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Bdubs can hear people talking, Etho by the sounds of it. “…I need to talk with Bdubs-”
“I’m here! I’m here! Believe it or not!” he announces himself.
“You’re so short I can’t see you! Where are you?” Etho calls out.
“Very freeking funny!” Bdubs shouts, climbing over the peak of the hill. He glares daggers at the other players, but quickly forgets about his mini rage in favor or asking, “I heard something about a dig party?”
“Yes.” Cleo states, rather bored like. “Dig party, we have to go get Scott and maybe Joel.”
Joel jumps down, appearing out of nowhere to the side of them “Did someone say dig party?”
Etho doesn’t even flinch at this. Bdubs does, and wonders if it’s something to do with Etho’s and Joel’s connection that the silver haired man didn’t seemed shocked at his arrival. “Yes Joel, dig party.”
“Dig party!”
“Dig party.” Bdubs parrots, bouncing a bit, while the three begin talking.
It’s boring. He wants less planning and more action. He feels fidgety, and bouncy and-
“Are you slipping Bdubs?” Cleo asks from out of the blue, gaining the other two males attentions.
“Nooo…” He said, in what was his most convincing voice.
Clearly he wasn’t convincing enough.
“Bdubs.” Etho warns.
“You wouldn’t lie to us would you?” Joel adds in, just cause he can.
“Not lying! ‘m not small!”
“But you are small. I’m mean you’re so short it’s impossible for you not to be.” The Canadian quips, which turns out to be the last straw for Bdubs.
So maybe, had Bdubs wanted to convince anyone that he wasn’t about to slip into little space he should have been acting like an adult and not getting so upset when teased. But what was he supposed to do? Etho was picking on his height! That was just plain rude.
“Not funny!” he shouts, tears welling up. “Not funny! You’re a big meanie it’s not funny!”
“Alright, aright, it’s not funny. Sorry.” Etho snorts, not sounding very sorry at all.
“Yeah. Not dat short.” Bdubs grouches, and no he’s not pouting.
“Well then. Who’s going to look after Bdubs?” Cleo asks, looking towards Etho and Joel.
Etho in turn looks at his soul bound. “Joel can you babysit Bdubs for just a moment?”
“What do you mean I have to baby sit him?” Joel asks, appalled at how he’s been dragged into this situation all of a sudden. “I thought we were going to go get Scott, and the dig party…”
“Well I’m going with Cleo and Bdubs, well…”
The zombie hybrid grins, amused. “Well he already doesn’t look pretty, so you know.”
“Hey! Shud up!” Bdubs shouts, “Don’t need to be baby sat! ‘m big!” This doesn’t help his case at all, in fact only hinders it.
“Yeah no, I get it now.” Joel grimaces, trying to imagine what might happen if they try and talk to literally anyone with a small Bdubs in tow. “Yeah I’ll watch over him.”
“Alright splendid,”
“You be good for Uncle Joel you hear?”
Bdubs nods, still slightly pouting. He wants to go too. Etho ruffles his hair and with that the two leave.
Bdubs watches as the two head down the road, walking out of sight. He sniffles. It’s not fair that he had to be baby sat. It’s even worse that it’s not Etho. And Bdubs is going to let that fact be known.
“I don’t have ta listen to you.” He says, once the two players are out of ear shot. “You’re not Etho!”
“Yeah, but I’m Etho’s other half.” Joel tries. “Come on. We’ll go back to the Relationship and-”
“I don’’ wanna! No one asked me if I wanted to go too!”
Joel sighed. “But Etho has boring things he needs to do, and little ones can’t come with. You wouldn’t want to stand there while they talk about boring adult things, would you?”
“Yeah but I wan Etho to play wif me.”
“Hey! What am I? Chopped liver?”
Bdubs giggles, despite himself. “No, but you’re old.”
“I’m not old! I- oh, just come on back to the ship Bdubs.”
“Fine, I suppose.”
Joel really didn’t have the brain cells to deal with this.
~~~
“I’m bored, what are we gonna do?” Bdubs asked, draped over the back of a chair.
“Umm, what do you wanna do?”
“I dunno.”
“Very helpful,” Joel thinks, going over to a chest, digging around for a while. Not like he had many supplies to take care of a- he wasn’t even sure how old the little was at the moment. “How about you give me an age check?”
Bdubs rolls his eyes and holds up 7 fingers.
Yeah Joel doesn’t really have any thing suited for a seven year old, but he can make do.
He pulls out some rockets. They weren’t strong rockets, more for show than for actual power, duds that he and Etho tried to construct, filled with colored dye and not enough gun powder.
So Joel thought they were at least somewhat okay for the little to use. Besides the small collection of rockets were going to waste anyways.
“Hey Bdubs, wanna stop some bad guys?” he holds up a wooden crossbow.
Bdubs gasps. “Can I get to use one?! Can I?!”
Joel nods, handing over a crossbow. “Pick a color.”
“Oh, green!”
~~~
“We need to have a base! So that we can defend it from the bad guys!” Bdubs declared and somehow Joel got handed the task of helping the regressor set up blanket forts. Bdubs made their ‘secret base’ while Joel was in charge of making the enemy camp.
Joel sets up some wooden armor stands to be used as ‘bad guys’, gave them some wooden weapons, and then went back to Bdubs.
“Alright what’s the plan captain?”
“So we have-ta sneak up on them and then we attack!”
“Alright then.”
“Make sure to hold your shield up, cause they are very bad, and you don’t wanna get hit.” Joel reminds the little. He’s fairly certain that the fireworks will stain Bdubs’ clothes more than they will do any damage, but he wants to stay on the save side.
“Right, right.” The age regressor concentrates, tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth.
The two ‘sneak’ around the base, Joel having to stop to show Bdubs how to properly load his crossbow, before the two are blasting all of the bad guys away in an explosion of green and purple.
“We did it! We stopped the bad guys!” The little cheers, going into the enemy camp and pretending to raid it for loot.
“We did. Quick we have to make it out with all this treasure before reinforcements arrive.”
“But it’s too late cause day already got here!”
“Oh no!” Joel gasps dramatically, though he could hear Bdubs trying to figure out how to load his crossbow way before his ‘betrayal’. He goes along with it anyways.
“Ah ha!” Bdubs shouts, finally managing to get his crossbow loaded, pulling the trigger, and sending out a firework.
Joel covered his face as a bright pop of green went off in front of him. “I got chu!” Bdubs shouts triumphantly.
“Not yet you don’t!” And he loaded his own crossbow.
~~~
Joel did his best to get the two of them cleaned up in time to meet back up with Etho and Cleo, but even he can’t work miracles. He was finding out the hard way that dye, even when converted into rockets, stained literally everything. Clothes, hands, faces, not to mention part of the base. Yeah, Joel was gonna have a hard time explaining that one to Etho later on.
“Stop Joel.” Bdubs complains as the mentally older is using a washcloth to attempt to clean his face and hands off.
“Hold still I’m almost done.” He tries his best to get powdered dye out completely before giving up and calling it a lost cause. He sighs. “Okay, come on then. Let’s go find Cleo and Etho.”
~~~~
“Joel and I had the best time!” Bdubs announced, running up to Etho and Cleo.
Well that answered anyone’s question if Bdubs was still in little space.
“Oh did you?” Etho says, ruffling the mentally younger’s hair, his hand returned dusted in a light shade of purple. That wasn’t concerning in the slightest.
“Yeah!”
“Great babysitting Joel.” Cleo praised, genuinely surprised that nothing had gone up in flames in the time that they were gone.
“Yeah, well just ignore all the arrows.”
“The what?”
Maybe Joel shouldn’t have mentioned that.
“Yeah no, he brought me to a scary place. And dare were bombs and rockets and we defended the whole fort!” Bdubs rambles, hands flapping animatedly as he recalls the thrilling tale to Etho and Cleo.
“Oh no.” Etho laughs, “Why would you do that Joel?”
“What?! You told me to babysit, I did the best I could didn’t I?”
“You gave a child a crossbow, loaded with a rocket and thought it would be a good idea Joel?” Cleo speaks up, appalled. “We told you to look after him, not try and kill him.”
“Hey! I didn’t try to kill him! And there was barely any gun powder in the rockets!” Joel stammers under the hybrid’s glare. “Bdubs, stop making me look bad here.”
Bdubs just giggles.