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“But Machi—"
“Keep the cat, Shal. I don’t want another one.”
“Machi, please—"
“No.” There was a beep, and the call ended.
Shalnark stared at his phone, crestfallen. “Come on, Machi!” He groaned, running his other hand through his hair. “You know I’m not a cat person; I’ve never even had a pet before.” Well, the Troupe did have at least five or six cats back at their hideout in Meteor City, but those were really Pakunoda’s cats more than the group’s, and they’d always kept a wide berth from Shal in favor of snuggling with Paku.
So he didn’t exactly have the experience on hand to figure out what to do with a cat. Machi had seemed like his best bet, given that she lived a few blocks over from his new apartment. But even though she was really a softie deep deep down…he knew that pushing her wasn’t going to work. He’d have to find someone who was open to taking in a kitten; the most responsible Troupe members didn’t live nearby (Shizuku, bless her, had a hard enough time taking care of herself), and he was sure that in a city this size, the local animal shelters were full to bursting.
A sudden meow caught his attention, and he looked up to see the little soot-gray tabby sitting next to the kitchen table. The kitten meowed again, its amber eyes pleading at him. Shalnark sighed, feeling his heart soften just a tiny bit. “I guess I can keep you for a few days…until I figure out what to do,” he conceded. “I’m sure I can get this sorted out over the weekend. I mean, I’ve hacked national security databases, how hard can it be to look after a kitten?”
After doing some in-depth research (consulting ChatSHT), Shalnark had a basic idea of what his temporary feline houseguest would need. One InstaDoor order from the local pet store later, he had a litter box with a scoop and some litter, a selection of kitten food, some feeding bowls, and a laser pointer. (Okay, maybe the last one was more for his own amusement.)
“Not too shabby,” he congratulated himself after he set up the litter box and placed a water dish on the floor. “I guess let’s get you fed for now, and then do some searching for a forever home for you,” he informed the kitten, who was staring intently at the cans of food with wide amber eyes. He dumped a can of the kitten food into the other feeding bowl and placed it on the ground next to the water bowl. Like a moth to a flame, the kitten dashed over and began to noisily scarf down the meal.
Smiling in satisfaction, Shalnark wandered over to the living room. Plopping himself onto the couch, he reached for his laptop. “There have to be plenty of people looking for kittens, right?” Shalnark mused as he logged in. And sure enough, a simple web search turned up plenty of groups with people looking for pets or offering to foster young animals. “Wow, I didn’t even think about animal cafes!” He whistled in awe as he scrolled through the first page of search results. “Well, this could take a while. I mean, there’s lots of creeps out there, and Machi would kill me if she found out this kitten went to a less than perfect home.” Shalnark blanched as he considered the possibilities.
For the next few hours, he threw himself into checking each link, keeping a spreadsheet of possibilities with pros and cons neatly marked. He could do a thorough vetting of the final candidates on the dark web; this would just be a bit more surface level research for now. It was tedious work, but nothing compared to some of the jobs he’d done for the Troupe. Eventually, he decided he’d had enough for one day, and pushed his laptop away.
“Man!” Shalnark groaned as he stood up and stretched. “How long did that take? And I’m still not done, wow! But I can always pick it up tomorrow. I deserve a break for the rest of the night, I think.”
His eyes immediately strayed to his JoyStation5; he’d just downloaded a new game the other night, and between one thing and another, hadn’t gotten a chance to play it yet. “The perfect reward!” Shal decided, his face lighting up with a bright grin. Grabbing his controller, he turned on the JS5 and his TV, settling in for a night of gaming.
The game was something he’d been eagerly looking forward to, having followed its development for years. The story of an underprivileged youth who had to fight in a competition to become the king, in order to save the country from a murderous general who would destroy it…something about it really spoke to him, somehow. The misfit crew that gathered around the youth reminded him of the Troupe, too. And the combat was honestly incredible, so intuitive—
Suddenly, a dark shadow descended upon his JS5, breaking Shalnark’s focus on the wave of enemies assaulting him in the dungeon. It was the kitten, whom he’d completely forgotten about! Since his new temporary roommate hadn’t made any noise for the last few hours, he’d completely forgotten about their existence. They batted curiously at the console, looking up and meowing plaintively at Shalnark.
“Are you looking for some attention?” Shalnark laughed as he kept one eye on the game. “Okay, maybe give me a few minutes to find a save point or some—”
The kitten batted at the console again, and hit the power button. Immediately, the screen went blank and Shalnark’s heart practically stopped. He cried out in anger and frustration, and flung himself towards the console. “What are you doing? How did you—I mean, why—ARGH!” He pressed the power button and scooped up the squirming kitten. “Okay, you’re staying here with me,” he instructed them as he went back to the couch. “I guess I have to keep a close eye on you, huh?”
The console turned back on, and Shalnark was able to get back into the game with no trouble at all. He sighed in relief as he realized that the game had auto-saved right before the power had been turned off, so he hadn’t lost any progress. “Good thing, too,” he instructed the kitten, “because if you die in this dungeon, you get sent back to the beginning level and lose all of the gear and items you find. And I’ve gotten a bunch of rare drops off these monsters, too!”
He settled back into his spot and picked up right where he’d left off. “It’s not as gimmicky a dungeon as you might think, even for an early-stage area of the game,” Shalnark told the cat. “The design’s pretty thoughtful, and the difficulty conditions make total sense given the story…” he prattled on, talking to the cat in the same way that he’d chat with Phinks or Feitan when they played. Well, the two of them weren’t particularly interested in the design of games like Shalnark was, so they would tend to tune him out when he talked about things like enemy attack patterns or ray tracing. In a way, having a little furry companion was kind of like having a friend who he could talk to about anything, even if they didn’t understand a single word he was saying. Yeah, this wasn’t so bad!
Then the kitten pounced on his controller, batting at the joysticks. Shalnark’s character promptly rolled forward into a spike trap, immediately dying. The game autosaved, and then warped back to the beginning of the dungeon, a text box popped up to remind the player of the consequences of dying in this level. The controller fell out of Shalnark’s hands as he stared helplessly at the screen, mouth agape. Horrible, strangled noises of pain issued forth from his lips as he processed what had just happened.
Meanwhile, the kitten leaped off the couch to inspect the controller, swatting at the joysticks and trying to bite them. Shalnark clenched his teeth, smiling through the pain as his jaw twitched, suppressing the urge to open the window and scream into the twilight sky.
After the gaming fiasco, Shalnark decided to march through the apartment, checking everything to make sure there was nothing that the cat could knock over or break. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” he hissed to himself, “you can start the game over. Nothing’s broken. You can wait to finish it once the cat’s gone, or in another room, or whatever. It’s fine.”
The kitten trailed at his heels, surprisingly docile after their reign of terror in the living room. As Shalnark inspected every flat surface in his apartment, checking each object to see if it could be broken easily, the kitten stared at everything with those bright amber eyes. “I have to admit,” Shalnark told the kitten grudgingly, “you’re pretty cute when you’re not trying to destroy my belongings. If only you were like this all the time,” he sighed.
Eventually, Shalnark decided that he’d checked and secured everything that he could. “I think I’ll take a shower,” he decided, “and just wash all my troubles away!” Scooping up the cat again, he headed towards the hallway that connected his living room and kitchen to the other half of the apartment with his bedroom and bathroom. Luckily, the hallway had a pocket door that could be used to close off access to the front half of the apartment. Besides the bedroom and bathroom, the back half of the apartment had a storage closet that was pretty much empty except for a few empty boxes. Shalnark shut the hallway door behind him, opened the door to the closet and set the kitten down.
“I’ll keep this door open so you don’t get scared or anything, but you just stay put here, okay? There’s nothing here you can wreck, but there’s some boxes you can play with. Cats love boxes, right?”
The kitten just stared at him blankly, and Shalnark shrugged. He glanced at his bedroom door, visually confirming that it was closed, and then walked into the bathroom. He quickly turned on the water, took off his clothes and tossed them into the hamper, and opened the bathroom closet door to fetch a towel. “Well, this hasn’t gone according to plan,” he sighed as he set the clean towel down on the lid of the hamper. “I didn’t think Machi would pass up the chance to have a friend for Phantom…but maybe she saw how this one acted and decided against it. Guess I can’t blame her then.”
Shalnark popped a hand under the shower spray to test the water temperature, and stepped in once it was hot enough to his liking. He preferred long, scorching hot showers that could practically melt your skin off. Maybe it was due to only getting cold or room temperature ‘bird baths’ as a kid with a water jug and washcloth. His boiling hot Forever Showers were the ultimate luxury in his eyes.
He closed his eyes in bliss as the hot water rained down, letting out a deep sigh of contentment. The tension drained from his shoulders, and he could feel the afternoon’s stress wash away down the drain. “This is the life,” he murmured. Shalnark could wash himself up later; right now, he wanted to enjoy the soothing warmth. Several rapturous minutes passed by as Shal stood under the shower spray, mind completely devoid of any thoughts whatsoever.
And then there was a strange muffled thump. Shal’s eyes popped open and he snapped back to reality. What on earth was it? The plumbing, perhaps? That seemed odd; the apartment’s plumbing had never had issues before.
It couldn’t be an intruder, he knew that much. Right after he’d moved in, Shal had surreptitiously installed his own security system throughout the building, including several customized sensors and alarms for his apartment in particular. The Troupe had made many enemies over the years (on both sides of the law), and it didn’t hurt to be cautious, even if he knew for certain that it was nigh impossible for him to be identified as a Spider. But none of these alarms were sounding, and the thump didn’t sound like it was coming from any of the neighboring apartments.
Slowly, Shalnark turned off the water. He stood stock-still in the middle of the shower, steam still rising off his skin. The thump sounded again, and Shal yanked the shower curtain open, practically tearing it in the process. Squinting through the misty haze filling the room, he noticed that the door of the bathroom closet was open. Had he closed it? He pursed his lips, trying to remember.
The thump sounded again, and this time Shal realized it was coming from inside the closet. Well, that was even weirder. But make no mistake, he was going to get to the bottom of this mystery, if only so he could return to taking his shower in peace. Shal edged closer and closer to the closet, taking care not to make a sound. If he timed this right, he could maybe catch the source of the noise ‘in the act,’ so to speak. Carefully, Shal used his elbow to nudge the closet door further open, and peeked inside—
There was nothing there! Just his towels and washcloths, and an extra bathmat, all folded and sitting in their proper spots. But he quickly noticed that some of them seemed to be set askew to how he remembered placing them. Shal wasn’t the kind of guy who was careless in taking care of his home, so it was definitely suspicious. He reached out and set the towels back into place; as he did so, he realized that they had been blocking the back wall of the closet, and concealing another surprise; the wall panel was open.
Normally, the only way the panel would be opened was when the apartment building’s maintenance crew came in to check the pipes and water valve inside the wall. But Shalnark knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only had they not been inside his apartment in weeks, but that they couldn’t possibly have left it open and made a mess of the towels without him noticing. “What the heck…” Shalnark murmured to himself, squinting at it in confusion. He leaned towards it, peering into the darkness of the space between the walls—
And a pair of amber eyes stared back at him.
Shalnark yelped in surprise, and scrambled to find his phone. Turning on the flashlight app, he shone it into the darkness. There, sitting as innocently you please, was the kitten. She meowed cheerfully, as though to ask him what took him so long to join her.
“How did you get in there?” Shalnark was baffled, and could only stare at her. Then it hit him—the kitten must have followed him into the bathroom without him noticing. Since the closet door was open, the kitten climbed inside and must have figured out how to pry open the wall panel to get inside the walls of the shower. “You were the thumping noise?”
The kitten meowed again, as though to confirm. If Shalnark didn’t know better, he could have sworn that the kitten sounded proud…and smug.
“So not only do I have to remove everything from every surface, but I have to keep every door closed at all times,” he groaned. “Perfect.”
His response was a purr, and his brain automatically supplied “No, purr-fect.”
Shalnark let out a deep sigh. “Then I have to be on my guard 24/7, like a Troupe mission, until I find you a new owner. Are all pets this much trouble? And speaking of trouble…” He looked into the crawlspace, noticing how deep it was and how far back the kitten was sitting. “How am I gonna get you out? ”
It wasn’t easy, but somehow Shal managed (with the help of a freshly opened can of wet food, of course) to lure the kitten out. As he shoved the wall panel securely back into place, Shal made a note to nail it down for however long the kitten was going to be in his apartment. No way he wanted to go through this again!
By the time he was finished, it was after ten o’clock. “It’s been such a long evening, and I didn’t even get anything really accomplished,” he grumbled. “All I’ve been doing is chasing after this little guy…or girl?” He scratched his head. “Come to think of it, I don’t even know what your gender is,” he told the kitten, who was rolling around on the carpet next to him, attacking the loops of thread. “Pardon me...” He picked the kitten up to look. “Ah, pardon me, miss!”
The little kitten squirmed in his hands, licking at his finger. “Hey, that tickles! Geez, your tongue’s like sandpaper,” Shalnark told her. He sighed, smiling at her as she squeaked at him, and then resumed licking for a bit. She stopped after a moment, letting out a yawn.
“Oof, I feel you there.” The day’s antics had worn him out, too, and maybe an early bedtime was just the thing both of them needed. “Let’s go, miss, time to hit the hay.”
Carrying her into his bedroom, Shalnark set her carefully in a basket lined with fluffy towels that he’d set up for her. “Not exactly a princess bed, but it’ll do until you’re in your new home,” he told her. Shalnark quickly changed his clothes and plugged his phone in to charge before flopping onto the bed. “You know, I’ve been on missions that required me to stay on surveillance duty for days on end or to fight my way through waves of enemies,” he mused, “but taking care of one kitten has been way more intensive and exhausting than all of those. Who’d have thought?”
He yawned deeply, his jaw cracking. Shal grumbled as he massaged the sore spot. “What. A. Day.” He looked sidelong at the kitten, who was snuggling into her basket. “You’re just a little bundle of mischief, huh? Enough energy for both of us, that’s for sure.” He yawned again and nuzzled into his pillow. “Whatever,” Shalnark mumbled. “I should get some sleep. Tomorrow’s gonna be busy…gotta find you a home…”
Within a few seconds, he fell asleep. The room was silent and still for a few minutes before a small scratching noise could be heard. Shalnark, exhausted, slept on. The basket wobbled as the little kitten slowly climbed out of it. She made her way towards the bed, then sat and meowed softly. Shalnark didn’t move.
The kitten tried to jump up onto the top of the bed, but it was just too high for her little legs. Determined, she jumped again and hooked her tiny claws into the comforter that was draped over Shal and hanging towards the ground. Carefully, she clawed her way up the blanket, wiggling and wobbling all the way.
As soon as she was on the solid surface of the mattress, she darted forward towards Shal. Carefully, she wiggled herself into the crook of his elbow and snuggled deeply into the plush surface of the mattress. She licked his arm a few times and began to purr. With another squeaky yawn, the little kitten curled up around Shal’s arm and dropped off to sleep, still purring.
Still deeply asleep, Shalnark nuzzled into his pillow and cuddled the little kitten close, the ghost of a smile on his lips.
Machi’s phone buzzed as she was making breakfast. Glancing at it, she noted the name on the caller ID and sighed. “This better not be another job,” she said to her kitten Phantom, who was eating his own breakfast on the floor next to the kitchen table. “I finally have a free weekend, and my plans don’t involve another heist.”
She picked the phone up and answered the call. “Shalnark, what’s up?”
“Hey Machi! I hate to bother you so early, but I have a big favor to ask of you.”
Machi scrunched her face in annoyance and counted to ten. “That depends on what it is,” she said at length. “I’m not really planning on leaving the house today, and I’ve already made plans for tomorrow. So if you need help for a job—”
Shalnark laughed. “Oh, no, nothing like that. I wanted to see if I could stop by your place and borrow some cat toys?”
She blinked in surprise. “Uh…sure. That sounds fine, Phantom has more than he knows what to do with. Shizuku keeps buying him more because she forgets she already got him a ton.”
“Great! I need to keep Missy occupied while I find a home for her. She kept getting into things yesterday, so I think she’s bored. And I just don’t have the time or patience to clean up more messes, so maybe some toys would do the job.”
“Missy ?” Machi echoed. “Who’s Missy, Shal?”
“Remember Phantom’s little friend? She’s been hanging around my place, so I took her in while I’m working on finding her a home. She’s…something else.” He gave Machi a quick rundown of the previous day’s events, and Machi couldn’t help but notice that while he certainly seemed annoyed, there was an undercurrent of warmth in his tone. “I’m calling her Little Miss Mischief,” he continued, “Missy for short. It just seems appropriate, you know? Wow, it’s gonna be an uphill battle to find an owner for her.”
Phantom meowed, as though he could understand the conversation. Machi glanced down at him. If it was possible for a cat to look smug, Phantom was definitely pulling it off. In fact, if she didn’t know better, she was sure that Phantom had managed to coach Missy into exactly what to do.
Machi rolled her eyes. “I hate to break it to you, Shal, but it looks like she already found one.”