Where Your Core Rests

One Door Closes...

The ship seemed... confused? Could they be confused without a Mental Model?

If not, then this one was the excuse to the rule.

Red lights decorated a black hull, turrets gleaming in the pale sunlight fighting through the clouds and the superstructure towered over human and cat (even if it really wasn't that tall).

Those two had frozen in place, staring at the ship with wide eyes and really not sure what to do in this situation.

The ship moved its turrets as if stretching them, rotating this way, angling that way, test-loading without shells, unloading, weighing anchor, and testing all other systems.

Then, it moved its forward turret towards them in a non-aggressive way and had the nerve to click in question.

"H...hi...???"

Click

"Uhh... one beep for yes and two for no?", they were running on absolute adrenaline at this point, one panic reaction hunting the next.

Click

Luigi looked up at the human, to the ship, to the slope, back again and then started sneaking off.

Said human noticed that, of course, and began moving with him: "We gotta go now... but it was nice meeting you! Really!"

With that they speed-walked away, ignoring the obvious sounds of a launching ship behind them and just praying that nothing would happen, praying harder when the sound of cutting waves followed them.

It didn't stop. That was probably the worst part of it, like an ever-hovering skyscraper waiting to crash down on you.

After a while, they couldn't stop the instinctive urge of looking back and turned their head, almost suffering a cardiac arrest.

That ship wasn't just moving in the same direction as them, no, that would have meant that human and cat were out of the situation and all was good. No, this ship, for whatever reason, was moving with them, as close to the shore as possible and even halting with them.

Admittedly though, that made the entire situation way less creepy, because the ship seemed like a gigantic puppy, but it didn't make it less complicated.

The human stared, then held their eyes closed with both hands, took a deep breath and let the arms fall limply to their sides: "So, you're following us."

Click

"Don't you have, like... a place to go? A fleet waiting for you?"

This time, the answer took longer and came back with three clicks.

"Three? Does that mean "maybe" or "I don't know"? Something along those lines?"

Click

"Ok well, that's bad", they felt... bad, really. An enemy of humanity it may be (or rather, was), but to have no place to go that's just... terrible.

They scratched their head, thinking.

Taking a ship home was nothing you could just do. The Fleet of Fog wasn't an enemy of humanity anymore, but that was only the officially announced status – years of enmity couldn't just be erased simply as that and especially not in a region like this were lots of land and human lives had been lost.

Luigi looked up at his friend, meowing.

"I know I know...", they rubbed the back of their nose, "listen... kid."

Man, they didn't even know the ship's name and what pronounce did it have? Did ships even have pronouns? They had been mentally referring to it as, well, "it", the whole time, but what if gender actually existed for the Fog and they had been disrespecting the kid the entire time!?

No – no I can't panic about this now. It's "it" until proven otherwise.

There was not enough mental capacity to deal with this issue as well, so they postponed it until an unspecified later.

"I can't really take you back to our house, you probably wouldn't be a sight for sore eyes, to say it nicely – we have a lot of ex-navy people living there. But you could stay in that bay if you want to?"

Click...

"Nooo, don't sound so sad! How can you even make this sound sad!?"

That was unfair! Ships communicating only with clicks shouldn't be able to sound heartbroken!

"Ok ok ok, I'll chill with you", a look down at Luigi, "we'll chill with you. And you know what? Let me get my things and I'm even willing to accompany you on the search for your flagship, how does that sound?"

It didn't matter if they stayed here or not. As a thief, they were accustomed to staying in a place for a certain amount of time and then moving on when it became too risky to do so – but Luigi was barely one year old and born here. If he didn't want to follow into the great unknown, his friend also wouldn't go.

They had been spitting big words to the ship, preferring to think positive in hard times or overplay doubt with sass and snarky comments, but there was no way they would leave Luigi.

But the ship couldn't know about that and so clicked cheerfully in response to something which could very well just turn out to be a lie.

"Can you wait in the bay though? We'll go collect our things and then meet you there."

It seemed to agree to those terms, turning around and back into the natural cover.

"Alright then."

The way back to the shack was fast and once they were inside, Luigi went to collect his favourite toys and blanket, mimicking his friend who was putting all their things (weren't many) into a rucksack with seemingly endless depth.

When he moved to put them inside, they turned to him, serious: "Lui, I know you're intelligent, even if we don't speak the same language, so listen closely: we're going far away, we might not return back here and will be on sea for a long time. It could become very dangerous, do you hear? If you don't want to come with me, then that's alright, ok? I can stay here as well, telling a lie to a ship is far from the worst I've ever done."

But Luigi was Luigi. He didn't fear anything, only respected them and trusted his human friend too much. So, he head-butted them softly, purring reassuringly and tried to close the bag himself.

They closed the bag for him, patting his head: "You're an idiot, you know that?"

"Meow!"

That made them snort, shouldering the bag finally and looking back one last time. The old wooden boards, creaky windows, fucked up door lock, shitty bed and torn curtains – man, they would miss this, they always missed their old houses.

"Thank you for everything, amigo", and with that, this door was closed as well.