"Of a Different Stripe"
By Eoraptor
AN: "Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir" created by Thomas Astruc, and property of French TF1, Korean EBS, and English rights to Nickelodeon. This work is a fan-work, intended under fair-use and not-for profit, I don't own anything other than the original characters.
~Miraculous~
"Is there anything more beautiful than Paris at night, m'Lady?"
"Yeah, Paris, at night, without fighting Omelette du Fromage…" Ladybug ducked an incoming projectile from the chicken-themed organic farmer and sighed as it exploded into a cheesy mess behind her, "Focus Kitty Cat!"
"Yeah, see what you mean!" Chat Noir ducked under a strand of cheese as he ran around to help her up, "Not exactly how I was EGGspecting to spend my evening."
Ladybug rolled her aquamarine eyes at the ever-present puns and blew a strand of violet hair out of her face, "Seriously… for magical spandex, I wish it could breathe just a bit better."
The slinky feline eyed his partner a bit too keenly. When he was caught, he ran a hand through his own sweaty golden hair, "Yeah, well count yourself lucky, magic black leather is worse, especially in broad daylight, with the sun beating down..."
Ladybug eyed the cat archly for a moment, before shrugging and conceding the point. Then she turned and looked at the explodey cheesy mess surrounding them in the Bois de Boulogne's largest grotto. At least they were here this time, and not somewhere that expensive things could be damaged like the Louvre. Or the plaza beneath Tour Eiffel.
Then she refocused on the chicken-man in blue over-alls.
Looking up, the black cat considered the yolky mess he had stepped in reaching to help Ladybug to her feet. "What do you think, the Akuma in his hat? His basket? It is full of those magic eggs after all…"
"Mmmm, I don't think so…" She shook her head, considering aloud," They usually protect their magic fetishes…"
Bending over, she picked up a stalk of celery from where it lay, studying it. Then she flicked it at the evilized farmer's hat, sending it off his feathered and masked head. He was put off by the attack, but he certainly didn't panic and pounce on the straw chapeau. Turning to face the heroes, he reached into his over-flowing basket, this time grabbing what seemed to be a large wheel of cantal, which magically expanded its way out of the farmer's small panier.
His motion to roll the huge 36 kilo wheel at the heroes was interrupted by Chat Noir's magic staff. It lanced out from his hand, shooting through the handle of his basket as it extended. A flick of the hero's wrist sent the basket flying, spilling some farm-goods out on the way.
The deranged farmer snorted and dropped the giant cheese wheel, turning around his pitchfork when deprived of his ammunition.
"Nope, you're right, not the basket either..." the feline hero sighed, retracting his staff.
Then he yelped and dodged, half-bending backwards when the pitchfork magically extended just like his staff, rocketing at him with four glinting tines.
"Whoa! I think I get the point!" He panted, watching Ladybug's yoyo swing out and wrap around the shaft of the implement, intercepting it and tugging it aside to lance past him somewhat harmlessly and just in the nick of time.
"What did I say about paying attention?!" She hollered, recalling the yoyo as the pitchfork simultaneously retracted. "Or next time you will!"
"I didn't know you cared, m'Lady!" He purred and backflipped closer to the Ladybug.
"What, I wouldn't just BUG-out and leave you." She smirked and spun her yoyo a few times.
Chat Noir clutched his heart, looking as though he'd been struck.
"That bad?" she cocked her head to the side, eyes wide with concern.
"No no! I think you've PUNished me enough!" he crowed, pressing the back of a hand to his forehead.
Ladybug snorted and whipped the magical bug fetish around at the end of her arm a few more times. "Just keep those big green eyes on the prize, Kitty Cat."
Blinking them poignantly, Chat Noir turned and looked for Omelette du Fromage. "Uh… Speaking of bugged out…"
Ladybug sighed and started looking around for the Akumatized farmer as well. "Crud, I can't see him!"
"Maybe I can…" the black cat intoned. Concentrating a moment, he summoned his night vision powers, peering through the dusky city greenspace.
The entire park blossomed into clear, albeit green daylight. "There!"
"Where?!" Ladybug stared around helplessly.
"There!" the feline themed hero pointed, and then smacked himself in the face, realizing that she couldn't see the bibbed chicken-man skulking through the wooded space at the edge of the grotto. "There, look towards the Fortifications highway!"
Ladybug did, momentarily lamenting that while Chat Noir got night vision and kitty claws, she got the black and white motion-based vision of a ladybug. Finally, she saw the darkened outline of the chicken-man backlit by the traffic from the main artery road.
"Wait, there's someone else!" He warned when she whipped her yoyo around to latch onto a tree branch, intending to sling her way forward.
It took her a moment, but she saw the outline of… something. She slashed out with her yoyo to latch another tree branch, and then heard the sounds of thrashing about in the woods.
A moment later the pitchfork came spinning airborne out of the woods with a wicked whistling sound. Ladybug had just enough time, in the gloom, to cartwheel out of the way before it impaled the ground where she had been standing. She watched it bounce back and forth on its metal tines a few times before bobbing to a stop standing straight up between her empty footprints.
"Quick! Smash it!" came a distinctly feminine cry.
"Who was that?!" the polka-dot themed heroine scratched her head, looking from the farm implement to the copse of trees.
"I don't know," Chat bounded over to the pitch-fork. "But Let's not look a gift-horse in the mouth."
He grabbed the smooth wood handle of the fork in a hand, and then executed a spin, driving his foot into the haft midway down. The implement gave a crack, splintering where his foot struck.
"Darn this thing is tough!" he lamented when it stood intact despite the fracture.
"What do you expect? It's a magically imbued farm tool, not an egg shell…" Ladybug chewed her lip when the fork failed to snap, reclaiming her yoyo from the tree branch and whipping it around to gain some speed for a strike of her own. "Hit it again!"
"No!" Came a terrified and enraged cry, followed by a disconcerting clucking.
Two shapes exploded from the growth along the path; one at ground level, revealing the evil-incarnated farmer, feathers flying behind him and hat flipping off as he charged. Above him the canopy of old fir trees exploded as well, accompanied by a sort of growling sound.
"Oh for the love of… Here! Let me!" the airborne form landed right next to Chat Noir, a few paces ahead of Omelette du Fromage.
"Fortitude!" She cried out and held her hand back, poised to strike. There was a sort of shimmering in the air, and a golden light enveloped the gloved hand of a woman who was revealed by the sudden burst of energy and illuminance.
She swung the glowing fist down, opening her hand at the last instant and striking the handle of the magically imbued farm implement. Her gloved fingers struck at the haft with magical speed, and in an instant it exploded in a cloud of splinters, which were swept aside as her blow continued through, leaving a notable wind in its wake to carry the splinters away.
Chat Noir and Ladybug stared at the revealed woman in dumbstruck awe as she completed her attack by spinning down to one knee, the shattered handle clutched in her hand, apparently expending the rest of her supernatural momentum with a flourish.
The mystery woman looked up, and then around, and then pointed, "I believe this is where you take over?"
Ladybug looked around dumbly, following the pointing glove. After a stunned moment she saw it, the purple and black butterfly form of the Akuma released from its fetish. "Oh… Oh!"
Her yoyo already orbiting her arm in a high-speed spin, she nodded grimly, "No more evil for you little akuma!"
The black-spotted magic yoyo lashed out and scissored open, revealing its magical interior. It inhaled the evil sprite and latched close, and the lavender haired heroine retrieved it with a snap of her wrist. She tapped out a quick incantation on the spots of her charm and smiled as she felt the evil aura evaporate. "Bye bye little butterfly!"
She watched the little cabbage white butterfly flutter off into the night with a smile, and then looked around, a bit at a loss. She hadn't called on a Lucky Charm, so how did she dispatch the evil chaos that Omelette du Fromage had wrought?
"Use your item!" she heard a familiar whisper. It was Tiki's voice, except that it wasn't real; she had felt it in her mind more than heard it outright.
Concentrating, she spun her yoyo around again, and hurled it skywards, the way she would when calling on her magical attack. "Lucky Charm!"
The enchanted toy lanced skywards and she watched it spin around at the end of the taught line, its halves again opening like Ladybug shells. The expected burst of magical light blossomed and a wash of red ladybugs spread over the area.
The three turned and looked, and witnessed Omelette du Fromage surrounded by the mystic purification, transforming from an anthropomorphized chicken in suspenders back into just a farmer. The spans of stretchy cheese, and shattered egg shells, and various organically and magically grown vegetable projectiles all evaporated under the purifying wave, leaving Bois de Bouglogne once again a pristine greenspace in the heart of Paris.
"Not that I don't appreciate the help, Lady… but who…" Chat Noir turned back, trying to stumble past his surprise at the intervention.
"Who are you?!" Ladybug whirled around faster, already suspicious of the seeming magical help.
"Tigress d'Or." She smiled, and with a flourish she snapped a hand fan open before her face, hiding the burgeoning smirk she wore.
The fan was a sort of metalic fabric, shimmering in the lamp-light of the park. Its decoration was simplistic, inky black bars spanning from top to pivot; sinuous tiger stripes.
Both Miraculous Heroes took a weary step back, examining the newcomer. She indeed was decked out to be a golden tiger. Where Ladybug wore tights of red with black spots, faintly faceted like a Beetle's armor, and Chat Noir wore a sort of pebbly black leather like the street guardian he was, the Tigress woman wore satinish tights which gave the impression of soft fur while still being sleek fabric.
Neither hero could at the moment see the tights' true color owing to their own transformations, but both were willing to bet that the outfit was orange-to-gold, and the organic black tiger stripes wrapped around her body and shoulders from the back, leaving most of her front a solid color and giving the impression of a cat's belly.
Like Chat Noir she had a sort of tail trailing behind her body; but where his was a backwards-turned belt, hers took the form of a sarong, roguishly slanted across her hips like a sash, the knot tied in the back to drape down and create the tail. It also bore dark stripes in its folded matrix.
But unlike the black alley cat, she didn't have bulky boots and gloves. Rather her gloves were feminine, fashionable, and pointed, and tipped in fine claws less obvious than his. Her boots, like Ladybug's, were in-built affairs, though they came in a much taller and more daring heel than the spotted heroine's, poising and accentuating powerful muscles in her legs.
Her mask was again different, a lightly colored field over her eyes and cheeks, the edges darted downwards, two stylized tiger stripes framing her eyes and also giving the impression of dagger-like fangs. A third triangular stripe anointed her nose, between two gleaming cat's eyes that resembled Chat Noir's enchanted orbs.
Above her head, her hair was lightly colored, and cut upwards into a sort of spiked pixie cut, thought it at least lacked the same stripes of all her other affectations. Strung through the spikes were a set of decorative black-tipped light-colored ears, a bit more rounded than Chat's.
And on her neck she bore a black choker, and upon the front of her throat, an elliptical gem graced it. It was slanted slightly from left to right, giving the impression of, what else, a tiger's eye. Except that rather than being an eye, it bore five simple vertical tiger stripes, again receding from top to bottom.
And just like Ladybug's five spots, and Chat Noir's five-part paw print; as the two heroes watched the newcomer, one of the stipes blinked and then vanished.
"Well, that would be my cue to depart it seems!" She gave her fan another coquettish flutter, her grinning lips still hidden.
"b- but…" Ladybug was still confused and non-plussed.
"Nope! You know the rules! Secret Identities must stay secret!" She gave a grin, though her voice seemed less friendly now and again slightly growling.
She executed a spin before Ladybug and Chat Noir, her free hand producing a second fan with a flick. With her spin a wind came up, sweeping up loose pine needles and dust from the path around them, seemingly driven by her twin fans. The debris served to force the two heroes back and to shut their eyes against the dust and debris.
When they both opened them a moment later, the wind was dying away, and the mysterious Tigress d'Or was gone.
"Well… that was…" Chat Noir trailed off, for once at a loss for words.
"Yeah… different." Ladybug sighed, rubbing a hand over her face to clear it of a few stray needles. Then she heard a beeping at her ears, and realized her own magical transformation was wearing thin as well. "And that would be my cue too… can you take care of our misguided farmer, Kitty Cat?"
"Uh… sure! Sure…" the debonair alley cat nodded, realizing that he alone had not unsheathed his Cataclysm attack and still had plenty of time on the magical clock. "At you're leave m'Ladybug!"
"Thanks Kitty! See you soon, looks like you've got your own row to hoe tonight!" She winked at him and spun her yoyo out, latching on to a nearby street lamp at the edge of the park and swinging away into the night.
With a sigh, the disguised Adrien Agreste turned and made his way over to the befuddled farmer, "You alright Mister Agriculteur?"
~Miraculous~
AN: Well, my first attempt at Ladybug. It's a bit of a departure for me… "Miraculous" has a lighter and less biting tone than most of my other stuff like Gargoyles, Darkwing Duck, Avatar, Kim Possible, etc. So I'm going to try to keep the lighter tone compared to my other stuff. I decided to wait till all the episodes of S1 had aired (at least in the French) before tackling it, so I didn't get stuck behind the eight-ball idea-wise. And pardon my spotty French, I have only a passable knowledge of the language, and Goggle.
Also, special thanks to fellow writer Trackula for helping me to nail down a few details about the Tigress, such as making her Gold Versus White and what magical tool to give her.