Chapter 226: Just Weird

The two of us got our clothes back on and headed out the new door in the far corner of the lab. We walked together, hand in hand down the beach; Violet had become all smiles, and we found a spot on the sand to sit. 

"Do you feel better?" I asked while sliding both my arms under her breasts, using them to pull her back into my chest.

"Yes, a bit, but I hope you're not just going to run off now, right?" Violet asked, turning her head up to me.

I leaned down and then kissed the top of her head, then the tip of her nose, finally ending on her lips. We shared a slow, and soft kiss, but then I pulled back and looked into her beautiful purple eyes.

"You have me until the morning, so what would you like to do? Run some of those tests?" I asked, giving her a squeeze.

"Hm, yeah, but I don't really know the kinds of things that you need to test. You just learned about your powers, and now you have another power from this thing," Violet said.

"Good point. Well, the latest thing is control, so I wanted to test it out on some things to see the effects. I am supposed to be able to put some of the Gates' power into an object and make it animate, and follow my will."

"So you want to try it out on Titania's and your baby?" Violet asked, turning to look up at me with a grin.

"Not that one yet, haha. No, let's start small and see what kind of effect it has on small things before we go bring life to the big friendly giant. Let's start with something small, like a rock or something. Let me see what I have in my pocket, there was a small rock in there poking me."

Violet leaned forward and I leaned back reaching in my pocket and finding what had been bothering me. I pulled it out and it was a small blue diamond-like crystal; where had I got this?

"Well, maybe we will stand up and you stand back a little bit, and watch your eyes… no, let's go get safety gear. We would both look pretty stupid going blind from something like this after the things that we have all faced. Defeated by stupidity, that sounds just as bad as it is," I said, taking Violet's hand and heading back to the ship.

After we went and bothered Titania next door for some smocks, gloves, and safety glasses, the two of us went back outside. Tamika had been in the lab when we had come back, so she asked if she could help by taking notes, so she had come along as well.

Now, the three of us were back out on the beach and I had taken off my gloves. I had the small crystal in my hand, and the girls were standing back from me waiting to see what happened.

"Okay, here goes nothing," I said as a joke, I knew exactly how to do it, but what actually happened after was different for everything.

I placed my index finger on the small crystal, and let the power flow from my fingertip. I could feel the lightning come with the power, and that was what I was worried about. 

There was nothing about the lightning in the Memory Download I received, so I just had to hope that nothing bad happened. 

I stopped the power, and the crystal lifted out of my hand about three centimeters and then started to spin and crackle. Then, purple snow started to curl around the gem until there was a little purple and sparkling snowman.

"Wait, this is Nina's! Icle!" I said with excitement.

"I told you that was a horrible name!" Icle complained.

"Good thing I didn't ask you, but what happened to you?"

"Really? You almost got turned into bean paste and you're asking me what happened? You jumped in the invisible block, and then I was here, in your hand, looking quite fetching if I do say so myself!" Icle said while checking out his new color.

"Well, glad to have you back, not what I expected, but then I hadn't expected much. Okay, you, up here," I said putting Icle back up on my shoulder. "Now, what next?"

"What about trying a rock that wasn't already something?" Tamika asked with a grin, but I rushed over to her and tickled her for the smart-ass comment, but she was right.

I walked over and found four rocks, about five centimeters wide and round, collecting them. I filled each with power, and then tossed them on the ground.

Each one started to shake a bit, but then they settled into the ground, starting to glow. As they did, lines of power started to leak from the stones. They stretched to touch other stones, making them pull along the lines, but the lines kept spreading.

I was starting to get worried at first, and we all stepped back from the two-meter wide patch of energy lines. They were pulling more rocks and even the sands were coming together. 

Yet, the lines of power were not stretching wider than they already were. Instead, now they were starting to dig into the ground at the edges, but each of the four rocks was rising.

"Hey, umm, Hyde...what is going on?" Tamika asked, writing down notes furiously.

"I really don't know," I said, but then I paused, and watched how the stones rose and each web of lines shrunk in. "Wait, woah! They are making copies of me!"

It was true, the lines were starting to look like they did within my body when I stood at the gate. Slowly, sand covered the lines, and four copies of me stood, looking at each other with smiles.

"Umm, hello?" I asked, not really sure how to approach this.

"After all this time, I finally get to stretch my legs!"

The voice was deep and graveled, and I knew who it was.

"Keepa? You can come out of my head?"

"Hyde?" A familiar pair of female voices asked from two of the clones.

Okay, now this was just weird.