Tandem

Chapter Five

"Go Time" the text read, and suddenly Alya was flying around her room.

She and Nino had been waiting nearly 4 days for their chance to act, and of course her notebook chooses now to go missing. The frantic teen stuck an arm blindly under her bed, groping around before moving to the next plausible spot.

"Gotcha!" Alya yelled triumphantly, wrestling the beat-up journal from between 2 filing cabinets. She took a moment to leaf through the pages, confirming her notes were still in there. Everything had to go perfectly if they wanted any chance of possibly unmasking Ladybug and Chat Noir.

From the street running beside her house, Alya heard the tell-tale ringing of a familiar bike horn.

"I'm coming." She announced, poking her head out of her bedroom window to shoot Nino a sheepish smile.

"Tick-Tock Homegirl, you waste any more time and they'll be gone before we even get a chance to go up to them!" He responded, absently spinning the pedals of his bike with anticipation.

The pair of them had spent the past few days keeping an ear to the ground about information on monster attacks. They had missed their chance yesterday, arriving at the scene just in time to watch Paris' renowned heroes swing away. Not wanting a repeat performance, Nino had been listening to the closed circuit police channel through his earphones all morning. 15 minutes ago, he finally heard what he was waiting for, shooting a quick text to his conspirator before booking it over to her house.

Alya blew out the front door, tossing her bag into the basket affixed to the front of Nino's bike before heaving herself onto the same pegs she had been standing on since they were 8.

"You're getting heavier..." Nino grumbled softly, earning him a sharp slap on the back of the head as he began pedaling.

"Maybe you're just getting weaker." Alya shot back, grasping his shoulder with one hand while the other furiously scrolled through the Ladybug hashtag on twitter. Reports of an incident near Versailles had been surfacing, blowing up over the last few minutes as people live-tweeted the action. Alya kept refreshing the page, wind whipping through her hair as Nino swerved around a corner.

"Pick up the pace, it looks like things are really beginning to heat up!"

"Heres an idea, how about you pedal for once?"

"Absolutely not, I'm the brains of the operation."

"Are you insinuating that I'm the muscle?"

"That's hilarious."

Their banter trailed off as a hideous shriek echoed across the empty street.

The pair rounded another corner, skidding to a stop in the large, concrete plaza in front of the Château's façade. There was a large crowd gathered, all of them eager to see Paris' crime-fighting duo in action despite the fact there was a large, spider-like monster crawling its way across the clearing.

Alya hopped down from the bike, yanking her backpack onto her shoulder and booking it towards the palace, Nino just steps behind her. With a whoosh of exhilaration she spotted Ladybug, wielding what looked like a giant pair of polka-dotted scissors. Chat Noir was sprinting around their enemy, shouting taunts as he dodged the tangled webs shooting from the creatures crossed knitting needles.

"Hold this, I want to get some pics for the Ladyblog." Alya said breathlessly, shifting her items to the boy beside her and unlocking her phone.

"We aren't here for the Ladyblog." Nino moaned in exasperation, watching his friend contort her body to snap some shots of the action going on before them. "We need to get our act together before-"