After regressing that old man into a hot young surfer, Kyle proceeded to get some practice with the watch by messing with other people's ages. Yet, no matter who he changed, his thoughts ended up drifting to his two former best friends, Marco Bell and Ian Tanaka. His newer set of memories told him that these two were no longer his best friends and just two children that lived in his neighborhood. That sudden loss of the connection to his friend made Kyle dwell on that sad fact. After thinking about it for a while, Kyle decided he didn't want to just abandon his friends. He was going to bring them along for the ride.
The next day, Kyle had returned to his 12-year-old self. It was strange to change to a mindset from an adult to that of a child, but Kyle tried to remain focused and not get distracted. He had called them and said he wanted to meet up at Marco's place, so they should be there.
When he got there, he saw his friends playing handball outside. Marco Bell was the athletic type. Blonde hair, blue eyes, an all-American boy. In contrast, Ian was a nerdy Asian kid who, while still active, wasn't nearly as athletic as Marco was or Kyle even. It may have been strange that a jock and nerd were friends, but all three boys connected as they were all interested in the same TV show. Anyway, Kyle smiled as he approached his two friends, as it felt like it was a lifetime since he last saw them.
"Hey guys, look at this. Cool, right?" Kyle showed the stopwatch to his friends, much to their confusion.
"Uh, it's nice...?" Ian began, "But why is it cool?"
"Yeah, is this from your father's store or something? Like, is super valuable?" Marco asked, which made Kyle grin. Oh yes, it was very much valuable, but not in the way most expected.
"Well, just watch this," Kyle responded as he pressed a button on the stopwatch and slowly aged. He then stopped when he reached age 15. Admittedly it was a rash decision to use the stopwatch this out in the open, but the way his two friend's jaw dropped. Kyle then used the stopwatch again to return to his original age while his friends were hounding him with questions about what just happened. One explanation later, and both of them wanted to use the watch themselves. Now it was a question of who should use it first when Ian got an idea.
"Why don't we use the watch together? We can do that, right?" Ian suggested. Admittedly Kyle didn't know if multiple people could use the watch simultaneously, but there's only one way to find out. The three of them headed to Marco's room for some privacy and took off their shirts so they could really see their transformation in detail. The three boys then all held on to the stopwatch as Kyle was held his finger against the reality-changing, age-up button.
"Alright, on three. Ready? Three, two, one!" Kyle pressed the button and felt the familiar warmth of getting older. He looked in the mirror to see that all three of them were growing taller. Targeting multiple people was working.
"Whoa... this is mind-blowing!" Marco yelled as his young jock body started to turn into a teen jock body, packing on lean muscle. This was something that Kyle expected, but what he didn't expect was his body to do the same thing at this age. His arms were getting bigger, and his stomach was starting to form abs. He may not have been progressing as fast as Marco, but it still was impressive to Kyle. Of course, the question was, why was this happening? Kyle was skinny as a reed until his early adult years when he used the stopwatch the first time. The only difference was that Kyle was growing up with his friends this time, so could Marco be influencing him to exercise more as a teen?
"Wow... you guys are getting so... ripped," Ian observed, clearly jealous that his friends were growing up to be muscled jocks while he remained skinny.
"Aww, come on. All you need to do is work out with us, and you could be ripped too," Marco replied. It seemed that he still had his child mentality as that was easier said than done. However, everyone's eyes widen as they saw Ian was beginning to beef up too. It seems like he took Marco's words to heart or something like that.
This was all so amazing. Who knew that the people around you can have this big of an impact on your life? Kyle couldn't wait to see how all of them grew up. Speaking of which, when should he stop the stopwatch? Hmmm...