gravity | dr. stone

gravity 10: senku, the protector

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"Sen-chan..."

Ishibashi Tenma called out in a weak tone. Watching her childhood friend gush over the raw materials inside Chrome's storage house, Tenma watched with a silly smile. It's been a while since she'd seen him so carefree, despite that evil look on his face, of course.

A few moments later, Senku snapped out of his fangirling phase to glance at Peaches. Catching her looking at him, Senku almost lost composure. He cleared his throat, acting as if her watching him did not make butterflies flutter in his stomach. "What are you looking at, Peaches?"

"Sen-chan," she started with a smile. "Are you hydrogen?"

Senku almost choked on air when he heard her question. The pick-up line came out of nowhere and it caught him off guard. "Because you'll always be my number one."

"— always be my number one."

"— my number one."

"— number one."

An arrow struck Senku straight in the heart, making him mentally keel over. Holyshitholyshitholyshit Peaches is trying to fucking kill me, isn't she?! Yet despite the rapid beating of his heart, Senku remained blank-faced as he shot Peaches an unamused look. "Really, Peaches? Right now?"

"Hmph," that pout on her lips was so adorable that Senku wanted to pinch and pull her cheeks. "Aren't we supposed to recruit them on our side? Shouldn't we start roping them in? Yet you're still gushing over the raw materials." Unable to resist the urge, Senku reached out and pinched her puffed out cheek.

"Why are you so impatient? I'm checking the things we can use here to recruit them in our Kingdom of Science."

At the side, Chrome wanted nothing more than to shove both of them out of the storage house. Could they not act lovey-dovey right in front of him? Could they not?!

"Anyway," Senku stood up, dusting his clothes of dirt. "Peaches, help me bring the pestle and mortar by the bridge. We're going to try and scam— I mean, recruit those two to our Kingdom of Science."

Chrome: "..." He definitely said scam, didn't he?

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"Cinnabar — when you apply heat to it, it becomes liquid metal, otherwise known as mercury. Add a dash of gold dust, melt it down just like so and then—" Senku hadn't even said anything yet when Peaches grabbed Kinrou's spear and dipped the blade into the solution. Senku gave her a thumbs up before she pulled it out of the solution, revealing the blade coated in gold.

"WOAH!"

"HOLY CRAP!"

Chrome and Ginrou exclaimed in both surprise and awe. They had never seen such magical things before. How did that happen?

His girl beside him chuckled under her breath and Senku glanced at her from his peripheral. That pair of peach-colored eyes that had been wary for a while melted into joy. The scientist internally sighed in relief, glad that Peaches was no longer as gloomy. His temporary death affected her greatly which he hadn't meant to, alright? Who knew she would find them at the exact moment of his death?

If he knew that she would show up, he wouldn't have risked that one-time human experiment and just let Peaches knock some sense into Tsukasa's hard head. Although Senku rarely listened to rumors, he did agree to one; that Tsukasa obediently followed whatever Peaches said. He once saw them from the third floor leaving school together, and Tsukasa had bumped into one of the school's troublemakers.