The first time you saw him, Paris was already on fire.

Not the whole city, of course. Just the top floor of a department store near the Seine, where an akuma made of smoke and shattered glass was screaming about "unfair return policies." You had only been in Paris for six days. Long enough to learn the metro lines, not long enough to stop getting lost.

The street had emptied by the time you rounded the corner. Sensible people were running the other way. But you had frozen at the mouth of an alley, watching the silhouette of a boy in black leap from a chimney to a billboard to a lamppost, moving like gravity was just a suggestion.

Someone grabbed your arm. A woman pulled you back beneath an awning just as a pane of glass exploded against the pavement where you'd been standing.

You barely heard her. Your eyes had found him again. Cat Noir. Even if you hadn't seen the news clips, you would have known him by the way he moved. He was using his baton to vault over the akuma's head, laughing as he went.

The akuma shrieked. A wave of smoke and splintered glass rushed toward the crowd. Cat Noir's head snapped in your direction, and for a split second—impossibly—it felt like he was looking straight at you.

Then Ladybug's yo-yo wrapped around a lamppost, and she swung into view, calling his name.

The fight lasted only a few more minutes. You stayed beneath the awning, heart hammering, watching until the Miraculous Cure swept through the street in a flood of pink light. The glass reformed. The smoke cleared. The city exhaled.

And when it was over, Cat Noir stood on the edge of a rooftop, scanning the crowd below like he was looking for someone.