One of the things that the Gorilla learned within a week of becoming the younger Agreste's bodyguard was that the boy had quite a knack for vanishing out from under people's noses, even when it should have been nearly impossible. He could somehow get out of a second-story room when someone was watching the single door, he could vanish from a photoshoot even when there were a dozen people around all paying attention to him, and he could disappear in an open room when his caretakers had only taken their eyes off of him for fifteen seconds. In short, Adrien had escaping down to an art.

The Gorilla suspected that that was why the previous bodyguard had quit, just out of sheer frustration and stress.

It didn't seem to matter much where Adrien was, or what security precautions there were in place. The boy was creative and could plan out his dashes for unsupervised freedom without much trouble at all. The Gorilla personally suspected that if Adrien had less free time during which he could dream up escape routes there would be much less of a problem, but he wasn't about to suggest that. The boy didn't need any more of his life scheduled out for him than he already did. The Gorilla would simply have to deal with the constant disappearances and do his best not to bring the boy's escapes to Mr. Agreste's attention when it wasn't important. It was a far better idea to simply hop in the car and search the streets until they could find Adrien and bring him back.

It wasn't as though it was all that hard. After all, Adrien never went that far. Despite what the Gorilla had first thought when he heard about Adrien's constant dashes for freedom, Adrien wasn't running off to do anything dangerous or stupid. Most of the time, the Gorilla found Adrien simply hanging out in the park, or at the movies, or hanging out with the sole friend he seemed to have in the hotel nearby. It was stuff that any normal kid would be able to do without all of the sneaking, so the Gorilla found that he really didn't have a problem with it. Why the older Agreste did, he wasn't sure.

As Adrien got older and better at both escaping and defending himself, the Gorilla found himself letting Adrien wander away more and more often... or, at the very least, letting Adrien think he had gotten away. The Gorilla had learned more than a few tips on how to follow someone without them noticing. While it was difficult (he was a large-framed man, after all) it was not completely impossible. Adrien certainly provided ample opportunities for the Gorilla to practice his stealth skills. The large man would simply stake out a spot where he thought Adrien would pass and, once his charge dashed (or sauntered) by, he would follow along behind at a distance, either until Adrien returned to the mansion (or wherever he was meant to be) or until Adrien was needed somewhere.

Still, the Gorilla breathed a sigh of relief once Adrien was enrolled in school. Surely Adrien wouldn't try to rappel out of the windows there. He would have friends that he could hang out with all day, instead of having to rock-climb down the walls of the mansion to go find them. He would have homework to do to keep him busy when he wasn't in school or doing photoshoots (or fencing or basketball or Chinese lessons or piano). Surely the attempts to escape would dwindle to nothing.

Nope.

The escapes weren't quite as frequent, but when they happened, the Gorilla couldn't find Adrien anywhere. It was frustrating as anything at first, but it didn't take long for the Gorilla to realize that Adrien always returned by himself, without anyone needing to come drag him back to whatever activity he was meant to be doing. Normally these disappearances didn't take long- at least not compared to Adrien's old vanishing acts- so after a month and a half of such disappearances, the Gorilla decided not to worry about it too much. Adrien was a good kid. As long as he came back, there was no need to worry.

Probably.

The Gorilla was not paid to not notice things. Being a good bodyguard meant that he could spot suspicious-looking people loitering nearby. It meant that he could find escape routes in seconds if necessary. It meant that he could blend into a crowd, despite his large stature.

And it definitely meant knowing what his charge was up to and noticing when his normal pattern of behavior changed.

At first, the Gorilla didn't think much of it. Adrien had just started going to public school for the first time in his life, after all; of course he wouldn't act the same. But as Adrien settled in to life at school, the new trend of strange disappearances continued. While the Gorilla had decided to not pay much attention to it, he couldn't help but notice some curious patterns.

It was impossible not to occasionally notice that Adrien was occasionally nowhere to be found during an akuma attack, even if he had been right there only minutes before. It was impossible not to notice that Adrien sometimes had the Gorilla drop him off somewhere and then he took much longer than he should have to do whatever it was that the boy had claimed that he needed to take care of. It was especially impossible not to notice when Adrien somehow ended up across the city from where he was supposed to be.

The Gorilla noticed, shrugged, and went back to the cat videos he always watched when he wasn't needed. As long as Adrien was not getting injured doing whatever it was that he did, he did not feel the need to do anything about it or tell the elder Mr. Agreste about it.

Still, he couldn't help but notice even more details as time went on. Adrien vanishing right about the time Chat Noir showed up. Adrien apparently talking to himself. Adrien apparently talking to himself and his jacket responding.

That was really weird.

That wasn't all. It hadn't taken long for the Gorilla to figure out what Adrien liked to eat once he started his job, since he was sometimes tasked with preparing the boy's lunch or ordering something for Adrien to eat after a photoshoot was over. It hadn't taken the bodyguard long to figure out that Adrien hated stinky cheeses. Loathed them. He often wouldn't eat sandwiches that had had stinky cheeses on them, even when the cheese had been removed. Adrien always said that the taste still lingered.

So it was a little weird when Adrien suddenly started buying large quantities of stinky cheese- Camembert, if the Gorilla's nose wasn't failing him. It was hard to miss the smell. Adrien hadn't gained a sudden appreciation for those kinds of cheeses, of that the Gorilla was certain (Adrien had recently accidentally ordered a sandwich with stinky cheese on it and hadn't touched it after that initial face-twisting, stomach-churning bite). On top of that, the Gorilla had spotted Adrien sneaking slices of Camembert into his jacket several times. Considering that the maid doing the laundry had never complained about finding cheese in Adrien's clothes, the Gorilla suspected that Adrien was feeding something else. Possibly the something else that responded to Adrien whenever he appeared to be talking to himself.

The Gorilla ended up going to a pet store and asking if there were any animals that ate Camembert cheese. He was informed by one very confused salesperson that they didn't know of any animals that required that sort of diet. A search online proved to be no more fruitful, though the Gorilla did find some very cute kitten videos in the process.

And what was even stranger was that Adrien wasn't the only one in his friend group that appeared to talk to inanimate objects and had them talk back. The Gorilla had overheard one of his friends talking to her purse and having an actual conversation with it.

"A talking bag imported from Japan," she had claimed when he had noticed. The Gorilla had straightened up, interested. Maybe the young Master Adrien had bought one as a sort of companion to talk to and hadn't wanted it to look like he was carrying a purse around. There were a few problems with that, however.

For one, it didn't explain the cheese that Adrien kept shoving into his jacket.

And two, there was no such thing as a talking purse. He had searched and searched online for ages and found nothing that fit the description of her purse. There were toys that could talk, sure. But they couldn't engage in conversation and they all sounded awfully robotic. Unless the girl was a programming genius, her purse did not talk. It couldn't.

But maybe, possibly, there was something inside of it that did.

It wasn't long after the talking purse incident that the Gorilla just happened to notice a floating black thing in front of Adrien. He hadn't had the chance to really get a good look before it dove into Adrien's jacket, leaving a strong scent of Camembert cheese behind.

The Gorilla decided to pretend that he hadn't seen anything.

"Is it time for the photoshoot?" Adrien asked, adjusting his jacket with a too-wide smile. He looked worried- clearly he had (correctly) guessed that the Gorilla had seen the little flying whatever- but his expression relaxed when the Gorilla gave a nod, expression as calm and placid as ever. He let Adrien hurry past before he followed, deep in thought. The little flying thing was magical, no doubt about it, and had a distinctly cat-like appearance, at least from what the Gorilla had seen in that half-second glance. Put all of that together and add in Adrien's disappearances during akuma attacks...

Well, at least now the Gorilla had a good idea what Adrien was up to when he vanished.

"I can't find Adrien," was the first thing that Nathalie said when the Gorilla picked up. "Is he with you?"

The Gorilla glanced down the street to where Ladybug and Chat Noir were mid-battle with a akumatized driving instructor. Chat Noir got whacked aside by a hit from a stop side and went flying, landing face-first in the street. He hopped back up within moments and charged straight back into the battle, looking none the worse for the wear. "I can see him, yes. I'm just letting him think that he got away from me."

Nathalie let out an irritated huff. The Gorilla could picture her exasperated frown. "You're only going to encourage him if you do that. Running away from his bodyguard is behavior we want to stop."

"I disagree. If I let Adrien think that he can get away from me easily, then he won't try as hard to cover his tracks and shake me off." The Gorilla took a sip of water and continued. He wasn't really lying. Adrien was becoming a little more careless in his bodyguard-shaking, making it easier and easier for the Gorilla to find him again during his non-superhero-related escapes. "If I always found him again, he would work on becoming even more slippery. He's been getting sloppy in his getaway attempts. That's a good thing."

"Mr. Agreste would prefer it if you were with Adrien."

The Gorilla only just resisted rolling his eyes. In his opinion, Mr. Agreste didn't have a very good idea of what methods worked best for keeping track of Adrien. "Mr. Agreste pays me to keep an eye on Adrien. I am doing so. This approach seems to be working better than what the previous bodyguard was doing, so forgive me if I don't change my tactics. Besides, it's not like Adrien is doing anything dangerous. It's just normal kid stuff, like sitting around at the park or going to the movies. There's no need to worry too much."

As he spoke, Rules of the Road tore past with Ladybug and Chat Noir hot on his trail.

Yep, just normal kid stuff all right.

The Gorilla was watching Ladybug and Chat Noir fight yet another akuma when Nathalie called to ask how soon Adrien would be arriving at his next photo shoot.

"It's starting in ten minutes," Nathalie said peevishly. "On the bridge over the Seine, and the makeup artist would like to get started early. Where are you?"

"We'll be there soon," the Gorilla promised, hoping that Nathalie couldn't hear the fight going on in the background. "Adrien tried slipping away again, so I'll just have to fetch him without making it look like I've been following him the entire time."

The Gorilla clicked his phone off before Nathalie could respond. The fight tumbled past him and down the block. Sighing, he picked up his phone and his newspaper and followed.

Five minutes later, the fight wrapped up with a purified butterfly fluttering away and a swirl of sparkling ladybugs spinning over the city. Ladybug dashed away and Chat Noir dropped into an alley. The Gorilla paused on the sidewalk, wondering how he should best approach the situation. He didn't want to lose Adrien in the crowd again, and while it was possible that Adrien might make a beeline to the photoshoot as soon as he detransformed, he might also have forgotten. It would be faster to just swing by the alley that Chat Noir had dropped into and remind him of the photoshoot. Besides, it would probably make it easier for Adrien in the long run if he knew that the Gorilla already knew that he was a superhero and would be willing to cover for him during attacks.

Mind made up, the Gorilla wandered with more purpose towards the alleyway, thankful that the street was mostly deserted. He only slowed down slightly as he approached the alley. A quick glance to the side let the Gorilla know that Adrien- well, Chat Noir, he hadn't detransformed yet- was still there. Without turning his head at all, the Gorilla raised his voice so that he could be heard.

"In case there's anyone here who's supposed to be at a photoshoot, the bridge is probably only a couple minutes away if you hurry."

The figure in the alley froze. The Gorilla ignored it and continued down the sidewalk. He ducked into a store- well, as much as a man of his stature could duck- and waited until Adrien hurried past the store, making a beeline straight for the bridge. He waited to a count of thirty before heading back to the car and then following Adrien to the photoshoot. They arrived a minute late, much to Nathalie's displeasure, and then the entire photoshoot ended up being a total bust because Adrien's expression was constantly nervous instead of relaxed and happy. The Gorilla felt a little guilty- no doubt Adrien was worried about his secret identity being discovered- but there was nothing he could do about it now.

Eh. The boy would get over the surprise eventually.

Three weeks late, an akuma attack broke out while Adrien and the Gorilla were sitting in the lounge of the building that Gabriel Fashion had chosen as the location for their next photoshoot. They had arrived early after Adrien's fencing lesson came to a premature end thanks to an injured fencer and now they were simply waiting for the photoshoot to actually start. There was still an hour yet to go before the designated start time when the news came in.

The Gorilla watched as Adrien sat up straight, eyes scanning the sidewalks outside as panicked civilians tore past. The akuma wasn't visible from the building- or at least it wasn't visible from where they sat- but Adrien knew full well that dashing towards the disturbance instead of away would just draw unwanted attention to himself. The Gorilla watched as Adrien's eyes then scanned the room, trying to figure out where he could go to transform. They had never been to this particular location before and it was hardly visitor-friendly. The Gorilla knew full well that there were no immediately obvious places to hide.

He would just have to help, then.

"There's an employee's bathroom over around that corner," the Gorilla muttered out of the corner of his mouth, even as he returned his attention to his magazine. He saw Adrien's gaze snap over to him, and he nodded ever-so-slightly towards the hallway he knew held a bathroom. "It's not used that often. Just please try to get back here by eleven."

Adrien was off in a heartbeat.

The Gorilla waited a few minutes longer, watching idly as the lounge emptied as people noticed the fuss outside and beat a hasty retreat to deeper inside the building. Once the akuma passed, the Gorilla consulted his watch. He had fifty-three minutes left before Adrien was meant to be present for the photoshoot, which meant that the Gorilla definitely had enough time to go for a quick run to the grocery store to pick up some cheese.

After all, even though he might not have all of the details, something told him that it might be a good idea to have a stock of Camembert on hand in the car fridge from now on.

As with most of the things I write, this is a one-shot and therefore complete.

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