04x18 - Diamond Heart

[bunniefuu]

If Why-man was so determined to end us.

He actually used more than one Medusa to make sure no one could escape.

There's a good chance we'll find more than one waiting for us.

Hey everyone!

I found a Medusa in the river!

You seriously found the thing already?

That's so bad!

I can't believe we got that lucky!

Luck?

I'm not so sure it has anything to do with that.

You see?

This is sickening yet beautiful.

And full of malice.

That was one meter in three seconds.

All right, if I get turned into stone Taiju again, give me a dose of that sweet revival fluid.

One meter in one second.

One meter, one second.

One meter, one second.

One meter, one second.

Ha, sounds like he's having fun.

Maybe we should help out.

One meter, one second.

Yeah, kind of had a hunch this would be the outcome.

Every last one of these statue makers has run out of batteries.

Huh, just as expected.

They were activated a while ago.

But more importantly, our Medusa died after zapping Treasure Island.

So it makes sense that these are cooked after covering the whole planet.

Elegant.

What a sight it must have been.

A vast number of advanced weapons of science

blazed across the horizon

thousands of years ago

and transformed the earth into a stone world.

A merciless barrage.

They went out of their way to petrify all of humanity.

So much malice on such a grand scale.

No joke.

We never stood a chance.

Our fate was sealed the moment Why-man devised his plan.

Do me a favor, Xeno.

Let me see your right hand.

That stolen Medusa must be burning a hole in your little pocket.

Now, isn't it?

I've got to admit that was a rather solid attempt saying such profound things as you swiped it.

But you've got to wake up earlier than that to fool a mentalist.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

My a*s you don't know.

It's fine.

Let him have it.

The thing's out of juice anyway.

He can't pull anything sus while we're guarding him.

His wings are clipped.

We're better off letting him get cozy with it.

Then we can pick that glorious brain of his for answers.

Figuring out how it works is our only chance of survival.

Otherwise we're screwed whenever Stanley finds us.

I don't get it.

What's the point of learning how they work if we can't even use them because they're all out of battery?

Well, they're not worthless.

Having so many in our possession gives us new options.

Senku, may I?

Yeah.

Brilliant!

We had to track down an expert like Joel to handle the delicate dissection.

But smashing them to bits is easy.

We can thank Matsukaze for that little bit of intel.

When we only had one Medusa to play with, we couldn't risk doing anything that might have damaged it.

But the tides have changed and now we can be as rough as we want with them.

Am I wrong?

This is what science geeks live for.

Tearing apart something you don't understand and trying to figure out how it works.

Oh Matsukaze, where's Stanley taking us and exactly how doomed are we?

I apologize.

It is yet unclear.

But I'm certain that Senku and the others have safely escaped by now.

Poor little science kids.

They probably think they're safe now.

I bet they've got their feet kicked up and everything.

Don't count on it.

Those kids are nothing if not clever.

It doesn't matter either way.

Their bike tracks tell the whole story.

And right now they're they made their escape down the Amazon river.

Their little group urgently needs to build themselves a new ship.

Considering what an enormous time investment that is, we'll eventually catch up, even taking the long way around.

Won't it be much more difficult to recognize them if they have a different ship?

How the vessel looks is irrelevant.

No anomaly can escape radio waves.

Despite how clever they are, it's only a matter of time.

They can't evade radar.

The eye of science.

Heads up.

I wish I could give you two all the time in the world to play with those things.

But we sail the moment the ship is finished.

Yeah, yeah.

We'll just have to bring as many as we can.

Right, of course.

I suppose we'll be hitting the high seas again soon, so we're going to need more than a dinky raft.

One tiny question.

Is there a reason it's not actually ship shaped?

I wondered the same thing myself.

Does it matter?

I happen to think all the pointy edges are bad.

Why are all men fascinated by pointy objects?

Especially when round things are obviously much cuter.

It's comprised of diagonal planes, and they're tilted as upward as possible.

You gotta be kidding me.

Good eye.

I knew our sonar operator would piece it together.

Stanley's not going to just let us slip away.

It'll be game over unless we can evade their radar.

That's why we're building a stealth ship.

What's all this about a shelf?

Stealth as in secretive.

Covert.

It means our ship will be invisible to the eyes of radar.

Well, that's scary.

I can't believe our science crafting has already progressed to this point.

We swiftly went from the Stone Age to legit modern warfare.

Ryusui's hyped to the max for realsies.

Of course!

The King of Greed himself has never had his very own stealth ship and I want it!

I mean, yeah, your average civilian doesn't need to avoid detection.

So adding pointy edges makes a ship invisible to radar?

Right.

That basically sums it up.

Remember how the tech works?

You watch the radio waves that bounce back after hitting objects.

Picture a normal ship...

I've got you now!

Now imagine it's all slanted and pointy.

I can't see a darn thing!

It absorbs radio frequencies because we're covering the whole thing in rubber filled with carbon powder.

Is there anything this rubber of yours isn't useful for?

Various designs are used for stealth, but I don't know the specifics.

Things like that were closely guarded military secrets.

So this will take a bit of trial and error.

I bet Mr. NASA here had clearance.

Am I right or am I right?

I'm happy to lend my vast knowledge to any scientific pursuit that ensures my own safety.

But you can't seriously expect that I would help you evade Stanley.

That is stone cold savage, Xeno!

Now that it's done, the pointy ship is actually kinda cool!

Tried to tell ya!

Only function matters, not form.

We're still testing its stealth capability.

Your verdict?

Are we stealthy or not?

Kind of.

What does that mean?

I suppose if I had to quantify it, we're just a tiny bit stealthy.

It's maybe a little blurry for how big it is.

Maybe.

Just maybe?!

But we need to be way more stealthy than that!

You thought we'd nail secret military tech first try?

We're gonna refine the hell out of it.

Why'd he say it was blurry for how big it is?

Is stuff easier to see if it's bigger?

What if there were a whole bunch of smaller things?

Now you get it.

Radar works like eyesight.

But it doesn't make any sense!

That day when a crazy number of these things rained down from the sky

how is it possible no one in the 21st century noticed until moments before?

Manye things cross the horizon undetected

Sometimes even aproaching asteroids

But the scope does make it peculiar

There was no warning, neither from NASA observatories nor anywhere else

Is this strange shape functional?

It's hidden!

No signal!

All that trouble so humans woudln't see them comming

The malicious man whi did this

He really thought of everything, didn't he?

If it's wholly undetectable by radar...

Yeah, it's somehow absorbing radio waves.

Must be something inside its mysterious circuitry.

In that case, what's to stop us from covering the whole freaking ship with them?

Dr. Chrome just scored us our own radar-dodging futuristic stealth ship!

This new world's craft is something special.

It's the first time we've surpassed the old world.

There's no denying it now!

We're taking big bold steps into humanity's science future!

Science is...

without question...

rather elegant.

A Medusa-cloaked vessel?

That wasn't on my bingo card for this trip.

Senku's so obsessed with efficiency, he must be pleased to pieces right about now.

Hell yeah, science is all about max efficiency.

So we've got to use anything and everything that we can.

Though we still have no idea how any of it works!

Nope.

But we're about to get our hands dirty and figure it out.

Lucky for us, we have these.

A metric sh*t ton of samples.

If we can analyze these devices and figure out how to recharge them, it'll be smooth sailing from then on!

We'll have a fighting chance against Stanley's crew!

At that point, victory will literally be within the palm of our hand!

Am I wrong?

That's the plan, anyway.

But we're analyzing a dangerous weapon that we'll use to petrify Stanley.

Will the great Dr. Xeno help?

You can back out if you don't have the stomach for it.

To let politics deter scientific research would be foolish.

It would be far more detrimental to my safety to allow you to forge ahead without me.

Naturally, in the event I make any kind of discovery that seems to have escaped your notice

I have no intention of sharing it with you.

Suit yourself.

As for me, I'll be sharing everything.

That'll help keep things moving.

Every Medusa has one.

A charred diamond.

Meaning Joel's report was accurate.

Smashing the devices has left only tiny components behind.

But this discovery is key.

Without the aid of our masterful watchmakers' elegant disassembly and analysis

we might never have noticed it.

As ever, knowledge is indeed power.

It's possible it looks charred because the crystalline structure's been distorted, changing its refractivity.

Is there any pattern to the charring?

I can't discern any whatsoever.

We dissected around a thousand.

But every diamond is stupidly different.

That would seem to indicate that the charring isn't by design.

They change in a disorderly fashion.

In other words, simple decay.

Bad.

Look at this one!

One of the diamonds isn't blackened at all!

Indeed.

These diamonds are like batteries, aren't they?

So maybe this one here is brand new!

Right, let's try to find more of those.

Keep your eyes peeled for a Medusa with a pretty diamond inside.

One meter in three seconds.

Maybe the battery isn't new.

It's looking like it was a dud to begin with.

I see cracks, likely along the cleavage planes.

Those are areas with weak atomic bonds that are naturally far more prone to splitting.

It's true.

All of our pretty diamonds have the same kind of flaw in them.

Decided to play "show-and-tell" with the science kits, huh?

It's irrelevant.

After all, I'm certain you would have noticed the very same thing.

Most of the other clean diamonds are chipped, and the ones that aren't are smaller than the rest.

So these are brand new Medusas that are only duds because of slight defects.

Meanwhile, I'm looking, but I don't see any flaws at all in the used-up blackened diamonds.

All of the dark ones are exactly the same shape, too!

Doesn't that mean...

Well, it's just a hypothesis.

But theoretically, if we replace a dud with a brand new diamond that's 10 billion percent undamaged

I'd say there's a fairly decent chance our friend the Medusa will power right back up.

You know what that means!

We're making our own diamonds!

We're what ??

That sounds totally ridiculous to me.

How the heck do they expect us to make diamonds?

If that were possible, then wouldn't someone in the old world have made themselves filthy stinking rich doing that?

Wait, what if Senku can pull it off?

Holy crap!

I totally should have made friends with them back before our long stone nap!

Our pro technician Joel will polish it and determine how the mechanism operates.

You're gonna work together to make us a diamond!

I don't understand how we're gonna do that if we don't have any scientists here to guide the process.

We don't have the same expertise as you or Dr. Xeno.

So what?

It's not like the experts have a monopoly on science.

Anyone can do it.

It doesn't matter if you're a scholar or a fool.

If you follow the same steps, you'll achieve the same results.

That's the beauty of science.

I'll tell you what you need to make a diamond.

Alcohol, that's it.

If you have to, use whatever booze they've got.

It'll just take longer.

I found some!

In Xeno's room!

We've got alcohol!

Now heat the hell out of it and you're done.

What? No way!

We need to make a tungsten filament and then we can heat the hell out of it.

Tongue what?

Why does that word sound familiar?

Wait, that's what the weird rock I dug up was called.

Correct.

It's a heat-resistant metal.

The one we use to make light bulbs.

If we just coil up our tungsten wire, we'll instantly have the filament we need.

Put the alcohol in hot water.

That will turn it into vapor.

Then we superheat it using the filament we made.

We just hook it up to some electricity and heat it?

Could anything be easier?

What was that expl*si*n?

I don't understand at all.

Yeah, same here.

Why don't we just get that mechanic dude Brody to do it for us so we can be done with all this?

That's not an option.

Knowing Senku, there's a real good reason he asked us to make a diamond.

So we can't go and reveal the process to our enemy.

It's like Senku said, science doesn't only belong to the Brainiacs.

We're a bunch of nobodies, but they're counting on us to make a diamond.

Maybe it exploded because there was air inside?

Yo, it's working!

Let it finish.

We have to wait until the alcohol vapor pushes out every last bit of air.

There, if we did it right, there should be no more air inside of it.

Okay, here we go.

It's working.

That's wild!

It's making charcoal.

Perhaps it isn't hot enough.

I'll add more power.

Hope this is enough.

Here we go.

We added more juice, but now we're not getting any power.

I don't understand what we're doing wrong.

Is it broken?

It does look like the connection thingies are stuck together.

Mecha Senku here, reminding you not to be judgy

because completing the circuit in the wrong place is a stupidly common mistake.

Look, here it comes.

Great, and it's not stuck together.

Everything's stable here too.

Hook it up.

They're incredibly tiny, but those little specks are sparkling.

As a pro, I can confirm without a doubt.

We've managed to craft ourselves a genuine diamond!

We pulled it off, Senku.

Is this what you had in mind?