update 03/05/16: jossed by origins episodes, officially au

The first time Adrien used his power, he was alone in the large park near his house. The top layer of the latest snowfall had frozen, forming a hard white blanket that cracked dangerously underfoot. Sculpted evergreen hedges that stood year-round in neat rows were each topped with white conical caps. The whole landscape glowed silver in the moonlight, dotted here and there with the yellow smudges of distant street lamps.

Adrien was very cold and at the moment irritated with Plagg.

Only for emergencies, Plagg had said, when he'd informed Adrien that there was more to the transformation than just the suit. You don't try that just to see.

And when Adrien asked why, Plagg had only responded with, No, mm-mm. Not until a tin of camembert rests in your pocket. Brie is also acceptable.

Which Adrien hadn't done, because who did that? He had finally convinced his father to allow him to go to a normal school for once, and since everyone had been so welcoming he didn't want to ruin that by being the kid with the random cheese. All… everything was still so new to him, between the suit and the baton and that new tickly sense that pushed and guided him nightly, alone, in leaps and twists across the Parisian skyline. And now the floating kitty wouldn't answer any questions until Adrien agreed to carry cheese in his pocket. This was where he crossed the line.

Adrien slowed to a stop in front of one of the snowcapped evergreen hedges, tilting his head at it.

When he thought about it, which he did quite a lot in the whirlwind since the ring came to him, waiting for an emergency to use his special power was a way to make a bad situation worse. When he voiced this thought to Plagg, Plagg had said, I don't know, your pockets still seem empty to me.

There also had been no emergency situations, not counting a few misjudged jumps.

Plagg had yawned and told him he'd better take advantage of it.

Plagg wasn't here right now. Well, technically, he was. It wasn't that he disappeared when he went into the ring; it was like whatever it was that made the kwami real split and diffused, to become the disguise. Adrien had spied the shadow of twitching ears. The mask was more like a second skin. The baton wasn't just a stick, it worked like nothing he'd ever seen, as if connected with his will. The essence of the kwami was what reshaped him as Chat Noir, so Plagg was not gone, still he was still with him, still there…

But in the literal sense, in the sense that he couldn't shoot out from under Adrien's lapel and scold him, Plagg wasn't here right now.

And Adrien was curious.

He tilted his head the other way at the hedge.

Activating his power wasn't only a word, like the transformation itself wasn't only a word—it was a stark, worldless moment of concentrated feeling. By the time the snow-encrusted night bled back around him, Adrien was aware that his hand was beyond cold, as if he had dipped it in an ice bucket and held it there. The frigid night was like summer by comparison.

When he looked down, he leapt a step back, the frozen snow finally collapsing under his weight with a jolting crunch. Boiling black bubbles floated eerily from the surface of his clawed glove, to dissipate like steam. As real as Plagg, or less. When he flexed his hand the eddies of blackness streaked in the air, showing briefly as hard stripes against the snow.

On impulse Adrien reached forward and closed his hand around a green stem of pine needles, and to his surprise the branch plucked free as easily as a dandelion.

Green leeched away from the point where his fingers held the branch, travelling down the length. Brown pine needles feathering away and scattering in a wave. Before he could even recoil, the branch crumbled to dust in his hands.

The world became cold and still again as he stared down at his glove, now coated lightly with gray dust. Dead needles littered on the snow surrounding him. Breath rushing out in stilted puffs, heart pulling toward his throat, Adrien looked to the hedge whose branch he had taken; it stood as green and snow-coated as ever, except for where one limb ended in a rotted stump.

Adrien took a step back, sinking into snow once more. Then another. Then he turned and ran, leaving a long line of footprints. If he climbed the tower as high as the pylons, he could hop over the row of townhouses that lined the street behind his house, scale his own back wall, and be through his bedroom window in five minutes.

Before ascending the tower Adrien hesitated, and after a moment's thought patted it a few times, in the manner of one testing something hot. But the eerie floating black spores hadn't returned, and his hand was normal, if prickling, like it had been numb for a long while—for the first time, he noticed his ring flashing like a winking green eye. Deciding to worry about that when he got home, Adrien leapt up the iron struts and turrets, flipped himself onto the pylon base, and with the back of his house in sight bounded ahead to make that last leap.

Three steps from the edge, two hundred feet in the air, hurdling forward at his top speed, and his transformation wore off all on its own.

And this was not a jump Adrien could make as Adrien. The only way he knew how to stop was to fling himself to the ground, rolling like a barrel before slamming to a halt against the edge railing.

Slowly, wincing, he sat up, rubbing his shoulder where it had hit an iron bar. "Plagg?" he whispered.

There was no answer.

A little more urgently, Adrien said, "Plagg? Where are you?"

"Eeh-uhh," came Plagg's distinctive whine from behind him.

Looking around, squinting in the darkness, Adrien finally spotted the kwami floating an inch clear of the floor, looking like a deflated balloon.

"Why'd you turn me back?" He crawled on his hands and knees, the cold iron stinging his bare palms, to cup Plagg in one hand. His eyes were closed, ears and antenna droopy, more exhausted than Adrien had seen him yet. "Are you okay, what's happened?"

"Cheese," Plagg rasped.

"I don't carry cheese with"—then it clicked. "Oh," Adrien said.

"Oh. Oh, he says. Well I hope you're happy."

Adrien looked away, then stood, holding Plagg to the front of his T-shirt. His right hand he stuffed into his pocket. It had been cold as Chat Noir, but now as a regular person he could truly appreciate how freezing it was.

"How do I get down?" he wondered aloud.

"The human way, stupid," muttered Plagg against his shirt.

The iron bars were somehow much more slippery and set further apart than a minute ago when he leapt up as Chat Noir. Shakily descending the sprawling pillars, Adrien got about halfway down when he heard a whistle, then a shout: "Hey! Who's up there!"

Adrien froze, then flinched when he was caught in the white stream of a flashlight.

"You! You're not allowed to climb up there, get down this instant!"

Glancing down at Plagg, now nestled as a bulge in his chest pocket, Adrien promised, "I'll remember the cheese from now on."

"You'd better."

This incident actually earned him a face-to-face scolding from his father. Staring straight ahead, Adrien accepted each clipped, disappointed sentence with a silent nod, only speaking up when his father began to speculate that this unsavory behavior stemmed from going to a public school.

"No father, and I usually hang out with—spend time with Chloé," Adrien said hastily. Chloé. The only thing he had that resembled a friend his own age, until his father finally agreed to let him attend the same school she went to. He wanted to go on, to say that everyone else was just a regular person besides, but just one interruption was pushing it so he fell back silent.

Luckily his father wasn't interested in explanations, so Adrien managed to escape after making assurances that he would correct his behavior, and hoping his father wouldn't change his mind and send for the private tutor again. But he had to play it straight for at least a week, not sneak out or anything, and be utterly more careful next time.

Better yet… just never, do that thing again. Over the next few days everything in his dreams sprouted black floating spores that killed what they touched. The sort of death that toppled buildings and perished legends. An inevitable death.

"I did say only in emergencies, didn't I?" Plagg said, lazily rotating in the air. "You did hear me say that?"

As far as Adrien was concerned, there would be no emergency great enough to justify that. What if he made a mistake, and touched—he didn't even want to think about that. No, the other stuff—the impossible acrobatics, the heightened senses, even the suit, especially the suit—those were side effects of the ring that Adrien was totally cool with. And he'd just leave it at that.

A week and a half later, his father was working late as usual and it was Nathalie's day off (although she was probably toiling away at home over the company tablet), so feeling stir-crazy Adrien called Plagg into the ring and dropped like a shade out his window. Ivy crawled up the side of the mansion, so descending the façade was kitten's play.

Reaching the base Adrien rubbed his covered palms together, idly thought about which section of rooftops he wanted to explore next, and turned.

A barista was standing there in the middle of the road, well past nine at night. She wore a tie and black pinstriped vest, arms inexplicably bare in the cold weather, her hair in a neat bun. Balanced on one hand was a silver serving tray, on which sat a glass pitcher and an espresso cup.

Adrien stared.

Calmly she poured a shot of steaming espresso from the glass pitcher into the tiny ceramic cup. "After-dinner espresso, sir?"

Adrien looked around. Was she talking to him?

Then he ducked, and the cup of scalding coffee exploded on the wall behind him, etching the wall like acid. "What!" he yelped, one hand on the ground.

Her arm was already drawn back to aim the next one.

Adrien dove out of the way as ceramic shards and sizzling liquid burst at his feet, somersaulted, and in the next moment was back on his feet and running, running along the courtyard wall of his house.

"How about some steamed milk, sir?"

He twisted to the side, just as another miniature cup sailed past his head. As he turned he glimpsed his assailant for a brief second, but it was long enough to observe that she was on the chase, already arming herself with another shot.

Maybe he did need a pick-me-up.

Crouching, he sprung back up his own wall, managing to catch his fingertips on the first-level coping. He carried just enough momentum to follow through on the second hurdle. The very top of the wall was lined in decorative stone spikes, one of which he gripped to vault over to the other side. Landing heavily on his back, he was now atop the wall walk that encircled his own courtyard.

Breathing heavily and staring at the night sky, Adrien tried to understand what just happened.

A ceramic cup appeared, lobbed from the other side of the wall.

Biting back a yell he flipped backwards onto his feet, and the coffee crashed down, leaving a dark smoking tattoo on the stone.

Definitely not normal coffee.

And slowly the barista's head appeared over the spiked edge of the wall, then her pinstriped vest and silver serving tray, and finally she was well clear of the wall, like she was standing on an invisible hoverboard.

This wasn't normal. He thought he'd gotten a taste over the past few weeks on what could at a stretch be defined as normal, and this wasn't it. He wished Plagg were here. Plagg needed to tell him what to do here.

"Was the service acceptable, sir?" Pouring her endless supply of espresso into another small cup, her tone never varied from professional.

Maybe that was why Chat Noir said, "I think I'd like to complain to your maître d'."

For the first time her face twisted in fury, and she hurled the cup at him. Before he knew it his baton was in his hand, and he batted the cup out of the air with a laugh, which turned into a cry when sizzling droplets landed on his suit to the unattractive smell of scorched leather.

He leapt from the wall walk and into the courtyard, belatedly realizing that the front gate was closed and he just gave up his only semblance of high ground. But it bought him distance, making the next thrown cup an easy dodge. The spray was wide, though, ruining the decorative tile in front of the entrance staircase.

Bounding the length of the courtyard, he leapt to the walk on the opposite side, intending to clear the wall once again and lose the barista in a rooftop maze. As his hand closed around a wall spike, something seized the neck of his suit from behind and yanked him backwards.

Choking, he dropped his baton as his hands went automatically to his neck, trying to relieve the pressure. The barista used this time to drag him clear of the wall and dangle him, flailing fifteen feet in midair. As a last ditch attempt he tried to gain his freedom by banging the back of his head against her wrist. This didn't work.

And he stopped when he saw her holding the delicate glass pitcher inches above his eyes. "I can make it a double," she said as she twisted her wrist to poise for a direct pour, and a purple outline glowed around her eyes. The serving tray floated into the air next to her, the small espresso cup disregarded.

Is this what Plagg meant by an emergency?

Chat Noir hesitated.

Her arm snapped back, and he winced, waiting for the blow… which never came. There was the distant tinkle of breaking glass. The pressure on his neck released, and he dropped to the floor, rolling to absorb the impact. Somewhere above him the barista screamed like a banshee.

Scrambling to his feet, Chat Noir wheeled around and saw her. Atop the wall, feet tucked between the spikes, she was a dash of red in the cold gray night. Her hair was dark and a red mask, like his, covered her eyes.

A long string connected her and the barista, who seized her tray back out of midair.

With a fist on her hip, she gave him a bright smile and said, "You look like you need a hand."

Maybe his bow was exaggerated, but his grin was not as Chat Noir replied, "I would be honored to accept your hand."

Her smile dropped.

The moment, what he considered to be a moment, was interrupted when the barista wrenched on the line that trapped her, forcing his savior to brace her feet against the top of the wall and yank back. She had better leverage so the barista tumbled out of the air, rolling along the ground.

Using the time to lunge for his baton on the ground a few feet away, he heard her yell, "The tray!"

Straightening, he called, "What?"

"The tray, get her tray!"

"Watch the coffee!"

The girl hopped neatly from her perch, where a thrown cup of espresso dissolved a stone spike, and landed in a crouch on the walkway railing. The slack in the line allowed the barista to detangle herself, the tray floating by her head with the delicate glass pitcher and the ever-present single cup still neatly in their places.

Chat Noir flung the baton, and it clanged as it hit the tray, which smacked against the stone wall to the sound of breaking glass. He let out a momentary, triumphant, "Ha—!," and cut short when the tray rightened itself and the pitcher and cup were still there.

"The glass isn't real, we need to get the tray," said a voice next to him.

She had joined him in the courtyard and was even more magnificent up close, in a red leotard with black spots, dark hair pulled into adorable pigtails, red-framed big blue eyes narrowed in determination. A large round disc was clutched in her hand.

"What can I say, I gave it a shot," he shrugged and grinned down at her, catching his baton as it whirled back. "Allow me to intr—"

"Not now!" And she dove.

Chat Noir flung himself to the opposite side, coming up on a knee. Glass spattered between them.

The red disc sailed out of her hand, and this was when he realized that it was attached to the string from earlier. It was a yo-yo, that behaved much the same way his baton did, flying against all rules of physics.

But the barista managed to dodge, floating up and back with unnatural speed to take a stand on top of the walkway.

The yo-yo rebounded to wrap around the tray directly.

Rising to a half-crouch, he saw his unexpected ally was on a knee, the line wrapped around her fingers and elbows. She gave a mighty pull. He was sure that this should have worked, but suddenly the taut line slackened and she toppled backwards, feet coming over her head.

A filled cup already in her hand, the barista snarled, "Allow me to pour you another," and slung it in their direction.

The girl was still tangled in her own line, so Chat Noir threw his baton like a boomerang, knocking the mug out of the air far above their heads. Its contents fell like acid rain in the large space of courtyard between them. In the cold night, the ground looked covered in fog.

Skipping backwards, catching his baton in his right hand—undamaged, somehow, by the espresso—he said, "This seems to be part of the daily grind for you," and reached out to help her stand.

"Yes, kitten," she replied wearily, to his absolute delight. Grasping his wrist, she pulled herself to her feet and let go at once.

The barista didn't float closer, probably wary of that yo-yo, needing her feet on solid ground to keep from being toppled from midair again. The purple outline around her eyes glowed bright again.

"Why does it keep—?"

"I'll explain later!" She took a couple slow steps back, eyes fixed walkway, where the barista was serenely refilling a cup.

Chat Noir followed her lead because gaining distance from the origin of the projectiles seemed like a solid plan to him.

Or not: "Listen, we need to find a way to get close enough!" At his expression, she insisted, "It's the only way to help!"

"Perfect, but how exactly—"

"Cover me!" she exclaimed, hands at her ears.

Shaking his head a little, Chat Noir looked up in time to say, "Whoa," and flip over a cup that he'd let too close—it skated across the ground behind him to smash against the wall. The barista had stepped over the railing to stand on the precarious glass overhang on one side of the courtyard. "You've never heard of a coffee break?" he demanded.

The air flashed, white and worldless.

Shaking his head when it passed, wincing spots out of his eyes, Chat Noir glanced to see the girl standing there, blinking at a bulky object in her hands.

It was an inflatable swim ring. Admittedly a rather large one, red and black spotted like her outfit, but nevertheless.

"Is that what normally happens?" he asked, nonplussed, edging closer as the barista filled another cup.

"Hush!" Then he heard her murmur, "What am I supposed to do with this?"

Holding his baton in front of him, he made sure to add, "I'm not saying it's not a pretty—"

"Sh! I need to think!"

She didn't have time to think, however, because another burst of corrosive espresso forced him to drag her toward the corner provided by the entrance staircase. She dug her heels in and yanked her elbow back, and he wheeled to face her set expression.

"Can you distract her while I come up with something?" she demanded.

"Distract her—?" He planted a hand on her shoulder to pull them both to a crouch, as another cup sailed over their heads. "How?"

She hissed, "Anything," and nudged Chat Noir backwards. He landed on his butt. "Break out whatever claws you have, kitty cat." And she jumped to her feet and bounced away.

Anything.

Adrien looked down at his hand.

When he looked up, the barista was still on the glass overhang, balanced on the corner.

Putting the baton away and tilting forward to rest on his knuckles, Chat Noir charged and pounced.

It was, if anything, a stupid enough move that the barista's hand paused before she started pouring. By then, airborne, he was close enough to pull his hand back—one stark, timeless moment later—and he landed on the support pole. It crumbled and broke, and just before it wrenched free he launched away. Sailing toward the next pole, he trailed his hand along the underside of the overhang. Behind him the metal rusted and wrent, the glass crumbled to sparkly dust.

There was a gasp from above—his adversary was probably airborne again, probably trying to find a new foothold, so he decided to take that away from her too. Black blobs and streaks still bubbled from his hand, which he planted against the wall.

And he ran. With the ground bouncing and shivering beneath his feet, Chat Noir stayed just ahead of the dust. The wall collapsed behind like a line of dominos. Rounding the corner by the gate, he leapt up the wall, landing on the rise. Some English ivy, tough and hardy even during winter, still clung to the archway; frosted brown leaves crumbled beneath his touch, to drag down with the falling stone.

Chat Noir had no idea where anybody was anymore, he just knew he had to get off the stone arch immediately. Letting himself drop down on the street side of the gate, he managed to land on some uneven rubble. It shifted, all ending with him sprawled a few feet away on the edge of the sidewalk, baton uncomfortably jutting into his back.

The gate's entire support structure crumbled to ruin.

For a moment, only the gate stood, a few feet clear of the continuing wall Chat Noir hadn't managed to reach. The dust cleared a little to reveal the barista on the other side, bars between them. Not a single hair in her bun was disturbed.

The gate teetered a moment, then began to tilt.

The wrong way.

Chat Noir pushed himself up on an elbow, mouth dropping open. Oh, this just takes the—

The barista, eyes framed in a purple grimace and holding her tray down by her hip, didn't even bother to fill a cup. The gate fell toward him almost in slow motion.

A lean red form dropped from the sky, red swim ring poised high over her head—a yell: "Cover!"—as she slotted the tube over the barista's shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides.

Cover?

But there wasn't anywhere—the street gutter. How fitting.

At the last second he rolled off the curb of the sidewalk, squeezing himself face-down in the shallow corner. There was a mighty clang above him, then another as the gate bounced on the asphalt, and finally he was pinned. Not squished, the length of the gate angled down over the curb and probably helped by some rubble—but barely able to budge.

His ears rang and now with a face full of concrete he couldn't even see what was going on.

After the longest few seconds in his life, there was the groan of metal.

The weight eased.

Dazed, he lifted his hands from the back of his head to see a pair of red feet.

"Hurry up, I can't hold it!" She had used the uneven angle provided by some of the rubble to see-saw the gate an inch or so, allowing him just enough leeway to scramble out. Once clear she let the gate fall, and it clashed back into the road. "Are you okay?" she asked, offering a hand.

Carefully, he took it with his left, but didn't pull himself to his feet. First he leaned to peer beyond her; the barista was no longer in sight. The red and black-dotted swim ring lay alone on the ground where she had been standing. "She's not…?"

"She'll be okay, she just needs to sleep it off." Her hand tugged at his fingers a bit when she shrugged. "Had a rude customer."

Chat Noir grinned up at her from his position on the floor. His savior. She was so matter-of-fact about it all while he was barely treading water here, figuratively speaking. Her eyes were so round and blue and alert and at the moment partially confused, flickering down at their joined hands.

For the first time introduced himself as, "Chat Noir, at your service."

"Ladybug." When he made no move to stand, she took her hand back, but even so appeared amused. "And I think I was the one helping you out."

Ladybug. Of course, the red, the spots, but why Ladybug? Did ladybugs have some fierce reputation he was unaware of? As far as he knew, they… buzzed around. Aphids? He remembered something about ladybugs eating aphids. That probably didn't apply here. He probably shouldn't bring that up.

Finally pulling himself to his feet and looking around, Chat Noir searched for something to say—and then he finally realized that he'd single-handedly destroyed his courtyard. More specifically, his father's courtyard.

It looked like a warzone. Half of the wall was collapsed, glass and rubble was everywhere, the gate was lying in the road. The acid stains that peppered the ground and remaining wall were like window dressings compared with everything else. At least the house itself was untouched. At least.

"Good thing nobody's home," he said hoarsely.

Ladybug's dark pigtails bobbed as her head turned, frowning, then her eyes snapped wide when she saw the mansion. "Oh no!" Her hands flew to her mouth, and he began to nod along dumbly. "That would have been so awkward!"

This managed to tear his attention away from the ruins. "Awkward?" he repeated, feeling this didn't quite encompass his own looming dread.

In one smooth movement shot her yo-yo out, tugging that mysterious inflatable polka-dotted swim ring back to her hands. With a wide smile that caused his stomach to crunch up, she spun the swim ring high in the air.

The air flashed, white and—

—when Chat Noir opened his eyes, he stood in a different world. The world of an hour ago, when hardy English ivy clung to the archway over the gate.

Ladybug stepped away from his side.

He blinked and shook his head.

"I really do hope no one saw us," she added, prancing over to peer through the gate into the courtyard.

"They didn't," he assured. No, same world, but Ladybug put it back… His eyes raised again to the living ivy.

"Why'd you hold out for so long on using your power?" she asked, finally turning from her study of the courtyard and snapping him out of his reverie.

"What?" When Chat Noir focused on her face, it was more curious than judgmental. So he shook it off, trying to reclaim his mood. After a moment a corner of his mouth pulled up in a smile, and he dropped a step closer to her. "Such a cataclysmic power is reserved for emergencies only," he said with a serious nod.

Ladybug lifted a skeptical eyebrow. "You were lucky I got there when I did."

His smile disappeared.

She must have misinterpreted this, because she continued, "I'm sorry, but when exactly does it become an emergency for you?"

Chat Noir let out a breath, and a laugh, and reached for her hand. "From now on… I think I'll let you decide that"—on impulse he raised her gloved knuckles to his lips and kissed them—"my lucky lady."

Unfortunately Ladybug's expression flattened and she tugged her hand away, wiping the back of it on her leg.

But his hope flared alight when she replied, "Well I guess I can't say no to that, can I."

Chat Noir tapped his chin, then pretended to wonder absently, "I wonder how she would react if I were to whisk 'er off her feet…"

Beside him Ladybug stopped walking, and he swiveled in a slow circle to grin at her. He'd been sitting on that one for a while.

"You know, before now, I almost could have believed you weren't doing that on purpose."

"Doing what?" he asked, bewildered. "You don't want me to espresso myself?"

Sirens sounded in the distance, depriving him of her reaction to this. They seemed distant, though; they had time.

She met his smirk but did not return it. "You," she said, poking him away with a finger when he dipped closer, "are not my kind of cat."

A beep from somewhere on his person interrupted his pout. First sirens, now random beeping! He couldn't catch a break! What was beeping? Confused, he looked around, wondering where it was coming from. He didn't carry his phone with him…

"… And it appears both of us need to clear out, I hope you know someplace close." Detaching her yo-yo from her hip, she lassoed it over a nearby streetlamp, a yellow halo in the cold cloudy night. "I'll see you around, Chat Noir," Ladybug tossed over her shoulder, and she sailed into darkness.

She alighted briefly on the lamp, a streak of black and red against the yellow, before becoming a moving silhouette on a nearby roofline, and with a final leap she slipped out of view. Chat Noir stared at the spot where she disappeared for a moment, before he heard that beep again. After frantically patting his pockets, he pulled out his baton to see if that was the culprit, and that was when he saw the flashing ring.

There was one toe left on the paw.

There was only one other time he'd allowed the timer on the ring to get that low, and he hadn't been paying attention to the beeping then either, his mind flickering between crumbling wood, scattered pine needles…

Just minutes ago Chat Noir had stood atop the archway as it crumbled beneath his touch. And the ivy had been a feature of the grounds for ages, trimmed by landscapers three times a year for that perfect almost-overgrown look his father demanded. Just minutes ago, the ivy withered beneath his fingers to be buried in a grave of falling rubble.

Adrien pulled his gaze from his prickling hand to look at the stone archway over the gate once more. Brown, frost-snapped ivy clung to the top and crawled stubbornly down the sides, and when he touched it, it was alive.

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