That prickling feeling was still there, behind her eyes. But it was better to cry as Kitty Noire than as Marinette.
"Marinette? Where are we going?" Plagg asked, flying after her.
She didn't answer, instead pulled over into a dark corner, untouched by moonlight or streetlamps. "Plagg, transform me," she commanded, hardly above a whisper, afraid that if she spoke louder, her voice would crack.
The rush of power accompanied by the bright glow of transformation was beginning to feel familiar. Kitty Noire let herself smile about that.
She hopped into the darkness, trying to empty her mind, to clear it of everything except the physical sensations of the wind tugging on her braid and blowing in her face as she jumped from building to building. She didn't know quite where she was going, but when she arrived at the edge of the Seine, she knew she had reached her destination.
She sat on top of a lamppost, dangling her legs off the side. She took a few calming breaths and watched as the water gently lapped and shifted, sparkling with the reflection of so many stars and streetlights. She closed her eyes and listened to its soft rush, focusing on the ways the water moved, discerning its actions with her heightened sense of hearing. As she focused, other sounds made themselves heard. Crickets chirping in a nearby brush. A car driving down an adjacent street.
Her nagging tears ebbed away, and Kitty opened her eyes and exhaled, a long and measured thing. She was finally calm.
With that realization, it was time for action. Kitty stood atop the lamppost, one foot in front of the other, balancing on the thin steel. She looked down at the pavement beneath her, illuminated by the very light she stood upon, and was not afraid.
She pulled out her baton, extended it a few feet, and tried something new. Instead of using it as a pole vault, she wondered about something else. Kitty Noire held it above her head, and spun the baton in circles, trying to mimic a helicopter. As it began to spin faster, she bent her legs and pushed off!
The baton carried her up, up over the Seine, and giddiness overtook her. She was flying! She watched the lovely water pass beneath her, and she slowed her spinning, stopping altogether as she approached the ground on the other side of the river.
"Wow," she said to herself. It was certainly a different approach to traveling. But she knew it wasn't the kind of thing Fu had in mind when he told her that this morning. She needed something that was going to help her in a fight. Something that wasn't cataclysm.
Kitty Noire elongated her baton again, but this time planted it firmly on the ground. She held the very tip, pressed the button once more, and almost laughed as it lifted her feet off the pavement, and kept going, carrying her higher and higher into the sky, and still she didn't stop extending it, not until she was taller even than the tallest buildings in Paris. She hung there by her arm, letting her eyes take in the beauty of the entire city, lit up to fight the dark of the night. She closed her eyes and breathed in the crisp air. It sure was nice so high up.
Eventually, she pressed the button again and descended back to the surface. But something about her was rejuvenated. Some of her fears were allayed.
"I thought that might be you," a voice called out, and Kitty perked her ears up, her gaze landing on a certain bug, sitting casually on the rooftop of a small café.
Kitty Noire smiled. "Well, I'm not sure there are any other cats in town with a baton that goes on forever."
"Definitely not," and he hopped down onto the ground beside her. "You doing better?" His brows raised anxiously. It made Kitty Noire feel at ease. He really had been worried about her.
"Yes, thank you." Her eyes dropped to the reflecting water.
Coccinello didn't say anything after that, just sat beside her on the pavement, watching the Seine.
"What are you doing here, anyway?" she asked him.
Coccinello's response surprised her in its sureness. "I keep watch every night. Just in case something happens."
She stared at him, her mouth agape, but he was genuine. Kitty's gaze fell into her lap. She had been right earlier. Coccinello was exceedingly devoted to the citizens of Paris; he took his job as their protector more seriously than she had imagined. Kitty Noire suddenly felt so negligent. It was her job, too, and she wasn't doing it as well as she knew she could.
Kitty examined her ring and clenched her fist in determination. From now on, she was going to do better. No more talk of giving up miracle stones. Coccinello certainly wasn't able defend Paris all by himself, no matter what Kitty's doubts would like her to think. It was time she stepped up, to not let one failure deter her.
She decided to pick his brain on the subject. "Cocci, how are you so confident about all of this? Sometimes, I get so overwhelmed I can't move."
Coccinello finally turned to look at her. "I feel overwhelmed, too — but then I remember that I don't have any other options. This is my duty; it's something I have to do, no matter how hard it is, because I don't have a choice."
"Aren't you scared?" Kitty played with her hair in its long braid. God knew she was.
"Of what?" Coccinello watched her run the tip of her braid along her palm, like it was a giant paintbrush.
Kitty Noire looked up at the dark sky and sighed softly. "More failures. I killed one victim. Who's to say I won't kill another? Or you won't?"
Coccinello was silent for a few moments. "I just think we need to better learn how to use our powers. And better learn how to work together." He looked back into Kitty's neon green cat eyes. "There's two of us for a reason, you know," and he gave her a comforting smile, as if to remind her that neither of them had to go it alone.
It made her feel a little guilty for taking so long to realize the same.
When Marinette returned to her apartment, Alya was already asleep. Marinette found she couldn't access her phone as Kitty Noire; so she was disappointed in herself when she transformed and found a few texts from her roommate, mostly along the lines of, "You've been out for a long time and I'm worried, but I know you wanted space so, I hope you're okay."
Plagg read the text over her shoulder and tried really hard not to give her an "I told you so" look, but he crossed his small arms over his chest and failed.
"I'm sorry," Marinette breathed, pocketing the phone and getting ready for bed herself. What she was sorry for, exactly, she didn't know. But today had been full of learning for her, and she planned to implement everything she had been taught. Including trying to better understand the auburn-haired girl in the bed next to hers.
Marinette chewed on the back of her pen in Chinese Mythology, zoning out. Zoning out on what, you ask? On the perfectly combed golden hair of Sunflower Boy, sitting six rows in front of her.
Plagg cleared his throat from her clutch, and she jumped, torn out of her reverie. Color rising, Marinette hurriedly closed the bag, so that no one around her might accidentally see her kwami. And also so that she didn't have to see her kwami. The knowing look he was giving her embarrassed her, but he was right: if she wasn't careful, her crush on Sunflower Boy might turn into a full-blown infatuation, and she really, really didn't have time for that.
History of Modern Fashion went much like it usually did, as there was no one cute there to distract Marinette. But about twenty minutes into class, all of the phones around her blipped, including her own.
She discreetly opened the message and had to suppress a gasp. "A new sighting at the Trocadero!" the blog posting read, with a shaky video clip of a gargantuan dragon flying across the blue Paris sky. A dragon! And it was completely aflame!
Some other students around her murmured quietly to one another, but everything tuned itself out for Marinette as she realized: this was it. Go time.
Without a second thought, she grabbed her bag, hastily threw her notes in it, and shoved through the row of the lecture hall, not even hearing the dissatisfied grunts of her classmates as she stepped on their feet and backpacks.
Of course she didn't. Her heart was pounding in her ears, her pulse on overdrive. This is it, this is it, it seemed to pump out, over and over again. This was the big test. Would she be able to find a different approach? Or was she doomed to kill another innocent?
Marinette casted about in the hallway, searching for a place to transform. Were there security cameras here? If she went to the bathroom and Kitty Noire came out, would anyone see?
She stood there, frozen for a moment, paralyzed with indecision. She didn't want to stupidly endanger her identity, even if she was in a hurry. "Plagg, what do I do?" she whispered desperately.
"Oh, Marinette, jump into a bush if you have to. But you need to get out there! That dragon is burning Paris to a crisp!"
"Okay, okay, think!" she said, mostly to herself as she sprinted down the stairs, taking them many at a time. Marinette left the building, heart thudding. Were there cameras out here?
Perhaps, but there were also a few large trees. She couldn't believe what she was about to do, but as her feet carried her there, it happened, almost without her control. She lined herself up behind the tree's trunk, called out, "Plagg, transform me!" and a heartbeat later, she was Kitty Noire, extending her baton and vaulting onto the tops of the lecture rooms, racing to the Trocadero.
Kitty Noire couldn't believe her eyes. It was otherworldly; that was the only word to describe it. And it was even more terrifying in person than in the video.
"Ah, Kitty, good to see you," Coccinello greeted her as his feet landed on the roof beside her. "What's our plan of attack this time?"
"I'm not sure. But I'm almost positive that there is a person in there, just like last time. And we need to get them out." Her hands shook on her baton as she said it, trying to keep her voice even.
Below them, citizens and tourists alike scurried away in fear as the giant monster opened its jaws and sprayed them with its fiery breath, catching the trees and creating huge billows of smoke. The grassy fields below were invisible beneath the flames.
"Okay, we need to come up with something, and fast," Coccinello gripped his yo-yo and tensed.
"Um," Kitty's mind whirled. She needed to do something. She needed the solution to this problem. The solution she didn't have. "Let's, um, let's," she tried, but she couldn't think of anything at all. All she could think about was how important it was for her not to screw this up again.
Coccinello noticed her spluttering, and turned to see his partner immobilized beside him, her neon eyes the only thing moving. He dropped his stance and turned to stand in front of her. "Hey, you're okay. How about we… how about we just fight the monster a bit, figure it out, learn more about it? Let's not be hasty until we know what we're dealing with."
Coccinello's wide blue eyes calmed her. Breathe, she told herself. She and Coccinello could do this. And even if they couldn't, they would have to. "Okay, let's," she nodded, with more confidence than she really felt.
Both heroes spun off the roof and headed right toward the dragon. Coccinello threw out his yo-yo like a lasso, catching it against the monster's tail and pulling, but the steel wire just slipped against the slick scales. On the other side, Kitty aimed her baton and extended it rapidly, like a shotgun, poking the dragon's eye, hoping to inhibit its ability to see, as they had done with the bear. But instead of blinding it, Kitty only succeeded in angering it, and it came after her, flying full force and opening its jaws to shower her in flames. She bounded out of the way just in time, and she and Coccinello regrouped.
"So, that did nothing. We still don't know where the person is in that thing. It's massive!"
"My bet is the head; that's where Mme. Renault was," Coccinello noted. "But I don't think this dragon is robotic. Its movements are way too smooth."
"I was just about to say that. Which means… how will we defeat it? If it has no batteries to power down?" Kitty fiddled with her baton and looked to Coccinello with hope. He just tapped a finger on his chin in thought, his brows coming together unconfidently.
"Agh! I don't know!" he cried out, suddenly, in frustration. "Forget it, lucky charm!" he called, tossing his yo-yo above his head, forehead wrinkled in concentration.
Kitty Noire wrung her hands, mentally asking Tikki to summon them a giant knife with which to cut the beast in half.
But when the bright light dissipated, a huge beach umbrella, taller than Coccinello, was in her partner's grip.
She closed her eyes, her anger beginning to boil. Was an umbrella a step up from a banana? This was all starting to get overwhelming again. She knew she had made some promises yesterday, but they were so much easier to make in the moment, when the threat of being burnt alive wasn't quite so present.
Coccinello opened the umbrella, twirling it in confusion. "Um…?"
But Kitty couldn't take it anymore. "Let's just beat this thing, like we did last time! Maybe what happened then was just a fluke, or… or maybe there's no person in there after all!" She clenched her fist and called out, "cataclysm!", watching as her ring glowed and began to overheat.
Kitty scoped out the surroundings, trying to find the best way to launch herself right at the dragon.
"Wait! Kitty, no!" Coccinello yelled, brandishing the umbrella. "You can't! I still need to figure out what the charm is for!"
Kitty Noire turned on him. "Oh for heaven's sakes, Cocci! It's an umbrella! What are we gonna do with it? Shield ourselves from the fire? A lot of good that will do!" she fumed.
But Coccinello's clouded expression cleared itself. "Actually, yeah! Let's try it! Maybe we need to get up close and personal with this thing!"
Kitty Noire almost rolled her eyes, unable to believe that he was actually going with it, but she didn't get the chance to, because all at once, Coccinello's arm was around her waist, pulling her flush against his side. "Hold this," he commanded, putting the umbrella in her grip before she could respond. Then he pulled his yo-yo out and began to spin it rapidly above their heads, just as she had done with her baton last night. He was going to fly them right into the dragon.
Coccinello pushed off the building and the wind carried them closer to their goal. The dragon turned its jaws at them and breathed, but Kitty opened the umbrella right on cue, and to both her and Coccinello's delight, the umbrella completely deflected the fire, as if it was made of some un-meltable material.
In her excitement, Kitty moved to get a better grip on the umbrella, and for just a moment, she forgot all about the active cataclysm in her right hand. As her palm made contact with the umbrella, a jolt shot down her arm and the umbrella flashed brightly, like a lightning strike, before discharging and turning a near-black shade of purple.
Coccinello and Kitty Noire, both distracted by the unexpected change, did not see the swipe of the dragon's tail until it was nearly too late, but Coccinello dodged, swinging his yo-yo to pull them away, the tail missing them by a hair.
The dragon decided it was tired of playing games, and it turned on them, flying right at them, opening its jaws once more.
Coccinello thought fast, knowing that there was no chance that they could fly faster than it. He stopped spinning his yo-yo and allowed them to fall right onto the building below them, and both he and Kitty Noire immediately started running when their feet hit the paved rooftop. "So," Coccinello called to her as they sprinted, dodging bursts of flame. "What happened back there?"
Kitty examined the umbrella in her hands. It seemed to vibrate in her grip, humming with power, much like her miracle stone had done the first time she beheld it. "I'm not sure," she answered, "I accidentally cataclysmed your lucky charm, and theoretically, it should have disintegrated, but… it didn't?"
Coccinello said nothing, his mind racing. The duo turned to hop onto another rooftop and hid beneath an overhang. Kitty Noire looked to Coccinello. His brow was furrowed in concentration. "What if… I mean, our powers are opposites. So… maybe my lucky charm is like the anti-cataclysm! If we pit them against one another, well," and his eyes brightened and he snapped his fingers, turning to her with excitement. "Neither power is stronger than the other, so they're at an impasse! They fused since neither could overtake the other! That's it, Kitty! You got it!"
Kitty Noire looked down at the charged umbrella in her lap, her voice echoing his in disbelief. "I got it? On accident?"
"Looks like it! That right there is the first unlucky charm in history! Who knows what it can do for us!"
Kitty's face spread into a wide grin. She figured it out! The different approach! She emerged from their hiding place, as the dragon circled about overhead, searching for them. "Well, let's find out!" she replied, brandishing the umbrella like a sword.
Coccinello stepped to her side and gripped her waist again, propelling them toward the beast with his yo-yo. Kitty kept a firm hold on the umbrella, waiting for just the right angle to strike…
The dragon lashed out, but Coccinello had predicted that, and he moved to the side just before it reached them. Its attempt at a strike left its neck exposed, and Kitty Noire took that opportunity to lift the umbrella up over her head and bring it down as hard as she could.
She was expecting it to bounce off the dragon's thick skin, but as she and Coccinello had hoped, it did something entirely different. When the unlucky charm touched the monster, the contact point blazed up in a white light, buzzing with an almost electrical current, the umbrella shaking in Kitty's grip as she felt the power release. She held even tighter to the charm, and Coccinello held even tighter to her, as they shielded their eyes as best they could.
The dragon screeched, an awful, echoing sound, and the pressure in Kitty Noire's arms released as the umbrella finally passed cleanly through the monster's skin. She almost dropped the charm in shock, but Coccinello was quicker to recover; he was the one to notice that the dragon was no longer aflame — and that it was rapidly falling out of the sky, crashing toward the singed ground beneath them. He stopped spinning his yo-yo and instead launched it below him, wrapping it around both halves of the dragon, slowing its fall.
The heroes, however, were plummeting without Coccinello keeping them up. Kitty Noire opened the umbrella, which was no longer charged with magic, to slow their fall, but it did little. She watched the ground get closer and closer; they were still falling dangerously fast.
In a split decision, Kitty let the umbrella go in favor of her trusty baton, and she held it over her head and spun it as fast as her arms could, desperately trying to keep them from becoming pancakes after only their second battle.
Coccinello smiled at her as their feet gently touched the ground, and Kitty Noire allowed herself a few breaths before rushing to the defeated dragon. Coccinello bent to pick up the umbrella, which had fallen nearby, but before he could, it disintegrated into nothing. "Huh," he remarked to himself. Had the cataclysm won out after all?
Kitty knelt next to the dragon with bated breath. The flames surrounding it had vanished, and now the skin was burnt, rapidly peeling away. And there, where the monster's head had been, laid the body of a young boy.
Kitty Noire's eyes filled with tears and her breathing hitched. The boy wasn't moving — was he dead, too? Had she failed once again?
"Oh," she cried out, running up to the boy, wrapping her arms around him, lifting him out of the debris. She couldn't keep a tear from falling as she held the limp child out to Coccinello. "We failed, Cocci. Again."
Her spotted partner took the boy in his own arms, examining him thoroughly. There was no blood, no appearance of injury this time. That was already a good sign. He brought two gloved fingers up to the boy's neck, feeling for a pulse.
Kitty Noire curled her claws into her palms with anxiety.
Coccinello turned to look right at her, a small smile on his lips. "He's alive. Unconscious, but alive."
"Oh, thank God!" Kitty Noire exclaimed, wrapping her arms around them both in a flush of relief. They had done it. The boy was saved. She exhaled, and it was a heavy breath, one she hadn't realized she had been holding ever since their last battle.
"You did it," Coccinello whispered reassuringly into her ear.
"No, no," she replied into his shoulder. "We did it."
The sweet moment they shared lasted just a beat longer before a car door opened, and the heroes jumped away from each other to face this new threat.
While they had been fighting, they hadn't realized the huge amount of police cars and news station vans that had parked themselves right beside the Trocadero. A massive news video camera was poking out of one of the vans. Kitty's heart sank as she realized they must have filmed everything. There was no more evading the authorities.
Clara Contard and Officer Roger Raincomprix, the head sheriff, approached the heroes.
"We don't know who you are, or where you came from." Officer Raincomprix fixed them both with his most intense stare. Clara nudged him, raising an eyebrow. Roger sighed. "However, you did rid Paris of that monstrosity, and for that we are incredibly thankful."
Coccinello opened his mouth to speak, but Kitty Noire stepped forward and addressed everyone present: Clara, Officer Roger, the news camera, and everyone else who had been watching from the cars. "I'm Kitty Noire," she announced, and then gestured to her partner, "and this is Coccinello. These mysterious creatures aren't going away, but we've figured out how to save the people that they've possessed." She took the unconscious boy from Coccinello's arms and handed him to Roger. "Here's the child who was trapped inside. He's alive."
There was a long, silent moment, during which everyone processed what was said. Kitty Noire felt a warmth pooling in the depths of her stomach. She had been brave. She had followed her instincts. She was one of Paris' new heroes. And now, everyone would know it.
Coccinello stepped forward and put a hand on Kitty's closest shoulder.
Nadja Chamack was the first to recover from hearing this announcement. Her eyes sparkled as she took in the physical contact between the heroes. "So, where did you two come from? And have you known each other long?"
Kitty Noire recognized the look Nadja gave them; she had seen Alya give her that exact look when she had been talking with Adrien at the party. Kitty shifted so that Coccinello's hand slipped off her shoulder, and he didn't seem to notice — her discomfort or the predatory eyes of the reporter.
Kitty ignored the second question. "We can't tell you that, unfortunately. Just know that we're here to stay until we can track down what exactly is causing these monsters to appear," she answered professionally, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Ooh, this cat has claws," Nadja remarked, and Kitty glowered. "What about you, bug boy? How long have you two been so close?"
Coccinello smiled broadly, about to answer, when he glanced at his partner, finally noticing her closed-off expression. He switched gears. "Not long," and he put on a dazzling grin, "but what I really want, is to let the citizens of Paris know that we're here to defend them during this frightening time. You could say we're your superheroes!"
Both Nadja and Clara's excitement grew, and they were each about to open their mouths to ask more questions when Coccinello said, "It seems that's all the time we have today, though. Until the next!" And he gave Kitty a smile to ease her nerves, winking as he casted his yo-yo out into the distance, grappling away out of reach of the newscasters.
Kitty smiled at him in return, thankful for his perceptiveness. She just saluted the camera and bounded off in the other direction.