Clark and Wes traded skillful jabs in relative silence, neither boy wanting much to engage in any meaningful conversation with the other, but a narrow victory for Clark prompted an unexpected remark from his defeated opponent.
“You’re pretty good at this,” Wes stammered, hoping desperately to attenuate the oppressing atmosphere of the room.
Clark continued scrolling through menus in the game, not shifting his gaze away from the TV. “Well, yeah. I play this all the time… Duh.”
Wes stared awkwardly down at his controller, fiddling quietly with some of the buttons and getting a feel for the size of it in his small hands.
Looking over at their uninvited houseguest, Clark felt some sympathy for the boy’s plight. He, too, had been regressed unwillingly. Although Clark did eventually agree to it, the same couldn’t be said of Wes.
Clark playfully kicked the other boy’s leg. “You’re actually not all that bad yourself… Somehow… I thought you didn’t play video games.”
Wes perked up, grateful that his compliment had ushered in at least some conversation to fill the silence. “Maybe it’s because I played Mortal Kombat when I was a kid?” Wes queried. “I think I started playing when I was eight, so maybe getting younger kinda resharpened my skills?”
Clark shrugged. Nick was the nerdy science type, so Wes’s explanation was satisfactory for him.
“Heh! Let’s see if those skills are sharp enough to beat me this time!” Clark challenged.
Nick was hard at work in his endeavor to fix the gun and bring about a timely restoration of their adulthoods when he heard what sounded very much like innocent, playful banter between two boys fervently engrossed in a virtual competition. Perhaps this unexpected intrusion by their neighbor would work in everyone’s favor. If Clark and Wes could patch up their heavily strained relationship over a few rounds of Mortal Kombat, then maybe their adult lives could each carry on without the added stress of worrying about the other man across the hall.
After about a couple hours of tinkering away, Nick was confident he had arrived at a solution to the gun’s inability to advance one’s age. He took the device and exited to the living room, seeing the two 10-year-olds fully engaged in their imaginary combat.
Wes’s arms shot up. “YES!” His enthusiasm elicited an exaggerated eye roll from Clark, who still seemed to be in decent spirits, from what Nick could tell. “There you have it. You just lost to someone who hasn’t played this sorta game in decades. That’s gotta suck, huh, Clark?!”
Clark inhaled deeply, setting his controller down and stretching after their hours-long session. “It still took you like 20 games or whatever, so you can have your one win, Wes,” Clark quipped, unphased by the newbie’s innocent provocation.
“At least I can say I beat someone whose only significant contributions to this planet are being good at video games and, of course, annoying his neighbor,” Wes joked.
Clark was ready to spout off a witty comeback when he finally noticed Nick standing at his open bedroom door, peacefully observing their exchange. “Hey, you got that thing fixed, already!?” Clark asked, eager for the peace of mind that he wouldn’t be stuck spending the next 19 years trying to play catch-up to his original age.
Nick held the gun up, turning it in his hands for the younger boys to marvel at. “I can’t be entirely sure until we test it,” Nick confessed, “and I actually came out here to ask if one of you could be the test subject.”
Wes and Clark turned toward each other, each expecting the other to want to capitalize on the chance to quickly be thrust back into manhood. Clark, though, remembered that he had already promised to be kids for the remainder of the weekend with Nick, and he was really treasuring this wholesome time that they were sharing together, so he found no difficulty in allowing Wes to be the subject of Nick’s pilot age progression.
“This isn’t so bad,” Clark gestured at his diminished form. “Wes, why don’t you go ahead and grow up so you can finally get the hell out of my apartment,” Clark suggested, perhaps feeling a bit out of sorts with this impromptu fraternization with the enemy.
Wes got up from the couch and replied, “Sounds just perfect to me. The sooner we’re done with each other, the better.” While their time together playing Xbox was fun, it didn’t fundamentally address the matters underscoring their fraught relationship, and Wes held out little hope that Clark’s inconsiderate habits would suddenly cease to agitate him.
Nick knew that each boy’s sarcastic tone, while innocent-enough, belied their genuine feelings toward each other and that the two would really each prefer to be done interacting with the other.
“Thanks, Wes,” Nick relayed. “I’m just gonna blast you with the age set to 18, okay? I’m not sure how calibrated the progression functionality is just yet, so I didn’t wanna set it all the way to your original age in case it gave you double or triple the burst.”
Hearing this, Wes was a bit concerned. He certainly didn’t want to end up aging to death in the span of seconds in his neighbors’ living room, but he was desperate to return to adulthood and get the hell out of here.
“Okay…” Wes hesitated. “So, should I take these off?” The boy pulled meekly at the white briefs hugging his waist.
“Oh, yes!” Nick remarked, having almost forgotten to relay that instruction. “Definitely do that! They’ll just tear otherwise, and it’d probably be painful for you as well, I’d think. Oh, and thanks for volunteering. I can’t just test this on myself, in case something goes wrong and it needs fixing again.”
Wes, while not wholly comfortable being seen nude by his neighbors, was no stranger to communal changing, and he almost enjoyed showing off in the precinct locker room on occasion; though, his body now had little to offer in the way of a free show. Regardless, Wes pulled off the underwear and stood perfectly still for Nick, unsure of what to expect.
“Ready, Nick,” Wes sternly affirmed, emanating a performative confidence to conceal his underlying concerns with the untested device’s potential adverse effects.
“Alright,” Nick began, “aging up to 18 in 3… 2… 1… Go.”
Nick pulled the trigger, and the effects were immediately apparent. Wes stood in open-mouthed wonder as his body hair and a fraction of his musculature returned to him. It all happened so fast that by the time he reached down to check, his manhood had been just about fully restored. Wes was observing his body and appreciating finding himself on the other side of puberty again when he said, in a voice that was nearly as deep as what he was used to, “Nick! It really worked! I think we can age me up all the—,” but Wes looked up to see Nick’s expression, a melding of horror and regret, directed not as his adult form but at Clark, the figure on the couch who now, much to everyone’s shock, was even more diminutive than before. A boy—no—a toddler, no older than 2-years-old sat wide-eyed, anxiously glancing between both Nick and Wes. The tighty whities that he’d so vocally denounced now almost covered the entirety of his lower half, at least sparing him the humiliation of showing off his infant manhood to his newfound crush of a best friend and his rival, cop neighbor.
“Nick,” Clark squeaked up at the boy. “Wha… How…?” but he couldn’t seem to find the words to express his utter astonishment at his very much unwanted regression to toddlerhood.
“Uhhhh…” Nick frantically checked the gun for signs of any error, but no such warning had appeared on the screen. Maybe he had wired something wrong? “Clark, I’m so sorry!” Nick blurted, desperately attempting to assuage his friend’s concerns. “I- I think the gun maybe…" Nick pondered the idea for a second, realizing that it could be the only logical conclusion in this situation. “Clark, Wes, I think the gun somehow sapped the years from the closest subject to its target and transferred them into the target, or Wes, in this case.”
A tense silence filled the room, everyone in disbelief of this setback they’d have to overcome.
Nick continued explaining, “Since I made you 18, Wes, I think the gun took 8 years from you, Clark, so now…”
“I’m two…” the little boy held up 2 fingers, still unsure of how to process his extreme reduction in stature.
Nick turned specifically to the young man before him. “Wes, I’m sorry, but I can’t risk using the gun to make you any older right now, in case it were to make Clark or me any younger. I think you’ll just have to stay 18 for right now, until I can properly fix this.”
Wes, happy enough that he could at least enjoy his teenaged adulthood, still shared the same concerns as his two young neighbors, not wanting to return to his previous age the old-fashioned way. “Uh, that’s fine for now,” Wes assured him. “It’s not like we have any other choice than to just wait for you to fix it… Is there anything I can do to help?”
Nick’s eyes darted to the toddlerfied Clark. “Well, I think that since you’re old enough to drive, you’re going to need to run out and get some supplies for Clark,” Nick mentioned, “and I’m not really sure how long this whole ordeal is gonna last, but I’ll need to spend all of my time working on this, so I need you to take care of Clark in the meantime... I kind of rushed the repairs this time around, and I don’t want to risk doing that again, so maybe plan on being like this through Monday or Tuesday?”
“That long?!” Wes gasped, unsure of how to explain his absence to the higher ups at the station.
Nick promptly shot back, “Wes! If I make another mistake, then the gun could put all three of us back in diapers, not just Clark. If that happens, it’s game over! I need to get it right this time, so if it means missing work for a couple days, then I think it’s worth it. Don’t you?”
Wes realized he had little choice in the matter. He was enjoying his partly restored adulthood and was certainly not eager to spend any time back in diapers, not with his adult mental faculties in place. “Fine. You’re right,” Wes conceded. “Let me get dressed first, and I’ll head out.”