Dr. STONE (Dr.STONE)

Alright.

We're ready to fly. Now.

This is Stanley's final pursuit.

The repaired plane will be here soon.

But all we've got to do is make it to the other side of those mountains, right?

Right.

Straight to the Amazon.

Its famously ridiculous tree cover is the perfect barrier.

It should effectively keep us out of Stanley's crosshairs.

Sure, sounds great.

Let's just hope there truly is a dense unglejay on the other side.

There totes will be!

Enough chatter.

Let's get to crafting this bad boy.

Our science-born transport vessel.

Let's make a ropeway.

Well that's terrifying.

Talk about steep.

We'd definitely die a terrible death if we tried crossing without a ropeway.

Good thing death-defying leaps are my specialty.

Has she lost her arbles-may

In case you forgot, I'm an expert.

I have years of training from fetching hot spring water for Ruri.

I made that trip several times a day.

None of this would be a problem if I were the only one who had to cross.

But even I can't carry everybody and our bikes.

So what should our next move be?

Um, we're calling this teeny-tiny string a ropeway?

Not quite.

This is just our guide.

We'll use this rope to pull the cable across.

Holy crap!

We sent Kohaku hopping away without a phone, so how could we give her instructions?

Hey, did you forget the part about the enemy plane coming our way?

Using the radio would mean broadcasting our exact location to them.

We have a rope, which also means we have a landline.

A landline?

Hey, can you hear me?

Lioness ?

Shut it!

It's a string phone?

Oh, I remember making those!

Always nice to have low-tech options in a pinch.

Stretch a cable and slide some pulleys back and forth.

Huh, it's actually quite simple.

It's the same way they do cable logging in the timber industry.

Yeah, all we have to worry about is the weight.

It's fine! Send us!

Tsukasa and I will go first to reunite the power team.

Between the three of us, we can easily pull over a hundred kilos.

Think again, you big oaf.

We've got engines and tires.

We'll let our tech do the pulling.

It's this cable that we need to be worried about.

Woven from carbon and iron.

Strong yet lightweight.

Rather elegant, but...

What's the maximum load on the Kingdom of Science's ropeway?

The limit is somewhere around 160 kilograms.

We'll need to take our equipment apart to make it work.

And we'll also have to cross two at a time.

It'll be fine, we'll just have to pair up based on weight.

Luckily, we already weighed everyone and wrote down the results!

There's more to it.

It's too dangerous to go by weight alone.

The problem is Xeno.

Imagine if something like this happens.

We carelessly pair up and Suika winds up all alone with Zeno.

Point made.

It's looking like we have a real-life river-crossing puzzle on our hands.

So, uh, what kind of puzzle is that?

You're a simple traveler.

Trying to carry three conflicting things across a river.

You have a fox, a chicken, and lastly, some corn.

You can only carry one of them across at a time.

If you take the corn over first, you're leaving the chicken and fox alone.

And that poor chicken becomes fox food.

But if you take the fox over first, you're leaving the corn and chicken behind.

Scoring the naughty chicken a belly full of corn!

Correct.

The trick is finding a way to get everyone across safely.

Mecha-Senku, drop it in!

If you haven't already, try this famous Brain Buster!

The big question is who to pair Hyouga and Zeno with.

We can't ignore the past.

Hyoga literally killed Tsukasa for his ideals.

I don't know what Hyoga and Xeno are thinking right now

but we shouldn't leave them alone together.

There's always the possibility.

You and I are cut from a similar cloth, Dr. Xeno.

Let's join forces and curate a kingdom of superiority.

Now is the perfect opportunity to rendezvous with Stanley and the others.

Yes, a rather elegant proposition.

Make this make sense for me!

You're saying Hyoga killed Tsukasa?

That's crappy!

You people have a super freaky definition of friendship, you know!

I don't disagree.

We're complicated, but some context might help.

How about I give you a quick little rundown of our overly complex relationships?

Hyoga killed Tsukasa, but it didn't stick.

Oh, and before that, Tsukasa killed Senku.

To be fair, later Senku killed Tsukasa.

Xeno also killed Senku, but not really.

That's a heck of a lot of killing!

Well, I suppose when you lay it all out like that...

So the big problem we've got to solve for is Xeno.

Whoever carries him across has to be someone from the battle team

because things could get real bad real fast if he tries something.

That's incredibly risky.

Both pairs are over 160 kilos.

Should I jump back down to where you are?

Let's try to avoid reenacting the river crossing puzzle.

Zeno and Hyouga could cross together!

We were just talking about how that's the worst possible pair we could think of!

It's the logical choice.

Our schedule's too tight to fuss about seating assignments.

Here we go!

Okay, we are almost done.

Suika!

That was way too oseclay!

We can always count on Kohaku to leap headfirst into danger and save the day.

This is bad.

No one up here can fight.

We're completely at Hyoga's mercy on the edge of a cliff.

Hyoga knows he's in the perfect position to betray us without risking anything.

I'm defenseless.

I can't fight while holding Suika.

He could reach out his hand and end us.

That's a good boy, Hyouga!

I'm a fan!

I'm so Team Hyoga!

You're all pals, even though your relationship diagram's a hot mess and that is totes sending me!

It's true.

We have a lot of history.

We're just a stone's throw from where this mess began.

This kingdom of ours.

Of science.

We're united.

We're all on the same team!

Come on, Mother Nature!

You'd better not let us down!

If we're going through all this trouble, cough up that tree barrier!

Hell yeah!

They've got no hope of tracking us down in there!

We made it to the great Amazon jungle!

And that means we're done!

Now we just speed our way through the South American cross-continent jungle course.

Thanks to the Amazon's epic tree cover, Stanley's fighter plane poses no threat to us anymore!

They managed to evade us.

For now.

But the game would have been far too easy if we had just sniped them in the desert.

We have no choice but to concede round one to the fledgling science team.

That's fine by me.

That wasn't our main reason for coming here by plane.

It was for those tire tracks.

They tell us the exact route their ragtag crew is taking through the jungle.

How do we know those motorcycles aren't another decoy?