attercop
Come into my parlor.
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The New Abnormal (My Hero Academia/Celestial Mutation)
Lagoon12002
Not too sore, are you?
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- Nov 7, 2020
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MarcusDeGabriel
Connoisseur.
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- Aug 31, 2017
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His "Quirk" isn't really made for it, but i'd love to see him do something different than most other Inserts and do something other than being a Hero.
With his Programming Quirk and reincarnation knowledge he could crib notes from great games that no longer exist there! Rather than all the Hero slop.
With his Programming Quirk and reincarnation knowledge he could crib notes from great games that no longer exist there! Rather than all the Hero slop.
orith
Getting out there.
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He possessed knowledge of pre-quirk media and instinctively referenced it in ways that a modern person wouldn't, such as using it as an immediate form of reference.
Anyways without those, the idea that someone cloned Yoichi seems more likely.
CosmicBigfoot
Not too sore, are you?
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If Toji and Zen were monozygotic twins their DNA would be functionally identical, and only differ based on mutations (both natural and quirk related) over time. Between Zen being three centuries old and having hundreds of quirks I'm sure his DNA looks like a petri dish dropped in the mud at a Burning Man festival, but even with all that their DNA would be close enough that Toji being a twin or a clone are the only logical explanations.
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orith
Getting out there.
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The real question is "would All For One, a man who has never been to school, know that?"
…whenever I want to justify DFO, I usually go with "Inko has Yoichi's eyes and Zen doesn't understand that if he has enough kids with her eventually one that looks sufficiently Yoichi-like will pop-up, because he never took middleschool science and so doesn't understand punnet squares" which is admittedly very contrived and lo-key means that he doesn't think to just bleach Izuku's hair?
Anyways, if Zen's white eye color was the result of cataracts due to malnutrition from him prioritising Yoichi over himself when he was age babbu, and well without knowledge about that kind of thing (which he would have no reason to pick up, even under realistic circumstances; the "siblings will inherit different traits from either parent" thing is obvious to any human being who has observed multiple humans, but many people probably don't know that cataracts exist, and of those that do, knowing that malnutrition can cause them is less common, possibly because there's not much overlap in the "knows what cataracts are" and "at risk of malnutrition" populations) he would probably just chalk it up to "quirk nonsense"
BlankFox
Making the rounds.
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Wow a crack fic acting like a crack fic? Thats the whole point it's meant to be silly in a funny way.
Jagganoth
Know what you're doing yet?
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i wouldn't even say its acting like a crack fic, really. (in that the chapter didn't just happen for BLEARGHHH HERES JOKES THAT MEAN NOTHING!) it gives us some more toru toji interactions, shows how effective toji's coding quirk is (going from nothing to a fully fledged if weird 3d dwarf fortress like is fucking insane.) and sets up PBBDCS which is going to come up later.
plus sometimes i like a... i'm not going to say a filler chapter. but one where the characters just hang out and do nothing. it might not be rushing in new characters or plot lines, but its making you connect with the ones already present in the story.
Looking Out For You
New
CosmicBigfoot
Not too sore, are you?
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Toji Kayama
Toji wasn't really sure when it happened, but he was pretty sure Toru stole his personal autonomy sometime in the past week or so. Considering the fact that it had already been getting strip-mined by both the hospital and Nemuri before then, that was a bit of a problem.
Time spent lounging by himself was now spent coding with Toru, time spent doing old granny calisthenics was now dedicated to pumping iron with Toru, and going by the fact that Nemuri was trying to set up some nepo-baby placement tests at the school she teaches at, there was a nonzero chance his education was about to get Toru'd as well.
In the daily life of Toji, every day was Toru day. Well adjusted people would probably call everything he just thought something lame like "having a social life" and "being invested in hobbies", but Toji knew the score. That invisible gremlin was shanghai'ing his entire life.
As Toji lounged on Nemuri's plush leather couch like an exotic pet, the only thought he could muster at that realization was 'Thank God.'
He knew better than to ever admit it out loud, but almost fifteen years of following along after his shithead of a brother like a shadow did not prepare him for solo-existence in the slightest. Was it healthy to immediately go all in on the first friendship he made with a loud bossy person? Well that bossy nutjob was Toru, so the answer was somehow yes.
Oh no, Toji latched onto a person like an abandoned bird and now he codes for a hobby and goes to the gym four times a week. What a nightmare.
Toji was pretty sure it only counted as codependency when it negatively affected your life, and he was pretty sure that Toru's… everything counted as a positive impact.
Hanging out with her sure as hell beat doomscrolling in a hospital bed. Despite acting like a coked out chimpmunk the only red flag Toru had shown so far was her absolute lack of respect for personal boundries… which sounded worse than it actually was.
It wasn't like she was sneaking into bathrooms or stealing his socks or any other degenerate behavior like that. Toru was just a bit touchy and kinda… had a thing with staring? He wasn't really sure if she even noticed she was doing it, and he was positive nobody else noticed it due to the whole invisibility thing she had going on, but in spite of Toru's parakeet color scheme she tended to give off an awful lot of vulture vibes.
Not that Toji could throw stones on that front. Apparently he gave off cat vibes of all things. He still wasn't sure how to unpack that time Nemuri said she wanted a son, but a cat was fine too while they were filling out the adoption paperwork.
*bzzzzzt* *bzzzzzt* *bzzzzzt*
Oh look, a distraction. Toji already knew exactly what the message was going to say before he checked it, but he was nothing if not a creature of habit.
Never mind, that wasn't a mailbox notification for the GPUs he ordered. Fat assed shame, too. He had been hoping to get that server rack finished sooner rather than later. It was getting a bit difficult to make an assistant bot and a video game with nothing but a laptop.
Also, he needed to rename that derpy bot to something besides Self-Help. That thing was only a help app for the first twelve hours of it's existence, and even that's pushing it.
*bzzzzzt* *bzzzzzt* *bzzzzzt*
Looking down at his phone again, Toji realized that he had zoned out long enough for… sigh, for Self-Help to send him another message string, this time from Toru.
Damn, no need to dump a bucket of purple prose paint over his head. Getting up from his spot on the sofa, Toji softly padded down the hall to the thick piece of wood protecting him from the feral animal that clawed at the other side.
"Toji! Toooooooji! Lemme in! I'm freezing my head, shoulders, knees and toes off out here!" Toji took his sweet time waddling up to the doorway. Toru had demanded enough mutual staring time for him to know her quirk was a bit of a thermal regulator. It was about as useful as a sweater, but hey… he guessed it was something?
Alright, maybe he should hurry and open the door. Speeding up slightly, he managed to penguin march to the front door and swing it open before she used it as a drum set, and whatever sarcastic remark he was ready to pelt at her for swinging by his place with no heads up got decommissioned after one glance at her.
"H-hey Toji! Mind if I use your bathroom? And like, a dozen towels? I'm kinda freezing my bits off out here!"
He just blinked at the sopping wet mess currently fidgeting back and forth on his now soaked welcome mat. "Toru, what the Hell? Did you trip over a fire hydrant or something? Why are you so freaking soaked?"
Toru just giggled at that through clattering teeth, her still dripping duffle bag. "O-oh, funny story. I was walking at the gym a-and-" Watching his friend sneeze like a self-allergic kitten while shivering on his doorstep, Toji realized that he should probably ask her about whatever went down after she stopped freezing her ass off in early December.
"You know what, how about you tell me after you dry off? I'd rather not have you drop dead of hypothermia." Not that she was that frozen over, but he doubted she felt good walking around with about 10lb of ice water sodden clothes hanging off her.
Stepping aside so he wasn't body blocking the doorway, Toji didn't even bother to look at her as he made his way back to his room to grab her something to wear… that probably wouldn't fit her in the slightest.
For some reason she just laughed at that through clattering teeth as she followed after him. "Jeez Toji. I'm not a fabric egg or whatever that saying is. It's like, at least seven degrees Celsius outside! I've handled way worse than that!"
Somehow that didn't make Toji feel any better about his friend shivering on his doorstep. "There's about a dozen or so towels on the top shelf in the bathroom, use as many as you like. I'm gonna go grab you some… I dunno. Pajamas? I'm not really sure if I have anything that'll fit you while your clothes dry off."
Toji tried not to wince as he watched Toru drop the absolutely sodden dufflebag stuffed with waterlogged clothes onto the hardwood floor with a disgustingly wet thud. "Eh, if nothing fits I could always just fall back on my quirk."
That managed to make him snort like a stalled chainsaw. "Toru, if my mom came home to find a nude poltergeist running around the house she would make it her life's mission to make me die of embarrassment."
"That just means we can be poltergeist together!" Pawing at his forehead like a crisis actor in an advil commercial, he could do nothing but sigh as he watched Toru rush off towards the bathroom.
Looking down at the duffle bag that was already well on it's way to turning his hallway into a bog, Toji couldn't even be fucked to ask for permission to touch her nasty swamp loot and unceremoniously shoved it into his kitchen sink before going off to dry up the mess.
How the hell was Toru this soaked? He was pretty sure she would've been less wet if someone shoved her in a pool. "Hey Toru! I know I said it as a joke earlier, but did you actually get blasted by a fire hydrant?"
"What? No! Some jerk with a water quirk got banned from our gym while I was working out and flooded the whole place. Everyone there got super soaked! I'm fine though! Just super cold! And pissed! Super pissed!"
Well, that's probably better than being sad at getting caught up in Aquaman having a fit at the gym. At least she got blasted with water and not lava? "Hey, you want me to cook some soup or something? I'm pretty sure you're supposed to eat something hot when you're cold."
Toru paused just long enough for him to know she was seriously considering taking her dollar store soup as a consolation prize. "… I've had enough liquids for the day!"
Eh, that's fair. Only a psycho would eat Campbell's after going to the gym. Standing up from his spot on the freshly dried floor, Toji tossed the small tree's worth of paper towels in the trash before moving on to step two.
It was time to give a neanderthal pants. For the crime of being a gym washout, she was getting the cookie monster pajamas.
Walking up to the bathroom door, Toji idly prodded the pile of soaking wet clothes sitting by the door with a huff as he knocked on it. "Yo, I've got some clothes that might fit you. Crack open the door a bit and I'll pass em to-" That was about as much as he was able to get out before Toru did what she did best and jumped over his personal boundaries like a knee-high gate at a Travis Scott concert.
Swinging the door wide open without a care in the freaking world, Toru let out a stray "Yoinkers!" and knicked the folded clothes out of his hands with a smile and began to flip them around in her hands like a doctor's office magazine. "OooOOOooOOOoooo!!! These are super soft! Thanks bestie!"
Blinking down at the smiling nudist that was halfway towards qualifying as a grimm's fairy tale monster, Toji just reached out and slowly closed the bathroom door on her, causing her to squeeze herself back into the bathroom with a click of the door handle closing.
"Toru, dude… what the fuck?" Listening to her chuckle through the door, Toji barely withstood the urge to thunk his head against it as he let out a groan. "Why are you so weird?"
She had the gall to laugh at that. "What? You've already seen my everything with your radioactive eye-sotopes. You gotta get climatized to my brand sooner or later, Toji!"
Thunking his head against the door, he let out the wettest, saddest sigh he could muster as he rubbed his head against the door. "Toru. Just because I know everything about your body doesn't mean I fuckin' know what it looks like!"
A few moments of silence passed between him and the door at that before Toru let out a muffled sound of realization through the wood. "… Oh! Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…. Woops! How was I supposed to know that?"
"Toru! I get TMI from knowing way too much about people's bodies when I look at them, I don't get freaking 3D models of their nude bodies downloaded into my brain. Did you seriously just spend the past couple months thinking I was just looking at you-"
Toji cut himself off with a startled backpedal as Toru slammed open the bathroom door with a wide smile, looking absolutely shameless as she stood there inher his cookie monster pajamas, the fuzzy pants hastily rolled up several times just to keep from dragging against the ground.
Putting her hands outwards, Toru struck several power ranger poses as she absolutely butchered several languages in a row. "Wah-lah! Viola! Tadah! How do I look?"
She looked like an ipad kid that walked the C- lap in gym glass. "Well you're dry and clothed, so I'd say you're looking your Sunday best."
"It's Saturday." Dude. "But thanks! Sorry for dropping by unannounced, but your place was closer than the train station was and I thought it'd be weird (and cold!) to ride the train while all soaked and sogged up!"
Toji just pawed at the side of his chin as he watched Toru lift up the metaphorical rug and shove literally everything that just happened under it. "Eh, don't worry about it. I'd rather have you lounging around my house than shivering on a metal tube. I'm assuming your phone got busted from the villain attack at the gym?"
God, it always felt so weird to call criminals and crashouts "villains", as if some guy robbing a gas station is on the same level as Dick Dastardly.
"Why would my phone be busted? It was just a few tidal waves of water." Right, he forgot that the tech wasn't actually stagnant and only looked like it came out when Will Smith was still popular. "But if you're offering to give me some super ultra-phone, then file me down for a please and thank you!"
Putting his palms together, Toji formed the universal sign for time out and the more localized sign for "hold the fuck up" before shaking his head. "Bzzzt! Nope. I'm already going all in on the assistant app and the game. If you want a super phone then the game's going on hold."
Grabbing at both sides of her flowing mane of hair, Toru tugged on both fistfuls and let out a low droning wail… that was completely ruined by her forgetting she needed to make a facial expression to go along with it.
"Noooooooooooo! You haven't even streamlined the flora update yet! Come on Toji, the pibbles just discovered drug culture! And not just drug culture, but drug sophistication!" He knew for a fact that Toru was exaggerating. The only thing those damn pibbles had were short-term tobacco profits and generational dust bowls.
Well too bad for Toru, because his infinite free time was currently getting dissected by a little something called obligations. "Sorry dude, I'm kinda busy studying for school. Guess the pibbles are stuck with dusty fields for another day."
Toru perked up the new conversation with both hands, abandoning the pibbles without a second thought. "Wait, you study? But you've been a neet since I met you!"
"… Dude, I'm pretty sure we've only known each other for about two months." Has it really been that long since he met her? Well… he met her about a week into October, and now it was about a week into December so… huh. "In fact, I'm pretty sure I've known you for exactly two months now."
It shouldn't have taken him seeing the look in her eyes to know that string of words was a mistake. "Ahhh! Two month platonic friendship anniversary! You know what you should do to celebrate? Code more Pitbull Prison Simulator! How about an, uhhhhh… friendship mechanic update!"
Should he even reward such a shameless grindset? Well he's an enabler and his alternative is studying ancient Japanese history, and as fun as it was soyfacing at his not-a-kindle every time he got to a Jujutsu Kaisen reference in his history book… he wouldn't actually say no to a distraction.
Idly twirling a stray lock of hair through his hand, Toji thought it over and… "You know what? Sure. The pibbles can learn that love can bloom, even on an opium field."
Toru pumped both fist into the air at that and let out a whoop and turned to frolic off towards the living room. "Yes! If the house always wins, then I'm the whole suburb!"
He just reached out and nabbed her before she could make a break for it. "You know, I just remembered that my kitchen sink is currently stuffed with a duffle bag full of your clothes that still need to be wrung out."
Watching Toru wilt like a well taken care of orchid, Toji moved towards the living room and kind of realized that… this whole situation was probably something he should text his mom about? Maybe? Toji genuinely had no clue if it was normal to text parents about random encounters like this.
Turning back towards the kitchen, Toji shouted over the sound of Toru's squelching laundry. "Hey Toru, do you tell your parents about all the weird shit that happens to you on the daily?"
She didn't even miss a beat with her response. "Only if I see em!"
Well, that's good enough for him. Pulling out his phone, Toji slowly drifted back towards the living room and shot a few texts to Nemuri just to let her know Toru was running amok around the house.
Feeling the couch suddenly lurch from underneath him, Toji pivoted his head just to see it was only Toru throwing herself onto the other side of it.
"Alrightie, that's done! Now, onto the real important business… you're studying?" Well that was less of a question and more of a statement, but he got what she was trying to ask.
"Yeah, I'm studying basically everything besides languages, computer science, and world history at the moment. Me and Nemuri had a family discussion about what I wanted to do, education wise."
For some reason Toru just scrunched her eyebrows up at that. "Do you mean that as in she sat you down, told you it was time to study, and asked you what school you wanted to aim for?"
Oh look, here comes his turn to scrunch up his brow. "What? No. I mean she did sit me down and tell me it was time to get back on the saddle, but we talked over which classes I wanted to focus on first, which ones I already felt secure in, what kind of education I wanted…"
Should he even be talking about this conversation with Toru? This was kinda getting into real feelings territory.
Too bad for him, because she actually looked super invested in the current topic. "What do you mean by that? Like, what kind of college courses you were planning on taking?"
"I guess we talked about that when we went over higher education? I'm not really planning on going to one, but we floated a few I might be interested in down the line. I was more distracted over more immediate options."
Toru just nodded at that, halfway lost in thought. "Huh. You know, speaking of distracted... maaaaybe I shouldn't be distracting you with pibbles and programs!"
He couldn't help but chuckle at the absurdity that was Toru. "Seriously? You're not worried about flashing me but you'll start sweating if my grades start to slip? What are these cram school priorities?"
She couldn't even be bothered to pretend she ever felt a crumb of shame. Not that she'd do a very good job of it, her facial expressions were usually pretty hit or miss. "I regret nothing! Public decency is just a concept invented by the shame industry!"
Toji was starting to regret something. "Toru, dude… can you not? I'd rather not catch allegations, or worse, Nemuri's teasing."
Instead of saying 'Of course I'll stop running around naked.' like a member of society that's never had to wear an ankle bracelet, Toru instead chose the slightly more fringe path of laughing in his face.
"No can do, Toji! I'm gonna be a pro hero soon, and that means you seeing me in my work uniform is basically inevitable. And by work uniform I mean nude."
Toji wouldn't have been surprised if he had actual math calculations floating around his head as he connected the dots together. "But… if I can't see your suit, wouldn't I only see whatever's sticking out of the suit instead of through the suit?"
It was Toru's turn to get absolutely baffled by what he was saying. "What suit? Are you finally having a translation error? Uhh… how do I say this plainly? ...hmm…. My hero costume is I'm a nudist! Did that translate correctly?"
He was already checked out of the conversation and halfway through messaging Self-Help before she was even finished speaking. "…. Yeah. I think I get it now..."
"Who's Self-Help?" Oh right, he forgot he was kind of in the middle of a Toru-grade crashout. Lightly prodding her back with a few well placed elbows, Toji tried to think about how to say 'I made google if it was a guess engine instead of a search engine.'
"Self-Help isn't a person, it's that health app I said I was gonna make a while back and never got around to. I needed a bunch of actual information to feed it so it'd actually know what kind of advice to give, and then I kinda realized that between the bot I made to scrape the internet for legit info and the bot that was meant to read accurate information I was basically halfway towards making an AI content farm and doubled down on the idea."
For some reason that just made Toru side-eye his phone with a wide eyed grimace. "Jeez Toji, first the Wcdonalds obsession and now an AI? You're really living up your American roots, huh?"
Toji just clicked his tongue at that. "Rude. And it's not actually an AI. The thing is basically a chat bot with pattern recognition. I tried basing it off the human brain since our meat's pretty efficient and I'm stuck with a laptop, but it didn't really work out." Here's hoping his mail got here soon.
That actually managed to calm Toru down pretty quickly. "Oh, you're just playing around with a neural network! Dang it, Toji! Why'd you have to call it an AI and make my heart race? I thought my bank account was about to get liquidated to go buy car stocks!"
He only had one question to that… well, one question worth asking at least. "What the heck's a neural network?"
Oh look, the baffled look is back. Must've forgotten it's keys. "Uh… a neutral network is a computational model that's built to mimic how brains function. AKA, basically what you just said. I'm pretty sure they were mostly used for mass surveillance in the vigilante era."
Huh, no shit? "Dang, that's cool. The based off brains bit, I mean. Not the surveillance thing. I just based it off the brain because I can see how stupidly efficient at processing and power usage."
Toru just kept staring at his phone. "I'm pretty sure neural networks are infamous for being resource hogs."
"How do you even know all this stuff?" Slowly turning her head towards him like a rust-metal doll, Toru slowly smiled at him and fluttered those giant fluffy eyeball wipers she called 'eyelashes' at him.
"I go to computer science class. You know, that thing you're skipping because you're a cheaty cheater who cheats at life."
He just threw a hand in the air at that. "I'm not really sure what to say besides skill issue. Don't human brains only eat about a skull's worth of space and a light bulb's worth of electricity? I'm honestly embarrassed I even need to build a small server just to speed Self-Help up."
Toru let out a low hum as she squinted directly into his eyes. "You… you didn't base the AI off of your own brain, right? This whole convo is giving me 'fifteen minutes into a horror movie' vibes."
He just shook his head at that. "Nah, that one's basically impossible." For some reason diagnosis didn't work on himself unless he really pushed it, and usually all that did was cause a feedback loop of him watching his cortisol levels rise from the sight of how high they are.
Feeling his phone buzz in his hands, he looked back down at the screen as Toru turned on the TV with a sigh of relief and just kept chatting away to him.
Feeling something lightly prod at the side of his ribs, Toji quickly ripped his gaze away from his phone and looked to his side at Toru, who had somehow managed to turn his lap into a leg rest as she laid across the entire couch like an afghan hound.
"You doing alright? You kinda zoned out for a bit there." Ah, woops. Taking a quick peek at the TV, he noticed she was already about halfway through the first episode about the dozenth friggin show about Captain Superlander himself.
"Yeah, I'm good. Just got a bit distracted by something and missed the first bit. Mind giving me a run down on what the show's about?" And by 'what's it about' he actually meant 'what kind of villains is it about beating up', because this world's entertainment industry only knew how to make one type of show.
In other words, absolutely nothing had changed.
Passing his laptop to him without looking away from the TV, Toji decided to make the best of his situation and just laid it down across her legs. If a dollar store AI was his greatest invention, then the second greatest one would be the Toru-table.
"How have you never seen All Might: Liberation? It's sooooo good! They first started making it when he was still helping free Belgium-" What? "-But he saved the capital before they finished animating the first season so they made the entire second season a prequel about him returning to Japan."
That was enough to get Toji to slowly look up from his screen to stare at the cheery cartoon trying it's best to burn itself onto his TV's screen. "You're telling me they animated this show about him diffusing an active terror crisis… while he was diffusing the crisis?"
What the hell would they have done if All Might failed and the capital got blown up? Post a twitter apology? Maybe Toji was just missing something here, because this sort of sounded like making a feel-good movie based of the Space Shuttle Challenger and releasing it a day before launch.
At least Toru seemed to enjoy the thought. "Yes! Isn't that so… so… fuckin' based?!" Hearing Toru belt that of all things out in broken English wasn't on his bingo card for the day, but he'd take the free spot.
"Yeah, he's a real Giga-Chad. Literally. So do you want me to just try winging that friendship mechanic idea, or do you want to focus on bug-fixing first?"
Letting out a light hum to herself, Toru began to idly bounce her legs before he karate chopped his table back into compliance. "Hmm… how about bug mechanics first? There's a lot of em, but they're all pretty small so I guess it's more like a lottle. I think the biggest one I found is dead bodies counting as fertilizer after any percentage of decay. Blood also still counts as water, so if too many pibbles died the biome would changes into a swamp. You miiiiight also want to lower how much bonemeal babies drop. Also, I noticed that if you launch a cactus every pin becomes-"
Zoning out, Toji started to idly carve away at the game as Toru continued to switch between talking about the game and the show. It was a damn shame that Toru was the one wearing fuzzy pajamas and laying on the couch, because he could really go for a nap right about now.
… Why did Toji feel like he was forgetting something important?
"-and then All Might just laughed and whistled so hard the villain got sent flying through the- Oh! Hello there, Ms. Kayama!"
Slowly looking up from his laptop still balanced on Toru's legs, Toji stared into the eyes of his grinning mom as she stood in the living room doorway with a bag of groceries in one hand and her phone in the other.
He didn't need to listen to Nemuri speak to know the heckling from this moment was going to carry well into the next year.
AN:
Here's a very light chapter, mostly just trying to get back into the groove of writing. Sickness, heat waves, IRL shenanigans… May into June has not been good for the creative process, lol. Next chapter's already partially completed so hopefully I can get it out sooner rather than later.
At first I was going to end the chapter with a POV of Nemuri and Nezu talking, and then I realized it's been about a month, everything they were gonna talk about's already been established (or can be guessed), and the chapter's basically finished. Might as well ship it out.
Also I'm really awful with time scales for some reason so if you see any contradicting dates that's my bad.
Toji wasn't really sure when it happened, but he was pretty sure Toru stole his personal autonomy sometime in the past week or so. Considering the fact that it had already been getting strip-mined by both the hospital and Nemuri before then, that was a bit of a problem.
Time spent lounging by himself was now spent coding with Toru, time spent doing old granny calisthenics was now dedicated to pumping iron with Toru, and going by the fact that Nemuri was trying to set up some nepo-baby placement tests at the school she teaches at, there was a nonzero chance his education was about to get Toru'd as well.
In the daily life of Toji, every day was Toru day. Well adjusted people would probably call everything he just thought something lame like "having a social life" and "being invested in hobbies", but Toji knew the score. That invisible gremlin was shanghai'ing his entire life.
As Toji lounged on Nemuri's plush leather couch like an exotic pet, the only thought he could muster at that realization was 'Thank God.'
He knew better than to ever admit it out loud, but almost fifteen years of following along after his shithead of a brother like a shadow did not prepare him for solo-existence in the slightest. Was it healthy to immediately go all in on the first friendship he made with a loud bossy person? Well that bossy nutjob was Toru, so the answer was somehow yes.
Oh no, Toji latched onto a person like an abandoned bird and now he codes for a hobby and goes to the gym four times a week. What a nightmare.
Toji was pretty sure it only counted as codependency when it negatively affected your life, and he was pretty sure that Toru's… everything counted as a positive impact.
Hanging out with her sure as hell beat doomscrolling in a hospital bed. Despite acting like a coked out chimpmunk the only red flag Toru had shown so far was her absolute lack of respect for personal boundries… which sounded worse than it actually was.
It wasn't like she was sneaking into bathrooms or stealing his socks or any other degenerate behavior like that. Toru was just a bit touchy and kinda… had a thing with staring? He wasn't really sure if she even noticed she was doing it, and he was positive nobody else noticed it due to the whole invisibility thing she had going on, but in spite of Toru's parakeet color scheme she tended to give off an awful lot of vulture vibes.
Not that Toji could throw stones on that front. Apparently he gave off cat vibes of all things. He still wasn't sure how to unpack that time Nemuri said she wanted a son, but a cat was fine too while they were filling out the adoption paperwork.
*bzzzzzt* *bzzzzzt* *bzzzzzt*
Oh look, a distraction. Toji already knew exactly what the message was going to say before he checked it, but he was nothing if not a creature of habit.
Never mind, that wasn't a mailbox notification for the GPUs he ordered. Fat assed shame, too. He had been hoping to get that server rack finished sooner rather than later. It was getting a bit difficult to make an assistant bot and a video game with nothing but a laptop.
Also, he needed to rename that derpy bot to something besides Self-Help. That thing was only a help app for the first twelve hours of it's existence, and even that's pushing it.
*bzzzzzt* *bzzzzzt* *bzzzzzt*
Looking down at his phone again, Toji realized that he had zoned out long enough for… sigh, for Self-Help to send him another message string, this time from Toru.
Toru: lemme in!
Damn, no need to dump a bucket of purple prose paint over his head. Getting up from his spot on the sofa, Toji softly padded down the hall to the thick piece of wood protecting him from the feral animal that clawed at the other side.
"Toji! Toooooooji! Lemme in! I'm freezing my head, shoulders, knees and toes off out here!" Toji took his sweet time waddling up to the doorway. Toru had demanded enough mutual staring time for him to know her quirk was a bit of a thermal regulator. It was about as useful as a sweater, but hey… he guessed it was something?
Alright, maybe he should hurry and open the door. Speeding up slightly, he managed to penguin march to the front door and swing it open before she used it as a drum set, and whatever sarcastic remark he was ready to pelt at her for swinging by his place with no heads up got decommissioned after one glance at her.
"H-hey Toji! Mind if I use your bathroom? And like, a dozen towels? I'm kinda freezing my bits off out here!"
He just blinked at the sopping wet mess currently fidgeting back and forth on his now soaked welcome mat. "Toru, what the Hell? Did you trip over a fire hydrant or something? Why are you so freaking soaked?"
Toru just giggled at that through clattering teeth, her still dripping duffle bag. "O-oh, funny story. I was walking at the gym a-and-" Watching his friend sneeze like a self-allergic kitten while shivering on his doorstep, Toji realized that he should probably ask her about whatever went down after she stopped freezing her ass off in early December.
"You know what, how about you tell me after you dry off? I'd rather not have you drop dead of hypothermia." Not that she was that frozen over, but he doubted she felt good walking around with about 10lb of ice water sodden clothes hanging off her.
Stepping aside so he wasn't body blocking the doorway, Toji didn't even bother to look at her as he made his way back to his room to grab her something to wear… that probably wouldn't fit her in the slightest.
For some reason she just laughed at that through clattering teeth as she followed after him. "Jeez Toji. I'm not a fabric egg or whatever that saying is. It's like, at least seven degrees Celsius outside! I've handled way worse than that!"
Somehow that didn't make Toji feel any better about his friend shivering on his doorstep. "There's about a dozen or so towels on the top shelf in the bathroom, use as many as you like. I'm gonna go grab you some… I dunno. Pajamas? I'm not really sure if I have anything that'll fit you while your clothes dry off."
Toji tried not to wince as he watched Toru drop the absolutely sodden dufflebag stuffed with waterlogged clothes onto the hardwood floor with a disgustingly wet thud. "Eh, if nothing fits I could always just fall back on my quirk."
That managed to make him snort like a stalled chainsaw. "Toru, if my mom came home to find a nude poltergeist running around the house she would make it her life's mission to make me die of embarrassment."
"That just means we can be poltergeist together!" Pawing at his forehead like a crisis actor in an advil commercial, he could do nothing but sigh as he watched Toru rush off towards the bathroom.
Looking down at the duffle bag that was already well on it's way to turning his hallway into a bog, Toji couldn't even be fucked to ask for permission to touch her nasty swamp loot and unceremoniously shoved it into his kitchen sink before going off to dry up the mess.
How the hell was Toru this soaked? He was pretty sure she would've been less wet if someone shoved her in a pool. "Hey Toru! I know I said it as a joke earlier, but did you actually get blasted by a fire hydrant?"
"What? No! Some jerk with a water quirk got banned from our gym while I was working out and flooded the whole place. Everyone there got super soaked! I'm fine though! Just super cold! And pissed! Super pissed!"
Well, that's probably better than being sad at getting caught up in Aquaman having a fit at the gym. At least she got blasted with water and not lava? "Hey, you want me to cook some soup or something? I'm pretty sure you're supposed to eat something hot when you're cold."
Toru paused just long enough for him to know she was seriously considering taking her dollar store soup as a consolation prize. "… I've had enough liquids for the day!"
Eh, that's fair. Only a psycho would eat Campbell's after going to the gym. Standing up from his spot on the freshly dried floor, Toji tossed the small tree's worth of paper towels in the trash before moving on to step two.
It was time to give a neanderthal pants. For the crime of being a gym washout, she was getting the cookie monster pajamas.
Walking up to the bathroom door, Toji idly prodded the pile of soaking wet clothes sitting by the door with a huff as he knocked on it. "Yo, I've got some clothes that might fit you. Crack open the door a bit and I'll pass em to-" That was about as much as he was able to get out before Toru did what she did best and jumped over his personal boundaries like a knee-high gate at a Travis Scott concert.
Swinging the door wide open without a care in the freaking world, Toru let out a stray "Yoinkers!" and knicked the folded clothes out of his hands with a smile and began to flip them around in her hands like a doctor's office magazine. "OooOOOooOOOoooo!!! These are super soft! Thanks bestie!"
Blinking down at the smiling nudist that was halfway towards qualifying as a grimm's fairy tale monster, Toji just reached out and slowly closed the bathroom door on her, causing her to squeeze herself back into the bathroom with a click of the door handle closing.
"Toru, dude… what the fuck?" Listening to her chuckle through the door, Toji barely withstood the urge to thunk his head against it as he let out a groan. "Why are you so weird?"
She had the gall to laugh at that. "What? You've already seen my everything with your radioactive eye-sotopes. You gotta get climatized to my brand sooner or later, Toji!"
Thunking his head against the door, he let out the wettest, saddest sigh he could muster as he rubbed his head against the door. "Toru. Just because I know everything about your body doesn't mean I fuckin' know what it looks like!"
A few moments of silence passed between him and the door at that before Toru let out a muffled sound of realization through the wood. "… Oh! Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…. Woops! How was I supposed to know that?"
"Toru! I get TMI from knowing way too much about people's bodies when I look at them, I don't get freaking 3D models of their nude bodies downloaded into my brain. Did you seriously just spend the past couple months thinking I was just looking at you-"
Toji cut himself off with a startled backpedal as Toru slammed open the bathroom door with a wide smile, looking absolutely shameless as she stood there in
Putting her hands outwards, Toru struck several power ranger poses as she absolutely butchered several languages in a row. "Wah-lah! Viola! Tadah! How do I look?"
She looked like an ipad kid that walked the C- lap in gym glass. "Well you're dry and clothed, so I'd say you're looking your Sunday best."
"It's Saturday." Dude. "But thanks! Sorry for dropping by unannounced, but your place was closer than the train station was and I thought it'd be weird (and cold!) to ride the train while all soaked and sogged up!"
Toji just pawed at the side of his chin as he watched Toru lift up the metaphorical rug and shove literally everything that just happened under it. "Eh, don't worry about it. I'd rather have you lounging around my house than shivering on a metal tube. I'm assuming your phone got busted from the villain attack at the gym?"
God, it always felt so weird to call criminals and crashouts "villains", as if some guy robbing a gas station is on the same level as Dick Dastardly.
"Why would my phone be busted? It was just a few tidal waves of water." Right, he forgot that the tech wasn't actually stagnant and only looked like it came out when Will Smith was still popular. "But if you're offering to give me some super ultra-phone, then file me down for a please and thank you!"
Putting his palms together, Toji formed the universal sign for time out and the more localized sign for "hold the fuck up" before shaking his head. "Bzzzt! Nope. I'm already going all in on the assistant app and the game. If you want a super phone then the game's going on hold."
Grabbing at both sides of her flowing mane of hair, Toru tugged on both fistfuls and let out a low droning wail… that was completely ruined by her forgetting she needed to make a facial expression to go along with it.
"Noooooooooooo! You haven't even streamlined the flora update yet! Come on Toji, the pibbles just discovered drug culture! And not just drug culture, but drug sophistication!" He knew for a fact that Toru was exaggerating. The only thing those damn pibbles had were short-term tobacco profits and generational dust bowls.
Well too bad for Toru, because his infinite free time was currently getting dissected by a little something called obligations. "Sorry dude, I'm kinda busy studying for school. Guess the pibbles are stuck with dusty fields for another day."
Toru perked up the new conversation with both hands, abandoning the pibbles without a second thought. "Wait, you study? But you've been a neet since I met you!"
"… Dude, I'm pretty sure we've only known each other for about two months." Has it really been that long since he met her? Well… he met her about a week into October, and now it was about a week into December so… huh. "In fact, I'm pretty sure I've known you for exactly two months now."
It shouldn't have taken him seeing the look in her eyes to know that string of words was a mistake. "Ahhh! Two month platonic friendship anniversary! You know what you should do to celebrate? Code more Pitbull Prison Simulator! How about an, uhhhhh… friendship mechanic update!"
Should he even reward such a shameless grindset? Well he's an enabler and his alternative is studying ancient Japanese history, and as fun as it was soyfacing at his not-a-kindle every time he got to a Jujutsu Kaisen reference in his history book… he wouldn't actually say no to a distraction.
Idly twirling a stray lock of hair through his hand, Toji thought it over and… "You know what? Sure. The pibbles can learn that love can bloom, even on an opium field."
Toru pumped both fist into the air at that and let out a whoop and turned to frolic off towards the living room. "Yes! If the house always wins, then I'm the whole suburb!"
He just reached out and nabbed her before she could make a break for it. "You know, I just remembered that my kitchen sink is currently stuffed with a duffle bag full of your clothes that still need to be wrung out."
Watching Toru wilt like a well taken care of orchid, Toji moved towards the living room and kind of realized that… this whole situation was probably something he should text his mom about? Maybe? Toji genuinely had no clue if it was normal to text parents about random encounters like this.
Turning back towards the kitchen, Toji shouted over the sound of Toru's squelching laundry. "Hey Toru, do you tell your parents about all the weird shit that happens to you on the daily?"
She didn't even miss a beat with her response. "Only if I see em!"
Well, that's good enough for him. Pulling out his phone, Toji slowly drifted back towards the living room and shot a few texts to Nemuri just to let her know Toru was running amok around the house.
Toji: Heyy, Toru stopped by cuz the gym got turned into a swamp by some crackhead
Mom: Aww, is your buddy alright?
Toji: Yeah, just got soaked. Just thought I should say she was visiting
Mom: Hun, nobody likes a braggart
Toji: huh?
Toji: Nemuri?
Mom:
Toji: Nemuri
Mom:
Toji: MOM!
Mom:
Mom: dw, I know there's nothing going on with you
Toji: Well yeah, Toru's her own month
Mom: Yeah, that too
Toji: …idgi
Mom: And you never will
Toji:
Toji: btw is today a hero week or nah??
Toji: If it's a hero week I'll start slow cooking some kakuni
Mom: Aww, you don't gotta cook for your mom
Mom: Even if you're really good at it
Toji: I'm used to cooking for family, it's fine
Mom: Well as fine as it is, I'll be home in a little bit
Mom: I'm just talking to nezu about some stuff
Toji: Nice
Toji: Lemme know if you feel like cooking or if I can cook
Mom: I'm getting the feeling that you might want to cook some kakuni
Toji: Motherly intuition is scary!
Mom: If you want you can show me how to cook it when I get home?
Toji: Kakuni is like, 10% prep 90% crockpot magic. But yeah, we can cook it together. Sounds nice
Mom: Great! I'll be home soon! Love you!!!
Toji: See you soon. Love you too
Feeling the couch suddenly lurch from underneath him, Toji pivoted his head just to see it was only Toru throwing herself onto the other side of it.
"Alrightie, that's done! Now, onto the real important business… you're studying?" Well that was less of a question and more of a statement, but he got what she was trying to ask.
"Yeah, I'm studying basically everything besides languages, computer science, and world history at the moment. Me and Nemuri had a family discussion about what I wanted to do, education wise."
For some reason Toru just scrunched her eyebrows up at that. "Do you mean that as in she sat you down, told you it was time to study, and asked you what school you wanted to aim for?"
Oh look, here comes his turn to scrunch up his brow. "What? No. I mean she did sit me down and tell me it was time to get back on the saddle, but we talked over which classes I wanted to focus on first, which ones I already felt secure in, what kind of education I wanted…"
Should he even be talking about this conversation with Toru? This was kinda getting into real feelings territory.
Too bad for him, because she actually looked super invested in the current topic. "What do you mean by that? Like, what kind of college courses you were planning on taking?"
"I guess we talked about that when we went over higher education? I'm not really planning on going to one, but we floated a few I might be interested in down the line. I was more distracted over more immediate options."
Toru just nodded at that, halfway lost in thought. "Huh. You know, speaking of distracted... maaaaybe I shouldn't be distracting you with pibbles and programs!"
He couldn't help but chuckle at the absurdity that was Toru. "Seriously? You're not worried about flashing me but you'll start sweating if my grades start to slip? What are these cram school priorities?"
She couldn't even be bothered to pretend she ever felt a crumb of shame. Not that she'd do a very good job of it, her facial expressions were usually pretty hit or miss. "I regret nothing! Public decency is just a concept invented by the shame industry!"
Toji was starting to regret something. "Toru, dude… can you not? I'd rather not catch allegations, or worse, Nemuri's teasing."
Instead of saying 'Of course I'll stop running around naked.' like a member of society that's never had to wear an ankle bracelet, Toru instead chose the slightly more fringe path of laughing in his face.
"No can do, Toji! I'm gonna be a pro hero soon, and that means you seeing me in my work uniform is basically inevitable. And by work uniform I mean nude."
Toji wouldn't have been surprised if he had actual math calculations floating around his head as he connected the dots together. "But… if I can't see your suit, wouldn't I only see whatever's sticking out of the suit instead of through the suit?"
It was Toru's turn to get absolutely baffled by what he was saying. "What suit? Are you finally having a translation error? Uhh… how do I say this plainly? ...hmm…. My hero costume is I'm a nudist! Did that translate correctly?"
He was already checked out of the conversation and halfway through messaging Self-Help before she was even finished speaking. "…. Yeah. I think I get it now..."
"Who's Self-Help?" Oh right, he forgot he was kind of in the middle of a Toru-grade crashout. Lightly prodding her back with a few well placed elbows, Toji tried to think about how to say 'I made google if it was a guess engine instead of a search engine.'
"Self-Help isn't a person, it's that health app I said I was gonna make a while back and never got around to. I needed a bunch of actual information to feed it so it'd actually know what kind of advice to give, and then I kinda realized that between the bot I made to scrape the internet for legit info and the bot that was meant to read accurate information I was basically halfway towards making an AI content farm and doubled down on the idea."
For some reason that just made Toru side-eye his phone with a wide eyed grimace. "Jeez Toji, first the Wcdonalds obsession and now an AI? You're really living up your American roots, huh?"
Toji just clicked his tongue at that. "Rude. And it's not actually an AI. The thing is basically a chat bot with pattern recognition. I tried basing it off the human brain since our meat's pretty efficient and I'm stuck with a laptop, but it didn't really work out." Here's hoping his mail got here soon.
That actually managed to calm Toru down pretty quickly. "Oh, you're just playing around with a neural network! Dang it, Toji! Why'd you have to call it an AI and make my heart race? I thought my bank account was about to get liquidated to go buy car stocks!"
He only had one question to that… well, one question worth asking at least. "What the heck's a neural network?"
Oh look, the baffled look is back. Must've forgotten it's keys. "Uh… a neutral network is a computational model that's built to mimic how brains function. AKA, basically what you just said. I'm pretty sure they were mostly used for mass surveillance in the vigilante era."
Huh, no shit? "Dang, that's cool. The based off brains bit, I mean. Not the surveillance thing. I just based it off the brain because I can see how stupidly efficient at processing and power usage."
Toru just kept staring at his phone. "I'm pretty sure neural networks are infamous for being resource hogs."
"How do you even know all this stuff?" Slowly turning her head towards him like a rust-metal doll, Toru slowly smiled at him and fluttered those giant fluffy eyeball wipers she called 'eyelashes' at him.
"I go to computer science class. You know, that thing you're skipping because you're a cheaty cheater who cheats at life."
He just threw a hand in the air at that. "I'm not really sure what to say besides skill issue. Don't human brains only eat about a skull's worth of space and a light bulb's worth of electricity? I'm honestly embarrassed I even need to build a small server just to speed Self-Help up."
Toru let out a low hum as she squinted directly into his eyes. "You… you didn't base the AI off of your own brain, right? This whole convo is giving me 'fifteen minutes into a horror movie' vibes."
He just shook his head at that. "Nah, that one's basically impossible." For some reason diagnosis didn't work on himself unless he really pushed it, and usually all that did was cause a feedback loop of him watching his cortisol levels rise from the sight of how high they are.
Feeling his phone buzz in his hands, he looked back down at the screen as Toru turned on the TV with a sigh of relief and just kept chatting away to him.
Feeling something lightly prod at the side of his ribs, Toji quickly ripped his gaze away from his phone and looked to his side at Toru, who had somehow managed to turn his lap into a leg rest as she laid across the entire couch like an afghan hound.
"You doing alright? You kinda zoned out for a bit there." Ah, woops. Taking a quick peek at the TV, he noticed she was already about halfway through the first episode about the dozenth friggin show about Captain Superlander himself.
"Yeah, I'm good. Just got a bit distracted by something and missed the first bit. Mind giving me a run down on what the show's about?" And by 'what's it about' he actually meant 'what kind of villains is it about beating up', because this world's entertainment industry only knew how to make one type of show.
In other words, absolutely nothing had changed.
Passing his laptop to him without looking away from the TV, Toji decided to make the best of his situation and just laid it down across her legs. If a dollar store AI was his greatest invention, then the second greatest one would be the Toru-table.
"How have you never seen All Might: Liberation? It's sooooo good! They first started making it when he was still helping free Belgium-" What? "-But he saved the capital before they finished animating the first season so they made the entire second season a prequel about him returning to Japan."
That was enough to get Toji to slowly look up from his screen to stare at the cheery cartoon trying it's best to burn itself onto his TV's screen. "You're telling me they animated this show about him diffusing an active terror crisis… while he was diffusing the crisis?"
What the hell would they have done if All Might failed and the capital got blown up? Post a twitter apology? Maybe Toji was just missing something here, because this sort of sounded like making a feel-good movie based of the Space Shuttle Challenger and releasing it a day before launch.
At least Toru seemed to enjoy the thought. "Yes! Isn't that so… so… fuckin' based?!" Hearing Toru belt that of all things out in broken English wasn't on his bingo card for the day, but he'd take the free spot.
"Yeah, he's a real Giga-Chad. Literally. So do you want me to just try winging that friendship mechanic idea, or do you want to focus on bug-fixing first?"
Letting out a light hum to herself, Toru began to idly bounce her legs before he karate chopped his table back into compliance. "Hmm… how about bug mechanics first? There's a lot of em, but they're all pretty small so I guess it's more like a lottle. I think the biggest one I found is dead bodies counting as fertilizer after any percentage of decay. Blood also still counts as water, so if too many pibbles died the biome would changes into a swamp. You miiiiight also want to lower how much bonemeal babies drop. Also, I noticed that if you launch a cactus every pin becomes-"
Zoning out, Toji started to idly carve away at the game as Toru continued to switch between talking about the game and the show. It was a damn shame that Toru was the one wearing fuzzy pajamas and laying on the couch, because he could really go for a nap right about now.
… Why did Toji feel like he was forgetting something important?
"-and then All Might just laughed and whistled so hard the villain got sent flying through the- Oh! Hello there, Ms. Kayama!"
Slowly looking up from his laptop still balanced on Toru's legs, Toji stared into the eyes of his grinning mom as she stood in the living room doorway with a bag of groceries in one hand and her phone in the other.
He didn't need to listen to Nemuri speak to know the heckling from this moment was going to carry well into the next year.
AN:
Here's a very light chapter, mostly just trying to get back into the groove of writing. Sickness, heat waves, IRL shenanigans… May into June has not been good for the creative process, lol. Next chapter's already partially completed so hopefully I can get it out sooner rather than later.
At first I was going to end the chapter with a POV of Nemuri and Nezu talking, and then I realized it's been about a month, everything they were gonna talk about's already been established (or can be guessed), and the chapter's basically finished. Might as well ship it out.
Also I'm really awful with time scales for some reason so if you see any contradicting dates that's my bad.
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SiegfriedisPower
Calamity Demon King of Time
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I love JJK! I wish history was real and everything wasn't invented last Thursday.
Lumiere_DB
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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- Jan 31, 2022
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Thank you for the chapter.
MarcusDeGabriel
Connoisseur.
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I'll be honest, i'm still holding out hope he manages to accidentally seduce Nemuri.
krumpwoman69
Versed in the lewd.
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I'm fine either way. At least he won't get sent to the FriendZone (that's an actual location in Regular Show, you can get sent there if you're too afraid to confess your feelings and got no game)
MarcusDeGabriel
Connoisseur.
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- Aug 31, 2017
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Regular Show was great.