Chapter 9

Tim walked back across the street closely behind Lucien, who was, unbelievably, whistling "Reboot the Mission" under his breath as he walked. Tim stopped short just short of entering the light cast by the sodium-vapor street lamp, watching this unusual occurrence for a few seconds. Okay, seriously, some weird shit must be going on.

The weird shit was only just beginning. Tim went upstairs and got into the shower when it started to kick into high gear. An innocent hand gesture as he put the shampoo in his hair caused an impossibly large amount of water to pour from the showerhead, and collapse onto the floor. Within seconds, it rose up and molded itself into a shape, much like the water tentacle from The Abyss.

The shape was that of Tim. It was, quite simply, a water-clone of himself.

Tim stared in shock at his aqua-doppelganger. His mouth dropped open, and so did water-Tim's mouth. He tilted his head, and water-Tim followed, in an exact mirror image. At this point, Tim was shocked enough to jump back against the wall, which water-Tim did as well, only to crash against the knobs and dissolve before flowing down the drain.

Tim stopped the shower, dried off, got dressed, and headed back to his room. "Axel, dude, you're not gonna believe- uh, dude, what are you doing with my posters?" Indeed, Axel was redistributing the posters, putting the Katniss and Rush posters onto the wall by the window, over his bed.

Axel silently removed the Katniss poster, revealing a large, ugly black burn mark on the wall.

"Uh, what-?"

"You know, I thought they taught us everything in health class," Axel grumbled. "Apparently not. They never said anything about our hands catching fire." He gestured at the burn mark. "That's where this came from. Get me another poster, I need to cover this last part here."

While Tim grabbed another poster, he said, "Sorry about your, uh, date. Guess we shouldn't have expected any more from a...politician, huh?"

Axel grunted in reply. A few seconds later, he said, "So what did you wanna tell me?"

Tim paused. "Well...it looks like you're not the only one with some strange new power. Looks like I can make a clone of myself."

"A what?"

"Well, not really a clone, it's made of water." As he finished covering the burn mark, Tim took Axel into the bathroom, ran the sink, and tried to make another clone with a sweeping hand gesture, the way he had accidentally done before. But it didn't work, even after he made the same gesture ten times in a row.

Axel rolled his eyes. "Brilliant. My brother, the waterbender."

Tim said, "Well, if you can't make your hands catch fire again, I guess we're even."

Axel put his fist in Tim's face and stared down at it, as if willing it to catch fire. Like Tim, he failed miserably.

"Whatever, then," Tim said, waving his hand. One loud rumbling sound later, a small water-clone of Tim popped out of the sink.

"Whoa!" Axel yelled, brandishing his fist at the water-clone. Instantly, his hand caught fire, and when it hit the water, everything vanished in a massive cloud of steam.

Axel stared down at his hands in complete bewilderment. Tim stared at the center of the steam cloud in complete shock. Turning to Axel, he asked the question on both their minds:

"What the hell is going on?"

-END OF EPISODE 1-