The last person Hakone expected to run into in the laundry was Ryouma. Although he hadn’t exactly figured Ryouma and Ayane would have spent the morning cuddling and brunching, either, and what better to do with down time between missions than laundry? But those were a lot of soiled uniforms for one man to generate, even with a week-long mission under his belt. He leaned on the running washer next to the one Ryouma was loading and eyed his friend’s efforts. “You think that’s enough detergent?” he asked, as Ryouma poured a long stream on top of the pile of clothes. “If you’re looking to kill whatever’s still alive on those, you might be better off with a fire jutsu.”

Ryouma eyed the pile with a critical head tilt, and poured in one last glug of detergent. “QM will skin me alive if I come in asking for new underpinnings for my whole team ’cause I burnt all the old ones.” He twisted the cap back onto the detergent bottle and dropped the machine door shut. “Do washing machines ever really explode in soap bubbles, or is that just on TV?”

“Pretty sure that really happens,” Hakone said. He pointed to a curling and water-spotted sign taped up on the wall near the door that read ‘No more than “three” units of liquid detergent per load!!!’

Which, he realized belatedly, Ryouma couldn’t have read.

“That sign says no more than three capfuls per load. Although there are quote marks around the three that make it seem like there’s some wiggle room, like maybe three is an ironic measurement.” He frowned and looked at the bottle still in Ryouma’s hand. “How much did you put in?”

Ryouma hefted the bottle, sloshing the remaining liquid back and forth a little. “About three capfuls. More or less.” He squinted at the shadowed level of liquid in the bottle. “Maybe a little more. They were pretty filthy.” He shrugged, set the bottle down, and started the machine. “If it explodes in bubbles, we can have fun with water jutsu.”

“You ever try a water jutsu on soapy water?” Hakone asked, chasing the new idea. “I wonder if it’d lift out the water and leave the soap behind, or whatever part of the soap isn’t water. Like when you get clean water out of a muddy stream, right?”

“Yeah, but that's a special filtering jutsu,” Ryouma said. “You could work a jutsu to play with bubbles if you wanted.” He placed the detergent bottle — one designed for ‘organic stain removal and rapid sanitizing’ according its label — back in its cubby on the shelf above the washers. “Guess you would need to alter it to catch whatever's in the soap too, though,” he said, staring up at the flourescent fixtures in thought. "So's you didn't pop the bubbles.” His fingers flexed in half-formed seals. “Maybe add a Rabbit-Ox-Snake combo to pull in some Wind chakra?”

“Wind, definitely,” Hakone agreed. “Smart. And maybe you need an inverted Monkey seal combo to accommodate whatever Earth nature is in the soap itself? Soap’s complex.” He turned back to his own interrupted laundry task, applying a few spritzes of stain lifter to each darker-than-black spot on his uniform blacks. “Maybe we could invent a laundry jutsu. You’d need Earth to get dust out, and Water, obviously.” He added his own three measured capfuls of detergent and slammed his machine shut. “What do you think? You’re the ninjutsu creator.”

“Water'll get dust out, if you've got enough of it,” Ryouma said. “I'd think blood stains'd be a bigger problem.” He frowned at the washing machine, drumming his fingers against his thigh in an unconsciously syncopated beat. “Maybe if I could figure out how Iebara worked his jutsu. Kakashi copied it, so it's not a bloodline limit. Water-based, clearly, but I've got enough of that…”

And that was one of the many reasons Hakone included Ryouma in the very exclusive set of people he called friend. Ryouma was smart and inventive, and always willing to consider even an impossible problem.