"Dave? Dave... Dave!"
Simon's mother prodded her husband until he woke with a start. They were both sitting in bed. It was the middle of the night.
"Yes, dear?" Simon's dad answered groggily.
"Could you go downstairs and tell the boys to go back to sleep? I can hear them yelling down there."
Indeed, Dave could hear the muffled sounds of voices coming from the floor below. Oddly, they sounded to Dave like adults, not 13-year-olds.
"Mmff..." Dave buried his face in his pillow.
"Dave, it's two o'clock in the morning! Take care of it please? You said you'd be responsible for them."
Dave sighed and sat up in bed. He was 35 years of age and looked it. His dark hair was receding and he weighed a hefty 260 pounds. However, despite his expanded waistline, he was no pushover when it came to feats of strength, as he worked in construction.
"Alright, alright," said Dave, slipping out the bedroom door and making his way down the hall, "I'll take care of it."
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Simon had managed to position himself between Bryan and Jay, which was a pretty intimidating position, given that both his friends were now a lot bigger and more muscular than he was. He had been attempting to explain the concept of the Chronovac to Jay without much success. Jay had grabbed one of Simon's baseball bats and was wielding it threateningly at Bryan.
"What the hell! Who the f*#@k are you?" Jay growled and Bryan. "Do you get off on breaking in to people's houses and watching kids sleep?"
"Jay! That's Bryan," Simon attempted to explain for what had to be the millionth time."
"You want some of this?" Bryan taunted, waggling his fingers in a "come at me, bro" fashion. "Come on! I dare you!"
"You're not helping!" yelled Simon.
Just then, the door the the room burst open, revealing Simon's dad.
"Boys?" he said. "What's going on in he- Who? What-"
As quick as a flash, Simon leaped for his computer and tapped a couple buttons on the keyboard. The emitter flashed and... nothing had changed. Well, except for the fact that, Jay and stopped waving the bat about menacingly. In fact, both Jay and Simon's dad just stood there, completely unmoving, like statues.
After a moment, Bryan stepped up to Jay and tapped him on the forehead.
"He's hard as rock," he concluded. "What's you do?"
"Emergency Pause button," answered Simon. "They're caught in a ... temporal stasis field... I think..."
"Which means...?" asked Bryan.
"Which means time isn't passing for them. They're stuck until an hour passes or I push this button. Though, now that I think about it, I probably should have paused my dad and you, so I could explain things to Jay WITHOUT you taunting him." Simon rolled his eyes exasperatedly.
"Hey, he was asking for it," Bryan said, grinning. "He wouldn't have had a chance, anyway. I'm more man right now than he'll ever be."
Simon rolled his eyes again. They were getting quite the work out this night. "Remind me not to be such a conceited jerk when I grow up. And put a shirt on, already. I need to think about what I'm going to do here."
Simon sat at his computer chair while Bryan rooted around in his family's laundry bin for clothing. He sighed. Now not only were both his friends about ready to kill each other (testosterone was very unhelpful in these situations), but now his father was involved.
Bryan stepped back in. He had apparently gone to Simon's older brother's old bedroom and taken some of the clothing. He was buttoning up a polo shirt and had a pair of jeans over one shoulder. Simon's brother was now at college, and the clothing looked like it would be a good fit for Bryan, if a bit small.
"So," said Bryan, "got an idea, yet?"
"Yes," said Simon. "But I"m going to need you to step into the hall for a bit."
____________________________
It took a little while, but Simon had managed to unpause Jay and explain to him the Chronovac and its properties. It also helped when he had Jay take a look at himself in the mirror.
"Okay, Bryan. You can come back in now," said Simon.
Bryan reentered the room, squeezing past Simon's dad's still-frozen body. Bryan was now wearing a grey polo, which was tight against his testosterone-fueled muscles and a little bit of a protruding stomach which hadn't quite gone away with the testosterone upgrade. The jeans were also somewhat tight, but still manageable.
"Better?" he asked.
Jay looked a little sheepish. "Yeah... sorry about that. But what would you do if you saw some forty-year-old guy standing above you in the middle of the night in nothing but his underwear?"
"One," Bryan said, "I'm only twenty right now. Two, I'd punch him in the 'nads."
Jay turned and quirked an eyebrow at Simon. Simon shrugged. "That's probably the testosterone talking. I might have given him a little too much."
Bryan pumped one of his biceps. "Hey, if this is the testosterone then, by all means, let it talk."
"Back to the important issues," said Jay, directing everyone's attention to the frozen form of Simon's dad, "what do we do about that? We can't just unfreeze him. He'd freak out once he saw us."
"And we can't just leave the room while Simon explains this to him," Bryan piped in, "He just wouldn't understand. Adults just never do."
"Well, I have an answer for that," said Simon. "I've been looking around on here, and there's something here called 'Awareness'. What it does, basically, is it edits nearby people's memory so they think you've always been this way. I could apply that you your guys' changes. But... that would beg the question why I'd be having a sleepover with a 16-year-old and a 40-year-old..."
"I'm... still 20, you know..."
"Whatever. The best option would be to change you guys back then unpause him."
Bryan looked disappointed. "But, I really don't want to give this up." He pumped his bicep again. "I mean, this is so awesome. I big, powerful, covered in hair! There's no way I can go back to being 13 again."
"Bryan...," began Simon.
"But...," continued Bryan, "if you're really adamant about this... the lowest I'd be willing to go is 16. Just age yourself up three years, use your 'Awareness' whatsit, and we're set to go!"
A mischievous smile crept across Jay's face. "Y'know... since he's down here, we could always have a little fun with him," he said, gesturing at Simon's dad.
"I dunno, guys," said Simon. "It's getting pretty late..."
"Well, whatever you do," said Jay, "just do it before your mom begins to get suspicious."