Disclaimer: We love Totoro! Yup, that's about it. Don't own Sweep or Totoro. As if that wasn't obvious. To warn anyone who hasn't seen the Japanese movie My Neighbor Totoro, this won't make much sense, but does anything we write make sense? Nooo … oh, and by the way, the story is really fun if you think of everyone as anime characters. If you want to know more about Totoro, visit www dot Totoro dot org. Sorry, it doesn't let me post web addresses. Anyhoo, read and review if we haven't scared you away!

Hunter's Neighbor Totoro

(Scene: Hunter's house. Hunter is outside planting acorns in the ground.)

HUNTER: Choo-choo! Chug a chug a chug! (Sky pokes her head out of an upstairs window)

SKY: Hunter, I told you to be quiet! I can't work if you're being so loud out there! (Hunter looks confused)

HUNTER: What are you working on?

SKY: Tax returns.

HUNTER: What are those?

SKY: (sighs) What are you even doing?

HUNTER: I'm planting acorns.

SKY: Why are you making train noises?

HUNTER: I like trains. And cat buses.

SKY: I should have never gotten you that picture book.

(she disappears again. Hunter hums to himself)

HUNTER: Doo doo doo doo doo doo … doo doo doo doo doo doo … (pause) Wait, what am I singing? I don't know, but it sounds cool!

MORGAN: Hey, Hunter, what's up?

HUNTER: I'm planting acorns! Want to help?

MORGAN: (pause) Not really.

HUNTER: Oh. So what do you want to do?

MORGAN: I don't know. Want to see a movie?

HUNTER: Ug, no. Movies are for kids. You want to see something really cool?

MORGAN: What?

HUNTER: My picture book! (pulls out a picture book) It has dust bunnies and totoros in it!

MORGAN: Dust bunnies and who whats?

HUNTER: Totoros! They're big and fuzzy and nice and they have spinny tops and they fly on trees and they have cat buses and they like acorns and they visit bus stops when it's raining and they plant trees and make them grow really, really big … and … and … (coughs and trails off uncomfortably)

MORGAN: I'm going home.

HUNTER: But, Morgan, wait! (Morgan leaves) I'll prove you wrong! Totoros are real! (sniffs) They are real.

(Scene: Hunter's house later at night. He is tired from searching all day for Totoro and has fallen asleep in bed with his Totoro stuffed animal.)

HUNTER: (murmuring in his sleep) Totoro … wait, I want to play with you … we can go flying on the spinning top … (he wakes up suddenly as he hears a noise outside) Wait … (he looks out his window and sees a Totoro in the backyard, hopping up and down over his acorn garden) TOTORO! (gives a squeal and jumps out of bed, tangling himself in the bedsheets and falling flat on his face) Ouch. (he jumps out of the window and lands in Sky's rosebush) Ow …

TOTORO: (helps him up with his fuzziness) (A/N: We love Totoro!)

HUNTER: (too awed to speak) (eyes widen) Are … are you Totoro?

TOTORO: (blinks) (roars)

HUNTER: (pause) Yay! Totoro! It is you! (Totoro roars again) (Hunter yells)

SKY: (from upstairs) HUNTER, SHUT UP!

HUNTER: Sorry, Sky. Totoro is out here! Come see him! (a flowerpot comes flying out of the window at Hunter's head. Sky goes back to bed. Totoro catches the flowerpot and sets it on the ground. It begins to spin) Ooh, can we go flying?

TOTORO: (roars)

CHIBI TOTORO / CHU TOTORO: (grab onto his tummy)

HUNTER: (gives a squeal of happiness and grabs onto his tummy too)

(Totoro jumps onto the spinning flowerpot and they zoom away past the trees)

HUNTER: This is so much better than flying on an airplane!

(Scene: Morgan's house at night. She is lying in bed awake because she feels so guilty about being mean to Hunter.)

MORGAN: I feel so guilty about being mean to Hunter! I should make it up to him somehow. (she walks down to the kitchen and rummages through the refrigerator) Well, the only thing we have is this ear of corn. (examines it) Yes, this will do just fine.

(she picks up the corn and leaves. Unfortunately, she forgets the way to Hunter's house and wanders around town aimlessly)

(Scene: a treetop in a forest. Hunter, Totoro, and the mini-Totoros are playing magical musical flutes.)

HUNTER: Once more, with feeling! (they keep playing into the wee hours of the morning)

(Scene: a street in Widow's Vale at seven in the morning. Morgan is walking down it with the corn. She goes into a 24-hour convenience store.)

MORGAN: Do you know the way to Hunter's house?

CLERK: Um … who's Hunter?

MORGAN: My boyfriend.

CLERK: Who are you?

MORGAN: I'm Morgan. Who are you?

CLERK: Look, do you want our money? Because store policy is –

MORGAN: You're no help. (blows up the clerk with witch fire and walks out, still clutching her ear of corn)

(Scene: Hunter's house the next morning. He hops excitedly into the kitchen, where Sky is making tea.)

HUNTER: Oh, my Goddess, Sky! You will not believe what happened to me last night!

SKY: You woke me up.

HUNTER: Well, yes, but something else happened, too! Something amazing!

SKY: (deadpan) Oh, I care so much.

HUNTER: (excitedly) I saw Totoro!

(pause)

SKY: I'm going back to bed.

(she leaves. Hunter looks depressed)

HUNTER: It really happened … didn't it?

(he spends the rest of the day in careful pondering of the previous night's events.)

AUTHOR #2: Wow, he's actually thinking.

AUTHOR #1: Sometimes I feel bad for the guy.

AUTHOR #2: WHY?

AUTHOR #1: I don't know. We just make fun of him a lot.

AUTHOR #2: That's true.

AUTHOR #1: Hey, let's go. Hey, let's go.

AUTHOR #2: I'm happy as can be.

AUTHOR #1: Let's go walking, you and me!

AUTHOR #2: Ready, set, come on, let's go!

(they go walking)

(Hunter waits in bed eagerly, staring out the window for Totoro. Totoro doesn't come that night. Hunter stays up all night waiting … alone …)

HUNTER: I don't understand it! Where could he be?

SKY: Maybe the whole thing was a figment of your imagination.

HUNTER: Or maybe it wasn't! WHAT THEN?

SKY: All I'm saying is that maybe it was a dream.

HUNTER: It wasn't! When I woke up, there were acorns in my pocket!

SKY: You were planting them before. They're all over the house! Of course there are acorns in your pockets! There are acorns in my pockets!

HUNTER: Did you see Totoro too!

SKY: (smacks him upside the head and leaves)

HUNTER: (droops sadly)

(later that evening, he is sitting sadly in the backyard, waiting for Totoro to come back. Suddenly, a noise sounds from far away. Hunter looks up eagerly. He hears a sort of meowing noise and, a second later, a cat shaped like a bus appears. Lindsey and Kristin step out of it)

HUNTER: (faints)

LINDSEY: Ennervate. (Hunter wakes up)

HUNTER: What are you guys doing here? And … in that thing?

KRISTIN: This is Totoro's bus. We came looking for you.

HUNTER: You know Totoro!

LINDSEY: Of course we know Totoro. He's one of our best friends. But we've got bad news, Hunter. He's been kidnapped.

HUNTER: What? Who would want to kidnap Totoro?

KRISTIN: An evil scientist? Some crazed psychopath? Aliens? Karl Rove? Who knows? All I know is that he's missing and we can't find him anywhere! We need your help.

HUNTER: Why me?

LINDSEY: You're the only other one who can see him. You have to be young to be able to see him.

HUNTER: But I'm eighteen.

LINDSEY: (amends) Or be young at heart. Us, we're just special.

KRISTIN: True, true.

HUNTER: All right. Let's go find Totoro!

(they hop inside the cat bus and plop down on the fuzzy seats)

CAT BUS: Next stop: Totoro! (meows and takes off)

(Scene: a park in Widow's Vale. Morgan still has her ear of corn.)

MORGAN: (to a random person) Have you seen Hunter?

PERSON: No.

MORGAN: (to another random person) Do you know Hunter?

OTHER PERSON: Who's Hunter?

MORGAN: (starts to cry) Hunter, where are you? I can't remember where you live! It must have been that bad soup I ate the other day …

(Scene: the cat bus. It arrives on a deserted island after skipping like a stone across the Pacific Ocean.)

HUNTER: Where are we?

LINDSEY: The island of Umpapa-Maomao. This is where the ransom note was addressed from.

HUNTER: There was a ransom note? Let me see it. (Lindsey hands him the paper) "Come to the island of Umpapa-Maomao. Bring the dork who works for the council. If you want to see Totoro alive again, also bring ten pounds Starbursts. I will be waiting. – Cal." (Hunter does a double take) CAL?

KRISTIN: We have reason to believe that he is holding Totoro hostage.

HUNTER: But he's dead!

LINDSEY: That's never stopped anybody before.

KRISTIN: Haven't you seen any horror films? The ghosts always come back in the sequel and take their vengeance!

HUNTER: Oh. Well, how do we rescue Totoro if we can't defeat the villain?

KRISTIN: Bargain?

LINDSEY: I like barter economies! They work much better than money. Considering … I never … have any … Anyway …

KRISTIN: Let's move into attack position! (they run off, leaving Hunter alone)

HUNTER: But … but what do I do? (silence) (Hunter is alone) I'm scared! What am I supposed to do?

(Lindsey and Kristin grab Hunter from behind and shove him to the front door of Cal's secret lair, which says "Cal's Secret Lair" on the door)

HUNTER: Why is it shaped like a bunny rabbit?

(they use Hunter as a battering ram to break down the front door)

CAL: Hunter!

HUNTER: Cal!

(they exchange mean looks)

KRISTIN: Look! It's Totoro! (he is trapped in a cage. He roars)

LINDSEY: Don't worry, buddy, we'll get you out of this.

CAL: Did you bring the Starbursts?

LINDSEY: You fiend! We'll never give you Starbursts! (they go ninja on the cage and free Totoro)

CAL: They don't make those like they used to.

KRISTIN: You'd better never bother us again, Cal. Otherwise … we'll tell your MOMMY!

CAL: No! Please don't tell her! She didn't want me to leave the netherworld in the first place! She wants to take over that world first before trying again on earth!

SELENE: (gives ghostly bellow) CAL, THAT WAS A SECRET!

CAL: Oops. (disappears)

LINDSEY: That was strangely easy. Let's just get home. (they go outside to see that the cat bus has disappeared) I wonder where it went.

KRISTIN: I heard it say something about "Next stop: PETsMART."

HUNTER: (receives a witch message from Sky)

SKY: Hunter, everyone is worried sick! We can't find Morgan anywhere! She disappeared sometime a few days ago! We don't know where she is!

HUNTER: Oh, no! What will I do?

TOTORO: (roars)

(the cat bus appears again. Hunter gets on it)

CAT BUS: Next stop: stupid girlfriend! (the others get on and the bus heads back to New York)

HUNTER: Wait, I've been wondering: can other people see the bus?

LINDSEY: Nope. It's our own special invisible transport.

KRISTIN: Of course, they can see us.

HUNTER: Huh. That must look really weird.

RANDOM TOWNSPEOPLE IN IOWA: (stare as three sitting people zoom by suspended in the air)

FARMER BOB: I gotta get me another drink.

RANDOM TOWNSPEOPLE IN MICHIGAN: (stare as three sitting people zoom by suspended in the air)

MARY SUE: Are we seeing things?

BILL GEORGE: At least we're not Ohio.

(they finally find Morgan in New Jersey)

MORGAN: Hunter! Um … what are you doing? (Hunter is still in the cat bus. To Morgan, it appears that he is suspended in midair in a sitting position)

HUNTER: Oh, yeah, the bus. (he gets off and walks around the bus, or, to Morgan, seemingly empty space) I'm so glad I found you!

MORGAN: I forgot where you lived. I wanted to apologize to you, so I brought you this corn. (holds it out)

HUNTER: Mmm, I love corn! (eats it in one bite) (gets food poisoning from the rotten corn and dies)

MORGAN: Wait! Why did he die?

KRISTIN: You were wandering around in the hot sun with an ear of corn for three days. Of course the corn went rotten.

MORGAN: Well, that's depressing. So what are you guys sitting on?

KRISTIN / LINDSEY: (exchange looks)

TOTORO: (roars)

(they take off, leaving Morgan alone)

MORGAN: This seems to happen to me a lot. Wait, where am I? … Crap.

LINDSEY: (singing) Totoro, Totoro … Totoro, Totoro …

KRISTIN: (singing) You only see him when you're very young. A magical adventure for you … it's magic for you!

TONARI NO TOTORO

A/N: Sorry for the weirdness of this story. Like we said, if you've never seen My Neighbor Totoro, it won't make much sense to you. By the way, go see that movie! It's awesome! Totoro rocks our socks! Remember: Love. Cookies. Friends. Totoro.

"Your overconfidence is your weakness."

- Luke Skywalker

"Your faith in your pants is yours."

- Emperor Palpatine