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WHACK!
Seriously? P thinks, and reaches for his pulse cell before---
CRACK!
Oh come on, that's bullsh---
aaaaaaaand...
Okay wait I know this one I block...now? No wait---
WHAM!!!
F---
P is gone. Blessed oblivion. But not for very long.
Sophia comes to the rescue for the sixty-eighth time (yes, he's been counting). She shunts P through spacetime to the threshold of the arena he's come to know so well, deep within the bowels of the Alchemists' Isle, where a certain anonymous puppet waits patiently to clap his ass cheeks one more time.
P apparates in a cloud of Ergo, finishing his thought.
--UCK!
He's tried all the special grindstones. He's tried throwing cells. He's tried reactivating his P-organ and reallocating his Ergo. Okay, he hasn't tried specters, but Alidoro once told him "if you summon you're not really playing the game" and P doesn't want to know what that means.
About thirty attempts ago, Gemini suggested P "take a breather, pal." Gemini's taking a time-out at the Stargazer now.
With only his nose for company, P's never felt more hopeless.
"It's no use," he mutters. "I can't do it."
His nose grows by a hair's breadth.
P sighs.
"I know. What I really mean is that I hate this shit."
His nose shrinks by the same measure.
"No, you don't get it. I really hate this fucking puppet. I'd feed its ass to the Green Swamp Monster. Can you believe I ever complained about the Green Swamp Monster? Feels like another lifetime. I'm a veteran Stalker now. I think I'm qualified to say that this---"
(He gestures towards the arena.)
"---is just bad design. Sure, I get that Gepetto wanted this last fight to be more challenging than ever --- it's good for PR hype if nothing else --- but without the combat design experience to back up that vision it feels like an unpolished vanity project. Then again what else did I expect from an over-hyped Alchemist wannabe like Gepetto?"
P's nose doesn't respond to this outburst.
"Also he's a terrible father."
At this, a noncommital twitch.
"I mean yeah!" P's nose seems to say. "Gepetto's a dick. But it's hard to assign a definite truth value to opinions like that."
P's been spending so much time with nerds it must be rubbing off on his nose. Just yesterday Venigni and Eugénie almost threw hands discussing some silly paradox. What was it again?
"And I can't grow and shrink at the same time, now can I? Not without breaking the world."
Interesting.
Next time P enters the fray, he doesn't draw his weapon. He takes a deep breath.
"I'M TELLING A LIE!" he cries, and charges in, nose-first.