Ten: Hello, Old Friend

As he takes on Lila, Chat endeavors to shift the playing field toward one that favors the Black Cat of Destruction.

Lila announced her arrival by blasting through the wall of glass windows facing the Seine; if I'd needed any further evidence I had frustrated her with my sleight of hand, the tiny shards of glass raining down upon my mane seemed proof positive I'd made the right decision. Not only that, it confirmed my suspicion that she was not after whatever was on the House of Gabriel network she'd wanted me to hack into, but rather she needed Adrien himself. As I scrambled to duck beneath one of the wide pattern tables, I wondered why she'd gone to all the trouble of kidnapping Chat and Marinette, for it seemed to me there would have been hundreds of easier ways to get to Adrien herself that didn't rely on using Chat Noir. After all, she was a classmate of mine and sometimes on-set partner at my photo shoots; it's not like she didn't have ample opportunity to connect with my alter ego. Always suspicious of her intentions, I didn't discount there was still some angle I wasn't yet able to see where she needed both Chat Noir and Adrien; sadly, she would never see the duo together.

If I could help it.

Leaping away from a second shower of glass, I landed next to what was left of the transparent wall separating the design studio from the hallway; my night vision picked up Spidey hurriedly wall-walking along the ceiling toward the emergency stairwell, and I vaulted in his direction, mindful of the hurricane that seemed to be on my flapping tail. Leaping again, I came up beside the doorway as he dropped from the ceiling; whether it was from the exertion or the pure terror of her entrance, both of us seemed to be breathing pretty hard.

"Did you get it?" I asked as we slammed through the door and began upward, two steps at a time.

"Yes," he said. "Whatever it is, it's huge – it took nearly all of the space I had on the flash drive."

"And you wiped it off the network?"

"Not even Tony Stark could recover it now," he said somewhat smugly.

There was no further time for chit-chat as the door below us exploded into thousands of tiny pieces, serving as motivation to get to a better position in order to take on Lila. It was painfully clear she was leaning on her transformation powers, the full spectrum of which we still didn't know. Two steps above the door for the top floor, I paused and changed my mind on the fly; pivoting easily, I pushed through the door to the executive suite and dashed toward the corner office that had once been my father's. If Spider-Man thought my swift redirection was unusual, he kept his own council.

Leaning a costumed shoulder down, I smashed through the glass door and skidded to a halt in the middle of the massive space. Oddly, at that moment it occurred to me it was nearly a mirror of his atelier at the mansion, save for having a desk at one end for the inevitable meetings he'd needed to hold with staff. But there was a similar sunken area in the center, with his standard design workstation on a pedestal at one end, facing his own massive set of windows on the river below. As my feline ears picked up the crashing of Lila's approach, I frantically scanned the space, not entirely knowing what I was looking for until my masked eyes fell on a smaller version of the same painting that hung in the atelier.

Without giving it a second thought, I yanked Spidey to the spot behind the desk and quickly pressed my paws into indentations I knew were going to be there; I barely had time to smile a crafty Chat smile before the floor below us dropped into a hidden elevator shaft, quickly removing us from the office. As we descended, I looked up to see the opening above us iris closed and smiled wider; it was clear to me now that should we get past this little episode with Lila, a more thorough review of the building was in order.

What Lila left standing, of course.

The lift slowed and then stopped not in a secret lair per se, but what appeared to be a very standard looking basement corridor. Small, recessed lights glowed every few meters, just enough to serve as a guide. "Clever," I breathed.

"Secret escape hatch?" Spider-Man asked me as we quickly started to run down the corridor.

"Of a sort," I nodded as we ran. "I presume Gabriel built this so Hawkmoth could come and go unseen."

Spidey pulled me aside as we reached a metal door at the end of the hallway; it was hard not to smile at the decidedly normal illuminated exit sign hanging above it. "I thought you wanted Lila to bring Marinette here," he asked, confusion in his voice.

"I did."

"Then why are we leaving?"

"We're not," I smiled wider as I pushed the door open.

"It kinda feels like we are," he added, nodding his head at the darkness beyond.

As I suspected, the door opened directly into an arched sewer tunnel; a river of foul-smelling liquid faintly fluoresced, and my feline nose wrinkled as a result. My masked eyes quickly detected which way the current was flowing, causing me to nod slowly. "As much as I enjoyed trashing House of Gabriel," I continued as we slipped around the door and started trotting upstream along the small stone walkway, "I need a spot more conducive to taking down Lila. I suspect there is a junction room ahead much like the one we used to take out Nathalie a few months back."

"You seem to spend a lot of time in the sewers," Spidey chuckled. "You're more like Rat Noir than Chat Noir."

I shrugged as the tunnel widened and we entered the junction room. "It's actually kind of practical. Fighting akumas down here protects the city and the civilians."

"Still," Spidey protested as he leapt to the wall and hung, sideways. "She's not gonna know we took that secret elevator. How is she going to find us?"

I slid my baton out and snapped it open, turning it to the Miraculous tracker; my feline smile grew wider as a small symbol appeared directly above our location. Turning it toward Spider-Man, I explained. "She's still able to use the Chat Tracker. As it happens, that is a two-way street."

Spidey glanced upward and I followed, spying the maintenance hatch directly above us. "Do you think she knows you can track her, too?"

"I have to assume she does," I said as we crept to a far corner and withdrew to the shadows. "Look," I continued as I scanned and then found the second access point I assumed was in the space. "She's expecting me, not me and a plus one. Go up that ladder there and grab Marinette."

"Grab-?" he spluttered. "She's not going to be idly hanging around waiting for Lila to get back."

"No," I nodded. "Lila will have stashed her somewhere close. But she'll also assume Marinette is helpless and won't be able to escape."

"Which she's anything but," Spidey added as he scuttled toward the hatch. "Okay. But I'm coming right back after I've rescued your princess."

I smiled wider. "You heard that, did you?"

Somehow, I knew he was rolling his eyes. "Yeah, I did."

There was a metallic grinding as he pushed the hatch open, and then he was gone. I waited a moment before twisting my baton and popping open my hidden compartment; a moment later, I was diving into the sordid water in aqua mode, and kicked toward the brick bottom. I had a hunch I knew what Lila's tactics were, and if I played my card right, might get her to confirm what her Miraculous abilities might be. Stroking across the channel, I shifted and slowly made my way upward at the far edge, intending to poke my mane just above the surface; I was halfway there when I felt a dramatic change in the temperature of the water around me.

Instincts took over, and I quickly tried to propel myself up and out of the water, but I was a fraction too slow responding. The rapidly freezing water surrounded me in it's icy embrace faster than I could smash it away with my paws; I'd barely gotten my shoulders above the surface when I became a Chat ice cube. I had one arm free, and scratched away as best as I could, but without my claws it was clear I wasn't going anywhere fast.

Sighing, I looked up and frowned at Lila, who was standing above me. "Well played," I smiled.

"That was a stupid move," she smirked. "You seem to have forgotten my command of the elements from our earlier encounter."

"No," I smiled wider. "I didn't."