What the Cat Dragged In

by Kryal

Tony's pretty sure it's written into cosmic law somewhere: superheroes are not supposed be cute. Apparently, no one's told these two. ...He's okay with that.

3. Chapter 3

AN: I meant to post this yesterday, but given that I had been awake for over twenty-four hours (I could not get to sleep on the plane), I decided it would be best to stall until I felt a little less like a zombie. On a related note, I do not know when the next chapter will be going up; that will be dependent on internet access and how much free time I have available once my program starts.

Some dialogue taken directly from the MiraculouSubs translation of the French-language version of the second Origins episode.

And while on the topic – I couldn't find a way to get this in, but did anyone else notice that Papillon calls himself "le Papillon/the Papillon" in his Evil Speech, while Ladybug simplifies it to just "Papillon"? I wonder if that's a subtle bit of nyah on her part – Papillon was playing up his portentousness, while she turns it into just a name.

I came up with this story long before the Origins episode declared that the abilities of Ladybug and Chat Noir centered on creation and destruction, and the background worldbuilding I did based on the good luck/bad luck premise was too much fun to simply throw out. Besides, I really like the idea of Ladybug and Chat Noir both getting their powers from primordial chaos, AKA primordial potential. And it's possible to view creation and destruction the extreme poles of good fortune and bad fortune…

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What the Cat Dragged In

Chapter Three

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"So. The two of you ready to tell me the real reason you're here yet?"

Natasha arched an eyebrow as Tony dropped himself down onto the couch. She had to admit, she was impressed. Tony Stark was known for his patience in the same way that deserts were known for their humidity. She had half-expected him to leap down their throats the moment the dust settled.

On the other hand – Tony might present himself as a professional jackass, but he had a conscientious side underneath the veneer. After Ladybug had made her exit, he'd returned to the floor they'd been on when everything started to retrieve his briefcase, and returned bearing Bissette's purse and an elegant blouse-and-skirt ensemble that he'd handed to the girl with an offhanded, "Courtesy of Stark Industries, miss."

Natasha had raised an eyebrow at that. She was fairly certain she'd seen that particular outfit on one of the display racks for a high-end off-the-rack fashion designer. She sincerely doubted the owner had let it go for anything less than a small fortune.

On the other hand, given that she distinctly remembered knifing the skirt when it had attempted to tangle her legs during the melee, the vendor might have been glad to see it gone. The damage might to have been repaired by Ladybug's odd power, just like Clint's jacket and the hole in the ceiling, but…

Well. Tony wasn't the only one in their trio who'd found an excuse to change clothes as soon as they'd gotten back to his suite in Le Grand Paris. Natasha counted herself as a practical person – but there was something profoundly unsettling about your own clothing turning against you.

But Bissette hadn't even blinked when Tony handed the ensemble to her, just given a vague nod as he'd gently chivvied her off to the women's restroom to get changed. Even when he'd claimed the ruined dress upon her return, handing it off to a wide-eyed member of the staff with the promise of a truly Tony Stark-grade tip if the man could salvage it, she hadn't reacted beyond a bemused look.

Shock, had been Natasha's first thought – but that didn't quite seem to fit the symptoms. There was no thousand-yard stare, and while Bissette seemed slightly disoriented and confused, she didn't seem particularly dazed. More… drained, maybe – as though all the desperate emotional energy that had sent her running from Chloé's jeering in tears had been wrung out, leaving the woman a little baffled – knowing she had been upset, but no longer actually feeling it, with no memory of what had happened in between.

Well. Turning into a supervillain probably counts as a form of catharsis, at least, Natasha thought wryly.

Still. It had been a relief when the three of them had escorted Bissette down to the ground level to find two paramedics waiting in the lobby. The pair had taken charge of Bissette with no more than a quick, courteous nod of thanks to the Avengers, wrapping a shock blanket around the girl's shoulders and gently ushering her off to one of the side doors, where they were met by a woman with a look of no-nonsense compassion about her that reminded Natasha of some of SHIELD's better post-mission counselors – the ones who understood that sometimes, everything went wrong, and that healing wasn't about not being broken, but learning your way around your own sharp edges.

The counselor wasn't wearing a uniform – but she and the paramedics all wore patches on their shoulders, patches that matched the unit designation on the police officers currently manning the quick barricade that had been set up in front of the main doors of the convention center. The design of the patches was simple: a black ring on a red background, encircling the spread wings of a white butterfly.

The Brigade d'Intervention du l'Akuma. Paris's own dedicated Akuma Response unit, trained to contain and minimize the damage wrought by a supervillain, and to help the victim once the akuma had been dealt with.

At least our intel got us that much, Natasha thought. She'd certainly run missions with less information in the past – but that didn't mean she had to like it.

Clint settled down into an empty chair, automatically correcting for his quiver. He'd armed himself as soon as they'd made their way back to Tony's hotel room, for which Natasha did not blame him, although it would make keeping their presence under the official radar a little more difficult.

"Believe it or not, the suit's actually legitimate SHIELD business," her partner said, clearly amused by that fact. "And we'll need to follow up directly with Mister Agreste now, since the party at the Exposé ended up getting a little rowdy."

Tony snorted. "Fury sending the two of you shopping for nice clothes?" he asked dryly, raising an eyebrow.

"Hey. I want one of those suits," Clint defended. His grin dropped a moment later. "But it's not a coincidence that SHIELD sent the two of us to inspect them, either."

Tony nodded, the motion just a hint too sharp to be casual, for all the man's relaxed posture. "Figured as much." Straightening up from his slouch, he eyed the two of them. "So. What was all that about? Because when last I checked, most people don't go around yelling it's a supervillain the way most sane people yell it's a lawyer."

Natasha felt the corners of her lips twitch as Clint snickered, but both of them sobered quickly, glancing at each other. They'd briefly discussed how to present the situation to Tony, after learning he'd be in Paris – but they'd hoped for a little more time to gather intelligence.

The Seamstress's dramatic appearance had changed the plan.

You'd think we'd know better by now, she thought wryly.

"We don't know nearly as much as we'd like," she admitted, honestly.

Tony crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow pointedly. "You knew the Seamstress was possessed; both of you were holding back from kill-shots even before Adrien managed to warn me. And you threw Ladybug's yo-yo back to her before you threw the bag, Natasha – even though we were supposed to be getting that akuma thing away from her. You knew she needed that yo-yo to exorcise it, didn't you?"

"Know, no," Natasha admitted. "Strongly suspect? Yes. Most of her abilities seem to rely on it." She leaned forward. "Akuma?"

"That's what Adrien called it. Chat Noir and Ladybug mentioned it as well," Tony said. "Doesn't sound like a French term."

"I think it might be Japanese," Clint said thoughtfully. "Pretty sure I've heard it crop up related to those cartoons with the big eyes." His eyes flickered uneasily for a moment, before he added, "Kid didn't mention how the possession thing works, did he?"

The question came out casually enough, but Natasha saw Clint's fists tighten until his knuckles showed white under his tan, and she had to fight the urge to wince. Clint had never quite forgiven himself for what had happened when he'd been under Loki's power, back during the Tesseract incident. Mind control was a loaded topic for him. They'd known the basics coming into the mission, but forewarned was not the same as being happy about it.

"Wasn't a lot of time for detail," Tony said, almost apologetically – if Tony Stark could ever be called apologetic. "He said akuma got into people's heads by twisting their emotions around to 'crazy' and gave them powers, and he told me about the whole talisman thing. That was pretty much it."

So it was some kind of emotional manipulation. "That's more detail than we had for certain before," Natasha said, meeting Tony's eyes levelly. "Thank you."

The inventor blinked slightly, and some of the tension in his shoulders eased. "So, what do you know?" he pressed, although his tone was more honest curiosity now.

Getting to her feet, Natasha walked to the side table where she'd left her travel bag and fished out the tablet she kept in one of the inner pockets. Not that that would keep it away from prying fingers – but she didn't keep sensitive information on her in the field, physical or digital.

More to the point, if someone pried, they'd only get more suspicious if they didn't find anything – and she highly doubted that anyone would expect her to not have information on the akuma situation, if they knew enough to pry in the first place.

"SHIELD has had its eye on the situation for a while," she explained, unlocking the screen and opening up the appropriate set of images. "We first became aware of something out of place in August, when a blizzard…"

Tony must have inhaled at the wrong moment, because he doubled over coughing briefly. "Wait, a blizzard? In August?" he rasped in disbelief. "This is Paris! They barely get a few inches of snow all winter!"

Natasha nodded. "The storm itself developed in just a few minutes, and spread to cover the entire metropolitan area of Paris. It lasted less than ten minutes, however, and then simply vanished."

"In a swarm of sparkly ladybugs?" Tony asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Most likely," Natasha agreed, pulling up the image she wanted. "However – Ladybug may have reversed the immediate effects, but the ripple effect of such an unnatural weather system suddenly appearing and then vanishing had a significant impact on storm systems across most of the oceanic climate zone of Western Europe. SHIELD started asking questions, but since the situation had apparently resolved itself so quickly, it was low priority. Until this turned up."

Turning, she reached over the back of the couch to offer the tablet to Tony.

The inventor tilted it to look at the screen, and sucked in a sharp breath that hissed between suddenly gritted teeth.

"…this is a portal," he said flatly, looking at the satellite image of a dark, circular rent in the air over central Paris. "Like the one over New York."

"Similar, at the very least," Clint agreed. "Although we don't think it connected to the same place. We don't know enough to say for sure either way – there was a girl livestreaming the incident, but apparently she lost her phone before she could get a clear image of anything on the other side of the rift. Either way, that one cleared up pretty quickly as well, and so far as we can tell, nothing made it through."

"That one?" Tony echoed pointedly.

Natasha nodded to the tablet again, gesturing for Tony to begin swiping through the images. "The supervillains created by these akuma are highly varied. We've been tracking, and so far as we've been able to tell, there are no real overall patterns in their powers, either in terms of what they can do or their scale."

Tony swiped to yet another picture, and froze, a strange look coming across his face. "I… can see that, yeah," he said, sounding a little strangled. And then asked, incredulously, "Pigeons? Really?"

Clint snickered as Natasha winced, remembering the report on that… incident.

"Ever gotten to a stake-out point only to discover the pigeons claimed it first?" Clint grinned, clearly delighting in their discomfort. "Hitchcock had it right. Pigeons are evil. Heck, they've even got the Sith eyes to prove it."

"We'll take your word for that," Tony said dryly. Lowering the tablet to his knees, he turned his attention back to Natasha. "So this wasn't just a one-off thing. These attacks happen a lot."

"At least two or three times a month," Natasha confirmed grimly. "Almost weekly."

Tony's cheeks puffed as he released a slow breath. "So that was what Adrien meant when he said things had been too quiet recently." His eyes narrowed. "How long?"

"Since this started?" Natasha replied. "So far as we've been able to determine, the first incident was only a few weeks before Climatika – the supervillain who triggered the blizzard," she clarified. Reaching over the couch again, she swiped through the pictures until she found the one she wanted – a massive creature reminiscent of the Hulk in shape, but by all appearances made of solid stone, about to launch a car after a fleeing policeman.

Tony blinked at the image, eyebrows rising with interest, and tapped the screen to call up the metadata attached to the image. "Cœur de Pierre – Stoneheart?" he asked.

"Yep. First sighted bashing his way out of a local school – apparently some kid who got turned down by his crush or something," Clint said, having picked himself up from the chair to stand with his hip braced against the arm of Tony's couch, so that he could follow the conversation. "Basically paralyzed Paris for a few hours – shooting at him just made him bigger, and he'd bash through just about anything."

"And they didn't call in the army?" Tony asked.

"They were trying," Natasha acknowledged. "In fact, given that the Mayor was apparently informed of SHIELD's existence, I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to put in a call for the Avengers." And she wanted to go on the record as not liking that idea. As a group, the Avengers had hammered out something resembling an understanding with Fury – no small accomplishment, given that two of them were Fury's subordinates, one was a quasi-soldier with no real organizational ties anywhere, and two were civilians who were practically allergic to anything resembling organized military or political institutions, and for good reason. The thought that a random civilian official would consider himself authorized to call on them… made a certain amount of sense, but it didn't sit well with her.

Of course, given his daughter, it was entirely possible that Mayor Bourgeois had simply assumed he had the right to do so, rather than actually having any sort of official power to that effect.

"I take it that the situation was handled before it got that far," Tony observed, his pursed lips suggesting that he'd been going down a similar line of thought. "Ladybug and Chat Noir?"

Natasha nodded. "Their first recorded appearance," she confirmed. "A civilian girl had apparently been following Stoneheart, and submitted the video she'd taken with her cell phone to the local news channel." She hesitated for a moment, before adding, "It seems likely that it was not just their first known appearance, but their first appearance, period."

"Ouch. So much for staying off the public radar," Tony said, swiping to the next picture. And froze, staring at the eerie head hovering against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, made of thousands of those strange black butterflies.

Butterflies Natasha recognized, now, having seen one with her own eyes, and she hoped Tony wouldn't notice the way she swallowed, trying to coax moisture back into a mouth that had suddenly gone bone-dry. If any one of those little black butterflies could create an opponent like the Seamstress, or Stoneheart, or Climatika, and Papillon had thousands at his disposal…

Then I suppose we're lucky that he seems to have a plan beyond simply unleashing chaos and devastation, she thought grimly. I just wish we had some idea of what that plan was.

"What. Is. That?" Tony demanded.

"The only solid intel we've got on the person or thing behind this mess," Clint said flatly, eyes hard as he scowled at the image. "Tasha, do we have the video?"

Natasha nodded, tapping the screen to bring up the metadata, and using that to call up the file.

Seen in motion, Stoneheart's resemblance to the Hulk both increased and decreased. Increased, because there were simply only so many ways something that size and build could move – and because Stoneheart and Hulk shared that same quality of… acuity, that vague hint that, size and slow words aside, there was much more going on behind those glowing eyes than one might think at first glance. Decreased, because Stoneheart's movements as he settled himself at the edge of the Eiffel Tower's second platform were ponderous, in a way that the Hulk's never were, no matter his size. And then he simply stopped, as still as the rocks he seemed to be made of, not even seeming to notice the girl screaming in one absently-raised fist.

The stillness didn't last.

Stoneheart suddenly groaned, doubling over as coughs fought their way out of him. Twisting, he roared, threw his head back-

A swarm of black butterflies exploded out of his mouth, boiling upwards to coalesce into a nearly featureless head, eyes nothing more than dark indentations over a sharp nose and sneering mouth.

Natasha glimpsed Stoneheart collapsing backward, seemingly lifeless – but only for a moment, as the camera view cut back, apparently transitioning to one of the circling helicopters, just as the mouth of the effigy opened.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Listen to me carefully. I, am the Papillon."

It wasn't a thunderous voice. The voice was male, and almost soft, even as it echoed across the silence of the open space surrounding the Tower; the sort of tone that made you lean forward to listen, even when you knew you didn't want to hear a word of what he said.

"Ladybug. Chat Noir. Give me your Miraculous. The ladybug's earrings, and the black cat's ring. And everything will go back to normal. The people have suffered enough because of you-"

Even watching this for the tenth time, Natasha still wasn't certain how the simple sound of sarcastic applause managed to cut through that voice so easily.

The video feed switched to another camera, at ground level, as it focused in on a small figure in red and black, as Ladybug strolled forward.

"Nice try, Papillon," she said dryly. "But don't reverse the roles – we all know who the supervillain is. You're the one who transformed all these innocents into monsters of stone and rock!" She stopped, feet set wide and braced, as her hands tightened into fists by her side. "Papillon. It doesn't matter how long it'll take – but we will find you, and you'll be the one to give us your Miraculous!"

Then she launched herself into a run, yo-yo a shining whirl by her side as she ran down the long bridge towards the tower, before she launched it ahead of her to wrap around the lamp-posts at the edge of the tower plaza, and used the wire to slingshot herself up to Papillon's level-

"I free you from evil!"

It was hard to follow what came next – the view bounced around, clearly switching between cameras, but none of them could get a good enough angle to show more than Ladybug twisting and flipping in the air to keep her momentum a little longer, as the shining yo-yo lashed out again and again and again, each sweep stealing a swath of butterflies from "Papillon's" mass as the image roared in fury. Eventually, it burst apart in a scatter of dark wings, as the akuma tried to escape – but by then, there were too few, and Ladybug was able to sweep them up as her leap finally peaked and brought her down to land on one of the cross-girders above the platform.

She turned, one of the cameras finally zooming in now that she was no longer in motion to show a face full of a strange mixture of defiance, reassurance and entreaty.

"I'm making a promise to all of you," she shouted, voice echoing across the same space that Papillon's had filled just seconds before. "No matter whether some try to hurt you – Ladybug and Chat Noir will do everything in their power to help you!"

Holding out her yo-yo, she tapped the top of it, then raised it up.

The camera view pulled out again as butterflies fountained upward in a cloud of shining white wings, hovering overhead for just a moment before scattering in all directions…

Reaching out, Natasha tapped the screen to stop the video. There was more, of course, but they'd covered the important part. If Tony wanted to watch the rest of the battle against the reawakened Stoneheart, he could look it up himself.

And he probably would, knowing him. But for the moment, the inventor just stared at the image frozen on his screen without apparently seeing it, eyes narrowed and hard.

After a long moment, Tony huffed, a sharp, angry puff of air as his mouth twisted. "I'm only doing this because you didn't do what I wanted, so this is all your fault," he said in a mocking sing-song. "Straight out of the scriptbooks of schoolyard bullies and just about every other abusive slimeball out there. Cute."

Clint grimaced. "It nearly worked, too."

Tony's lip curled, but then he shook his head, sighing as he rolled his shoulders in an effort to shake some of the tension out of them. "…Yeah, I could see that," he admitted. "Gotta hand it to Papillon, he sure knows how to manipulate an argument. A whole city of terrified people who don't know what's going on? They'd have bought it hook, line, and sinker. Just to have someone to blame."

Natasha nodded. "If Ladybug had been one iota less confident, Papillon would have turned the whole city against them." And she knew for a fact that at least some of that confidence had to have been feigned. She'd seen a clip of unused footage, of Ladybug wincing back from a policeman's brusque dismissal, accepting the blame, and only recovering after a few quiet, intense words from Chat Noir that the microphones hadn't picked up. If Papillon had made his accusation a moment sooner…

Well. He hadn't. "As it is, Papillon's threat seems to have backfired. Ladybug and Chat Noir have the full support of the Parisian population, and pretty much blanket authority to make whatever requests they need in order to stop a supervillain. For the most part, the people seem to adore them." She had to smile a little. "I understand the city even commissioned a statue."

Tony chuckled, setting the tablet aside and eeling himself around on the couch so that the three of them were more or less facing each other properly again. "So, not really the Spiderman type. They do their heroing out in the open, where everyone can see."

"They don't really have much choice," Clint pointed out. "Nine times out of ten, the villains attack in broad daylight."

Tony raised an eyebrow, but nodded. "Makes sense," he admitted after a moment. "Sounds like the villains are just a means to an end for this butterfly guy. And it's not like he's the one out rampaging across Paris. If Ladybug and Chat Noir are the ones he's really after, then he wants the villains to be big and loud and visible." He crossed his arms over his chest. "So. Who are those two?"

This was going to be the interesting part. "We're not sure."

Tony snorted. "Pull the other one."

"Hey, they're not exactly running around advertising their real identities," Clint said, a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. "The masks are kind of a clue."

The inventor rolled his eyes, every inch of his relaxed slouch showing just how unimpressed he was. "Like those masks actually hide anything? To say nothing of the suits. Damn. Even I'd think twice about wearing a get-up like that." He grinned. "Only twice, though. Third time around, suit's on."

Natasha wouldn't give him the satisfaction of a reaction. "Actually, it's official public policy. They can't do much about civilian speculation – and there's quite a bit of it," and if she never had to slog through some of those conspiracy theories again, she'd be a happy agent, "but all public officials and newscasters are barred from making inquiries into Ladybug and Chat Noir's real identities. The Mayor's already cracked down on one or two journalists who tried sneaking around to do an exposé."

That got Tony to sit up a bit, blinking. "Seriously?"

"Think about it," Clint pointed out. "Even if someone didn't go public with it – the akuma possess people? Then who knows how much of what they know gets passed on to Papillon. If you know who those two really are, and one of those little black butterflies gets to you…" His face darkened and he looked away, his point made without any more need for talking. Loki had proven what could happen if an enemy managed to take control of an agent with useful intel.

Showing a sensitivity he rarely actually bothered to listen to, Tony grimaced, obviously guessing where Clint's thoughts had gone. "Okay, I admit, that makes a certain amount of sense. Besides, a little mystery is good for tourism." And then he gave them a Look, eyes narrowing in a way that silently warned that Tony was feeling tempted to turning things over to Mr. Stark, dangerously wealthy businessman, unrepentant hacker, and the mind behind Ironman. "And I don't believe for one second that any of that would have stopped SHIELD. Don't tell me that you guys don't have files showing the grades they got on their kindergarten fingerpainting assignments by now."

Natasha didn't try to dodge that unspoken accusation; after the events surrounding Tony's palladium poisoning and recovery, he had every right to be paranoid about SHIELD's approach to exceptional individuals. "There are… certain factors that have made investigation challenging."

One eyebrow rose pointedly.

Natasha didn't smile – but she'd be lying if she said she hadn't been looking forward to this from the moment they'd known Tony would be getting himself involved. "You're good at judging women's ages, Tony," she said. He had to be. For all his rakish ways, Tony Stark had never once so much as wolf-whistled at a girl under the legal age of consent – despite active pursuit in some cases, including several honeypot operations by various crime syndicates looking for blackmail and tabloids looking for a racy scoop.

Which was going to make this all the more effective. "So tell me," she challenged. "How old is Ladybug?"

Tony blinked at her in surprise, opening his mouth to fire back an answer-

And left it hanging there, jaw slack, as his eyes rounded in surprise.

Natasha couldn't help a wry shrug of sympathy. She was no poor hand at estimating someone's age, weight, height – dozens of details, summed up and filed away at a single glance. She depended on that skill, in her line of work, to catch the thousands of odd little details that even the most skilled disguises rarely managed to completely mask.

Which meant she remembered very, very well the alien sensation of studying Ladybug's photos, the videos, even the heroine herself – and feeling that trained observational skill come back with nothing more than the equivalent of a mental …shrug.

"Holy freaking…" Tony trailed off, blinking. "That's… wait. She's short. I remember that! And – black hair. Blue-grey eyes. Small athlete's figure…"

"Yeah – but do you think you could pick her out of a crowd?" Clint asked pointedly.

Tony opened his mouth, closed it again, and then shook his head, slumping back against the arm of the couch. "Until you asked, I would've said yeah, of course, but…"

"It's not just human eyes," Natasha said, anticipating where Tony's mind would go next. "Recognition software, pattern matching – nothing seems to work. We know what they look like – as I said, there's a statue of them, and there's no shortage of photos and video footage. But when we try to make a connection between this is what Ladybug and Chat Noir look like and this is what a certain person looks like – it's like the mental pathways are simply blocked."

"It's not just recognizing their features, either," Clint added. "I looked into the subway systems here and Paris. Cameras everywhere. And we have plenty of evidence of Ladybug or Chat Noir ducking into a terminal and then just vanishing. Even if by some wild stretch of luck they managed not to get caught on camera taking those masks off, it should be child's play to make the connection – superhero goes in, a minute later, Mild Mannered Citizen walks out. I don't think there's anyone in the world who hasn't seen that movie." He spread his hands. "And yet… zip. Zilch. Nada."

Tony's eyes narrowed slightly. "Oh really," he murmured, his fingers twitching slightly on the case of the tablet, and Natasha would be willing to bet good vodka that the inventor would be testing that interesting little tidbit, as soon as he – or rather, JARVIS – got his electronic fingers into the files.

Good. She'd be interested to know if Jarvis – not human, but also far from a simple computer system – could slide past the strange protections.

But for the time being, Tony continued, voice deliberately light, "Well, if it works even when someone's looked them straight in the face, then it's certainly no tech I've ever heard of, unless someone got an honest-to-goodness Not My Problem Field up and running. So… what? Some kind of mutant ability?"

"It's been suggested," Natasha admitted. "We think it's unlikely, however. For one thing, physical abilities enhanced to that extent would be very, very difficult to hide in day-to-day life – especially in a city as busy as Paris."

"Point," Tony admitted. "The green-on-green eyes would be pretty hard to hide. And I have no idea how you'd get mutant abilities that would explain fake ears that move on their own. Or the tail. Belt. Thing."

Clint grinned. "Not to mention, leaping buildings in a single bound. Can you imagine being able to do that and not using it whenever you could?"

Tony snorted in amusement. "In case you didn't notice, it sounds like they are, they're just wearing masks and tight suits. Sounds a lot like the X-Men to me. Besides, it's not like they actually…" He trailed off, eyes widening-

-and then let out a huff that was part frustration and part astonishment and part pure, wry amusement as he raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Except Chat Noir did. Right in front of us. Across the street to the roof of the apartments across the way, then straight up over the hotel. Spiderman couldn't have made that jump – not without an assist from his webbing, at least. How did I not notice that? More of this weird Not the Superheroes You're Looking For effect?"

Natasha chuckled, resting her hip against the back of the couch. "Actually, it's something that shows up all over the place. SHIELD's analysts have taken to calling it the cinema effect."

Tony blinked, and raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"

"What he said," Clint added, twisting in his seat. "I haven't heard about that one. Sounds like there's a story behind it."

"Not that much of one," Natasha admitted. "They aren't sure if it's something that's always been around – it's possible – or if it's developed in part since people have gotten used to movie special effects that are good enough to make the impossible look natural. Loosely put – when someone does something that should be physically impossible, but without any obvious cues that it is impossible, the same suspension of disbelief that lets us accept that sort of thing in movies kicks in."

Tony's lips quirked. "I suppose that makes a certain sort of sense," he admitted. "Lets you get on with things like screaming and running, rather than standing like an idiot going but, but, but." He shook his head. "Okay, so not mutant powers. But definitely superhuman abilities, and last I checked, that sort of thing doesn't just turn up at random. So what gives?"

Oh, he was not going to like this. "At the moment, our best guess is that we're looking at some kind of magical influence."

Tony stilled for a moment – and then turned his head slightly to give her a flat, disbelieving Look.

Natasha shrugged.

Tony rolled his head back on his shoulders and groaned. "Magic. Lovely," he groaned, pouting at the universe for a second before sighing heavily and sitting up again. "So do we have any details, or did your nice friendly analysts just throw up their hands and say, it's all magic, you should really just relax?"

Natasha had to bite the inside of her cheek for a second to hide a snicker. Truth be told, the reactions among the analysts had apparently been much like Tony's. Only with significantly more swearing involved. From what she'd picked up from Clint and the other people she'd gotten to know in SHIELD, magic was more or less the bane of the organization's existence, long before Loki's dramatic entrance on the scene. In no small part because Earth-native magic users were few and far between, and apparently allergic to anything resembling too much public attention – and she couldn't exactly blame them for that. Which meant that SHIELD's knowledge of magic was limited to careful guesswork and analysis, and a mess of folklore and superstition which might or might not be accurate. On certain days. If the moon was in the right phase.

"Like physicists trying to figure out how gravity managed to work without violating touch-at-a-distance," Coulson had noted. "They knew it did, they just were missing the pieces that would make it all make sense."

The memory brought a slight pang – she'd liked Coulson, the man who'd vouched for her along with Clint, when she'd barely have been willing to vouch for herself. She allowed herself a moment, before pressing on. "They have a few guesses, at least," she said. "For one thing, Ladybug and Chat Noir both seem to get their powers from some sort of chaos-based magic…"

"Huh. That's a new one since I last talked to them," Clint commented, raising his eyebrows. "How'd they come up with that? From where I'm standing, I'm pretty sure they're playing the role of Guardians of Law and Order, here."

"Think about that Lucky Charm of Ladybug's," Natasha started.

Both men groaned. "Do we have to?" Tony asked, looking pained. "Because seriously, I'm pretty sure that broke my brain, I'm still making sure I got all the pieces glued in right."

She was not going to laugh at them. Although it was very tempting. "The point is, that ability appears to give her a single object that, if used in the right way, with a half-dozen near-random factors falling exactly into place, will let her succeed in her objective. At a smaller scale, many of their battles seem to involve many small things going right for them – or perhaps more accurately in Chat Noir's case, going wrong for his enemies."

"Like rival suits tangling each other up? That… actually kind of makes sense," Tony said, looking as though he'd really rather have his fingernails pulled than admit that much. "Black cats are supposed to be bad luck, after all. And… huh. Aren't ladybugs supposed to be good luck?"

Natasha nodded. "Outside that – our analysts think that they're not actually magicians, themselves. We seem to be looking at some sort of magical transformation."

"Which means… what?" Tony asked. "Because I've gotta warn you, I'm picturing Sailor Moon saying by the power of the Moon, here. And I really can't see those two as magical girls." He paused, before suddenly laughing. "Okay – Chat Noir, sure, I could see him rolling with that and owning it. Guy's got a well-developed sense of the ridiculous."

"Actually… that's not a bad analogy, as I understand it," Natasha admitted, as Clint cackled. "They have a relatively limited set of abilities that produce more or less the same effect every time; the variation seems to come in how they apply that effect. Once an ability has been used, that sets off a time limit, after which they lose their transformation and have to find some way to recharge their energy before they can rejoin the fight – and that's confirmed, there have been occasions where one of them had to take over a fight while the other retreated, vanished, and then returned, anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour or more later. And they both seem to be dependent on a magical talisman for their abilities."

"These… Miraculous, right?" Tony asked, giving it the same French inflection that Papillon had. "Any idea what those are?"

Natasha traded a glance with Clint, both of them wincing slightly. "Nada," the archer admitted. "What you saw in that video? That's literally pretty much all we know about the things, right there. Though, if I were going to guess? I'd bet you that Ladybug and Chat Noir only got their hands on theirs after Papillon made his move. Like I said – who'd have been able to resist using those awesome abilities? So it seems reasonable to guess that these Miraculous turned up after Papillon started throwing black butterflies around. Maybe even because of it."

"Huh. Sort of like a natural defensive reaction?" Tony pursed his lips, apparently distracted for the time being from his sheer distaste for the concept of magic. "Ladybug seemed pretty convinced that Papillon has one, too."

"We're assuming, for the time being, that she's right," Natasha admitted. "At the moment, she and Chat Noir are the people most likely to know, one way or another." She spread her hands. "And that is, literally, all that we know, Tony."

"…not very much, is it," he said thoughtfully, tapping his fingers restlessly against the tablet again. "That's why you're here, isn't it? Because Fury's got to be tearing the hair he doesn't even have out over this mess."

That was… fairly accurate, actually. Fury had not been pleased by the situation in Paris. Natasha didn't blame him. "Essentially, yes," Natasha admitted.

Tony straightened up on the couch. "Right, then. I'm guessing the next move is to talk to the mayor… What?" he interrupted himself, obviously seeing the way the two SHIELD agents both grimaced.

"Mayor's… not gonna help," Clint said dryly. "He's been stonewalling SHIELD – heck, stonewalling the whole mess – ever since Ladybug and Chat Noir took Stoneheart down."

Tony blinked. "…Seriously?" he asked, incredulous.

Natasha huffed, a little irritated herself. "Within the city, Ladybug and Chat Noir are the public's darlings. Outside it? Mayor Bourgeois is doing everything in his power to suppress any word of this – the akuma attacks, Papillon, anything – from getting out. The attacks are broadcast on the local television channels – but anything that goes out of the city is edited. Heavily. Same for radio, newspapers… just about any information channel he can put pressure on."

That got a wince from Tony. "Guess I can sort of see his point. Tourism's a pretty big source of income for Paris. If people are worried they're going to get carried off by pigeons or turned into mummy minions, they're likely to take themselves and their money and pick somewhere else for a romantic vacation."

"Or a bunch of thrill-seekers who think it'd be fun to flirt with the odds will come pouring in," Clint pointed out. "Or international news hounds looking for the scoop of the decade by unmasking the heroes, no matter what the fallout for Paris might be."

Now it was Tony's turn to grimace. "And the Mayor thinks that pretending none of this is happening will make it all go away?" He snorted. "Or at least, keep it from affecting his standing in the polls."

That got a snicker from Clint. "Actually, I'm willing to bet that half the reason he's still in office is that none of his serious contenders want to touch the hot seat with a ten-foot-pole while this mess is going on." He made a face. "But, yeah. When Fury tried to approach him, apparently Bourgeois more or less shoved him out the door while insisting that everything was perfectly under control, we most certainly do not need help, go away before someone sees you."

"Hm." Tony slanted a glance at them. "And what do you two think?"

Natasha traded a quick look with Clint, who shrugged; the ball was in her court, then.

"I think," she said carefully, "that Paris is a very big city for a two-man team to cover. And that beyond that, we just don't know enough to make a call on what the situation warrants."

Tony nodded slowly. "So what you really need," he said pointedly, "is a local who's willing to give us the real story about what's been going on here." Then, unexpectedly, he grinned. "Fortunately, I know just the person. And what do you know, we even have a legitimate reason to get in touch."

Natasha blinked at him, as Clint's brow furrowed. "We do?" he asked.

"Sure." Grinning, Tony pulled out a plain white business card, the G of the Gabriel logo emblazoned on the back. "Because you know, I wouldn't mind a James Bond suit of my very own."

---

"It appears to me, Ms. Romanov, that Mister Fury's needs would best be served by an off-the-rack line," Gabriel Agreste said thoughtfully, running a hand over his chin. "With a few minor modifications to the design, I can ensure that any reasonably skilled tailor would be able to handle the final fittings without interfering with the mobility of the suit."

"That would be ideal," Natasha agreed, looking relaxed and comfortable, as though they hadn't been standing around in the guy's office for a good hour.

"Excellent." And no wonder Adrien was such a good actor; the smile Agreste flashed at Natasha was professionally perfect, not even a flash of the lower row of teeth to hint that it was fake. Tony didn't believe it for a second. "In that case, I will have the finalized designs prepared within a few days. I do apologize that we were unable to complete this business at the Exposé yesterday."

"That's quite all right," Natasha reassured him. "Given the disruption caused by the Seamstress, it's perhaps just as well."

And just like that, the warm smile was gone, replaced by cool disdain. "Ah yes. Rather an inconvenience, that. I do wish that Ladybug and Chat Noir would simply resolve the issue already."

"Kinda hard to do when the big bad won't come out from behind the scenes," Tony said lightly from where he was slouching against the wall by the door, because apparently Gabriel Agreste didn't believe in providing chairs when he had guests over for a business meeting. Color Tony oh-so shocked and surprised. Not.

Agreste's lip curled ever so faintly in what Tony suspected had to count amongst the most honest expressions he'd seen on the guy's face yet. "Given that the Papillon has hardly been subtle about what he wants, I should think the solution would be quite straightforward."

Across the room, Clint looked away from an ornate gold-leaf painting of a pretty golden-haired, green-eyed woman who had to be Adrien's mother, and eyed the designer thoughtfully, a slight line between his brows. "Last I checked, handing over magical items to the sort of person who sends supervillains rampaging across a city fell under the category of really bad idea."

"Hm." Gabriel pursed his lips slightly, and then shook his head, the annoyance smoothing out into urbanely noncommittal expressionlessness again. "Regardless. The constant disruptions have proven exceedingly inconvenient."

"That's right – you were the target of one of the victims," Natasha noted. "Jackady, I think it was?"

Which was the oddest name for a supervillain… oh. Oh. Jackady – as in Jacque a die, the French version of Simon Says. That… was almost awesome enough to make up for the travesty that was Monsieur Pigeon. Almost.

Although, eesh. The implications of a supervillain with powers themed along the lines of Simon Says were… disturbing. Then again, Papillon obviously had no hangups about mind control, why should he veer away from creating supervillains with similar abilities?

Gabriel's lips thinned as his shoulders straightened pointedly, like an affronted cat confronted with sub-standard kibble. "The holes in the mansion's security have been corrected," he said stiffly, obviously not appreciating the reminder.

"Of course," Natasha said, clearly resigned to playing the Good Cop role in this conversation. Which, well, kinda amusing, that, but hey, she was the one with actual infiltration and espionage training. Clint's training was more of the sneak-into-position-and-shoot, and Tony generally didn't do sneaking, period. Something to do with highly shiny red and gold armor, probably. "Forgive us. As I'm sure you are aware, our organization takes some interest in such events. We're simply curious."

One steel-grey eyebrow quirked upwards the width of a hair. "If you wish to hear more about our local heroes, I suggest you discuss the topic with someone else. My son, perhaps; the younger generation in particular has been quite taken with them. Nathalie."

The secretary busy disappearing into the background at the desk by the door – and occupying practically the only chair in the whole room – started, looking up quickly. "Sir?"

"Schedule a meeting with my guests for Adrien this afternoon."

To Tony's surprise, the woman hesitated, biting her lip slightly at as she glanced at the computer screen – less checking something, Tony would guess, given that she didn't click anything, and more avoiding direct contact with her employer's cool gaze. "Ah… about that, sir…"

"He has no photoshoots scheduled, I believe?" Agreste's tone didn't shift at all.

"Well, no, but…" Nathalie looked like she was bracing herself slightly. "I believe he has a literature test scheduled for today, and… he spoke of an engagement with his friends."

Gabriel made a dismissive gesture. "Contact the school to arrange for a make-up of the test, then."

Nathalie's shoulders slumped slightly. "Very well. I shall inform him." Pushing her chair back, she rounded the desk and disappeared through the double-doors leading to the front atrium.

Tony blinked slightly. "So… wait. You're just going to pull him out of school for the day? Just like that?" Which… okay, they'd come here fully intending to maneuver a chance to talk to Adrien again. But he'd anticipated it would take a lot more jockeying on their part – not that the guy would throw them at the kid himself.

Gabriel clasped his hands behind his back, expression slightly bored, now. "My son is well ahead of the rest of his class. I only permit him to attend public school because he has insisted that it will serve as valuable social experience, on the condition that he continue his work with the photoshoots, and that he maintain a pace of education that I deem appropriate. Now, if you will excuse me, I am certain Nathalie will return shortly. Good day."

Sheesh. Cold nothing, that's liquid nitrogen right there, Tony thought, carefully not shaking his head as the man paced out. Call 911 – 112 in France, right? – because I'm picking up some severe freezer burn here.

Once the door closed behind the designer, however, Clint whistled, low and pointed. "I'd say that Princess Bourgeois isn't the only serious piece of work in town," he commented, as the three of them drew together so that their voices wouldn't echo too loudly across the large study-cum-gallery.

Tony shook his head. "No kidding. Are we sure that guy is Adrien's father?" Which was pretty much rhetorical, given the giant glass case of photos covering one of the walls, but sheesh. Kid's mother must have been one hell of a woman.

And Tony just wanted to go on record saying that the wall of photos wasn't exactly making him feel much better. Because, sure, proud papa, fine – but he hadn't missed the fact that they were all glossy, professional photos, probably taken from Adrien's modeling shoots. Not a candid shot or home photo to be seen. Heck, not even any team photos, and hadn't Adrien and Chloé both said something about him doing fencing, at the very least? Anyone with the guts and reflexes Adrien had shown dealing with the Seamstress surely had snagged himself a few trophies.

Then again – Adrien was a kid who'd faced off against a supervillainess with nothing more than a polite smile and a paperweight. So, yeah, coming from that angle, Tony could kinda see the relation, but…

"Chronic grief," Natasha observed. "At least, that was the assessment of SHIELD's profilers, when they looked into him."

Tony snorted. "Why am I not surprised you guys ran checks on him?"

Natasha rolled her eyes at him. "It's standard procedure for any civilian consultant, there was no particular reason to waive it. Particularly given that he was going to be designing clothing for agents to wear in the field."

"And odds are, anyone putting on those suits is probably pulling bodyguard duty," Clint admitted. "Meaning, it's not just their necks at risk if they can't move quickly."

Well, okay. Put that way, Tony could kind of see the logic, sure. "Chronic grief?" he prompted, looking at Natasha again.

She nodded to that crazy gold-leaf painting. "His wife went missing under mysterious circumstances three years ago," she explained. "Simply walked out the door and vanished one day; no warning signs, no indications it was planned – she was simply gone." She shrugged. "There were no leads, and there's been no sign of her since. But apparently Mister Agreste has flatly refused to allow her to be declared Presumed Dead, and he continues to employ multiple private investigators to look for her."

Tony winced, even as he grimaced. "Okay, so I guess I can see how that would mess with a guy," he admitted, trying to imagine what he'd do if Pepper just disappeared on him one day. It wasn't pretty. Still. "We need to bring Steve here, tell him to go at the guy with the Disappointed Face. No one's immune to the Disappointed Face."

Clint snickered. "Pretty sure Agreste would be."

Tony pursed his lips. "Are we sure he isn't a supervillain himself?" he asked. "I mean, fashion – that's got to be at least fifty percent evil, right out of the starting gate."

A soft laugh interrupted him as one of the doors to the atrium swung open. "I think he'd take that as a compliment," Adrien said as he leaned around the door to look at them.

Tony blinked. Sure, they hadn't been exactly whispering, but they'd been keeping their voices down, and they were sort of clustered at the far corner of the room – good ears on that kid, apparently.

Then again, given this place was all hard walls and apparently no living things in it except for Nathalie, Gabriel, Adrien, and the three of them – yeah, sound would carry, and now Tony was feeling grumpy all over again.

Clint cleared his throat slightly. "I'd have thought you'd be at school," he noted.

Adrien smiled, although Tony thought it looked a little pained. "I come home for lunch," he explained, stepping around the open door. He'd ditched the fancy suit for jeans and a white, short-sleeved button-up over a black T-shirt – although Tony was willing to bet that the whole ensemble, from sneakers to T-shirt to whatever product gave his hair that artfully tousled look that probably took half an hour to get in place, was designer down to the last thread. Probably all Gabriel brand, at that.

Didn't help that the kid was still carrying himself like a model, even in his own house. Though maybe that was nerves; he'd clasped his hands behind his back in a pose that had to be copied from his father as he looked at them. "Nathalie said you wanted to see me?"

"Sort of," Natasha replied. "We were asking a few things about what happened yesterday. Your father told us we really should be talking to someone your age, and sent Nathalie to arrange a meeting." To Tony's surprise, she looked… apologetic, almost. "I'm sorry. If I'd realized he would pull you out of school for the day…"

Tony blinked at that, because what fifteen-year-old wouldn't be gleeful at a chance to get out of classes?

Except that Adrien's smile had taken on a rueful cast. "It's… okay. He doesn't really want me there in the first place. I only started attending this year, and I'm pretty sure he only gave in because Nathalie backed me up." He offered a bright smile that had a bit of mischief peeking around the edges. "That, and the fact that I'd already managed to get myself registered when he wasn't looking."

Tony blinked again. "How the heck did you manage to get the paperwork taken care of?" Because Daddy Agreste definitely had the vibe of a man who read every single clause of every single piece of paper to cross his desk.

Adrien's grin had teeth in it now. "Let's just say that, so long as it gets her something she wants, Chloé can be amazingly helpful sometimes." He hesitated, then nodded towards the door. "But if we're going to be talking for a while… well, would you like to come to my room? It's a little more comfortable than here."

Frankly, Tony thought that a jail would be more comfortable than this place – or the rest of the house, to be honest. The whole place was so utterly monochrome, all cool whites and blacks, that it made Tony want to storm around with a couple cans of neon spray paint in defense of what little claim he still had on sanity.

"We'll try to finish up quickly, so you have a chance to go back to your classes," Natasha began to offer as they left the office and climbed the stairs, but Adrien shook his head.

"No – it's okay," he said, sounding a little tired and resigned underneath the politeness. "If he told Nathalie to pull me out of school for the afternoon and I turn up anyway, she's the one who will get in trouble." He shook his head. "At this point, I've missed so many tests that the school's letting me make up for them with term projects for most of my classes." Leading the way towards the door, he drew in a deep breath, then glanced sidelong at them. "So, um… what exactly did you want to talk about?"

And, darn it, the kid was good enough to hide it from someone looking just at the way he held himself – but there was a stiffness in his movement that said he was tense.

Which, well. Tony couldn't exactly hold that against the kid. Having a bunch of big-name superheroes tracking you down after a supervillain attack would definitely be a little nerve-wracking.

So he stretched his legs a bit, to make sure the kid would see his grin when he glanced to the side, and replied, "Well, see… it's like his. You know about our little side job, right? Weird is kind of supposed to be our thing. And yesterday? Yesterday was very weird." He shrugged. "But Ladybug and Chat Noir didn't exactly have the time to sit around and chat over a glass of wine. You? You seemed to have a pretty good idea of what was going on, all things considered, and you proved you could keep your head clear enough to look after yourself. Which also means you keep your head clear enough to pay attention to things other people miss. Like elevator buttons." He eyed the kid, openly. "Which, sorry, I've got to ask. How did you even manage to pull that off? Seriously."

Adrien chuckled, a little awkwardly, but with a glint of embarrassed pride in green eyes as he scratched the back of his head. "Well… that floor's always been slippery, I used to make a game of sliding around it as a little kid. And…" He shrugged as they reached a dark door with a sunburst pattern outlined in silver on it. "I'm a model, I fence, I play basketball … I know how to fall with style. The rest was just…" He grinned as he opened the door. "Applied physics, really. Please, come in."

The bright sunlight filling the room inside came as a bit of a shock. Not that the rest of the mansion had been dark – the opposite, really. But where the atrium and Gabriel's office had mostly been illuminated by flat, cool indoor lights reflecting from pale walls… well, for a second Tony wondered if they'd somehow managed to step outside.

No surprise, given that the far wall was floor-to-ceiling windows. All two and a half floors' worth of it.

Clint whistled low and long as he followed Adrien through the door, pausing as he cleared the small narrow space between what looked like skateboard ramps of some kind to turn around, craning his head back to get the full effect. "Damn rich people," the archer said in English, with feeling.

Tony blinked as he came in last. "Y'know," he said dryly, "I'd say I represent that remark, but…"

Okay, so to be fair, he had an entire tower all to himself in the middle of downtown New York, even if technically some of it belonged to his company rather than him, he'd never been entirely clear on the details there. That was a level of extravagance all its own, sure.

That didn't mean this place wasn't its own unique brand of completely ridiculous, though – and by ridiculous, Tony meant a teenage boy's dream, if that boy wasn't quite sure if he was supposed to be a nerd or a jock. The room was two floors, the second floor an open mezzanine looking out over the open space of the main floor and lined top to bottom with books, books, books, and more books. The ground floor also boasted a computer desk with three separate monitors, and a fourth looming overhead that could pass for a cinema screen. Probably had fisticuffs for the privilege of the title with the equally massive TV screen standing with its back to the windows, surrounded by matched white chairs and couches. There was an arcade corner underneath a branch of the mezzanine, and a basketball hoop on the opposite wall, complete with court lines painted onto the floor. Dear God, the kid had his own climbing wall, going right up the wall past the hoop and over to the little balcony over the door, just off the mezzanine. And a zip line, connecting that corner of the second level to the far end of the mezzanine.

Tony would bet good money that Adrien had probably spent a solid week, at some point in his life, never touching the floor of his room. Tony sure as hell would have.

Heh. Oh yeah, Hawkeye drool ahoy, Tony thought with a grin – and then blinked. Because Clint wasn't looking at the rock wall, or the zip line, or the fire pole that provided yet another alternative to the artfully spiraling and probably not actually all that functional staircase connecting the mezzanine to the main floor, or any of the other fun acrobatic toys. He was looking at that neatly painted basketball court floor, face just a little too expressionless and an odd hint of tension in his shoulders that Tony wasn't quite sure how to read. Hiding a frown, Tony looked down.

After a minute, what Clint had seen suddenly hit him. Or rather, what he hadn't seen.

"…So," he said casually. "Nice climbing wall there. What do you do if you fall?"

Because where were the mats?

That climbing wall was a good twenty-five feet high, easily, sheer vertical all the way up. The floor was hard – great for bouncing basketballs, maybe, but if Adrien fell from even halfway up that climbing wall, he'd be courting a sprained ankle or wrist, minimum. Any higher, and they'd be talking serious damage. Up to and including life-threatening, even if the kid didn't break his neck.

What the hell? I thought Agreste was supposed to be this super-paranoid dad?

Okay, so it was possible that the mats were rolled up in some secret cubby somewhere. Only, not, because no way no how would any mat that could be dragged around by even an athletic fifteen-year-old be thick enough to cushion a fall from that height. Rather more to the point, fifteen-year-old. Sure, the kid had a good head on his shoulders, but good enough to always dutifully pull the mats out when he wanted to quickly Spiderman his way up to the library level, and then dutifully stash them all away when he was done?

Hell. Come to think of it…

Tony scanned the room again, this time concentrating less on all the shiny toys and more on the space as a room, a place where a kid spent probably a very good portion of his life. And… yeah.

Adrien had obviously gone out of his way to shove as much color into the space as he humanly could, from the orange ramp-thingies to an art-deco red and gray carpet over by the desk. There were cabinets framing either size of the whole computer set-up with all sorts of trophies and medals – yeah, Tony'd thought as much, no way the kid could have gotten away with not getting a few prizes – and there were a few artfully framed fencing and basketball posters on the walls.

Except.

Those posters were abstract – organization posters, not showing celebrities. And no movie posters, rock stars, or pretty actresses to be seen on the walls. Those couches and chairs next to the TV were placed with mathematical precision, all right angles, the little coffee table spotless.

Hell. The whole place was spotless. Not a crumb, coffee stain, or smear of pizza to be seen. Not a scuff mark on the basketball hoop's backboard. Hell, not even a book face-down on the bedside table or a controller cord straying out from under the TV with its fancy game consoles tucked into the cabinet underneath.

This place looked like the idealized picture of a teenage boy's dream room. Not one where someone actually lived.

Which, okay, cleaning staff were a thing – and no way Agreste didn't have some on hire, not with all his stark, white rooms. But in a kid's bedroom? His private space, where he hid all the little secret guilty pleasures that Daddy dearest wasn't supposed to know about?

Not to mention… Tony eyed the arcades again. Which, okay, not exactly tech he messed with much, but he was pretty sure that arcade-style dancing machines came with two pads, for partner play. And this one had one. Meaning, a custom model, meant for one kid alone. What, Adrien wasn't supposed to have friends come over or something?

All of a sudden, that glorious wall of windows seemed less about the windows and more about the bars.

Damn. And I thought my old man was a problem.

But Adrien just laughed, sounding a little sheepish as he scratched the back of his head. "Well… generally speaking, the first rule is don't fall."

Clint snickered. "I tend to favor that one myself. What about when it doesn't work?"

Adrien shrugged and grinned. "I try to aim for the couch."

From where he stood, Tony could Natasha's face clearly as both of her eyebrows made a jump for her hairline. Which was an unusually open reaction, but on the other hand…

The kid had trained himself to, if he lost his grip, go completely against basic instinct and jump away from the wall – at an angle no less, because that couch wasn't even facing the climbing wall, or even all that close to it. Which probably had taken no small amount of practice.

Houston, I sense a serious case of cabin fever from hell.

Smiling crookedly, Tony shook his head. "I think I'm beginning to grasp how you picked up an interest in applied physics."

"Well… yeah." Adrien walked over to the desk, waking the computers with a tap on the keyboard. "It's my favorite subject, really."

"Oh?" Tony asked, strolling over. "Physics, huh? Not design?"

One of Adrien's screens had a web browser open; another had a document, some sort of school paper. The third was open to the desktop. The background was a green-eyed, blonde girl standing in a field of flowers – very obviously a picture of Adrien's mother in her teens. But where Agreste's gold-gilt painting had been demure, the girl in Adrien's background had a tauntingly mischievous glitter in her eyes.

Adrien rubbed the back of his head again, looking embarrassed. "Not… really, no. I'm… well, I'm not really creative. Not the way my father is. Or some of my classmates – my friend Marinette does all sorts of design work. You name it – clothes, hats, CD covers…" He looked away. "I can't do that sort of thing. I'm… well. I guess I'm better at breaking things down than creating them."

Ouch. Not really an issue Tony'd ever faced, really – his problem had always been that his talents had been too much in line with Stark Sr.'s master plan for his life. But he could imagine what it would have been like, if he'd been… oh, a musical genius or something, not an engineer.

Still. "Hey, nothing wrong with being analytic," Tony noted, craning his neck a bit to look at the paper. "Heck, look at me. I may invent cool stuff, but ask me to reverse-engineer something? Train wreck in the making. Granted, probably an awesome train wreck, but still. Train wreck. I get busy thinking about how I'd do it and end up ignoring how it was actually done."

Guh. Given the recent conversation topic, the subject matter was a little hair raising. The suits have proven protective properties in cases of extreme cold and heat, and against many basic hazards. However, the transformation may have deeper effects, protecting the subjects from such dangers as inertial stress. Consider the Bubbler incident, when Ladybug and Chat Noir…

Tony's brain came screeching to a halt. And then revved a second later as he darted his eyes across the text, skimming with a purpose now. Inertial forces, centrifugal force…

"Wait," he said. "This paper – are you seriously doing a physics project on how Ladybug and Chat Noir do what they do?"

Adrien blushed as Natasha and Clint both made interested noises, quickly crossing the room to join them. "Um. Yes?"

Tony eyed the kid. "And how exactly are you getting your material?" he asked, pointedly.

Adrien quickly raised open hands to shoulder level, eyes wide. "From videos!" he said hastily, nodded to the webpage on his browser. "I'm not like Alya, Mister Stark, trust me. You can check the video records yourself – I don't hang around when a supervillain attacks. When I see something like that coming, I run and I hide!"

Heh. Well, apparently the kid did have some self-preservation instincts in there, despite the climbing wall and the zip line. Settling back a bit, Tony skimmed the open page of the paper again, a little more carefully this time. "So… you're trying to figure out how they do what they do?"

"Seems kind of pointless," Clint said. "I mean… magic."

Before Tony could argue, Adrien leaned in, eyes bright and excited. "See, that's the thing!" he said, the words practically tumbling out of his mouth. "It's not! Well, I mean, obviously it is magic, but… Look."

Grabbing the mouse, he opened a different tab on the browser, one that was open to a video. From the somewhat grainy quality and the angle, Tony thought it was probably from security camera footage – and, based on the surroundings, set in the lobby of Le Grand Paris. The screen itself was paused on Ladybug and Chat Noir, facing off against a man dressed like some sort of rock star, holding a giant sword made of…

Tony blinked. "Okay, that takes swordfish to all new levels of bizarre."

Clint groaned, and he could feel Natasha's eyeroll without even looking at her. But Adrien, at least, sputtered on a gleeful laugh, almost closing the tab by accident when his finger twitched. Coughing unconvincingly, the boy quickly scrolled through the video until he found the spot he wanted. "Look at this," he said, and hit play.

There was no sound, which was too bad – from the look of things, there was some fine banter flying. As well as a superhero, as the sashimi swordsman managed to throw Chat Noir back. The cat boy flipped in the air and landed on his feet, the force of his landing actually sending bits of dust and leaves tracked in from the street puffing away from him-

"There." Adrien paused again, pointing at that little impact-cloud of debris. "There was a lot of force at work there, right? And yet, Chat Noir didn't land any differently than an acrobat would have."

Huh. "In other words, they're not immune to inertia, but they've got some way to absorb impact better than most people?" Tony guessed, quickly skimming the titles of the other tabs – looked like other videos, mostly taken from the same website. Awesome. He'd have to watch those himself when he had a few minutes. Then he turned back to the paper, feeling oddly flattered when Adrien obligingly turned the mouse back over to him and moved out of the way. Heaven knew Tony wouldn't have thought too kindly of anyone reading over his high school physics projects.

…Granted, there hadn't been a Tony Stark-level genius in the world to look at his work when he'd been in high school, for obvious reasons.

"Inertia, gravity…" Adrien shrugged. "The point is, physics works around them, even when they're doing impossible things. So… I thought, if I looked at the physics of what they do, maybe I'd be able to figure out a bit more of what it is they're doing…"

Tony scrolled down a bit more, and stopped short. "…You have a theory for how that Cataclysm thing works?" he asked, carefully casual.

"Really?" Natasha leaned in to read over Tony's shoulder, and even Clint stepped closer for a look. Not that Tony was surprised. What Chat Noir had done when they'd been fighting the Seamstress was… impressive. Very. And following that with some of the stunts in the video clips he'd seen on Natasha's tablet…

Well. Good thing the cat was apparently firmly on the side of the good guys.

Adrien hesitated. "…Sort of?" he said tentatively, ducking his head a little. "I mean… it's not exactly something I can prove or anything, but…"

Tony twisted in the chair to face the kid squarely, eyebrows raised in open invitation.

Adrien drew a deep breath. "Okay. So, this might sound silly, but… black cats are supposed to be bad luck, right?"

"Depends on the culture, but in Western Europe, yes," Natasha noted.

Adrien nodded. "Cataclysm destroys pretty much whatever Chat Noir hits with it, but… it's not just, poof, disintegration. When you look at what it actually does, it looks like it… accelerates decay. Sort of like… well, intensified entropy."

Huh. Okay, had Tony mentioned he liked this kid? Because he did. "So… bad luck?" Tony prompted. He thought he saw where this was going, but he was curious to see how Adrien had approached it.

Adrien nodded again, with more confidence this time. "If you think about it – entropy's pretty much a lot of little things going wrong over time, right? An oxygen atom binds to iron, and the iron rusts. Or a bit of mold sets into wood, and the wood decays. Or cells not copying perfectly. Take radioactive decay. Technically, it's completely random which atom will emit a particle, right? So it is, technically, possible for every single atom to decay at the exact same moment."

Tony snorted, but he grinned anyway. "Technically, sure," he said. "Just really, really unlikely."

"Don't you mean really, really unlucky?" Adrien shot back, green eyes sparkling.

Clint huffed. "Good one," he noted. "So, you think Chat Noir's Cataclysm is making everything possible go wrong for one thing, just the way Ladybug's Lucky Charm makes everything go right?"

"…Maybe?" Adrien ducked his head a bit again, looking embarrassed. "I think so, anyway. It got kind of complicated – I ended up poking at chaos theory a bit, and, well, I'm really not sure I understand that well enough to really apply it yet…"

"…Adrien?" Tony said, very carefully giving the name the correct French pronunciation rather than using the Anglicized version. "Just so you know, when you're ready to tell your dad to take the modeling job and stuff it, give me a call, because there's an open internship at Stark Industries with your name on it."

Adrien stared at him. "But…"

Tony pointed at him. "I'm serious. You've got magical superheroes, and you decided to sit down and try to figure out the physics. I like that sort of thinking!"

Adrien's cheeks turned bright red – and, okay, no fair, he looked camera-ready even like that. Some people got all the good genes, sheesh. "To be honest, if my father weren't so determined to keep me where he can keep an eye on me, I think he'd probably shove me onto the plane himself." He sighed, the blush fading. "Which… would probably be the worst thing he could do, really."

"Oh?" Natasha asked, her tone that very calm neutral that Tony associated with Black Widow on the hunt for information.

Adrien didn't seem to notice. Glancing around, he made his way over to the cabinets that doubled as a bedside table, sitting down on it. "Well… the akuma," he said quietly. "I mean, I'm not sure, but… there seems to be this pattern, where Papillon targets people who feel… angry, but not just angry, if that makes sense. Frustrated types of angry. People who feel helpless when they want to do something. People who are angry that the world isn't fair."

Huh. Interesting. And more than a little sobering; Tony knew a lot about that sort of mindset himself. The Avengers had that name for a reason, after all. Forcing a grin he didn't quite feel, Tony joked, "Man, the guy must be a menace around toddlers, if he goes for the whole it's not fair! thing."

He'd meant it as a joke, at least. But to his surprise, Adrien winced.

"…Aw, no," Clint said slowly. "Don't tell me that's actually happened?"

"Yeah." Adrien studied the laces of his sneakers.

"Explain," Natasha said, voice sharp and cold.

But oddly – or, maybe not so oddly, given the kid's father – Adrien didn't seem put off by it. Sighing a little, he leaned back, bracing his arms against the back edge of the cabinet for support. "There's this girl that my friend Marinette – the one I mentioned earlier – babysits sometimes. I'm not really clear on the story, but it was something about her doll getting taken away. She threw a tantrum, and… she turned into the Puppeteer. She could control people by using puppets of them."

"Well, that could be worse, I guess," Tony said slowly. "I mean, not many real people have… dolls… made…"

Aw. Shit.

"Ladybug and Chat Noir?" Natasha guessed quietly.

Adrien nodded. "And three previous supervillains. Ladybug managed to get the doll of herself back, but… Chat Noir got controlled. It was a mess."

Tony had to whistle at that. Yikes. No wonder Chat Noir had been so tense when he'd body-blocked the pins going for Ladybug.

He honestly didn't expect to be immune. Guess it's a good thing the Seamstress's pins were based on manipulating cloth – whatever those magic suits are, looks like they didn't count.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw Natasha's fingers slowly curl into a tight fist, that and the too-blank expression on her face the only hint of some serious anger. "We didn't hear anything about that incident."

Adrien blinked, then looked thoughtful. "Come to think of it… so far as I know, the Puppeteer never actually left the TV station. She transformed there, and Ladybug warned all the staff to stay clear, so… yeah, there wouldn't have been much footage. I only knew about it because… well, when she got her hands on a supervillain doll, the original victim got forcibly turned back into that villain, no matter where they were. One of them was right in front of me when it happened."

Yow. That was spooky all on its own, yep.

"Plus, if she was a little kid, I'll bet they went out of their way not to broadcast," Clint suggested. "So far as I know, France has laws protecting the privacy of minors, right? It'd be rough on a little kid, getting a reputation like that."

Adrien blinked, then slowly nodded. "I suppose so. Most people understand these days that the people who turn into supervillains are victims. Even Chloé doesn't really go after people on that basis, not anymore. If nothing else, by now I suspect just about everyone in Paris knows at least one or two people who've been possessed."

Tony stared. Because, sure, he could buy that SHIELD's intelligence-gathering had missed a couple incidents, given the whole gag order, and the sheer chaos of a lot of these attacks, and the whole all-the-damage-vanishes-in-a-swarm-of-ladybugs weirdness. But... "Just how common are these attacks?" he asked slowly. "How often do they not make headlines?"

"…fairly?" Adrien shrugged. "Sometimes Ladybug and Chat Noir only get there after the attack's already being broadcast. But sometimes they're right on the scene and clean things up before the situation ever gets that big – like with the Seamstress, yesterday. Or sometimes other things happen and no one gets a chance to report until everything's over, like when Bubbler snatched all the adults right out of the city – that was a mess, too." He tilted his head. "I'd say there's an akuma attack… every other day? Roughly. Sometimes we get a quiet spell, and sometimes there are two in the same day."

After a long, shocked silence, Natasha breathed something that Tony was quite certain was a curse, as Clint closed his eyes, letting his head roll back on his shoulders.

"So much for our intel," the archer muttered. "Blast. Where do we even start?"

Adrien hesitated, one left hand gripping the loose edge of his white button-up as the fingers of his other hand tapped a quick rhythm, bright green eyes studying them thoughtfully.

"…Look," he said suddenly. "If you really want to know about Ladybug, you really should talk to Alya. She runs the Ladyblog."

Natasha looked at him, one red eyebrow going up. "The fanblog?" she asked.

Adrien nodded vigorously. "Her information's usually good. She's the one who took that first video of Ladybug and Chat Noir; she was really crazy about running off to record every single appearance for a while. She's calmed down a bit since then, but her blog is still pretty much the number one source of information." He held up a smartphone. "She's in school still, but I can text my friend Nino and ask him to pass along an invite for them to come over after class?"

Tony nodded. "And until then… mind if we borrow your computer for a bit? I feel the need to go diving in the video archives. Anybody got popcorn handy?"

---

AN: Of course the Avengers would end up picking Adrien as their example of a Perfectly Normal Parisian Civilian. In the world of Miraculous Ladybug, the Law of Irony has nearly as much power as the Rule of Cool.

Apologies to any and all native speakers of French for any errors in the name of the Akuma Intervention Brigade – but you know that Paris must have something of the sort at this point.

Same for any errors in the physics technobabble – I am no physicist! As for Adrien – it's canon that he's very intelligent, since Nino mentions he always gets the top grades in the class, and it's canon that physics is his favorite subject. So I could see him looking at Ladybug and Chat Noir's abilities and trying to figure out how it works.

The nature of episode airing for Miraculous Ladybug makes timelines a bit of an issue – they were deliberately aired in a non-chronological order, with different countries airing them in different orders, and the developer declared that one of his goals was to set the episodes up so that – with the exception of the Origins episodes, which were always meant to be the season finale (despite being chronologically the first) – they could be seen in any order. With that said, I firmly believe that Climatika was one of the very early akuma. Ladybug and Chat Noir are too clumsy in that fight to be experienced; they're clearly still learning the ins and outs of their powers and their teamwork: the awkwardness about boundaries, Ladybug's insistence on I-can-do-it-myself when she can't even see, the whole drop-the-yo-yo-on-someone's-head gag. Which means, summer vacation comments aside, that it must have been shortly after the new school year started. So, late August or early September. By the same token, the events of Origins can't have been more than a few weeks earlier, at most.

It's likely that Papillon is limited in his ability to create akuma, the same way Ladybug and Chat Noir are limited to one use of their special powers per transformation. (Which doesn't mean he can't create multiple akuma per day – he just needs time to recharge in between; the fact that several episodes start with the news reporting "they once again saved the day" suggests that multiple attacks in a single day do happen.) So that cloud of akuma he uses to make his demands in Origins was likely only possible because Stoneheart's akuma escaped. Natasha doesn't know that, however – and the idea of Papillon having access to that many akuma at once would be genuinely terrifying!

Speaking of special powers… yes, Ladybug and Chat Noir can, in fact, leap buildings, if not in a single bound, than at least with minimal assistance. Yes, even without using their weapons to give themselves a boost. We see Chat Noir jump from the top of a car to a lamppost, and then across the street to the rooftop of a three-story building – and eventually to the roof of the Grand Paris. And at the time, he couldn't use his baton, because he was carrying Marinette. So yes, definitely able to make inhuman leaps. (As for the whole "cinema effect"? That was actually a jab at myself, for not noticing that detail sooner – once you go back and actually look for it, they do that sort of thing a lot.)

Regarding the Mayor stonewalling SHIELD: bunnies think that actually what happened there was that Mayor Bourgeois is just Genre-Savvy enough to look at Fury, look at the Significant Naming that pops up all over the place in Miraculous Ladybug, and think, Oh dear God this man is a supervillain waiting to happen get him out of town now!