Chapter Text
Oak hadn’t been lying when she said that it was going to be an early start. Senku blinked awake the moment he heard someone shuffling outside, the rough voices of Ash and Beech as they conversed in that language they used. With a tired sigh, Senku turned his head against Taiju’s shoulder, he knew logically that he should focus on trying to decipher their language. To understand so he could keep up with what they were plotting. Glancing to the side, bitterness filled his heart as he saw Xeno’s sleeping form at the back of the sled. He knew, deep down, that Xeno had likely already deciphered the language. Maybe not enough to speak, but enough to understand. Yet a part of him wanted nothing more than to not think for once. To not worry about what would come next. It was in that moment, with the control forcefully wrenched from his grasp that Senku realized just how tired he was.
Surrounded as he was by his friends, Senku couldn’t help but think of what Oak had said about him going into hiding, about how Stanley wouldn’t be able to find them as they approached the smoking mountain in the distance. He let out a shuddering sigh as he looked around the lightening sled. Maybe they would be safe for once so he could finally heal from everything. Maybe they could get actual help. Then, at the very least, he could deal with Gen’s betrayal, wavering loyalties, and his grief. The same grief that he had been running from ever since they found the last remnants of his dad’s gift. How long had it been since he had listened to the recording of Byakuya’s voice? Senku found he couldn’t recall. Realizing he was starting to spiral into a fit of despair, he forced himself up, carefully crawling from the back of the sled. As much as he hated to admit it, the Tiger-Killer knew her way around stone-age medicine. Not even Chrome was this well-versed. Though, considering she had been around with her group for supposedly ten years, Senku figured that was plenty of time to put experience under her belt.
It was cold outside of the sled, the crunch of snow underfoot as Senku stepped out into the quiet world beyond the sled. He took a deep breath of frigid air as he made his way over to where the fire was the night before. Oak was squatting before the fire, poking it with a stick, a thick woolen scarf surrounding her head and making her look thirty years older. She hadn’t noticed him, instead staring into the fire with a look that Senku recognized well. Maybe she wasn’t as untouchable as he had initially thought.
Driven by curiosity, he continued his approach, not so much as flinching when her gaze snapped up and she stood in a fluid motion. She wasn’t that intimidating when she looked like an old lady. He brushed off the log that Ash and Beech had dragged over to the fire the night before and sat down while Oak watched his every movement. Now that he was closer he saw the iron kettle that was next to the fire, needles poking out of it as they steeped in hot water.
“Pine needles.” He said, not intending to draw conversation from a stone. She glanced down and hummed.
“Good to keep scurvy away.” Oak said, “What are you doing out, we’ll be leaving once I prepare medicine for the tall one.”
“Aren’t we all tall to you?”
“I could always take your legs.”
“You’re a strange doctor.”
“Never said I was one,” Oak said as she wrapped the handle of the kettle in fabric and poured herself pine needle tea into a thermos made of two horns fitted inside one another.
“Then what are you?”
“A human, carving out a home in this world of ours as my ancestors did before me.”
Senku tensed, hoping that she wouldn’t notice it. That phrase… it reminded him too much of Tsukasa in the early days. “Is that so?” He asked, watching as she steeped some old man’s beard in the kettle after letting fresh water heat up.
“It is so.”
If he wasn’t already on guard before he was now as he watched her pour another cup for Ryusui which she handed to Senku. “Give this to your captain friend for me, will you? If you’re going to pester me this early in the morning you might as well make yourself useful.”
Senku eyed her warily, suddenly unsure if he should trust her medical knowledge after all. He stared at the cup for a few moments, almost longer than necessary, before he took it back to the sled. There was a nagging feeling at the back of his mind, one that told him not to trust her despite the overwhelming evidence otherwise. There were too many lies, too many secrets. Ones that he was not a part of.
Senku rounded the corner, slipping into the sled before he ran his fingers along the grooves of the floor, setting the tea down instead of giving it to Ryusui. Finding a groove, Senku carefully pulled on it, relieved that the hinges appeared to be well maintained. Instead of seeing the snow beneath the floor, he was instead greeted with a separate compartment. One that contained dragon-headed missiles. Quickly closing the hatch, Senku sat back on his hands, taking a shuddering breath. This was too much like before. He almost didn’t notice the cup of tea next to him move.
Looking over, he saw Ryusui pick it up in a daze, a cry of alarm sticking in his throat as he watched his friend down it in one gulp. The warmth helped Ryusui wake up further and he looked over at Senku, confused by the alarm.
“What’s wrong?” Ryusui hissed.
“How… do you feel?” Senku asked, his heart beating rapidly in his chest. This was just his luck.
“Leg still hurts but this tea has been helping, why?”
“You don’t feel any shortness of breath? Or chest pain?”
“No, why?”
Feeling now that he might have gotten even more paranoid after the incidents in Corn City, Senku forced the tension from his shoulders. “No reason, she just asked me to make sure you weren’t having any side effects.”
At this, Ryusui’s eyes narrowed. “Then why are you asking me if I have any heart attack symptoms?”
Senku fixed him with a look that plainly said ‘not now.’ One that Ryusui was thankfully able to understand. Senku watched as he leaned over, pulled up the canvas cover to the sled, and dumped the rest of his tea out. Senku bit his lip, cursing internally. He wasn’t in good standing with the mentalist and for good reason but now, he was positive that he was going to need to owe Gen a favor.
Though the plane continued to chase them, it kept to its pattern, showing no sign that they had been spotted. Regardless, it still seemed to put Oak and the other Americans on edge. They went as far as to refuse Xeno even a glimpse at the sky. As the days passed it seemed to get closer and closer to their location and Senku realized that Stanley had been toying with them all along. On the morning of the fourth day, everything finally came to a head.
During that whole time, Gen had been unable to weasel any additional information out of the Americans, noticing how they seemed to watch the sky more and more, even sending Beech with the sled to go a separate route on more than one occasion only to meet up in the same location for the evening. They knew they were being followed. Knew that it was a death sentence to be caught. They were just waiting for the most opportune moment to strike, both sides posturing like wild animals preparing for a fight. Senku watched as Oak once again made Ryusui’s tea. She had noticed that he didn’t take it that day and for both the third day and the fourth she watched Ryusui down every drop.
What struck Senku as odd was that she had made another cup when she thought no one was watching, allowing the lichen in the glazed cast iron kettle to steep further. Oak poured a dark tea into a cup and Senku’s hair along his arms stood on end. He knew what she was doing, he was not a fool, but there was a part of him who wanted it to be done. A dark side of him that had reared its ugly head not long after he had been shot. Which is when she gave the tea to Beech who approached Xeno to offer him the tea, Senku turned his head to look away. Instead, focusing on the conversation he was having with Gen, pretending to be blissfully unaware of what he assumed had been a murder in cold blood happening just past the tree line. A part of him wondered at what point had he become okay with the thought of death and another quietly told him that he had always known and had always accepted it.
“There’s just something out of all of this that I just don’t get,” Gen said to him, voice barely carrying as they followed the sled. He ducked his gaze down when Oak passed them atop her horse. Senku’s gaze settled on the shiny barrel of a gun that was wrapped in her bedroll.
Once she passed, he let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. “Of course there is… I’ve been watching her. Do you remember Tsukasa when we were first starting out?” Senku asked him.
Gen just shuddered in response. “How could I ever forget?”
Nodding, Senku glanced up at the sky. Ever since Xeno’s disappearance there had been a distinct lack of plane. The absence was more unsettling than when it had been following them. “I think she killed Xeno.”
Gen’s breath hitched. “I see. I’ll let the others know.”
“Don’t, I don’t think we’ve shown that we’re a threat to her yet. But this is exciting, if we play our cards right we might be able to have a whole city as our own.”
“I don’t like that look in your eye…”
Senku smirked in response. Though he may still feel bitterness towards Gen, he couldn’t deny that something was exciting about taking on a whole city, a call back to when they first went against the Empire of Might. As they approached the fringe of the forest, the smoking mountain a backdrop against the sky, capped with the orange glow of morning, fog settled on the grasslands before them, the glint of a river in the distance. And in front of them, made of brick and glittering silver of statues that capped pristine stone buildings, high painted walls of a city built upon a hill. Shaped in a circle like a moon. None other than Kertaros. Where Suika waited for their return.
Senku felt like his breath had been punched from his chest. This. This was where the next chapter of their America arc would begin. A city of silver and blood. It was exhilarating, it was dangerous, and Senku was ten-billion percent ready for it.
The journey will continue in Silver and Blood.