Astro watched Professor O'Shay's neighbors intently as they set up the fronts of their houses with colorful lights and decorations. Many of the decorations consisted of skeletons with pale white bones, and several spider webs hung from the roof to a clever place on the banisters. Almost every house had a pumpkin of some sort on the porch steps or in forming a line to the front door. The pumpkins that sat by the fronts doors were usually the pumpkins that had a funny face carved into them; jack-o-lanterns, Astro recalled Professor O'Shay calling them.
"Professor, what did you say the children in Metro City will be participating in tonight?" Astro called out, due to Professor O'Shay being in a separate room.
"Halloween." The professor replied as he came into the room to spare the both of them from yelling back and forth. "It's a holiday that has a rather controversial history behind it, but it's generally associated with colorful costumes and boatloads of candy."
"Ms Green isn't giving out candy." Astro informed his caretaker with a scrunched nose.
"But do you see how she has albino pumpkins?" O'Shay pointed out. "The Halloween Regulation Board for Metro City states that if you do not plan on giving out candy then you should have at least one white, or albino, pumpkin somewhere clearly visible on your property."
"Ah…!" Astro understood with an affirmed nod. For awhile, the little android was content as he observed the neighbors some more. But a certain little idea creeped on him like a ghost…
"Professor," Astro then started to say, "Can I go trick-or-treating with the other kids?"
O'Shay took a heavy sigh in, conflicted on whether he should let the android boy out for a day or to keep sheltering him. Of all days, this could possibly be one of the better ones to let the naïve little machine converse with the humans that looked close in age with him. On the other hand, what if he to someone revealed that more than one part of him was inhuman? The very rumors that have spread and seeped through Metro City like a toxic ooze would easily become exaggerated firsthand accounts that made the public want to purge all robots within city limits. But Astro was so human… would anyone ever believe those accounts to begin with?
"The Metro City Secondary Public School is having a fall fest tonight." Astro suddenly said. "I could go in costume and no one would know, and if they asked where I came from I'd say that I'm from out of town and I'm being homeschooled. I'll wear a mask, and put on those red boots that almost go up to my knee, and I'll get those shorts I wear when we're doing performance checks at the Ministry. I'll even go by a different name! I'll be…! I'd be…!"
Professor O'Shay gave Astro a skeptical look while raising an eyebrow. "Astro, how long have you thought about this?"
"Just now." The android answered, almost amazed with himself for a moment.
The professor looked at the android as if he was analyzing him for any kind of mischief or thoughts of rebellion.
"Alright," O'Shay then started to say, almost in a disbelief. "You can go."
It took all it had in Astro to not blast through the roof and into the clouds with pure glee.
. . .
"Daddy Walrus, I don't want to go. Thinking about it is making me sick."
Dressed in a short red dress paired with white boy shorts, Uran looked as adorable as she was uncomfortable. Her caretaker for the moment was a shorter man for his age with a balding head and white moustache; depending on his mood, this gave him a passing resemblance to a walrus.
"Nonsense." Shunsaku Ban declared. "Now try these flats, I think they'd match your dress better than the pumps."
For a moment, Uran only stared at her caretaker in a sense of bewilderment.
"Really?" she asked with a tone of annoyance.
"What?" he asked, innocently enough. He put down the flats though, and got close enough to Uran to put a hand on her shoulder.
"Look kid," he said with a sigh, "I know it's only been a day or two since your mother passed, but you can't stay cooped up all the time; it's not healthy."
"You have yet to see me try." Uran spat. Shunsaku frowned.
"Let's make a deal." He then said, attempting to coax her, "We take one night to go out to the fall fest at the school and the rest of the year we can stay inside the house. Deal?"
Uran thought about it for a moment, before looking back up at Shunsaku with a broken little smile.
"Alright." She agreed with a nod. "As long as we bring Jump too. He's been out less than I have."
"Of course." Shunsake agreed firmly. "Whatever gets you out and going, even if it means that stupid dog."
. . .
The school's festival was better than what Astro had expected. Food stands were dotted in nearly every aisle, carnival games where clustered with each other three at a time, there was a stage where a live band played top Billboard songs from the 1980s and upwards along with a few songs that always seemed to play in the fall, there was a dunk tank that had a member of the human faculty of the secondary school hostage for certain intervals, there was apple bobbing, there were henna tattoos by a robotic painter, and there was-
"Hey get outta the way!"
"Watch what you're doing twinkle toes!"
"We're walking here!"
Astro turned around in confusion as three boys shoved passed him as they raced each other to one of the carnival games.
"H-hey!" Astro hollered to them, "Shoving people isn't nice!"
"Neither is standing in the middle of the road!" one of the boys shouted right back at him, leaving the other two boys to let out a laughter of agreement. Astro watched them for a moment before breaking into a run to follow where they were going. Even though they had a point, they had still been rather rude, so the android had a plan. Astro followed the boys and watched them as they attempted to win a prize from a ring toss game. With a small sliver of amusement to Astro, all three of the boys failed.
"This game's rigged, there's no way anyone can win this game." The bigger of the boys lamented.
"It's only because you suck at it." The darker complexioned of the three said to the bigger with a grin.
"You didn't do any better than he did!" the shortest of the three ratted to the darker one. The three boys gave each other hard looks before randomly bursting into a laugh; this was when Astro saw the opportunity to jump in.
"I can win this game." Astro boasted, just loud enough so the boys could hear him. The boys stopped laughing and looked at Astro. The android took this as a cue to continue; "I just have one question for you, which prize do you want when I win?"
The biggest of the boys stepped forward with a look of challenge on his face. "That white cat with the stupid pink bow on it." He said, pointing to the stuffed animal. "My sis Fitch loves that kind of junk."
"Alright." Astro agreed before giving a token to the robot in charge of the game in exchange for three rings. Holding all three rings in his hands, Astro calculated how each one was going to land before he tossed them all at the same time. To the amazement of the three boys, each one of Astro's rings hit the same target with an accuracy almost inhuman. They were still gawking as the robot in charge of the game handed Astro the stuffed cat and when Astro handed it to the bigger boy.
"Here you go." The little android said cheerfully enough. Carefully, the bigger boy took the stuffed toy and looked at Astro with a wary side glance.
"How did you-" the boy started to say, but was cut off by someone screaming in the distance. The boys turned their head from the direction of the noise and were shocked to see several of the robots in charge of the food stands and a few of the games were chasing people around.
"Let's get out of here!" the smallest of the boys declared as the three of them took off without another warning. Astro stood where he was. Something about this didn't seem right- why would a bunch of robots go around terrorizing humans all of a sudden?
Snapping him out of this thoughts, one of the robots had knocked down a tent that sat by a food stand and subsequently caught on fire. Within half a second, almost every stand was burning or falling apart and Astro simply stood where he was, horrified that he had promised Professor O'Shay that he wouldn't use his abilities.
"Jump!" a voice hollered not far from him through the sudden disaster. "Jump where are you?!"
Why was that person still here? Astro wondered. Doesn't she know this place is about to fall to pieces?
But then he heard a beam split near the voice and immediately Astro knew that it was going to fall on whoever was still there in the next second. Acting without thinking, Astro jumped high enough in the air for his rocket boots to activate and reached the person just as the beam was about to fall on her. The girl fainted in shock as Astro rolled the beam off his back as if it were nothing before looking closer at the girl he had just saved.
She had dark hair, she wore a short red dress, white boy short leggings, dark pink flats, and if Astro looked just right at her, her face almost looked…
A bark from a dog made Astro jump in surprise. The mutt was caramel colored with a brown spot on his left ear and another on his back. Astro looked at the dog, then at the girl.
"You're Jump, aren't you?" the android asked. The dog replied with an enthusiastic bark. Suddenly, the android had a fury he had never known before.
"Look at what you did you dumb dog!" Astro spat. "She was almost hurt badly because she was trying to find you!"
The dog whimpered to show that it did have some remorse for its actions. Heartbroken that he had been so harsh, Astro apologized.
"Look, I know you didn't mean it." He said. "But you can make up for it, alright? You can watch her until help comes. Okay?"
Jump yipped in reply, giving Astro the idea that it would. With a smile, Astro looked around them of the now utterly destroyed fall festival and his smile was quickly under shadowed with a frown. If he had helped, maybe if he could find the cause of what made the robots go crazy out of nowhere…
A new feeling that Astro couldn't shake came upon the android as he started to leave. Something had to be done. And maybe… just maybe, that something was him.