She stood out, scarlet billowing out around her like smoke, hint of something almost unreal about her as she leaned close, "Watch yourself, Agreste. You aren't in an elementary playground." She backed up, dark blue-black hair following behind her, and all that he could do was stare.
Something pricked a lot like familiarity as he tried to figure out why the strange woman was familiar until he saw a flick of a steel tail, and he bit his lip; could she be someone from the lab?
His eyes flickered back towards his boss, who gave him a thumbs up and a nod to get back to work, so he moved on from that. He wasn't Adrien Agreste, not anymore, not since the lab tore that identity out of him, not since he was created into something much better than a model boy, than a model son.
He sighed; he was the elusive Chat Noir, skilled spy, one that always blended into the shadows, perfect to uncover the worst kinds of secrets though his mind still spun as he watched the woman out of the corner of his eye go up to his man.
He growled, something just quiet enough, just under his breath enough, that no one would hear it as he stepped closer, flirting with pretty woman in expensive dresses and slowly stalking his way towards the man before he saw her smug smirk and stopped.
She sashayed away; Ladybug, perhaps? She worked for someone else, was as tiny as a bug people often spoke, rumors that trickled through the air. She was the size of a full grown woman roughly, may be just a hint shorter than the average, and her eyes sparkled like long forgotten gems that you just discovered for the first time in forever.
He just wished that she wasn't technically his enemy as she moved through the room with the practiced grace of another spy, trained to deceive, tail flicking out from hiding every now and again for vanishing again. Their steel tails were a dead giveaway as to what they were except when someone managed to hide theirs perfectly well.
Chat Noir was just mildly impressed that hers wasn't hidden quite as well as he'd expect; she was classified under the same qualifications as he was, but he almost shook his head in disappointment when the man that he'd needed to question blew up like a human pinata. She'd killed him like all the last of her victims.
Who raised spies to be murderers anyway? It was a waste of perfectly good talent; it made it way too easy to tell who the spy was after all.
"Pound it!" A fist met his, and he looked up into a brilliant and relieved smile.
"Bugaboo, do you have a minute?" He asked, voice almost scratchy from the scare of that rough battle; Hawkmoth wasn't getting any easier in time. You'd think his ideas would just fizzle up and die instead of get better and get deadlier.
"No, this princess has to return home before midnight." She smiled at him, and princess still made him think of Marinette Dupain-Cheng, the shy girl in his class that he'd willingly help bring out of her shell if she wasn't so shy around his civilian identity that was.
"M'lady, can we one day...?" He wasn't sure what he wanted to say, too much sprung to mind, and he just wanted her to stay by his side one day, just he didn't want to push her past her comfort zone. Love could be patient or at least that's what he'd remembered reading before and feeling spark up in his chest for her.
"We'll see, kitty." She sighed before she turned and ran away, disappearing into the evening sun as superheroes tended to.
He'd rather she'd stay with him, but he knew how important their secret identities were. He also knew better than to push her.
Cat Noir would just have to return home to his practically empty mansion and hope that one day, he'd get more than just a 'Pound it!'
He woke up with a barely muffled scream, glancing down at his cat that he'd knocked off the bed and paced with obvious aggravation. This room wasn't really big enough for them or the spy that was more robot than human that was sound asleep on his couch that would really hate if he were to wake her up again.
Chat Noir, the best spy here as far as he was concerned, hopped out of bed, tail drooping past his oversized T-Shirt and the rest of his nightclothes. The metal contraption hurt when pressed against his body while he slept, so he had to leave the lizard like tail out at night after it pressed burning into his back during missions.
"Noir, what's the matter? Is there an emergency or are you leaving?" The voice droned in his head, one of many that had been connected to him by some kind of interceptor placed within him back when he was an experiment in the lab.
"No, I'm getting a glass of water." He carefully side stepped around the couch, watching his spy coworker snooze as if robots ever truly slept. It made him somewhat uneasy sometimes, almost like he was on lock down, and yet he hated to think over the fact that he was actually part robot too. It was something that he'd choose to ignore and pretend was as normal as can be.
He was mostly human after all, just quite a bit better.
Seeing Ladybug again was like a hit just straight to his chest; he couldn't quite breathe, because she looked familiar do to his dreams and not the shared experience they had to have had.
She looked dashing in red even though this time it was a tank top that clung to her and dark jeans almost black that hugged at her legs as she looked like she was calculating some long withheld mission in her head and how to best go about it. Almost like she was free and didn't have a boss.
"Dupain-Cheng," He whispered in her ear on a whim, "Fancy seeing you here."
He wasn't trying to become something he wasn't or sound seductive; he just wanted to know if his dreams were pointing him to some warped perception of the truth.
She spun around to face him, and he wasn't blind to the recognition in her eyes. He'd hit the nail on the head much like how she had done some weeks back.
"Adrien, fancy meeting you here too." The use of his once first name sent his heart into panic mode, because no one, no one ever associated Chat Noir with Adrien Agreste, especially an enemy spy.
That's when the guns went off, and instinct propelled him forward. He grabbed Ladybug's hand and dashed back into his getaway car, and pulled her in, practically on his lap with the nerve endings with him completely on edge and sped away. Seat belts weren't mandatory when driving meant an escape from people who simply didn't like the tailed spies that often left places in vague levels of disrepair.
Ladybug slid off of him, shooting him a dark look, and leaned back to buckle him up before she buckled herself up, "We're still somewhat human."
"Not enough to actually mean something." Chat Noir muttered under his breath, ignoring the way his body both chilled and warmed up by her proximity; it was simply a delayed reaction from the dreams. He couldn't love her like that after all.
"Do you even know your mission? Or who turned us into this?" She huffed, tail slipping out from its hidden spot, hitting the spot closest to the door like some worn out dog.
"No, what matters is doing what we should. It's for the greater good." Chat retorted, because as a spy, he truly believed that everything that he did was for the greater good.
"You think that just playing researcher for some voices in your head helps the world out?" She grumbled, "I, at least, know better than that. Hawkmoth or whatever he has become has you."
"Hawkmoth? That's a mysterious person from some weird dreams, and so he doesn't actually exist..." Who was once Adrien retorted.
"He's your father." Ladybug sighed, "He's went mad. He was fine, practically impossible before, but now he's become some criminal mastermind with the desire to control his son like a machine and chance the world until he can concoct some way without magic, might I add, to bring his wife back when magic truly failed him."
"That sounds unbelievable, you know?" Chat Noir peeked out of his window and tried to ignore how lit up his veins felt under the barrage of bullets aimed at them.
"But it isn't." She sighed, "We lost so much, our Kwamis, my best friend, our humanity." Ladybug steadied herself with another deep breath, "Tikki managed to reprogram a robot to stay in touch, so that I didn't forget. Do you still have Plagg?"
"Plagg, my cat? You're nuts. He's just a cat." Chat Noir muttered under his breath.
"Why do you call yourself Chat Noir?" Ladybug retorted as if she just couldn't believe him at all.
"It just felt right." He answered, tone flat and practically dull.
"You're French, so's your father though." She muttered before managing to speak up, "And you used to go by that when you were my superhero partner, think about that. Dreams aren't always just stories that bug us when we sleep.
"Did you just make a pun?" He couldn't help how he involuntarily smiled, but he wondered why. He didn't remember liking puns, let alone ever making them.
"I didn't mean to, Chat." Ladybug's blue eyes lit up, "Please, don't forget who you used to be anymore, please help me stop your father. I don't want to screw up this world too."
"I-" His mind blanked as he suddenly was confronted with the fact that despite everything he remembered something, felt it like those practically lucid dreams, and he remembered a girl that he'd fallen in love with, that's balcony practically became a home for them. "I'll believe you just this once." His mind was in a disarray, but the smile on Ladybug's face felt a lot like coming home and felt a lot like understanding.