Chapter Text
The idea had been Puss’, of course. Kitty wouldn’t have been so reckless to think they’d be able to steal during a ball consisting of Spain’s highest royalty and a whole bunch of guards keeping track of all of those rich people’s asses. Had she gotten the chance to actually talk about her idea, she’d have proposed to strike after the event, rather than during. Sure, it was less immediate, but more effective.
All that they knew from the people that commissioned their heist was that the Marquis always brought with him the letter whose words were so essential to the country’s fate (so they’d been told, at least). Apparently, he was so fond of that letter he’d carry it in a necklace, all folded up so that it could fit in a golden pendant, shaped like a heart. They also knew that he used to stay in his heavily guarded castle with his loyal servants, only indulging in public events such as the upcoming ball. While they had briefly considered getting into the castle, they then had rejected the idea: there was no way of telling whether the Marquis kept the letter in the necklace at his home, or even if he kept the necklace at all, and searching the palace to find it could have proven difficult, considering how big it was. The ball, they had decided, was their best option to get the pendant: their commissioners knew for a fact the Marquis would be wearing it, as he always did in public.
According to Kitty’s plan, they’d have to wait in the stables, search for the right carriage, talk sweet nothings to the horses to corrupt them and convince them not to snitch (Perrito was getting really good with that, but sugar cubes could have done the trick as well), then wait in the back of the carriage till the Marquis and his servant came back. At that point, she hoped, they’d be far too wasted to realize two cats and a dog were hidden in the back of their vehicle: Puss was not as stealthy as she was but he was good, Perrito… well, he was an easily excitable pup. He was more difficult to hide. At that point, all they had to do was knocking the people in the carriage out, and get the necklace from the Marquis’ neck. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
But at that point, Puss had already exposed his grand, bold idea, arms opened in his very melodramatic flair (one thing she had to concede him: he knew how to make even the stupidest of propositions sound exciting and viable): steal the necklace under the Marquis’ nose while at the ball itself. Surely, he’d be far too distracted by social interactions to realize immediately even such an important piece of jewellery missing: they’d surely have enough time to walk out of the main door, protected by whichever fake aliases they’d given the guards. No one would have second guessed three wealthy guests just leaving a ball early.
At that point, Perrito had started yipping excitedly while wiggling his tail (it had taken her a while to learn that that was actually a positive thing, for dogs) and running in circles while repeating “Yes, yes, yes! Let’s go to the ball! Let’s go to the ball!”. And then, he had turned to her, said in his smallest, most adorable voice “Can we go to the ball, Kitty? Pretty please?”, and… the little fucker had done the eyes to her. Kitty was very proud of the pup’s progress with that skill: at that point, it was one of the few weapons he had to protect himself during their heists, and it worked surprisingly well, usually giving her and Puss some time to come to his rescue. But Perrito was also very much aware of the power he had over both Kitty and Puss. Every time he did that eyes thing, the discussion was over, and he knew it. Puss knew it, as well: when Kitty raised her gaze from Perrito’s pleading face to meet her companion’s one, he just smiled at her and lifted his shoulders with a grin. Kitty sighed. There was no point in arguing, she was clearly outnumbered. For a moment, she hated the democracy they’d established early on as a column of their teamwork.
“Bien…”, she gave in. “Let’s go to the ball”.
“You are aware that your idea is pretty risky, right?”, Kitty whispered to Puss while keeping an eye on Perrito, trotting between the aisles of the costume shop. Their big entrance in society as Team Friendship, they had agreed, needed something less casual than their usual attires, which was the reason why they were searching the shop of one of Puss’ “friends” (one other useful thing she had learnt about Puss: he had a lot of people ready to help him out) for costumes they could use for the ball. Perrito, as usual, was the most excited one, looking at every single outfit with wide eyes and wonderment, apparently sure that even the most ludicrous would be a good fit for the occasion. Puss was definitely more contained that the dog, but he was very much interested in finding something that would suit him, casually touching some fabrics here and there and comparing matching colours.
“Not to say ‘stupid’, of course”, she added, shaking vehemently her head when Perrito looked at her pointing to a fluffy meringue coloured dress. After Santa Coloma’s total flop, she had decided she was done with big dresses for good. Not that she liked them before, but she had thought she could indulge for once in something new, especially at her own wedding. After that day though, she had realized how much she actually despised those models, and decided she would definitely live better without ever wearing one anymore. Not even for the (hopefully more successful) second marriage. Which was scheduled to happen someday in the future, they both subconsciously knew. If they were both alive after that heist, of course.
Puss shook his head looking at a black caped uniform, humming to himself.
“You have to be more optimistic, Kitty” he assured her, putting the outfit back on its crutch. “I mean, we have the best thief in all of Spain with us”, Puss gestured at her with a smile on his face, “this will be like a walk in the park for the great Miss Softpaws”.
Kitty shook her head grinning lightly. Puss certainly knew how to compliment a girl, but she didn’t want to be swayed by his charms so easily.
“I mean it, Puss”, she said resting a paw on his forearm. “I appreciate your trust, but this plan could go wrong in a lot of different ways. It’s risky”.
Puss scoffed with nonchalance.
“And since when has anything being risky stopped us from doing it anyway?”
Kitty raised an eyebrow, ready to open her mouth to remind Puss that they had to be careful after he was left with only one life. He needed to be reminded, now and then: the great Puss in Boots had been far too reckless for far too long, making it harder for the much more ordinary Puss to grasp the fact that he was, indeed, mortal. Extremely mortal, actually.
But Puss preceded her:
“Look, I know it is risky, but I don’t think it’s anything we can’t handle. That ball will be full of boring rich men and women who certainly don’t know how to defend themselves. We can handle a dozen guards by ourselves, if we have to. We’ve been in direr situations, recuerdas?”
“We surely have, but aren’t you forgetting Perrito?” she asked before he started enumerating examples from their glory days. “We know how to handle ourselves in these situations, but does he?”
Puss looked behind his back cautiously, then he drew near her whispering:
“Look, if you’re worried about him we can just leave him outside the castle to…”
“No you won’t!”. They jumped on the spot: a trotting Perrito was walking the aisle on their back dressed up as a pageboy in a silk-like outfit, complete with wig and all. Kitty took a glimpse of his suit while he was parading it around, head high in pride. The tuxedo cat couldn’t help but smile: he was quite cute, she had to admit it.
Kitty turned back at Puss and shrugged resigned.
“Apparently we’re not doing that”.
Puss sighed.
“Bien, bien…”, he granted, trying to avoid smiling as well. “Well, but you see it now, Kitty… He wants to go to the ball as well”, Puss said in a conciliatory tone, putting his paws on her shoulder. Oh, no he wasn’t gonna give her the “Do it for Perrito” look.
“Pero, claro que quiere: you have put this idea in his brain!”, she retorted, purposefully raising her voice just enough to express her distain while avoiding Perrito from hearing it. Still, Puss brought a finger to his mouth, while shushing her: that dog had extremely sensible eardrums, they had found out.
Puss got closer to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to keep their conversation as secretive as possible.“Listen… I understand your concerns, I really do”. Kitty could tell by the tone of his voice that he was finally getting more serious about the whole thing. “But I think we can do this, I really do. Surely… We can afford one bombastic adventure like this, sì? Like we used to?”
Kitty looked at his pleading eyes closing her lips in a thin line. So that was what all of that was about: an ode to their glory days. How fitting it must have seemed to him, that their next heist would take place during a fancy ball. How exotic. How… so much like his old self. Or rather, their old selves.
Still, she could tell by his eyes he wasn’t taking that lightly, not as much as she had initially thought. He wasn’t being reckless, he just… wanted to feel the thrill of it all once more. Maybe… for the last time?
“Just… indulge with me, amor. Just this once”, Puss pleaded in a soft, delicate voice. Well, that was new. “Will you?”
Kitty stood silent for a few more seconds, looking at him. Puss kept quiet as well, waiting for her to break the reciprocate stillness: he knew she was considering every single aspect of the upcoming evening in her mind, weighting pros and cons and thinking about each way everything could deviate from their original plan and finding hypothetical ways to save both his and Perrito’s asses. As much as Kitty was an adrenaline junkie as he was, she had come to appreciate having backup plans after she had learnt about him having only one life, he understood that. Kitty apparently felt the pressure of having two mortal beings depending on her and those being the two guys she cared about the most in the whole world. Puss wanted to tackle the issue, sooner or later, but he hadn’t managed to convince her to talk to either one of them about her fears, and didn’t want to bring them up if she wasn’t ready.
Eventually, Kitty nodded.
“¿Está bien?”, he asked.
“Está bien”, she agreed.
Puss smiled, happy with the result.
“Good”.
“Oh, Kitty!”
They both jumped on the spot: Perrito was suddenly in front of them, still in his page outfit, carrying a crouch in his jaws. Puss sighed dramatically, putting a paw on his chest.
“Perrito, what have we told you about these jump scares?”
“That I don’t have to do them when you and Kitty are around?”, he asked in his little pleading voice, while looking at Puss with his most innocent look. Kitty couldn’t help but grin and shake her head with a laugh.
“Yes, that! Exactly that!”, Puss exclaimed, pointing a finger at the inoffensive looking pup. “You’re gonna give me a heart attack!”
“Oh, please”, Kitty joked. “This little fella is gonna give the great Puss in Boots a heart attack? Seriamente?”
Perrito chuckled amused, commenting “Gatos locos” under his breath.
“Now”, Kitty turned her attention to Perrito, “what have you got here, cariño?”, she asked kneeling in front of him, her eyes curiously staring at the crouch and the clothes on it. To her surprise, Perrito hadn’t selected another big, puffy gala dress. On the contrary: what she was looking at was a gąrconne style-like outfit.
“You would absolutely SLAY this look at the ball, don’t you think?”, Perrito asked excitedly, wiggling his tail and studying her expression.
Kitty tilted her head, looking more attentively at what the dog had brought. The outfit was quite simple: it was composed of a black tuxedo paired with a white shirt and bow tie, paralleling her fur’s colour scheme. Well, this looked a lot more practical then wearing a dress, she had to give Perrito that. The fabric wasn’t too rigid nor it looked too tight, which meant she could move with it a lot more easily. She could see herself climb up the Marquis’ neck with that outfit on, being comfortable in it. Not only that, she could also see herself being… beautiful, in it.
“They also have beautiful blue caps to go with it”, the pup explained. “Of course, any colour could match, they also have green if you prefer”. Kitty raised an eyebrow, then looked at the pup with a funny look in her eyes.
“My, you’ve really done your homework, haven’t you, Perrito?”. Kitty extended one of her soft paws to pet the dog on the head affectionately. Perrito reacted closing his eyelids and wiggling his tail even faster than before.
“I think it would suit you”, Puss commented, after having examined the outfit, then he snickered softly. “It reminds me of that time in… Where was it, San Miguel, right?”
“No, not San Miguel. San Domingo”.
“Right, right…”
Puss was about to start telling Perrito what had happened in San Domingo (the pup had proved to be a receptive listener, especially when it came to their adventures), but he was quickly silenced by the look Kitty gave him when she lifted her head, staring at him. She had the most mischievous look on her face, the one that was usually reserved for her brilliant strokes of genius or playful ideas. He wasn’t sure which one he was going to get this time around.
“Perrito, would you bring us that meringue dress you showed me before?”, Kitty asked still examining Puss with her snarking smile.
The pup nodded (“Okey doke”) and trotted down the aisle with his usual happy go lucky attitude. Puss lifted an eyebrow in confusion.
“I thought you didn’t like that one”.
“Oh, the dress isn’t for me”, Kitty said nonchalantly, still looking at him with that pleased look. She got up from the floor and put a paw on his shoulder, then said confidently:
“If we’re going to this ball and we’re following your stupid plan, you’ll have to indulge with me as well, amorcito”.
The plan was supposed to go as such: they were going to introduce themselves at the ball as members of the court of San Domingo, accompanied by their little page boy. Kitty and Puss knew the Governor of San Domingo was incapacitated to go to any party, at that point, which meant there was no way they would meet him. At the same time, they knew the members of his court had been trapped in a sleep-like condition for the past two years (they might have had a hand in the whole affair), something that, as far as they knew, not many noblemen were aware of because of the lack of communication between the courts. This meant that it was extremely unlikely to meet a member of San Domingo’s court and anyone that would question their presence there.
“Sin embargo we are going to introduce ourselves as Count and Countess Mariposa to the noblemen. No reference to San Domingo unless they ask more specific information about ourselves”, Kitty remarked for the twelfth time while they were stationed in front the castle where the ball was going to take place, hidden behind a bush. “And even if they do…”
“We try and avoid giving straight answers until the very end, ya ya…”, Puss repeated, monotone. His annoyance with Kitty’s repetitiveness didn’t stop her from going on with her narration of the plan.
“Puss is the one that has to find the Marquis and keep an eye on him until he is with a small, isolated group of noblemen. Perrito” (the pup’s ears immediately went up and he looked at Kitty with his tongue dangling out, eager to receive his commands) “when I give you the sign” (she slid out of her sash a mirror, little enough to be held in her palm) “you distract those malditos ricachónes with your… well…” Kitty mumbled to herself, trying to find an appropriate word to describe the dog's shenanigans.
“… talent?”, Puss chimed in, unsure.
“That’s right, you distract them with your talent, cariño”, Kitty approved, giving Perrito a scratch on the head. The pup giggled with satisfaction, happy with the cat’s motherly attention.
Puss couldn’t help but smile to himself, looking at the duo in front of him: how in such a small amount of time his partner had found in herself so much love and care for that little ball of fur he couldn’t know, but as much as it was surprising to discover that side of Kitty, it was also something he cherished deeply.
He had thought there wasn’t much more to learn about Kitty Softpaws, not after knowing her for so many years. All the surprise he had felt when they first met had vanished over time, replaced by the recognition of patterns in her behaviour. Sure, she was still wonderful, and she was still as great as ever, but she was no longer something new for him. Yet after the Wishing Star, there had been a lot of new discoveries he had made about her. Maybe he was becoming better at picking things up. Maybe she was starting to open up to him and Perrito. Maybe it was both of those things. Whatever the reason might be, he just knew he was happy to be able to find something to be surprised for with each passing day.
“… understand, Puss?”
“Mh?”, Puss shuddered, brought back from his inner thoughts.
“I said,” Kitty repeated, spelling out each syllable. “Did you understand, Puss?”
He nodded, trying to feign certainty.
“Sì, I did”, he assured her, pressing his thumbs into his belt to try and give himself a more confident aura. It didn’t work very well: Kitty looked at him skeptically, then sighed and asked:
“OK… so, would you gently repeat to me…”
Puss breathed in heavily and then started enumerating step by step, counting on his paws:
“Perrito distracts the noblemen, I keep an eye on them to make sure they’re all looking somewhere else, you sneak on the Marquis’ neck, get the pendant, we get away as soon as possible from the main door”.
Kitty lifted a finger and opened her mouth, then promptly closed it. Puss smirked with satisfaction.
“Bien, pero… What about the back-up…”
“If, and I repeat if the Marquis gets separated from his servant and is suddenly alone, Perrito convinces him to follow him in some deserted angle of the castle, you knock him out and take the pendant”, he retorted right away.
Kitty closed her mouth, which was left agape by his prompt intervention, once more.
“Well” was the only comment she got out of her. Perrito shook his head giggling quietly.
“Come on, mi amor”, Puss said in his raspy voice, approaching her so that he could wrap his arms around her waist. “You really think I could ever forgive myself if I lost even a drop of your words?”
Kitty chuckled, trailing a finger through his chest. She didn’t have the time to answer, thankfully for Puss which had indeed completely zoned out during her speech and was able to save himself only because his partner had repeated the plan so many times those days he could have recited it better than his favourite poem. The moment was interrupted by Perrito’s bark. The pup left out a single, barely audible whimper, for anyone but Puss and Kitty, which were waiting exactly for that. The cats separated and leaned out of the bush, just what was needed to see the road ahead of them. A carriage was just behind the bend, getting nearer and nearer.
Puss looked at Kitty for approval. The cat squinted to try and get a better view of the carriage’s occupants, then she nodded.
“This will do. They’re two”.
“Bien”, Puss whispered, lowering himself onto his back legs and stretching the front ones, a feline getting ready to jump on his prey. His cat instincts kicked in, and he found himself growling and gritting his teeth, as the carriage was getting closer and closer to the bush.
“Ready…”
“Set…”
“Go, go, go!”. Perrito was jumping excitedly on the carriage’s front seat, the wig’s curls going up and down on his face and messing up the whole styling.
“Quieto, quieto!”, Kitty pleaded, putting her hand on his shoulder to try and keep him down. “We are going in in a minute!”
“But you said it a minute ago already!” Perrito whined pleadingly. He had just found a new way to get his dress all messed up: scratching the puffy gorget on his neck with his back leg, causing Kitty to immediately repeat “no” in a panic.
“Stop, please”, she begged him in an exhausted puff, joining her paws. She was still half done with her outfit, the white tie hanging from her neck wide open and the shirt's buttons mostly unzipped. “Querido, we have so many things to do and so little time, te pido…”
“Kitty’s right, Perrito”. Puss emerged from the back of the carriage. Or, as Kitty would have put it, his dress did: Puss’ head was as little as the statue of two new weds on a wedding cake. His body looked completely engulfed by the layers of tulle and fabric, his arms awkwardly stiff on the sides of his body to avoid any contact with the cloth. He looked like a fish out of water, trying to find his footing in that new element. But he didn’t look bad. On the contrary.
Kitty smiled radiantly, looking at her partner.
“Ay”, she purred lowly, approaching him. “Mira que bonito…”. Her eyes trailed all over his body, now covered under layers and layers of meringue coloured fabric. She had always thought he had the physique to wear a dress, but she didn’t think he’d look this good.
“Bonito?”, Pus scoffed, putting a hand on his chest and assuming one of his theatrical poses. “Amor, yo soy guapa”.
Kitty couldn’t help but laugh, while her paws worked to adjust the cloth here and there, trying to make it more comfortable for Puss. He seemed to like the changes, since he moved a lot more effortlessly afterward. Puss thanked her in a soft murmur ("Gracias, mi amor"), and then started buttoning up her shirt, skilled paws intentionally making each movement slower to rest longer on her chest. Kitty smiled softly, using the neckline of the dress to pull him closer, and planted a small, chaste kiss on his lips. Puss closed his eyes with a smile and breathed in deeply, as if trying to bottle up with that single breath the sensation of Kitty’s mouth on his, her scent, her warm presence up against his, tulle and cotton touching and mingling.
When he opened his eyes, Kitty was still holding his neckline, looking at his face with her eyelids half-closed.
“Te ves muy bien, Countess Mariposa”, she muttered against his lips, letting her words slip inside him. Puss lifted the corner of his mouth.
“Te ves muy bien también, Count Mariposa”, he said, raising the tip of his hat as a token of appreciation.
That was the first time in the past two weeks that Kitty felt like Puss' idea was actually good.