AN: There were a few questions about whether Felix should have received the Dog Miraculous at the end of "A Miraculous Adventure in Tibet." Hopefully this story will answer those questions! This does come after "The Woman out of the Fridge" chapter 12, in which Emilie gave the Peacock Miraculous to Amelie to hold temporarily.

According to Barkk, the Hound was a war hero. While his partner the Fox hid in the shadows and drove the Luftwaffe to distraction through misdirection, creating illusory targets for them to attack while hiding actual targets from their view, the Hound stood tall and rallied the people of London with his Doggedness to weather the bombings, rescuing those trapped and using his flight power-up to join the aerial battle on occasion. On D-Day, while the Fox kept up the illusion of greater Allied numbers, the Hound led the British attack on Sword Beach, nearly losing his life to a German counterattack before almost singlehandedly repulsing a column of German Panzers. At the Battle of the Bulge, the Hound rallied the Allied troops over and over to slow the German advance and buy time for reinforcements to arrive. At the war's end, he had received a knighthood from the King himself for his service before hanging up the collar to return to a quiet life.

According to Felix, he really didn't give a rat's ass if Barkk's last holder was a decorated war hero. This Hound was most definitely not looking to get blown away by a machine gun or run over by a tank, and he certainly had no intention of leading a squadron of Spitfires into battle! Sure, the Heroes of Paris had to deal with Miraculous-wielding psychopaths and men in metal suits on a regular basis, but after his one experience this summer with an extraordinary adversary – one which literally ate Kwamis for breakfast – Felix knew that kind of thing just wasn't for him. At the moment, he much preferred to make his patrols of London and fight his own brand of villains in his own way.

Of course, the villain he was after at the moment was not exactly making that easy.

The first body had been discovered last winter: a woman who had just finished her shift at an East End club, found with her throat slit. The second body hadn't been found until a couple months after the first, this one near a club south of the Thames, and she had been raped before her death. By the time the third body had been found, this time with her abdomen cut open postmortem, the police had connected the murders and the media had decided they had to be the work of a serial killer. Then the Times received a letter from the self-styled "Stripper Ripper," beginning a months-long game of cat-and-mouse between Scotland Yard, the City of London Police, and the Ripper.

Last spring, when the Ripper had first made headlines, Felix had begun to follow the developments in the media along with the rest of London, though not as regularly as some of his housemates at Eton had. An ex-girlfriend with whom he'd had a brief fling the summer after his father died had lived in the same neighborhood as the Ripper's fourth victim, which had piqued his curiosity. He didn't particularly like the idea of a serial killer on the loose in London, any more than anyone else in the country did, but the threat had seemed so distant before he received his miraculous over the summer.

But of course that had all changed after Tibet.

On one of his first outings with the Dog Miraculous, while he was still trying to find his bearings, he had been running across the rooftops of London to test his speed when he had heard a piercing scream from an alleyway. He reached the scene just in time to watch someone disappear around the corner. On a cursory glance he hadn't seen anything in the alleyway, so he had assumed it was just a cat that had been startled. The next morning when he came down for lunch, his mother had been reading about another Ripper murder – in the very alley where he'd heard the scream. That was when Felix had started patrolling more regularly in London. After all, perhaps what this cat-and-mouse game was missing was a Hound.

Unfortunately, that was also when the Ripper had started leaving chew toys in his victims' hands.

The Hound ground his teeth in frustration. He really hadn't set out to confront or stop a serial killer – that just wasn't his style! But the Stripper Ripper was calling him out now! He couldn't just ignore such an obvious challenge, even if no one in the press had connected the chew toys to the Hound yet.

That was how he found himself racing around London in the middle of the night, making concentric circles with the senti-bloodhound that La Paonne Deux had created to assist him for the night. "Has that thing found anything yet?" he asked, jumping across an alleyway and rolling to his feet on the apartment building roof on the other side.

"Nothing yet," replied La Paonne Deux over their communicators. He could almost hear her sipping tea in the back sitting room they had set aside weeks ago for hero business. "Please be careful if you do find this man, will you?"

The Hound rolled his eyes. "Of course, Mother." One of his floppy miraculous ears stood straight up at the sound of glass breaking. He stopped immediately and closed his eyes, ignoring all the other late-night city sounds and instead focusing on this specific one. There was a moment of silence, followed by the clink of a piece of glass hitting the pavement. He frowned. It sounded like it was coming from a residential neighborhood just outside the city center, well away from any of the Stripper Ripper's usual hunting grounds. He could look into it, but it could only be a distraction from his objective. With a sigh he took off again, running across the rooftops of London.

He had almost completed his third full circuit of the city when another sound caught his attention. He cocked his head, skidding to a halt on the edge of the roof. Somewhere nearby he had heard a faint gasping sound, followed by a grunt and a whimper. Jackpot. "I think I've got something. Send the dog my way." He turned in the direction of the noise and raced three streets over before dropping into the alleyway where he could hear the sounds of a weak struggle deep in the shadows. "Gods, and I thought the last place I took a date was filthy," the Hound commented, affecting a casual posture as his eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness. A nondescript man with sandy hair crouched on the ground and held a knife to a woman's throat. The woman lay on her back against the wall of a building, her blouse in shreds and her miniskirt hiked up, one shoe missing, a look of terror and pain in her eyes. Shallow cuts covering her arms, chest, and shoulders wept blood. "I sure hope you at least took her to dinner first."

The sound of typing came through the communicator in his ear. "I just sent your location to the nearest BCU," his mother informed him. "I will let you know when I receive a response."

The man jumped to his feet and whipped around to face the Hound, his knife held in front of his chest defensively. He placed one foot on the woman's throat, eliciting a moan of pain from her. "Think you're the one to stop me, Puppers?" he taunted.

The Hound ignored the question. "So what's your thing, huh? Power? Ritual? Oh, did you sell your soul to Santa instead of Satan?" The Hound looked the man down, raised an eyebrow, and snorted. "That's what you're working with? I guess there's no need to look for other motives: it's no wonder you can't get a woman…"

The Ripper glared at him while fumbling with his zipper with his free hand. "I can get any woman I want!"

"Yeah, and all you have to do is stick a knife in her face." The Hound smirked. "I see why you keep leaving giant bones at the crime scenes: compensating much?"

"If you're not careful, I may branch out into animal cruelty next…" The Ripper eyed him ominously, tightening his grip on the knife handle.

"And if you're not careful, I may test to see if I really can launch you all the way from here to the Thames!"

The Ripper growled, but not before the Hound detected the hint of fear in his eyes.

The Hound sighed and shook his head in disappointment. Considering all the effort he'd put into this manhunt up to now, he'd been hoping for something a little more… more. Instead, the Ripper turned out to be a poorly-dressed guy who thought a penknife was an actual weapon against a superhero. Still, as long as he was caught, nothing wrong with toying with the mouse… "Hey, man, you do you," he finally told him with a shrug. "Normally I'm not one for interrupting another man when he's busy. It's just… if you keep on murdering all the hot ones, there won't be any left for the rest of us. And you called me out. So…"

In the blink of an eye the Hound flicked his leash out and looped it around the Ripper's arm, moments before he heard a hound's bay from the roof above him and the midnight-blue senti-hound leapt for the Ripper's head. It snarled and sunk its claws into his chest and shoulders just before its teeth found his throat. The Ripper's eyes shot wide open as the hound's weight drove him backward against the brick wall behind him. He managed to get a hand on the senti-hound's chest and push it off of himself before it could latch on, slashing at its flank with his knife. The knife bounced off the hard Amokized hide, and the senti-hound contorted in midair to land on its feet between the Ripper and his victim, a low-pitched bay escaping its throat, eyes narrowed to tiny slits at it focused in on its quarry. Seeing the Ripper's distraction, the Hound yanked on his leash, pulling the man away from the wall to the side, further from his victim. He stumbled off-balance and fell to his knees with a cry of alarm. The Hound gave the leach a flick, flinging the man into the air screaming, spun, and slammed him face-first into the brick wall of the nightclub to one side of the alley. Glancing down at the woman he'd rescued, his eyes trailed down the cuts on her chest to the sheer bra that the Ripper had pushed askew. "I'd suggest you get out of here," he told her, his eyes returning to her face as he reached down to grab her forearm and help her up, placing one hand on her back to steady her.

The woman nodded and wobbled in the direction of the street, trying to straighten her clothing as best she could.

The Hound's enhanced hearing picked up two noises at the same moment from opposite directions. In one direction he heard the siren of a police car heading toward them, on the same side of the street that the victim had gone. In the other direction he heard the sound of a police-band radio.

"We have a 10-43 in progress at the Lloyd's Bank of London."

"Dammit," the Hound muttered. He glanced down at the Ripper, who had regained his senses and was glaring up at him furiously. The victim hadn't quite made it to the street, and the police car sounded like it was still several blocks away – if it was coming to investigate them at all. But still… He flicked his wrist, throwing the Ripper five meters into the air, and released him from the end of the leash in midair. The man yelled in terror, his arms windmilling in a desperate attempt to catch hold of the fire escape ladder just out of his reach.

"Felix," his mother warned. "What are you thinking?"

But the Hound didn't stay to watch the rapist land, or respond to his mother's question; instead, he took to the rooftops in the direction of the bank.