DISCLAIMER: I do not own Dr. Stone! :)

To my awesome reviewers (09/06/20): Hello, Lu-chan 16Love, Lupa Lazuli, PuppyCake, pikapika, BorbFan28, karin150301, and Phantomfray! ^_^ Thank you so much for reviewing the twenty-third chapter of No Stone Unturned! I'm sure Gen will learn a lot during his time with Kohaku! :) A running gag indeed :D Ah, if only XD He was so young... :D That's a "complaint" that I'm more than happy to receive! :) Scenes that could have happened are fun to write! :D Senku is practical about everything, even about kitten Gen XD I hope all you enjoy this new chapter, and thank you again! ^_^

Chapter Twenty-Four: (S01 E09h) Furnace Repairs

After watching the two disappear into the forest, Senku turned back to Chrome and Suika, who had watched the sudden turn of events in silence. As they finished their breakfast, they discussed what they thought Kohaku would make Asagiri Gen do.

Not having heard Kohaku's final words to Gen at the campfire before she dragged him off, Suika had taken the conversation at face value and assumed that Gen's experience would be very educational. Chrome, who had received painful lumps from the woman on more than one occasion, guessed that Gen would have a mountain of them on his head by the time the two of them reappeared.

However, Senku remembered that Kohaku had only deflected Kinro and Ginro's weapons when they tried to attack Senku, rather than harming them outright. Not only that, but with the exception of the second arithmetic battle, Kohaku had only given such lumps to Chrome, who she clearly considered a friend. With these facts in mind, Senku, unlike the other two, thought that rather than education or pain, Kohaku would fill the next two weeks of Gen's life with fear.

I guess we'll see when they come back.

By the time they finished cleaning up after breakfast, the three of them were clear on their tasks for the day. Suika would gather solidifying clay, while Senku and Chrome were to make new sandstone bricks to repair the furnace, just like the two of them did during the fifth week they all gathered iron sand.

Finding sandstone wasn't the problem, since they had obviously located the right type of stone in order to build the furnace in the first place, but shaping it was. Without Kohaku there to quickly pound the stone into submission, Senku and Chrome had to resort to their old method of breaking large boulders and then hitting the sides of said boulders with whatever they had on hand in order to make blocks that were the right size.

Unfortunately, that method took a few hours per block, and they had around one fourth of the furnace to reconstruct.

In the end, they decided to adopt the same routine they had during that fifth week – spend several hours creating a few sandstone blocks, then use the rest of the day to collect iron sand in the river.

Luckily, Senku, Chrome, and Suika now had the magnets to help them collect iron sand. Not only were they more powerful than the natural magnets they had used previously, but they also had a greater surface area, allowing the three of them to gather more iron sand more quickly than before.

Eventually, after over a week of hard work, Senku and Chrome managed to shape the needed amount of stone blocks, carry them back to the camp, and smooth them down to make bricks. After crushing some more seashells from the many bags of the stuff they still had, the new stone bricks, along with a combination of mortar and solidifying clay, helped them repair up the furnace, which, after a few days of baking in the hot sun, looked almost as good as new, and Senku, Chrome, and Suika celebrated the completion of the repairs with a grilled fish dinner before going to sleep. Fortunately, the next step in their plans would take much less effort.

As it turned out, the next step in their plans would take more effort than they had assumed.

After trying – and only barely succeeding – at what he had attempted to do, Senku handed the tools in his hands to Chrome. Perhaps, with his better stamina, speed, and experience with sharp objects, he would yield more favorable results.

"Okay, here I… go!" shouted Chrome as he ran ahead a few feet, right into a field of green foxtail grass, and spread his arms outward, hoping to slash as many stalks as he could for their ramen.

Unfortunately, while Kohaku had known how used the momentum she had gained from running to support her arms' rapid movement, Chrome did not. Once surrounded by foxtail grass, he had used small steps to try to stop his running as quickly as possible, but doing so distracted him from directing that energy to his arms, and he ended up making his slashes and separate coordinated movement altogether.

Still, he did better than Senku, who had cut fewer stalks than Chrome using the same method.

Knowing about momentum and being able to use momentum are two different things, Senku thought, shaking his head.

After Chrome's attempt, they could have had the third member of their party, Suika, try her hand at slashing the foxtail grass. But being much younger and smaller than the other two, Suika's short arms would result in hardly any stalks being cut anyway.

In the end, Senku and Chrome ended up walking steadily through the field, cutting several stalks at a time with Suika staying between them, holding a large wicker basket to gather the foxtail grass they had obtained. It helped that from their previous ramen shop, they had a rough idea of how much they needed to gather.

As the three of them moved forward, Suika also occasionally knelt to pick up the foxtail grass that the wind blew from Senku and Chrome's hands as they placed their stalks in the basket – and after noticing the way Suika patted the ground with her hand when she did so, as if knowing that some stalks had fallen but not being able to easily pinpoint their exact locations, Senku had another piece of evidence that her eyesight wasn't what it ought to be.

(End of Chapter Twenty-Four.) (09/06/20.)

I. My personal comments: In the anime, Chrome made a relatively small hole to get the melted iron out of the furnace to make the iron bars. But in the manga, they made a HUGE hole - it was an irregularly shaped hole that even went up to the "bottleneck" part of the furnace, and lower part of said hole was about as tall as Senku (including his hair) and as wide as him when he was wearing his thick protective gear :)

II. Question of the day: What do you think of their furnace repairing and foxtail grass gathering struggles? :D

III. A tiny request: Thank you for reading my fanfic! :D If you've read this far, I hope you'll consider taking an extra minute to leave a review for Chapter Twenty-Four ("Furnace Repairs")? :D Reviews really mean a lot to me as a fanfiction writer, and all kinds of positive, negative, and/or constructive reviews are very welcome! ^_^ Even if it's the year 5738 or something, I would love to hear your thoughts on this chapter! :D (By the way, I'm "fireflyhwufanficwrit" on Reddit and "firefly-hwufanficwriterrrrr" on Tumblr :D)