Steps to survival

Chapter 12 : Magnet Acquired!

"Melt the copper! There's lacquer coating Kohaku's shield; we could really use some of that!" Before I could react to Senku's bossing, Suika rolled over the bridge and hopped up.

"I've got a whole jar of it right here!" She caught our attention.

"Lacquer is a ridiculously effective insulator. Use it to coat the iron rod!" He yelled.

"Help me would you!" Kohaku tossed a knife for me to catch, I used it to assist her in carving a channel into a wooden plank Senku had 'borrowed' from the bridge to the village.

"We've carved a channel in it!" Kohaku called. Senku poured in the melted copper into the plank as quickly as he could, his wrists shaking slightly with adrenaline. I boredly looked around, having nothing else to do, but spotted a furious looking man followed by two smaller ones approaching the other end of the bridge.

"Uh, who's that? He doesn't look happy." I squinted to get a better look. I heard Kohaku gasp which quickened my heartbeat.

"This is bad! That's Magma!" I looked at Chrome baffled.

"He's not the kinda guy who talks things over. We're gonna have to fight!" I shook my head trying to think of a way to get rid of the new nuisance.

"If we go to war with the village right now, it's all over! I need to think fast!" Senku hollered. Catching Gen's attention in the process. He sighed.

"Now this won't do. I simply can't let myself get killed because of you lot," everyone except for me turned to him, I kept my eyes glued on the blonde ape that was approaching, fairly fast.

"Fetch me some flowers, Suika," Gen ordered. She made a 'huh' noise, Gen's facial features twisted freakishly.

"Instead of war, flowers," he's definitely got something up his sleeve, question is, what?

Shortly after, Gen approached the men, none of their distinct chatter could be heard. Gen held out his flowers, flicked them onto the back of his hand, leaving the men to sheer confusion.

"Wait a second. So they really can't see the flowers?" Kohaku asked.

"It's trick that I believe is called the back palm. Magicians do it all the time with cards and stuff. Hmph. Not too shabby for a fraud," the three men turned and began walking away reluctantly.

Time skip

The five others around me panted furiously on the climb up to the top of the mountain. I used to run a lot 3,700 years ago, so I'm not too out of breath. We soon reached the top, my limbs burning faintly.

"Well Chrome, I'd say that your ten years of exploration are really paying off now," I congratulated him.

"Oh, yeah. Pretty bad, right? We're at the top of the bald mountain!"

"Good spot to catch lightning. We couldn't ask for a better place!" Senku interjected. We struggled, attempting to create suitable scaffolding. Another crack of deafening lightning struck, causing the two boys to flinch.

"The lighting's close now!"

"Crap. There isn't enough time to build real scaffolding. Even so, we have to get it as high as we can," Chrome said frustrated.

"If only there were something long that we could stick into the ground," Kohaku grunted, her gaze falling into something in the distance. I followed her gaze to find Kinro and Ginro standing below us. I see where this is going. Yelling could be heard.

Before I could blink a spear was aggressively lurched into the ground by Kohaku. I plucked the rod from Senku's hand and tied it onto the top with my hair tie. As soon as I let my hand fall off of the spear a blinding light blew up in my face.

"Koiru, move!" Senku snapped me out of my daze and I was wretched backwards. I groaned unintentionally, although I had landed on something soft, I sat up between what I could identify as Senku's legs. I shot up, my whole body burning in embarrassment.

"You're lighter than you look you know," he chuckled lying on his back. I rolled my eyes and helped him back to his feet. My eyes lingered on his for a moment, I was able to pick up on the pinkish coating on his cheeks. Switching my gaze to the rod, I noticed it was smoking excessively.

"Well, take a look at that. The lightning God descends," sarcasm leaked from his words. A high pitched laugh of disbelief broke the rattling silence.

"This is crazy, Senku. Starting with nothing in this barren Stone World. You actually pulled it off," Gen said breathily.

"Stop that. It was actually Koiru's idea after all," my cheeks tinged rose at the unexpected compliment. I was pretty sure Gen took note of this, he didn't seem like the mischievous type, clearly, I'm wrong because all I could hear were cheeky remarks afterwards. I sighed irritably in response.

I kinda felt bad for Kinro in a way as he stormed off away from his charred remains of what used to be a spear.

"Senku, I think we may have failed to make magnets! They won't get anywhere near each other," I swear my heart stopped beating for a second. But to my relief, I turned to see Kohaku holding the magnets the wrong way, they were pushing away from each other.

"Oh my god, you're holding them the wrong way," I laughed. Standing in front of her I twisted one of the magnets around and the force drove them together.

I sigh and turn back towards Senku, he was cackling at my miniature heart attack.

"Stop laughing, I could've gone into cardiac arrest!" I hunch over chuckling to myself.

"Wow. They're so strong!" Suika exclaimed.

"We can make it now, can't we? That crazy-bad thing called electricity?" Chrome blushed in excitement.

"I'm curious, Senku. Are you creating a thermal generator? Or a wind turbine? I don't suppose you're going nuclear yet?" Gen smirked.

"It'll be muscle-powered" he turned, fingerpicking his ear. Ew.

"I should've expected as much."

Later on that day, multiple people were seemingly dead, unconscious on the dirt ridden ground while Kohaku, Chrome, Senku and I were helping to make disks for the generator. Oh, did I forget to mention Senku's unfortunate, hilariously inflamed face? Only I had the guts to laugh quietly at him, no one else present dared to ask him about it.

"We'll hammer the copper to stretch it, cut it into a disk and grind it down," Senku muffled between his chipmunk cheeks. I sighed and dragged him off towards Chrome's shed.

"What are you doing?" He mumbled.

"Taking care, of that," I said pointing to his face.

"Sit, " he, thankfully, did as I asked. I entered Chrome's shed for a few minutes, retreating back to Senku. He sat silently on an uncomfortable-looking log. Oh boy, it's worse than I thought.