36. Communication
09-30-2023
A/N: Woo, I posted before the day was over! Sorry for the slight delay!
I'm actually pretty cool with the rate of which I'm posting and the amount of words I put in chapters now. Weekly updates are gonna be permanent! I will let you guys know if there will be delays on my profile though, like earlier.
Q: What has been your favorite chapter so far and why?
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"Senku, the phone's ringing!"
You and Senku were in the observatory with nearly all of your friends early in the morning. The phone suddenly started ringing as all of you waited and prepped for anything that could happen.
The boy grabbed the phone and answered it casually, "Yo."
You then heard it; A big oaf crying out loud through the other line, "SENKUUUU! (Y/NNNN)!"
As everybody heard the voice go through, the villagers were impressed, while you and Senku were feeling nostalgic.
"Oho! The cellphone hotline is finally connected across this enormous distance!" Kaseki cheered.
Kohaku spoke up, "So this is the guy we've heard about! His name is--"
"Taijuuu! Yuzurihaaa! I missed you guys so muuuch!" you blurted out in a trembling voice, tears welling in your eyes, as you took the mic out of the scientist's hands. You couldn't even hold in your emotions anymore and ended up melting into your feelings.
"Kukuku...this is so nostalgic, I could shed a tear with that stupidly huge voice of yours," said Senku, his head tilted upward to keep his hidden tears from pouring out of his eyes. "It's almost been a whole year, huh?"
You heard Taiju struggling to talk, "Senku, (Y/N)...I...I'm...I'm Senku! I'm Senku!"
Your boyfriend's face turned to annoyance as he heard the brute bawling his eyes out through the phone. He leaned down as you held the microphone up and said, "You're me? No, I'm Senku. Pull yourself together before you talk, man."
"Ugh, sorry...I'm getting too emotional!" He wailed.
Then you heard Yuzuriha speaking; her voice shaky and light, "One year...and you guys already made a cellphone, Senku-kun, (Y/N)-chan? Ha...it's too incredible to believe, but it's you!"
"A lot more happened, Yuzuriha, and I would love to tell you everything if I could," you told her. "But we don't have time to talk right now. We have something to tell you guys."
"Skipping the small talk, are ya?" Kaseki blurted out.
Kohaku told him, "There's no choice, really. Especially if they're being watched."
Senku then placed a hand on his hip as you handed him the device. He instructed them firmly, "Listen up, you two. First, you need to bring over one of Tsukasa's soldiers. Whatever it takes to convince them, just get them in front of the phone. More details later...actually, it's better if you don't know the details, Taiju. Whatever weird stuff you go hearing, just go ahead and believe like the big oaf you are."
Your friends in the village were talking amongst themselves as you heard nothing coming out from the other side.
"So harsh man...you trying to make this Taiju guy mad?" Ginro muttered.
Then Taiju spoke after a few seconds of thinking, "Guys, I just wanna make sure of one thing...is this the best way to avoid bloodshed?"
"Of course! We don't wanna be murderers, do we?" you said with a grin.
"If this works, there won't be any blood," the scientist told him confidently.
Taiju replied, "Perfect. If you say so, then no need to explain!"
"Okay, now that's out of the way, we don't have much time before Tsukasa's all-out assault. Gen should be back here by later today and that's when the mission begins," said Senku.
You then added, "Did Gen or the others talk to you at all?"
"What? Nope. Nothing. We just found this phone buried in the earth. That's it," the brute answered nonchalantly.
You widened your eyes, then looked back at Senku, who had a concerned look on his face. Even your friends were worried about the situation. You believed something must've happened to them as they delivered the device, and you were praying that it wasn't what you thought it was.
Sweat was dripping down your temples as the boy behind you spoke up, "Well, right now, we are going to be prepping for the mission. Give us a couple of hours for Gen to return, and then you can bring someone to the phone."
"Got it. We won't let you down!" They exclaimed.
The scientist hung up the phone and looked down at you. You clenched your teeth as you talked to him, "I told them to deliver the phone safely and to come home...they better have not done something stupid..."
Senku placed a hand on your shoulder to help you calm down. "They'll be okay. Gen will be here. Right now, we need to make an actual record player so that we don't distort the playback and so that we can do the mission properly."
You sighed. "Okay. You're right. What do we need to do?"
"We need your music box."
The boy explained that your music box was needed as a reference for the new record player for the glass disc. You, Senku, and Kaseki were basically just making a giant version, using more gears and a bigger coil and key. With this device, you wouldn't need to play it manually by hand. But it would take a few hours to make it due to the complexity of the gears that needed to be molded. Some mistakes would be made but science is all about recycling.
"Now it won't wreck the song with this new record player," you happily exclaimed as the device was finished up in the observatory. "Too bad I accidentally made an extra gear..."
"Yeah, it was too small for us to use. That's okay though, we can use it for something else," said Senku.
"Heh, doesn't this look like a ring?" You joked around as you placed it around one of your fingers. Senku just smiled as he watched you wave your hand around his face. He then turned on the record player to test it. The disc began to play the music and the villagers were listening closely.
"It's so smooth!" Suika cried out.
As you tested the device with the others, you heard panting. You looked out from the building and saw Gen, who was all disheveled and dirty.
"Gen! You're back!" You called out and jumped out of the opening. As the others ran up to the mentalist, you helped picked him up since he was using a stick to prop himself up. "What the hell happened?! Where's Magma and Chrome?"
"I'll explain it later...but who do I need to seduce?" Gen playfully questioned.
You replied, "No one yet."
"You're lucky that you made it just in time, damn mentalist," Senku snickered.
You brought him up to the observatory while the others had gotten him water, since he was so parched. After having him relax for a while, you, Gen, and the scientist had went over the plan one more time to make sure that nothing could go wrong. Then you heard the phone ringing again. The mentalist shifted into the famous singer as he held up the mic.
"Hi, I'm Lillian Weinberg!" He began.
Your boyfriend went next, "Ah, I'm a interpreter, Sebastian. If we have any problems regarding connection, our technician, Yona, will do whatever to fix it."
You looked at Senku, who had a confident grin on his face after providing your fake names to them. In the background, you could hear Taiju getting excited and asking if "Nikki" knew who Lillian Weinberg was.
The man continued, while "Sebastian" translated everything, "Hello? I'm calling from the USA. People of Japan, are you listening?"
You then heard the voice of a woman speaking through the phone, who you assumed was Nikki, "Hold it. First things first: Lillian was supposed to be in space."
"That's right. Immediately after I returned to Earth, I was turned to stone. I was just awakened recently," Gen replied.
In a shaky voice, you heard the woman continue, "Lillian...I ...don't translate this...do you have any idea just how much your songs saved me during my student life?!"
Oh no...I know where this is going... you thought to yourself.
"I would do absolutely anything to help you if I could, Lillian...but if someone was using Lillian Weinberg's identity to accomplish their own schemes, I would never forgive them!" Nikki finished with an angry tone.
The three of you looked at each other with sweat dripping profusely down your temples. You came across a hard-core fan right off the bat.
"You know...I've been thinking for awhile, Senku-chan...but you've got a really strong force behind yoir fate...and I mean that in the worst way possible," whispered Gen. "Like...the very first person outside your friend group that you happened to revive was Tsukasa. Then there was the lightning coming before we were ready with the magnets..."
"There's also the time when we found the sulfuric acid in the basin..." you quietly added, causing the mentalist to hold in a snicker.
"Shut up! You think I don't know that?!" The scientist silently hissed.
The man then said, "...the only stroke of good luck you've gotten was (Y/N)-chan. Now you're stringing her along your bad luck."
"Don't say it like that, Gen," you whined.
Your tiny conversation was interrupted by the hard-core fan, "It feels like there's something off with your voice. I truly do apologize if this is really you, but if it is, you should know this: what are your total CD sales to date?"
You asked quietly, "Do you guys know it? I never paid attention to her much..."
The mentalist looked over with an awkward smirk on his face. He whispered, "Looks like we got three choices: We lie, guess, or hang up."
"Or we get it right." The scientist immediately stuck his finger up to think and calculate the sales of the CDs, as well as royalties and assets. He answered, "It would be more than 60 million CDs sold. That's as accurate as I can get with the information I have."
Shifting back to Lillian, Gen answered Nikki, "I had a party to commemorate topping 50 million in sales a good while back...but since CDs aren't my main source of income anymore, I don't really remember. Sorry! Maybe I should revive my manager...?"
"No, that's fine," the woman said. "Alright, just one last thing. If you can tell me these numbers, then I'll believe you."
You grinned with a thumbs up, "You got this, Senku!"
"What are your measurements?" Nikki blurted out.
The three of you blanked out as you heard those words come out of her mouth. The panic began settling in when you looked at Senku's surprised expression.
"Just gimme something in the ballpark! Even if you're off a little bit!" Gen frantically told him.
You blurted out as you tried to come up with a solution, "Um--uhh--Senku! What about that picture Byakuya-san sent you with him and the crew?! Use that as a reference!"
He started thinking again, then said a number, "85 centimeters."
There was silence for a few seconds until the woman answered, "You were always way skinner in your profiles."
"AHH, how was I supposed to know that?! Those are just made for the fans to read! That's how all the pros did it!" Senku silently screamed with his hands on his head, causing you to comfort him by patting and rubbing his back as he was on the ground.
Gen nervously replied as Lillian, "Well, those are my real measurements! Normally, I wouldn't tell my real measurements to my fans...I'm still a professional, even in this world! For the sake of my fans, I have to keep up the fantasy--"
"You aren't Lillian Weinberg."
Those four words caused fear to rise up within you, though you couldn't help but try to figure out something to save all of this. Even Gen and Senku were having a hard time coming up with something. As your eyes drifted around the room to see the record player ready to play the melody whenever you so desired. You remembered how the music box your love had given you moved you to tears, so a lightbulb popped up in your head.
"Senku, play the song," you told him. "She's a huge fan of Lillian, so we gotta bet it on science."
Both men widened their eyes with surprise, but your boyfriend nodded his head. "Okay. Whatever you say."
He played the record and put it against the microphone for them to hear it. The song played through the connection, and you could hear surprise from your friends through the phone. Even Nikki was shocked.
"Lillian is no longer alive...I'm right, aren't I?" The woman asked.
Senku replied, "Yeah. You're right."
"But she's been revived...at the very least, through the song, she'll always be alive. But this is a question for your science. Would you be able to revive any of Lillian's other songs?" Nikki firmly asked.
"Say yes, Senku-chan!" Gen pushed with a grin.
The scientist shook his head. "No. That's impossible, since all those shabby recordijg mediums will have ten billion percent turned to dust. However, we will protect this last song of hers with the power of science!"
You then added, "Nikki, we will protect it no matter what. But since you loved Lillian Weinberg so dearly, I promise that we can create something to listen to on your own time when the record isn't available--a music box with her songs, just for you."
You heard her crying through the speaker, then she spoke, "Both of you are real tactless and blunt, aren't ya? I haven't even met you yet, and I can tell that. Well, science is the one thing I can't lie about because it's the one thing we have to believe in. Hehe...I think I might be falling for you both."
You slightly widened your eyes. How familiar that phrase was to you. You started, "I'm--"
"Stop... Seriously. Stop," Senku blurted out with a fake smile, interrupting what you were going to say. "I've already got someone to deal with, and that's enough. Anyways, in order to fool the rest of Tsukasa's army, we're gonna need this record, even if it kills us. And you want right protect this song, even if it kills you. Looks like we've got common interests."
You then heard chuckling through the other side, "Hah! Very well, you've got yourself a deal! I'll cooperate with your plan!"
"Alright!" You cheered.
"By the way..." You heard Nikki begin. "Why did you play the song for me? How did you know that I wasn't going to rat you guys out? What if I wasn't a massive fan of Lillian Weinberg?"
You stopped for a second to think as the two boys looked at you. With a small smile, you replied as you glanced over to the green-haired boy, "That song was made with enough love for humanity...I guess that if you put enough love in a song, it can be associated with certain feelings or memories. Anyone would want to listen to it again, even if it's just as simple as a music box."
"I see...well, I will do whatever it takes to help create those happy memories in the name of Lillian Weinberg!" The woman declared confidently.
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[ACQUIRED NIKKI]
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-To be Continued-
A/N: Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Again, sorry for the slight delay! I has some stuff to deal with this week!