if i think i can figure things out, is that curiosity or arrogance?

In preparation for his portal tomorrow morning, Topher was cleaning his room -- no. Topher was organizing his room, and it was turning out to be a surprisingly horrifying process.

The thing was that he was, on the surface, a very neat person. His clean clothes were always folded because that's how the dry-cleaners left them and there was rarely visible stuff on the floor of his side of the room besides wires. However, that was only because all of the stuff that was on the floor inevitably got shoved under his desk or bed or into his closet so he wouldn't have to see it all the time. Having a mess was fine, but having to look at it was quite another. No, thank you.

Unfortunately, packing for the summer meant that he finally did have to deal with this mess, which led to situations like, for instance, Topher crouching beside his bed, squinting at the mess underneath it, and asking aloud, "Is that a shirt or a possum?"

He wasn't a hundred percent sure, and it was a rather alarming concern to have, so to avoid having to go near the maybe-possum, Topher decided to abandon his half-packed bags for right now and perch himself on top of his desk with his laptop in his lap, where he began modifying Broca II's code so that he could go check it out. Robot dogs were useful that way.

[[open door, open post! probably his last on-island dorm post until fall.]]

Okay, fine, the subject heading was a lie. It was pretty much afternoon by the time Topher opened his eyes, blinked rapidly, stared at the ceiling, and pulled his blankets tight around him.

"I'm never getting up," he announced in a barely-coherent mumble, and then he rolled onto his side and dozed off again.

For the record, he kept his word for an hour and forty-five minutes. Then he got out of bed for long enough to stand up, open the door as if considering going into the hall, and then return to sit on his bed with the door cracked open. Baby steps.

[[door cracked, post open!]]

So for Topher, today had been noteworthy due to a variety of circumstances, the most obvious of which being:

1.) His best friend was apparently a world-famous political blogger who'd saved a whole bunch of kids' lives
2.) Said best friend had just been forced to go into hiding to avoid being killed by a Belgian psychopath
3.) Topher's room was still full of paint fumes, and
4.) It was his sixteenth birthday.

As a result of all of that, plus the portal-lag that came from the round-trip excursion to Peter's universe, Topher was just a little bit exhausted by the time he got back to his room in the evening. Too exhausted, in fact, to indulge in his usual birthday tradition of a cupcake and a couple rounds of laser tag at the nearest arena. So instead, by the time he got to his room, he flopped down on his bed to try to repress concerns about Peter by playing Tetris on his phone.

At least he was kicking ass at it, so, you know, there was that.

[[open! billy | dave | kenzi | ben ]]

Upon finally returning to his room after a five-day vacation, item one on Topher's agenda was to stand on the inside of the door and just have a moment of dorkish glee. He'd been on a whole other planet! And it was awesome! And he'd gotten bitten by a weird giant bug thing and seen mostly-naked girls and half-naked Ben and Ender and almost crashed Ben's speeder, but it was all on another planet so it was awesome!

Once that was taken care of, he composed himself (though he still looked a little overenthusiastic) and started unpacking. He set Kenzi's present on the dresser, tossed his clothes and the stupid, stupid poncho into their rightful places on the floor, and then shoved his luggage under his bed.

And then his room was neatly in order (you know, if you were Topher), which left him to flop down on his bed and grab his laptop.

( After almost having gotten Peter into trouble this weekend, he felt like he should look at a few things... )

[[Door is cracked, post is open. Spybots and stuff under the cut NFB, and obviously done with the permission of the marvelous lockestheway.]]

Fact: Research sucked.

But here Topher was, doing it anyway. Because Peter had told him to, and that was enough, most of the time, to get him to do things. Sad but true.

And... maybe Topher was a little bit more inclined to do as Peter said this week in particular for another reason too. Which would be the need to appease him in light of the terrifying possibility that maybe, just maybe, Karla had blabbed the contents of their conversation the other day and now Peter wanted to kill him and get a new tech person and not be his friend anymore and and and --

Anyway.

Researching.

It was hard, with the siren call of meta for Skyrim beckoning to him, but Topher was managing.

[[open door, open post]]

It wasn't like Topher was writing fanfiction about one of his best friends or anything.
 
At all. Because that would be wrong.

It was just that, well, said best friend (shut up, he totally was his best friend) happened to be a superhero. A superhero with, as it turned out, an exceptionally devoted online fanbase. Who had… ideas. And something called a kinkmeme.

And some of them were just stupid. Like the one about the tentacles. Or the one with the… what was it called? Sailor fuku? Please. Tony would never wear something like that. He'd even said so. These people clearly didn't know him at all.
 
So, naturally, he had to retaliate. Retaliate in the form of a novel-length RPS story of his own, in which a high-school-aged Iron Man fell for a science-minded classmate named Chris Strink.
 
Take that, apepperpot.

[[omg blame hoorayimrich. open to artificial intelligence thingies, comments on his masterpiece, visitors, IMs, whatever you want.]]

In contrast to the past few days, Topher and Kenzi's room was now meticulously clean. This was because many of Topher's robots and wires and such had been thrown away and/or destroyed. KENZI.

There was, however, a fairly complex chain of wires attached to the TV, and three video game controllers set out on the floor. And there was a T-shirted Kenzi in the tub, a pajama-clad Topher who had dragged his mattress onto the floor in front of the TV, and a zombie-killing game on the screen.

Peter was sure to love this arrangement!

[[For the evil overlord and lady! Kenzi modded with permission. Up early for timezones!]]

For the first time since that time last week in Tony's room, Topher woke up naked.

Which... was the least of his problems once his memories flooded back. Tony. Ben. Nate. All of the anonymous "clients" from his past. It was completely horrifying, and the memory alone gave him what appeared to be a nervous tic of the neck spasm variety.

He didn't think he'd actually... followed through. He remembered flirting and -- oh god, KISSING, but then it got fuzzy and he remembered things like Kotex and Bounty. Did that mean he had... used those things? That didn't seem to make sense. But that hardly mattered, did it, when he had DONE THINGS! Things with -- guys!

"Oh, god," he muttered. "I was in love with Tony!"

Yeah, he was going to hide in bed today. ALONE.

[[OOC: Door is closed, post is open. I'm actually moving today, holycrapwtf, so expect extreeeeme SP.]]