Forging Up Glass for Clearer Path
"Alright, gather around team, we gotta introduce you all to the new guy and bring him up to speed about what we're currently doing." Senku gestured his hand for them to come closer.
"That guy looks really scary… Maybe Kinro can get a closer look for me." One blonde guy said cowardly.
"Wow, how brave of you, Ginro." The brown hair guy said sarcastically, giving his brother a look of disapproval.
"These two are the brothers in charge of guarding the entrance to the village and they don't let anyone outside of the village in. Kinro is the serious type who by the rules in the ass, Ginro is the coward type who likes to get greedy when things "might" go his way." Senku introduced the two brothers.
"Excuse, I'm what in my ass?" Kinro gasped.
"Why are you making me sound so lame?" Ginro asked complaining.
Kinro is a muscular young man of slightly above-average height with brown hair, green eyes, a scar on his right cheek and a lock of long hair that hangs between his eyes. He also has that scowl face. He wears a sleeveless royal blue karate gi-like uniform with a rope belt. On his back, he wears a buckler emblazoned with the village's star pattern.
Ginro is a rather short, androgynous young man with medium-length blond hair that covers the left side of his face. He has round, green eyes and soft facial features, and unlike many of the other warriors, is not very muscular. He wears a blue karate gi-like uniform and belt.
"They're training with Kohaku for the Grand Bout which will be explain later." Senku mentioned.
"The little one with the watermelon mask is Suika, she's our little helper wanting to make herself useful and our little detective." Senku gestured to the little girl.
"Hi, it's nice to meet you!" Suika greeted.
Suika is a young girl of short stature and wears a helmet made from a melon. She wears a dark-blue poncho that reaches to above her knees and wrists, and she has a large white rope attached to her neck like a necklace, which is common for her tribe, especially for girls. Her shoes, unlike most of the villagers' shoes, are flat.
"A watermelon mask, not the strangest thing I've seen people wear on their heads." Inuyasha commented.
"Huh, you think I'm weird?" Suika asked shock.
"Not in a bad way if that's what you're wondering. Go for it." Inuyasha shrugged.
"Okay, then I will!" Suika smiled cheerfully.
"Did she even understand what I was saying at all?" Inuyashas asked.
"Don't worry, we just let seeing her being happy." Kohaku assured that Suika is fine.
"You already know Kohaku, she's our combat specialist with the strength of either a lion or a gorilla, or maybe both. Either way, she's a good fighter." Senku said.
"Yeah, I already know." Inuyasha grinned.
"Except I hate being called a gorilla and lion." Kohaku gritted her teeth in rage.
"Not your fault that you're more of a gorilla." Chrome chuckled.
Suddenly Chrome got smacked down into the ground by Inuyasha with his foot on the guy's head.
"My mom raised me the best she could before passing away, including showing respect to the ones who are strong in more ways than one. But I always dish out a little punishment for those who disrespect the ones I've come to like." Inuyasha explained.
"Looks like you got two people to worry about if you don't cut it out with the insults." Kohaku chuckled.
"Anyway, the guy you just kicked is Chrome. He used to call himself a sorcerer before I came in and showed him the ropes of the superior might of science, now he's a scientist himself. Mostly, but he's getting there." Senku explained.
"Hey…" Chrome greeted weakly.
"Nice to meet you all, and I take it that's the village Gen told me about?" Inuyasha asked, pointing at the village in view.
"Yes, that's my village where most of us live, but I haven't been in the village for a while since the kind of trouble I cause for my father." Kohaku chuckled, rubbing the back of her head.
"I decided to live out here to practice my former sorcerer skills in order to help someone, but I visit the village from time to time just to visit my parents." Chrome explained.
"I like to hang out with Senku because he made so many cool things and I wanna see more!" Suika said.
"Me and Ginro stand guard at the bridge where we don't ever allow outsiders to enter. Rulers are the rulers." Kinro explained.
"Even though the job can be so boring…" Ginro groaned.
"And about our goal, we're using science and whatever we can find within this Stone Age to make a wonder drug for the village priestess and the only way to get even close to her is the win the Grand Bout." Senku explained the goal of the Kingdom of Science.
"Okay, so this Grand Bout is a competition?" Inuyasha guessed.
"That's right, the Grand Bout is a fighting competition that happens every generation as a way to select the strongest man to become the next chief of the village and to marry the village priestess, and this one is to marry my older sister Ruri." Kohaku revealed.
"Talk about finding a boyfriend the quickest way possible." Inuyasha commented.
"This one has a big problem, or two depends on how you see it." Senku mentioned.
"How so?" Inuyasha asked.
"For one, Ruri has a terrible illness that's eating away her life, and she doesn't have much time in this world for long, most believe it's impossible to cure her, but Senku says there is a way and that's when I'm going with!" Chrome explained, looking a bit angry.
"Like what, make her a medicine?" Inuyasha asked.
"Exactly, if we can make the medicine for Ruri then she won't have to worry about being too weak to even walk anymore!" Chrone answered.
"The other big problem is Magma; he's known to being a strong warrior in the village and he's really scary with that smile of his." Suika mentioned Magma.
"Not to mention a muscle meathead for thinking he can do whatever he likes just because he's strong, like wanting my sister's marriage only because of her beauty and cares nothing for her feelings." Kohaku felt angered at Magma.
"Yeah, I'm already not liking this guy one bit." Inuyasha clutched his fists.
"Yeah, some would agree with you." Ginro nodded.
"It would be a real pain in the ass if Magma wins the Grand Bout which would definitely erases our chance of getting close to Ruri to give her the medicine. That's something we're gonna have to deal with at the Grand Bout." Senku pointed out.
"Which is why I was in the middle of training these two before I caught you coming, but unfortunately, they're having trouble with their strikes that mostly goes to Kinro with his shallow strikes." Kohaku pointed at the brothers.
"Okay, and I take it Senku here is working on making the medicine while you guys wait for this Grand Bout to start." Inuyasha guessed.
"That's right, and the Science Team needs to start on the wonder drug." Senku said.
"Hell yeah! So, what was that next step you were going to say on our science journey before Kohaku ran off?" Chrome asked.
"Yes, the other fundamental component, one as essential to civilization as iron. The first material in history to be synthesized using science. We call it glass." Senku answered.
"Glass? You're going to make glass cups and windows?" Inuyasha asked.
"Mostly on the cup part, but in a different way." Senku said to Inuyasha.
"So, what is glass exactly. I mean, now that we have electricity, isn't the plan to start making the medicine?" Chrome feels confused now.
"(They actually made electricity here? That must've been the light thing Gen mentioned.)" Inuyasha thought shocked to hear that.
"Yeah, it is. But in order to do that, we need glass first. Those clay pots aren't gonna cut it for the kind of experiments we'll be doing. Glass can stand up to just about any chemical. In fact, we wouldn't even have chemistry without it." Senku explained the purpose of glass in science.
"Oh, I remember using those glass things in science class back in our old era. Guess that make sense now that you can see through glass the inside like a window." Inuyasha started to see where Senku is going with.
"Exactly, and it's ten billion percent easy to process! It can be fragile or double as hell. It's the perfect science tool!" Senku bragged.
"Seriously? That's bad!" Chrome felt excited now.
"To top it off, once glass is acquired, we might finally get the chance to yank off that melon, take a look at Great Detective Suika, and finally see that mysterious mug." Senku glanced down at Suika.
Suika felt nervous when Senku is looking at her with that kind of face that he wants to see her face by removing her melon helmet, she was about to make a break for it only that it was too late when Senku pull the helmet off.
"Stop, Senku! Suika doesn't want anybody to see her face!" Kohaku quickly snatched the melon helmet from Senku.
"Really? I don't see anything wrong with her." Inuyasha said.
Suika's whole face has been revealed now. She has blonde hair in a bowl cut and brown eyes. The most adorable face of a cute little girl possibly in the world!
"My gosh, Suika! You are just the most adorable little thing!" Kohaku squealed of how cute Suika is.
"Maybe she was hiding her face because she doesn't like the cute attention?" Inuyasha guessed.
But that is not the case when Suika suddenly narrow her eyes causing her face to look a little gross much to Kohaku and Chrome's shock, like the cuteness on her face just went away in a snap.
"(Ah, now I'm seeing the whole story here.)" Senku thought noticed this.
"Okay kid, why are you making your face look like a rotten old watermelon just threw up?" Inuyasha asked.
"It's not my fault, it's my eyes." Suika said.
"Your eyes?" Chrome was puzzled on what she meant by that.
"There's something wrong with my eyes. They got the fuzzy sickness. Everything looks fuzzy to me, so when I try really hard to see, I end up looking like this, and it's super embarrassing." Suika explained, and then puts her melon helmet back on. "But when I put on my watermelon mask, it gets a little bit easier to see for some reason!"
"Huh, I don't get it, how does a watermelon mask help you see a bit better?" Inuyasha was confused on this.
"That's because of the pinhole effect." Senku said, starting to explain.
"If you look at an object through a small hole, the light passing through it narrows and brings it into focus." Senku explained.
"So, glass and the fuzzy sickness, are they connected somehow?" Chrome asked, not seeing this is related to the medicine road.
"Dude, they're like ten billion percent connected!" Senku snapped a little.
"Here's the deal, Suika. You're nearsighted as hell. It's not some kind of sickness. There's nothing wrong with you." Senku said to the little girl.
"Oh, so her eyes are just natural like that because I remember hearing that some people got their eyes like that because of how they stare at bright things too much like too close to a TV screen or looking at the sun for too long." Inuyasha recalled those cases.
"Yeah, but some of them are down with disabilities such as problem with their sight." Senku nodded.
"In a technological civilization, this isn't a big deal at all. We have scientific eyes, made outta glass. They're called glasses, and they help you see clearly." Senku said to Suika, meaning he can help Suika with her sight problem.
Upon hearing those words, Suika never thought such a thing was possible as she always has problems with her eyes for as long as she could remember and sometimes hated her eyes for being this bad. But now hearing that her eyes can be fixed, it's like her deepest wish is finally being answered.
"Science users can actually make new eyes? That's amazing." Suika commented, clutching her hands.
"I guess it can, only if you're willing to let science help you that is." Inuyasha said.
"If it's really possible, I'd love to see all the beauty in the world. Even just once." Suika started crying, the emotions of being able to see for real overwhelms her.
"I wanna see you guys without the fuzziness. I wanna see the real you. Just one time would be all I needed." Suika begged, really willing to give science a chance to make her eyes better.
"Well then, guess this will be my first help with the Kingdom of Science. I'm in." Inuyasha decided to go for it.
"All right, I'm ready too! Let's make some of this glass!" Chrome hyped up.
"Oh, yeah! What martials do we need to gather?" Kohaku asked, ready to help Suika as well.
Senku chuckles as he is glad to see these guys are on board, he leads them to a place where they can find one of the right materials while Kinro and Ginro went back to the village bridge to stand guard since their training is done (mostly).
"Glass is mostly made out of silica, or quartz sand." Senku said.
"You mean like the sand at the beach?" Inuyasha asked.
"No, no, those are just the normal kind you see there. The quartz sand is different, and I didn't see any of that in the Chrome Collection." Senku pointed out.
"Why in the heck would I be collecting sand?" Chrome asked, he's more of the rock type.
"Although, I did see a clue that should lead us to some." Senku said.
They kept on walking until they arrive at a mountain that Chrome leads them to the top.
"This is the spot. When I was a kid, I found this cool, see-through rock right here." Chrome mentioned.
"Well, that little chunk is worth more than you could imagine right now." Senku walked over to one spot and start hammering the little spike on the ground.
"That transparent rock you've got in your hand is a quartz crystal, and it tends to be found in areas of decayed granite." Senku said, he stops hammering and picks up the gray sand.
"And in my hand, I'm holding lots of the raw material for glass: quartz sand." Senku showed them.
Soon, everyone starts hammering on the rock sides trying to gather as much quartz sand as possible though the one who is doing more than the others is Inuyasha because he is smashing up the area with his bare hands and have already filled up his basket all the way to the top.
"Holy shit, you went into overdrive!" Chrome gasped loudly.
"No duh, do you have a cheat code for superhuman strength or something?" Senku went a little pale of witnessing Inuyasha's incredible strength.
"I guess you could I was always born strong, and I became stronger through training." Inuyasha explained, which got the others thinking what kind of training did he do?
But then Senku notices that Inuyasha has two jaws in his clothes, they must seem really important to him if he's keeping them close. He'll ask him about it later, after they make glass.
"We crush all the quartz sand down into even finer grains." Senku instructed as Kohaku and Inuyasha are crushing the sand with large rolling stones.
"Then we mix it with a bunch of other stuff and melt it." Senku held the quartz sand into the fire furnace.
"Do we need to get anything?" Chrome asked.
"Actually, we've already gathered everything we're gonna need. Our hard work keeps paying off." Senku believed.
"Really?" Inuyasha was surprised to hear that.
"Oh, yeah. 10% calcium carbonate from seashells, then add 20% cooked seaweed. Allof the same materials we used to make soap." Senku remembered back when he lived with his best friend who is also an oaf gathering and using this same material.
"Want me to help heat this up?" Inuyasha offered.
"We do need to make this a little hotter, but not too hot. Go ahead." Senku allowed Inuyasha to give it a try.
Inuyasha went crazy with his incredible strength and speed on the heating job that the process is going along a little faster than he thought, and it was able to get it done right before sunrise.
KO a new chapter is done and hope you all enjoy it!
Inuyasha has already started helping out with the science road to making the medicine, they just need to acquire themselves some glass and his superhuman strength is making a big help with this one. But they might hit a little roadblock when it comes to forming the glass.
KO comment, favorite, and follow through of how this story will go!
