maskormenacelogs | AGE PLOT SHENANIGANS

[Relief instantly settles into his shoulders, not feeling as heavy as they were a few minutes ago. Okay. That's a start. But now he's realizing he's having to take more steps than he did even just earlier today to get where Hiro is and he definitely grabbed the wrong shirt out of the wash

And then the smoke clears. And everything is eye-level with him - desks, chairs, the blown generator, tools. Everything except his little brother who suddenly isn't so little.]

Dude-- What di- It worked!

[ Hiro almost doesn't recognize his brother standing in front of him, he's so used to having to look up at Tadashi. For a moment he thinks that maybe he just somehow ended up that tall - but no, even a cursory glance at Tadashi's face and his clothes tells Hiro that his brother got smaller too. So now, for the first time in Hiro's life, he's absolutely towering over his brother. That's worrying - he hadn't meant to affect anyone except himself here - but it also worked. A grin finally lights up his face. ]

It worked! Finally, I got it! Oh man, I wish I could show Fred. He loves this kind of bonkers stuff.

[It takes all of five seconds to take his surroundings into account and figure out what happened - height differences, the sound of his voice now that the smoke is gone and not muffling him, Hiro's reaction.

He's gonna .... Something. He'll do something. His face gets red with irritation.]

Yeah, he does, but seriously. What'd you do.

Other than succeed way more than I expected?

[ Because this is kinda awesome. He's worried about his brother too, of course, but he's also gonna reach out to ruffle his hair. Like, immediately. This is revenge for fourteen years of being the younger sibling, okay. ]

Other than blow up our only copy of the generator? It's--

[Ugh. ugh, he runs his tiny hand down his tiny face. He can't be too mad because Hiro's idea did work, it just. Happened to have bad side effects for everyone around him.

Yeah, this is normal.]

Okay, first thing, we're switching clothes.

[Fourteen year old Tadashi's about the same build as fifteen year old Hiro, so it works out. Sort of. Right?]

[ Oh. Right. He did kind of blow up the generator. He cringes a little, eying the smoking wreckage left behind from his experiment. It's not completely unsalvageable, but it sure is super duper broken right now. Something like this'll take weeks, if not months to fix. He pulls his hand back kind of guiltily. ]

Yeah, uh ... I kind of got frustrated? And rerouted most of the power in the house through it.

[ He says that last part kind of fast, like it might go right by Tadashi if he just says it quickly enough. Also, he's more than happy to pull his arms out of his hoodie - there's no way it would fit him now. ]

I'm not wearing any of your cardigans. Just saying.

Oh.

My god.

HIro, you-- Unbelievable.

[He switches the oversized shirt for the now perfectly fitted hoodie, forgetting what's in the hoodie for the moment in favor of just. Giving Hiro the most exasperated look a fourteen year old can give, a face he gave little baby Hiro all the time.

You got a problem with cardigans, buddy.]

Fine. Got plenty of t-shirts up there.

What! It worked, didn't it? And maybe you got caught in the crossfire, but - you're okay, right?

[ That last phrase comes out concerned. Oh god, if he's hurt his brother by getting impatient, he'll never forgive himself. But at least Tadashi looks perfectly fine, other than the obvious change, so Hiro's hoping that that's the only thing he did. He takes the shirt - flicks the garage door down with his mind, not that they were anywhere near being visible from the street, but still - and starts shrugging out of the rest of his stuff, swapping it out for Tadashi's clothes. Yep ... those'll work well enough. The pants are a little long, but not by much.

Also cardigans are for nerds. ]

Great. Guess that works out then.

Yeah, I'm fine.

[Okay so he's realizing something while changing that pointedly makes him Not Fine - he dropped his limiter somewhere along the way, slipped right off his thin ass nerd wrist. Through just the nervousness alone he can feel his hand getting hot and needs to quash that down and look for it in his own time so Hiro doesn't worry.

Even fourteen year old Tadashi was a little to mature for his own good and cared way too much about not bothering anyone.]

Okay so the question now is what to do? We can't just reverse it until we get another copy of the generator made. And we should make sure this didn't go any further than the house.

[ Hiro is too busy being relieved to realize that the limiter is gone - for now, anyway. He'll figure it out soon enough. There's a lot of other stuff going on, like ... did the effect go past the house? Hiro routed a lot of power through the generator, so it's possible. But - surely that would be too far? It was struggling to affect just Hiro before, much less anyone else. And yet here's Tadashi, who was definitely upstairs, so it's obvious that it at least went that far... ]

I dunno. Check the house, see who else got affected here?

[ A paaaause. ]

Oh man. I told Shinjiro we'd be experimenting today, but I thought it wouldn't go past the room.

[He's already trying to casually look around the garage now, see if maybe he dropped it when he came in and lost it in the smoke. But that-- Ooooh jeez.]

You better really hope he just decided to leave the house altogether. Everything in the kitchen's busted up there, he's gonna be pissed.

[But he's not seeing the bracelet in here, so he'll take up the offer to go check the house so he can look without Hiro.]

I'll go check, see how bad it is.

The kitchen is busted?

[ Ohhhh no. He knows Shinji well enough by now to realize that he is totally dead if he finds out. Maybe he can sneak in and replace all the broken dishes before Shinji ever notices ... ]

Okay, yeah. You check the rest of the house, I'll take care of the dishes.

Yeah, it's bad. Be careful walking in there.

[Works for him. He starts to reach for him, out of sheer habit, but scrunches his face a little when the height differences don't work out right. Instead, he starts for the door.]

I'll meet up back in the living room later.

[ Aww. Bro. He recognizes the gesture, at least, and puts his hand on Tadashi's shoulder for a moment. It's a little awkward, since he's not used to this reversal either, but ... ]

Yeah. Meet you there. If Shinji doesn't kill me.

[He stops dead at the feeling, a memory he'd shoved down years and years ago resurfacing - a big nerd father putting his hand on Tadashi's shoulder to reassure - and swallows the sudden lump in his throat.

He's fine. He's totally fine, he just. Wow. Yeah, he needs a minute. He nods, pulling away carefully so Hiro doesn't think he's mad or anything and definitely heads to that door.]

[ Huh. Well, he doesn't think Tadashi's mad at him, but he also doesn't know how to read that reaction. Did he do something wrong? Did he do the thing wrong? It probably doesn't help that Hiro looks more like their father when he's older - not as much as Tadashi does, since Hiro always looked more like their mother of the two of them - but the resemblance still definitely there. Just wait til he gets nerd glasses on top of it.

Anyway, he splits off from his brother to go investigate the kitchen. And get yelled at by Shinji. Yep. Hopefully Tadashi has better luck with his side of things. ]

[And true to form, Tadashi's in the living room an hour later. He didn't run into many people in the house, but he glanced through the network and hoooooly crap. There was a fair nearby and it's bad, Hiro, they hecked up SO BAD. On top of it all, he still can't find his limiter, making him even hotter. He paces around the living room, shaking his hands trying to stay loose and not anxious and not start any unwanted accidents.]

Oooh man this is bad. This is really bad.

[ Good timing - Hiro's just now stepping into the room himself, floating the comm close so that he can read it. He's ... kind of got it unusually close to his face, actually, a gesture that's familiar except for the distance Stupid body change is making his eyes hurt something fierce. He can't seem to focus on anything past about five feet away, and he does much better reading if it's right up in front of his face.

He also holding something else in his other hand. ]

Yeah, uh ... holy crap, I think we might have hit the entire city.

[ And there's a hint of pride in that? As phenomenally terrible as this whole thing is, they did make their mark on the rest of the world. ]

[He immediately turns when he hears Hiro, stops shaking his hands for the sake of just looking normal damn it. But he's so focused on that, he doesn't even realize the comm Hiro's trying to read is his own comm - doesn't realize when they swapped clothes, they swapped the comms they left in their pockets. That could be a problem later.]

Yeah, no kidding, knucklehead! There was a fair going on a few blocks away, I think we hit every import that was there.

[THAT IS NOT SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF.]

[ A fun problem, okay. Just be grateful he hasn't gone through Tadashi's apps. Yet. He just sighs at his brother's comment, because he knows Tadashi is right, but ... man, he sure did feel cool for a split second there. ]

Yeah, Lana told me ... And I think there was some kind of magic thing going on too because like half of the people that went don't remember being adults. At all.

Wait-- what?

[Dude no, they didn't do that. There's no way their tech was able to do that at all and it's worrying and it's plain as day on his face; fourteen year old who, while mature, still had trouble hiding his feelings on his face.]

No, that-- oh man this is way worse than we thought. There's no way those memory problems are on us.

[ Hiro's in agreement here, okay. He may have messed with the formulas a lot, but he knows that what they were trying to do couldn't have possibly gotten into people's minds like that. Not without brain damage anyway. He opens his mouth to say just that ... and then pauses. He sees that look on Tadashi's face. He's ... never really seen that look on Tadashi's face. Even when his brother broke down and admitted to being scared earlier in the month, he'd kept his face hidden. Now Hiro can see his brother's vulnerabilities, even if they're just these little glimpses. It's kind of heartbreaking, to be honest. Does Tadashi always feel like this? Is the age difference the only reason why Hiro's seeing it now.

... He closes his mouth, swallowing back his words. ]

Yeah, no way. The nanites can't do that. So that complicates things, but at least it's not our fault.

[ And quick, a distraction before Tadashi realizes what Hiro left out. He holds out a familiar-looking power dampener. ]

Think you dropped this.

Right...

[He starts to propose some kind of theory but -- his eyes widen when he catches a glimpse of his bracelet in Hiro's hands and reaches for it. Whatever worry he had, it's gone in the wake of pure relief. He doesn't wait a breath, Tadashi immediately sets to work putting it on and trying to adjust it so it stays on.]

Oh man, you-- You found it, I've been looking for it this whole time. Where'd you find it?

[ Hiro helps too, adjusting it a bit with his technopathy to get the straps to lock in tighter. Should be enough to keep it from falling off again unexpectedly. ]

On the stairs. Well, in the stairs. You know that crack about five steps up? It fell down into that. Confused the heck out of me when I felt it stuck down there.

[ He pauses, though. As grateful as he is to see his brother relieved like this ... ]

... Why didn't you tell me? I coulda found it faster if I'd been looking for it.

[Once it's secure, he feels better. Hell, even looks better, definitely not as worry-stressed as he was a second ago.]

We really should look into getting that fixed.

[Aha. And then he asks that. He looks up at him (ugh that's weird??? that's weird) and. The whole "I didn't want you to worry, we had more important things" is one thing coming from a big brother. It sounds completely juvenile and un-thought out coming from a younger one.]

Didn't realize it was missing until after we split up.

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