. The physical kind. Gossiping is still permitted. Too many of you have burned yourselves while tired to the point that it’s impressive.
c. Weapons. If you intend to share your pillow with someone please move the knives or at least warn them first.
11) Whoever is teaching Suika bad words, stop, or face the wrath of one very vengeful Kohaku. None of us will be able to save you. You have been warned.
12) Nikki: Arranging group meetings to admire Lillian Weinberg, teach the villagers more about music and the English language and keep her songs alive is a great idea and has been wonderful for morale. Keep arranging them. However, please do them at regular times for pre-determined lengths. People get disappointed when they miss a meeting because you decided to hold it on a random afternoon in one of the storerooms and people have especially complained about the group still singing well past midnight despite starting at 6pm.
13) Yes, we have an empty holding cell on board. No, this is not an invitation for you to lock people up in it because they annoyed you and sit on the other side of the bars eating for ‘torture reasons’. If a person really did something bad enough to warrant being locked away come to me instead of enacting ramen-based psychological torment.
a. After Hyoga’s response to this rule I will be amending that no torture is allowed. Of any form. Under any circumstances.
14) Chrome: Stop challenging people to meet you in the ‘science ring’. Especially Senku. Never again.
15) No proposing to Francois in order to secure their cooking for yourself or to steal them from Ryusui out of spite. I don’t care how good their food is, we all already know, or how much money you lost gambling against Ryusui. It’s not going to work. Not only are they loyal to Ryusui and therefore will continue to serve him even if they marry you, they’re not interested. They work so hard, leave them out of your petty feuds and just thank them for the meal normally.
16) No proposing to Ryusui to secure Francois’ cooking for yourself. It just might work, but that does not mean it’s a good idea.
17) The only acceptable reason to propose is because you love the person and wish to marry them. I don’t know how it became a ship wide thing to do this, why you all defaulted to proposing or how many dragos you all paid the science team for those simple rings, but the following reasons especially are not acceptable beginnings to matrimony;
a. To win a bet.
b. Because you lost a bet.
c. You want them to fight you.
d. You want someone else to fight you.
e. Because they have the last slice of bread and you’re hungry.
f. To make someone else jealous (just put us all out of our misery and talk to him Gen. Also, break up the engagement already. If the Perseus is blown up due to a certain someone hearing you loudly talking about wedding planning it will be your fault).
g. Because they proposed to you and you want to assert your dominance with a grander proposal.
h. You’re convinced they’re queer and believe that you are the perfect person to be their ‘gay awakening’.
i. You just got bored and wanted to ‘stir the pot a little’.
j. Because you knelt down in front of someone and panicked.
k. As revenge because they broke your stuff so you decided to marry them and then break their heart.
l. To conform to compulsory amatonormativity.
m. To conform to the general absurdity currently sweeping the Perseus.
n. Because you want Francois to bake you a fancy cake. I can understand where you are coming from here. Still, no.
o. For ‘tax benefits’. I just need you to consider this for a moment - we don’t have taxes.
p. Because you want to move into their cabin. I thought we had gotten passed this. You all agreed to the cabin allocations at the beginning of the journey, why are you like this?
18) If the question ‘can Ukyo hear?’ comes up assume the answer is yes. If this is followed by ‘then should I do this?’ the answer is no. If you don’t want me hearing or think me hearing will get you in trouble then don’t do it.
19) Magma and Yo: If you two start another food fight I will retract rule number 13 and let Nikki lock you up and snack torture you.
20) Minami: Stop taking photos and recording people without permission for ‘blackmail material’. You are also not allowed to sell this material to anyone. Get rid of everything you have collected.
a. Gen, I don’t have any proof, but I am absolutely sure you are involved in the above as well. Stop the blackmail ring you two are running.
21) If you are hungry just ask Francois. Don’t decide to organise a highly sophisticated heist behind their back. They will catch you. Not even Homura or Kohaku have a chance of sneaking past them when in their domain. Suika might have a chance, but only because they might let her, so don’t weaponise that.
22) Taiju: Please use your inside voice. My ears haven’t stop ringing since you saw Yuzuriha’s newest craft project.
23) You don’t need to throw a party for every small success or milestone. The second week anniversary of the third day Ginro went without getting sick over the side of the ship is not a real anniversary. Just own up to the fact that you want to play games and drink rather then trapping yourselves in weird traditions you’re too stubborn to abandon in the future.
24) Stop teaching the villagers fake stuff from the 21st century for your own amusement. It’s getting rude and you’re taking advantage of their curiosity. One I especially want to correct, particularly due to the chaos it is causing not only at the casino but in everyday life, is that it’s normal to pay someone by rapidly throwing bills at them. It is not. Please just hand the bills over to the person you are paying.
a. Yes, Chrome, I know Ryusui sometimes does it too but he is not normal and is, in absolutely no way, a good role model.
25) Moz: Leave the girls alone. None of them are interested. I’m not even putting this rule in here just for their sake, more for yours. Your punishment for not obeying this rule is any horror they inflict on you. You have been warned.
26) There are no assigned seats in the mess hall. You cannot carve your name into the benches to mark your ‘spot’ or sit on people’s laps without their permission when they are ‘in the way’. Do I need to give another talk about sharing?
27) Senku: The kitchen is not a place for your experiments. If you need something from the kitchen send someone else for the sake of Francois’ sanity.
28) Stop telling each other that Ryusui is the reincarnation of a minor sea god. I am under the impression that this came about through the unfortunate combination of attempting to explain all sorts of old world religions to the villagers in the same conversation as the class system so I don’t believe this was a purposeful deception at first. However, the fact that you all, instead of correcting this misunderstanding, made a shrine, is not helping. What is also not helping is Ryusui who, upon hearing of this rumour, has been leaving offerings for his followers at his shrine. I believe it’s supposed to be the other way around. Please just disband this weird cult you all accidentally made.
29) While I am glad you listened to the last rule and disbanded the cult, I am very concerned about the what you all replaced the shrine with. I am especially concerned that I have not heard anyone talking about it. I don’t want to know what the drawings of cryptic symbols are for, just remove them.
30) Stop trying to give the villagers last names. While it may become an issue when the world is fully revived, it is currently unnecessary. Besides, if they do decide on surnames let them choose their own. None of you have good taste and I hope some of you never name a child.
a. In particular, Nikki, just because she is one of their ancestors does not mean you can go around referring to them all by the name ‘Weinberg’. You cannot forcibly impose a name on someone. Besides, it gets confusing when you also don’t use their actual names and just refer to them all as Weinberg.
31) Kirisame: An appropriate response to someone being irritating is to tell them, politely, to stop or to just get up and leave. Picking them up and throwing them across the entirety of the deck is not appropriate. It’s impressive, but not appropriate.
32) Ginro: Stop bothering Kirisame.
33) No more dueling each other. Francois, Yuzuriha and Kaseki clean up after you all and repair the stuff you destroy when you decide to handle petty disputes by beating each other up and wrecking stuff. Feel some guilt for giving them more work and keep to sparring in the designated areas. None of the following reasons for having a duel are valid;
a. To defend your ‘honour’. We all know none of you have any.
b. In order to ‘win the maiden’s heart’. Who is this maiden? Did they agree to this? Have you asked them?
c. To avenge Kinro. He’s not dead. The fact that so many of you are insisting he is just concerns me.
34) Stop drawing mustaches on each others’ faces when they fall asleep on deck. It’s become an entire war. No one should be so tired they can’t function because they have been staying awake to avoid having their face drawn on. Just let everyone sleep in peace.
35) Suika: I don’t want to ban you from playing hide and seek, so please just be the seeker or, if you are hiding, please just come out after thirty minutes if not found. You’re too good. We were terrified you had fallen off when we couldn’t find you after several hours. We had to physically restrain both Taiju and Kohaku from jumping in after you. It was not easy.
36) When you run out of dragos gambling you shouldn’t put your soul or a soul you collected from someone else on the line. Souls are not currency. Their existence itself is debatable. Also, Magma, that certificate says you own Yo’s toe, not his soul. It doesn’t even specify which toe.
a. No, Magma, you cannot cut off Yo’s toe to ‘collect your dues’. It wasn’t a legitimate payment to begin with.
37) Yuzuriha: Stop messing with people’s clothes when they upset someone you care about. Not because I disagree with you, you are completely right that they were being insensitive or upsetting, but rather because I am trying to foster open communication on this ship. I want you to know that you can trust me to provide punishment proportional to what they did so you can go comfort your friends rather than waste the effort dyeing their clothes hot pink. You don’t have to sneak around anymore, we all support each other here and won’t tolerate their bad behaviour.
38) Matsukaze: I won’t stop you from serving Ginro as you can make your own choices but I do want to tell you that protecting him does not mean you have to do everything he says. Announcing his presence to the mess hall at dinner and then rolling out a mat for him is too much. Set some boundaries.
39) Gen: I don’t usually care about your footwear choices, or lack thereof, but please at the very minimum wear shoes in the lab car. It’s basic lab safety. I have no idea how Senku has let you get away with this or how you have avoided stepping on glass so far.
a. Saying that you have stepped on glass in the lab and that it was ‘no big deal’ is not helping your case here, Gen.
40) Stop purposely breaking the rules around Kinro to short circuit him. I don’t get how any of you think this is a good idea considering after he calms down he just reports your antics to me. You’re going to give Kinro a heart attack and give yourselves night watch. No one wins here.
41) Tsukasa: Please watch your strength. I appreciate how good you usually are at this and that can’t you can’t always help the automatic response to perceived danger, but if you could work on it that would be wonderful. We only have so much glassware. On a totally unrelated note, Gen and Francois have moved you off the dish washing roster.
42) If someone starts crying you help them or, calmly, go and get someone who can. You do not;
a. Start panicking and screaming for help. No one who is crying wants the entire crew to come running to watch.
b. Punch them in the face so ‘they have something to actually cry about’. There is so much wrong with this approach. So much.
c. Give them a hat without explanation. This especially applies if you stole said hat from someone else.
d. Make direct, terrifying, eye contact as you boop their nose. Sure, it stopped them crying, but it didn’t solve the underlying problem.
43) Yo: The gun is a weapon, not a toy. If I see you pointing it at anyone or shooting it without good cause again you will lose your gun privileges. Don’t test me on this one.
44) Stop using the excuse ‘we’re pirates’ to steal from each other. We’re not even pirates.
45) Stop trying to rebrand us to the ‘Kingdom of Pirates’ to justify stealing. This also does not mean that you can use us actually being called the Kingdom of Science in order to justify stealing for ‘science’ purposes. No stealing. At all.
46) Don’t try to bribe me with dragos to allow stealing. With all that money couldn’t you just buy the stuff you want off each other? Instead of, you know, stealing it?
47) Ginro: the following excuses will not get you off from doing your work;
a. It’s too hot.
b. It’s too cold.
c. You’re hungry.
d. Your legs hurt.
e. You no longer have legs. I can see them. You have legs.
f. You got stabbed. Yes, that did happen, but if you are not currently injured it is not a valid excuse.
g. The deck is cursed and if you mop it you will turn to ash.
h. Kinro isn’t stuck doing chores when you are so you shouldn’t have to. Have you considered that this is because Kinro already did all his assigned work instead of procrastinating?
48) No more cannonballs. Of any form. Not created in the lab for ‘the possibilities’. Not in the form of jumping off the side of the ship. Especially no throwing any cannonballs Senku and Kaseki crafted in the middle of the night in a crazed frenzy off the side of the ship and saluting them as they sink.
49) I wiped off the Twister dots you all put on the deck for a reason. Stop repainting them.
50) Ryusui: If Senku says no to a commission, leave him alone about it. You know if it were currently possible and/or reasonable he would make it if only to charge you a ridiculous amount of money. Don’t just randomly pop up out of nowhere to yell ‘Jacuzzi’ at him.
* * *
Ukyo added a rule to the list and stepped back.
Ryusui had predicted only a few more hours until they reached the US. Hopefully, this rule was the last one he was going to have to add and the crew would behave themselves while they hunted for corn. That felt like wishful thinking. There was never a dull day with the Kingdom of Science.
It was both a blessing and a curse.
He looked over the assorted rules again. He was mystified as to how their group had managed to get up to so much chaos in just the span of just a few weeks. As much as he had come to truly care for many of them and was, to some extent, amused by their antics, they were giving him a serious headache.
The rules had served as a good deterrent for some of their more earnest members. Others seem to have taken them as a challenge. He was convinced that some of the crew were actively attempting to get their actions on the list and prohibited, challenging themselves to new chaotic heights.
“Ukyo!” Suika barreled towards him, eyes bright behind the lenses embedded in her melon helmet. “Can we do some more reading and writing practice? Please?”
Ukyo had continued on the reading and writing lessons which he had began when they were building the Perseus, now with the list being commonly used as material to both improve reading aloud and to remind people of the rules. The fact that it made his students laugh or sigh occasionally was also a bonus for engagement. Suika remained his most avid student, often finding him at odd hours to go over the little slips of homework he sometimes assigned to just her or to excitedly show him the new words she had learnt.
Ukyo hesitated, thinking about all the work to be done now that they were close, but found himself weak to the adorable girl. The Kingdom of Science encouraged learning and Suika was an amazing learner. If there was any excuse to be a little distracted from work in their group then it would be for the pursuit of knowledge. At least, that’s what he would tell anyone that questioned them. Not that they would stop them as everyone else was just as enamoured with Suika as him. “Sure, if you join me near the sonar.”
“Yay!” Suika beamed.
“What’s got you so excited, Suika-chan?” Gen approached, hands in sleeves.
“Reading and writing practice!” Suika bounced up and down, declaring the activity with more energy that it probably should prompt. “Ukyo’s going to help!”
“I must say, Suika-chan, you are much more eager for ool-schay than I ever was at your age.”
Suika tilted her head, looking puzzled at the concept that a child would feel anything less than ecstatic for learning. “But, it’s so fun? And, writing is so cool! Senku told me that you can write things for people to read way in the future! Like Lillian’s song but on paper!”
“The Kingdom of Science sure does foster a different attitude to learning than the old world,” Ukyo chuckled, thinking fondly of Chrome’s pure enthusiasm anytime he was learning a new concept and Kinro’s determination to perfectly replicate the example sentences Ukyo gave them. The villagers weren’t tainted by the school system. They had no need to strive for good scores or spend hours trapped inside. Instead, they retained the childlike joy of every new discovery of how the world worked. “Speaking of Senku, where is he? I thought you two were joined at the hip?”
“We don’t spend all our time ogether-tay,” Gen rebutted, tilting his head in mock innocence. Ukyo just raised a doubtful eyebrow.
“Perhaps that’s true now, but not always. You two have been so off since the poker game. You should talk to him.”
“Why talk when nothing is wrong?”
Ukyo sighed, knowing he couldn’t interrogate Gen fully with Suika present, but still just fully done with his friend’s pining. It reminded him how young all the other members of the Kingdom were. Oh, what he would give for some more modern adults. Maybe a marriage counselor. “I know neither of you are much for feelings, but if you don’t communicate what you want then how will he know? You may both be weirdly good at reading each other at times, but some things need to be laid out in the open.”
Suika visibly pondered their conversation for a moment before brightening.
“I know! We can help Gen write Senku a love letter!” Suika exclaimed. “Nikki said it’s super romantic.”
“Wha-Who said anything about ove-lay, that’s-” Gen began before pulling himself together and hiding his shock behind a pleasant expression. “Suika-chan, that’s-”
“A great idea, Suika.” Ukyo patted her melon helmet. Gen mouthed ‘traitor’ at him over Suika’s head. Ukyo just smiled innocently back. “What wonderful writing practice.”
The three of them walked to the bridge. Or, more accurately, Ukyo led the way as a skipping Suika dragged a very reluctant Gen along with her. Ukyo easily ignored the daggers Gen was glaring into the back of his head.
With them quickly approaching land there was no way they would have the time to finish it. Regardless, it was a nice little moment. Like many of the incidents that formed the list, it was memorable. The combination of Suika’s evident joy and Gen’s affection for the young girl thinly veiled behind dramatic displeasure made him feel warm.
Still, Ukyo just couldn’t shake the fear that it was the calm before the storm.