Rube poured the hot water from an iron kettle into the porcelain tea pot. "Just so. How long has it been, Kakashi? Eight years?"
"I have no idea," confessed Kakashi. "Time just seems to get away from me."
"Ah," said Rube, pulling on a lock of his own remaining gray hair to bring it down to eye level. "It does that, doesn't it?"
A mighty crash and a sploosh came from the factory floor.
"Your genin team seems talented," noted Rube.
"Well, they have potential," said Kakashi.
"Freeze card!" tried Naruto as tentacles of water lifted pies.
There was a moment where it seemed to have worked, then the ice shattered and pies started flying.
"Why didn't that work?" asked Naruto.
Sakura still felt she had a few uses of Jump and used that to leap off a boiler and pass over the tank of water. "Steam? It's drawing the hot water from that tank! It's too hot for you to freeze it."
Sasuke made a leap, rolled out of it, and leapt again as he zig-zagged towards a control panel.
Instead of a pie, a geyser of hot water hit him and caused him to slide backwards.
"Gonna have to use it," said Naruto.
"'It'? What 'it'?" asked Sakura.
"When you got knocked out by the Fight card, the Power card was still in you," said Naruto. "Sasuke woke me up first. Power card! Enhance Sasuke!"
Sasuke felt the card take effect and tried to keep from grinning like some fool. The resulting smirk was unavoidable.
He knew his strength had just increased more than a dozen times. It felt as if he could do nearly anything. What he chose to do was dig in and plow through the next geyser of water to hit him. His sandals broke as he dug his feet into the floor and slowly moved forward under the pressure, but he was doing it.
The smirk didn't falter. Now if Naruto would just pick up on what he was doing...
"FREEZE CARD!"
"But that won't work," protested Sakura from somewhere overhead. "Oh, waitaminute. You're freezing the spray."
Sasuke grinned. He'd had serious doubts about this team at the beginning, but if they could follow his lead like this - the day he could confront his brother was getting closer.
With the Water card tapping into the really-darn-hot water of the dishwashing area - Naruto couldn't freeze it. However, the card had to use a high-pressure stream of water to keep him from the control box. The spray of water being deflected was smaller and lost heat quickly.
Once it turned to snow and ice, Sasuke was betting that a Water card couldn't control it. So the more it attacked him, the less water it had. Now, he couldn't see anything with all the water spraying but he could listen for particular sounds.
CLUNK! Whirrrrr
"Got it!" said Sakura.
Which would be Sakura turning off the pumps to the reservoir.
"WAGH!"
SPLURCH!
Which was the sound of several pies hitting Sakura in retaliation apparently.
The water cut off abruptly with a startled noise in a voice that was neither Naruto's nor Sakura's.
"Freeze!" said Naruto, turning his full attention to the remaining water.
Rube listened for a few moments. "Turned quiet abruptly."
"Ah," said Kakashi. "Well, I'm going to guess that the mission is now cleaning rather more than just the dishes."
"Your guess is completely correct," said Rube. "Does this sort of thing happen often with your team?"
"Rather more than I'd like to think about," admitted Kakashi.
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(Posted Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:17)
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