The black cat yawns,
Opens her jaws,
Stretches her legs,
And shows her claws.

Then she gets up
And stands on four
Long stiff legs
And yawns some more.

She shows her sharp teeth,
She stretches her lip,
Her slice of a tongue
Turns up at the tip.

Lifting herself
On her delicate toes,
She arches her back
As high as it goes.

She lets herself down
With particular care,
And pads away
With her tail in the air.

Cat – Mary Britton Miller

The Black Cat

It was a definite thing among the kwami.

No one was ever quite sure when it had started, or who had started it, but it was a definite thing. Whatever the noun for the baby of their particular species (at least, the species they resembled), the kwami invariably applied it to their Chosen.

So Longg usually called them 'hatchlings' like Sass did, or else 'draclets' or 'drakes'. Fluff tended to call them 'kits' like Trixx, but the vulpine kwami also called them 'cubs' like Roarr. Tikki and Nooru alone didn't really have a word, per say; they both tended to just call them 'Chosen' and left it pretty much at that. Plagg, as the other feline in their dysfunctional little family, tended towards 'kittens' when he was referring to his bearers.

That was an unspoken rule. Another unspoken rule was that you could always tell when a Chosen had wormed their way into their kwami's heart and-or exceptionally long memory; that was when the nickname came into play, after all.

And that was the last unspoken rule. More a vow, really, but kind of a rule and one of the few Plagg willingly adhered to. The kwami remembered. Every Chosen. How they were, how they lived, and what happened to them. They were never forgotten. Whether their Chosen wrought pride or shame, garnered fame or infamy, no matter if they passed into myth or were overlooked by all others, the kwami remembered. Each Chosen had a place, be it in history, or legend, or time immemorial, but each one had a firm place in their kwami's heart. Even in the hearts of the more hands-off kwami, like Plagg.

You could not go through millennia watching kittens grow into their claws and not take a moment to feel pride in their accomplishments or, on occasion, shame, and not remember the ones you had had a hand (or paw, or fang) in shaping. For better or worse.

Tikki, smug little sugar cube that she was, had more reasons to feel pride than shame more often than not. Yet even Creation had one or two tarnishes that caused her to go still and quiet and remorseful. A couple of dark spots on an otherwise spotless record. Plagg knew this well; her dark spots had a bad habit of attacking his kittens.

But that was not the point, in the end. Not really. The point, Plag reflected as he watched a sleeping Adrien toss and turn this night, was that even Plagg remembered his kittens. Through Plagg, so did the Miraculous, and through the Miraculous so did his Chosen, albeit instinctively and without really knowing that they did.

And like all kwami, Plagg had his favourites. Adrien was fast becoming one of them.

Destruction had something of a knack for 'troubled youths' as Tikki and Nooru had both once said. It was why when his kittens went bad, they went bad in a big way.

But which kitten did this kid remind Plagg of the most?

Would it be Kek, the former acolyte of the goddess Bastet, with his more refined demeanour that had often belied his wild, wild heart? When Plagg had met the young man, barely more than a boy at the time as Adrien was now, he had already had a good ten years of temple training to reign in his warrior spirit. It had taken the combined influence of Plagg, Tikki's then-bearer Monifa and Barkk's then-bearer (Plagg had only ever known him by his alternate name; Anpu) to bring out the wild cat hiding behind polished manners. Even then, Kek had always been very discerning as to who witnessed that side of him, or deserved to bear such ferocity.

And boy had that one been fierce. Once Kek had gotten going there had been almost no stopping him! Anpu had helped a lot, Plagg reflected. Good old fashioned cat-versus-dog natural instinct. And Kek had been a good kitten.

Then again . . . maybe not quite. While Adrien could be refined when he had to be, it was just that. When he had to be. And he wasn't so much refined – it wasn't quite the right word to describe his current Chosen – as he was gentle. Kek had never been gentle. The two words were not synonymous. And Adrien had needed no prompting to loose his wild streak either; if anything reigning it back in was the hard part.

So fast forward a bit. If not Kek, then maybe Caeso from near the fall of Rome? Like Adrien, and unlike Kek, Caeso had come from a noble family. But no; in hindsight Plagg rather hoped the kid didn't take after Caeso. Not because Caeso had moonlighted as a thief (that kitten, like so many of his others, had occupied a greyer area of the moral battlefield) but more because Caeso had broken under the strain and had all but surrendered himself to the villain he'd been called upon to defeat. It had led to the fall of Rome and, well . . .

No. Please no. That mess had gotten Trixx's bearer killed for a start. Destruction hadn't been directly responsible, but still. The fox kwami still bore a grudge for that one.

Plagg was rather hoping Adrien wouldn't break like that.

So go back a bit further than Egypt, Plagg thought. Maybe Adhar . . . on second thought no. Absolutely not. Adhar had gone completely insane and had been half the reason Plagg had accidentally-on-purpose sunk Atlantis; because the princeling had let the power go to his head in a very, very bad way.

None of the others had ever let Plagg forget it. Even if most of them weren't sure why he'd done it. Never mind that originally the brat had been one of Longg's.

If Adrien took after Adhar, Plagg would kill the kid himself.

So fast forward a lot.

Maybe Gunther? The young 5th century Germanic king had been a great kitten. Strong, brave, a romantic, bit of a dare-devil, blonde. Quite a bit like Adrien really. Also, Gunther had been one of his less troubled kittens, though like practically every one of them he'd been a bit of a wildcard once he'd gotten going. And more importantly not a traitor of any kind, no matter what that thrice-damned saga said. Propaganda, plain and simple. The writer, story teller, whatever, had hated him.

Adrien was also a lot like Shiro. The fourth son of the head of a shinobi clan, Shiro had been Chosen alongside Trixx's at-the-time bearer Kasumi. Both Kitsune and Nekotama had travelled to China in the end to help Tikki's bearer against a foe she couldn't defeat alone. Shiro had certainly had Adrien's rather quirky sense of humour. Coupled with an ability to put his own foot in his mouth in civilian form. And a crush on Tikki's bearer that had ensured he did so with alarming frequency. It had made it easy to forget sometimes that the kitten had been a ninja trained in several styles of fighting, had a head for strategy and tactics and had known more about poisons than most people alive. Then and now.

Yeah, Adrien reminded him of Shiro a heck of a lot when Plagg thought about it.

And of Seraphine Bedevere, if Plagg's thoughts were allowed to skip a couple more favourites to head into the early 19th century. She had easily been one of Plagg's favourite kittens. A nobleman's daughter who had decided that obeying her father and marrying a rich pig (no offense to Daizzi, but Plagg had seen the man in the early years of that kitten's career and he couldn't think of anything better right now) was not to her liking. Seraphine hadn't so much run away – she'd actually stayed in touch with her mother, who hadn't approved of her old man's selling off of his daughter's virtue for mere wealth – as she had run with it. It, in this instance, being life. In the end, becoming a pirate and highwayman to balance Tristan Marin's naval captain had made for vastly amusing escapades.

So long as Adrien didn't follow all of Seraphine's story. After all, she'd originally been Trixx's. She'd taken up the ring instead when her immediate predecessor, Caleb Accolan, was killed by Tikki's Tristan in his pursuit of the wish to revive his family. While Plagg was eternally proud of his fire kitten for doing it and, more importantly, succeeding, he knew that the whole affair and the two deaths had weighed on her for the rest of her life. Particularly as Tristan's desire to have his young wife back had morphed into a desire for Seraphine herself.

One of the few times Tikki had been (and still was) truly ashamed of one of her Chosen.

But enough about that.

Still studying his newest kitten slumbering beneath the quilted covers, Plagg considered the past and the present side by side. Yes, he thought to himself fondly, Adrien reminded Plagg of a fair few of his favourite kittens. The points of similarity were obvious to anyone with half a brain, even after just one month. And since more traits were passed on from Miraculous to Chosen the longer they held the item, and the Miraculous always kept a little piece of each Chosen, ready to be called on as needed by future bearers . . .

Adhar's power, Kek's ferocity, Caeso's grace, Gunther's bravery, Shiro's discipline, Caleb's honour, Seraphine's determination, and the strength and skill and instinct of dozens of others besides, all tied in to what made the youngest kitten Adrien.

Plagg could not wait to see what his newest kitten would do with the power of Destruction.

Pearly white fangs gleamed sharply in the moonlight as the black cat's yawn transformed into a feral grin.

Hawkmoth wouldn't know what bit him.