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In the situation he finds himself in, Pinocchio believes he should’ve been listening to Gemini earlier. He was investigating a worn down house for supplies and a possible travel route. As he approached it, Gemini began to glow red.
“This place seems sketchy, P,” he said. “Why don’t we turn back?”
But of course, him being a bit too curious, he ignored the lamp’s suggestion. Now, Pinocchio finds himself in the rather unfortunate event of being at the mercy of some particularly violent puppets.
“Why did it have to be the big kind?” Gemini comments, as Pinocchio dodges incoming blows.
While Gemini is concerned about this whole ordeal, Pinocchio on the other hand is more bored than anything. This isn’t the first time he’s been under attack by a larger-than-wanted crowd, and it’s especially not the first time he’s been surprised by them. At this point, he’s more or less going through the motions when it comes to any encounters with these puppets. Even if he were to be harmed, it’s not like it would hurt him.
Sure, he’d need to replenish his charged state and maybe repair a couple parts, but he’s learned to take care of himself quite well since awakening.
After a couple of minutes, the horde has died down, the clanging of weapons seized, and multiple puppet parts and oil have spilled across the floor. Pinocchio stands alone, briefly re-sharpening his sword, with not even a single injury on himself.
“Alright!” Gemini exclaims. “Nice job, Buddy! But seriously, you gotta listen to me when it comes to this sort of stuff. We don’t want anything bad to happen right?”
The lamp continues to comment on how Pinocchio has to take care of himself, but P himself is more focussed on scavenging for any usable spare supplies. Another minute or so of searching, and he is only able to gather a so-so amount. Still, it’s better than nothing. His father or Eugénie should still be able to get some use out of them.
He makes his way back to the house’s entrance, his steps slow as he walks along the hollow wooden floors. Once he’s mere inches away from the door, the lamp chirps, and red light lights up the dim room.
“P! Watch ou-”
A gunshot. From who? Pinocchio spins around. He faces a still active puppet from the earlier fight, laying on the ground with one glowing eye staring at him. Something feels wrong.
Feels.
How does he feel? He limps. One knee falls to the floor. He clenches his left lower abdomen. His whole body begins to shake.
What is this?
A quick glance down. His right hand trembles as he lifts it closer to his face.
Red.
Why is his oil red?
A scratching sound. He looks back up towards the puppet.
Though it struggles to lift its limbs, it still tries to reload its gun. He doesn’t give it the chance, as he shoots from his legion arm. The force from his arm hurts him. The pain in his abdomen intensifies. He picks himself up from the ground, only able to do so by holding onto the handle of the house’s entrance door.
He stumbles. He struggles. He almost slips on a puddle.
The world is starting to spin around him.
Hotel.
He needs to get back to the hotel. He has to!
“P! P, listen to my voice!” Gemini calls.
The lamp’s attached to his hip. So, why does he sound so far away?
“There’s a stargazer…” he hears Gemini say, but it sounds so far. “…corner, remember?”
Stargazer…yes, there is a stargazer nearby. He can use that to get back. He has to, he must!
He walks, or tries to, as best he can. Occasionally, he falls and catches himself with the help of a nearby object, like a lamp post or a shop window. He feels terrible like this. Why does he feel like this?
He’s a puppet. He shouldn’t be hurting. So, why?
__
He stares at the red oil smeared across his right hand and along his arm. He wonders why the Mad Donkey’s oil is a different color than the puppets’.
“Ah, Son,” his father says, grimly. “You’re covered in blood.”
Father takes out a small piece of cloth and tries his best to wipe the oil off of him.
“Blood?” He repeats, softly.
“That’s what this is called,” Father says, holding out the cloth now covered in the ‘oil’. “Oh, I wish I didn’t have to meet you under these circumstances.”
Humans release blood when they are hurt. That’s what he learned that night.
__
Humans release blood. Puppets spill oil.
Why…why does he bleed?
“P! We made it!” Gemini exclaims.
Pinocchio didn’t even realize he had returned to Hotel Krat. His vision was beginning to darken as he was approaching the stargazer. Though the warm light of the hotel’s lobby would be a relief to gaze on, right now it only stings P’s eyes.
“P!” Someone exclaims
He can make out the figure of Sophia, her blue hair and clothes glimmering under the light, as she leans over him. She looks like she’s on the verge of tears, panicking at the sight of his bleeding body.
“What on earth is happening?” He hears the distant voice of Eugénie.
His ears begin to ring. The light of the lobby begins to fade.
Before completely passing out, P hears hurried footsteps, Gemini’s chirps, and the voice of his father. He cannot comprehend what Father was trying to say to him.
__
He wakes up. It is hazy and dim. He recognizes the old, dusty chandelier that hangs above him. He is in his room.
He notices a soft, green light glowing within his peripheral vision, and turns over to find Gemini laid atop of the nightstand. Soft chirps of a cricket can be heard from within the lamp.
“Gemini…” he mumbles.
In response, the lamp’s glow brightens.
“P!” He exclaims, excited and relieved. “You’re awake! You doing okay?”
Pinocchio is not sure how to respond to that. He doesn’t feel as terrible as he did last time he was conscious, but everything just feels so…off. He eyes where he had been injured, and he spots a thick, white bandage wrapped multiple times on top of his bare torso. It’s tight and uncomfortable. He shouldn’t even need a bandage.
He tries to sit up, but he winces at the soreness of his abdomen. After a sharp breath in reaction to the pain, he coughs. It’s an odd sensation. He’s never really breathed before, yet here he is doing it naturally. Same goes for the coughing. It’s all so strange to realize that’s technically the first time he’s done this.
“Careful, Buddy,” Gemini says. “You’re still recovering. Try to take it easy.”
How can he? He’s feeling pain. Not as bad as earlier, but still. That’s not supposed to happen.
Slower than he’d like, P sits on the side of his bed, his feet meeting the cold floor.
Cold…that’s a new feeling as well.
He goes over to his wardrobe to dress himself. While he finds his blue coat hanging daintily, the shirt and vest he was wearing earlier are nowhere to be found. He assumes they must still be being washed. There was a lot of blood after all.
Blood. That’s right. He was bleeding. Like everything else that’s been happening, that should not have occurred.
He wavers off of those thoughts and puts on one of many plain white shirts he’s found over the weeks of heading in-and-out of Krat. After dressing himself, he picks up Gemini and hangs him on his belt.
“You know, P, you’ve been out for about three days,” the lamp comments. “You may feel fine now, but are you sure you don’t need more rest?”
“Do you know what’s happening to me?” Pinocchio asks, as he looks at a mirror, checking over himself.
He looks the same as ever, but there is something different.
“Well…no, you’ve got a point there,” Gemini responds.
“I need to speak with Father then.”
He heads for the room’s door and just as he’s about to leave, the door flings open and Polendina stands before him.
“Ah, Master Pinocchio, you have awakened,” the puppet butler greets, and stiffly bows his head.
“Polendina,” P responds, bowing his head as a greeting. “Do you know where my father is? I need to speak with him.”
“He is where he always is, Master.”
That’s all P needed to know. With a quick ‘good-day’, he exits his room and heads for the workshop down the hall. Unexpectedly, perhaps because he walked a little too quickly, the strain of his injury became worse and he stopped in his tracks, taking a short, sharp breath.
“Would you like some assistance?” Polendina asks. P can hear him approaching from behind.
“No, thank you,” he groans. “I’m fine.”
Though he would deny it at that moment, he was clearly lying. At this point, such a simple action comes naturally to him. So naturally, sometimes he doesn’t realize it.
Pinocchio looks up to find Polendina hovering over him, and the butler stares at him with his ever-static polite expression.
“Would you like some assistance?” He asks again, same tone as earlier.
It’s in his programming to serve and assist whenever he recognizes a guest to need it. P knows that, and thus knows he’s not going to make him go away if he keeps pausing while injured.
“Fine,” he mumbles, to which the butler responds by carrying his arm around his wooden shoulders.
__
The walk to Geppeto’s workshop takes longer than Pinocchio would’ve liked. Sure, it was only five minutes, but it doesn’t take that long to walk to a room literally just down the hallway. He kept pausing mid-way because the soreness of his waist continued to bother him.
Upon arriving, Polendina knocks on the door with a rhythmic three hits.
“Sir, your son wishes to speak with you.”
Not even a second later, the door opens up and Geppetto reveals himself, hair unruly and glasses crooked upon his nose.
“Hello, Father,” greets Pinocchio, with a hushed voice.
“Pinocchio…” he says, as if he wasn’t sure that his creation was even standing before him. “…uh, thank you Polendina, but I’ll take things from here.”
“Of course, Sir,” the butler responds, then walks away after a quick bow.
Geppetto invites Pinocchio inside, helping his son walk by gently holding his hand.
“Please, sit down,” he says, guiding him to a chair at the table in the center of his room.
An awkward silence fills the room P sits down and his father finds a seat across from him. After such a stressful event, both of them know there is much to discuss. They don’t know where to start.
“So, uh, how are you?” Geppetto starts. “Are you feeling alright?”
P doesn’t know how to answer that. If he said he does, that’d be a lie. If he were to tell the truth, however, that’d only create unnecessary worry.
“What’s happening to me?” He decides to say instead.
“Going straight to the point are we? I’ll have to be honest, Son. I don’t know.”
The answer isn’t too surprising, but nevertheless it leaves P disappointed.
“It’s a strange predicament, even for me,” says Gepetto.
“Not even a clue?”
“Only a few ideas, but they are not sound answers or perfect conclusions.”
“Then, tell them.”
Gepetto sighs. P dislikes it when his father does that. Not sighing specifically, of course, but rather hesitating to share important information with him. His father was like this when he asked about his creation and about his past. To this day, he hasn’t gotten a straightforward answer. But for this situation, for something so unordinary for him, P would like any sort of explanation, even if it’s an incomprehensible one.
Thankfully, after a few seconds, Gepetto began to share his thoughts on the matter.
“While Sophia and I looked over you during your recovery, she had sensed a change within you. Something related to ergo.”
The old man sits up from the table and goes over to his desk in order to collect something.
“An old alchemist colleague of mine had this hypothesis related to ergo. He introduced the idea that ergo is connected to the mind. More specifically, the desires or wishes of its user. I waved off the idea, thinking it to be a bit too fantastical.”
As he continued speaking, he searched the drawers of his desk for whatever it is he is looking for. It doesn’t take too long for Gepetto to return to his seat at the table with a large rolled-up sheet of paper.
“However, after seeing what’s been happening to you, I began to think that maybe…he had the right idea.”
Gepetto unrolls the paper, large enough to cover the entire table. P recognizes it as a scanned image of himself, an x-ray of the inner workings of his body. Immediately, his attention is grabbed by the unfamiliar shapes within his torso.
“You…are becoming human. A real boy…”
Pinocchio stands up slowly, shocked and processing what he just heard. He looks at the scanned image before him. Those shapes…are those organs then?
“When I created you, it was intended for you to be able to emulate human-like characteristics. To look, sound, and move like one. I even gave you the ability to lie.”
“That is what’s allowed me to not be infected by the frenzy affecting other puppets, yes?”
“Quite so.”
Pinocchio knows this already. To lie…to choose to lie. The first time he learned that, he knew he was different from the other puppets he had dismantled by then. He’s still not sure if his father made him specifically to fight off the frenzied puppets or if he was just lucky that his design allowed him to be unaffected. Either way, he was born with a conscious and a choice, and that’s what makes him…him.
“Tell me, Pinocchio. With how human you already act, did you ever think about what it would be like to be one?”
This time he would choose not to lie.
“Yes,” he answers, plain and simple.
Gepetto nods in response, approvingly.
“The more human you act and the more ergo you collect, the more your wish comes true. Metal, gears, and oil. All that makes you now, sooner or later, will be replaced. Flesh, bone, and blood.”
He points to different parts of the scanned image.
“The P-Organ is still intact, but it does pump blood now. That will likely soon become an actual heart. You’ve gained lungs and the ability to breathe. A stomach and other guts seemed to have formed as well. Anything to do with your limbs and head have yet to be affected, but only God knows when you’ll be fully human.”
The old man starts rolling up the paper and returning it to its spot at his desk, leaving Pinocchio to ponder everything. A real boy…what are the odds such a simple, wandering thought would lead to this.
“Now, knowing all of this, you must understand the consequences this will have on you. You already know from your first injury that you can’t be reckless while you put yourself in danger outside of this hotel. Simple repairs will no longer be enough to keep you alive. Any hits you take will hurt now. Are you still okay with this?”
Moments of quiet, but then the former puppet speaks up.
“You created me with the ability to choose. This is the path I chose, and so I’ll continue to walk on it. Even if there is more danger, more risk, I’ll still challenge it.”
His father keeps his eyes on him, and a smile perks up beneath his gray beard.
“I should’ve realized sooner that you are, indeed, not a puppet. I’m forbidding you from leaving the hotel for the rest of the week. You are still recovering.”
Yes, he’ll need to be even more careful from now on. He’ll need to learn how to take care of himself in the dark parts of Krat all over again, and how to take care of himself as a human. Now, he’s determined to live through this frenzy in order to live beyond it.
But before that…he’ll have to figure out how to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling in his new stomach. Some sort of loud grumble came from within him and it’s disturbing.
“That, my son, is called hunger,” Gepetto says, with a jovial laugh, to Pinocchio’s embarrassment. “Would you like to join me for breakfast?”
“Y-yes. I would like that.”