Ignoring the Gender Bender switch, each of the three modes interested him. However, his plan to destress would only be possible through Overdrive. The instructions caution him about using Overdrive as it would render some teens unable to turn back. The mode is also unpredictable. The only guarantee is that the teen would make a return to single digits, but there is no telling how far Overdrive can make a teen go.
Figuring that he'd be back to normal by the end of the weekend, Marcus elected to put his Pubertaway into Overdrive. By the time the teen was asleep, the device started its handiwork, pulling Marcus further away from puberty and adulthood.
Part of his routine to keep his body healthy was to wake up early, even on weekends. Marcus would normally wake up at 7 AM and go for a morning run before everyone else would be awake. However, Marcus had learned of the extent of how much he had changed as soon as his alarm went off. His arm could not reach the phone, even when stretching. He had to sit upright on the bed just to get the phone and stop the alarm.
Marcus' smartphone felt large on his hands, which reminded him that he had used the Pubertaway the previous night. Alarmed, he pulled back the covers, and saw that he had kicked his boxers off in his sleep. Exposed was a body far removed from puberty. Not a single bulging muscle or sign of maturity in sight. His limbs became miniscule and impossibly small. His torso, once home to his six-pack abs, had developed a small belly attributed to baby fat. His privates, once his pride and joy, had shrunk to the size of a baby toe with two small marbles.
Marcus then chose to see his own face on the camera app on the phone. The face of a cherubic little boy stared back at him seconds later. His hair devolved into a bowlcut, his head rounded out, and his smile contained a sea of baby teeth with none of them loose.
"When that thing said Overdrive, it wasn't joking around," Marcus said in his high soprano, "I'm a little kid again!"
Marcus grinned and laughed with joy at how small and young he had become. Once an 18-year-old star quarterback ready to take on the world, he was reduced to a 5-year-old boy that was clearly ready to start kindergarten. Though he didn't want anybody to say it, Marcus admitted to himself how adorable he had become. So much so that he had taken a picture of himself with the large smile on his face, showing off the baby teeth that he had welcomed back into his life.
He had spent the next twenty minutes on his phone watching videos on YouTube, figuring that his younger body would not be ideal for a run. He found himself fixated to the cartoons that had appeared on his recommended section, and wondered if he should be watching them through YouTube Kids instead.
He was snapped back to reality when somebody knocked on his bedroom door. Someone was about to be the first to see Marcus as a mere 5-year-old. The boy, amazed at how big his bedroom looked compared to his smaller body, faced the music as the person on the other side was about to see him nude.