Enrik groaned as he leaned over the last gap in the floor. He and Stena had been working to repair it for a few days now, a bit at a time. They were making good progress! But given how many of the floorboards had outright broken or splintered, the task was beginning to feel endless - even with the end pretty clearly in sight.
Stena was nearby using her Qi to shape and meld the boards to fit them against the others. Enrik didn’t even want to think how long this would have taken without her. Her ability to warp and shape the new wood boards made everything go much faster than it would have by hand. And even then, they still had a little help here and there from some of their siblings. Mostly the ones that were in the training that day.
“We’ve only got like three boards left.” Stena said with a deep breath. “Finally.”
“Yeah.” Enrik agreed and slid the board into its spot. It fit neatly in between two others, and he held it in place as Stena tapped her Qi to make the board grow just a bit to fit perfectly snug into the space.
The two of them continued shaping and fitting the last few boards in place. It didn’t take too much longer, but getting all the boards in place was the easy part, thanks to Stena. Once they were finished with that, they took in the mess they had made.
They hadn’t really cleaned as they went, which left the state of the room pretty poor. There were bits and pieces of wood and shavings everywhere, leftover pieces from boards that had been splintered but not entirely broken. Those had been shaved down to cleaner edges to remove any potential splinters and the like before fitting the new boards in.
There was also just the general mess that came with doing work like this. There were scuff marks on some of the old planks that would need to be cleaned, but that was fine. It just needed a little effort.
The real issue was the bits of splintered wood all around. Everyone that had come and gone had been forced to wear real shoes to protect their feet just in case, which had led to the dirty shoe tracks and dust tracks all over the floor.
And all of that stuff needed to be cleaned up before they could mop the floors to prepare for the lacquer that they would still have to do, too. The family as a whole had a habit of ruining the lacquer on the flooring in the training room, so there was always a ton of lacquer material on hand thankfully.
Stena eventually let out a deep breath, standing straight and stretching after the last board was laid in place. “Well. Now I guess we need to clean up.”
“Get all of the debris out of here and mop up and wash the boards for lacquer, yeah.” Enrik nodded, stretching out his back as he also stood up straight. “Shouldn’t be too bad though, we haven’t made that much of a mess.”
“You’re right, but trying to get all the dust is going to be a pain.”
“Yup. May as well get started.” Enrik yawned, and moved toward the door to the hallway where the storage closet was. There was a mop and other cleaning supplies in it. Once he opened the door, he began collecting the things they would need. “I should probably go over it with the push broom first, yeah?”
“Good idea.” Stena called from the room as she also walked out, but headed to the stairs. “I’ll go see if anyone is willing to lend us a quick hand with this part. If we get a few of us on it, this part should go much faster.”
“Sounds good. I’ll get sweeping.” Enrik nodded and went to get started.
It didn’t take long for Stena to return with Kord, Briar, and Fia in tow. But even then, Enrik had still broomed up most of the room, gathering a neat pile of loose dirt, dust, and debris. The whole group got to work quickly enough and in a few minutes the floor was clean. Or at least free of dust and debris.
“What’s next?” Fia asked, eyeing the set aside cleaning tools. “Mop and wipe up?”
“We should probably actually wash it all down before we mop. If we want to get the scuff marks and stuff out of the older boards, it’s gonna need a bit of scrubbing.” Kord said.
Briar sighed. “Right. Let’s get it done.”
Enrik and Stena shared a smile, seeing how willing the others were to help, and they were looking forward to getting finished with the whole thing well ahead of when they thought they would.
“If you all want to get a head start, I’ll go get a bunch of water and soap.” Stena offered. “It’ll be good to really wash the floors, but there’s a wood cleaner in the closet you can start with for the scuff marks. It should scrub them right out.”
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“Oh, is that the stuff that Momri made?” Briar asked, perking up. “I had to use that the last time I scrubbed the bathhouse floors. That stuff was incredible.”
“I’ll leave you all to it then.” Stena said as she spun on her heel and ran up the stairs.
It was a little while before she returned, a large bucket of soapy water sloshing about in each hand. By then, most of the scuffs had already been scrubbed away, too. Stena set the buckets down by the door for now and moved to help the others finish up.
Once the floor had been scrubbed clean and all of the loose debris was removed, Stena returned to her buckets, waving the others out of the room. Once they were all standing behind her, she shoved both buckets over with her feet, letting the water freely spread over the wooden planks.
As Stena was raising her right hand, Fia said, “Right then, let’s get mopping,” and walked into the room, right past Stena.
Before Stena could react to Fia moving in front of her, her Qi triggered the storage ring on her finger. Which had been filled with more water. So much more water.
With Stena holding her hand with the ring up, the stream of water that poured forth landed squarely on the back of Fia’s head. It drenched her long hair near instantly, and by the time Stena lowered her hand to let the water flow onto the floor as she had intended, Fia was already entirely soaked from head to toe.
The girl’s robes hung heavy off her body and her hair was clinging to her face when she spun around to glare at Stena, who at least had the decency to look sheepish.
“Sorry, Fia.” She said, hurriedly, “I should’ve said I had more water in my storage ring before I let you walk in.”
Fia looked about ready to snap, especially after having been on edge for days thanks to the constant trading of pranks that was going on. She closed her eyes in an attempt to calm herself, and took a few long, deep breaths. She did sound remarkably calm when she finally spoke, but it was the cold anger type of calm.
“It’s okay.” She said through gritted teeth. “You didn’t mean it. I walked in early. It’s no one’s fault.” She said each short sentence almost as if she was trying to convince herself more than Stena, who just looked apologetic.
Enrik and Kord had the sense to keep quiet. Briar, however, did not.
“It’s just some water, Fia. You’re fine.” They said, stepping past everyone and into the water logged room. “Besides, you’re a water based Cultivator. You can’t seriously be bothered by getting a little wet, can you?”
Fia’s Qi sprang to life immediately. To Briar’s credit, they did react quickly, turning toward Fia and raising their arms defensively. But rather than a frontal attack, Fia’s Qi roused the water beneath Briar’s feet. The swift and sudden current swept their feet out from under them, leaving Briar tipping face first toward the floor.
Briar’s hands shot forward to stop the fall successfully, leaving them in a push-up like position. Fia had no mercy, launching a blast of the soapy water from the floor straight into Briar’s face. The water sprayed every which way after making contact with a good amount of force. It was enough to make Briar try to protect their face with an arm, which left them off balance for a second current to sweep out their remaining arm.
Stena, Enrik, and Kord all flinched as Briar’s nose cracked against the floor. It wasn’t likely to cause real damage to a Cultivator’s body, but the impact would definitely hurt.
Sure enough, Briar rolled over, clutching at their nose. “Damn it, Fia, that hurt!”
“It’s just a little water, surely it didn’t hurt that bad.” She mocked, then kicked up a small wave of water to splash Briar from the side. She kept murmuring softer mocking lines to herself as she tried to strip off her soaked outer robes and wring them out.
She looked back to Briar, still trying to wring out her robes, and clicked her tongue. “Oh, get up.” She said, sounding exasperated. “There’s no way you’re that hurt.”
Briar glared, but still stood just fine. Aside from being as soaked as Fia, they were fine.
“I guess we should actually get to cleaning up.” Kord said, trying to get everyone back on track. He strode into the room, looking around. “Thankfully, it still looks like we just need to clean up the water and mop up.”
“Yeah, shouldn’t be too - “
Stena stopped suddenly when she was hit with a blast of water from behind. She spun to find Enrik grinning widely, clearly having kicked up a bunch of water at her. It wasn’t enough to completely drench her, but her hair and back felt gross enough with the small amount of water. She narrowed her eyes at Enrik, but returned his grin.
“Oh, you’re gonna get it.” Stena said menacingly. She pulled the hair tie from her wrist and gathered up her hair in a loose ponytail. “I hope you’re ready Enrik.”
“Wait!” Kord said, trying to interpose himself between them. “We already broke this floor. Can’t we finish the job before we make this any worse? Right?” We pleaded, looking between the two siblings about to face off.
They both answered by kicking water at him. Resigned to his fate, Kord sighed as he was equally drenched from both sides and dropped his arms. “Fine. I guess we can just finish up later.” He said begrudgingly. With a quick burst of Qi, Kord created greaves around his feet and legs; they were strangely shaped at a glance, but were crafted in a spur of the moment decision for a specific purpose.
The wide front of the greaves caught a truly impressive amount of water as he kicked, sending up a huge splash at Stena. She danced to the side, leaving the brunt of Kord’s splash to land squarely on Fia, who turned on him immediately.
Rather than the anger from before, she seemed to show a bit more amusement this time. But her smile was wolfish all the same.
“You should all know better than to pick a water fight with a water Qi Cultivator.” She intoned, as the soapy water rose slowly from the floor to hover in the air around her, slowly rotating.
Stena and Enrik took one look at her and shouted, “Run!” before bolting out of the room and down the hallway.
The laugh Fia let echo through the house would haunt their dreams for a week.