"Hey," said Mad Rat, once the two of them were settled and staring up at the stars. "Uh. Heart. Do you know what the L stick is?"

Heart -- and wasn't that a cute name to have, now, after so long with no name at all -- blinked once, quickly. "... The what."

"The..." Mad Rat made a vague gesture, like a quick flick of his paw. "Uh. Y'know. You were there, right? When Rat God was explaining how to jump around and stuff? It was all flying over my head, but she said to use the L stick to move faster or something?"

"I... don't know?" Heart shifted a bit, curling a paw around Mad Rat's middle. He was starting to miss having hands to hug with, but this would have to do. "... are you really sure this question is how you want to spend your last moments? Wouldn't you rather chat about something less..." A bit of fumbling for a word. "Weird?"

"Hey, it's the one thing that never added up!" Mad Rat objected. "All the other stuff made sense. The cheese she told me to follow, the goals, even the time limit! But what the hell did she mean, press A to the beat and use L to dash extra far!"

"Does it even matter? She was only helping to try and get you eaten. Why would her advice need to make sense?"

"It worked, though!" That seemed to be a sticking point, because for all that time was slipping away, Mad Rat just wouldn't let this one go. "I just don't get why she kept saying it like that. It's so specific."

Heart lowered his head until his chin met the tip of Mad Rat's head, nestling against him like a kitten. Might as well make what time they had left comfortable.

"Maybe things work differently when you're a parasite..." Heart proposed, tentatively. If Mad Rat was going to keep on with this topic, so be it. It was his last day, after all; he could end it on a weird conversation if he really wanted.

"Maybe," Mad Rat considered. "I've never seen anything like that body she had yesterday. Maybe an L stick is some kind of weird parasite body part!"

"You did spend your whole life in a lab, so it's not like you'd know much about other animals," Heart pointed out, but not as anything more than a quiet reminder.

"Eh, whatever," said Mad Rat. "Pretty sure we didn't see anything that weird in the park or the sewers either. That's more than just the lab. You'd never seen something like that either, right?"

Heart's tail flicked in the grass, and he nuzzled Mad Rat for a moment. "No, I couldn't see anything. That was all in your head."

Mad Rat sighed. "Right. Forgot about that." He paused a moment, wincing a little as he changed position against Heart's front paws. "Man, I must have looked really weird in all those fights."

"A little. It made more sense with the music."

That got a little chuckle out of Mad Rat. "Yeah, I bet... speaking of music... you got it in you for one last song?"

"I'm not your actual heart anymore," Heart reminded him, but that didn't really matter. The song was already thrumming in his ribcage. Heart would have kept playing forever if he could. "But I can try."

"Hm?"

"Lean close," he said, and Mad Rat wriggled his way up against Heart's chest, pressing an ear into his fur. Sure enough, the same rhythm still beat beneath the skin, a slow, gentle tempo in pulse with the shimmering stars above, harmonizing to a steady melody for only the two of them to hear.

"Whaddya know," said Mad Rat. "I can still hear it."

(And then, a minute later: "Hey wait, what's a sound check?")