Chapter Text
Jay and Elle were bored, there was nothing to do. Ai had locked himself in his room in order to work on some new type of gadget, or at least that’s the reason he claimed, Zed was busy cooking, and Tee and Ess were showing that trio of girls around the Tetra.
“Ugh, stupid adults and their boring adult stuff, they’ve got no time for fun,” grumbled Jay. Truth be told, the closest thing to an adult on the crew was Zed.
“Yeah, and they’re always yelling at us for no good reason,” pouted Elle.
“If only we had more kids our age.”
Practically on cue, a strange blue-blob person popped in giggling, “I’ve heard about your problem! And I think I can help you fix it!”
“How,” asked Jay
“Yeah, how,” asked Elle
“Well, I'm not exactly sure how it happens, but if you pop enough puyos, there’s a chance it can cause you to age down! Just give the command and I’ll start flooding the ship with ‘em.” Truth be told, Ecolo was already planning to do this anyway, but now he’d have someone to shift the blame onto.
“Hmm that sounds like…fun!”
“Yeah, fun!”
—
The quartet of Tee, Ess, Ringo, Amitie, and Arle were currently the control room of the ship. Tee and Ess were explaining how they flew the ship, when suddenly, Puyos began flooding the room! There was a collective sense of deja vu at the sight of this.
“Hey! Where’d these blobs from,” cried Ess
“Ugh, I feel like I know who is responsible,” groaned Ringo
“There’s no time to grumble, we need to start popping,” replied Arle
“Yeah, let’s do it,” added Amitie.
“It’s a good thing we’re not in flight, or else this could be much more problematic,” said Tee
The group began popping puyos, and then it happened, there was a large flash of light. But rather than getting teleported, the group got transformed.
“Hoo hoo, that seemed to have done the trick,” grinned Ecolo as he stopped the flood. Much to the present surprise of the blob, all five had conveniently been transformed at the same time.
“Woah, where are we,” asked Amitie, this didn’t look like Primp at all.
“SPACESHIP,” cried Ringo happily, her sci-fi senses could smell a starship from a mile away.
“Space? How’d we end up here Carby?”
“Gu gu,” rather strangely, Carbuncle did not seem to have changed at all
“We’re not in space,” giggled Ess, “that symbol on the panel means the ship is currently docked.”
“So we’re on some kind of alien planet!?” Ringo’s mood had quickly done a 180.
“Hopefully they have some strong opponents,” said Tee.
“Kids! Come meet your new friends,” called Ecolo.
Jay and Elle rushed in excitedly, as Ecolo had said the five did turn younger, although they seemed to be even younger than Jay and Elle. The twins weren’t exactly sure what to do, but then it hit them.
“Wait if they’re younger than us…”
“That means we get to boss them around for a change!”
“You two, identify yourselves, who are you,” commanded Tee. It seems even as a child he liked to take control of the situation.
“We’re the bosses of you, that’s who.”
“Yeah, and we’ve got lots of chores for you to do.”
The five grimaced at that.
“I don’t want to do that,” grumbled Arle.
“Yeah, I think I’d rather explore this planet,” added Ringo
“Well too bad, we’re older.”
“Yeah, we’re the ones in charge.”
Tee quickly stepped up to them, “I’ll only take orders from the Tetris King, and you two aren’t him,” even as a child Tee could pull off quite the look of determination, “if you think I’m going to back down because of your age, you’re wrong! I challenge you to a Tetris battle!”
The twins accepted, after all, Tee was so much younger now, how good could he be at Tetris?
—
One massive piling of garbage later and Jay and Elle now knew how and why Tee became the Tetris King. By the time they had finally managed to clear their way out, everyone was gone, including the blob.
Fantastic.
“This is all your fault, Elle!”
“No, it’s yours, Jay!”
The twins were about to get into a rather fierce argument when they were cut off by the fierce crackling of lightning. It was O, and in addition to strangely not looking any younger, did not look very pleased.
“Pi pi!” O could tell that this had the twin’s fingerprints written all over it.
“Well we didn’t know that was going to happen!”
“Yeah the blob guy told us they’d turn our age.”
The trio’s conversation continued for a little while longer, Jay and Elle doing their best to argue their innocence, when they all heard a rather loud whimper and sob, it sounded like it was coming from the Captain’s Quarters. They wasted no time in making their way over.
——-
When they arrived, they found a rather upset looking Ess.
“Where’s Papa,” she sobbed, or at least that’s what the twins thought anyway, it was somewhat hard to tell through the tears.
“Hey don’t cry, we know where your papa is.”
“Yeah, follow us, we’ll take you right to him!”
“R-really,” Ess began to cheer up.
The twins led Ess to the kitchen where Zed was currently preparing the crew’s lunch. The twins expected her to rush over and give him a big hug, but instead she just stared at him.
“You lied! That’s not Papa!” Ess began to cry even harder now. Jay and Elle weren’t sure what to do, Ess was always very fond of her papa, but now she seemed almost scared of him.
Just then O perked up, “Pi pi, pi.”
“Contact the Keeper?” Jay could only shrug in response to Elle’s question, it was worth a shot.
The twins weren’t used to contacting him, this was more of Tee’s thing, but they tried their best
“Uh, hey Mr. Keeper, we’re having some trouble on the Tetra.”
“If you could hurry and help us that would be nice.”
A few minutes passed but finally, Ex appeared through the warp tunnel.
“Jay, Elle, what seems to be the problem?”
The twins were about to speak when they were interrupted by Ess’ cry of “Papa!” She happily ran over and gave Ex a hug. The twins had questions, but they figured they should save them for later.
For a good few moments, Ex wasn’t sure how to properly react. Here was his daughter hugging and showing him affection for the first time since he had become the keeper. He began to shed a few tears, when he noticed that Ess was much shorter than usual. Then it finally clicked, he looked towards the twins. “Elle, Jay, What happened?”
Jay and Elle explained about the strange blob person, how he had turned everyone into children by using puyos and that he was now gone.
“Ecolo…I should’ve known,” grumbled Ex. Sometimes he just wanted to smack that nuisance with a tetromino. “I’ll go find the blob, it hopefully shouldn’t be too hard to convince him to fix this nonsense. As for you two, I want you to round up everyone else who got transformed. I’ll send O with you so you can report any hiccups that might happen, understood?”
“Ok…” Jay and Elle fumed, in their attempt to get some friends they instead ended up with the role of child wrangler.
Using their powers, they sensed that the closest was Arle.