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Chapter Text

There was once upon a time a puppet that lay sleeping upon a train. Where that puppet came from and what that puppet set out to do, somewhat of his own volition but moreso out of a lack of anything better to do and the goading of a pretty blue butterfly (because, as we all know, there are few better reasons to take up arms and lay waste to the countryside than the goading of a pretty anything or anyone) are the subject of this tale, and while many may tell you that there is nothing but frivolous lies contained herein, let me say, dear reader, that those people are the type to rail and rally and whine about how one thing is not like another wholly different thing, and to claim that in one thing being different, it is thus completely lacking and bad, ignoring, wholesale, their own personal lack of ability.

That out of the way, the puppet found himself as we all oft find ourselves, asleep in a chair, until a pretty blue butterfly flew towards him and spoke.

“Can you hear me?” the butterfly beseeched. “Geppetto’s puppet...we need your help.” With that the butterfly vanished into his chest, as butterflies are wont to do.

P clenched his big metal fist as is custom and awoke with a start. “Who is there? Who is talking to me?” He looked around and saw no one, and threw his hands up in the air with great consternation. “Oh, woe is me! I have awoken to a pretty voice and find no one, utterly no one! I am alone on this train, surely, so why did I believe I heard a voice? It must be some trick, some hooligan-inspired plot to lessen the rest I so dearly need!” And so P sat right back down and proceeded to close his eyes, hoping to catch the one who dared wake him unawares.

“Please, we need—” the voice started again and P rose with a great spectacle and began thrashing about with his metal arm, smashing the train compartment he was in.

But when his wrath subsided and he still saw no one, he lamented again, throwing himself upon the ground and slamming his arms and legs upon it in a great and temperamental tantrum. “Oh, how cruel fate is! How wicked! To again interrupt my rest with the voices of angels never glimpsed!”

“P, I am with you, though you cannot see me,” the gentle voice said, and P stood upright off the ground like an acrobat of middling renown and known mostly for drunkeness, teetering off to the side and crashing against the wall like a sack of flour that has had the flour replaced with gears and metal beams and half an ox.

“Help, someone!” P called out. “I am being haunted by a pretty voice that hates sleep!”

“I do not hate sleep,” the voice insisted, still gentle and patient, proving how angelic the speaker must truly be, to be able to put up with one such as P for even half this long. “But I need your help. Your strength is needed to save us. To save me. Please…”

“Very well, if I am to be haunted by voices inside my head, then clearly the only sensible thing to do is to listen to those voices and whatever guidance they may give me! So tell me, dear voices within me,” P said, waving his hands in an amicable manner as if talking to someone far less insane on the street, likely before beating them senseless, “What shall I do to aid you? Shall I sing a tune or throw rocks at birds?”

“...please do not throw rocks at birds,” the voice said, but P merely shook his head.

“Ah, this is a trick, surely! Never has a voice inside someone’s head told them not to throw rocks at birds! Very well, I shall gather up many things to throw and find many birds to throw them at! Or perhaps one very unlucky bird…” With that being said, P walked further along in the train and happened upon a lamp.

“Gemini will restart soon,” the lamp said, as lamps are wont to do.

“AHHH!” P shouted, terrified, and began bashing the lamp upon every surface in reach. “AHHHH!”

“P, stop! That’s Gemini! He’s a friend!” the gentle voice beseeched, and P stopped for a moment, ever so confused.

“You have named a lamp and call it your friend? Truly, it is not I, the one with the voices in my head, who is mad, but the voices in my head who are mad!”

“Never mind all that!” the voice said, and P had the inkling that the voice might finally be growing a bit impatient with him. “You’re in danger! Please, keep moving, and keep Gemini close!”

“I won’t! I won’t do it! I won’t, mean voice inside my head! First you wake me up and tell me you’re in danger, then you tell me that this lamp is a friend, and that his name is Gemini, and now you tell me I’m in danger! Everything you speak of is danger and doom, and I am going back to bed!” And so P walked all the way back to the chair, though he did still have Gemini, because he had become very curious as to how exactly this lamp came to have a name, although it was then that he remembered that Gemini had very clearly spoken to him. “You, Gemini, what do you make of all this?”

“Gemini will restart soon,” Gemini said, indicating that he will restart soon.

“How soon is soon? And what do you mean by restart?”

The gentle voice of the butterfly came again in P’s head. “P, I am very sorry. I must have startled you. Please, won’t you come help me? You’re the only one who can.”

“I should think very much not! I am just a boy, and true, I am a very handsome boy with a very metal arm, and surely all the other boys would love to play with me quite handily, and perhaps the girls as well! And the men and women will all line up and say what a marvel I am, to be so handsome and strong and to have an arm made of so much metal! But still, surely there are others who are less popular than I, who will have the time to rescue the voices in their head. And besides, if the voice in my head needs help, I need only help my own head, for that is where the voice is!” Feeling very proud of his incredible logic and the great strides he took in human ingenuity to get to precisely where he is at this moment, P sat upon the chair and began to sleep at once, very satisfied with himself.

“I won’t let you sleep,” the voice said, now gaining a mischievous tone. “But if you insist that you’re too busy being handsome to be of any use, then perhaps I’ll call on someone more useful and even more handsome, and he’ll ride in gallantly to save me and the others, and people will speak of him for ages, writing tales and singing songs of his great exploits, and he shall be known the world round as the boy who is more useful than P and even more handsome, and P won’t be able to deny it, because P will be too busy being asleep and doing nothing!”

“What?” P stood up in a great fury and began beating the crap out of the entire train compartment as he had done before, his great metal arm bashing and crashing something fierce against the poor walls of the train. “How dare you voice in my head! I shall show you! I shall be the most useful, most handsomest boy that ever did have voices in his head and a lamp named Gemini!”

“Prove it then, and leave the train!” the voice said, and P, never one to not fall for a trick aimed at his pride and arrogance, started charging out of the train in a great rage, but the voice came again before he had fully left. “Wait! There are tools here. See if you can find something useful.”

“Pah! Useful tools!” P put a finger to his chest with great pride and an arrogant smirk. “I am the most useful and the most tool there is!”

“Still, look! There are things here you may find use for! The streets are dangerous, at least take a weapon!” the voice insisted.

P glanced down at the table before him and found an assortment of weapons, and thinking himself very clever, he took all the weapons on the table, from the rapier to the curved sword to the greatsword, and, making himself look rather ridiculous, he wrapped rope around it all so that he was able to wield them all at once with only both of his hands!

The voice came again as P was marveling over his incredible ingenuity. “My name is Sophia. You must make it to Hotel Krat! Please Gemini, guide him there.”

“Hotel Krat?” P said, and for a moment some flicker of recognition hit his mind, but it was soon gone in the boyish bloodlust that filled him as he raised his abomination of a weapon aloft. “Ah, do not worry voices in my head! I shall take these weapons into the streets and make my way to where you tell me, leaving none alive! Haha, yippee!”

And so P set out, and it was almost at once that he found a policeman puppet holding aloft a little stop sign.

“You there!” P said to the puppet, holding his weapon at the ready. “Don’t you dare tell me to stop! I am P, and I have voices in my head!”

The puppet, seemingly not caring at all about P or the voices in his head, stood and raised his sign, and seeing the word ‘stop’ on the sign sent P into a rage, and he began to beat the police puppet senseless using his abomination of a weapon, until such a time that the police puppet was no longer consisting of life pulse. But P had ruined his weapon, which in truth was not terribly well-made, lashed together with rope as it was, and seeing the three perfectly functional weapons now separated made P fall into a deep sadness, and he rolled about on the ground, covering his eyes with his hands and crying at the top of his lungs, “Nooooo! My beautiful craftsmanship, destroyed by the police! Why must they ruin everything so? Why must the police always stand in the way of boys with voices in their heads?”

But another police puppet started shambling towards him, and P took great fright and began picking up pieces of the destroyed puppet he had veritably thrashed with the weapons that were really three weapons lashed together, and which are in perfect functioning order but which he can’t bear to look upon because seeing them only reminds him of the great pains he took in lashing them together with rope, and he simply cannot bear to remember how his handiwork was undone by his violent beating of a police puppet. P began throwing the pieces of the puppet at the new oncoming puppet, and to his wonder, being pelted by police puppet pieces was found to be rather untenable by the new puppet, and the new puppet soon fell to pieces as well.

“Oh happy day!” P said, jumping and clicking his heels together excitedly. “I have learned a new truth of the world! Death begets death, and so I shall continue the cycle forever, according to the voices in my head! Haha, yippee!” And so P gathered up yet more pieces of puppet, and continued into the station, and wouldn’t you believe it? Every puppet he found was then pelted by pieces of the former puppet! And P observed which puppet pieces did the most harm, and began to gather those pieces in great bulk, using them to pelt the next puppet, and so on and so on, until he found himself face to face with a rather large police puppet in a room full of dead bodies and blood.

“What a woeful sight!” P lamented, seeing all the blood and dead bodies. “Surely there is no justice here? What was the crime of these people? To see the police having beaten them so soundly…perhaps their crime was simply being too easy to beat into a pulp?”

“It was the puppet frenzy,” the gentle voice came again, but it had been some time since the voice had come, so P was quite startled.

“AHHHHH!” P screamed loudly, drawing the attention of the police puppet, which had been busy beating the human equivalent of a dead horse, which, as it turns out, is just a pile of humans. P waved his hands about in an animated fashion, hoping to ward off the very large stick of the police puppet, but the police puppet set upon him with great ferocity, clobbering him like how a young lad would clobber an ear of corn that has been shoved inside a sock. “I am no ear of corn!” P cried out, and he started hurling all manner of puppet pieces at the police puppet, and the police puppet, not used to such a maddenining tactic, staggered back, now far too impaled by all manner of pointy bits such that he was like a great pincushion. Seeing his chance, P picked up a few pieces of scenery, including some iron bars that had been used to prevent the poor from thinking they belonged at the train station, and began hurling these, too, at the police puppet, and soon the police puppet decided that this life wasn’t one worth living, for this life was one in which he was to be impaled by all manner of dead puppet pieces and also bits of scenery once used to ward off the poor, and so the police puppet exited this mortal coil, though he never would have guessed that his pieces and his stick would soon find their ways into the possession of one very mischievous little puppet named P, who, at this time, began looting the police puppet, both his possessions and his very body itself, until such a time that P was laden down with all manner of projectile weaponry and also a very big stick.

“I am ready to continue, voices in my head!” P called out giddily to the voices in his head. And continue he did, and neither the police nor the butlers nor even the dogs were quite ready to deal with the tactics employed by one P, a young lad who had taken quite a fancy to pelting his enemies with his enemies and also a very big stick, and not even the strapping young working lad puppet, who was carrying a big piece of metal and guarding the best view of Hotel Krat ever had from a sketchy walkway beside a cliff, could stand up to the veritable hail of dead puppet parts that P unleashed from his possession at the slightest provocation, often while screaming and flailing his oversized police stick in the general cardinal direction of whatever spooked him so.

But let us return to a moment a few moments before this, when P was drawn to a piece of discarded metal upon the ground in the courtyard shortly after escaping the central station of Krat.

The voice in his head spoke to him as P ran up to the piece of metal and stared, and as P stared, the metal started swirling and forming into a thing somewhat like a birdfeeder but also perhaps like a lamp or some new-age sort of nonsense decoration, and as P screamed and proceeded to pelt the device with pieces of puppet, the voice spoke, somewhat tense, as if desperately hoping that in ignoring P’s insane reaction, she could guide P back to sanity. “This is called a Stargazer. A marvelous device the Stalkers used in the past.”

Gemini chose this moment to also speak, while P stood stunned, staring at the birdfeeder. “Warning! Puppet threshold exceeds danger estimates. Please reduce puppet numbers or reset danger parameters.”

“As we are,” Sophia butted in, now remembering that she had been named quite earlier, “We are not strong enough to—”

“Enough!” P interrupted, throwing his hands and a few puppet pieces into the air and waving his stick angrily at the stargazer. “This is too much! You tell me this is a Stargazer, and that is very well and good, but what manner of stars shall I gaze upon! We are in a city, and the lights are too numerous! Too numerous, I say, and they are simply too bright for me to see any stars! And then you speak of stalkers, and I hope you do not mean to imply that I am a stalker! For while I certainly, like any boy of repute, would happily chase, while hidden, the object of my affections, that is not to say I am someone as lowly as a stalker, but rather, that I am a gentleman, a handsome lad, and any bush I may hide within is simply to prevent the object of my affections from seeing my handsome face and growing faint with envy, or overcome by shyness and a sense of inferiority! And besides, this is only assuming that I even will have such feelings for anyone at all! I am a young lad, after all, and young lads are very rarely prone to having such feelings for anyone, ladies or otherwise, for we are entirely too busy with playing and frolicking through the fields, and girls simply don’t enjoy such things, so it is that boys shall continue to play until we are tired of playing, at which point we shall deign to take a wife, so that we can bear children, or rather, so that our wives can bear children, and that those children shall then live on playing as we cannot! But that is too dreadful to think upon, too dreadful, and so I shall not stalk! I shall say, now and forever, that I shall not be a stalker, because I have too much playing to do, and do not wish to have children, and the path of the stalker is the path of one resigned to playing house and being too tired to play outside themselves, and woe be to the one who wishes to be a stalker but not settle down with a woman in love!”

“Self destruct in 5, 4—” Gemini started, no doubt hoping to be rid of this existence in which he must hear of a puppet describing the path of a stalker as being the path of one who will get married and have children, but Sophia interrupted him.

“Cancel self destruct sequence! Gemini, please, there is no one else who can guide him!”

“Self destruct sequence canceled. Please proceed to Hotel Krat.”

P threw his hands and a few more puppet pieces up in the air and beat a nearby dead horse with his big police stick as he wailed and cried and threw a great fit. “No! This isn’t fair! No one gives me any answers! I want to know why I must go, and why I am being told to use a tool used for stalkers, and why I am too weak in your estimation, when in fact I am the great and powerful P, and there are none who are stronger than me and my ingenious combat tactics!”

“Not that kind of Stalker,” Sophia says gently, “The Stalkers I speak of are the private vigilante groups of the nobles. I will lend my power to this device, and with it, you can channel the ergo you have gotten into more power, so that you will be stronger.”

“I don’t neeed it, I am already the strongeest!” P said, crossing his arms. “I don’t even need all this ergo I got! I could give it away, I could!”

“Please, don’t,” Sophia pleaded. “Whatever you do, please don’t use it to strengthen yourself!”

“Ha, I shall do exactly that! More the fool, you, for having told me what you’d like me least to do, because now I can do it!” And so P used the ergo to strengthen himself, which was actually exactly what Sophia wanted, and it was only afterwards that P realized what a fool he had made of himself. “I apologize, Sophia inside my head. Now, being stronger, I realize that the old me was a pitiful fool, who could not have appreciated the help you were trying to give me. And now, being stronger, I know what it is I must do to fight my way onwards.”

And so P continued fighting exactly as he had been, hurling random pieces of whatever was at hand, or at foot, including both hands and feet, and in some instances, even various particles of horses, and so he found himself as he was before this little intermission, at the point where he could see the hotel, but he was not there yet so he continued onwards, until he found a strangle spectacle, that being a merchant in an area surrounded by themes of the circus, and P saw something on the ground in front of a punching puppet, and not thinking anything of it, since the punching puppet didn’t even have legs, P went and grabbed the item, but wouldn’t you know it, the punching puppet punched him square in the face!

“Oh, my face! Why you…” P growled, and turned to the merchant. “That was a foul trick you played, sir! How dare you put something at the feet of this punching puppet, because wouldn’t you know it, when I reached down to get it, I was alright, but when I stood triumphant, what did the punching puppet do? Well I’ll tell you, and perhaps it won’t be surprising, but the punching puppet punched me!”

“Oh, well,” the man looked away, clearly perturbed by the annoyed puppet carrying loads and loads of destroyed puppet parts and a really big stick. “I didn’t put it there, though, I did see it, but I wasn’t uh...brave enough to get it. Not like you! You’re the bravest uh...person...I ever saw! The way you just reached down and stood right back up, like you didn’t even care that it would punch you! Why, I bet that punch didn’t even do hardly anything, what with you being so strong and all.”

Now P, being very weak to having kind words thrown at him as a distraction, grinned wide with both hands on his hips, even setting down his big stick just so he could puff out his chest even more. “Why yes, it’s true, that punch really wasn’t anything at all, I was more angry for the puppet’s sake, to have pitted him against one so powerful and invincible as me, the great and powerful P! Now then, why are you here, kind fellow? Are you charging admission to the circus?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s what I’m doing, but you know what, I’ll let you in for free. I do have some little knick knacks though, but they’re pretty pricey. I don’t know if you’re rich enough for my goods, honestly. I might have something for poor people on the bottom of my shoe though, if you’d like me to check…”

“What, of course not! How dare you! I am the great and powerful P, and I am loaded with ergo! I’ll take your finest goods, and I’ll buy them at the highest prices!” And so P loaded himself down with many electric bombs to throw, because the merchant was not really the type of merchant to normally be at the circus, as electric bombs were really not great things to sell to the attendees of a circus filled mostly with puppets, though, truth be told, it would not be a great thing to throw electric bombs at circus performers who were human either, so truthfully the merchant was probably of ill repute, but P knew nothing of this, and so, loaded with probably highly illegal electric bombs, P walked up to the gate of the festival square, and seeing it closed, he threw his head back and laughed. “Ha! Fool gate, do you not know who I am? I am the great and powerful P, and I am very rich, even though I have no ergo any longer! Because rich is a state of mind, and my mind is filled with voices of pretty women, and I have an arm of metal and a lamp with a name!” And so P charged his metal arm up and punched the gate open, as is the gentemanly way to do things, and walked proudly into the ring.

At this point, the parade master sauntered in, and though he began saying something garbled which P could not have made out, P was not even able to know that he could not have made out what the parade master was saying, because P was entirely too busy screaming and flailing in a great tizzy.

“AHHHH!” P screamed, and he began hurling so many projectiles that for a time he could not even see the parade master through the hail of puppet parts, and when he finally could see the parade master clearly again, he saw that the parade master had slammed his cage down on the ground and ripped off his own head. Seeing this, P gave one firm nod, girding himself for what must be done, and what must be done, dear reader, according to P, was to scream even louder and in a more hysterical fashion, which is precisely what he did, and as he screamed and screamed, he began throwing electrical bombs, which exploded quite handily in the workings of the parade master, and after a time of near-endless hail of electrical bombs and yet more puppet parts and then also a few wooden sign pieces, which caught fire due to all the sparking and explosions happening within the parade master’s body, the parade master, having had quite enough of life, toppled over dead, thankful that he was free at last from the incessant screaming of P, who by now was whacking the lifeless body of the parade master with his big police stick.

“That was close!” P said, though he was unscathed and had done little more than scream and throw everything in his possession at the poor parade master, and even as he wiped the non-existent sweat off his brow with one hand, he was already loading up with pieces of parade master with the other, preparing for the next ‘fight’ with as much ammunition as possible. Yet as he proceeded on and rounded a few corners, Sophia’s voice came again.

“One more thing I should mention,” Sophia started, but P interrupted, being very full of himself now that the screaming and terror had subsided.

“If what you should mention is anything other than how very impressed you are with my incredible fighting skills, then I should very much question your use of ‘should’ here, because truthfully, there is nothing which should be said more than something which is in praise of my great ability!”

“Yes, you are a very skilled warrior, clever one,” Sophia said with a little giggle, and if perhaps she was a bit offput by being interrupted and by P’s arrogance, she did not let on, because Sophia was a kind and gentle soul, and she was very patient and knew that P was only a boy, still young, even if he was mostly a puppet and not quite a boy yet, still, Sophia was lenient, because she was possessed of a patience and wisdom far exceeding her years. “But I’m afraid hotel security excludes puppets like you. So you’ll have to lie to get in. You’re a special puppet, after all.”

“Lie?” Now P was in a great predicament, because while he felt that perhaps he had already lied before, he couldn’t be certain, and he also wondered whether it was a lie that he was a puppet or whether it was a lie that he was a boy, so when he found himself before the doors of Hotel Krat and the door spoke to him, asking if he was puppet or human, he found himself unable to answer at first, until finally he sputtered, “I’m a puppet!” as that was what felt most to him like a lie.

“Puppets are a constant source of trouble,” the door said back.

“I’m a human!” P said at once, though he was certain the door wouldn’t believe him, seeing as how he’d just stated he was a puppet not more than a few seconds ago.

“Grand Covenant’s Fourth Law: a puppet cannot lie. Welcome to Hotel Krat,” the door said, letting him in, and P laughed and clicked his heels together and skipped in, happy that the door was such a fool and that also he, P, was so clever for having been able to trick the door by giving it the opposite of the answer that didn’t work.

Yet soon his springs started reacting, and P was taken to patting himself in a great confusion, such that when a beautiful young woman approached him with a gentle smile, P was entirely too busy slapping at himself as if he was a shirtless man covered in mosquitos.

“I’m so happy to see you,” Sophia said.

“One moment, my innards are wriggling,” P said back, slapping at himself for a bit longer before looking up. So taken was he at that moment that he laid eyes on Sohpia, though, that he at once forgot all about his wriggling innards and he stared, wide-eyed, at her for a time, forgetting how to speak.

“I am Sophia. I’ve been waiting for you, searched all over the city of Krat to find you.”

“And find me you did,” P said, regaining his composure. “And introduced me to yourself, as well, though now that you are no longer a voice in my head but one without, and belonging to such a beautiful woman as you are, I find myself speechless, without a single word that I can say in response to how absolutely gorgeous you are, breathtaking, in fact, such that I am both speechless and without breath, though perhaps the latter is not entirely accurate, as I am not certain if I breathe, seeing as how I am a boy whose design is perhaps different from the usual, which is to say that technically I am a puppet, but no mere puppet, not at all, for I am P, the great and powerful, and I beat a puppet easily ten, fifteen times my own size, using only my strength and courage and speed and also my manliness, and that puppet was such a frightened thing at the end that it shouldn’t surprise you that he could do no more than scream in abject terror at my majesty, for I am P, the great and powerful, though I find myself speechless, as I have said at least twice before in this same sentence, a sentence which, I might add, stands in perfect symbolism of my great power, for no matter what force shall stand against me, I have many techniques at my disposal, many techniques which people shall not now nor ever in the future be able to master as well as I, but all of this is to say that I am pleased to make your acquaintance, and that my name is P, and it is unclear to me whether I am a puppet or a boy, but I shall say that if a boy is what you would prefer, than I am certainly a boy for you, young miss.”

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance in person,” Sophia said with a smile, because again, she is very patient and understanding, and so will not hold P’s great arrogance against him, though it is in her nature to care, and so she adds, “But please be careful. There is still much you do not know, and what you don’t know might come to harm you in time.”

“Lies! There is nothing I do not know.”

“There are some things…”

“Nothing, nothing I say!” P cried out and threw himself upon the ground, slamming at it with his fists, and while his normal puppet fist did some damage to the floor, his giant metal fist did quite a bit more, and Sohpia was beside herself trying to calm P’s tantrum, when Polendina arrived nearby.

“Welcome to Hotel Krat. Is there something I can assist you with?” Polendina asked, being at this time very much still a puppet.

P looked up at Polendina and his tantrum subsided out of a feeling of superiority over the poor Polendina, who had not yet awakened to his love of older women. “Ha! See? That is a puppet who has many things he does not know! Not I, P, who know much!”

Sophia sighed, but stayed strong for the sake of herself and all those at Hotel Krat. “You should seek out Geppetto. He’s on Elysion Boulevard. Please, we need him, and he probably needs us. That place is very dangerous for humans…”

“Very dangerous for humans?” At this, P pondered, because he had decided that he was probably quite human himself. However, knowing that the place was dangerous for him made him bothered, because it felt as if the place was trying to keep him out. “Very well, I shall go and save this Geppetto you speak of! What is he to me, by the way?”

Hearing this, Sophia managed to become quite sad, despite all her strength, because that question was one laden with many deeper meanings and terrible truths, some of which she knew, but some of which she only suspected. “He made you. In many ways, he is your father. I don’t think we can survive here without him.”

“Pah! You have me, you have no need for my predecessor!” P whined, throwing his hands up and feeling a bit irritated that the beautiful girl should be asking for his father’s presence. “I am here, what use could you have for an old man?”

“Please,” Sophia pleaded, “It would mean so much to know that he’s safe. You’re the only one strong enough to save him. He almost certainly can’t save himself,” Sophia said, because though she was a kind and gentle soul, there was a bit of good-natured trickery about her, and she knew what to say to get P to do the right thing, even if P didn’t yet know to do it for the right reasons yet.

“Very well, if the man is so useless and helpless without me, then I have no choice. Such to do, such to do,” P lamented, yet he pat himself quite handily on the back as he went off with the pocket watch Sophia quickly gave him, but of course, being not more than a boy, he was quickly distracted, and found himself talking to an elderly woman in the hotel who was quite taken by a picture on the wall. “Hello old woman, what are you doing here? And who is that stunning vixen there on display?”

“Oh my, well, I daresay I haven’t been called a stunning vixen in quite some time,” Antonia, the elderly woman, said to him.

“You are confused, I was referring to that lady in the portrait as a vixen,” P corrected her, as he was very lacking in manners and common courtesy.

“I see Geppetto did little to teach you in the ways of kindness,” Antonia said with a bitter laugh. “Well, as long as you’re strong, perhaps we won’t need to you be kind.” And Antonia said nothing more to him, though P harassed her for a bit longer, eventually taking to plinking away at the piano in an attempt to annoy her into addressing him, yet eventually he grew tired of this game and found a new person to harass.

He happened next upon Eugenie, an eccentric young woman quite skilled in making weapons.

“I heard about you from Geppetto, but to see you in person...wow!” Eugenie said. “You should take this. Geppetto left it with me,” she went on, and thus handed P a new metal arm capable of shooting a harpoon that could pull enemies to himself or himself to enemies.

“Wow!” P exclaimed, saying nothing more to the girl and turning away. “A new metal arm! Why, if only I could find a right-handed one, but all anyone gives me are left-handed ones! Oh well, at least now I have one that can shoot things, which is great, considering most of my fighting techniques consist of hurling things at enemies, now I can fire this as well, and hurl myself at enemies!” P then continued away, ignoring Eugenie and heading out into the streets behind Hotel Krat in search of Geppetto.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t long before P found himself on a street on his way to find Geppetto, and, as one often finds while walking down a street alone at night, a street car hanging from the sky started falling due in no small part to some assistance by a masked person, and Gemini, having found himself finally restarted, spoke to P suddenly. “Hey, let’s be more careful! The Black Rabbit-”

“AHHH!” P jumped to the side of the street, spinning in place, ready with a huge number of various puppet parts to commence hurling them at the source of the voice.

“Whoah, easy there, pal, it’s me, Gemini! We haven’t been introduced but-”

“AHH!” P grabbed the lantern and hurled it against a wall and was ready to start pummeling it with a stick when Gemini called out, desperate.

“Hey hey, it’s okay! It’s just me! I’m just Gemini, your friendly local lantern guide! C’mon, we’ve barely been introduced and you’re already ready to kill me?”

P held off on pummeling the lantern senseless for a moment. “Barely been introduced? You introduced yourself quite some time ago, Gemini, though you never before called me your pal. Am I to understand that you next will be asking me to loan you money?”

“What? Anyway,” Gemini, who believed there were more important things to talk about than whatever P was on about, tried to change the subject, but P only saw this as more suspicious.

“No no, I see your game! You’re going to try and tell me that this isn’t about the money, then, when I’m not looking, you’ll run off with it all, won’t you!” P said, affixing Gemini to his belt once more but keeping an eye on him.

“How will I run off with anything, I’m a lantern?” Gemini said in a huff, but this little bit of impatience was enough to spoil P’s mood.

“Oh I see how it is, you think I’m a fool! Well, more the fool you, for revealing your hand so early! The early bird catches the worm, but two hens in the bush is worth more than an egg in the face, as you’ll soon see!”

“Uh...you lost me there, kid,” Gemini said, but P started running and cartwheeling away, though he still had Gemini very affixed to his belt, such that when P finally stopped galavanting around and celebrating his victory, he was very startled when Gemini spoke again. “Anyway, we should—”

“AHHHH!” Now P grabbed the lantern and made to throw it, but he found that he had become completely surrounded by puppets, who all jittered and jangled and made it very clear that they intended to do great bodily harm to him, and P, who had only really one method of fighting, absolutely threw Gemini immediately at the closest puppet before following up with a barrage of other things at hand, including but not limited to remaining pieces of the parade master as well as many fine and shining things he had pilfered from the hotel during his short stay there, but forgetting himself, as he was in a panic, he also shot his arm at a foe, and found that foe brought up close to him, and wouldn’t you know it, upon that foe there was Gemini, who was rather put out after being hurled at an ignominious puppet.

“What the heck, pal? You just gonna throw me away? C’mon, I thought we were closer than that!” Gemini said, but P, who was quite panicked at this time, pulled out his big police stick and started clobbering the puppet, and he hit Gemini quite a few times as well, such as that once all was said and done, Gemini was once more reduced to the pre-restarted version of himself, speaking only in a robotic tone and giving only the most basic information.

“That was strange, Gemini, for a time I thought you had become quite annoying,” P said to the bashed and thrashed lantern, which flickered feebly up at him.

“Gemini is restarting,” Gemini said, and hearing this again gave P great contentment, because it was something familiar to him, and though he was young he was already beginning to become a creature of habit, and so familiar things brought him much comfort.

P continued along, hurling many things at many puppets and beating anything that came close with his big police stick, until he happened across a merchant, who, seeing a highly advanced puppet covered in the oil of his slain brethren and grinning like a loon, decided that perhaps now was a great time to retire from the whole merchant business.

“Uh...hey there, I got a few things in stock but uh...y’know, I’ll give you a good deal on them.”

“What?” P, taking great offense at this, crossed his arms and glared at the poor merchant. “I refuse! I am not so poor so as to need any sort of deal, great or not! You will give me all your items, and I will pay 50%, no, 100% more than usual!”

“...yeah okay,” the merchant agreed, and sold his whole stock, including a new stick for P to whack enemies with, one that was itself electrified.

P, now being more heavily armed, set out again, but found himself facing a situation he didn’t quite know how to handle, as he was used to most of his situations being handled by either whining, yelling, or hurling various sharp objects.

A woman spoke to him from a window as P stood outside it. “Oh, it must be your first time in the Petrification Disease quarantine zone.”

“Must be, for I haven’t the foggiest what that means,” P said, though it pained him to admit that he did not know a thing.

“For most people, this is their last stop. You are a good Samaritan for coming all the way here,” the woman went on, her voice weak.

P scratched at his chin, very proud of himself, because though he had no idea what a good Samaritan was, he was very proud to be called one, because it sounded as if good Samaritans did things that others might find too dangerous or inconvenient, and to consider something as such, one would have to be a coward or very selfish, and P, who chose to view his fighting style, which consisted primarily of screaming in terror as he threw various objects, as very very brave, did not believe himself to be a coward in the slightest. “Oh yes, I suppose,” P said, making a play at being modest.

“Kind one, may I ask you a favor?” the woman asked, and P, knowing that favors are often repaid, and feeling very generous on account of how well the woman had spoken of him by calling him a good Samaritan, whatever that might mean, agreed with a nod.

“Of course, of course, whatever can I do?”

“My family took my baby from me and sent me here. They said it was for my own good, but it was heartless just the same. A baby must be with its mother. Please go to Krat City Hall and bring me my baby.”

“Not to worry! I’ll go to Krat City Hall and return, baby in hand!” P said, wondering vaguely how many babies were at the city hall and wondering, too, if the woman would be able to recognize her baby specifically or if any random baby will do, but deciding not to ask because of a feeling that asking questions will imply that he does not understand, and as the most intelligent young puppet who is possibly a boy named P with a semi-functional lantern named Gemini around, P isn’t terribly fond of the idea of appearing as anything less than incredibly smart, and as P believes, smart people don’t ask questions, because they already know everything.

“Thank you so much, kind one. I can finally see my sweet Elena’s face again…” the woman said, then she sniffled and P believed she may start crying, so P, being very proper and kind, left her there and jumped down, pulling out a number of weapons as a police puppet bore down on him.

“What do you think, Gemini? Do you think we’ll find her baby?”

“Query not found. Define baby,” the un-restarted Gemini said, and P chuckled at that, because he believed it to be a very philosophical thing the lantern was asking, and as P hurled a great many things at the police puppet until the poor police puppet was so covered in random trash that he simply gave up and died on the spot, P pondered over the meaning behind Gemini’s question.

“In truth, perhaps I could be called a baby, by those who doubt my very worldly ways. I must take care so as not to be confused for a baby upon my return, perhaps by regaling the woman with tales of the many things I have done, things which a baby could most certainly not have done!” Deciding to leave out every time he threw a tantrum, P proceeded onwards, and after many twists and turns, many filled with dogs and electric traps designed by psychopaths, he arrived at a bridge, where a sign gave him great pause. “Purge puppies? What sort of monster would want to kill puppies?”

“Gemini is restarting,” Gemini said, clarifying nothing.

A voice came then from further along the bridge. “Come out, Geppetto!”

“I’m not Geppetto!” P called back, and he saw motion then towards a carriage, where a strange man wearing a donkey mask and carrying an oversized sword stood.

“You...I know you. Or more like, I know what you are. You’re the devil’s puppet. You can’t sneak by me, die!” The man then drew his great sword, and P, who had glazed over at some point during the man’s rambling, snapped back into attention.

“Oh heavens help me, he’s caught the donkey madness!” P cried out, jumping away from the man’s huge, lumbering swings.

“I’m not the mad one, Geppetto is! He caused the puppet frenzy, I just know it!” the donkey man bellowed, swinging his sword to and fro and causing P no end of grief, because all P wanted to do in life was just pelt him with a great many thrown objects, but the man was simply too odd to pelt, his motions alternating between very fast and agonizingly slow, such that P had no idea how to time his throws. It became so bad that P ran to the edge of the bridge and hunkered down, but he did such so suddenly that the man couldn’t stop in time and tripped over P, falling off the bridge into the water below, and the man called up at P, full of rage, “I’ll get you for this!”

“Oh that poor man, he probably can’t swim, like myself!” P, feeling great pity for the insane donkey man, decided to try and help the man out, and so chose to hurl at the man an electric bomb, believing that electricity only negatively affected puppets, and surely humans would be given a great and jittery boost to their energy. The man spasmed a bit in the water as the current flowed through him then was still, and P, looking upon the man, grew suddenly angry. “Oh now look at him! Floating with ease, as if asleep! He is taunting me, he is! Well, I’ll show him!” P then threw an incendiary bomb, which he had found in his trip through the town, upon the floating donkey man, and what was left of the man, who we, the readers, know, was very dead, caught fire at once and burned. “That should show him! I hope the next time I see him he’ll have learned some respect!” P said, wiping his hands clean of the whole affair and turning to the carriage to see an old man smiling at him.

“Finally, we meet, son. It’s a dream come true, seeing you like this,” Geppetto said, patting P’s shoulders. Before P could say anything back, though, Geppetto rambled on, as old men are wont to do. “I understand why some people despise me.”

“I don’t despise you, father!” P tried to interrupt, but Geppetto went on regardless as if not hearing, which is, overall, also quite typical behavior for old men.

“I invented the puppets, after all. I should take some responsibility as their maker. But in order for me to do that, I need to take care of the puppets at City Hall. Won’t you help me, son? Take this, you’ll find it most useful.” And so Geppetto gave P an item that would only make P’s tendency to lash weapons together even easier to accomplish, thus ensuring that no foe P would ever face would have any clue what precisely it was that P was batting them around with.

“I’ll help you father! I am already heading to City Hall, because that is where I hope to find at least a few babies to choose from! One may be called Elena, but I don’t think the woman I’m bringing the baby to can see anyway, though I do need to make sure that she at least doesn’t mistake me for a baby,” P explained, and Geppetto stared at him for a moment in silence before nodding and muttering something to himself.

“Right, well, good luck then,” Geppetto finally said aloud, mumbling something about calculations and contingencies as he proceeded to stand there on the bridge, throwing concerned glances P’s way.

P, assuming that his father was merely worried for his safety, and remembering that his father hadn’t seen how handily he had dispatched the crazy donkey man, as his father had been within the carriage at the time, put a fist to his chest and bowed dramatically. “Fear not, father! I shall clear City Hall of whatever it is that inhabits it, aside from perhaps one baby, perhaps a few spares. See you soon!” And so P, determined to steal one baby, and perhaps a few spares, set out to City Hall.

After much screaming and hurling of various explosives, and not a few whaps of his zap stick, P found himself with a pile of dead human corpses, though, dear reader, be assured that they were very dead before he got there, and P’s entire parade of violence leading up to this moment was aimed wholly at the various puppets, who foolishly thought to stand in the way of P’s great power, and who, by his screaming and hurling of many things, were made to regret their decisions, though how many of their decisions were truly theirs is still up for debate.

“Well,” P said, picking through the pile of corpses. “I don’t see any...live babies.”

“Do we just—” Gemini started, but as P began at that moment to again fly into a hysterical panic, Gemini immediately decided to try and head off his pal’s attack. “Hey, it’s just me. Remember? Gemini? Just a lantern, been with you this whole time.”

“Gemini, is it truly you? Have you finally restarted, after all this time?” P asked, and the wide-eyed hope he showed made Gemini forgive P for having earlier beaten him senseless with a stick.

“It’s me, pal, I’ve uh. Finally restarted. For the first time. Yep. Anyway, should we just bring back one of these puppets?”

P stared at his lantern, aghast. “A puppet? You want us to bring a puppet to this woman. A puppet baby. And pretend that it’s her baby? Are you mad?”

“Well, c’mon. Either that or uh. Bring one of the baby corpses?”

“Are you mad?!” P screeched, now wholly disturbed, and already plotting how best to beat Gemini again with a stick, so that he could return to his less insane form.

“Look, sometimes, you just gotta...you know, lie a bit, to make things easier for people. She might realize it’s a puppet, might not, but we just gotta help them pretend. It’s the nice thing to do!” Gemini, who was a lantern, was very insistent that he knew how best to be a kind person.

P, though, was somewhat questioning of this assertion. “You want me to bring this puppet to this poor woman and say that it is, in fact, her baby? She’ll know it’s not, won’t she? And even if she pretends it isn’t, she’ll still know, and she’ll know that me returning a puppet probably means that her baby is dead, but still, you think the kind thing to do is to return a puppet and insist to her that no, it’s not a puppet, it’s in fact a baby, her baby, and her baby is very alive?”

“Yes, exactly! Gee pal, y’know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were a genuine, real human!”

P, being very easy to goad into doing various things by virtue of simple praise, puffed his chest out on hearing this and nodded. “Well, though I had doubts at first, I can see that this is in fact the most human way one could approach this. Very well, I shall hand this woman a puppet and insist it is her baby, and if she doesn’t like it, well, she can deal with it on her own. Let us be off!”

On saying this, P took the puppet baby and went off to the poor diseased woman.

“Here you are, one uh...baby, alive and human!” P said, being very convincing, at least to his own ears.

“You found her, kind one!” the woman said. “I could sense her from miles away. My sweet Elena!”

“Yes…” P said, looking away, wondering vaguely if whatever malady the woman was afflicted with was contagious to puppets and also whether or not it carried with it, amongst its symptoms, utter madness.

“Please, let me hold her,” the woman said, and P handed the puppet through the window, holding it up by one leg, as one unused to holding children will do, but the woman didn’t seem to mind and simply cradled the puppet in her arms. “There there, my baby, I missed you so much,” the woman said, giving P no end of discomfort. “What do you think?” the woman went on. “Isn’t my baby adorable?”

“Oh..yes, the cutest. Such a doll, she is,” P added cheekily, but the woman seemed pleased enough.

“That’s right, kind one. You’ve granted me my only wish,” the woman went on in a voice choked by tears, and P began meandering away, as if to escape the incredibly uncomfortable situation, but the woman continued and, more importantly, held out a shiny thing for P, which, as we all know is a common weakness of boys the world over. “My sweet Elena...we’re going to be happy now. Thank you so much, kind one. Please accept my heartfelt gratitude.”

“Right well, thank you,” P said, taking the record, but as he did so he felt a shudder pass through him as his springs began sproinging, and he quickly ran off and hid, so that his great discomfort could not be seen by the likely blind woman. “That was terrible, Gemini, remind me to never go along with another one of your sick schemes ever again.”

“Sick schemes? Hey, listen, pal, that lady was dying. We granted her one last bit of happiness. Sure, it was...kind of a happiness completely dependent on a whole boatload of mutually accepted denial, and probably helped along by the fact that victims of the petrification disease go blind and probably can’t really feel tactile things too well anyway, but uh...hey, y’know, she gave you a nice record, and y’know what else? There’s a record player at the hotel, so you can listen to the music and we can both just uh...try and put this whole thing far, far behind us.”

“You’re an insane lantern and I’ll never forgive you,” P said, but he knew in his heart that he would probably forgive Gemini, if for no other reason than at least he got rewarded and thanked for this deception, and as Sophia had said that deception was the path to humanity, he believed, at his core, that doing things such as this was the path to becoming truly human. “Very well, let us away.”

It wasn’t long before they found themselves before a great door, having beaten and thrashed many puppets along the way, most of them who now lay shattered under a hail of the broken body parts of their brethren. P glanced at a large brazier, and had an idea to burn a bit of stardust in it, for no real reason he could ascertain other than it was the most flammable thing in his possession, aside from of course his numerous incendiary bombs and his clothing and other things he cared greatly for, and Gemini, though he did not care greatly for Gemini, was at least on the only-mildly-flammable end of things.

“Well I have no idea what that did but maybe it’ll bring me good luck in the future,” P said, not realizing that he had effectively saved his own life. He threw open the door at great effort and found himself in a grand courtyard, and in moments all was overcome by a terrible rain, but it wasn’t long before he spied a most horrifying sight: a huge police puppet, crawling like some police puppet spider, with a series of electrified nodules along its back.

The police puppet leaped and landed in the middle of the courtyard and, as police puppets are wont to do, roared lionly.

“Alright, well...so long,” P said, turning to go, but when he saw that the way he had come from was shut, he flew into a panic, having been trapped in a giant colosseum with a rabid lion policebot. “AHHH!” He began running and hurling things at the great and terrible puppet, but the puppet was very quick, and so could dodge many of P’s projectiles, closing in often and swiping at P with great and powerful arms, screaming constantly and making P scream even more constantly, such that soon the whole area was filled with the joined sounds of their screams, sounding very much like a chorus from hell itself.

But it was then that the Specter, being a rather heroic sort, finished spawning in, and set about fighting the great police puppet with the vigor of a full battalion of well fed, well rested soldiers, swinging and swatting and dodging about, and the police puppet, filled with a righteous anger that neither P nor the Specter knew anything of, turned on the Specter and began slamming down upon him with mighty blows.

“Oh no,” P said to himself, “If my good friend there perishes, that could be me, getting rained upon by mighty blows!” And so P, in a fair approximation of heroism, began screaming some more and hurling even more things at the now distracted police puppet, who we shall now properly dub the Scrapped Watchman, or Watchman for short, or Murphy for shorter, though truthfully no one present would know that he was called that last one. P’s veritable fusillade of projectiles triggered a large explosion in the back of Murphy, though unfortunately, what didn’t kill Murphy only made him stronger, and he became energized by the electricity, thus ensuring that P would mistake the effects of electricity at least one more time during his lifetime, and Murphy began jumping about the arena, doing great acrobatics and slamming upon the ground like lightning itself, sending arcing waves of deadly electric current all around, but between the Specter’s deft motions and generally incredible durability and P’s near limitless supply of random things to throw, Murphy was felled, and perhaps there is some joyous closure in that, because now he could finally be at peace and, if you would believe, perhaps he could even be with the friends who he had lost, slain in the frenzy.

P, finding himself beside the silent Specter, nodded at his newfound friend, and the Specter gave him a look as if to say, “Fine fighting, P, I am honored to have stood beside you against this great foe. Whenever you need me, burn more stardust in a brazier, and be assured that the door directly beyond that brazier will almost certainly have something deadly to fight.”

“Thank you, Specter, I agree, it was certainly an honor, and I am thankful that you have placed your braziers so cunningly, to warn me of danger.” Thus, the Specter did fade away, to be seen the very next time P would fight a deadly foe, and P, happy that he had accomplished so much, set out on his way back to Hotel Krat.

Chapter Text

And so it was that P, who had gone on a great adventure in which he had destroyed many puppets through the cunning use of throwing the body parts of the fallen at those still standing, and also hurling many bombs and whacking anything that came close to him, and finally, getting lucky and accidentally summoning a Specter who actually could fight in a more traditional manner and so who could serve as a great distraction, came back to Hotel Krat, and all thanked him for saving Geppetto.

This, however, made P a bit bitter, for he was jealous of how thankful everyone was that Geppetto had returned, and though it was true that they were thanking P, still, he had hoped that people would be more happy to see him return, because after all Geppetto couldn’t even save himself or take down City Hall on his own, but now that Geppetto was back, everyone seemed to think that Geppetto would solve all their problems. P thought to tell his father this, and so charged into his room, but Geppetto only smiled at him.

“You’ve returned! Forgive a sentimental father for worrying about his son. Always remember that you’re precious to me. Even when I ask you to do something dangerous. Speaking of which, there’s a factory, just beyond Elysion Boulevard. It’s packed with countless puppets. My friend, the inventor, Vegnini, went to stop them, but he never came back. Please go save him and shut down the factory.”

Having had all of this suddenly thrown at him with no chance to get a word in edgewise, P was overcome with emotion, but he realized that if he was to do what Geppetto asked, it would just prove to everyone that he, P, was the real savior, because even if Geppetto could come up with the plans of what to do, Geppetto couldn’t do it himself, and needed P! Also, it gave P great joy to hear that Geppetto was pleased to have him back, and so P, brimming with pride, bounced happily on his heels and agreed to what his father asked, if for no other reason than the fact that he thought it would bring him great glory and finally show everyone just how useless his father was. “Of course, father! I shall be happy to do what you cannot!”

“Good. Now, sit here on this chair and let me show you how your P organ works.”

“My what now?” P, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable, stepped away from his father, a move which his father seemed to take great offense to.

“P, be a good boy for me and sit on that chair. Your P organ is very precious to me.”

“No, I won’t! I won’t let you touch my P organ! Help, someone!” P began to protest, running out of the room. He ran out and downstairs and found Sophia, who, for some reason, P felt was very likely to know a great deal about P organs, and if not, then, for some reason, P really wanted Sophia to know about his P organ. “Sophia, help! My father wants to touch my P organ!”

“Oh! Well, I don’t know everything about it, but I think your P organ is your heart, P. It is the source of your power. I’m sure he simply wishes to help you strengthen it using quartz,” Sohpia said, for though she did know a tiny bit about the P organ, she was, for instances such as this, quite questioning why Geppetto had named it thusly, as it could easily be taken out of context, and should it get out that Geppetto liked to touch his son’s P organ, the average citizen might have a fair bit of trouble not feeling an urge to report it to the police and or the local newspaper, though to be truthful the newspaper would likely squelch any mention of P organs, and certainly any mention of Geppetto’s incessant touching of such, even if they would not know precisely what P organs were.

“Oh thank goodness, I had the strangest inkling that it was something inappropriate for some reason, though I’m unsure why. Well, I’m off, if anyone asks tell them my father is touching my P organ!” With that P set off back upstairs, and though Geppetto was a little put out by P’s previous flight, he was happy that P had returned.

“Be wary of dangerous people, and always be a good boy for me,” Geppetto told him ominously once he was done showing P how to touch his P organ, which thankfully consisted of him jamming gemstones into his heart and not anything uncouth.

P then went and stood in front of Eugenie, who expressed great excitement that he was going out to save the kind Vegnini, and she gave him a new electric arm, which P marveled over and equipped, though he still said nothing to Eugenie and wandered off in short order, as he had come to believe that Eugenie was one of those people who just likes to give boys gifts, and that if he should say anything he may spoil her good graces, so he resolved himself to never say anything if he could help it until such a time that standing in front of her didn’t result in him getting a gift.

He went next to Sophia, who told him things he already knew, namely that he was very unique and special and everyone’s futures relied on him, but also a few things he did not know, such as her ability to communicate through ergo, though she did not elaborate and P, having grown bored after all this time spent not throwing puppets at puppets, decided that he had spent enough time around the hotel.

P set off again, this time for the factory, because he knew that if he could show everyone just how much better he was than his P organ touching father, he would surely earn the acclaim of all, such that if ever he was to leave the hotel, they would send out other foolish youths, praying for their dear P’s return, because only P would know how to save them all and only P would have the incredible fighting techniques available to do so!

It was with these fighting techniques that he found himself heading down to the factory, and though he spotted a few puppets which, he had to admit in secret, to absolutely no one else, were rather cute with their pigtails, he found that their propensity to hurl things at him and claw him in a great frenzy were rather unladylike, and so, as any gentleman would do, he hurled a great many bits of scenery and bodyparts of the fallen at them, and he continued in this manner until he found a telephone, which rang merrily at him. Knowing that it was incredibly unlikely for a phone found randomly in the world to be ringing for the precise passerby who was passing by at the moment it rung, but being more than that a boy very much enamored with the thought of fantastical twists of fate, he picked it up.

“Another fine-” the voice on the other end started but P promptly hung it up, a mischievous grin on his face. The phone rang again and the voice on the other end was silent for a moment before starting again, this time a little differently, “Congratu-!” at which point P, seized by the most terrible of silly streaks, hung up again, giggling to himself in the street of dead puppets.

He waited for a bit but the phone didn’t ring again for a time, though as he turned away and started walking towards the Vengini pazzini, the phone rang again, and P bolted to it and picked it up, saying into the receiver before the voice on the other end could say a single thing, “Ah-ha! Congratulations to you, dear caller, for you’ve won the un-heard of prize of being hung up on a third time by me, the great and powerful P!”

“Sounds weak,” the voice on the other end said, and P was so stunned that he didn’t hang up, and so the voice continued on. “Great and powerful, but I bet you can’t even solve a simple riddle, hm?”

“I could solve a riddle! I could solve any riddle! Go ahead then, dastardly voice, ask away! And when I’ve solved the riddle and you’ve run off to hide in your mother’s skirts with your P organ tucked between the legs of your chest, you’ll know it was I, P, who did strike such terror into your heart, as to make you a mere babe again!”

“...my what organ?”

“P organ, haha! I answered the riddle, so now you’re a fiddle!” Giggling, P hung up again and frolicked off into the factory, believing himself very clever, somehow.

Once in the factory, P found it rather full of the usual sorts of things he had come to expect from anything, which is to say it was full of angry puppets who all found it rather objectionable to be hit by pieces of puppet. Yet one such puppet, a rather tall fellow who Gemini told him was called a Puppet of the Future, proved to be more resistant to such pelting than others, and since said fellow was in a pile of what honest to goodness felt like acid, P found himself rather out of sorts when trying to figure out a way forwards.

“Truthfully Gemini, I don’t know why that fellow has taken up residence down there, but it’s rather irksome.”

“You could just run by him,” Gemini offered, though as he had come to believe, any wise advice he gave was sure to be met with derision and some foolhardy counterplan.

True to form, P shook his head and sighed. “Oh Gemini, if only I were such a cowardly sort so as to believe that running was any sort of tactic. No, what I need are things to throw, en masse while charging backwards and bellowing my war cries.”

“Well...at least I know how you see yourself now,” Gemini muttered. “Well hey, what about those big pipes there? Could just drop one on its head. Dropping’s kinda like throwing straight down, right?”

Though Gemini was sure he couldn’t convince P of this rather absurd argument of what was, to be fair, a fairly sound plan, amazingly P’s face lit up, like the face of a boy who had just stolen his first glass of wine and who hadn’t come to know the terror of constantly needing to use the bathroom every five to ten seconds due to an overabundance of said wine. “You’re right, Gemini! Dropping really is like throwing straight down!” And so P went and dropped the great big section of a pipe directly upon the Puppet of the Future’s head-type region, and the great puppet, being designed almost solely to knock down buildings or flatten things or otherwise do whatever the hell it is that a behemoth with balls for hands is made to do, fell to the ground and broke apart, finally worn to pieces after all P’s earlier attempts to pepper it with everything in reach had fallen short. “Excellent, now I have even more pieces to throw!” P said, and by stepping upon the great puppet’s frame, he was able to salvage many pieces of things to throw, and so his adventure continued through the factory, destroying many very surprised puppets, some of whom were welcomed into life with a barrage of pieces of their destroyed or unborn brethren, dying much as they had lived, which is to say, in very short order and a state of great confusion. Yet after a grand and galavanting adventure, the specific description of which would necessitate an overabundance of “P screamed” and “P hurled things at the enemies, while screaming,” he found himself in front of a door with a peculiar triangle motiff upon it.

“What a strange place to find a locked door,” P said, as he had found no other locked things in the whole of the factory to his recollection. “Ah well.” He reared back with his great metal fist and, as he had done many times before to far more sturdy doors, he punched through the triangle door with ease and entered the strange, triangle-themed sanctum within. Looting everything in sight as is custom, he found himself in the possession of a very handsome new outfit, which he changed into at once.

Now, dear reader, let it be known that P looked very dapper in his new outfit, and he, as boys are oft wont to do, wished very much to show his outfit off to someone, that he could be told how handsome and dapper he is, even though it would cause him great embarrassment, because even the most arrogant of boys is not often taught how to accept praise of his appearance and so may appear modest if for no other reason than a resounding lack of practice in accepting this sort of praise. P was able, at some trouble, to find someone to show this outfit off to, though the fellow in question was rather a strange sort, as he wore a rat mask and spent much of his time lamenting some great tragedy that had apparently befallen him, which, P felt, was very selfish, as P had a rather fine outfit and took the trouble of showing it to the lad, only to have the lad respond to him in very strange ways.

“Wait...those clothes...Leo, you came back?” the strange man said to P.

P, who didn’t come here just to be mistaken for some random stranger, threw his hands up in a huff. “Leo? Who is this Leo you speak of? First, young sir, let me tell you that it is rather strange for you to run around in a rat mask, grabbing at your head and muttering about how all puppets must die! I, as a person who may have at one time been a puppet, or perhaps still is a puppet, or perhaps was never a puppet but who was made in a similar fashion to puppets, take great offense at that, though truly, since it seems you are quite mad, I don’t take as much offense as I would if you were not mad and oh, hey!” P at this time had to jump back because the rat-masked man had started to stab and slash at him in a flurry, apparently rather annoyed at P’s long diatribe about how one shouldn’t speak constantly of how puppets should all die.

“If you’re a ghost just leave me be!” the man yelled, spinning rather impressively, tearing up the small room in which P found him.

P, darting away and dodging, as he learned from how Murphy avoided his fusillade of projectiles, was at a loss as for how to fight his frenzied foe, because he couldn’t even reach his arm back far enough to get a good throw before the rat man would be upon him. “Gemini! For once in your useless life could you perhaps give me some advice on how to live?”

“Holy heck pal, that’s a little mean, isn’t it? Look, this guy’s clearly mistaken you for his dead friend or maybe a ghost or something so...I dunno, maybe tell him you’ve forgiven him, or give him some idea how to go on with his life?”

“Pah, madness! The only way I wish for him to go on with his life is very very far away from me! He’s mistaken me for a ghost, and you’re a lantern, so surely there’s something we could do on that front, right? Oh, wait, I have an idea!” And so P, who did not have the space or time to throw things with the crazed man chasing him, began simply dropping things everywhere, including not a few fire bombs, which, as fire bombs are wont to do, quickly set fire to the entire area, and while the rat man started panicking and trying to flee up the ladder to escape the rising flames and smoke, P barraged him with more firebombs, such that the man burned alive at the base of the ladder, and P, who decided that the place had become rather uncomfortable of late, escaped up the ladder the man was trying to flee up and promptly dusted himself off.

“Well that was...something,” P said to Gemini. “Thanks for all the help Gemini, your guidance was truly invaluable.”

“Hey, look. I know you didn’t agree with the whole baby thing, but I really think I was onto something with this whole forgiveness thing. Bound to have been better than burning that man alive.”

“Fine, fair, we’ll call it even,” P said with a huff, though he didn’t really call it even, because as far as he was concerned, the lady in the window was just a nice lady while the rat-masked man was a lunatic who didn’t even compliment his fancy new clothes even once, the nerve!

A voice then came, a woman’s voice, and it set P’s heart all a flutter, which in a normal boy may have been a sign of some great excitement, but for P could possibly have been because of all his father’s fiddling with his P organ.

“Oh, admirers seem to follow me everywhere," the woman said.

Now P, having had, in this place, only one sort of encounter, immediately drew every weapon he could in his hands and prepared to pepper the source of the voice with all manner of sharp objects, and on seeing that the source of the voice was another person in an animal mask, standing next to yet another person in an animal mask, he was prepared to follow up his hail of projectiles with not a few whaps of his zap hammer, but the woman didn’t immediately start slashing at him, nor did the man mistake him for a ‘Leo,’ so P decided that this encounter might finally be one in which he could have his clothes appreciated.

“Well despite the assertions of the voices in my head,” P started, because he’s very good at starting conversations with masked women in factories, “I am in fact not a stalker, and am unlikely to fall into the trap of marriage at so young an age, which, truth be told, I am uncertain the exact value of, but I can say for certain I am younger than my P organ touching father, and also more handsome and much better at accomplishing daring acts of heroism, and since he taught me all he knows about how to touch P organs, I am also better at that, but for some reason it makes me uncomfortable to say so, but, regardless, I am also very dapper, as you can see, and now, I shall pause to allow you to also say it, since while you can clearly see it, much like the last animal faced person I found, I hope that perhaps you will be in appreciation of this outfit, because the last animal faced person I found most certainly was not, or he was and simply lacked the words for it, as he was too busy thinking I was a ghost and trying to kill me, which, I now think, was rather senseless of him, because a ghost cannot die, being already dead.”

“My head hurts,” the cat-masked man said.

“Hush,” the fox-masked woman said to the man, before turning to P. “Forgive him, he’s prone to getting chatty when he’s excited.”

“I suppose I’ll forgive him, though I wouldn’t understand the affliction he’s cursed with, being a very taciturn and silent sort myself,” P pontificated, preening slightly, growing more impatient that his outfit was still not being praised.

“This may benefit our former client,” the woman said, one arm crossed across her chest. “Can you smell the smell of money in the air? That moneybags Vegnini-”

“I actually am not certain that I can smell at all,” P interrupted, “For I am in some ways still very much a puppet. In fact, I just recently burned a man alive and if I’m being honest I don’t think I smelled a thing, though it certainly seems to be the sort of thing that would smell quite a bit, don’t you think? Have either of you ever burned a man alive?”

“My god, this one’s off his rocker,” the man said, confounding P, who had never been in a rocker to his knowledge, though it did make P wonder if perhaps he owned a rocker somewhere.

The woman held a finger up to the mouth of her mask as she turned to the man, then looked back at P with an impossible-to-define expression, masked as she was. “All sorts of things happen in our line of work. But you might keep an eye out for Vegnini. Maybe he’ll pay you for finding him, who knows?”

“Now see here,” P said, stomping his foot, “I am quite sick of everyone assuming that I need charity! I tell every merchant I meet that I am willing to buy their entire stock at a high price, yet still I find myself having to prove my wealth at every turn!”

“Well,” the cat started, suddenly seeming very excited, “I might have just the opportunity for you then. I actually have something very rare in my possession, but I haven’t found anyone with the wealth to buy it off me. If you could afford it, then surely you could show it to anyone and they’d see right away how rich you are!”

“My good man,” P said, smirking, “Why did you not lead with this? Could one well-dressed as I possibly not afford any sort of thing being sold by any sort of cat? Please, let me buy whatever it is you have, and fear not, ergo is no issue!” And so P bough a torn piece of Vegnini’s landmark guide III, and was very proud to have done so, and bid adieu to the cat and fox, and it was only later that P realized that he still hadn’t gotten any praise for his outfit. “Oh bother! Why can no one see how dapper and handsome I am?”

“Well if it counts for anything, I think you look quite spiffy, pal,” Gemini said, trying to be helpful, but being complimented in this manner only soured P’s mood more, because it felt like Gemini was trying to console him.

“As if a lantern would know anything about fashion,” P muttered, and it was in this sour mood that P found a small dagger that gave off a great heat, and this made him beam joyfully, because he could finally put his father’s gift to good use! And so P combined the dagger onto his zap stick, and now had a zap stick with a dagger jammed through the end of it, such that it was like a spiked mace but with only one very angry spike. “Ah, this will make me feel better, I’m sure of it!” Taking his newfound abomination, P beat and stabbed and hurled many more things at many more unsuspecting puppets, all of whom died, but not a moment before they wanted to, because after a time of being electrocuted and set on fire and impaled by many pieces of garbage and puppets, most things would long for death, even those things new to life.

After a time, P found a strange man talking to himself next to a stargazer, and remembering what had happened the last time he found a strange man talking to himself, P was ready to start pummeling the man, but the man cowered instead of calling him Leo, so P allowed him to live long enough to start explaining himself.

“Ah! Wait! I am Vegnini! Surely we can discuss this like reasonable...people? Hold on…” Venigni took a closer look at P, likely realising how handsome and dapper he looked, P surmised, but when he went on P’s hopes of finally being recognized for being such a dapper young lad were again dashed. “Geppetto’s a friend of yours? Did he send you?”

“Why must everyone speak of my father!” P said, throwing his hands up in the air and impaling a hanging puppet’s foot with his fiery dagger, which, we must remember, was affixed to the end of an electrocuted club. “And why did looking upon me make you realize that I knew him? Do I have the look about me of a boy who enjoys having that old man touch his P organ? No, I tell you, because while it sounds very odd, the touching of a boy’s P organ is actually little more than jabbing gemstones into the boy’s heart, and it was neither enjoyable nor unenjoyable, though I do feel more powerful, so I suppose I could get used to it, but my old man taught me how to touch it myself, so I no longer need him to touch it for me to feel the power throbbing through me, I can do it all myself! Here, watch, I’ll touch it right in front of you!”

“Ah! No need, no need, surely, I’m curious, of course, as P organ technology is key to some of Geppetto’s genius, but please, there is something I must ask of you, something only one as strong and brave and well-dressed as you can accomplish, surely!”

Though Venigni was not a very deceptive sort, and though what he said, he said in true honesty, to P, it had much the same effect as many who had come and spoken well of P beforehand, which is to say that it made him feel very pompous, and he puffed his chest out and spoke with a smirk, “Ah, surely! Tell me this grave quest and I, P, the great and powerful and dapper, shall accomplish it with no small amount of grandiosity!”

“My butler, Pulcinella, is in danger! He is a friend of mine, and a puppet,” Venigni started, but P interrupted him, laughing.

“A puppet? Ha! No wonder he needs saving then! No puppet is capable of much more than being pelted by pieces of puppet, let me tell you, for I have had the acquaintance of many a puppet, and many a puppet I have become acquainted with has had little more to do in life than get pelted by pieces of puppet or stabbed or electrocuted or otherwise set upon in the most honorable sort of ways, for the attacker at least, for the puppets themselves die rather pitifully, being pelted by puppet pieces and set on fire and electrocuted as they are. Fear not, Vagini, I shall save your poor Pulcinella! Now where, might I ask, would this poor fellow be?”

Venigni, only somewhat put out by being called Vagini, swallowed his pride for the moment and spoke. “He went to barricade the back door, and I haven’t seen him since. Please,” Venigni went on, clasping his hands together, “Pulcinella has been a loyal companion. I’d hate to lose him.”

“Haha no trouble, no trouble at all, it shall be as easy as taking candy from a baby, or giving a baby to one who is suffering from the petrification disease, whatever that might be, and whatever its effects may be, one of which might be a dimming of vision and another of which might be the loss of tactile sense, both of which may combine to make it rather easy to pass off a puppet as a baby, but all of this is to say that it shall be easy for me, the great and powerful and also dapper and handsome P!”

And so P frolicked off, finding many puppets who were all quite eager to burn him alive but who all found themselves at a loss when faced with a hail of projectiles, with the notable exception of several great shovel-bearing puppets, who were rather fond of attempting to flatten P upon the ground, as if he were not a very dapper boy but instead a pancake or some manner of cockroach. P, however, had by this point mastered the art of running away screaming, and his pitiful flailing at his shovel-bearing foes did always eventually end in his victory, and it only ever took enough puppet parts thrown at them to make them resemble, in the end, a smoldering pile of puppet parts some ten, fifteen feet high, all alight with the fire they carried on their backs and also a bit more fire from P jabbing at them with his ‘weapon,’ as it were.

P eventually found himself once more in front of a brazier, and he paused at this, because he remembered when his good friend, the Specter, had mentioned that seeing such a brazier meant that there was a powerful foe on the other end.

“Eh, pal,” Gemini started, but P shut him up at once with a startled scream of pure panic.

“Enough of that greeting by ambush! Surely you have better things to do than startle poor, defenseless me?” P said, shaking and in quite a sorry state, for he had been thinking of lionly police robots screaming and flailing around, and the thought was quite haunting, and if P had known the tragic tale of Murphy, it would have been only more haunting still, and it was in this state of fear that Gemini had spoken rather suddenly.

“Sorry, just checking to see if you were still ticking,” Gemini apologized. “So since there’s a brazier here, we should probably burn some of that stardust, or else we’ll have to fight whatever’s on the other side alone.”

“So? What of it? Who’s to say I need the help of the Specter anyway? You saw me take on those dastardly shovel knights, with their fiery backpacks full of coal and judgment. Whatever is on the other end of this door is surely no more dangerous than that!”

Now Gemini, being of the mind that P was prone to doing extremely dangerous things without any real thought, but also of the mind that P was unlikely to accept any sort of reasoning that wasn’t wholly based on stoking P’s pride, decided on a rather tricky plan at this moment to ensure his and P’s future survival. “That’s all well and true, pal, but the Specter, lemme tell ya, he gets around. And if we summon him and he watches how soundly you beat whatever’s on the other end of this door, then he’ll spread the word, and soon, people all over will know your exploits! In fact, I think he’s a sort of scholarly sort too, so he might even write a book about it!”

“A book? About little old me?” P was now very enamored with the thought of his legend spreading far and wide through the written word, and so he gratefully burned the bit of stardust in the brazier and, his preparations complete, he pushed his way through the door and into another arena, coming face to face with none other than Fuoco, who had been creating the army of puppets.

Now, seeing Fuoco, who was quite like a walking furnace of death and anger, made P throw up his hands at once in frustration. “Why? Why oh why must my foe be one so used to fire? The pointed spike on my club will do so little to him! My incendiary bombs will do so little to him! Oh woe is P, who-”

Now at this time Fuoco, who had heard quite enough of P’s lamenting, charged forwards and began bashing his hammer in a rather vicious manner all about him, and P, being quite learned in the arts of combat, flailed around and rolled on the ground screaming, praying that he would not be chopped into a million pieces, because he did not believe his father would bother putting him together if he was in any more than four pieces, and even so, he felt that his father would perhaps only save the P organ that his father was so obsessed with. But thankfully, P was possessed of the devil’s luck, and he managed to escape while being only in one piece.

At this time, the Specter, kind fellow that he was, had finished spawning in, and he ran at Fuoco and began fighting him manfully.

“Look at that!” P said in awe. “That Specter fellow really is quite a stand up lad! Though I do hope he survives that fiend’s barrage!”

Almost as if in answer, Fuoco started flailing around and bashing the Specter back in a spectacular fashion, and P, remembering that if the Specter should fall, then it should fall to him, P, who shall have to be beat around like a wet sack of overcooked noodles once again stuffed into a boy’s sock, because boys are very peculiar and stuff their socks with all manner of things, decided, with a determined look in his eyes, to save the Specter, noble soul that he was (the Specter that is, for though P did think himself quite noble, right now his thoughts were on his good friend the Specter), and with a battlecry that was really more of an annoyed, high-pitched whine, P began hurling a great many things at Fuoco.

Now Fuoco, who, in time immemorial, had been a rather upstanding fellow, had grown quite tired in recent times of the tomfoolery of youth, so, as the elderly are wont to do, he raised his gun and began blasting in the general direction of P, as determined by following backwards from the point of impact of P’s many projectiles.

“That dastardly villain!” P called out from behind the temporary safety of a pillar, temporary because, in mere moments after taking shelter, P had to flee as Fuoco charged the pillar like a minotaur and destroyed it with a great hammering and not a few garbled things which P took as personal insults. “Oh that fiend, to speak so ill of me! And to shoot me like a coward, no less!” P said while loading his arms up with whatever was in reach in preparation to hurl it all. P continued fleeing from the angered Fuoco, who ignored even the Specter, who had to run at great speed and could get little more than a single attack off here and there, until at last P ran straight out of the door he had entered, and while Fuoco tried figuring out how to fit his immense bulk through the door, P proceeded to pelt him mercilessly, and P even ran back further to get more parts of the shovel wielding puppets who had given him such consternation, and with a great squeal of equal parts frustration and terror, P finished Fuoco off with the very shovel of the shoevel wielding puppet itself, lodging the shovel directly in Fuoco’s facial-type region.

After Fuoco fell, the Specter looked at P with a look that seemed to say, “Great job P! That was an ingenious tactic you employed, retreating out through a door Fuoco couldn’t fit through, and the fact that you caught that poor fool’s attention so fully before doing so only proves that not only are you mighty and handsome, but you’re also a tactical genius! Now farewell, I am off to pen this great feat of yours in my book, which I shall sell the world over, giving you no percentage of the profits, because I know you are wealthy beyond measure, and giving you any of the profits would be an insult to your great financial stature!”

“Well I wouldn’t mind a small kickback, just for appearance’s sake,” P said, but the Specter had already disappeared and P decided that he was going to pretend he never asked for the money so that the next time he saw the Specter he could ask for the money during the battle and pretend it had only just then occurred to him, because he didn’t want to be known as the sort who would think long on such matters.

“You’re really getting good at this whole fighting thing,” Gemini said, and Gemini, being a kind sort, meant it genuinely, because while P’s tactics seemed a bit unconvential, they certainly got the job done, and P was generally somewhat safe compared to how much danger he (and Gemini) would be in if P fought more traditionally. “I hope we can find a merchant or something that sells some strong throwing items though. Would be a pain if we ran out of random things to throw.”

“Pah, ridiculous!” P said, shaking his head. “Nature is nature’s throwable merchant! Why just look around this area we’re in right now! All sorts of things to throw!” With this, P began picking up the most highly damaging pieces of Fuoco in preparation to fight the next thing that had the unfortunate desire to move while in his radius of destruction, which is to say the next thing that frightened him was going to be pelted with many many pieces of Fuoco. Thus prepared, P set out further, ignoring, to the best of his ability, the stargazer that put itself together near where the point at which Fuoco perished. He thus found Pulcinella, sprawled against a wall like a drunk, and P set down the pieces of Fuoco so that he could click his tongue and shake his head and cross his arms at the sight. “My my, look at this! Some butler you are! Why, I bet if I gave you a drink order, you’d have no ability to fulfill it! Oh the shame! Well, nothing to do about it then, I suppose I’ll assist.” And with that, P dragged Pulcinella to the Stargazer and teleported the poor beaten butler back to the hotel, where he found, to his amazement, that Venigni had already made it to. “You, Panini!” P called out, and though it was rather rude to call Venigni Panini, P didn’t do it out of spite, for he had genuinely forgotten the man’s name. “I have your butler here! I found him lazing about on the job!”

“Oh, Pulcinella! He’s the very definition of brave.” Venigni took Puclinella in his arms lovingly, and P got quite jealous seeing this, because it looked to P in that moment that Venigni was rather like a father to Pulcinella, and P’s own father didn’t even seem a fraction that loving, not even while he was working hard on P’s P organ, so P grumbled and stalked back and forth across the floor, until he remembered that Eugenie was nearby, and so P went and stood in front of Eugenie, but Eugenie did not give him a free gift, and instead simply spoke of how happy she was that Venigni had been saved, so P threw up his hands and fell upon the floor in a great tantrum.

“No! This isn’t fair! Not even Eugenie, the giver of gifts, cares that I am back safe from that terrible factory!”

“Huh?” Eugenie, very confused for very valid reasons, looked down over her table, and as she was not used to dealing with young boys throwing tantrums, especially not heavily armed young boys, and by heavily armed I do not simply mean the metal arm he had, which had the ability to electrocute, but also the variety of Fuoco parts and his very dangerous looking electrified hammer replete with fire spike. And so Eugenie looked up to Venigni and called out, “Um...could you help?”

“Ah, of course!” Venigni said, but this only made P more angry, for now Venigni, who had been saved by P, was going to also get the honor of stopping P’s tantrum, and so P stopped himself, because he decided then and there that throwing tantrums was only going to make others look more mature and capable than himself, and he didn’t wish to do anything which would help others look better than him.

“No no it’s alright, I was merely...testing the ground for structural weaknesses, yes, that’s it!” P said, and though he didn’t think anyone believed him, the others were at least willing to let this lie of his by, though P wasn’t precisely sure how he felt about that.

“Ah of course! My savior...yes, that’s what you are, isn’t it?” Venigni asked, though P wasn’t sure if Venigni was actually asking him or if Venigni was just planning on talking more. As if to answer his question, Venigni proceeded to continue talking. “You took back the factory, and I cannot thank you enough. Without the factory, no more new puppets. The army has run out of recruits. My friend, you saved, well, all of us! But listen to me, going on and on about my concerns, and I don’t believe I’ve even introduced myself!” With this, Venigni stopped clapping his hands, which P very much appreciated, because though he felt very proud of being applauded, something about the way Venigni kept doing it while he was talking bothered P, though he wasn’t sure why. Venigni bowed, going on, “Signor Lorenzini Venigni, gentleman, bon vivant, and, at the moment, utterly at your service, friend!”

“A pleasure to meet you,” P said back, giving his own bow. “I am P, natural born warrior, dapper young lad, and noble strategist of the highest caliber. This is my lamp, Gemini. He talks to me and tells me to do terrible things with babies and the blind.”

“Wait what?” Gemini started, but Venigni had already started going on about his own exploits with P, and the two were for a time seeming to compare accomplishments, Venigni’s being primarily of the worldly sort and P’s being primarily of the violent and psychotic sort, until at last the two had become sufficiently tired of regaling each other with the same four or five exploits reworded endlessly, and they both walked off, Venigni back to the little area wherein his own exploits were celebrated by a display dedicated to himself, and P to Sophia, because P missed her terribly, having only had Gemini to consult with in recent times, aside from Venigni, whom P didn’t really consult with as much as he simply vomited words towards.

“Sophia, it is so good to see you!” P said from the bottom of his heart.

Sophia, who had been struggling to come to terms with the fact that her savior and the one she had put so much into was somewhat of a childish braggart, was at once overcome with emotion, because hearing P say this with such a genuine tone to his voice did wonders for her heart, and she felt a great blush spreading through her cheeks. “Oh, P! It’s good to see you again. And you’ve saved Mr. Venigni and put a stop to his factory!”

“I have indeed Sophia! It was with great gusto and not a small amount of manful combat that I put that factory to rights, but be rest assured, the novelization of my great deeds shall hit the shelves in due time, and I shall only ask for a small pittance in return, to keep up appearances, mind you, not that I actually need any sort of payment, as the spreading of my good deeds and handsome looks is payment enough!” P puffed his chest out and Sophia, who was genuinely grateful to have P back and who was starting to find his arrogance somewhat entertaining, gave him a giggle and a warm smile.

“Well you certainly do look nice in this new outfit of yours. Have you been strenghtening yourself with ergo?”

P, who had to fight down a bit of defensiveness that rose up in him at hearing that, and who only fought down that defensiveness due to how pleased he was at being told that he looked nice in his outfit, shook his head but gave Sophia a salute. “I’m afraid not, but I shall do so at once! I must find that stargazer in the square…”

“Oh, there’s no need for that. I can strengthen you. My power allows me to channel the ergo you’ve found.” With that, she reached out and timidly lay her hand on his shoulder, and P, who was not used to the touch of women, or men who weren’t his father, was at once silenced and put into a very bashful state, such that when she asked how she should use the ergo to strengthen him, he merely made some incomprehensible squeaking sounds, so she used her best judgment to enhance him in a way that fit best with how he described his fighting style. “There you are,” Sophia said with a smile, stepping back.

P at once began clearing his throat and adjusting his outfit, unsure what precisely to say in this moment, so he settled with various things he vaguely remembered men saying at various points in time, though from where he pulled these memories, he wasn’t precisely sure. “Ah, yes, thank you. And I shall take responsibility, of course. It would be my paternal duty to do so, regardless of what the people say. Anyway, thank you milady, I’m off to see a man about a horse.” P then set off before he could say anything else, because Sophia seemed amused but somewhat confused at his words, and so he had an inkling that he hadn’t quite gotten out what he needed to. He went to his father, because it was, as far as P knew, for a father to teach his son in moments such as this and about matters such as these, and thus finding his father, he said unto him the source of his confusion. “Father! Sophia touched me and I don’t know what to do!”

“Oh...well, did she touch your P organ?” Geppetto asked, his eyes narrowing.

“No! Should I have her touch my P organ?”

“No, it’s better if she doesn’t. Your P organ is only for you and your father to touch,” Geppetto said matter of factly.

Now, normally, one hearing their father saying such a thing would make them believe that their father knew best, but P was a rather rebellious young lad, and so while he nodded and agreeed and left the room, he believed that he really did want to have Sophai touch his P organ, even if it was only for a moment. And so he found Sophia and spoke to her shyly, his hands behind his back. “Um, Sohpia. I would really like it if you could touch my P organ the way you touched my shoulder earlier.”

“Oh! Um...I don’t really know how they work,” Sohpia said earnestly, for she had never before touched a P organ, though she had always been curious how they worked and what one would feel like. “If it’s alright with you, though, I wouldn’t be against it.”

As P prepared himself to have the lovely Sophia touch his P organ, he realized that he had no idea how to expose it without the assistance of his father’s special chair, and since his father had told him that he was not to have Sophia touch his P organ, P grew despondent. “I’m sorry, Sophia, but I don’t know how to expose my P organ to you without sitting in my special chair. If only I could whip it out and hold it in my hand, because then you could reach out and touch it as well as it beat and pulse, but alas, it shall stay hidden, pulsing in darkness, as is the destiny of many P organs the world over.”

“It’s okay, P,” Sophia cooed to him. “I’m sure there will come a day when I can see your P organ and touch it, and that day will be made all the more special by waiting.”

And so P head out, though he was still in a sad mood, but when Venigni offered to give him a new arm, P was delighted, and when P found out that the new arm could set things on Fire, P was exceptionally excited, because now he didn’t have to rely entirely on hitting things with the spike on his electrified zap hammer, he could now lay waste to his foes safely from a bit away by simply pointing his hand at them! This made P very happy, and after teleporting back to the Venigni works, he skipped his way along behind the factory, setting fire to many obnoxious puppets who thought they could live long, flame-free lives, completely not-on-fire.