Chapter Text
———
Arle was amazed, she had never seen a city so big, and with all these strange things in it, it was honestly kind of overwhelming. Then she saw the twins approaching.
“Oh, it’s you two, well if you think that I’m going to take orders from you, then you’re going to have to catch me first.” Arle then began to run as fast as she could.
The twins grumbled as they chased after her. Why couldn’t she make this easy?
Arle was surprisingly agile and because of that, she had a massive lead on the twins, then she turned a corner and…dead end. She tried to make her way back only to find herself cornered by them. “Well I won’t go down without a fight,” Arle began getting her spells ready.
Normally the twins would be up for a battle, but they did not want to run the risk of Arle aging down even further by popping more puyos.
“No, no you’ve got it all wrong,” began Jay.
“Yeah,” continued Elle, “we wanted to invite you back to the ship to eat some…” Darn, what was that food she enjoyed?
“Curry?”
“Yes, Curry,” smiled Elle
“Curry, yes,” finished Jay
“Well ok then,” smiled Arle.
Huh, that was rather easy.
“Yeah, but we want to make sure that everyone is there to enjoy it.”
“So we need to find the other three first.”
“Then there’s no time to waste,” called Arle as she ran ahead.
—
Ringo had felt both disappointment and relief that she was actually only just a little ways away from her hometown rather than being on another world. However, she didn’t have much time to give that much thought as she was focused on those strange blocks that the boy in the jumpsuit had summoned. Currently, he was using them to reach some sweets that were placed on the top shelf
“Almost got it,” grunted Tee standing on his toes
Ringo examined the tower. “Maybe you should fill in the gaps, that might make it more stable.” She reached for a discarded tetromino, “if we put that right there-“
Jay and Elle had just arrived and saw that disaster was about to strike. Normally the two would find this funny, but they knew Ex would not be pleased if Tee wasn’t in one piece. “Stop,” they cried.
Too late, Ringo inserted the piece in the gap causing the line to disappear. The tower dropped down a level causing Tee to lose his footing, luckily, the twins rushed over just in time and managed to catch him.
Tee was in shock, he wasn’t sure exactly what to say.
“Nice catch,” said Ringo, also stunned.
“Indeed, it seems that I misjudged you, you both seem like rather good people,” smiled Tee as the twins lowered him onto the ground. Now if only they could get that in writing. Tee’s expression turned back into a frown, “I assume it’s back to the ship to start on our chores.”
“Oh no, it was all a misunderstanding, they’re going to give us curry,” shouted Arle happily.
“Curry,” Tee asked, raising an eyebrow.
Ringo and Arle began explaining what curry was to Tee, well Ringo anyway, Arle was mostly just saying that it tasted amazing.
——
Amitie was playing by a pond, the twins let out a breath of relief, finally something easy.
“Oh hi there,” waved Amitie as she saw the group approach. “Say hi Mr. Frog,” smiled Amitie as she pulled out a frog and waved his arm.
“Well that’s nice,” said Jay.
“Let’s head back to the Tetra,” said Elle as she took Amitie’s hand
“Wait, I can't! I’m doing something important.”
“And that is,” asked Jay
“I’m helping Mr. Frog find his friend!”
“Can’t we do it later,” replied Elle raising an eyebrow
“No, we need to do it now!”
Jay and Elle grumbled, it was clear that Amitie wasn’t going to budge. Fine looking for another frog, how hard could it be?
As it turns out, very. “Mr. Frog” was rather particular about what his friend looked like.
“No, he says that one’s too big.”
“No, he says that one’s too small.”
“No, he says the shade of green is off.”
Finally, after about 20 minutes or so of searching, Arle managed to find the right frog.
“Bye, bye Mr. Frog,” smiled Amitie as he hopped away, “Ok now we can go back!”
Jay and Elle didn’t want to say anything, but they were fairly certain they saw Mr. Frog and his “friend” hop away in different directions. But who cared, they had everyone, now they could go back to the ship and hopefully have this mess fixed.
———
When the twins returned, Ex was waiting for them, and thankfully, so was Ecolo.
“Hey wait a minute, where’s the curry,” asked Arle, raising an eyebrow.
Oh yeah, Jay and Elle had somehow forgotten they promised that despite the fact that Arle, and to an extent the others, had been screaming about it on their way to the ship. Luckily Ex quickly stepped in.
“Ah you arrived early, it’s still being cooked, just wait in the dining area and we’ll have it out once it’s ready.” He looked down to Ess, “would you please go along with them too? Just to make sure they don’t get into any mischief.”
“Ok, Papa!”
“Wait, Sweetie before you go, just know that I love you,” smiled Ex as he hugged Ess.
“I love you too papa,” smiled Ess and she ran after the others.
Ex had to admit, it felt very bittersweet and he almost didn’t want to go through with it, but it was the right thing to do. He turned to the twins. “I talked to Ecolo and he said that he has a way to turn them back to their proper ages.”
“Indeed I do, the way to get them to return to their proper ages is…” Ecolo paused for dramatic effect, “the same way they turned younger, popping puyos!”
“That’s it!?” Now it was the twins' turn to want to smack Ecolo over the head with a tetromino.
“Yep, I just need to start flooding the room with puyos again!”
“Well wait, we might want to-” began Ex. Too late, Ecolo began flooding the room with puyos.
The five were currently chatting about the misadventures they had that day when suddenly blobs began flooding the room! Again! Although they were not exactly aware that it was again.
Surprisingly, Arle and Amitie were taking it rather well
“Puyos? Well, let’s get popping Carby!”
“Gu gu!”
“Yay, I can’t wait to get some practice in,” cheered Amitie.
Ringo, Tee, and Ess on the other hand weren’t as enthusiastic.
“Ew, where’d these gross blob-things come from!”
“This isn’t good, they’re piling up,” observed Tee.
“Is there any way to stop it,” panicked Ringo
“Oh easily,” smiled Amitie
“Yeah, just arrange four in the same color.”
Ringo paused, there was no way it was that easy, but it was the only solution she had been presented with. She placed four green ones together and *poof* they had vanished. “Holy times table, that was easy!” Ringo now felt like she was a pro at this, and she had only set off a 1-chain.
Tee and Ess took a little while longer to get the hang of it, but once they did, it became as easy as pie, or whatever its equivalent was in the Tetris world.
Soon enough, the puyos were being cleared out quicker than they were coming in.
Once again there was a flash of light, and once again, and very conveniently too, the group had all transformed back to their proper ages.
“Huh, w-what happened, last thing I remember, I was having a dream about being a kid.”
“That wasn’t a dream hat-for-hair, that actually happened,” grumbled Ess
“Yeah, a bunch of puyos appeared out of nowhere and we got de-aged,” added Arle.
“The question now is, where did they come from,” asked Tee.
“I have a sneaking suspicion,” said Ringo as she led the others out of the room. “ECOLOOOOO!”
“Hey don’t blame me, Ringo,” frowned Ecolo, putting on his best innocent face, “those two forced me to do it.” And he pointed to the twins.
“Jay, Elle is this true?”
“Well, we only did it because you weren’t paying attention to us.”
“Yeah, you adults were all caught up in your boring adult things.”
“All we wanted was someone to play with.”
“Well, that still doesn’t excuse your actions, but we’re sorry for ignoring you,” replied Tee.
Ringo thought for a moment, “And hey, if you ever want to get involved in our boring “adult” things, popping Puyos has been known to turn people older.”
The twins exchanged a look.
“Nah, we’ve had enough age-swapping shenanigans for today.”
“Besides, we don’t want to become fossils like you five!”
And the twins ran away giggling. The five in question couldn’t help but laugh at that too, except for Ess, who made a mental note to bury the twins beneath a bunch of Tetrominoes the next chance she got.
Everything had returned to normal.