Chen Yu in the crosshairs

"This is my first time seeing his silver needles, too," Senku said as he worked.

"The first time I saw his silver needles was when he first came to my school. A few classmates didn't like the look of Chen Yu, so he used those things to teach them a lesson."

"Nobody saw how Chen Yu did it. All we saw was him raise his arm to fight back, and then those guys stopped moving. They stayed that way even during class."

"Stopped moving?" Kohaku asked in confusion.

"Yeah. He just raised his arm slightly and waved it like he was swatting a fly, and they stopped moving." Senku demonstrated Chen Yu's motion from memory.

"I don't see anything special about that. What does it have to do with needles?" Chrome copied Senku's movement but found nothing unusual about it.

"Yeah, they still hadn't moved when the teacher arrived. Then they were taken to the hospital for an examination. After taking X-rays, the doctor discovered several slender silver needles embedded in their bodies."

"What?" Chrome exclaimed.

"What was going on? Could the silver needles Chen Yu mentioned be...?" Kohaku caught on as well. Chen Yu had kept emphasizing needles earlier. Could he want those tools to...?

"Afterward, he explained to me that he'd coated the silver needles with a special toxin. It rapidly dissipated once the needles went in, causing temporary muscle stiffness. But if he stuck them somewhere else, like near the heart, they'd become tools for taking lives." Senku finished both his explanation and what he was working on. "Take Gen, for example. Look at how fine he seems right now. Does he look like someone who swallowed poison? Chen Yu is the last person who'd want to harm anyone's body."

At that, Chrome, Kohaku, Kinro, and Ginro looked over at Chen Yu and Gen, who were drinking ginger soup with Suika. Gen in particular had a healthy flush to his face. He hardly looked poisoned.

"Suika, take these to them. Go slowly, okay?" Chen Yu said, handing Suika a wooden board with five bowls of ginger soup on it.

"Suika understands!" Suika said, heading out cheerfully.

"Whew, she's finally gone," Gen said, wiping away his sweat.

"Have something to ask me?" Chen Yu asked as he sat down.

"What you gave me back then was probably just some simple tonic, right? Why did you call it poison?" Gen asked.

"Why don't you think it was poison?" Chen Yu turned to look at Gen.

"Because you're famous for never harming anyone's body, aren't you, Chen Yu?" Gen recalled what Senku had said earlier.

"It really wasn't poison," Chen Yu confirmed.

"Then why tell me it was? If it were poison, were you trying to get me to join the Kingdom of Science?" Gen continued.

"Because sooner or later, you'll discover what makes Senku special, and what the Kingdom of Science is all about." After speaking, Chen Yu found a spot sheltered from the rain, closed his eyes, and took a light nap.

"How sly. Then I'll see for myself what this Kingdom of Science of yours is all about, and what makes Senku special." Gen glanced at Chen Yu beside him, then at Senku in the distance.

In the end, Kinro lost his golden spear amid bitter sobs...

Senku, meanwhile, obtained the magnet he needed for the generator.

By the time Chen Yu woke up, the rain had stopped. Not far away, the people Senku had talked into coming over lay exhausted.

He checked their pulses one by one, confirmed that nothing was wrong, and left.

Then, under their repeated hammering, a sheet of copper took shape.

"By the way, why isn't Chen Yu doing any work?" Gen crawled over and looked at Chen Yu.

"If you want my hands to shake and accidentally cut something during your surgery someday, you're welcome to try making me," Chen Yu said with a smile at Gen.

Chen Yu's words frightened Gen into silence. After all, if he had an accident in this stone world and needed Chen Yu, a doctor, to treat him, what if Chen Yu...

At that thought, Gen stopped thinking altogether and simply played dead.

Finally, when Chen Yu saw Senku's misshapen mouth, he took out the ointment he had made earlier and handed it to him. "This should ease it."

Who would have thought the renowned man of science, Senku, would get paint poisoning? It was probably more of an allergic reaction than poisoning, but either way, paint was Senku's nemesis.

The others stared, utterly bewildered.

"Getting some Anpanman vibes here," Gen quipped.

By dusk, both copper sheets were finished, and the makeshift generator was ready.

"We have to turn both disks at the same time? That sounds pretty difficult," Kohaku said.

"It'll be fine with two people working together," Suika said optimistically from beside her.

"If they don't keep the same rhythm, the disks will jam together and be ruined," Chrome reminded them.

"Yeah. If we had a strong pair who worked well together, we could have them..." Senku paused.

Then everyone else thought of the same two people at once.

Kinro and Ginro!

Afterward, Senku and the others went to ask Kinro and Ginro for help, while Chen Yu stayed behind and used the leftover wood to make a miniature mechanism.

Once night fell, Chen Yu watched the two idiot brothers working the generator.

"They really are..." Chen Yu didn't even know what to say.

Gen was practically a cheat code. A few simple words had gotten both brothers working.

Maybe I should let Gen take that hit? Give him something to reflect on?

He remembered someone being ambushed by Magma and bedridden for several days toward the end. It seemed that someone had been Gen.

Magma had considered Gen a Sorcery User and thought he would be invincible once Gen was out of the way. Poor Gen had talked up a perfectly ordinary magic trick as eerie, mysterious sorcery, only to get ambushed by Magma for it.

After that blow to the head, Gen had seemed much better behaved. Chen Yu wasn't sure whether that was just how the plot went or whether Gen had genuinely settled down.

But wouldn't a blow to the head make him less intelligent? Should I save him?

While Chen Yu was considering whether to save him, Gen caught sight of him and immediately had a bad feeling.

Still, when he saw that Chen Yu didn't seem ready to do anything, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Chen Yu, meanwhile, began making a small device off to the side.

It was called a Sleeve Arrow.

Hidden inside a sleeve, it would fire an arrow with a flick of the hand in a dangerous situation. Its tiny size and the poor materials greatly reduced its destructive power, but it would still be useful for self-defense and dealing Magma a serious injury.

My dear Gen, you've just had your life spared.

What he didn't know, however, was that Magma had his sights set not on Gen, but on Chen Yu himself.

Chen Yu remained unaware. After all, the plot didn't seem to have changed much so far. Even with him involved, Senku and Tsukasa would still be enemies. Even with him accompanying Gen, Kohaku still saw Gen as a suspect. It seemed he would only know at the very end whether the plot had gone off the rails.

(Most of what I've written is pretty close to the original. I don't know whether you're enjoying it. If not, I'll make some changes later.)