An Honourable Thief
A/N: Thanks to KivatheDCWizard for the Mobian names for Paris and France: Citamour and Honetia, respectively.
It was a starry and clear night in Citamour, the capital of Honetia, and one of the most splendid cities in Eurish. Befitting its nickname 'the City of Lights', Citamour lit the night with a soft, welcoming reddish-orange glow that still managed not to drown out the starlight, and the Eurish Tower sparkled in the moonlight.
Citamour was generally a peaceful city, although remarkable incidents had occurred recently; incidents involving two magical heroes and several villains. The heroes always won the day and they were loved by all citizens.
On this night, these two heroes were patrolling the city across the rooftops. They didn't just fight supervillains; they responded to all emergencies in the city, and so were making sure all was pleasant and correct. Both were in their early teens: a boy and a girl. The girl was 13 years old, nearing 14, with blue eyes, black hair with blue reflections and wearing a red skin-tight bodysuit with black spots and a red, black-spotted mask on her face; her superhero name was Ladybug, and she wielded the power of good luck and creation. The boy was 14 with messy, blond hair and cat-like eyes with slits for pupils and wearing a black skin-tight leather cat suit, a black mask, black ear, and a belt that hung down from his waist, like a tail; his superhero name was Cat Noir, wielding the power of bad luck and destruction.
"Belle nuit, huh, ma dame? (Beautiful night, huh, m'lady ?)" he said casually to Ladybug in Honetian. "Envie de monter la tour Eurish? (Fancy going up the Eurish Tower?)"
Ladybug rolled her eyes. Cat Noir was always trying to impress her with wise cracks and boasting, which both amused and annoyed her.
"Concentré, Cat Noir; on ne peut pas se laisser distraire en patrouille (Concentrate, Cat Noir; we can't afford to be distracted when on patrol)," she said, keeping her eyes on the streets.
Cat Noir chuckled. "Doute ça, ma dame. Cette ville est tellement éclairée que nous ne pouvons pas manquer un caméléon (Doubt it, m'lady. This city is so brightly lit, we couldn't miss a chameleon)."
Ladybug just shook her head and bounded to the next building, her blue eyes sweeping the streets below. Cat Noir quickly followed. A moment later, they heard sirens on the street below and followed them to the source.
Meanwhile, inside a fancy house not too far away, where police cars had pulled up outside, a male Mobian raccoon was sneaking towards the roof through the air vent, having just swiped a valuable necklace from a hidden vault. He was 22 years old, had grey fur with black stripes on his tail and one across his brown eyes and wore a blue jumper, boots and hat, grey shorts, a backpack and a thief's mask; in his right hand, he carried a long cane with a golden crook shaped like a 'C' on the end. His name was Sly Cooper.
He hoped things wouldn't go pear-shaped this time, like it almost had in Southern Eurish. He just wanted to relieve the crook who lived here of something that didn't belong to him, the honourable thief that he was, just to prove he still had it in him. He was still rather troubled by what had happened to his best friends Bentley and Murray, after Clock-La was defeated. Bentley had been paralysed from the waist down, and Murray, blaming himself, had departed for parts unknown to 'find his spiritual centre'. Sly knew this was something he had to do, but he was still sad to see him go.
Normally, Sly would never go it alone without them. He'd only made the theft because the police had come calling, shutting off the security.
Sly reached the top of the ventilation shaft and carefully pushed the duct out, before climbing onto the roof. He was thankful the crook he'd stolen from had had his power source shut off by the police, who had come to arrest him. He had just placed the duct back into place, when his ears picked up the sound of two people landing on the roof behind him, and turned to see Ladybug and Cat Noir landing on the roof nearby. Before he could run for cover, they spotted him.
"Hé, toi! (Hey, you!)" Ladybug cried. "Arrêtez le voleur! (Stop thief !)" She and Cat Noir charged towards him.
"Uh oh," Sly said, and he quickly tapped the end of his cane on the ground, creating a cloud of smoke that Ladybug and Cat Noir ran right into. Both coughed loudly and tried to fan away the smoke. By the time they did, the raccoon had gone.
"Did you see where he went?" said a Latinan-accented female voice from behind them.
Ladybug and Cat Noir looked around. Climbing onto the rooftop via a fire escape was a Mobian vixen with orange-brown fur, thick, wavy blue hair tied into a braid, and sharp but beautiful brown eyes with a mole under the left one. She was wearing a dark blue top that did not completely cover her belly, tight jeans with metal knee guards, a leather jacket, gloves, knee-high combat boots and a choker around her neck, from which an Interpol badge hung. She was holding a large red and yellow pistol and a set of handcuffs hung from her belt. It was only really these and the police badge around her neck that told them she was a police officer; the rest of her attire didn't.
Though they'd never seen her before, Ladybug and Cat Noir recognised her from the papers; this was Inspector Carmelita Fox of Interpol.
"Inspector Fox?" Ladybug said, switching to English, albeit with a Honetian accent. "No, I'm afraid not. He vanished in a puff of smoke. He could be anywhere."
"Then let's split up!" Inspector Fox instructed. "He can't have gotten far! If either of you… Ladybug and Cat Noir, right… run into him, be careful. He's a slippery fellow."
"Right!" the two teenagers replied, and the three leapt off the rooftops in different directions to find the raccoon.
Meanwhile, Sly Cooper had reached a safe distance and had decided to stop and think about where he could leave the necklace for the cops to retrieve. No doubt Carmelita would be on his tail; she always was.
At the thought of Carmelita, the woman he loved, a pang of guilt shot through Sly's heart. All that trouble with the Klaww Gang had almost cost Carmelita her job. Thankfully, her name had been cleared, though he hoped his escape from her helicopter some months ago hadn't adversely affected her reputation any more than it already was.
He also felt slightly annoyed with himself for allowing Ladybug and Cat Noir to spot him. He knew they were superheroes, but he didn't really want to draw them into his clashes with people on both sides of the law. Even without powers, criminals could be just as dangerous as that mysterious Hawk Moth. And he didn't want to hurt the innocent.
Innocent… Bentley and Murray had technically been innocent in the curse Clockwerk had placed on his family; they hadn't needed to be hurt, but they had. Sly couldn't bear the thought of losing his friends; it would be about as bad as… losing his mother and father again…
Suddenly, someone grabbed him from behind.
Ladybug had spotted the thief standing by himself on the roof of an apartment block. Why a thief would do such a thing, she couldn't know, but she had to stop him and secure him. So, she'd snuck up behind him and grabbed him around the neck.
"Hey! Let me go!" the thief cried.
"You're not going anywhere!" Ladybug said. She raised her yo-yo to her mouth, to alert Cat Noir that she had the thief, but before she could speak into it, the raccoon twisted his body and flipped Ladybug onto her back, pinning her down.
"Stand down, Ladybug!" he said. "I don't want to hurt you!"
"If you didn't want to hurt people, you wouldn't have become a thief!" Ladybug retorted.
"I had no intention of keeping the necklace, you know," Sly said, shrugging, "and anyway, it was stolen property before I nicked it."
"What?!"
"Yep; that guy I took from was crime boss Élisabeth Barrere, though you probably didn't know."
"Well…" Ladybug kicked Sly in the shin with her knee, distracting him. This allowed the red and black-spotted heroine to push the raccoon off her. "Regardless, you're still a law-breaker."
She made a grab for her yo-yo, but Sly kicked it away.
"Stop this, Ladybug! I'm in no mood for a fight, and you'll never catch me!"
"Want to bet?" Ladybug ran at the raccoon, but next moment, smoke exploded into her face. She coughed and staggered about, feeling for the thief. Next moment, the ground suddenly disappeared from behind her feet and she fell forwards, over the edge of the building. And without her yo-yo, she couldn't catch herself!
Then suddenly, someone caught her by the ankle. For a moment, she thought it was Cat Noir. And indeed, the response was just as snarky.
"You really need to watch your step, miss! I told you that you couldn't catch me. But what honour is there in letting you fall?"
Ladybug was so surprised at these courtesy that she didn't react at first. She was pulled back onto the roof. Ladybug twisted around, her eyes scanning for Sly, but he was nowhere to be seen. Though she did hear his voice.
"See you round, Spotty!"
Ladybug rallied and leapt to her feet. She looked around for her yo-yo, anxious to chase after him again. Just then, Chat Noir and Carmelita Fox arrived.
"M'lady, are you alright?" Cat asked. "Where is he?"
"He got away!" Ladybug lamented. Then, she noticed the necklace lying on the roof nearby, along with a card shaped like Sly's head. "Hey, what's that?"
"Cooper's calling card!" Carmelita said, snatching it up along with the necklace. "He leaves it whenever he steals something!"
"But… why would he leave what he stole behind?" Ladybug wondered aloud. Carmelita paused for a moment.
"I don't know; it's just something he occasionally does," she said eventually, though Ladybug thought she saw an odd look cross the Inspector's face before they resumed their search.
The next morning, reports of Élisabeth Barrere's arrest, and the sighting and escape of Sly Cooper, were all over the news. Carmelita Fox once again voiced her annoyance that the raccoon had slipped through her fingers again, despite having help from Ladybug and Cat Noir, who so far hadn't been reached for comment.
Meanwhile, a teenage girl with black hair that reflected as blue tied into pigtails, bluebell eyes, light freckles was making her way to Collège Françoise Dupont, where she studied. Her mind was still teeming with the events of the night before. That raccoon apparently hadn't wanted to hurt her; naturally, she'd doubted it. But when talking with Tikki, after getting up, her Kwami had said:
"I understand your doubt, Marinette, but I've encountered many beings throughout the ages. I've learned to read people, and I can usually tell whether they're lying or not. And from what I could see, that raccoon, Sly Cooper, wasn't lying. Besides, he did save you from falling, even if, technically, it wasn't too dangerous."
It was true; even without her yo-yo, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, as Ladybug, would've survived the fall, thanks to her strengthened endurance and healing ability.
Regardless, Marinette thought, as she mounted the steps to Collège Françoise Dupont, that Sly Cooper was a strange case; especially given his brief mention of honour. She supposed that at least made him less evil than Hawk Moth. Still, if they met again, she'd make sure that he didn't get away so easily.