Chapter 225 - Lie

"Should we go back now?" Lei asked Von who was still taking his time to dry himself with the hand dryer they found in one of the rooms not far from where the laboratory was.

"Should we?" Von asked and turned the dryer again as if trying to prolong their stay.

"I'm worried about them. We shouldn't have left their side. What if something happened to them? I don't feel too good about this," Lei said with an urgency to go back now even though Von was clearly against it.

"You should go first then, I didn't come here to help clean that mess that you made," Von said and turned the blower again aggressively.

"Okay," Lei said with a guilty tone and went out of the room by himself.

Somehow, Lei was really feeling like there was something wrong happening inside that room with the cloud. And to think that he even let Gem go inside there even though it was very dangerous.

"I shouldn't have listened to Von's suggestion and watched out for them instead,'' Lei whispered to himself before running ahead to the room where Gem and Fily were.

On the other hand...

"Hmm…" Von muttered while thinking about whether he should go and help them to embody his 'maturity' or just stay here and wait for them to finish all the work like what he had been used to doing when he was still a child.

"On second thought, maybe I should just go and help them. Even though it really had nothing to do with me. This is a good opportunity for me to change my ways. Right! I should avoid being the old me and start changing, little by little," Von thought and was about to step out of the room confidently when his feet got cemented to the floor.

"But I really don't want to work," he said the words that his heart was telling him.

"But how about Gem and the others? It's going to be unfair for them to do all the work when Lei's the only one responsible for this. Should I go and help them just so I can prove my change?" Von thought out loud and took his time to sort out his contrasting thoughts.

"I should just go and at least be there for them… And if ever they decide to ask for my help, then I should go and help them. There's no more escaping this. I'm the one who chose to come with them anyway, even though I only came because Gem was really pushing…" Lei thought and shook the bad thoughts out of his head.

"Let's go."

***

"What are we going to do about this now?" Gem asked Petunia while sliding from the top of the cloud.

She then used half of her strength to punch through the now ice wall where the other cloud in the jar was inside.

"We should clean this, of course," Petunia said and rolled her eyes.

"But isn't this too much to clean by ourselves?"

"You're right. But do you want to tell Venedette about this mess?" Petunia said, challenging Gem with the thought that has never crossed her mind before while watching all this mess inside one of the very secured and historical laboratory rooms.

"A little bit. She's the princess here, doesn't she have the right to know?"

"But if we clean this place and restore it back to normal then she wouldn't need to know about this anymore, right?" Petunia said and started melting the ice with her Gummy cloud that could also act as a warmer just by activating a different chemical compound on its skin.

"Nice point. But still. At least she would be aware of the stuff happening in here, especially when we almost got killed by it."

"She doesn't need to know," Petunia said with an annoyed tone, "We just need to clean this up and return it back to normal. It wouldn't be that hard since this is just water anyway," Petunia added while sporting a fake smile.

'Wow, she's really against telling Venedette about this, huh?' Gem thought to herself before nodding innocently.

'Since she saved me, I should do this much to her,' Gem thought and proceeded to help with melting the ice with a part of Petunia's gummy cloud which was also burning Gem's hand.

But since Gem had an enormous supply of healing slimes in her hand, she just didn't mind the hot sting from the Gummy cloud and just worked harder to finish the task better.

"Why did this happen anyway?" Gem asked after a few minutes of not talking and just working with Petunia. 

"Ask Lei," Petunia only said and turned around from her when suddenly, the door opened and Lei was shown behind it.

"Lei!" Gem greeted him with a smile that immediately faded after remembering what she and Petunia were just talking about.

"C-Can you help me with this? It seemed like something's stuck here," Lei said while trying to push the door open but the door would only open until a few centimeters.

"Oh," Gem said and stood up to go towards him and help.

There was a huge ice cube blocking the door which was caused by the knee-level flood earlier.

It was even a surprise for Gem that the flood did not reach the hallways outside the doors so much. 

"This door must have been very secured," Gem thought to herself before trying to crack the ice floor with her sheer strength.

"Arg!!" Gem attempted punching it but then, she heard Lei knocking on the door and calling her name, obviously calling for her attention.

"Hey, use this," Lei said and slid a sharp hammer through the gap in the door after seeing huge blocks of ice and traces of the giant angry cloud earlier that was now frozen.

"What happened here?" Lei asked while watching Gem crack the block of ice floor open from the window on the door.

"We don't know," Gem simply said and shrugged before dropping the tool on the floor and using all her strength to lift the piece of ice blocking the doorway.

"There you go," Gem said and tried opening the door into a wider angle, just enough for a medium-sized human such as Lei to pass through.

"What do you mean you don't know? Weren't you the ones fighting this thing here earlier?" Lei asked while roaming his eyes around. Immediately became fascinated by the shape of the angry cloud that even had a face that was frowning to the wall that was only a few centimeters away from it.

And while Gem only shook her head as a response, Lei also saw the makeshift pool at the heart of the cloud with the hole that Gem made to take the other cloud in the jar out.

"Oh, you're here," Petunia said after seeing Lei roaming around the now ruined laboratory.

"This looks amazing! What happened? Oh, and I forgot to ask, but are you guys okay?" Lei said, somehow trying to be a more decent person after causing this very big ruckus that went in the way of their creation of the flight potion.

"Obviously," Petunia said and rolled her cat eyes away from Lei before whispering, "not," which Lei also heard since the room had not enough space for them to keep secrets from each other.

"Why is that? Did something happen?" Lei asked, checking Gem and Petunia again if they had scars or something that could be the reason why Petunia said not.

But aside from Petunia changing back to her cat form and their reactions, there's nothing really different with this Petunia and Gem from earlier.

"Oh, wow, what happened here?" Von, who had just arrived late to the party, said after entering the room also through the small opening of the door that Gem made.

"Dunno," Gem said to him with a matching shrug of the shoulders before returning back to what she was doing.

"Hey," Lei said, trying to make Petunia respond to his question, but the moment he came and touched Petunia's shoulder for a response, Petunia just suddenly burst out the words that she was dying to tell Lei earlier.

"Did you know that Gem almost died because of your carelessness!!" Petunia said and tears just started falling off her cheeks which made Lei take a step back from her with a flustered expression.

"Gem almost- what?" Von repeated and looked at Lei like he was about to commit murder.

"But didn't you just say to me that this isn't Lei's fault entirely?" Gem asked Petunia to help lessen the tension between the three of them.

"And besides, I'm fine. I didn't die. You all know I can't die, right?" Gem added with a knowing look at Petunia who was just about to complain about what she was saying since her Salamandite was not working yet and it was just a lie.

"Okay, I'm sorry," Petunia said and took a deep breath to get her thoughts straight.