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On Tuesday, August 19th at precisely 1:37 am Majestia and Knight Owl were murdered by Ladybug and Chat Noir.
The most miraculous thing about that morning should have been Ladybug and Chat Noir finally agreeing on something.
If it wasn’t for what followed, the sight of them standing side by side with their arms crossed would have kept far too many up that night.
Their backs were facing the security camera tucked in a dark corner of the alleyway so no one could tell what they’re shouting at Majestia and Knight Owl, but it didn't matter. Anyone who had so much as glanced at the news lately knows exactly what they’re arguing about.
Twenty minutes of footage follow their uneventful bickering, with Knight Owl standing behind Majestia and not even bothering to hide the resentment oozing from his gaze.
Majestia took a different approach, kneeling down before the heroes to describe her opinion with as much care and understanding as possible.
Her first mistake was when she reached out and laid a gentle hand on Ladybug’s shoulder.
The young heroine recoiled, slapping the hand away.
Chat Noir pulled out his baton and twirled it in warning by his side.
Knight Owl charged the young heroes, only stopped by Majestia's hand to his chest. Majestia murmured something in his ear and whatever it was it made Ladybug bristle.
Majestia turned back to the young duo, a placating smile plastered to her face. She grabbed Knight Owl’s shoulders and turned him away, slowly marching him out of the alleyway before things could escalate.
Right as they turned onto the main street, Kightowl glanced over his shoulder and made some sort of snide comment.
Whatever it is, Ladybug snapped, drawing her yo-yo and flinging it towards Knight Owl in one fluid motion.
Majestia shoved him out of the way.
The yo-yo snaked around Majestia, pinning her arms to her sides and digging into her skin. The heroine screeched, face twisted in pain and strained against the bonds. She called on her power, snapping the yo-yo. It dropped uselessly to the pavement.
Right in time for Chat Noir to reach over and tap her shoulder, calling upon his power to send-
Okay, maybe children shouldn’t be seeing this part.
Majestia’s body crumbled to dust. Chat stared at the pile of ashes that had once been Earth’s greatest hero, brushed the dust off his gloves and turned to look at Knight Owl.
Knight Owl’s gaze narrowed in fury. He reached for his boomerangs, but before he could grab them, Ladybug summoned her Lucky Charm.
Knight Owl’s eyes widened as a gigantic school bus materialized above him.
Ladybug grabbed Chat Noir’s arm and yanked him out of the way just before Knight Owl was crushed. The Parisian “heroine” ducked out of view of the camera, presumably to detransform as the yo-yo and school bus vanished in a wave of pink.
The murderers remained out of frame for a long moment.
Chat Noir stumbled back into frame, turning and laughing at something Ladybug said over his shoulder. He kicked through the dust that once was Majestia, scattering it into the cracks of the pavement and he must have recharged because Chat Noir leaned down and tapped Knight Owl on the forehead, watching in horrifying fascination as he crumbled to dust.
Ladybug hurried back into frame, cold gaze locking onto the camera. She spun her yo-yo through her fingers, launching it towards the camera and-
Marinette had experienced many a rude awakening in her life (many of which were caused by Hawkmoth’s various champions rampaging through the streets of Paris in the dead of night), but being arrested at five in the morning had to be in the top ten.
“This is a dream right?” she asked the ginger guard beside her who was currently pointing some sort of superpowered taser at her head. “I’m 95% sure it is one already but I just want to make sure.”
Their only response was to narrow their eyes as another guard yanked her hands behind her back, reciting her Miranda rights in a monotone. She yelped as she felt the cold metal of the handcuffs sting her wrists through her suit.
“You sure we’re not supposed to sedate her?” a third guard in the same obnoxiously navy blue uniform asked from her other side.
“Hopefully we won’t have to,” the guard from behind her snapped. “We’re just transferring her to another room in the facility.” She leaned down until her mouth was right beside Marinette’s ear. “Unless of course she attempts to escape. Then the seven guards out in the hallway will be more than happy to stick her full of sedatives.”
Okay, point taken.
The three of them marched her out into the hallway like the world’s most depressing parade. They passed the giant columns marking the commons of the dorms for international visiting superheroes. Ordinarly, Marinette would have stopped to gawk at the giant fountain in the center that was flowing in reverse or the path of priceless gems bubbling up beneath her feet, but today she was the one being gawked at.
There were only a few heroes awake at this hour- the twins from Australia who both froze mid-chugging an entire pot of coffee and the werewolf from Germany, but all of them stared shamelessly. There was something off about their expressions that she couldn’t quite pinpoint.
Ladybug stumbled over an unnecessarily large topaz as she was suddenly thrust down a hallway she had never been down before.
That’s when it hit her. None of them looked surprised in the least that it was her who was being arrested. Just scared and sad and horrified.
She twisted until she was at least somewhat facing the ginger guard. “What am I being arrested for again?”
They snorted. “Don’t play games with us, Ladybug. You know exactly what you did.”
“But I don’t actually-”
She cut off her protests as they held the taser up threateningly.
The hallways grew narrower the farther they trekked, with only an occasional bleached white door without a handle lining the walls.
This was starting to become a fairly creepy dream.
They turned left and then right and then left again, turning corner after corner until every single hallway and door looked exactly the same.
The group paused at a seemingly random door, rapping on it five times in succession.
With the hiss of pressurized air finally released from its confinements, the door swung open.
Marinette dutifully was led inside, resisting the urge to flinch as the door slammed shut behind her. One of her guards stepped forwards and punched some combination she couldn’t see in a keypad.
Groaning from the effort, the wall raised itself upwards until they could pass through.
Beyond it was a perfectly cubed room, with two cots in opposite corners and a single chair set in the middle.
The UFO symbol was printed across the cement walls in the same obnoxious navy blue. Someone had taken the time to painstakingly carve a giant X into the cement across it.
“What is this place?” she whispered, her voice echoing off of every wall in a never ending cycle.
The ginger guard smirked. “Welcome to your new home . ”
Marinette had only been sitting in this stupid cell for three minutes when her second least favorite person in the world showed up.
There wasn’t a lot to do there. So far she’d already bounced off of all the walls, created an obstacle course with her yo-yo and made her way through it and dragged the chair around the room four times.
She got up and knocked on the wall she had come in.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Is anyone there? Can I have a book or something?”
She scrambled back as the wall forced itself upwards with an irritated groan, revealing a far too irritatingly familiar green eyes.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“I could ask you the same question,” he countered right as the wall slammed down behind them once more.
They considered each other for a long moment before Chat Noir dramatically turned and settled on one of the wiry cots.
“I could take your miraculous right now,” he said casually, examining his gloves with disinterest. “But that sounds like a lot of work.”
“As if you could,” Ladybug challenged.
Chat Noir shrugged. “I mean, it’s not like it would be that hard. All I’d need to do is hold you off until you fall asleep from sheer exhaustion.”
“Or until you fall asleep from sheer exhaustion,” she shot back.
He grinned. “Something tells me that I got more sleep last night than you.”
She bristled. “Okay, first of all that is entirely false.”
Chat Noir snorted.
“And this is all a dream anyway,” she announced triumphantly. “All I have to do is wake up and you will be gone.”
Without missing a beat, Chat Noir extended his baton and swept it under her feet, knocking her to the floor.
“What was that for?” She demanded, every limb aching from their contact with the cement.
“Sorry,” he smiled, actually looking apologetic for once in his life. “That was a lot smoother in my head.” He reached out a hand and helped her to her feet. “Anyway, I was trying to prove to you that this isn’t a dream. We’ve both actually been arrested for murder and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Murder?” she echoed. “Of who?”
Chat sighed. “I guess your guards didn’t explain much, did they.”
“They just assumed I already knew,” she admitted.
“Well,” he said, in a far more delightful tone than necessary for the news he was about to break. “It turns out that somehow we both managed to kill both Majestia and Knight Owl in our sleep.”
She stumbled on the way to her cot in surprise.
“What?”
Chat snorted. “I know, crazy right? Apparently they have video evidence and everything.”
“Chat,” she began slowly, her voice lowering dangerously. “What did you do?”
He let out a laugh. “What makes you think I did anything? I got a nice uninterrupted nine hours of sleep last night before my daily call with Hawkmoth back in Paris at five this morning. I didn’t have a chance to leave headquarters for some early morning murder.”
Ladybug scoffed. “Like I believe that.”
Chat shrugged. “You can doubt me all you like. It doesn’t change the fact that apparently they have video evidence of us on a fun murdering spree side by side. No offense, but if I was going to kill Earth’s top heroes, I wouldn’t frame myself along with you.”
Marinette ground her teeth. “You aren’t exactly helping your case.”
“Well, you can have your little crisis over whether or not to trust me late,” Chat announced. “I’m getting out of here.”
Ladybug whipped around to stare at him. “What? Why?”
Her nemesis snorted. He stood up and began pacing across the floor. “Several reasons. Number one- whoever framed me, whether it was you or someone else, wanted me to be trapped so they could get away. Majestia, Knight Owl and I weren’t exactly besties, but they were still good people and I’m not about to let the asshole who killed them get away with it.
“Number two- the only way we’re getting out of this cell is if we get out ourselves. The UFO isn’t going to bother investigating other alternatives unless they get a better excuse to show the public. If I want my name cleared, I’m going to have to clear it myself.
“Finally we have number three- this room is causing my claustrophobia to act up like crazy and I need out immediately.” He grinned up at her. “You ready?”
“Right now?” she asked incredulously, clinging to the frame of her cot.
“No time like the present,” Chat quipped.
“I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” she protested.
He ignored her, counting down from five before calling upon his power and slamming his palm into the floor.
Instantly, the entire floor gave way, buried under a tsunami of destructive energy.
Marinette yelped as she felt her cot sinking through the floor as if it were made out of quicksand.
With the agonized groan of an ancient ruin, the floor collapsed, dumping them in a pile on the floor below, melodramatic black ash fluttering around them.
As the cloud of dust settled, she froze.
“Chat, I think you may have miscalculated which floor we were on,” she called, forcing her exhausted limbs to support her as she rose into a battle stance.
“Oh shit,” Chat breathed, finally noticing the gravity of the situation.
Oh shit indeed.
They weren’t anywhere near the barely guarded lower level where Chat had estimated they were imprisoned. Instead, superheroes from around the globe surrounded them, with a battalion of UFO agents behind them.
Chat had dropped them directly into the center of UFO headquarters.
A hundred heads snapped towards them. Without really thinking through it, Ladybug wrapped her fingers around Chat Noir’s wrist and yanked him through the nearest doorway.
She grabbed the nearest desk and shoved it in front of the door, buying them a couple seconds of time. After sucking in a few breaths, Ladybug glanced around at the room she had chosen.
In front of a green screen, Jess and Aeon wrapped their arms around each other. A dozen cameras centered around them. The two girls were too caught up in trying to keep the tears off their face to notice the intruders.
That didn’t stop the five or so members of the crew from turning and gawking at the broadcast's surprise special guests.
“Never fear, citizens,” Jess said, reading off a script as she pulled her little sister closer to her side. “We have apprehended the culprits. Justice will be-”
Chat Noir tripped over a camera stand as they attempted to sneak past the stunned crew, knocking over each of the cameras in a domino effect.
Marinette winced. That had to cost the UFOs a fortune.
Majestia and Knight Owl’s daughters tensed, finally spotting them.
The four of them gaped at each other for a long moment, completely forgetting that the cameras were still rolling.
Jess and Aeon’s carefully controlled expressions slithered away.
Aeon lunged to her feet, eyes haunted with grief as she snarled, “ You. ”
Jesss looked like she was about ready to leap from her chair and murder them herself.
Ladybug glanced back to her nemesis for guidance.
Chat Noir got to his feet, shooting them both an awkward and innocent smile enunciated by his finger guns. “Whoops. Sorry for interrupting your important press conference. We’ll just, uh, be going then.”
Grabbing her hand, he yanked her out into the hall, sprinting as soon as they hit the tiled floor. He dragged her along as she fought to look back over her shoulder where Jess, Aeon and the UFOs weren’t far behind.
“This was a terrible plan,” she groaned.
“Well, there’s no going back now,” Chat grinned back at her, eyes gleaming with the thrill of adventure.
He was thiving off of the thrill and danger of the chase. For him this was just another game, another challenge, another chance to laugh. It wasn’t a burden for him like it was for her.
That was one of the things she hated the most about him. And envied.
The dormant alarms on the walls suddenly sprang to life, screeching some sort of signal for them to evacuate.
“Emergency. Emergency,” an eerie monotone informed the few scientists who roamed these halls. “Escaping prisoners. Please proceed to the nearest and safest exit.”
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” Ladybug shouted over the noise.
“None at all,” Chat called back. “Down, I think.”
Honestly, those alarms shouldn’t have bothered. The two of them were good enough at parkour (mostly due to constantly competing to be better than the other) that they didn’t so much as brush a flyaway on the receptionist's head. In eerie unison, they bounded from wall to wall as casually as if they were merely going on a relaxing stroll by the Seine.
The mob behind them? Not so much.
Aeon leapt into the air, her rockets blazing into action the instant her feet left the tiles. Jess reached up and grabbed ahold of her sister’s hand. The two of them blazed with righteous fury as they chased after them.
Unfortunately, the agents were confined to the ground and were slightly more concerned with capturing their escaped suspects than guaranteeing the safety of the scientists.
Aeon and Jess zipped overhead as the scientists and agents collided like a pair of out of control semi trucks.
“There!” Chat Noir hissed, screeching to a halt.
Ladybug slipped out of control, accidentally ramming into him.
Grabbing the handle of a conveniently placed maintenance closet, Chat swung them into a nearby stairwell.
The two of them stumbled down the first flight of stairs before leaping over the railing and dropping down a floor at a time.
The door slammed open above them.
“Go, go, go! ” Ladybug chanted, counting down the floors in her head until they reached the basement.
She winced as the sound of Uncanny Valley’s rocket echoed off the walls, the light from the flames tracing a descending spiral around the stairwell.
Chat glanced up, eyes widening for a brief moment before setting in determination.
“Ladybug,” he hissed as they leapt down yet another flight of stairs. “On my signal, leap down the center of the stairwell.”
Marinette opened her mouth to protest, only to realize that his idea had merit and it would probably be best not to argue.
From somewhere above them, the door slammed open and the sound of a dozen UFO agents marching after them bleached into Ladybug’s brain.
“Now!” Chat Noir shouted, throwing himself over the edge.
In the brief moment of hesitation before she leapt from the railing, her father’s laughter came rushing back.
“If all your friends jumped over the side of a cliff, would you?” he had teased, poking her in the ribs.
Her younger self had squirmed, giggling as she tried to answer in the negative.
Her mother had swept into the room with the kind of grace Marinette could only ever dream to possess.
“Our little gremlin?” she had teased, joining in on the fun. “Of course she would.”
Marinette wasn’t looking forward to telling her parents that went jumping down the stairwell of the third tallest building in New York after a catboy she wouldn’t trust with watering her plants, much less her life.
Still, there was nothing she could do about it as her fingers released the railing and she fell after him.
Honestly, for a 98 story building, you would think you would at least have a few seconds to catch your breath as you fell, but as soon as Ladybug righted herself, the grimy basement floor came rushing towards her.
“Try to catch yourself on the railing!” Chat shouted from below, landing on the floor with ease because of course he did.
Ladybug reached out to grab the railing- and missed.
The wind rushed past her as she threw out her yo-yo in a last ditch effort not to become the significantly larger version of a bug on a windshield.
Miraculously, the yo-yo hooked on the railing she had just missed, jolting her to a stop before she could hit the ground.
Gently, she lowered herself the rest of the way.
“Oh good,” Chat grinned as soon as her feet brushed the floor. “I was kinda worried you weren’t going to make it for a second there.”
He offered her a hand but she ignored it, sending him a glare instead.
“Your next brilliant plan better not get me killed, Kittycat,” she growled. “Let’s just get out of here.”
“Whatever you say, m’lady,” Chat said, turning and leading into the storage closet the UFOs liked to call a basement.
“Don’t call me that.”
Begrudgingly, she followed him down the short corridor.
“Tell me if you spot any sort of drain on the floor,” he instructed, pushing his way through old wires as if they were vines at some abandoned ruin.
Ladybug made her way through the labyrinth of pipes, keeping her eyes locked on the ground.
Finally, she spotted it.
“Chat, I found it!” she whisper-shouted over her shoulder. “Over here! It’s by the-”
A single one of Eagle’s far-too fashionable boots slammed into the pothole.
“Looking for something?” she snapped.
Uncanny Valley folded in her rockets and lurked behind her sister, fists bared.
“Eagle, we-”
“It’s Knight Owl, actually,” Jess snapped. “Thanks to you .”
Ladybug sighed. “Knight Owl, we-”
“Also, my sister is here too,” Jess interrupted. “Don’t leave her out of this. You murdered her mothers too.”
Before she could get another word out, Uncanny Valley jumped in. “The UFOs are getting closer. According to my calculations, you have 194 seconds before they arrive.”
Ladybug opened her mouth to finally make her argument-
“Knight Owl! Uncanny Valley! Long time no see!”
-only to immediately get cut off once again.
“Don’t refer to us so casually,” Uncanny Valley snapped. “Murder is no laughing matter.”
“No, it is not,” Chat agreed. “Especially when it involves the loss of someone you deeply care for. I get it. I lost my mother not too long ago and hearing anyone casually discuss her death makes me want to cataclysm all of Paris. Still, you have to listen.”
He glanced up at the pair of heroines, waiting for their permission to continue. Jess and Aeon glanced at each other and nodded for him to continue.
“First of all,” Chat Noir began, “Let me preface this by saying this: I am so so sorry about your mothers. Take this from someone who just lost his. I feel your pain and I hate that someone used my image to cause both of you the same pain. Trust me when I say that I -and hopefully Ladybug- will do everything in my-”
“-our,” Marinette jumped in.
“ Our ,” Chat corrected himself, “power to find whoever did this and bring them to justice.”
Ladybug finally dared to look up and froze when she spotted Aeon struggling to contain the tears streaming down her cheeks.
Jess, however, seemed to radiate with fury.
“Pretty words,” she snapped. “But they prove nothing. Tell me, what evidence do you have for your innocence?”
“Hey, what happened to innocent until proven guilty?” Chat quipped.
Knight Owl looked less than amused.
“Alright,” Chat sighed. “This morning, I was busy calling one of my friends in one of the international conference rooms.”
“You are aware that this proves nothing,” Aeon pointed out. “There’s no security footage inside the private briefing rooms for security reasons.”
“That may be what they say in the official paperwork,” Chat pointed out. “But I think we both know that isn’t true. Otherwise, how would they have been able to solve the Scorpio case a few weeks back? That security footage was literally their key evidence.”
Aeon deflated. “Point taken.”
Jess looked like she was about to protest, but Chat put up a hand to stop her.
“And if you still have any concerns about me somehow sneaking away, there are security cameras at both entrances and exits. That’s where your security team nabbed me, actually. By the fire escape door.”
Jess conceded the point- momentarily.
“Well then, where was Ladybug?” she pressed.
For someone who wasn’t there, Chat Noir answered with way too much confidence. “Sleeping.”
“That could have been a facade,” Aeon pointed out.
Jess raised her eyebrows at her sister. “Facade? Really?”
Aeon shrugged. “I like that word.”
Knight Owl grinned. “Okay, fair enough.”
Chat Noir cleared his throat. “May I continue?”
Uncanny Valley nodded. “Of course.”
“The UFOs like to break safety laws a little with their room structure,” Chat explained. “Technically, for a room to be considered suitable to legally be a bedroom it must have two or more exits. However, any bedroom in the UFO headquarters has only one. You see, the windows may appear to be a second exit but in reality they are made with three layers of bulletproof glass reinforced with titanium macromolecules. Technically, the windows do unlock, but only while a fire alarm is going off. Ladybug’s only other exit is the main door, which is in plain view of the entire complex.”
“And how do you know she was sleeping?” Jess challenged.
Chat Noir shrugged. “Just a guess. Ladybug sleeps like it’s her last day on earth. My current theory is that she forces herself to be productive until the point of exhaustion and then she just crashes and sleeps for like fourteen hours straight. Sometimes I find her curled up on a rooftop after a long battle. It’s kinda cute actually.”
Marinette froze. “Wait, what? ”
“Yeah,” he shrugged again. “Sometimes I’ll bring you blankets if it’s cold.”
“I thought those were from Rena,” Ladybug whispered in horror.
“Some of them are,” Chat said casually, as if he wasn’t her entire understanding of the universe around her (or just who left her blankets, which was basically the same thing). “Sometimes we run into each other while we’re trying to drop off a blanket and we’ll have an epic rock, paper, scissors battle over which one you get to use that night. Or that morning. Depends on how tired you are.”
Marinette felt like her face was on fire as Chat turned back to Jess and Aeon.
“My point being,” he continued. “Even if there was some sort of way for either of us to, uh, do the deed , Ladybug would have been too tired to even bother and I-”
“We get it,” Jess interrupted. “Listen, the UFOs are almost here.” The two sisters shared a look of mutual understanding before she continued. “Which means that it’s time for us to let you go.”
Chat nearly deflated with relief. “Thank you so-”
“On one condition,” Uncanny Valley jumped in.
“If you can’t figure out who did this to our mothers…” Jess pulled herself to her full height (which despite only being a few centimeters taller than Marintette still looked threatening). “We’ll bring you in ourselves.”
“Now go, ” Aeon insisted, holding up the lid of the pothole herself. “They’re almost here.”
“Thank you,” Chat whispered, dropping down the pothole with stupid cat-like ease.
Ladybug slowly followed, clinging to each slippery rung of the metal ladder down to the sewers below.
Right before Aeon could lower the lid, she met their eyes and whispered, “I won’t let you down.”
The new Knight Owl folded her arms. “You better not.”
And then the lid slammed shut.
“Smooth last line,” Chat teased as she made her way down the ladder. He seemed to have a thing for making witty comments as soon as they escaped from a near-death experience. “‘I won’t let you down?’ You sound like some sort of protagonist.”
“Maybe I am the protagonist,” she shot back.
“What would that make me?” Chat asked as she finally reached the bottom rung.
“Probably the annoying background character,” Marinette grumbled.
“I was hoping for partner in crime,” he sighed, “but I suppose that’s what I deserve.”
Ladybug snorted. “Yeah, I mean, us? Partners in crime?”
“It does sound a little ridiculous,” Chat admitted.
She followed him through the maze of sewers, trying to ignore the ever-present ever-increasing feeling that she owed him something.
Finally when the feeling became too strong to ignore, she reached forward and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, Chat?”
He turned and glanced over his shoulder.
Ladybug set her jaw determinedly. “Thanks for all of that.”
Chat shrugged. “I mean, I was mostly just saving my own skin.”
“Not quite,” she pointed out, stepping over a discarded can of beer. “You could have ditched me back there, but you didn’t. And I really… appreciated that.”
Chat got that annoying smirk he usually got when he was about to make some sort of joke you would regret being present to hear for the rest of your life.
“I could have,” he began, “But then how would we be able to become partners in crime?”
Ladybug groaned. “That’s never going to be a thing.”
“Oh it totally is,” Chat teased.
Marinette couldn’t really think of anything else to say (other than additional protests that he would ignore) so they continued in the kind of silence so awkward that she wanted to focus on the eternal clang of water hitting an already rusty pipe. The air was denser in the sewers, every breath packed with the acrid scent of human waste.
“You know, I’ve heard that at one point people thought there were alligators down here,” Chat said randomly. “Apparently people released baby alligators that they didn’t want in the sewers when they got too big to be taken care of.”
“I heard that was a myth,” Marinette responded.
“I know,” Chat sighed. “Still, the idea is really sad- the baby alligator didn’t do anything wrong apart from exist. And now it would never be able to see the sun again, much less return to the Everglades.”
“It sounds like you’re about to turn that into some sort of metaphor about the nature of humanity,” Ladybug teased.
Chat shook his head. “Nah, I think that everyone wants in at least some way to do what they think will change the world for the better. Maybe we can’t do it perfectly or we get a little lost along the way but even despite that I think we’re all trying to at least be okay.”
“Except, like, seventy percent of politicians,” Marinette pointed out, not sure when this discussion had gotten so philosophical.
“Fair point,” Chat agreed.
The two of them grinned at each other. Ladybug realized that this was probably the longest conversation they’d ever had without trying to kill each other.
They reached the side of what seemed to be an infinite abyss of sewer junk, the chemically tainted waters pouring into some sort of never ending void.
“We’re going to have to jump,” Chat explained. He held out his hand expectantly. “Here, give me your yo-yo. This will be a lot more pleasant if we don’t end up six feet deep in sewer water.”
“I’m not giving you my yo-yo,” Ladybug protested. “What if you try to attack me with it?”
“I don’t even know how to use your yo-yo!” Chat snapped.
“Sure you do,” Ladybug snapped back. “Remember the nightmare that was Reflekdoll?”
Chat snorted. “Oh yeah, sure, I definitely had a ton of time to figure out how your weapon worked while I was getting attacked by a rogue Sentimonster.”
“Sentibeing,” she corrected automatically.
“What?” Chat echoed.
“It’s not important. Just, here-” Flicking her wrist she sent her yo-yo spinning through the air until it hooked on a ladder. Wrapping her arms around him, she threw them both off the ledge.
For a long second they hung in the air, weightless.
But all too soon, gravity came rushing back, their momentum just barely flinging them onto the next ledge.
Chat stumbled away, landing on his hands and knees with a dazed expression.
Taking a second to get her bearings, Marinette reached down and offered him a hand.
Chat Noir’s bright green eyes latched onto her, and suddenly, such a small action felt like it held far more weight.
Slowly, his gloved fingers wrapped around her own.
The two of them met eyes for a long moment, and Marinette felt like she should say something, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out what.
Chat’s lips twisted into a mischievous grin.
“That was such a partner in crime thing to do,” he declared.
“It was not!” she laughed indignantly.
“Oh, it totally was,” he teased. “Just you wait, Ladybug. I’ll grow on you yet!”
Not able to help the snort that slipped out, she followed him down the sewer tunnel. She didn’t admit it to herself, but he kind of right. He was growing on her already.