Chapter 33: Toganium

A/N: My bad, the Bronze Skill Gacha ticket was supposed to be a Random Bronze Gacha ticket

"Come on Hakari-kun! Pwease? Please just a bit more! It's so cute!"

My eyes twitched as I ignored the pleading Toga while we walked back home together.

"No Toga, I will not keep my tail out in public just so that you can play with it some more." It was embarrassing okay? I do not like being called cute.

I was cool. Not... cute.

"Pleeeaase! It's so emotive! It even wags Hakari! It wags." Toga stuck to me like glue while staring at me with stars in her eyes while I gave her the most offended look I could manage and scoffed.

"No."

"Pwease?" Toga pulled puppy eyes so hard I was surprised she wasn't bursting a blood vessel in her eyes.

No matter how cute she is I won't fold.

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I stared at the ceiling and contemplated my life as Toga sat next to me, playing with my tail and decorating it while giggling.

I folded.

I am a weak man. I folded. I couldn't even put up a proper resistance. It was pathetic. This is even worse than that time when the Black Nomu gave me a free skeleton adjustment.

When I said I was weak to pretty girls I meant it. And that applied especially hard when it was with Toga for some reason.

I never really got attached to people, well, I stopped after all the friends I made eventually got killed or changed by the Yakuza lifestyle. It started when both of my parents died, I stopped attaching myself to people to save myself the grief when they died.

But with Toga, I struggled to do so.

Even for me, it was hard to resist developing a bond with Toga. We lived together, slept together, ate together. She was always so non-judgemental, she always believed in me, and she kept staring at me with those adoring eyes that made me self-conscious.

Even a man like me whose emotions were carved from stone it was hard to keep my emotions locked down tight when getting blasted by over nine thousand watts of pure love daily.

So, I didn't mind her messing with my tail, she looked like she liked it a lot, as long as it makes her happy I suppose.

Plus, I was absorbing a lot of Toganiun like this for my rolls.

"Whoah! What is it Hakari-kun?" Using my tail I lifted Toga up and deposited her onto my lap without fuss from Toga, once she was in my lap I slung my body over her and cuddled her up to me and Toga immediately snuggled up to my body.

"I need to refill on my luck. Don't mind it." Toga simply tilted her head back and made eye contact with me before smiling at me and snuggling up more before taking my tail onto her lap and stroking it.

"Well, I don't mind, besides, you smell really nice recently Hakari-kun. Make sure to take all the luck you want~" I obliged, rubbing my face against her hair and rubbing her cheeks to fully fill up on my supply of Toganium.

All right, Gacha, you better give me a good roll for this bountiful Toganium harvest.

Bronze ticket, you go first. Make your papa proud.

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Rolling Bronze Gacha Ticket...

Rolling...

A Trash Ability!

[Trash - Bubbles]

[Rarity: Trash] [Class: Emitter]

Allows you to blow harmless soap bubbles from any part of your body.

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Huh.

I didn't even know they went that low.

What the fuck happened to my Toganium? Did the market crash!? No, that can't be, the Toga market doesn't go down in price, this is obviously my own fault.

I hugged Toga a little tighter as I rolled again. Give me your luck baby.

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Rolling Gold Gacha Ticket...

A Rare Perk!

[Rare - Shivers]

You feel the cold breeze raise the hairs on your neck. Tune into the world, listen to the whispers of the wind and hear what the city has to say.

You are supernaturally attuned to the world around you, sometimes the world around you speaks and you can hear its voice.

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Woah.

This feels weird, I suddenly feel incredibly aware of what's happening around me. I felt like I was suddenly very much part of the present. Deciding to try it out I closed my eyes and tried to just listen to the world around me.

Shiver.

I felt a cold breeze tickle my neck and send a shiver down my spine as I suddenly became hyper-aware, it felt like the world was telling me something.

[The cold breeze sends a chill down your neck. The city is peaceful, for now. Dark clouds remain far still, but they still loom overhead. Teens toss and turn excitedly in their beds, unable to stifle their excitement for the opportunity to prove themselves in the upcoming festival]

Woah.

That was weird. It felt like I became one with the city for a second there. It literally talked to me. That was rather good, I'm glad my Toganium stocks held out.

And man, I really am becoming an instincts monster. I already had good instincts before, now I also had Half-Light and Shivers. And not only that I could stack Danger Sense on top of those. Then lastly I could use Scary Monsters which gave me way better instincts.

At this point, my instincts bordered on straight-up pre-cognition.

Hmm, I wanna see just how good my reflexes and instincts are.

"Hey Toga, wanna try something with me? I promise it will be fun."

"Ooh~? What kind of fun~?"

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Bullshit.

"Bullshit."

"Yahoo! V for victory! I win Hakari-kun!"

Bullshit.

I looked at the screen blankly. Toga beat me. Me. The no-life guy. The one who is supposed to have incredible reflexes. In the game I used to play.

To give some backstory, after getting Scary Monsters I decided to search for the fighting game I played the most, JoJo's Bizzare Adventure Heritage for the Future, of course, it wasn't easy in the slightest to find a game made nearly three hundred damn years ago for this world.

I despaired at losing a piece of my childhood of crushing the dreams of my friends in the arcade playing JoJo before I thought about asking Nezu since he was so smart and all. And I was right.

Nezu apparently had a friend who had a brother who was a vintage console and game collector. He was able to get me the console and game cartridge delivered to me in 8 hours, he didn't even charge me or anything, he said it was the least he could do after the whole USJ debacle.

He was such a reliable and great dude. Anyway, I was very grateful to him since I now had an original copy of JoJo's Bizzare Adventure: Heritage for the Future and an archaic console to play it on.

And I wanted to play it with Toga both to introduce the game to her and to test my own reflexes but...

I lost.

Toga had crazy, and I mean crazy reaction time but more importantly hand to eye coordination. I went easy on her at first but she improved incredibly and eventually I started losing.

My instincts apparently didn't exactly help me with video games it seemed. Not only that but my body was still adapting to my instincts causing some weird delays.

I could react to a gunshot just by hearing the bang of the ammo and catch the bullet between my teeth but apparently not getting hit by the knife super in the game was too much.

Also of course Toga mained Dio. Cuz, y'know.

Vampires.

Well, even if I was getting beaten it was fine. Just playing with Toga was enjoyable and I was beyond getting angry at games at this point, I was zen, I was too mature to get angry at being beaten by a game I used to play often back in the day.

Just ignore the broken couch armrest.

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~The Day After~

My school uniform felt a little weird on me. It was kind of... tight, which was rather annoying for me. Which shouldn't have happened since I only got it a month ago but I knew the reason.

Well, it was the same reason why my hair had gone from barely beyond my shoulders to nearly reaching my waist.

Using Cellular Overdrive Stack had fucked up my body good, I didn't exactly age but my vitality had been very much spent. So my hair had grown the equivalent of several years in just a few minutes.

And after tearing my entire body in half and tearing literally every muscle fibre and then rebuilding it again and again had been a workout of my life. To put it shortly-

"Woah! Hakari-kun! You became massive! I mean you were muscular before but you were also kind of lankly now you just look like a beast. I like it~" Mina said while inspecting me from all angles, making me feel awkward. She was also accompanied by Toru and Toga as they hung around my desk.

Why had I decided to attend classes on this particular day despite having the privilege to skip them?

Well, you can blame Shivers for that. Before Toga and I went to sleep I felt a shiver go down my spine and felt that Aizawa was preparing a big announcement to the class. So I was doing classes now I guess.

I did have a pretty good idea about what Aizawa was going to announce the sports festival that was going to happen and I was actually hella excited about the existence of the Sports Festival.

For others, it was a chance to show off to the pro heroes.

For me, it was the Gacha Festival. A one-time event just begging me to steamroll all competition and snatch tickets from their hands. No matter who stood in my way I was ready to completely crush them without mercy.

More like I personally couldn't afford such things as mercy. The world had already changed and I was the center of those changes. All for One was after my ass and he wanted my ass badly. I may have defeated the black nomu but that was not a feat I could replicate.

If it was just a tiny bit smarter I would be dead. And soon enough that bastard was going to produce the evolution to those guys, or he could make another black nomu. What's to say he won't send more people after me? Hitmen? Assasin's? Villains?

The gloves were off the track of canon was derailed, anything and everything was on the table and I was nowhere near confident enough in my strength yet.

So, the goal was to score 1st place in every single event, sure it would bring attention to me but I don't care. This was war and I was not gonna pull punches. I would try to snowball as hard as possible.

"Toga-chan? Is he okay?" Toru worriedly pointed at me as I was still thinking to myself.

"Don't worry 'bout it. He just does that sometimes, he should come to us soon." Wait, what?

How long have I been thinking to myself for? Man, I keep losing myself in thought of how I could tear Afo's body apart and make him feel every second of it.

I have been having such thoughts a lot recently.

"Hey, I zoned out for a second what were you guys talking about?" But before Toga or any others could answer the door to the classroom flung open and a disgruntled teacher walked in prompting everyone to quickly shuffle to their seats.

"Alright, settle down everyone." He briefly sent a glance my way, I couldn't tell what he thought but there were a lot of complicated emotions in that one gaze alone.

"Oh, Hakari, you are here that's good, I'm glad you got out of the hospital sooner than expected." Some of the classmates sent awkward gazes at me, not knowing what exactly to think, after all not many of them had even seen the black nomu, they just knew shit went down and I was hospitalized.

"Anyway, soon you all are going to be fighting yet again." That sent shivers down the class's spines wondering if they were going to face villains again for some reason or yet another unexpected challenge but the next words out of Aizawa's mouth revealed what he really was talking about. For a guy with an I don't give a fuck attitude he sure had a flair for creating tension.

"The UA Sports Festival is drawing near."

Now that's what I like to hear.

A/N: I haven't written about Hakari and Toga fluff for a while and I missed writing it, I love their dynamic. As always the Toganium stocks are winning even if they did somehow give Hakari the elusive and rare Trash tier roll that I didn't think he would roll anytime soon. Truly the power of Toganium is unmatched.

With how many intuition and instinct abilities Hakari is getting it's almost like he is becoming a supernatural detective. Any more rolls like this and he will find AFO's hideout with a coin flip and a cigarette. At least now he has an "Important thing is happening" indicator which is nice.

Also, the plot starts moving forward, we are going to be entering the Sports Festival arc soon. Any ideas? Your comments help inspire and motivate me to write more. 

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