AN: Today's chapter of "Fear Itself" ends with Chloe and Adrien going on patrol together, so it seemed silly to not have that as the "Patrol Log" coming out the same day!
To yellow 14: I do enjoy using the "Patrol Logs" to introduce new villains!
To Kiki: Thanks for the suggestions! I will add a few of those to the list! One or two are similar to ideas I've been thinking about already, and I may combine a couple of them together. I've actually written a one-shot already (I think next week or so) with a hero dealing with cat-calling, though that will be in "The Life and Times of the Heroes of Europe." However, I don't know if I want to do an anti-bullying story when Ronoken already has a really good arc with that premise in "What To Do When Your Superhero Is Having A Baby." But maybe…
To Butterfly: That's one of my favorite parts of having this weekly series running concurrent with everything else.
To GuenZhenXuan2020: It's fun to play around with underused heroes in these "Patrol Logs"!
Chloe flinched when she felt tiny teeth tugging on her leg. She ducked under the table and shook her finger. "Not now, Bee," she hissed. The puppy licked her finger and yipped happily.
"Sorry, Chloe," Tikki apologized, fluttering back with Bee's ball. The puppy wagged her tail excitedly, tongue hanging out, and dropped her head to the ground, watching the ball with big eyes. Tikki rolled the ball away, and Bee-atrice chased after it. Plagg batted the ball into the living room, with Bee-atrice in hot pursuit.
"Everything okay down there, Chlo?"
Chloe straightened up to find four pairs of eyes staring at her. She shrugged dismissively. "Everything's fine," she replied. She smirked. "Though your 'puppy-sitters' don't seem to be keeping Bee occupied as well as they thought they would!"
Marinette giggled into her hand. "She is a little larger than them, you know," she pointed out, raising an eyebrow. She jerked her head toward the living room, where Bee-atrice was lying on the floor, Plagg's head partway into her mouth. Plagg narrowed his eyes at the puppy and hissed, while a couple meters away Tikki laughed.
"Excuses, excuses," Chloe retorted with a smirk.
"You're just disappointed they can't whisker out from under your feet!" Adrien joked, laughing.
"Now, now, son," Tom chided. "Just wait until you have kids of your own dogging you all day!"
"I wouldn't mind having a little one tailing me," replied Adrien, smiling. "–Not right away, of course!" he quickly added with a nervous look at Tom and Sabine.
"Do you see what I have to put up with?" Marinette complained to Chloe, shaking her head.
Chloe scoffed. "As if this isn't exactly what you were hoping for last summer!" Marinette opened her mouth to protest, and Chloe arched an eyebrow at her.
"… I'm not answering that."
Chloe turned to Sabine and gave her a small smile. "Thank you for the invitation," she began. "I…"
Sabine placed a hand on her arm. "I understand, dear," she assured her. "We enjoyed having you stay with us last summer, too." She raised an eyebrow at Marinette. "Especially once we realized why you were staying with us that month!"
Chloe stifled a snort as Marinette shot her mother an annoyed look. "I kept a secret: so sue me."
Adrien glanced up at the clock before giving Chloe a disappointed look. "As much as I hate to do it… it is about time for us to be leaving."
Chloe nodded and glanced over into the living room where she'd left her Sent-Bee bag. Bee-atrice was in the process of playing tug-of-war with Plagg, swinging the Kwami around at the end of a rope. She pushed back from the table and walked over to grab her bag. "I should get changed." This had been a thousand times easier with her miraculous…
"I'll send some pastries with you," Sabine promised as Chloe walked down to the guest room which had been hers for a month before it had been Adrien's for almost a year. Now it was back to just a guest room, though Sabine and Tom had told her back in the spring that she had a standing invitation to stay with them if she ever wanted to – she hadn't taken them up on it yet, but her mother would be in town next month, so…
Fifteen minutes later, Sent-Bee and Cat Noir stood on the balcony, ready to leave for their patrol. Sent-Bee turned away as Cat Noir wrapped his arms around Marinette and swept her up into a deep kiss, his fingers combing through her hair. Last year, it had taken almost a month before Chloe could hide her jealousy at watching their PDA. But that was last year, before Marinette had become one of her closest friends. The last time she had actually felt any hint of jealously toward them was some time last year; now she could admit that she was simply happy that Marinette was going to marry her almost-brother.
Not that she would ever admit it to them, of course…
"I'll miss you," Marinette whispered against Cat Noir's lips.
"I can come back here when we get done," he murmured back. "But you need your rest for school tomorrow."
Marinette hummed in acknowledgement.
"I'll pick you up in the morning," he told her. "That's a purromise!"
Sent-Bee rolled her eyes and lowered the visor on her helmet. From her pouch on Sent-Bee's chest, Bee yipped happily. She shrugged her shoulders uncomfortably to make the rig on her back sit better: this was going to take some getting used to. Finally, Cat Noir put a hand on her shoulder and said, "We'd better get going."
"Ready whenever you are, Adrikins," she replied, smirking, as Cat Noir extended his baton to the next building's roof and ran across it, Sent-Bee close behind him. The moment she was off the baton he retracted it and secured it to his belt. She followed him across the roof, accelerated, and jumped across to the next one. "Saccharine." Cat Noir gave her a confused look as they continued along the rooftops. "You and Mar: saccharine."
He chuckled. "What can I say?" He threw his arms out wide and shouted, "I'm in love!"
She rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure there are alien races out there who've never heard of humanity but can tell you're in love!" she observed as they jogged across a few more roofs, the remains of the Nuit Blanche spread out below them.
"Is that a bad thing?"
She shook her head. "Not really," she admitted. "I'm glad you have her. And your mom back. And all of it. Just–"
He nodded. "You're always going to be my sister," he assured her, sweeping her up with an arm around her waist and riding his staff down to the street. "That's not changing."
"You know I could have done that myself, right?" She raised an eyebrow, though without any force behind it.
"I know," he agreed, nodding. Suddenly he froze, his eyes narrowed in confusion. A gust of wind picked up around them, and Sent-Bee almost fell over. The crowd of civilians around them scattered. "What the actual hell?" she demanded. "Tyran-X?"
Cat Noir stabbed his staff into the sidewalk and held up a hand to shield his eyes. "I'm not sure."
A whirring noise came from the darkly-shadowed alley to their side. Sent-Bee looked over and started on seeing a short, slender woman with an unusual contraption consisting of three different fans on her back. "Feel the power of the Mistral!" the woman declared, tilting a second fan to point at them.
Sent-Bee's feet finally flew out from under her and she was blown up into the air. The woman – Mistral? – shot into the air after her, propelled by the force of two of her fans. As the ground grew further and further away, Sent-Bee forced herself to breathe slowly before hitting the new control on her glove. Her jetpack activated automatically, giving her some control over her ascent. Bee whined pitifully, quivering against Sent-Bee's chest.
Mistral hurtled higher into the air before turning her third fan against Sent-Bee. Sent-Bee deactivated her jetpack, dropped out of Mistral's range, and reactivated the jetpack, shooting herself forward at Mistral from below. "Not so fast!" Mistral shouted, aiming her fan at Sent-Bee and blowing her off-course. Sent-Bee nearly flew into a building but caught herself with her feet against the building's façade, grabbing onto the apartment building's balcony above her head. From her compartment on Sent-Bee's chest, Bee-atrice barked agitatedly.
"You'll find I'm not so easy to fight," Sent-Bee commented, pushing herself off and into the air, aiming to fly higher than Mistral. She drew one of her synth-Venom guns and aimed it carefully at Mistral's head but frowned. If Mistral could somehow blow the synth-Venom stream away from herself, it could fly back and hit Sent-Bee, and then she'd be in trouble. It was too much of a risk. She returned the gun to its holster and instead drew her yo-yo. Across from her, on the opposite side of Mistral, Cat Noir stood on an apartment building roof with his staff out. Sent-Bee nodded slowly. She threw her yo-yo at Mistral, who dropped two meters to avoid the yo-yo. Sent-Bee retracted it again and threw it to loop around Mistral's chest. Mistral flew to the side, and the yo-yo's momentum carried it through one of Mistral's fans.
The fan froze in place for a moment before the fan powered through the obstruction, sliced through the yo-yo string, and continued spinning. Mistral spun around out of control but righted herself before she could lose too much altitude. Sent-Bee groaned in frustration. However, taking advantage of the distraction, Cat Noir suddenly extended his baton straight through Mistral's other fan, which immediately cut out and froze. Before she could react, Mistral dropped from the air, and Cat Noir dove after her, catching her meters from the ground.
"Now stay," Cat Noir told her, placing her on the ground and yanking out one of the control wires to Mistral's fan suit. The woman stared up at him sullenly but held out her hands and sat down on the curb.
"So what are you going to tell your girl about this?" Sent-Bee asked, landing next to Cat Noir and hitting the control on her helmet to call the Superhero Liaison Department's overnight dispatcher.
Cat Noir shrugged. "Purr-haps that even after this, she's still the only woman who can truly blow me away!"