PD 4.5: Young Plumbers

PD 4.5: Young Plumbers is the fourth episode of a meta complementary project for Project Deca. The following events are completely non-canon to the series and should be treated as such.

Episode
Attai, Sci, Bink, and Paper were all gathered in the Academy's mess hall, which was otherwise empty. They each held a script save for Attai, who was pouring himself a cup of coffee from a freshly-brewed jug.

"I don't think you're supposed to use the coffee machines if you're not staff or a student." Sci said.

"You're definitely not supposed to." Paper affirmed.

"I'm the main character, so I count as show staff." Attai replied, picking his script up off the counter.

"Wait, so are these segments in-universe or not?" Bink asked.

"That's a complicated question, and the answer is that nobody cares." Attai took a drink of coffee. "Get to talking about the episode already. We're five days behind schedule."

"Alright, so, first off, this is kind of a weird rendition of Young Plumbers, isn't it?" Sci said. "Like, there's a lot of lore changed or outright missing."

"Young Plumbers is no Lord of the Rings, but the worldbuilding can get complicated, especially compared to most series on BTFF." Attai explained. "The biggest story beats needed to be compressed down into a single episode while still maintaining the rough 'feel' of the original work. That applies to most series adapted."

"I guess that makes sense..."

"My question is, why was our universe the first one to get destroyed in-show?" Paper pointed at Attai accusatorily. "Things were going fine until the Nazis were suddenly shoehorned into the ending!"

"Well, first off, they weren't 'shoehorned'." Attai grumbled. "The villain of Young Plumbers is the Sage of Hate, who is literally powered by hate, and the main villain of the overall series are the Nazis. If you ask me, it clicks just fine."

"Still seems kind of unfair." Bink huffed.

"Okay, let me explain something about the story structure for this series." Attai sighed. "There are going to be twelve episodes, with every four episodes comprising an 'Act'. This being the fourth episode, it was the end of Act 1, and essentially would act as the 'season finale' of a larger series. Something big has to happen, and the villains hadn't really made good on any of their shit-talk yet, so it's only natural."

"So are the universes stuck at the end of the other two acts going to be destroyed?" Sci raised an eyebrow.

"Contractually, I can't answer that." Attai mumbled. "That being said, the series showing some of its cards essentially counts as a status quo change. Things aren't going to happen the same way twice."

"I think we're all missing the biggest question here." Bink interjected.

"Which would be?"

"What the hell was that scene in the mess hall?!"

"If you know what it means, you know what it means." Attai chugged the rest of his coffee. "If you don't, you don't."

"That doesn't tell us anything!"

"Because if I explain the joke, it's not funny anymore."

"Speaking of things that aren't funny..." A growling voice came from seemingly nowhere.

"Whelp, time for the obligatory awkward entrance, I guess." Attai sighed.

"Why was I defeated so easily?!" Rigon roared, climbing out from the shadows underneath a table. "I was up against literal children!"

"Teenagers." Paper corrected.

"Even worse!"

"Because you got pissed off and let your guard down." Attai tsked. "Like Sci said, you're a 'nothing person'. No real identity other than 'the Hate guy', and as soon as something can counter hate and darkness, you're out of cards to play."

"So was this whole thing just a metaphor for how letting your hatred of something become your entire identity leaves you hollow and weak against the people who don't care about it?" Bink mused.

"If you're willing to give the writer that much credit, be my guest, but I sure as hell wouldn't." Attai snorted.

"That better not be it, because if I lost for the sake of a metaphor, you cannot even fathom how pissed off I would be!" Rigon snapped.

"I think I can ballpark it."

"Hey, speaking of hatred and Nazis and crap, are we gonna talk about your big reveal this episode?" Sci asked Attai.

"What about it?" Attai tsked.

"What do you mean 'what about it?', that's a lot to unpack!"

"Yeah, but that's for the show to work through, not the complementary project." Attai rolled his eyes.

"Seems like a lot to put out at once." Paper folded his arms. "Isn't this basically revealing your whole identity?"

"Doesn't explain who I'm made from, where I came from, why I'm not the same as Ubermensch, where Ubermensch came from, how Project Deca worked, or much of anything else." Attai replied. "At most, it explains why I'm Germanic. It raises more questions than it answers."

"Alright, one last question, and this is kind of a big thing the episode just totally ignored." Bink said. "Rigon was sealed away thousands of years before the episode, right?"

"Right."

"And Sci is his son, right?"

"Right."

"Then why is Sci only seventeen?!"

There was an awkward pause.

"Well, same reason as the original series." Attai coughed.

"Which was?"

"An unexplained spell made it so he wasn't born for thousands of years after conception."

An even more awkward pause.

"You're...not serious, right?" Bink asked.

"I'm dead serious."

"Wait, so my mom was pregnant with me for thousands of years?" Sci grimaced.

"Yes."

"How did that even work?" Paper asked.

"I don't want to know, and I don't think you do either." Attai snapped. "I'm just going to pretend this topic never came up, if you don't mind."

"I just mean like, did Sci just develop really slowly, or did he grow at a normal rate until he hit nine months and then just got carried around like that until-"

"NO YOU DON'T, I'M ENDING THIS RIGHT NOW!" Attai slammed his script shut. "See you next month, people! Jesus Christ!"

TO BE CONTINUED