The earth turned.
It spun on its axis, like it had for over 4 billion years, not stopping its forever fall towards the sun, sideways, tangled in a dance of gravity and force, friction dooming to be its downfall… eventually.
"…Who are you?"
The one side of the large crusty ball was darkened, the sun not shining on that face. Yet, it was illuminated, small dots and lines plotted most of its surface, shining in the night.
"Well, very technically, not from here."
If any alien civilisation would look at it, they would think some elder race marked the planet, and not consider it would be the excruciating amount of light humans needed to feel comfortable at night.
Yet, there were some people who just preferred their business in the cold envelope of the darkness.
"What do you want?"
It was summer in paris, the warm hot air of the day slowly cooling through the night, making car fumes and other air pollution more bearable, but still, some people coughed their way back home, late at night.
"It's not the fact what I want, it's what the universe wants, more or less. I'm just a messager, an informer."
"…"
The massage shop was closed, no lights were on, a bypasser glanced at it, then resumed walking, forgetting, living.
"You do realise this is extremely dangerous, right?"
The man stared down at the elder, his mouth open in thought, then grinned.
"Well, it's not like I'm practically handling a nuclear bomb with this, right?"
The elder frowned.
Soon the door of the shop opened, someone walked out, bowler hat on, large black trenchcoat sweeping, taking brisk steps in the night.
In an alleyway, two pairs of doors appeared, they opened, and a man stood in the doorway.
"Do you have them?"
"Yup, at least he seemed to understand there had to be put a stop to this. Come on, let's go, doc."
A nod, They entered.
The doors closed.
"Heeya!"
Ladybug swung across one of the buildings across the Eiffel tower, before spotting a ledge halfway to throw her yoyo at before she fell again.
With three more throws and a front-flip, she landed on the top. She stood up and looked around for a moment, detransformed, and promptly sighed.
"Ugh, how much more homework can someone get just a few weeks into the new school year?" She sat down, buried her head in her knees, as her bag slid off her shoulders.
"Don't sulk so much, Marinette! You'll get brow lines long before you become much older!" Tikki giggled, flew around Marinette, and then stopped in front of her.
"As if my superhero duties already not cause just that, I just want some free time here and there…" She buried her face further in her knees.
"Aw, come on, Marinette! You're Ladybug, how often do people get to be that?"
Marinette grabbed her bag from behind her, and fished for a cookie. "Well, with you, at least once every 100 years." She poked a finger at Tikki's non-existent nose (making her giggle), before handing over the cookie.
They both shared a small silence, before Marinette sighed again and lay backwards on the platform. She put her arms behind her head and stared up to the clouds.
Something red entered her view.
"Hey, don't forget what we came here for~" Tikki said in a sing-song voice, waving a geography book from Marinette's bag in front of her eyes.
Marinette frowned, "I know, Tikki, I just… I want to enjoy this, I almost never get to go up here just for fun anymore, or anything else than saving the world for that matter."
Marinette sat up, and grabbed the book, started flipping through it, her mind already adjusting to the long task of staring at her book for hours upon end.
"Purr-leasure to meet you here, Princess!"
"EEK!"
The book flew out of Marinette's hands, and she almost broke her neck as she tried to look behind her. Standing there was Chat Noir, grinning and leaning against the fence of the balcony, tail idly swishing around.
"How're you doing, Princess?" He asks, with that oh-so-smug grin of his.
"Well, I was about to start with my homework, till you dropped in on me." She turned back to her book, intent on just ignoring him for the moment, she has homework to finish, dangit!
Marinette saw him moving in her peripheral vision, but didn't look up. Soon, she saw the belt-end of the tail pull down the top of the book to reveal Chat's grinning face.
Oh, so kitty likes to play, doesn't he?
She stuck her tongue out at him, and he laughed. "Why're you here, kitty? Patrol too boring?"
Chat Noir pouted, "In fact, yes, I wanted some fresh air, stretch my tail…" 'Wait, does his tail even need stretchi- nevermind.' "…and see the sights. And, I can at least confirm that the last reason I got up here has definitly been fulfilled" he finished while he stared at her.
She blushed a little, did he really just compliment her? No, he was just flirting, as always.
So she grinned back. "Well, I came up here to do my homework, kitty. It's serious, and due tomorrow. So as much as I like to spend time with you-" '…Did that tail just twitch?' "-I need to get on with this."
Chat Noir went silent for a second, before nodding and standing up. He grabbed his staff from his back, swinging it around a few times before laying it on her shoulders. "That's fine, I understand what it's like to have unnecessary work to do."
Marinette giggled, "Yup, at least you are doing some real work over there, out there, with Ladybug. While I'm all here with my stuffy self doing stuffy things in stuffy books." She threw her school book to the floor in emphasis.
Chat Noir nodded, looking distant, before noticing where he was, looking around. "Speaking of here… how did you get up here?"
Marinette froze, oh shit, "Uh, I… Uh…" 'Speak, Marinette! No, wait! Think before you speak!' "Uh… Ladybug showed me up here? I mean, she showed me how to get up here?"
Chat raised an eyebrow, not good.
"Uh… she came to me one day before most of the more serious stuff happened with akumas and wanted to spend some time with me? So she showed me how to get up here through that trapdoor over there, yeah."
Phew, smooth, that was too close…
Chat Noir turned around to that trapdoor, then shrugged. "Alright, just know that it's pretty dangerous for people to stay up here, it's pretty high, and unlike the tourist balcony further down, this one doesn't have full-body-height fences around the sides, so be careful."
Marinette blinked, oh yeah, she never noticed that. She never wanted to notice that, not wanting to think of the hundreds of meters that it was going down over the fence and oh god what if she someday would stand too close to that fence without her Ladybug suit on and he wouldn't be here and-
"-ette? Marinette?" Chat Noir waved in front of her eyes, she blinked, right. She noticed she was gripping the metal bolts on the balcony just a little bit too tight.
Marinette had actually never mentioned this to anyone, but she has a real fear of heights. Granted, her becoming Ladybug kind of fizzled that away, but it never really went away since being a civilian she was not protected by the suit.
"You kinda spaced out there, Princess, you okay?"
She stared, oh yeah, he was still here too. "Yeah, sorry, I do that sometimes, hehe. Thank you for your concern, but I'm fine."
Marinette looked up, into Chat's eyes, his oh-so-green eyes. He blushed, and looked away, she smiled.
He looks back, a blush still on his face, and smiles too.
"You know, we could-"
BRRRRRR!
"AH, that's my phone!"
Trying to wrestle with her designer pants to get her phone out of her pockets, she slipped it through her fingers.
It flew through the air, one turn, two turns, three turns, before falling back down. Marinette froze horror as it disappeared over the edge, and a black blur coming after it.
A few seconds of silence passed before she was able to tensively move closer to the fence.
"Got it!" Chat Noir hopped over the edge, her phone in his hand. He handed it over.
It was broken, the screen was black, but at least it was not cracked in half, completely, like most phones from this height would be.
"Oh, thank you! I don't know what would've happened if-"
BRRRRR! "Ah!"
She almost let it fall again, it was ringing? Now? Wouldn't the fall have shut off the phone?
Chat Noir laughed. "Seems like the battery and phone itself are still fine, but your screen has a day off!"
Marinette groaned and shut off her phone by holding the power button, she has to ask Alya later on if she can find a cheap place to fix something like this, else she'll go crazy from all the calls she can't answer.
"Shush, kitty, thank you for saving my phone, although that thing will definitly make me crazy later on today…"
Chat Noir snickered, then cleared his throat. "I have to go do some… homework, yeah, same as you. So I'll see you later, Purr-incess!" He teased before jumping off the fence, backwards.
Marinette sighed in contentment, her phone still clutched in her hands.
"You usually have that look for another 10 minutes before you snap out of it, Y'know."
"Tikki!" Marinette shouted, blushing hard. She hid her face in her hands, "Shush, please!"
"What? Because it's true?" She giggled more when Marinette groaned.
"No cookies for you today, little miss." "Hey!" Tikki protested, but Marinette giggled too.
They giggled for a few more minutes and continued teasing eachother, homework forgotten.
Chat Noir ran across the rooftops, a grin on his face, what a lucky coincidence he met Marinette on top of the Eiffel tower, of all places!
He grabs a chimney, and sits on it, looking over the roofs of paris, dangling one leg downwards.
He shouldn't be doing this with Marinette, he really shouldn't. Whereas Ladybug has already captured his interest in a romantical way, he still finds himself slipping back into a playboy-ish mood around Marinette, flirting and making jokes like that, trying to appeal to her.
He groans as he realises he's thinking about this again, but that doesn't stop his thoughts.
'I really should stop seeing her, but I don't want to, she's so… passionate.'
Chat Noir shook himself out of the reverie, and thought about what he should be doing, which is, ironically, homework.
More specifically, on top of the Arc de Triomphe, as the Eiffel tower is already claimed by a certain blue-black haired girl.
He was just about to jump over to the next chimney when he stopped.
Chat Noir straightened his back, widened his eyes, as his ears suddenly shot up, and he felt a chill down his spine.
Chat sat unmoved, frozen, but there was no sound, nothing, nothing unusual in his sights, or anything like it.
But still…
Something was wrong.
Chat Noir had no idea how to explain it, but whatever he felt, it didn't feel like anything good, or well, not bad, but just… not good either.
He shook his head, got into a more relaxed posture, but he couldn't stop his eyes searching the surroundings, scanning for an unseen threat, something moving in the corner of his eyes. Maybe it was that same pull, but he didn't know.
Taking a step from the Alleyway, an unknown figure sniffed in the air. 'Ah, summer, and daytime too, I should take this Jacket off.'
And so he did, tucking it under his arm, stepping forward and crossing the street patiently.
The stranger arrived at a small massage shop, but instead of knocking on the front door, he simply walked in.
He got an odd sense of Deja-Vu walking in here, technically, for his second time, for the first time.
'Odd way to phrase that, I wonder if Doc has a whole book with these kinds of sentences.'
He heard some muffled conversation through the door, and stayed as silent as possible, leaning one ear towards the door.
"Oh, Wayzz, Ladybug and Chat Noir are keeping every akuma at bay, but how can the balance be kept? Sooner or later they'd…" The man at the other side of the door stopped talking, and then just sighed.
The stranger adjusted the grip on his vest, patted his pocket, and then opened the door.
On the other side, an elder man turned around, looking at the door. "Welcome, how can I help you, sir?"
The stranger grinned mysteriously, "Well technically, that is indeed the question, but it should be me asking that, instead."
He rummaged through his pockets, and grabbed a small darkbrown hexagon-shaped box, holding it out towards the elder, who had become intensely alert all of the sudden.
"How can I help you, Master Fu?"