As the Cyber Space Warriors lay nestled in the warm blankets, deep in the clutches of the Sleepover King's spell, something inside Alex stirred. His dreams were filled with laughter and games, but somewhere, faint and distant, the memory of who he really was—a warrior, a protector—pushed through the haze.
Suddenly, Alex’s eyes snapped open. He gasped, sitting up in the blanket pile, his heart racing. “Guys, wake up!” he whispered, shaking Carl and Luke.
Carl blinked, yawning as he rubbed his eyes. “What’s going on?” he muttered, looking around in confusion.
Luke sat up slowly, his small face scrunching in thought. “We were… we were under a spell,” he said, realization dawning. “We need to get out of here. Zardak's mental training must have allowed us to fight back in our subconscious.”
The boys, now with their minds cleared, glanced down at their hands and gasped. They were even smaller than before, their bodies having been regressed even further. They were no longer 8-year-olds; they were now tiny 5-year-olds, their Cyber Space Warrior pajamas shrunk along with their bodies.
“We’re even smaller now!” Carl squeaked, his voice high-pitched and panicked.
Alex clenched his tiny fists. “We can still do this. We just have to fight the spell and reason with the Sleepover King. There's got to be a bargain we can strike. Maybe we convince him that our world, that the whole universe needs us.”
As if on cue, the Sleepover King appeared, stepping through a shimmering portal of stars. He looked down at the tiny boys, a smug grin on his face. “Ah, awake already, little ones? And I see you’ve resisted my dream magic. Impressive… but let’s see if you can resist this.”
With a wave of his hand, the Sleepover King cursed them, his magic swirling around the boys like a glittering cloud. Alex, Carl, and Luke felt their thoughts shifting—still clear, still sharp—but when they tried to speak, their voices were no longer those of teenagers or warriors. They were the voices of small, 5-year-old boys, limited by the vocabulary of a child.
“There,” the Sleepover King said, crossing his arms. “You’re still free to reason with me, but let’s see how well you do with the minds of adults and the speech patterns of little children. If you can logically convince me to let you go, I’ll allow you to leave my dimension. Go on—each of you gets one chance. I’m listening.”
Alex, determined as always, stepped forward first. His tiny body trembled with frustration, but he looked the Sleepover King dead in the eye. He knew he had to make this count. “W-We're the cybew space warriows! We fite bad guys and p’tect people!” Alex stammered, struggling to find the words he needed. “You—you can't… uh… twap us! It's not nice! We gotta go help people, uh… do… do big kid things!”
The Sleepover King chuckled, his grin widening. “Oh, my dear boy, you certainly sound like a mighty protector. But listen to yourself—‘big kid things’? You can’t even string together a proper sentence! Are you sure you’re ready to leave?”
Alex’s face flushed red with anger, and he shrugged. Tears welled in his eyes. His attempt had failed.
Carl stepped forward next, bouncing on his heels with impatience. “Listen!” he shouted, his voice a squeaky whine. “I’m smart! Like, real smart! I build gadgets, uh… like… with wires ‘n stuff! And it's super duper cool! I gotta go fix… um… tech-y stuff! Big, cool, super cool stuff! You—you have to let me go so I can like--” he made a bunch of explosion noises with his mouth, missles firing, laser sound effects. "Stop the bad guys! Yeah!" He pumped his tiny fist with enthusiasm.
The Sleepover King raised an eyebrow, clearly entertained. “Ah, so you’re a little inventor, are you? Well, I’d love to see some of your ‘tech-y stuff.’ You must be quite the genius if you can’t even describe it.”
Carl’s face fell as he realized his words had been jumbled, reduced to boyish ramblings.
Finally, Luke, the most level-headed of the group, stepped up, determined to be the voice of reason. “Okay, wait,” he said, taking a deep breath. He attempted to clear his thoughts. Achieve a state of zen-like calm, as Zardak had trained him. “We'we da good guys. We uh s‘pposed to be hewoes and help people, an’ you can't keep us here ‘cuz like… um… It's mean! We gotta go do ‘sponsible stuff! Like, save… uh… da world! Is important, mister Sweepovah King! Pwease let us go?”
The Sleepover King let out a full laugh, holding his sides as he looked down at the boys. “Oh, I’ve never heard such important reasoning before! ‘Mean’? ‘Sponsible’? You sound like children trying to get out of naptime! How could I possibly let you leave when you clearly haven’t grown up yet?”
Alex, Carl, and Luke stood there, their tiny fists balled up in frustration. They wanted to scream, to shout, to explain with all the power and eloquence of their teenage minds, but they were trapped by the spell, their words nothing more than the babble of small boys.
The Sleepover King smirked, kneeling down to their level. “You don’t sound mature enough to leave my realm, do you, little ones? I think you need to stay a while longer—play some more, maybe nap a bit. Then we’ll see if you’ve grown up enough to go back to your world.”
“B-But we’re warriors!” Alex shouted, his voice cracking with frustration. “And when we stay here we keep gettin' smaller!”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that you think you're warriors, boys,” the Sleepover King said with a patronizing smile, ruffling Alex’s hair. “But in here, you’re just little boys. And as long as you can’t speak like grown-ups, you’ll stay right where you are.”
Alex stomped his foot, trying to resist the pull of the childish behavior, but the frustration of not being able to communicate properly was overwhelming. The warriors were stuck, trapped by the limitations of their cursed speech, and the Sleepover King’s mocking laughter echoed around them as they struggled to find a way out.