Natasha came home to her apartment to find it in ruins: deep gashes and holes in the couch, the chairs, the walls.... the table was laying on the floor legless, somehow. Tofu was sitting on the chair and her boys were on the couch. All three of them were staring straight ahead, wordlessly. A full minute passed, and it seemed like the social baton of initiating conversation was passed to her.

"Tofu.... what happened here?"

"Hello Natasha. Your children wanted to see my knife collection, so I showed them."

".... you did all this? Why?"

"They asked why I had so many knives, and I explained that it was necessary. They did not believe me when I said I can use all of them at the same time, their exact words being 'nuh uh' and 'show us' I believe."

Her kids took this as their cue to put their two cents in: "He was so cool." "... so cool."

This was NOT what Natasha was expecting when getting a babysitter. But as they say, sometimes you don't get what you want.

"Tofu.... this..", Natasha struggled and failed with keeping her voice and emotions calm, "THIS IS GREAT!!!"

"I got the job at Neo Target. I'm quitting my other gig, and my kids are now your kids. Congratulations, you're a dad now. I'm outta this joint." Natasha turned around and left to join another webnovel with less weirdos in it, hopefully.

Tofu blinked at the awkward moment. None of his simulations were prepared for this outcome, and decided to break the ice by getting the important stuff out of the way with his new sons as early as possible. He looked at the kids.

"So, what do we do now?"

"I don't know." "...know."

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Tofu tried to figure something out using his robot brain, but no matter how much he tried and tried, he couldn't figure out where to take things from here.

He looked up many articles on how to be a 'dad' on his phone. There were many 'listicles' and essays on the topic, but most of the information contained within was objectively nonsense that even a robot like Tofu could tell was bullshit right away.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The sum total of usable information was 'try to provide them a path forward in life' and 'try to not traumatize them too badly.' The last one Tofu took to heart, as he had been paying extra attention to human psychology as Nicole's mental hangups put that tasty dish at a distressingly high risk of termination.

In fact, Tofu's psychological expertise had come across a revelation a few minutes ago: the Mikey unit wants to mate with the one called Cindy. Yeah! I bet you didn't know that one did you, you human-watching amateurs!

Tofu's belly rumbled. All this heavy thinking really drained his reserves.

It did give him a kickstart to his first family outing, though.

"Vanguard, Echo, it's time for dinner.

"My name's Timmy!" "..nny."

"No one knows what your names are! It's been over a year!"

Tofu coughed as he tried to get back into character.

"It's dinnertime."

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Being a rational being, Tofu made sure to horde as much money as possible. After all, a dollar wasted today was a hotdog lost tomorrow.

So, take-out it was.

The kids toddled behind him like ducklings, as they walked the streets. Eventually, he found a good alleyway.

"Wait here."

He grabbed a homeless-looking man, and pulled him behind a dumpster. Agonizing screams could be heard as Tofu slurped the meat off his bones.

Tofu made sure to save an appropriate amount of flesh to save for his children, he wasn't a monster. Feeding them raw meat at this time seemed a bit premature; they would have to either work up to it, or have their brains replaced with a computer first. So Tofu pulled out one of his utility knives, this particular one was extra broad. This was his hobo-frying knife, which he used to cook meat when going vegan (Tofu thought he was using that word correctly. He was not.) got stale.

He quick-cooked the slices using a butane torch, and carefully placed them into lunch boxes he had packed along for this purpose.

He came out from behind the dumpster, and handed each boy a box each.

"Fried pork cutlets. They're delicious."

And when little Voltran and Starscream, I mean Vanguard and Echo, put those slices of tasty hobo flesh into their mouths, they could only nod and agree.