AN: The names were created from the Superhero Generator. I used their actual names, but wasn't happy with the results, so actually switched their last names. Thought these were more appropriate (including their backstories, LOL). Also, this is inspired by the "new" Nick show, "Miraculous Ladybug." It recently aired in the US, but originally showed in France, then Korea. Check it out if you haven't already. And if you had, you'll immediately notice things I have pulled from it. The name-pulling, though, is completely coincidental. Otherwise, I've pulled a lot of typical stuff from it that, if you're a fan of both shows, you'll immediately recognize.

Originally, this was going to be a drabble in "Those Instances" but it's turned out too long.

Rated Teen for language.

AN 2: Yikes! I thought I posted this ages ago! As in, around Christmas/New Years. So when I stumbled upon alicethekillerpainter's image on Tumblr (which is cute, btw, so go check it out), I remembered about it and, ugh! I'm an idiot.

Madame Claw and The Mirror Mask
Chapter 1: The Reveal

If anyone were to ask what Helga Pataki would be doing that Saturday night, she definitely would not have told them she was swinging from building to building by a piece of leather that served as her tail, trailing behind her crime-fighting partner. Nope, she definitely wasn't sneaking out of her room at nine o'clock at night to fight some baddie that was set out to terrorize the people of Hillwood City. Not that anyone would have asked, but she definitely would have said she was at home, reading. Definitely.

Actually, no, she would have told them to fuck off, but technicalities.

She never would have admitted she was one of two Hillwood superheroes: Madame Claw.

It had happened one afternoon about four years ago during the summer before her freshman year in high school. What she thought was a wounded kitten in an alley ended up being an ancient sprite that could give her magical powers. At first, it was pretty awesome. What wasn't there to like? Kickass leather outfit, all black with accents of dark pink, a mask that was fused to her skin so as not to accidentally fall off during battle, the handy ability to channel into her inner cat and communicate with other felines, and, of course, her fighting power: cat scratch fever. Yeah, lame and cliche, but one swipe was effective enough to take down even the toughest opponent.

Her partner, The Mirror Mask, was pretty kickass too, if she did say so herself. He had the ability to manipulate and even control reflections. Even just a smidgen of a reflection allowed him to create an illusion and, as discovered last year, to transport himself from one area to another. That had taken them both by surprise and Helga still had the scar to prove that distraction.

They didn't know their identities, instead having preferred to be quiet about it at the beginning for one reason or another. Over time it became habit to dodge out of each other's way when their transformation began to lose its hold, their sprites only able to keep up the powers for so long, that they just fell into a routine. The magic provided by their sprites that kept them transformed also messed with their senses, changing their voices just slightly and making their overall appearance slightly hazy. Even in pictures, Helga had a hard time really looking at Mask to see if she could possibly know the boy that was her partner.

Tonight's baddie had been easy to defeat, having turned into a momentary villain by the ultimate Big Bad, Dark Matter. As they normally do, once he was turned back to his civilian form, he had walked home in disorientation, wondering how he had gone from the Civic Center to the park, leaving the two superheroes to bolt off together in the opposite direction.

But they didn't go too far, stopping their retreat on top of the Clock Tower. It was just after ten and those that had not been chased by the latest nuisance were oblivious to what had just happened. Not that the city had anything to worry about with the super duo around.

Madame Claw retracted her tail, allowing it to fall back to its normal length, while Mask stretched. Once he had figured out his teleportation, he tended to use that more often than running, but tonight had been an exception. The moonless night probably had something to do with it.

"That was probably the easiest one we've taken down. Not that I'm complaining or anything, but you'd think Dark Matter would be throwing us curve balls by now." And, really, she wasn't complaining, but it just seemed too...convenient. Going by the name of ''Popinator", he threw popcorn smoke bombs. And that was it. It made people cough but it didn't turn them into any sort of lackeys or do any damage whatsoever. What's the deal? They didn't have anything this easy even going back to the start, four years ago. Dark Matter's mission was to take over the city but in the four years since the three of them have been battling, he had not had one successful flight. Good always dominated.

"Or maybe it's because you're just so fur-ierce." Mask was a good guy, she adored him way more than she wished she did, but if there was one thing she hated, it was the puns. Always with the puns... "We were way butter than him, even on a bad day." Yet, no matter how stupid the puns were, there was always that hint of pride in his deep voice. Mask could get away with so much more than anyone else could with her, or ever had.

Claw just gave him a droll look but couldn't help the little flutter of her heart as she took in his obvious pleasure. The boy was too cute for his own good, sometimes, and always had her back. He had never failed her and, likewise, she had never failed him. Even though she didn't know his real name, she could easily say he was one of her dearest friends. And, because she was feeling a bit generous tonight, she decided to give in. Just once she'd play his game.

"You're paw-sitively corny, Lotte." Back when they had first been introduced, Helga had immediately thought of The Phantom of the Opera. Seriously...the dude's name was The Mirror Mask! At first she had teased him, calling him Phantom and Erik, and after one or three other jokes, she had settled on calling him Little Lotte. This particularly came about after she had come across the true meaning of Little Lotte and its origin as an early turn-of-the-century parlor game.

He blinked at her in surprise, wondering if he had heard correctly. She never made a pun and yet she had just laid a two-bomber on him. His infectious, delighted grin widened and he opened his mouth to respond, but she continued before he could start, trying to stay on topic and only slightly fought a smile of her own. "Maybe Dark Matter is trying to save up his muscle by thinking we're annihilating his minions. Then when he does give us what he's got saved up, we won't be prepared." She frowned at her spoken thought and rubbed her chin. "Maybe we should start training. If that is the case, then we really need to be prepared for it."

Claw heard him move and didn't fight him when he took her free hand in his and placed a soft kiss on top. "You worry too much, Chasca. But you really don't need to find an excuse to be with me. All you have to do is name the place and time, and your devoted Mask will be there." His grin was wider than before and although his eyes were completely black, she could see them flash with delight. She just rolled her eyes and pulled her hand back. His flirting had increased the last couple of months and while she never encouraged the remarks, she never stopped them, either. As a writer, she could never shy away from pretty words. And Helga was never shy.

"This is serious, Mask-"

"I'm always serious when it comes to you, Chasca." She fought and failed against the turning of her lips and simply pushed him away. Although he had always been a somewhat smooth talker, he had progressively gotten worse with his silver tongue over the last two years. It had been infuriating at first, but now it was somewhat endearing. Claw folded her arms across her chest and cocked her hip, letting him know that she wasn't playing anymore; not that it would stop him.

"So you're telling me you don't think that he's doing this on purpose."

Mask looked to the side, a smirk lighting up on his face as his hand twisted in the air lazily above his head. "Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, all we can do is contemplate." His hooded eyes regarded her. "If it means we have to stalk him day in and day out, I'm all ears for what you obviously have to say, Chasca."

Even with all his laid-back attitude, The Mirror Mask did know when to switch into hero mode.

Even though she was not nearly in love with Arnold as much as she had been (years of forced separation because of different classes and little time to stalk had somehow diminished her obsession with the boy), she refused to admit that Mask had somehow wormed his way into a part of her heart, too. In fact, she refused to acknowledge that he may have more of it than she had originally realized, but if she didn't think too much about it, then it wasn't so. At least, that's what she tried to convince herself.

Helga frowned deeply as she pinched the spot between her eyes, frustrated that the group was getting so off topic and that she had to be at Arnold's house so early in the morning on a Saturday to work on a group report for their midterm. It was the first and only shared class they had since ninth grade. Once she and Mask had parted ways the evening before, she had gone home and stayed up late working out potential training methods and various different scenarios. She was not going to take a chance to be taken by surprise.

Not realizing she was mumbling and growling out her annoyance, Arnold looked over to the third member of their little group. "Gerald, go grab the popcorn, will ya? And you butter hurry up, Helga is going to pop." Gerald left the room with a groan and a snickering Arnold behind.

Helga immediately froze, replaying the words that were spoken so care-free over in her mind. Slowly, her hand released the bridge of her nose and she stared at him, her face a blank mask. "What did you just say, Football Head?" Her voice was thick and low, and she could see a moment of uncertainty flash over. Although she hadn't harassed him since middle school, she had no doubt that her threats of pounding him were ingrained deep into his subconscious.

"Um..." He forced out a smile but didn't repeat himself and Helga could only assume it was because he thought she was pissed about his "pop" comment.

She continued to stare at him, although he was no longer looking at her and instead was buried deep into, what she assumed, was a research book she had picked up from the public library. Even though she had been thinking about Mask a lot more than usual, wondering what he would really be like in civilian form, she never in a million years would have compared him to Arnold until that pun. If it hadn't been the fact that corn jokes had been cracked by Mask the night before, she would have just ignored it. Arnold was so quiet and stumbled over his words from time-to-time. He was busy with school stuff and sports. And he was anything but flirty. She scoffed aloud at the ridiculous thought, convinced she was grasping at straws.

Gerald dropped the large bowl of popcorn on the table, bits of the snack bouncing out and onto their scattered papers and books. The three had teamed up for their AP ancient history assignment of...something. Helga really hadn't been paying too much attention when the guys had voted for something, but knew that they had to choose a civilization. For what purpose, though, she had no idea.

"Instead of wasting time looking at this crap, let's just do Egypt and write about that King Scorpion dude. Like The Rock's movie." Gerald stuffed some of the popcorn into his mouth as he spoke but Helga didn't didn't bother reprimanding him. She wasn't his mother and he wasn't ruining anything of hers with the earlier mess.

Arnold, obviously have shaken off Helga's anger, frowned at him. "Everyone is probably going to do something on Egyptian or Mesopotamian... Let's do Incan and Aztec. Not many people write about them, so we'll stand out because it'll be different."

"Great idea, Arnold-o," Helga scoffed. "Let's do a report on one of the least-known ancient societies. It'll be brimming with information and we won't have to spend that much time researching. Good thing, too, since it's due in two days."

Arnold, used to Helga's crass attitude, just grinned. "No need to be so sarcastic. I actually have a ton of books on it so it wouldn't really be that much work trying to put everything together." He showed her the book he had been reading and she was surprised to see that it was not one of the books she brought, but one on South American deities. "And you know we'll get kudos from Mr. White for doing something different. I was thinking we could do Feminism in Incan and Aztec society, starting with how they view their goddesses."

Helga lifted an eyebrow at him and Gerald nodded in agreement, still munching away. "Interesting choice. Kind of weird to go Incan, but I guess I can get on board with that."

"Great!" Before she knew it, he was handing her the book in his hand. "Here, Helga. You can read up on Chalchiuhtlicue."

She just balked, looking down at the book. "Charlie-who-what-now?"

"Chalchiuhtlicue. She's an Aztec goddess and is pretty violent. You'll like her."

Helga just hummed as Arnold assigned Gerald a goddess, not exactly upset about his forcing this one on her. If Arnold knew about these goddesses, she wasn't about to waste time trying to re-invent the wheel. She would have chosen this Charlie goddess anyway.

It didn't take long for the three of them to get lost in the various different ancient goddesses, which led them to the known-life accounts for the two different societies.

Before they knew it, it was lunch time and they were ready for real food. Gerald, never one for reading too long, volunteered to pick up some subs and left in a flurry of flying money and a random assortment of Boarding House animals.

Helga was quiet for only a minute after Gerald's departure before dropping the thick book that could rival any coffee table monstrosity on the floor next to her. "Ok, tell me what you've got. All these weird names are making be cross-eyed." Give her ancient Greek and she could pronounce them just fine. But Ancient Aztec or Mayan or whatever was a completely different ballgame.

Standing and stretching, Helga made to grab for her notebook, thinking instead she'll write for a bit.

"What do you want to know?" Arnold was lounging on the couch, one foot up on the cushion with a bent leg and the other stretched out in front of him. He looked like the epitome of chill and relaxed and Helga had to scowl at him to keep her traitorous butterflies from fluttering in her stomach. She had been over this for years!

"Gee, I don't know. Maybe something to give me mind-reading powers so I can figure out what you've just read so I can start putting down notes and make comparisons to Charlie-whats-it."

Arnold responded with a sigh and sat up, putting the book down on the coffee table she was sitting at, but not quite next to her, causing her to crane her neck to look at what he was pointing at. "This is Chasca." Helga whipped her head so fast towards the football-headed boy that she almost had whiplash. Chasca?

Arnold continued looking at the picture of the golden-hair goddess on the open page. "You can think of her like the Incan version of Aphrodite, but she's really more than just that." At that point, Arnold could have told her that this chick could have caused the demise of the dinosaurs and Helga wouldn't have heard a damn word. Instead, her vision tapered onto him, blocking out any and everything else. Her heart began to pound hard against her chest and there was just no way. No fucking way.

There must have been some odd expression on her face because Arnold stopped talking and was looking at her with concern. "Are you ok?"

Helga shook her head and pushed slightly back from the table as she tried to straighten out her thoughts. So what if he had made a comment earlier that was too much like Mask and now was wanting to do a report on the same name as what Mask called her. Because, really, there had to be tons of different explanations. It was also very possible that the names were similar. Or...maybe Mask was just a fan of Mass Effect. The fact was, she never did ask what Chasca really meant. She felt foolish about her ignorance now.

"Oh...kay..." Arnold regarded her again before pushing the book closer to her. "Maybe you'd be better off reading about her instead of me explaining...?" He was pushing the book closer to her when she suddenly caught sight of just how muscular his left arm was.

Lots of lean muscle that tons of high school athletes have.

Helga rolled her eyes and grabbed the book off the table, needing some sort of distraction from the boy next to her. But, no sooner had she touched the book when she noticed a scar on the top of his lower arm that still looked relatively fresh. As she did a double take, she realized that the sides were pinched and it looked suspiciously like a burn mark.

And it curved to the side, as if he had been hit with a fire whip while crossing his arms over his face just after he had jumped in front of Claw during a particularly nasty Dark Matter minion.

Before she could stop herself, she commented on it. "How'd you get that?" So it wasn't elegantly put...but if Helga was anything, it was blunt.

Arnold snatched his arm away from her view and covered the area with his hand. She looked up at him, he still sitting on the couch and she on the floor in front of the old coffee table. An eyebrow lifted, waiting for an answer and her eyes narrowed slightly as she took in his sudden nervousness.

"It's a rope burn."

She couldn't help but snort at that obviously lie of a response. "Rope burn? What, are you into kinky shit or something?"

If she wasn't on edge herself, she would have laughed at his bright-red face and stammering defense. "It was in gym class!"

Helga hummed and continued to stare at him for a moment, wondering if this was a road she really wanted to go down. She could call him out on it and find out if he really was her partner-behind-the-mask, or if it was a truly innocent, school-received wound. And if she did discover Arnold Shortman, the boy she had pined over since she was three-years-old, the kid who had made her childhood so incredibly miserable and wonderful, the one whom she thought was the only one up until she was twelve, was her crazy, absurd, incredible, and audacious superhero comrade...well...she wouldn't know what she'd do.

But she did know she was going to obsess over this; it was in her obsessive nature to twist and turn things, thinking of every outcome imaginable and freak out about every single one. So she could go home and grow an ulcer, avoiding both boys for all of next week, or get it straightened right now and sleep (hopefully) peaceful tonight. Because there was no way that Arnold was Mask. So, before she realized exactly what she was doing, she found herself sitting next to him on the couch, moving his hair away from his left temple. He flinched but didn't pull away and she didn't make any attempt to look at him. She didn't doubt that he thought she was crazy right now.

Claw had made a stupid mistake three years ago, which had resulted in her getting hit in the head and momentarily knocked out just as she was jumping between two buildings. If it hadn't been for Mask jumping out and catching her, she would have been a flat cat. He had landed on his side, scraping his temple on a protruding piece of concrete which had resulted in a distinguished scar in the shape of a heart. In true Helga fashion, Claw had poked fun at the scar numerous times. If she hadn't, the guilt would have been too great since she was the cause of it. After all, it was very unique.

Yet, somehow, behind somewhat longish golden hair, the same color as Mask's, Arnold had a very, very, very similar one in the exact spot.

Dammit!

She couldn't help the wave of immense feelings wash over her, causing her skin to crawl and her stomach to flip. Her throat constricted tightly and she couldn't do anything except stare at him, looking for any little physical thing that could be proof enough to confirm he was not Mask. But the more she looked, the more the fog lifted and she could really, truly see Mask. It was like she had been wearing beer goggles for the last four years and suddenly the haze was gone. And she just knew.

Helga unconsciously licked her lips and stared at him looking back at her as if she had lost her mind. But even though there was evidence staring straight back at her, she still wasn't sure. It couldn't be just some sick coincidence but she had to be sure. And so, she slipped out the one word that she knew that would separate Arnold from her Mask. "Lotte." It came out as a choked whisper and surprised her almost as much as it did him.

He recoiled back as if he had been punched, almost falling off the side of the couch. Helga stared at him, intensely alert of even the most minute change in expression. The confused, then shocked displays were almost humorous, and she would have laughed if she had any control over her body because she was watching him go through what she herself had felt just moments ago.

But then he gave her the widest grin she had ever seen on him before. She couldn't stop the shiver of irony run down her spine, because she had been privy to that exact expression many times before. Only, it hadn't been on Arnold, and now that she could see him, it was like a slap in the face. He leaned slightly towards her - he could finally see her, too - and and raised an eyebrow that was just so Mask, flashing his shit-eating grin wider. "Chasca..."

Fuck.

She was so, so screwed.

Be sure to check out ShortakiWeek on Tumblr: Arnold and Helga appreciation week coming soon in July 2016!