Time Lost
"One… two… three… four…"
He'd had a routine for the past thirteen years.
"Five… six… seven… eight…"
Get up, brush teeth, jog ten miles, do pull ups, sit ups, squats, curl the heaviest stone available, bench the heaviest log he could find, and wrestle the nearest monster. Repeat twice, and chase the nearest Heckapoo clone.
"Nine… ten… eleven… twe-twelve…"
It had been more difficult that he thought it'd be to keep up the routine.
"thirteen… four… teeeen…"
His body wasn't what his mind told him it should be.
"Fif-hah-fifteen… sixteen…"
In an instant, he'd lost sixteen years of progress.
"Seventeen… eighteen…"
His beloved dragoncycle.
"Nine-! Nine-! Come on Diaz!"
All he had was his memories.
"Nine…. Teeeen…!"
And his dimensional scissors.
"Twenty!"
Marco Diaz let himself fall to the ground, glaring spitefully at the pull up bar before glancing at the clock.
"Twenty pull ups in five minutes."
He'd lost a lot by returning to Earth, he'd be lying if he said he didn't miss the adventure of it all. In those eight minutes he'd become everything he'd ever wanted to be and more.
But this time around, he was different.
He could still wield his sword, even if it felt heavier than it'd had in years. He remembered his skills in combat, even if he felt he was moving at a snail's pace. At age fourteen, he had sixteen years of experience in war, espionage, swordplay, and, thanks to a certain candle-headed demon (?), flirting.
He'd made a lot of mistakes in his training he wouldn't make this time around.
His glare turned into a confident smirk.
It'd taken him ten years to do two hundred pull ups in ten minutes.
This time next year, it's be three hundred in five.
"Welp, time for the right arm! One… two… three…"
Omake
"… and so, yeah, Marco's technically thirty now."
Jackie Lynn Thomas and Janna stared at Star, gaping like fish out of water.
It was a full minute before Janna broke the silence.
"And you didn't take pictures!?"
"Wha!? Janna! I had more pressing matters than pictures! Like, "who's the guy with the eight pack that's hugging me?"!"
"Eight pack?" squeaked Janna, practically burning through her beanie, "Pictures should have been the first thing on your mind!"
"Oh come on! Jackie, back me up here."
She stayed silent.
"Jackie?"
"I'd have liked pictures."
Author's Note: So yeah, just adding to a plot point that probably won't be touched... Unless the whole point was to make Marco a ridiculously good fighter in a short amount of time. I hope he gets his dragon back.
That said, I'm both happy and mad that Marco is so ridiculously shippable. I can picture a happy ending with Star, Janna, Tom, and now Heckaboo (am I spelling this right?).