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Chapter 1
Player One Ready?

Chris set the box down, lowered himself onto the couch, and held his chin in his hand. He stared at the stout cardboard carton that the little man with the worn suit and the rehearsed expression of sympathy had given him – at the dust that clung tenaciously to its surface, at the faded logo that emblazoned its side and informed readers that it was not to be taken from the premises of Hooper’s Groceries under penalty of law.

He stared at the last gift his brother would ever give him.

At the funeral, his Aunt Vivian – a grief counselor who never missed an opportunity to ply her trade off-hours – took hold of his forearm and assured him that there was no “right” way to grieve, presumably because she had seen that he was the only dry-eyed member of the family at the ceremony. He gave her a small nod and a tight little smile for lack of knowing what else to do, and even now – alone in his apartment in his one good blazer, his stiff, formal clothing whispering of the sweet scent of the roses he had placed on Seth’s casket – the knowledge of what he should do now or even how he should be feeling was terribly, desperately foreign to him. The only emotions that had managed to distinguish themselves from the icy-numb shock that had leadened his limbs were those of the curiosity and fleeting amusement that came when the lawyer handling Seth’s affairs informed him that his brother’s bequeathment consisted solely of the contents of the box that lay before him, and that it was among his final wishes that Chris not open that box until he was alone.

His lips curled into a tiny smile as he took the box from the executor, both resentful and touched that Seth had managed to exploit his hatred of surprises one last time. Though every big brother knows the best ways to annoy his runty siblings, the personal knowledge of their little brothers and sisters often doesn’t extend much further than that. Not Seth. Since their real father had decided that he had no interest in taking part in the upbringing of a second child, it fell to twelve-year-old Seth to care for his newly-acquired baby brother while their mother worked long hours at soul-crushing jobs to support them.

A daunting task for a boy on the cusp of puberty, made only more difficult by the fact that Chris had been nothing less than a perfect little hellion as a child. On a daily basis he could be counted on to take a crayon to a wall or gleefully unfurl a cassette or put deep gouges into a 45 with the pointed foot of an action figure, and on special occasions display the sort of spontaneous destructive behavior that naughty little boys cherish so deeply, like the time Seth took him to Hooper’s and he sent an entire display of pickles crashing to the linoleum with a perfectly-timed five-year-old shove.

Chris chuckled to himself when he remembered how Seth reacted when he turned just in time to see the waterfall of glass and brine shatter against the floor, when he looked at his little brother and saw his features agape in open-mouthed, wide-eyed shock of what he had just done. Never would he forget how Seth, without a moment’s hesitation, grabbed him and high-tailed it out of there, carrying his little brother over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes as the manager shouted after them. When they got home he set Chris on the couch, crossed his arms, and looked down at the boy as though he were about to unload the mother of all punishments upon him. Chris squirmed and shrank and sank into the couch, knowing that he had gone too far this time, that his actions had finally exceeded what his brother’s saintly patience could stand – until tiny cracks starting showing in Seth’s stony visage.

A smile turned into a grin turned into a chuckle and before he knew it the two of them were howling with laughter, the little boy hopping off of the couch and into a hug that forgave Chris’s misdeed – for the most part. He was still forbidden from playing any videogames for the rest of the week, but he did at least keep the incident secret from their mother, who may very well have flat-out given away Chris’s NES has she discovered what he’d done.

Seth had learned very quickly after Chris first took an interest in videogames that denying him playtime on the squat little two-tone console proved to be the only way to keep him somewhat in line. The threat of not being able to shoot down enemy spaceships or battle robot masters or battle neighborhoods’ worth of chain-wielding thugs right alongside his brother or even just with him watching and cheering him on was enough to curtail his most destructive impulses. From the moment he could form the sentence it was rare that a day would pass without Chris tromping into his big brother’s room in complete disregard of whatever Seth might’ve been in the middle of at the time, giggling and tugging on his arm and crying “Drop everything and play with meeeeeeeeee!”

Being denied that privilege devastated the little boy, to the point where, even after Seth went off to college, a well-timed phone call from his big brother’s dorm room – seemingly always placed after Chris had done something particularly naughty, a coincidence he didn’t put together until years later – warning him that they wouldn’t be playing anything together when he came home to visit if he kept misbehaving invariably put him back on the straight and narrow for at least a couple weeks. He was a relentlessly positive influence on Chris from the very start, kind and loving and supportive and patient right up until the day he –

Chris blinked. He shook his head, ran his fingers through his hair, and exhaled through his nose. Christ, he thought, let’s just get this over with. He took a deep breath and opened the box. He peered inside.

It was only then that the tears finally came.

Stacked within the cardboard carton, clean and neat and meticulously organized, were the consoles and videogames that he and his brother had shared over the years. Everything he had left behind when he struck out from his childhood home – every single title he could ever remember playing with Seth stacked in chronological and alphabetical order right alongside their respective systems, dusted and cleaned and waiting patiently to be played once more. Chris put a hand over his mouth as fat shimmering tears dripped from his cheeks and onto the treasure trove that lay before him, onto the evidence that the memories of the time he had spent with Seth saving princesses and worlds and entire galaxies had meant just as much to his big brother as it did to him.

“You son of a bitch,” he laughed as he shook his head and wiped his eyes. “You son of a bitch.”

He sniffled and blinked away the last few tears as he plucked a cartridge from the carton and turned it over in his hands. It could’ve passed for brand-new where it not for the faded, childish stickers plastered all over it and the declaration of “PROPERTY OF CHRIS GREEN AGE 5”scrawled on its case in red magic marker. He smiled, tapped the game against his palm, and looked over the rest of the collection. He thought for a moment. His smile widened.

---

It took a trip to Radio Shack and twenty minutes playing with cords to do it, but Chris finally had things set up the way he wanted. He stood back, crossed his arms, and admired his handiwork. Set up on the floor before him were the four systems contained in the carton, lined up in chronological order and all plugged into the same device that made switching between them a matter as simple as pressing a button. He turned and smiled at the rich slanted sunlight of the early evening poured through his windows. Got the rest of the night to just play, he grinned as he kneeled over the cardboard box. If there’s a better way to pay tribute to him I’d like to hear it.

It wasn’t ten seconds into his examination of the collection before he realized the perfect place to begin – with the last game the two of them had truly bonded over. He picked up Perfect Dark and felt the heft of the cartridge in his hand as he thought back on the first time they had played it together. When he went off to college he naturally chose one that was within spitting distance of Seth’s house, so that whatever weekends that weren’t burned up in jags of co-ed chasing and underage drinking and casual drug use could be spent bunking with his big brother. It was on the first such visit that Seth, as soon as Chris was through the door, wrapped an arm around his shoulders and led him immediately into the living room, where the game was already set up and running. The two of them spent the rest of the day gunning each other down in warehouses and fortresses and sewers and ruins, breaking only so Seth could take him out to dinner and listen with a bemused smile on his face as his brother gushed about how great it was to finally be out on his own.

Chris grinned and scratched his chin. In a lot of ways he had still been just a reckless, loudmouth kid – but Seth had made him feel like such a grown-up. He sighed as he inserted the game into the N64. It wouldn’t be the same competing against the computer – especially since Seth tended to demolish him whenever they played – but he’d make the best of it. He turned on the system and felt his lips curl into a wistful smile as the familiar logos dove in and out of the shadows, as the music swelled and his hands gripped the smooth slick plastic of his controller in anticipation.

That smile soured into a worried frown when he became aware of a strange sensation forming within him, a warm, pins-and-needles prickling that was spreading over his skin like some beautiful anesthetic. Within moments he was covered from head to toe, a hand on his forehead as his vision blurred, as he groaned softly, as the feelings swallowed him whole. He felt the way one does when they’re unsure if they’re still dreaming, floating but tethered, possessing but a tenuous grip on reality that seems to slip further from their grasp with every passing second. He shivered. He whimpered. He bit his lip and clamped his eyes shut.

And then – just as quickly as it had come – the feeling was gone.

Chris blinked and rubbed his temples as he stared dumbly at the television, at the title screen that was playing on loop, wondering if what he had just gone through had really just happened or if one could still experience residual trips from acid dropped a decade prior. A moment passed before he shook his head and lowered his eyes to find where he had dropped the controller.

He looked down on himself.

His clothes were gone.

Not gone in that he had suddenly been rendered nude – gone in that the slacks and dress shirt he had been wearing when he turned on the N64 was nowhere to be found. In its place was a pair of beat-up Converse sneakers, tight worn jeans and a white t-shirt with the Radiohead bear plastered square on the chest.

“What the fucking fuck!"

Chris leapt to his feet and scuttled backwards onto the couch, as though his clothes wouldn’t come with him when he did so. His heart raced and his breath came in shallow, panicked gulps as he stretched out his shirt with trembling fingers and looked over his garb, over the clothing he would wear for days on end during his freshman year in college. He didn’t even have this outfit anymore. And when he allowed his eyes to finally stray from his shirt he noticed that there was something different about the hands that were stretching it out…something…

He raced to the bathroom. He turned on the light. He clamped his hand over his mouth as he staggered and pushed back against the wall behind him.

In the mirror stood a terrified eighteen-year-old boy.

It was all there. The unkempt hair that had been rendered stringy and greasy by the days between washings and the months between haircuts. The ridiculous goatee that, out of sheer stubbornness, he refused to shave until his twentieth birthday. The slouched shoulders and the slim build and the pale complexion.

He was eighteen. He was eighteen years old. Eleven years gone in a matter of seconds.

His chest heaved as his heart pounded against his ribcage. Sweat chilled on his skin. Panic swelled within him. And beneath it all ran a distinct undercurrent of mortification at the dim realization that he was fully, achingly erect. Eons seemed to pass before he could calm himself down long enough to at least attempt to rationally consider what had happened to him, before he took a deep breath and forced himself to look closely upon the teenager that stared incredulously back at him. The connection was slow in coming, but once it was complete he had never been more sure of anything in his entire life. This was the exact outfit he had worn the first time he and his brother played Perfect Dark together. And if it happened right after he turned the system on…

Chris stepped out of the bathroom and looked at the N64 the way one would a sleeping pit bull, and, after swallowing the lump in his throat, approached it with the same amount of caution. He kneeled in front of the console and put his finger on the switch. He took a deep breath. He flicked it off.

Instantly it was as though the transformation had never occurred in the first place. His dress clothes were back. His definition was restored. His hair was moderately clean and his chin was once again free of any off-putting facial hair. He exhaled and dropped back onto his butt, arms slung over his legs, eyes wide and hands shaking as his mind struggled to process the enormity of his discovery. Questions surged through his consciousness faster than he could answer or even ponder them. After some time they faded away entirely save for two, two inquiries which his curiosity would not allow him to abandon no matter how loudly the sensible part of his mind demanded he do so.

Would that happen if I played something else?

Do I really want to find out?

Chris grimaced and turned towards the box. Within his mind there continually pulsed a single thought that kept popping up over and over again no matter how strongly he repressed it – that what had just happened had felt really, really good. I can always go back, he thought, convincing himself that he understood the forces at work well enough to be certain of that. I can always go back. Minutes passed before he could work up the courage to return to the box and look over the titles with a new eye – not considering just how much fun he had had with his brother while playing a particular game but how old he had been at the time.

How much do I want to push my luck?

How far back do I really want to go?

The question seemed answered for him when his fingers wandered into Super Nintendo territory, when they seemed of their own accord to come across and pull out the cartridge for Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. He held the game in both hands and looked upon it with reverence as the memories of how he came into possession of the title came flooding back to him, of the week he had spent during the summer between seventh and eighth grade visiting his big brother in the tidy little studio apartment he called home.

The boy had been living for that week ever since Seth and his mother had arranged it months prior, the anticipation so great that his mom had been able to use threats of the trip being cancelled to keep him remarkably well-behaved for an entire semester. He hadn’t, however, been able to use his coerced deference to his advantage when it came to pleading for the game that he now held in his hands. He could’ve gotten straight As and gone the entire year without cursing once and it wouldn’t have made a difference – her barely-teenage son was not going to play a game that disgustingly violent if she had anything to say about it.

Luckily, she ended up having no say in the matter at all, as he had barely gotten into Seth’s foyer when he casually informed his little brother that he had purchased the game for himself. The words were barely out of his big brother’s mouth before Chris tossed his bag aside and grabbed him by the arm, tugging his chuckling sibling into the living room the way he used to when little things like reading and staying dry through the night still posed a significant challenge. Chris returned home after a week in which the two of them spilled enough of each other’s virtual blood to fill a moderately-sized water tower, moping as he unpacked his bag over not being able to see his brother again for at least a few more months. He was about to abandon the insipid task and throw himself on the bed in adolescent indignation when his hand came across something unfamiliar, when his fingers wrapped around a cool, rectangular hunk of plastic that was definitely not part of his belongings.

When he plucked it out his eyes widened and a moment passed before he clutched it against his chest and looked over his shoulder, terrified that his mother would see that his brother had snuck the forbidden game into his luggage. With a giddy little secretive smile on his lips he squirreled the cartridge beneath his mattress, to be surreptitiously retrieved only in the dead of night when he could play away from his mother’s prying eyes, when he could sneak downstairs to the living room and dominate the Outworld as the dim pale glow of the television lit up his grinning young face.

Chris swallowed heavily as the cartridge rested like lead against his palms. His heart thumped as anxiety roiled within him, as he slowly, deliberately inserted the cartridge into the system. He licked his lips and stared at the console.

He turned it on.

The sensation came over him so strongly and so suddenly that the young man gasped as though he had been socked in the gut, wobbling on his knees as he moaned and wavered, as the warm tingling numbness wrapped him up and held him tight as though it were a cherished childhood blanket. Though he wanted to clamp his eyes shut and just savor the feelings, he forced himself to keep them open, determined to see for himself just what it was that was happening to him.

He panted and trembled as he looked down at himself, eyes wide and unblinking as his clothing squirmed and shifted on his body. His tie and loafers vanished altogether. Seams and stitches and cuffs formed on his slacks as they lightened into a pair of acid-washed jeans. The buttons on his Oxford shirt melted into the fabric as it dyed itself a slate gray and became a medium for the image on the cover of the Dookie album. And when he held his hand up he couldn’t help but release a little soundless noise of pure awe, not only at the sight of his palms softening and his fingers retracting into them, but because he could look past the appendage and at his lowering line of sight and realize, with a skip of his heart, that he was shrinking.

When the sensation disappeared, Chris fell onto his palms and gasped as though he had just surfaced after being held underwater. A few moments passed before he managed to push himself to his knees, staring down with open-mouthed amazement at his hands and the clothing he was wearing on the first day of that unforgettable week with his brother. Had he been inclined to rush back into the bathroom to look into the mirror, he would’ve seen the very same boy that went on that trip staring back at him – a gangly thirteen-year-old with the worst of puberty still laid out before him, features just beginning to sharpen, stuck square in the middle of the days that lay between cute and handsome. But, at the moment, he had more pressing issues at hand.

The arousal that had occurred when he had become eighteen seemed infinitesimal to what he was experiencing now, to how loudly the hormones bubbling within him demanded satisfaction, to how painfully his cock pressed against his jeans with pulsing adolescent insistence. Chris’s cheeks flushed as he reached down and tentatively squeezed himself through his fly, voice cracking when he gasped and let out a tiny moan at the jolt of pleasure the action sent racing up his spine. Even Seth never knew how obsessed his little brother became with self-pleasure after discovering it shortly after his thirteenth birthday.

It wasn’t enough for him to engage in the act after school and before he went to bed – so great was his need for release that it wasn’t long at all before he began playing with himself in the middle of class, hunched over his desk in the back of the room and biting his knuckle so as to prevent himself from crying out as he rubbed the head of his growing stiffy against his hairless groin, as he tumbled headlong into glorious climax and soaked his briefs with shot after shot of clear thin cum. So lost was Chris in those wonderfully humiliating memories that he wasn’t even aware that he had begun fondling himself the very same way he used to when he was thirteen the first time, cheeks flush and eyes fluttering as he gripped his shaft through his jeans and rubbed it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and…and…

“Ahh…ahhh…ahhhhhhhhhh…”

Chris bit his lip and clamped his eyes shut and arched his back as he hit the breaking point, as he helplessly shot into his pants just like the horny little thirteen-year-old he had become. Though he rode the wave as long as he could the ecstasy eventually dissipated and its place swelled the blushing, grinning embarrassment of a kid having just gotten away with something terribly naughty. His sticky briefs weren’t the most comfortable thing in the world, but it’s not as though he had other clothes in his current size he could change into. Besides, he chuckled as he grabbed the controller and focused his eyes on the television. A thirteen-year-old boy just isn’t fulfilled without a daily dose of sex and violence.

---

Chris roared through the most challenging tower with little difficulty, playing with every bit of the skill he possessed way back in the halcyon days of eighth grade. And on the way to dethroning Shao Kahn there was a moment where he just couldn’t help himself, coming right after a match in which he defeated his opponent without even having to block. Muscle memory took over as his hapless, woozy victim stood before him, as his fingers moved over the controller with an unearthly swiftness and inputted the appropriate command. An instant later the portly cop disappeared in a puff of flame and his place sat a pouting, diaper-clad infant in a tiny blue shirt with a backwards cap on his head.

He grinned. Stryker always was his favorite character to do that to.

The credits began to roll as Chris sighed, as he leaned back on one hand and twirled the controller by its cord with the other. He could keep playing, sure, but he had already surmounted the greatest challenge the game could offer and there was a whole box of titles within arm’s reach that he hadn’t yet touched. The desire to delve deeper into his collection was his official reasoning for deciding to move on, stubbornly pushing into the back of his mind the brief but powerful thrill that arose within him at the thought of getting even younger. Though the notion may very well have played a part in the deciding which game he eventually plucked from the carton, the only thing on his conscious mind as he beamed at the anthropomorphic hedgehog and two-tailed fox on the cartridge’s cover was how the Christmas on which he first obtained the game was far and away the best one he ever had.

Though his mother wouldn’t allow Chris to camp out in the living room to try and catch Santa (a belief that persisted until the cruelty of middle school), that didn’t stop him from trying his damndest to stay awake in hopes of hearing the jolly old elf, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars plastered to the ceiling of his room as he fidgeted and squirmed beneath the covers, unable to keep still thanks to the anxious energy unique to little boys on the night before Christmas. Despite his best efforts his eyelids grew heavier and heavier until they seemed crafted of iron, and he may very well have allowed merciful sleep to take him were it not for the small, almost inaudible sound that came from downstairs that had his eyes wide open and his bare little feet on the floor in an instant.

It was with the stealth of Sam Fisher that he crept out of his room and down the stairs in just his undies and nightshirt, taking special care to avoid the step third from the bottom that groaned in protest under the slightest weight. His throat went dry and his hair stood on end as he tip-toed towards the living room, breath catching in his throat when he came upon a shadow hunched beneath the Christmas tree whose identity was only hinted at by the rhythmic flashing of the lights strung along the needles of the molting pine. Every nerve stood on end as it rose from the tree and turned to him, eyes going moon wide when the figure flipped on the lights and looked upon the astonished little boy.

“Hey there,” Seth grinned. “Merry Christmas, little dude.”

Chris hadn’t moved a muscle until he could make himself believe that his big brother – the one who wasn’t supposed to be able to make it this year, whose tiny college town was supposedly snowed in – was truly standing before him. When the realization that he wasn’t dreaming came it came all at once, and he made no effort to hide the tears that filled his eyes and stained his brother’s coat when Seth took him into a big warm hug that had to this day yet to be topped.

More practical matters returned to the surface once he had gathered himself, as it wasn’t two seconds after he was out of his brother’s arms that Chris had asked Seth what he had gotten him for Christmas. Seth had chuckled and playfully hemmed and hawed for a few moments before deciding to give his incorrigible little brother his gift, what with it being after midnight and the holiday technically having already begun. Chris’s excitement doubled when Seth handed over the rectangular, meticulously-wrapped package and quadrupled when he laid the intricate wrapping job to waste and found that the one game he wanted more than any other – Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – lay beneath.

He had hopped about like a damn fool with his hands in the air, thanking Seth over and over again as his big brother chuckled and tousled his hair and told him that he was very welcome. Such was his excitement that he ignored his big brother’s obvious exhaustion in asking him to play it right then and there, and such was Seth’s magnanimity that he gave in to his little brother’s exuberant request. With Seth piloting Sonic and Chris taking control of Miles “Tails” Prower (a pun that eluded him until high school) they sat side-by-side and barreled through the entire game at once, retrieving the Chaos Emeralds and felling Robotnik with the sound turned way down low so as not to wake their mother, so that, for a little while, it was as though they were the only two people in the whole wide world.

Chris felt himself tearing up in the present as the memories flooded his consciousness, chuckling softly as he wiped his eyes with forearm, as he inserted the cartridge into his Genesis and placed his finger against the switch. He blinked away the last few tears and smiled. He switched on the console. The game hadn’t even gotten to shouting “SE-GA!” at him before the sensation crashed over him once more, a giddy little high-pitched giggle bubbling from his lips as he looked down at himself and watched the changes unfold, hardly believing that he had actually chosen this for himself, that he had consciously and happily decided to turn himself back into a goofy little nine-year-old boy.

It was the willingness to return himself to childhood that excited him as much as anything else as he watched his pants simply vanish from his body, allowing him to look on as the few leg hairs he had held onto curled back into his skin, as the limbs themselves lost what little adolescent definition they had and became scrawny, skinny little chicken legs complete with bare, kid-sized feet whose tiny toes wiggled gleefully as they grew smaller and smaller and smaller. The piping and waistband on his plain white briefs shifted to a deep forest green and without even looking behind him he knew that his bottom had become emblazoned with the image of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hanging bodaciously out the windows of their gaudy armored van, completing the undies that he wore not only on the Christmas in question but also on pretty much every other day he spent in third grade. He squeaked and squirmed and burned with humiliation as he felt his pubescent pride shrivel and shrink, as he watched the bulge in the fly of his childish briefs grow less and less impressive until it was no more than a tiny lump that barely disturbed its cotton confines.

So transfixed was he on that worryingly exciting sight he didn’t even notice the way his surroundings grew around him as his body surrendered the full foot of height it had gained in adolescence, the way his arms retracted into their sockets as his hands grew soft and smooth and lost what little strength they had left, the way his shirt shifted to a light mint and its logo transformed to match the one stretched across his butt.

Chris exhaled and blinked rapidly as the feelings finally faded, a long moment passing before his eyes drifted downward, looking himself over as his lips curled into a gap-toothed grin that cleft his round rosy cheeks in twain. If he had sought out his reflection he would’ve seen that no detail of his nine-year-old self had been forgotten, that the button nose and wide shining eyes and soft bangs that fell over his forehead were all there and accounted for. But he had bigger fish to fry, he thought to himself as he giggled, picked up the controller and set his eyes on the screen. He had a whole world to save.

---

Chris sighed and smiled and set the controller aside as he leaned back on his palms, watching with unfettered nostalgia as the ending scene played out before him, the joy that came from watching Tails’s daring mid-air rescue of the heroic hedgehog not lessened in the slightest by the fact that he had committed the epilogue to memory twenty years prior. He frowned as the credits rolled, as he looked outside and saw that night had fallen. He knew that the responsible, grown-up thing to do would be to switch off the system, to return to boring ol’ maturity so that he could turn in and be rested for work in the morning. But he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to keep playing. He wanted to forget all about the trials and responsibilities of the adult life that awaited him in the morning.

And – more than anything else – he wanted another hit.

He crawled over to the box and rifled through its contents with the most discerning eye he had yet employed upon them, frowning as he scoured through the collection and discarded games one by one, titles that he and his brother might’ve spent dozens of hours playing together but somehow just didn’t seem right. The search for that one special cartridge was beginning to seem impossible, and he was just about ready to give in to the responsible part of his mind that was imploring him to stop this silliness and get to sleep – and then he found it. Tucked in the corner of the box at the very bottom of a pile sat the benchmark, the game-changer, the unassuming little chunk of media that was to households in the eighties what Frampton Comes Alive! was to those in the seventies.

At the bottom of the pile sat Super Mario Brothers.

Chris lifted the cartridge from the carton with limitless reverence, holding it the way one would a newborn or a Fabergé egg. Though he couldn’t, try as he might, recall specific instances of times spent playing the game with his brother, it didn’t make the emotions that flowered within him the second he laid eyes on the cartridge any less powerful. What he remembered was feeling warm and happy and safe. What he remembered – so powerfully that it made his heart ache to think of it – was being loved and protected and cared for.

The game shook in his hands as he considered just what it was he was about to do. He was still trying to wrap his head around how young he’d become, but this…this was taking it to another level entirely. The paralyzing fear that had surged through him after his first transformation came back in full force as he began to worry that he was taking things too far, that he was recklessly toying with forces he didn’t understand, that he didn’t even have any idea how little he would get if he were to take this next terrifying leap. Those concerns battled within him against the enormity of the feelings he was experiencing, against the irresistible desire to relive the experiences that had inspired them in the first place. He closed his eyes and came to a decision.

He blew into the cartridge, stuck it in the NES, and turned on the console.

It was beautiful. This time there was no tingling, no pins-and-needles sensation. Just warmth. Just wonderful, golden warmth that filled him from head to toe, that put a dreamy smile on his lips and an immediate end to his worries. He looked around the room and marveled as he shrank further and further from his surroundings, as his living room became a great big world to be explored, growing more and more fascinating and enchanting as he got littler and littler and littler and littler. His eyes drifted downward just in time to watch his shirt vanish from his body, to watch his belly puff with baby fat until it was a round little jiggling tummy that spilled over the waistband of his briefs, which were rapidly changing from the kind that super-cool nine-year-olds wore with pride into something else entirely. The underwear lost the color in its piping and waistband and then did away with those elements altogether as it became the purest white, as it swelled and thickened and pushed his pudgy little legs apart.

Whatever embarrassment he might have felt at watching his big-kid briefs become an absurdly thick pair of baby pants was insignificant to how good it felt when they hugged his chubby little bottom and itty-bitty wee-wee, giggling and squirming and crinkling about when he saw a design appear on the fly featuring Elmo trying in vain to teach the wearer of the infantile garment their ABCs. He cooed and sighed when the warmth finally faded, a thin line of drool dangling from his lips as he looked down in slack-jawed awe at what had happened to him – at his tiny hands, the tiny feet, the pink little sausage fingers and toes that seemed to wiggle of their own accord, at how every bit of him had been rendered soft and round and chubby and adorable.

He was a tiny little diapered toddler. At most two years old.

Chris moved as though he were in a dream, pushing himself onto his knees as he ran his soft little palms over every bit of him he could reach, as though to prove all that pudgy baby fat that wobbled with the slightest movement actually belonged to him. He reached above his head and pulled gently at his hair, at the ridiculous goldenrod curls that had been a stable of every baby picture from his first birthday on. And finally his attention returned to his diaper (My diaper, he thought to himself with an incredulous little laugh. Mine. I’m wearing a diaper.), giggling and wiggling his crinkly padded bottom against the floor in utter amusement at the way the plastic popped back into place no matter how thoroughly or rapidly he poked at it. This isn’t so bad, he grinned. Why’d I ever give ‘em up? Wouldn’t have to stop gaming even for –

The urge came suddenly and with no warning save for the tiny rumble his tummy produced, so low that there was no chance of hearing it over the high-pitched moan that pushed its way past his lips. One moment he was fine and the next he felt as though his intestines had tied themselves into a knot, growing tighter and tighter within him as he whined and squirmed and pressed his tiny hands against his upset tummy. Chris couldn’t say with any certainty whether his new form came complete with infantile emotions, whether it was the babyish fear of the unknown that had him on the verge of tears over not knowing what to do. He was on the verge of breaking down when instinct took over, when it slithered into his subconscious and hissed a single word.

Push.

Chris did just as he was told and gasped at how instant the feeling of relief was, eyes fluttering shut and mouth agape as the knot unfurled within him, as he fell onto his hands and pushed and pushed and pushed the pain right out of him. So transcendent was the release that he didn’t even realize the method through which it was coming, that he was completely, helplessly loading his diaper, his baby pants dangling further and further from his chubby little hips as it desperately expanded to try and contain the monumental mass forced upon it. The task was made no easier when Chris’s little baby dinky joined in on the fun, saturating the fly of his crinklies and adding to his grunts and groans the hot hiss of his diaper soaking up a long, continuous stream of baby pee.

When it was finally over – when Chris felt nothing but a blissful emptiness within him – he gasped and panted and felt his eyes blink themselves open, eyesight woozy and unfocused as he faded back into cognizance. He was dimly aware of a strange weight pulling on his hips, but dealing with that would have to wait until he could process the impossible sight that lay before his eyes.

He was no longer in his living room – in a matter of speaking. The living room he had called his own when he was twenty-nine was nowhere to be seen. The furniture and the electronics and all the videogames save for the NES were all gone. The living room he now found himself in, he realized as his eyes scanned his surroundings, was that of his childhood home, of the squat little ranch house that didn’t even exist anymore, that had been torn down years ago to make way for a half-occupied strip mall. His palms and knees sank into the plush chocolate carpet that he had trod mud and dirt onto over and over again no matter how many times his mother yelled at him for it. The soft worn couch on which he had taken so many of his afternoon naps lay behind him. And the television that had been patiently displaying the title screen for Super Mario Brothers was no longer a sleek flat-screen but a big black box with glass so thick that it bordered on bulletproof, stationed squarely in the gigantic stained-wood cabinets that he had climbed with such exuberance in his preschool years.

It was all too much for Chris to process. He pushed himself off his palms so he could rest on his knees – and in doing so pushed the seat of his diaper against the carpet, smooshed the mess in his crinklies all over his round little baby bottom. He flushed crimson and blinked heavily as he realized what had just happened – as he realized what he had done. A twenty-nine-year-old in mind he may have been, but at that moment that was of no consequence. At that moment he was a scared little boy, an itty bitty little toddler all alone in a great big world, frightened and confused and in desperate need of a change. He screwed up his face and prepared to bawl, to cry like the utterly dependent little baby he had become, to –

“Chris?”

The storm was quelled when Chris, with tears welling his eyes, turned and looked in the direction of the voice. At the young teenage boy that stood in the doorframe and looked upon him with a combination of bemusement and concern on his face.

At his brother.

“How’d you get into my videogames, little dude? Gonna save the Mushroom Kingdom all by yourself?” He chuckled as he stepped into the room, as he kneeled before the dumbfounded toddler and gave his soft curls a little tousle. It was but a moment after he came that close that the smell of what Chris had done hit his nostrils, his nose wrinkling of his own accord as he grinned and gave his little brother’s messy bottom a soft little pat. “Looks like you need a change, tiger. Upsy daisy!”

If Chris couldn’t figure out how to react at the death of his big brother you can imagine how conflicted he was at seeing him not only alive but talking and acting and appearing the way he did twenty-seven years ago. He wanted to cry, to shout, to wrap his chubby arms around Seth and give him the biggest hug his little toddler self could manage – but before he could decide between those courses of action, Seth suddenly took Chris by the armpits and hoisted him effortlessly into the air, unable to suppress a giggle at how tenuously his baby brother’s diaper hung from his hips.

“Whew!” He playfully exclaimed as he gave Chris’s pot belly a tiny tickle and elicited an involuntary giggle from the little boy. “You sure did a number on these, little dude. I don’t think you’ve got anything left to poop!”

Seth carried Chris over to and laid him out on the changing table set up in the corner of the room, and it was here that deep, profound humiliation added itself to the emotions swirling within him. No reunion he had fantasized about having with his brother had started with his poopy bottom and wet little pee-pee being put on display. His shame must have been more visible than he meant it to be, as Seth’s expression melted into one of sympathy as he caught sight of the distress on his little brother’s face, as he ran a hand through his hair and gently took hold of one of his pudgy little hands.

“Aw, don’t worry bud.” He said as he guided Chris’s tiny pink thumb towards his lips. “This’ll just take a second.”

Chris stared at the digit being offered to him and hesitated for only a moment before wrapping his lips around it, figuring that it could only help. Calm washed over him in a matter of moments as his infantile instincts kicked in, thumb bobbing between his lips, one set of chubby little cheeks rhythmically flaring in and out while Seth efficiently but tenderly wiped the other set clean. His mouth was somewhat occupied so he merely blushed and squirmed and kicked his little legs in gratitude as his big brother slipped a fresh diaper beneath him, as he coated everything between his thighs and tummy in a blizzard of lavender-scented powder before taping him in and completing a remarkably quick diapering job on his itty bitty baby brother.

“There, isn’t that better?” Seth smiled as he lifted his little brother off the table, bopping his crinkly bottom in the crook of his arm while Chris, for his part, sucked away on his thumb and burrowed himself as deep into his brother’s embrace as he could. “Now you’re all ready for ni-ni, little dude.”

Chris’s eyes widened as he plucked his thumb from his mouth.

“Noooo!” He cried, locking his eyes on Seth’s in a fervent plea. There was no way he was going to sleep mere minutes after being reunited with his brother. Chris looked over Seth’s shoulder and pointed a chubby finger at the NES and the television it was hooked up to. “No ni-ni! Wan’ Mawio! Wan’ pway Mawio!”

Seth bit his lip and turned back towards the entertainment center.

“Well, you’re supposed to be in bed by eight…” He hesitated for a moment before turning to Chris and filling up his field of vision with a wide, brilliant smile. “Okay, tiger – we can play Mario for a little while. But no telling mom, okay?”

Chris squealed and kicked and clumsily clapped his little hands together as Seth carried him into the middle of the living room, as he sat cross-legged before the NES with his little brother set square in his lap. He helped get the controller into Chris’s grip and closed his palms over his little brother’s tiny hands. Chris squirmed and craned his neck back to beam at his big brother, the gesture rewarded by a kiss to the forehead that got the little boy giggling and drumming his little heels out of the purest, truest happiness he had ever felt.

He pressed start. Their adventure began.

 

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