Seventy-Two: Something's Wrong
Chat's attempt to enjoy a lazy morning with Ladybug is squashed when his alter-ego is unexpectedly summoned to House of Gabriel for an unscheduled meeting with Gabriel.
The joyful ringtone of my phone was, as usual, an unwelcome intrusion; the fact it seemed three times louder than normal should have been a warning to me as I blindly reached for the device and brought it to my ear.
"Hello?" I replied groggily.
"Adrien…?" came the very recognizable voice of Tomas, my personal assistant.
"Yeah," I yawned, still not willing to open my eyes and accept the fact that I was waking up.
"Are you okay?"
"Just fine. What's up?"
"You sound… different. And you're late for your meeting."
My eyes snapped open to see Ladybug snoozing on my black-cladded chest. Somehow she'd managed to sleep through my phone going off, but then again, only one of us had enhanced hearing; still, I tried not to curse out loud, for my voice as Chat was definitely not the same as Adrien. Closing my masked feline eyes, I did let out a small groan. "It was a long night," I replied, trying to pitch my voice slightly. "We're… babysitting for a friend."
"'We're?'" he asked neutrally.
Shit!
As far as the office knew, while Adrien didn't live at the mansion, he also wasn't known to be living with anyone, either. It was one more issue in a long line of them making it harder for Marinette to officially start her relationship with Adrien. Groaning inwardly, I cast about for a suitable explanation. "The 'Royal' we, I'm afraid," I laughed softly, aware that Ladybug was stirring. Her eyes snapped to mine and I held up a finger. "This cat I'm watching, he's got the purr—personality of a cranky human. His mission seems to have been to be fed at all hours of the night. I must have dozed off after the third helping of breakfast."
Ladybug rolled her eyes and I shrugged.
"Oh," Tomas said, though he didn't sound completely sold on my lie.
"I thought I moved the meeting?" I asked, intentionally shifting the topic.
"You moved the Chateau Le Blanc contract meeting, yes. But your father is here; he says you had a one-on-one with him this morning."
I frowned. "Did I? I feel like I would have remembered that."
"You didn't," Tomas confirmed. "He's… he's been sitting in your office for ninety minutes now."
I shook my mane in disbelief. "Father is really there at the office? In person?"
"Yes," Tomas replied, and I could hear the barely controlled anxiety in his voice. "You really need to get down here, Adrien."
Squeezing my masked eyes shut against the headache that was forming, I nodded. "Okay, I'm on my way."
"Thank you," Tomas said, relief evident. "I'll see if he wants more coffee while he waits."
Sighing as I clicked out of the call, I had the strong urge to toy with one of Ladybug's ribbons instead of heeding the call to duty. "This is not how I wanted to play this morning," I said softly. "Especially since I have you all dressed up and right where I want you."
"Will it help get you through the day if I told you I could be prevailed upon to dress appropriately this evening?"
"It would make me cancel my afternoon of meetings," I laughed, "so I could be here, ready and waiting, when my beloved made her entrance."
"With a rose between those feline fangs of yours," she teased.
"Don't tempt me," I breathed as she scooted up my chest for a kiss. "I'm sorry. But at least I get to see you in again in a few short hours. Purrfessionally, of course."
"Of course," she smiled.
One last kiss and then I was through her balcony slider, soaring over the rooftops of Paris on the way to House of Gabriel. My commute was not a long one, given how there was generally no traffic on my particular highway through the sky. I had multiple circuitous routes to choose from, and that morning, I decided to parallel the Seine for a bit. The early morning sunshine was sparkling along the water, catching the odd reflection as I passed; turning, I made my way in a few blocks before rising high enough to land on the building beside our corporate offices. It was a purely precautionary measure, for I usually checked to ensure no one was on the roof across the way before leaping toward the emergency stairwell that was my normal main entrance; every so often, one of our employees would be there, sneaking a cigarette and forcing me to take another lap around the block.
That morning, though, as I peeked over the ornamental filigree, I caught the striking form of Nathalie as she strode deliberately across the roof. She had her back to me, but also appeared to be holding an animated conversation with someone on the phone pressed to her ear. My masked eyebrow went up, for she had her own office in the building below, right outside of Father's; that she would feel the need for somewhere more private for a phone call was… interesting.
What is she doing?
Feline curiosity piqued, I stealthily slipped back to the rooftop proper and tapped a claw tip against the tile. I was already late for my meeting – one that wasn't on my schedule in the first place, though that probably didn't count, when it came to my father – but a feline instinct told me this was important. Crawling over the edge away from House of Gabriel, I slipped over the edge and clawed down to a fire escape landing, then vaulted across the alley to another building. I was shielded from by the slightly higher structure that housed the HVAC and elevator machinery, allowing me to leap to the side of our building unobserved, and then leap upward a few times to hit the edge of the rooftop.
Poking my feline ears just above the edge, I focused my attention on where I thought she was standing and picked up the thread of her conversation.
"…outrageous! Mister Agreste has done everything that was asked-no, that's not fair at all, and you know it!"
My masked eyebrows went up.
"We had an agreement! You can't change the terms now, midway—Mister Agreste-that's simply not true. Our—"
I heard her pause and start one her coughing spasms that had been getting progressively worse as time went on. It took a moment of gasping for breath before she had regained enough control to continue; I took that moment to carefully pull myself over the edge and creep toward her on all fours. Once I was close enough to the elevator tower, I leapt upward and landed with a soft thunk on the roof, immediately pressing myself to the tile. It wasn't strictly necessary, for I'd learned over the years that ordinary people didn't tend to look up, but it was better to be safe than sorry. I had no good explanation for why Chat Noir would be eavesdropping on an executive from House of Gabriel.
Nathalie didn't seem to notice me and continued. "Sorry, I have a bit of a cold—no, that's not going to happen," she said firmly. "Not in a million-wait, you what?"
Her surprise was palpable.
"How on earth did you get that? Wait, it doesn't matter. I have to insist that—yes, I do! And if you think this is something Gabriel would negotiate over, you have another think coming."
The pause was lengthy but felt heavy to me for some reason, probably due to a combination of the cold fury in Nathalie's voice – and the fact she called my Father by his first name.
"Fine. We'll come to you. But I warn you, if you don't provide—yes, you can take it as threat!"
I assumed that was the end of the call and held my breath as I heard her high heels move toward the stairwell; the door creaked open, and a moment later, I heard the footfalls as she moved down into the building. Waiting a moment longer, I flipped up into the air and dropped in a crouch on the tile in front of the roof access door, wondering what it was I had just stumbled into. I didn't have long to consider the conundrum, though, for as I dropped my transformation, I belatedly realized what I had been wearing when I'd transformed to take on Babyface.
Which is to say, not much.
Plagg's bemused expression as he floated up to my face told me I would be hearing about it for a bit, but he wisely decided not to comment on my wardrobe (or lack thereof). "Yes," he smiled crookedly to my unasked question, "I can transform you one more time, but it won't hold for more than the old five minutes." He rubbed his tummy. "It's a bit empty down here."
I thought quickly. "That should do it," I nodded after a moment. "I just need to get to the employee gym."
"Okay," he replied.
"Plagg – claws out."
The green wave washed over me and nearly immediately, my ring started to chirp – a sound I'd not heard in a while since coming into my adult powers. Suddenly I felt the same tension that the countdown had always brought with it – the need to wrap things up before my true identity was revealed had always been a magnificent motivator. Pulling open the door to the stairwell, I cocked my mane long enough to confirm it was empty, then pulled myself over the industrial railing to drop through the center; a moment before I reached the correct floor for the gym, I extended the baton and hooked it so I could arrest my fall, looping upward to land in a crouch on the proper landing.
Sliding to the door, I cracked it open enough to verify I was just outside the gym; it was a perk I had demanded for our employees when I'd come aboard, a well-used one from the numbers I'd been seeing. Strictly speaking, my daily outings as Chat were more than enough to keep myself in top shape, but I made a point of using the gym myself in order to provide cover for the six-pack abs that had (according to our marketing department) driven sales up quite a bit. A few employees appeared to be taking an early lunch hour and were working the weight machines just beyond the glass walls; I crouched to stay below the frame and loped to the lockers, cracked that door open, and paused once more to confirm the space was empty.
Someone was in the shower on the far side, which put me on a different sort of timer; the space was otherwise empty. Two vaults, and I was crouched under my personal locker against the corner furthest from the door. My claws made entering the code for the lock a little interesting, but just as the second pad winked out on my ring, it popped open and I pulled the door to the side. Whispering the de-transformation phrase, I yanked out a muscle t-shirt and a pair of compression tights, then tossed Plagg the piece of Camembert I'd stashed in the locker before sliding my microfiber shorts on over the tights. I completed the look with Gabriel-logoed workout sneakers before quietly closing the door and sneaking toward the sinks.
Whoever was in the shower seemed to be enjoying the hot water, giving me a few more moments to consider my next part of subterfuge. I'd done enough photo shoots in my life to know how to make it look like I'd been working out; the dampness around the armpits and neckline, even combined with my now-matted hair wouldn't pass a thorough inspection but leaning on my model skills would hopefully sell it long enough to get through the meeting.
I took the elevator back up to the floor holding the executive suite and met an extremely agitated Tomas at the door to my outer office. "There you are," he whispered as he took in my attire. "I thought you were babysitting…?"
"I was," I nodded as I accepted the hot mug of coffee from him. Sipping the coffee, I deliberately wiped away some "sweat" from my brow. "It's just a kilometer or so from here, so after I hung up with you, I literally ran straight over."
"Well," he continued, glancing at the glass door to my inner office. "Mister Agreste has been pretty quiet for the last twenty minutes, but he was pretty worked up when he arrived."
I could see his tall form sitting, ramrod straight, in one of my guest chairs; Nathalie was standing beside him. "Lovely," I sighed. "Wish me luck."
"Luck," he said fervently as he opened the door for me.
"Father," I said as I entered. "Nathalie. I'm sorry, I didn't know we had this meeting today. You caught me on the way to a shower."
"It was… last minute," Father said as I stepped behind my desk. His disapproving look told me all I needed to know about how he felt regarding the way I was dressed.
"You caught me working out," I shrugged, reaching up to try and get my hair into some semblance of what he was used to seeing. "It sounded important enough for me to come straight here."
"Indeed it is," he replied, those eyes of his coolly appraising me for a moment. "Our very future is at stake."
