Chapter Text
Of course, everything started going south from minute one.
Well, to be fair, not exactly from minute one.
It went smooth, when it came to entering the ball. Team Friendship rode their (stolen) carriage into the gates of the castle, the guards immediately asking for their identity. Kitty had some difficulties trying to convince them that they had in fact been invited (“That list you have must be incomplete! Yes, we did receive an invitation, but we lost it at sea! A shark ate it!”), but Puss came to the rescue. Mightily fanning himself and assuming his most composed and rigid pose, he said in a high-pitched (surprisingly not unnaturally-sounding) tone:
“How dare you even question us? Don’t you know who we are? Just wait until I report this scandal to our friend the Archduke! (a dramatic puff accompanied by a theatrical wave of the pulse, which closed the fan, and an even more theatrical turn of the head) Ah! That should get all of you low-lives fired in less time that it’d take me to say…”
He didn’t get the chance to complete the phrase: the guards immediately backed up, making the passage in front of them clear for Perrito, the driver, to ride through. The small dog, ever the gentleman, smiled amiably at the terrified guards when they surpassed them, even thanking them with innocent “gracias” all around.
Kitty, on the back of the carriage, looked at Puss appreciatively.
“My my… You’re good at this!”, she said, almost surprised. Puss smugly smiled.
“No need to sound so astonished, mi amor”, he explained. “I’ve had my fair share of royals and their behaviour in Far Far Away, remember?”
“Right, right”, Kitty nodded to herself. “Well, Countess… I guess I’ll leave the socializing to you, then”.
Puss was the one that escorted her and Perrito through the castle’s patio and the aisle leading up to the room in which the ball was taking place. He demanded that she linked her arm with his, straightened her back and legs, and bent her other arm, a process that took her longer than she cared to admit. He then had to comment on her facial expression, and ended up assuming specular pose and appearance to hers in less than two seconds. Kitty avoided rolling her eyes only because she feared that moving even one feature would ruin the look Puss had just imposed her.
“Remember”, Puss whispered before opening the fan again and using it to cover his mouth. “Use a bunch of pompous words, gesture with your hands a lot and carry yourselves as if you’re superior to everyone else in the room”.
“Oh, now I see why being noble comes so natural to you”, Kitty commented, not daring to smirk for the same aforementioned reason but conveying all of her smugness in her tone. Puss seemed to catch it: she saw him smiling under the fan.
Perrito, on the other hand, was asked to assume his most humble, meek expression, and he delivered perfectly, even keeping his head low while he followed them around without Puss’ instruction. In the months they’d been together, Perrito really had surprised both the cats, revealing himself to be quite the thoughtful actor.
Only after they’d all composed their posture and expressions, they finally approached the open doors. Kitty introduced them to the criers at the entrance trying to mimic the tone Puss had used at the gates (“Count Fernando and Countess Alejandra Mariposa, accompanied by their page boy Roberto de La Cruz”). They walked as one, cohesive group, Puss still holding Kitty by the arm, Perrito staying two steps behind them visibly containing his excitement to play his part well. They were in, at last.
The chamber in which the ball was hosted was as big and luxurious as one could imagine: high ceilings decorated with beautiful frescos and stuccos, marble statues all around and glass stained windows. Two long tables had been set in the middle of the room, providing food and beverage, complete with ice statues representing sea creatures at their ends.
The grandiose but polished style of the room clashed with the one generally assumed by the guests: noblemen and women, faces completely white with makeup, were strolling around, their attires looking as they’d been chosen with the primary goal to look more outrageous than the other ones’. The gowns were enormously large and exuberant both in colours and decorations, the hairstyles were shockingly high and creative (was that woman wearing a ship on her head?), the fabrics were either the most refined linen or the most kitsch-looking sequinned jacquard. There was no in between: every puffy frock was too puffy, every grotesque makeup was too grotesque, every shiny piece of jewellery was the sparkiest forbidden fruit Kitty had ever seen, tempting her to rush into action.
She inadvertently tensed up, looking longingly at one particular piece worn by a female tortoiseshell cat in a lavish red dress: a marvellous tiara decorated with rubies and sapphires, with a single egg-shaped diamond shimmering in the centre of it. Noticing the direction of her gaze, Puss slightly tugged her arm. Kitty sighed.
“Stay focused, mi amor”, he whispered to her. “We have a job to complete”.
“We could feed ourselves for three lives, with all the jewels in this room…”, Kitty replied, looking at him with a hopeful, pleading look in her sapphire eyes. Puss knew that look, had known it for year, now. Yet he wasn’t immune to its effect. It was the “I don’t need your permission to do it but I’m giving you the chance to assert authority nonetheless” look. The underlying statement was always there, never spoken but very much clear: “Know that even if you say ‘no’ I’ll do it anyway”. And under all of that, another implicit knowledge: “If you deny this to me I swear you’ll be sleeping on the couch for a week”. He scratched the back of his neck, then acquiesced:
“Well, if after you have stolen the pendant you find the time to fetch some jewels as well…”
Kitty smirked nonchalantly.
“Amorcito, you know damn well that’ll be like a walk in the park for me”.
“Oh, do you mean like that walk in the park we took in San Ricardito or..."
“Anyway, so much for a ball”, Kitty promptly interrupted, having realized Perrito's head had perked up in attention, ready to soak in each detail about that particularly embarassing mission. “I’ve seen more action at the Retirement Home for Decrepit Heroes”.
There was, indeed, a distinct lack of dancing: the guests were just strolling around the room, examining each other’s outfits judgmentally, criticising them under their breath and exchanging falsely polite salutations and courtesies. The small orchestra which had been hired was also playing a classical tune, not exactly tailor made to be accompanied by dance.
“Dancing is usually reserved for later in the evening”, Puss explained under his breath. “Now it’s time for chit-chats and pleasantries”.
Having attended his fair share of royal balls, he didn’t think much of the whole thing: there wasn't much difference between that specific party and the ones he had been to in Far Far Away. Royalty, he had come to learn, tended to be extremely repetitive regardless of geography. His two unexperienced companions had diametrically contrasting reactions to this novelty: Kitty, which was used to much more lively parties (usually, when they entered in a bar together it was a given that it was going to all end in a brawl, an extremely passionate dance fight or both), tried to stay quietly upset, limiting herself to pressing her ears against her head and pounding her tail on the ground as secretly as possible; Perrito was just as silently containing his excitement, looking around eagerly taking in as many details as he could, from the striking architecture to every piece of shiny fabric. He was keeping his head down, lifting only his eyes and evidently using great restraint, but his tail was waggling at a clearly controlled pace.
“Alright,” Puss muttered, making sure that both of his companions heard him. “The Marquis is no where to be seen, yet. I guess we can just… enjoy ourselves while we wait for him”.
There, that was the moment everything started going south.
Three different facts happened in the span of an hour. Two of them built up over those faithful sixty minutes, while one (arguably the most important) consummated itself during a scarcer time frame. The result was one, major climactic inconvenience.
Fact number one: Kitty got bored to death.
While she had initially planned on playing dumb, casually strolling around the room to find a safe way out, she found out pretty soon that not only were royals unable to throw decent parties: they also had a special talent for carrying on meaningless, vapid conversations.
As Count Mariposa, Kitty found herself being questioned by a lot of male royalty, interested in the location of the town Counts Mariposa supposedly reigned over and its population, then quickly shifting the conversation towards the respective houses, asking specific details about the number of rooms, of servants, of paintings, of dinner spoons and dessert forks. Puss had initially tried chiming in to avoid her manners being questioned, but they soon realized it was behind bewildering, for those rich dudes, that a wife would answer while her husband was the one being questioned, more so that she would do so being questioned about “such un-female matters”.
Puss scoffed once he realized what the problem was. “Increíble”, he muttered, clearly dissatisfied but not necessarily surprised.
“Look, we can’t have our cover blown up because these hijos de puta are sexist”, Kitty pondered. “I can take it from here”.
“Are you sure?”, Puss doubtfully asked. Kitty raised an eyebrow, feigning offense.
“I'm amazed by your lack of faith, Gato! I’ve seen what you do, I can mimic it. If I can rob them blind I can interact with them as well, don’t you think?”
“Bien”, he sighed and tilted his head towards her as if passing the torch. “Don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do, Count”.
“You know damn well I absolutely would, Countess”, she replied before discreetly winking at him.
Puss was subsequently swept away by the other women’s talks and involved in much more “female matters”, leaving Kitty to deal with their husbands and their morbid curiosity around tea sets and grandiose villas.
The first dozen times questions were asked, Kitty gave quite vague responses (“Servants? I wouldn’t know, there are so many…” “My favourite breed of horse, you say? Oh, our stableboy takes care of those, I really have no preference”), but by rich man number fifteen Kitty found out there was quite a pattern in those questions and settled on a credible answer for each, based on what she thought would satisfy their morbid curiosity. She found herself repeating the same, tired things again, and again, and again, so many times she started questioning the motif behind those gentlemen’s curiosity: were they onto them? Did they know? She had been cautious enough not to mention the exact location of their dominion nor its name, using periphrases instead. So, how’d they suspect? Were their costumes too obviously fake? Were they comparing her words and finding fallacies in them? Had she actually underestimated those men’s mental faculties?
Then, by rich man number forty, it hit her: that was nothing more than a dick measuring contest. Every question had been tailor made with the specific intention of comparing wealth and understanding how much the newly arrived guy could prove a threat to their fixated hierarchy.
At that point, Kitty was so bored by all the talking in those pompous, monotone manners and the lack of dancing and action, and her brain had gone so rancid having to repeat the same things over and over again, that she felt she owed herself some fun at the expanse of those tedious, greedy rich men. Hell, wasn’t she at a ball, after all? Didn’t she deserve some fun, after having to deal with so much ostentatious bullshit? And so, after fiercely drinking two glasses of the champagne which was being spilled by fountains at the centre of one of the tables to loosen herself, she started answering everyone’s questions in the most exaggerated, overindulgent way she could think of (“Two mansions, actually, one for the winter and one for the summer. Then, of course, there’s the house on the lake, but that can hardly be called a house, really, it’s barely ten acres…”), delivering wild statement after wild statement in the most deadpan tone she could muster up.
By champagne glass number four, she was, while still sober and attentive (it would take a lot more for her to get drunk), a lot looser, and she was surrounded by a big group of people listening to her giving a speech about their beautiful town and the amount of wealth he and his wife had amassed, either filled with jealousy, disbelief or surprise.
The tortoiseshell cat was one of the members of said audience, and she was by far the most curious of the bunch. Kitty found herself checking out her reactions multiple times during the speech, if anything because she stood out: she wasn’t jealous, and she wasn’t surprised, she was… intrigued. Not only that, she was very clearly drinking up all of her words, evidently believing them, taking in the wonder that the things Kitty was inventing could produce in a naïve mind.
Kitty looked at the cat more attentively, trying to read her: she seemed young, and the way she responded to her stories made her think she was also not very experienced. An easily impressionable young girl, then. Possibly the daughter of some big name who, based on the way she was looking all around herself and widening her pupils, hadn’t had a chance to see much, if anything, outside of her mansion’s walls. These were the thing Kitty was pondering in her brain, while carefully trying to strategically look at the female cat, when she realized something weird: she was returning her gaze.
Kitty didn’t flinch, but the revelation was a bit startling: the cat wasn’t captivated by her words (well, only partially), she was captivated by her. Of course, she was used to being fawned upon and having cats, male and female, goggle at her more or less subtly. Hell, she didn’t mind it, not at all: her seductive skills were, after all, one of the many she implemented to get things done, when other means failed her. She just didn’t expect that sort of situation to present itself in that context.
Realizing she had been looking at the female cat for an uncomfortable amount of time, while she was staring back at her, eyes filled with blind admiration, Kitty decided to play it off lifting her half empty glass while smirking at the other. The cat blinked furiously, her cheeks turning red under her fur: she probably hadn’t thought she would acknowledge her. Kitty found herself smiling while nearing the chalice to her lips, and gently biting the glass between her fangs. Damn, she was actually cute.
Then, something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Puss, standing next to a column not too far from her, was gently but evidently trying to catch her attention, fanning himself furiously while producing hissing noises. She could see his face damp with sweat from that far.
She frowned, slightly confused by what she was seeing. Someone asked something, but she couldn’t understand the words. Or at least, she didn’t consciously understand them: apparently her brain did, because she found herself giving some semblance of an answer, as dismissive as it was, and seemingly it wasn’t outlandish enough to raise any questions. She uttered a vague formula to take her leave (“Do pardon me, my wife is calling me, or something”) and then moved close to Puss, trying to keep her pace as unsuspecting as possible.
As she got nearer, she realized Puss wasn’t alone as she had initially thought. Perrito was there as well, but he was… stretched out on the ground with his paws in the air and his tongue sticking out?
“What’s happening here?”, she muttered once she was near them, looking at both her partners, bursting with confusion. Perrito hiccupped on the floor. Puss shook his head and said, voice filled with resignation:
“Estamos jodidos”.
Perrito chuckled.
“Jodidos”, he repeated, clearly amused.
Fact number two: Perrito got thirsty.
He had implemented a “no drinking or eating before the heists” rule for himself once he had realized, during a particularly bumpy mission, that having his stomach full could lead to puking, while drinking too much could mean having to take a bathroom pause in the middle of a very intense showdown. That mission had been quite memorable, in his and his partners’ book. It hadn’t been all bad, though: at least, afterwards, Puss and Kitty had given him a nice, hot bath and cuddled with him in bed until he had fallen asleep, still wrapped up in warm blankets. Any mission that ended with his friends cuddling him was a success in his book.
Still, that rule sure had saved him quite a few accidents such as that, but it came with the opposite problem: he could get thirsty or hungry during a heist. Nevertheless, that was part of the life he had chosen for himself: going toe to toe with renowned criminals that had years of expertise in the business meant he had to keep up with their level, which also meant having to adapt in a lot of situations and learning new ways to make himself useful while simultaneously avoiding being a burden.
Sure, that rule needed to be perfected: he hadn’t figured out the perfect formula just yet, which meant he was still trying out the exact amount of drink and food he could afford himself. And so, he had come to the ball having eaten only half of his ration (he had kept the rest for afterwards) and having drunk nothing at all. That, he had come to realize, had not been his greatest idea.
That was the first, proper ball Perrito ever went to in his life. Of course, he had been with Puss and Kitty to some eventful parties, but as exciting as those were, they didn’t entail royalty and luxury: Puss and Kitty were comfortable amongst the common people, they belonged to them and they were admired by them. Thus, his reaction to seeing all that splendour bottled up in just one room was pure, unadulterated excitement. Everything in that ballroom was bright, and new, and shiny, oh so shiny, and he had to contain himself so much trying not to start yapping and trotting and galloping on the spot and jumping up and down and running from one end of the room to the other presenting himself to each and every person in there. He was supposed to be a page, after all. He had a role to play, just as Puss and Kitty: head down, slow walk, humble attitude towards the nobles around him. All that excitement, and only his tail, wagging on the dance floor, to channel it through.
Containing himself was really, really hard, and it was going to get much harder when he realized all the stress he was accumulating was making his mouth drier than it already was. But he was committed to his act: he really couldn’t start panting in front of all those people to release some tension, couldn’t he? No, that wouldn’t be much in character: Roberto de La Cruz surely was a good, obedient page boy (well, page dog) who wouldn’t just stick his tongue out in front of a large crowd of aristocrats. So, he kept his mouth shut, his tail wagging, and his excitement as low as possible while looking for some refreshment.
The problem was that there weren’t many non-alcoholic options to choose. In fact, he realized there probably weren’t any at all. Perrito snorted lightly, after inspecting the tables set for food and beverage.
“Well, so much for rich hosts: they can’t even afford some limonada”, he murmured to himself.
That should have settled it, then. He wasn’t going to drink anything until the whole heist was over.
But that posed another problem: even if their plan as it was didn’t entail having to run away in some extravagant way, Perrito knew for a fact their strategies hardly went as they wanted them to, and knew there was probably going to be, at some point, some running involved. So, he didn’t want to be completely dehydrated, when the moment came.
Perrito sighed and shook his head. Of course, he understood that he couldn’t drink alcohol: Puss and Kitty had made it very clear once they had realized that the education he had gotten from his previous family apparently didn’t feature drinking alcoholics on the “not to do” list. But it was either that or becoming a problem for the rest of the team. Besides, Kitty looked quite unfazed by those glasses of champagne she was drinking. She didn’t seem to be blabbering around as she and Puss had told him would happen, if anything she looked a lot sharper in her responses and was getting a lot more attention.
What could one glass do to him?
One glass in, Perrito felt like his thirst was being satiated. That feeling, though, was accompanied by the pleasant sensation of his head being a lot lighter on his shoulders, and by a strange desire, tattering on compulsion, to have some more.
Two glasses in, the feeling of light headiness reached its peak. Perrito started giggling to himself, and found it harder to control his impulses in his page gimmick: he was getting more and more vivacious. Puss and Kitty must have been wrong about that whole “not drinking alcohol” rule: he had never felt better in his life!
Three glasses in, he was seeing pink elephants and alternating giggles with hiccups.
Four glasses in, he was laying on his back with his tongue sticking out, Puss (when had he arrived?) restlessly alternating between fanning him and then himself, his expression blurry to the pup’s eyes but very clearly agitated even then.
In his stupor, Perrito could only make out a few words spoken by the cat, as if he were a piscator picking up small fishes as a herd of herrings was swimming directly under him.
“… shouldn’t have left… alone, cariño… Mierda, Kitty… kill me…”.
Perrito opened his mouth, intent on answering that he’d never felt better, and that “Oh, but it’s so nice”, but the only thing that came out was a deep, guttural sound which he identified only later on as a burp.
He did feel good, though, he really did, he wished he could tell Puss. There was nothing better than that: his head free of any bad thought (to be fair, they weren’t many to begin with), his body feeling so light, his mind so peaceful, and one of the persons he loved the most right next to him-no, both of them! ‘Cause Kitty had just arrived (Perrito managed opening his mouth to try and express his happiness but could only produce a hiccup), and she had a very worried look on her face, didn’t look pleased at all, and the next thing he knew Puss was shaking his head and simply stating:
“Estamos jodidos”.
Perrito chuckled.
Jodidos.
Fun word.
Fact number three: the Marquis finally arrived.
Puss surely had it better than Kitty, when it came to distracting himself during the time they had to wait for their target to reach the ball. The conversations he carried out with the other wives at the ball were quite conventional as well, leaning into traditional “female matters” (he had half an idea that a few of those women probably knew a lot more about finances then their husbands), but he was thoroughly enjoying them and himself.
In fact, while he wasn’t necessarily surprised that he could seemingly speak with ladies about topics he’d never given much of a thought to (he hadn’t earned his fame as the Furry Lover for nothing), he was pleasantly astounded to find out he could do it while acting like a woman. At least, the responses he got from his audience made him believe no one was questioning his disguise. He had been a bit hesitant, as soon as Kitty had proposed they swapped roles for the night, that their game would be discovered immediately, but there he was, comfortably chatting with ladies about make-up and jewels. Who knew being an outlaw with a sense for fashion would make him so knowledgeable about which gem would match a certain lady’s eyes?
Kitty didn’t seem to be handling herself badly, after all. Actually, Puss realized after taking a look at his partner, she was gathering quite an impressive group of onlookers and getting circumvented by noblemen and women with her tall tales. Puss smiled under his fan. That’s my girl.
All in all, Puss thought to himself, his plan wasn’t going half bad, truly. He was enjoying himself, Kitty seemed to have found her footing, and Perrito-
Where was Perrito?
The thought hit him like a chariot speeding down a slope. While he had initially assumed the pup would just tag along either him or Kitty, he’d just realized that wasn’t the case: their page boy (well, page dog) had probably long abandoned his position, two steps behind them, and had gone wandering around as soon as their chit chats had proven too boring for him.
Where’d he go, then? What could have caught his attention? Puss felt the need to roll his eyes at that thought.
“Right, it’s Perrito we’re talking about”, he muttered under his breath. “Anything here could catch his attention”.
Well, nonetheless, he had to find him quickly. A wandering page boy could attract a lot of unwanted attention. Besides, they needed him for the next part of their plan, when he’d have to distract-
“Marquis Miguel Alonso de Unamuno y Jugo, from Roca Diamante!”
Puss’ ears instantly perked up, as one of the criers at the entrance announced that name, and turned his head around to look at the doors from which they’d entered. Now descending the enormous staircase which led to the ball room was a tall, slim man with black hairs and a moustache (both had been clearly adjusted with some dye), carrying himself with a composed demeanour which matched his fellow royals’ one, yet was tinged by the unreadable expression of his pupils, as he was scanning his surroundings with longing, extended looks which seemed to pierce each solid surface while taking nothing in. On his left, a few steps away from him, was another man, face plastered in white make up and hairs hidden under a wig, his expression as composed as his master’s but far more openly judgemental of the setting.
Puss’ pupils contracted, as he spotted a gold pendant, heart-shaped, dangling from the taller one’s neck. Their man had arrived, and he was wearing their loot.
Puss waited for his Team to reach him: surely the crier’s declaration would have been enough for his companions to catch up with him and get their plan rolling. But it didn’t: neither Kitty nor Perrito showed up at his side.
Puss confusedly and frantically looked for Kitty in the crowd, back in the same spot he’d previously seen her. She was still there, eyes locked on a singular spot, face pensive. The tuxedo cat had probably zoned out looking at some jewels she was planning on stealing, but she wasn’t being subtle about it, not at all. That wasn’t like her.
Where was Perrito, then? His eyes wandered through the room, desperately scanning for each possible sign of the pup’s presence. His wig (blending itself in a sea of similar hairpieces), his little white coat (all in all similar to the plethora of uninspired outfits worn by the other pages in the room), his tail, wagging with impossible haste-
Found him.
Puss took his leave from the other dames with a formal salutation, trying to approach the dog with as much grace as he could muster up at the moment, keeping his steps at a slow enough pace that it wouldn’t generate any suspicion. Still, what he managed to see as he got closer and closer to the pup was not very reassuring: he had been huddled around by a (thankfully) small group of people, who were whispering to each other and partially obstructing his view. He managed to snuck between two of the bystanders (“Do pardon me, señor. Would you be so kind to let me pass?”) and was met with a vision he wasn’t prepared for at all: Perrito, stretched out supine on the floor, his legs up in the air, munching and blabbering inarticulate gibberish.
"It could have been worse", he would have reasoned, hours later, recounting the incident with a half-shoked half-amused Kitty. "He could have been swearing".
“Well, that’s utterly inappropriate”, someone in his vicinity said, the others humming in response and vocally agreeing. That comment opened the gates to a string of other, similar remarks.
“A page boy getting drunk while he ought to be in service? Why, where are his masters now?”
“Certainly not keeping track on this scoundrel: otherwise, such an incident would have never occurred”.
“Oh, it’s loathsome that he’d be left wandering around during such an event. Someone should always keep track of the commoners!”
The other noblemen agreed in unison once more. Puss had to hide himself behind the fan as his mouth twitched with irritation.
“You’re absolutely right, ma’am, someone ought to keep an eye on the scoundrel!”, he chimed in, approaching Perrito. He was sweating profusely, praying to himself that the pup wouldn’t call out his name once he saw him. Thankfully, he didn’t. “Allow me to assist the poor beast, whilst I look for its… masters. We wouldn’t want the ball to be ruined by an inebriated guest, would we?”
The bystanders agreed once more, some women mentioning how kind it was of her to keep an eye on the unknown servant.
“Oh, but the dancing will commence in no time, Countess! Would you really deprive yourself of that?”
Puss shook his head.
“Me and my husband will have time to dance after we’ve reunited a most kind noble family with its missing servant. It should take no time, don’t you think? Who wouldn’t recognize this charming, little rascal?”
Perrito blurt out in a hysterical laughter and repeated “Rascal!”, a cause of both amusement and shock amongst the people still following the ordeal. Puss nervously laughed.
“Let me handle this, señoras y señores. You can go back to your dancing in peace whilst I take care of the situation”. He accompanied his words with a gesture of his paw, inviting them to disperse. As he had hoped, that was exactly what people did. They were probably too eager to start dancing to stay focused on one minor (for them) incident anyway: the party was about to begin for real and as interesting as gossiping had been up until that point, probably nothing could compare to that.
Once Puss was left alone with Perrito, he worked frantically to drag him behind a column to avoid gaining any unwanted attention: they’d already gotten too much for what they were trying to achieve. Thankfully for him the pup managed to stay calm (unresponsive, really) for as long as he needed to move him. Once they were hidden, Puss realized the dog had gone in a sort of drunken stupor, looking at the ceiling with his eyes wide in wonderment. Puss tried giving him a light smack on the muzzle with the back of his paw, hoping that’d bring him back to consciousness.
“Mh, Perrito?”, he called out in a small voice. Perrito responded with a soft whine, but still didn’t look responsive at all. Puss bit his lower lip and held his paws on both of the pup’s shoulders, positioning himself right in front of the his face to guarantee that he’d see him.
“Chiquito, it’s me. Do you hear me?”, Puss punctuated.
Perrito’s eyes blinked rapidly a couple of times, then the pup shook his head while closing them. When they re-opened, Perrito's mouth instantly went agape and he produced himself in a loud “OOOOOH”.
“Pu-!”, he proclaimed loudly, but Puss managed to cover his mouth before he could pronounce his full name and started shushing him and shaking his head repeatedly, eyes wide in terror. That was definitely not the proper way of dealing with a drunk kid, but they weren't in a proper situation to begin with.
“No no no no, I’m Countess Mariposa now, remember?”. Puss removed his paws from the other’s mouth to get up and point at his attire.
Perrito tilted his head while furrowing his brow as he looked Puss’ dress, apparently vigilant.
“Oooh, right”, he said at the end, nodding to himself. “Right right right right. We’re still at the ball, aren’t we?”. He started looking around, his tail waggling freely as his eyes filled with the marvel of the surroundings as if he hadn’t already basked in it for an hour.
Puss nodded. “We are, cariño…”
“Oh, nice. How’s the heist going?”.
Right, the heist. At that point he was supposed to be spying closely on the Marquis and Perrito was supposed to distract him once he was alone. Well, that had to be scrapped, for obvious reasons. But the pup seemed calm enough, at the moment: he hadn’t moved from his place since he’d transported him there. Based on the situation, the tabby cat decided he could at least proceed with his part: the Marquis had to be kept under observation, if they didn’t want to loose him in the crowd, especially now that the dancing was beginning. So, Puss sticked his head from behind the column and started searching the room.
“Eh, not very good, Perrito”, he answered absent-mindedly. “But we’ll get back on track, you’ll see”, he added, to convince himself more than anything.
Come on, come on, how hard could it be? Harder than he thought, really: people were getting together quickly and forming big groups in which distinguishing singular persons was quite tough.
“Oh, I know we will, Puss! We always do!”, Perrito barked content. Puss gestured to him with a paw, hoping that’d be enough for him to lower his voice. It wasn’t.
“Because we are Team Friendship! And Team Friendship never, ever, ever, ever loses! We are the bestest thiefs and the bestest friends and the bestest of all, and when we are around people get fu…”. At that point the dog had gotten up and started jumping and spinning on the spot, something which Puss only found out once that moment of over-excitement ended in Perrito tripping and falling on his back with a “oof”. After a moment of stunned silence, he started laughing.
Puss turned to him in despair, disturbed by the noise, before realizing he had just fallen.
“Are you okay, pequeño?”, he asked worriedly as he got nearer to him. Perrito responded chuckling again and shaking his head.
“Gracioso gatito”, he muttered, before putting his paws on Puss’ face.
Puss sighed, and got up, massaging his own muzzle with a paw.
"Kitty is going to kill me, Dios mio..."
Well, his big, great plan was going swell, wasn’t it? Kitty had been distracted by the gossiping crowd, Perrito was laying drunk on the floor, and the Marquis was nowhere to be-
Puss tensed up. He’d seen him in the crowd: the Marquis, accompanied by his loyal servant, was currently speaking with (or rather: listening to) another lord, not too far away from them.
The cat pondered the situation. Sure, Perrito was unable to do anything at the moment and his partner wasn't close enough, but he'd be an absolute fool if he didn't take that chance. He wasn’t nearly as good a thief as Kitty, that was for sure, but he had some aces up his (metaphorical) sleeve as well. He could have easily snuck on him, blending in the crowd, could have climbed on his back… No, that wasn’t really feasible, not with that dress on. And after all, that was Kitty's thing, not his. Then, he could try hurting him. Sure, he didn’t have his sword, but he had his claws. He could have “accidently” hurt him no problem. The Marquis would bend over, and at that point he could grab the pendant from his neck. What if he didn’t lean in the direction he needed him to? There was no risk in trying, though: if it didn’t go as planned, the Marquis would have no way knowing he was the one responsible for his injury. Puss could have carried on with his evening like nothing had happened and try another strategy to steal the pendant.
Puss straightened himself up and started moving towards the Marquis, his fighting stance unconsciously taking hold of him as he got nearer, step after step, unceremoniously surpassing the women who recognized and saluted him cordially. For once, the idea of blowing his cover had gone out of the window: he already saw himself out of that room, escaping with Kitty and Perrito into the night. If he actually succedeed they'd have to run as fast as the wind.
He was close, now. Claws out.
Closer. A growl instinctively building up in his throat.
Then, he suddenly stopped, paralysed by what he’d suddenly seen.
Puss stood in front of the Marquis, looking at him with wide eyes and contracted pupils.
How did he not notice before?
The pendant was no longer on the Marquis’ neck.
“What’s happening here?”, Kitty muttered, clearly confused by the whole scene. Perrito, once more laying on the floor in that supine position, left out a single hiccup. Puss, furiously fanning himself out of pure, utter stress, shook his head.
“Estamos jodidos”.
Perrito chuckled.
“Jodidos”.
Yes, they were. They really were.