Tuesday afternoon: Kitty's room, the library, and points between.

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Jamie bounced down the hallway toward his room, but screeched to a halt a door early in light of the scenery; it would, he thought, forever put to rest any further discussion of 'endearingly lovable nerd cute,' although probably Marie-Ange wouldn't see it that way.  He leaned against the doorframe, grinning, and, after a pause for visual appreciation, knocked.

Kitty was convinced that the best way to work on your bed was to use books as tables. It made everything much more level. Of course, that mean she ended up cross legged on the bed with a pile of books in front of her high enough to rest her laptop on, and another, smaller pile to the side with her notes, in addition to the assorted texts scattered around and behind her. She typed away busily, one pencil tucked behind her ear and forgotten, a second being chewed on thoughtfully, while two more did yeomen's service in keeping her hair up.
 
The knock caught her attention, but she wanted to get the idea she had safely stored in memory, so without looking up she said, "Be right with you." Or, that was what she meant to say. With the pencil in her mouth it came out as "Bme righ' wi' yu."

"S'okay, I'm enjoying the view.  I can wait."

Her fingers flashing over the keyboard she glanced up, her eyes sparkling. A quick keystroke and the work was saved, at which point she reached up and liberated the pencil from her mouth. "Hey love, what's up?"

"Well, I was looking for you, actually.  Wanna show you something if you've got a minute.  Down in the library?"

"Sure, hold on." Carefully moving the pile of books on her left Kitty untucked one leg and stretched it up over the laptop, shifting her weight to stand up from the bed without knocking anything over. "What did you want to show me?"

"Not so fast."  Jamie grinned and pointed up.  "Mistletoe."

Kitty glanced up. "Someone..." The raised eyebrow rather suggeseted she thought that someone was Jamie, "hung mistletoe in the hallway directly in front of my door?" She couldn't help but match his grin. "Well, who am I to flout tradition."

"This is what I'm saying."  Jamie gathered her in for a thorough kiss, and kept hold of one of her hands as they started off down the hall.  "What it is, is, I finally figured out a couple of new tricks with my powers and I kind of wanted to show off a little bit."  Jamie sent an overly-casual glance up at the top of the steps and blinked in surprise.  "Hey, look, more mistletoe.  People sure have been going crazy with the decorations."  He grinned down at Kitty hopefully.

Kitty just laughed. "Subtle you are not boyo." Leaning up she kissed him deeply. When she pulled away she couldn't help but grin. "So, new tricks with the powers?"

"I go with what works.  And this has definitely worked."  He shook his head slightly.  "Where was I?  Oh, right, powers.  Yeah."  He smiled mysteriously.  "Figured out a couple things.  It's a surprise."

"Surprise? I can live with surprises," she said, continuing down the stairs with Jamie.

He snickered.  "No you can't.  If we weren't practically at the library already you'd be going nuts.  I keep expecting to wake up in the middle of the night hanging upside down by my ankles while you tickle me into telling you what you're getting for Christmas.  Which won't work, in case you were wondering.  My strength is as the strength of six because my heart is pure.  And also, it's my mutant power."

Kitty giggled. "Sure, ruin my fun... And here I'd almost figured out a way to get you into the air by your ankles without waking you. And I can be patient when I want to be. I just don't usually want to be." The beginnings of a pout formed at the corner of her mouth, although she refrained from turning the full force of her 'big Kitty eyes' (tm) on him.

"If you don't quit that we won't even need the mistletoe and I'll never get around to showing you what I figured out.  And that would be a lot of fun, but so would this."  Jamie opened the library door and let go of Kitty's hand to gesture her inside with a flourish.  "Take a seat, and the Astounding Madrox will perform feats to amaze and astonish."

"Well, at least you admit it would be fun," she said, hopping up to sit on one of the tables. "Go for it."

"It's only about my favorite thing to do, of course I admit it would be fun."  Jamie grinned and moved out into an open space between tables.  "For my first performance, I will create a dupe using merely the fingers of my right hand."
 
He held the hand in question up dramatically, and snapped his fingers.
 
Nothing happened.
 
Jamie glared at his traitorous fingers.  "One sec.  Sometimes it doesn't always work the first time."

Kitty cocked her head, watching with a little smile.

Jamie closed his eyes with a frown of concentration, and snapped his fingers again.
 
This time, a dupe popped into existence and took a bow.

She grinned, applauding lightly. "That's less force than it usually takes, isn't it?"

"Way less.  And it's a lot harder going this way than it is stopping myself from duping--but I can do that, too, so we don't need to worry if we go to any poetry recitals at beatnik bars."

A quiet laugh greeted this. "Not sure how likely that is, but good to know none the less."

"Well, you never know, we might suddenly be compelled to wear berets."  Both the original and the dupe straightened.  "And now, for the grand finale . . . something that's kind of hard to explain and will probably go down better after a demonstration.  Ready?"

"Sure."

"Cool."
 
Both Jamies clamped their eyes shut and scowled, concentrating intensely.  After a long moment of nothing much happening, the dupe opened his eyes, flashed Kitty a grin and a wink, and smacked the original on the head.  "It worked, doofus."

The original blinked, opened his eyes, and grinned.  "Excellent.  Stop hitting yourself."
 
"Except I'm not, which is the point."
 
"Well, yeah.  Time for the other half of the demo?"
 
"Sure."
 
Both Jamies began snapping their fingers, not quite in unison, and soon there were four, then six . . . and then eight, ten, and finally twelve dupes, filling the empty floor space completely, and occasionally nudging each other.  One of them, possibly the original, folded his arms and grinned proudly.  "So what do you think?"

Kitty blinked as the two Jamies bantered and then her eyes widened as the duping began. "Wow... Jamie, this is... God, you really have been working. You used to only be able to do six... wow."

"Yeah.  It's actually . . . I can still only do six, sort of, it's just--well, Dr. McCoy pointed out that since the dupes are all exactly identical to me, and everything, they have my same brain, so they might be able to make dupes of their own if I could relax enough to let them."
 
One of the dupes broke in.  "Which he should've realized on his own. I mean, what are we, robots?"
 
The original glared.  "There's some weird side-effects.  They tend to argue when they're more independent."
 
"Gee, wonder where we get that."
 
"Anyway, the Professor thinks this is how my power was supposed to work--all the dupes independent, not just groups of six--but we went the wrong way figuring out how to train me at home, and it's pretty hard to let go.  He thinks it'll get easier, though."

Kitty's eyes flickered back and forth between the dupes, all in different stances but all so very Jamie. "Very wierd... cool, but wierd." They bicker with each other, which means they have independent thought, which would mean it'd be like cheating on him if I kissed the wrong one, but they're all Jamie, so it's not... This could be fun. She suddenly grinned, hopping off the table.

"Ooh, she's coming for a closer look . . ." one of the dupes said, grinning.  One of the other ones smacked it on the head.

"How independent are all of you?" she asked, head tilting to the side, a smile tugging at her lips.

"Six of one, half dozen of the other.  I can only manage one independent dupe right now--gets a little headachey after a while, and sorting out all the memories when I reabsorb is kind of tricky.  So there's really only two of 'me' here."

"Hmm... Can you still feel everything each one of you feels?" Her smile had widened slightly.

"Not until I reabsorb, then I remember it . . ."
 
One of the 'other' dupes waggled his eyebrows.  "What, you wanna compare and contrast?"

She giggled, her eyes sparkling. "You must admit, it leads to some interesting possibilities..."

"Ergh."  The original swayed slightly on his feet.  "Um.  Maybe later?"
 
"Aww, I wanna try it now!"
 
"Later.  Time to come home."
 
"Aww, man . . ."
 
 The dupes slid into each other with eye-twisting speed until only one Jamie remained, rubbing his forehead.  "Sorry.  That's still kind of a new trick."

Kitty made her way over and wrapped her arms around him. "No worries. You ok?"

Jamie returned the hug, resting his cheek on her hair.  "Yeah.  It's just like not thinking of the white elephant, only harder, and I can't keep it up for very long yet."

She turned her head up to kiss him softly. "It's still really impressive love."

Jamie grinned.  "Thanks.  Been practicing a lot, and I finally got it for a decent amount of time today and came right over to show you.  Haven't even told the Professor yet."

Smiling, Kitty hugged him tightly then stepped back. "You probably ought to do that now though. You know how they're getting about us experimenting when there's no staff around..."

"Well, yeah, I was going to right the second thing.  And they know I've been doing it, this is sort of homework.   I just wanted you to know first."

She kissed him soundly, and smiled again. "Congratulations."

"Y'know, you're so much better at encouraging me to excel than the Professor.  Which is good, because otherwise something would be very wrong."  He grinned.  "And we can try that compare and contrast later if you want."

She giggled, blushing slightly. "Could be fun..."