UMS Françoise DuPont
EPISODE 4: Training Exercise
Episode recap: A routine training exercise leaves two sets of people trapped together.
"Have you noticed anything between Nino and Alya?" Marinette asked her Noir squad mate.
Agreste stilled. She could imagine him listening to her words, translating them, trying to figure out what she had meant by them, then formulating and translating his own reply. "Noticed what?" he asked, turning his green eyes on her. She was usually fine as long as she didn't look into his eyes.
"Ni-Nino likes Alya," she said.
The pause was infinitesimal. "Nino likes people."
"He likes her," she restated with emphasis. Marinette had known Nino long enough to recognize when he found someone attractive. And she had seen Nino in company with Alya enough times - starting with their first meeting - to recognize that he liked Alya. With a frown she had to admit to herself that she didn't know her bestie to the same degree.
Agreste matched her expression, trying to understand.
Marinette sighed and thought of how to explain this to an alien. "How does a Noir show he's attracted to someone?" she asked, trying to put it in terms he understood.
If she thought Agreste had been still before, she needed to recalibrate. The very air around him seemed not to move. "Why do you ask?" he said quietly.
"I-I just…" It was his stupid eyes making her blush and stutter. "I just… Nino is attracted to Alya. That's what I meant."
The air around him relaxed. "Really? How do you know? And Alya likes him too?" He did a good mimic of her earlier emphasis.
Marinette frowned again, more at ease now that he was not staring at her. "I haven't known her for very long; she only came aboard a few months before you arrived, and I haven't seen her develop any obvious crushes yet," she explained. "But I think she does."
Now that Hornet was off the ship, Marinette felt like her life could use a little proxy romance, and watching it blossom between her longtime friend Nino and her new bestie Alya would be immensely satisfying. It had to be better than listening to Stone Heart moon about his fiancée.
"I think she does," she said thoughtfully. "All she needs is a little push. "
.o8o.
Humor was a cross-cultural challenge for the translator. So much of what was funny couldn't be directly translated, not between the languages that Nino spoke.
Physical humor was a touchy subject. While the sight of someone slipping and falling might make one person peel with laughter, another might be too empathetically worried to see any humor while a third might interpret that as license to knock down everyone. No, physical humor was off-limits unless Nino knew his audience well.
Word-play was safer and more rewarding. To watch his pupils come to understand the different levels of a pun in a new language was often better than the joke itself. Although it took a lot longer for people to develop the understanding to engage in word-play.
The Noir, however, had a quiet and often wicked sense of humor provided they ever showed any sign of it. Gore and Elathan seemed completely humorless. Plagg's ears almost always seemed to be quivering with hidden amusement, often at someone else's expense. But Nino had great hope for Agreste who seemed keen to integrate himself into the dominant culture, including the jokes.
So it was with consternation that Nino fixed his eyes at the door which had just been shut and locked behind him.
"Agreste?" he called. "Bestie? What's going on?" Without warning, the Noir pilot had shoved his translator into a small dark room.
"Someone needed a push," came the reply. Laughter was evident in the tone.
With a grimace, Nino realized his friend was making a joke. He made a show of laughing then called out, "Okay, you got me. Now let me out."
There was no reply.
For five minutes, Nino stood in that glorified closet and tried to reason with an alien who was gone, busy setting the next phase of his plan into motion.
Eventually he heard the lock click open. Before he could dart through the open door, someone else was thrust into his arms in the tiny space. While he was untangling their limbs, a door was shut and locked again.
"What the what is going on?" cried the other person. Her voice identified her as Alya Cesaire.
"I think Agreste is trying to be funny," Nino sighed.
"Lahiffe?"
A brief explanation followed, or at least an educated guess. Agreste had locked them in the closet, probably thinking it was funny. Only time would tell if he planned on shoving more people into the closet before letting them out.
"So we're just supposed to sit tight until he comes back?" She was not pleased.
Nino leaned against the wall. "I don't want to get him in trouble," he said. "He's still on probation after taking out that other pilot in the cantina."
"Well, how are we supposed to pass the time?"
.o8o.
Marinette could see Agreste's ears twitching riotously as he approached. "What's so funny?" she asked as she continued her pre-flight check. The two of them were scheduled to practice some lightspace jumps and she didn't want to go through another round of decompression sickness or worse.
"I just locked Nino Lahiffe in a closet with Alya Cesaire," he announced joyfully.
"You did what?" she nearly shrieked, her checklist clattering to the hangar floor.
"You said they just needed a push, so I pushed them." His ears twitched at the memory.
"Into a closet?" She blinked.
He smiled, looking so proud of himself. Marinette thought this through. Maybe this literal push was what Alya needed to start something with Nino.
"Agreste! You could get in trouble. We could both get in trouble. We need to let them out," she said as a grin grew on her face, "as soon as we come back from this training run."
Agreste's ears wriggled and his eyes widened in delight.
The two completed their safety checks under the supervision of Stone Heart and Reflecta. The two experienced pilots had already sat in the 'nag saddle' on earlier training runs to observe and correct the newbies. Today, however, Marinette and Agreste would be flying without a copilot to watch over them.
Lightspace had been discovered by the Kwamiians to cross the vast distances of regular space in weeks rather than lifetimes. The technology which generated the shell that allowed a ship to pierce the barrier between the two universes and thus take a 'shortcut' had eventually been shrunk into an engine that could fit on smaller craft. The smaller engines meant shorter distances, and a flyer like Marinette's could only travel in lightspace for an hour and a half total before needing to be recharged. Still, this allowed carriers to send squads of fighters ahead to engage the Akuma without putting larger ships and their civilian inhabitants at risk.
Satisfied that the newest members of the squad were prepared, Mad Dog ordered the launch and others cleared the bay.
"Black Cat, Ladybug," barked their leader, "just follow the flight plan and we'll see you again in an hour."
"Copy that, Mad Dog," Marinette agreed with a smirk. That should be plenty of time to break the ice between Alya and Nino.
Agreste gave a similarly gleeful agreement and the two shot into space. They cleared the carrier by a few kilometers then began to prepare their engines for the first jump through lightspace.
"Ready," announced Agreste, and Marinette echoed it from her own craft.
"Good luck," came the disembodied voice of their captain, then the comms blanked out as shells grew over their flyers, and the blackness of space paled and brightened as they entered lightspace. Marinette could still see Agreste's flyer through the translucent shell but she couldn't communicate with him during the time they traveled outside of normal space. Her instruments had briefly gone haywire as the shell grew, but as soon as she was fully out of normal space the computers compensated for the strange environment. Unfortunately, the signals couldn't penetrate the shell, so while she could see Black Cat's flyer, she couldn't communicate with him.
Just as she was starting to feel the quiet press on her they neared their exit point and the shell faded. Her instruments briefly scrambled, throwing every alarm, then space darkened and blackened, revealing stars and a distant way station that Marinette remembered from her trial runs with Stone Heart. Stations like that were littered throughout the galaxy. Those positioned along lesser traveled routes were often staffed with only a skeleton crew, and Marinette fully expected everyone on the nearby station to be either too busy to acknowledge the two flyers that just dropped out of light space, or too off-duty to care.
The comm burst with static before Agreste's voice called to her, "Ladybug, this is Black Cat executing safety checks."
"Confirmed," she replied. "This is Ladybug executing same." The safety checks were internal and external, looking for anything that might have gone wrong with their flyers during the exit from lightspace as well as scanning for any threats in their new location.
As the display began to light up in green as each scan came back positive, she tried making small talk. "So what do you think our besties are up to?"
.o8o.
"He's not coming back," Alya stated after the first twenty minutes.
"He'll come back," Nino disagreed with considerably less confidence. "He must be held up…" That should have been a complete sentence, but Nino suddenly remembered a comment from Agreste that explained why he was held up.
"What?" She couldn't see his face in the dark closet, but his voice was expressive enough.
"He, he's got a training run now," Nino replied numbly. "He won't be back aboard for an hour."
"An hour?!" she repeated in explosive disbelief. "Are you kidding me?" She didn't wait for his reply. She began shouting and banging on the door, trying to attract attention for a rescue.
He blindly wrapped his arms around her to quiet her. "Alya, stop! We can't get Agreste in more trouble right now."
She paused her shouting to glare at him in the darkness. "Do you have a portable comm on you so we can contact someone we trust to get us out of here? Because I don't."
His hands dropped to his sides. "No," he admitted.
"So we're supposed to just hang out for another hour in this closet while the Noir rocket jockey lets us stew? Why did he even pick the two of us to begin with?" she wondered angrily. "I mean, flyers play pranks on each other all the time but you and I aren't flyers. I suppose I can understand why he picked you - you're his bestie - but why me? Why not another Noir or someone else on his squad, or another warm body in the area? There are over a thousand people on the carrier yet he specifically lured me here. Why did he pick me?"
Listening to Alya rant, Nino felt an idea take root in his mind and sprout so fast that it gave him a headache. He groaned aloud before he could stop himself.
Recently Agreste had been starting conversations about how Noir and Earthlings showed affection, the different degrees of like and love, games of courtship, and - inexplicably at the time - Alya Cesaire. Agreste was always asking about Earthlings, trying to decipher the nuances of his interactions with them; there was nothing new in him asking questions about Alya or other people he interacted with on the carrier. The questions about courtship and affection, however, struck Nino as a bit suspicious.
Nino's first thoughts when Agreste began these questions focused on whether Agreste was generally curious or if he had a vested interest in how others fell in love. The only logical choice on the Françoise Dupont for Agreste to fall in love with was Elathan, but Nino had spent enough time in the company of the two Noir to determine that the couple had no chemistry. This led him to an uncomfortable idea - that Agreste might have fallen in love with someone else on the carrier. Nino was not one to fuss about the kind of person other people fell in love with; love was blind, after all. But Agreste was a Noir and there were very few free Noir left. Nino didn't consider it his business to worry about Agreste in that fashion, but Plagg might think differently. And if Plagg thought it was Nino's business, what Nino thought didn't matter much. So Nino watched and waited for additional clues, but Agreste didn't drop any.
On the other hand, Agreste had been so innocent-seeming, so insistent, that he had pried all sorts of details from Nino, some of it conflicting, on how Earthlings demonstrate interest. Nino recalled the day he had spent explaining the nuances between "hard to get" and "not interested". More to the point, Nino recalled explaining the rules of various games used to suss out attraction such as Spin the Bottle, Truth or Dare, Secret Admirer, and - of particular relevance - an ancient game of two people getting locked in a closet.
"What's wrong?" Alya said in reply to his groan.
"I know why we're here," he said, wanting to bang his head against something.
After a pregnant pause, she asked, "Are you going to tell me?"
The real question was how did Agreste figure it out? The Noir was curious but so much of Earthling interactions eluded him. Nino was sure Alya hadn't noticed yet. With an exaggerated grimace, he realized Marinette must have mentioned something to her squad mate; she and Nino had known each other long enough for her to recognize that Nino liked Alya just as he had noticed the new flyer was less than enamored with her old boyfriend.
Nino sighed deeply. There were so many ways this could blow up in his face. The worst, he decided, was the delayed explosion, holding the unexploded ordnance in his hand and waiting for the hidden counter to reach zero, not knowing who else would be present when it went off.
If he didn't tell Alya now, Nino realized that he would probably never find the words. He had heard enough from Hector Cesaire to know that the doctor would only stay as long as he was needed, that his unique skill set might call him elsewhere on very short notice, and that Hector's entire family would probably go with him. Or at least that is what he first thought, but recently Alya had mentioned some long term plans that implied she at least would remain on the Françoise Dupont.
If Alya wasn't going to stay, there was no point in admitting to his crush. Nino would get over it in time; he was too easygoing not to. But if she was planning on staying behind after her father got reassigned, then Nino needed to speak now or remain forever silent, because there was no way she would let it slide if he confessed later.
"I'm only telling you because I trust you not to get mad at Agreste," he began, believing no such thing but hoping to give her that idea, "but have you ever heard of Seven Minutes in Heaven?"
.o8o.
The second leg of their run was longer than the first. She hasn't noticed how quiet it felt on the earlier run with Stone Heart as copilot to keep her company. She'd have to load a recording before she did this again.
As she exited lightspace, her comm crackled and spat. Agreste was yelling something, his tone urgent although his words were incomprehensible. His flyer zoomed off at an unexpected angle and she tried to keep an eye on him.
"Black Cat," she called, "is everything alright?"
Then she thought she saw something in the black-on-black of space. Then the first external sensor came back red. Then something hit her flyer's tail. Then there was a very small explosion less than 3 meters behind her head.
"Was that an engine?" she yelled. More sensors started lighting up red in response to the explosion but her flyer held together. Her regular engine was still operable but the tail was damaged. She could feel the loss of maneuverability in the controls.
Agreste yelled something back at her then caught himself and tried again. "The space around the station is mined. This must be the work of the Akuma."
More sensors reported back on Marinette's display. Her lightspace engine was currently inoperable in addition to the hit to her tailfin. As she called out the readings to Black Cat, she concluded that her only hope lay at the station on the other side of the minefield. Where she sat now, she could float about, waiting for Agreste to return to the carrier and send a rescue mission, her breathable air slowly dwindling. Surely she would be saved in time, but she's rather save herself. At the station, she stood a chance of repairing the engine she needed to get back to the Françoise Dupont in her lifetime and under her own power.
"It's just like a simulation," she said calmly when her partner balked at the idea of letting her weave through the field of explosives. She thought back to the person who had made her tow a barge through the destabilized asteroid field and wanted to hug them in gratitude.
"Then I'm staying with you," Black Cat said with a note of challenge. "If the Akuma have taken the station, you won't be able to repair your engines and defend yourself alone. And if there is anyone's injured, I may be able to help them."
So they began to creep their way toward the station, too tensely focused on avoiding the mines to think of much else. Their conversation dried up to only the most pertinent of facts. As they got closer, they began to catch hints of damage, but the station remained silent, not once trying to hail them.
At last they were past the minefield and Black Cat did a quick loop to check the integrity of the station. Despite parts of the exterior being blackened or missing, it didn't look uninhabitable although the continued radio silence from the station only increased their anxiety. The station had been attacked within the last day or two; surely the crew was eager for someone to come and help them, even if Ladybug needed help too.
Agreste triggered an automatic landing routine which opened the hangar bay doors and guided them into the station safely. Marinette 's stomach and sense of balance swung off kilter as she felt the gravity of the station latch onto her. No one came to greet or challenge them as they hopped out of their flyers after the internal environment was restored. Marinette glanced at the back of her flyer and winced.
While Marinette began an in-depth diagnostic and repair program on the lightspace engine, Agreste announced their presence on the station-wide communications but no one came out of the woodwork.
Ladybug pulled off a damaged panel and frowned. A coupling between the LSE and a control board looked crispy and fell apart at her touch. She was going nowhere without a replacement part. Without a twinge of guilt, she began to rummage through the few craft that were also parked in the hangar. All of them had been damaged to the point that they were unflyable, but the second one had a suitable replacement coupling which she happily scavenged.
Once the LSE was reconnected with the main computer, she triggered a diagnostic program that would also reset or repair what it could. She just hoped whatever was wrong was also easy to fix. If it was anything complicated she would need -
"Alya!" she said with a groan.
At the mention of the name, Agreste dropped the cable he was holding. "I am in so much trouble," he whispered, his voice carrying clearly through the open space.
"We're both in trouble," Marinette corrected him. Agreste may have shoved their friends in the closet, but Marinette had gone along with the prank. "We are both in trouble. So much trouble."
.o8o.
There was a knock on the door and Nino had to admire Alya's foresight. They were fully clothed although incriminatingly disheveled. For how long had they been stuck here? For how long had they enjoyed being stuck here?
The knock came again, more tentatively. A muffled, "Hello? I know you're in there," followed it. That was a woman's voice. Marinette?
"Just a moment," Alya answered. Nino could feel and hear her moving beside him, running her fingers through her hair, bringing it to order and pulling it back into a bun at her nape. "As we agreed," she spoke low to him, "I get to kill them first, then you can kill whatever is left of those two. And no word about what actually happened in here to our besties, my dad, or anyone else."
Alya had wanted to keep this under wraps and he had not been in a position to negotiate at the time. "Agreed," he said quietly before raising his voice to call out, "You can let us out now."
The lock clicked loudly in the dark and the door cracked open. Light flooded in, temporarily blinding them. They blinked rapidly and realized that their savior was not Marinette after all but another member of the gold squad.
"Where's Dupain-Cheng?" asked Alya. She had a bone to pick with her bestie.
"Ladybug and Black Cat still haven't come back from their run," the flyer said. "Mad Dog sent me to get you out. You're in his closet."
"His closet?" Alya repeated. She felt the need to argue with someone.
"His and… nevermind. Point is, find your own next time."
Alya was clearly about to protest but Nino stepped forward. "Why aren't Black Cat and Ladybug back yet?"
The pilot shrugged. "No idea. Mad Dog's not happy."
Nino frowned. Alya's plans for their besties would have to wait.
.o8o.
Once their flyers were recharging and the diagnostic on Ladybug's LSE was underway, they took an eerie walk to the medical bay, looking for survivors.
Marinette had heard enough about the Akuma to know that they didn't intentionally leave anyone behind; Akuma warfare was built on slaves and financed by ransoms. But the space station was a tangled warren of storage facilities. Someone could have successfully hid during the attack and could now be waiting for a rescue.
The medical bay was empty.
The inhabited part of the ship was relatively small, and the rooms were all conveniently close to each other with the exception of the hangars and engine room. The walk from the medical bay to the command center was short and took them past the kitchen and dining hall. They were all empty.
Marinette sat at the communications desk. "This is the UMSS 782-Delta," she recorded. "The station had been attacked by unknown assailants. The crew is missing. Mines have been placed around the station. Approach with caution."
She then set the message to broadcast in a repeating loop. Ladybug and Black Cat had been gone too long - over an hour past their scheduled return time - and Mad Dog was no doubt sending other flyers to find out what happened to them. Hopefully this warning would prevent anyone else from ending up like her.
"Turn it off," came a voice from the shadows and Marinette's heart nearly leapt out of her throat.
She and Agreste spun around to spot an Earthling male hovering over the threshold, glaring at them angrily. The insignia on his sleeves said that he was a lieutenant in engineering.
"Turn it off," the crewman repeated.
Marinette clutched her fingers to keep them from trembling but she made no move to disable the warning.
"I'm Ladybug and this is Black Cat," she said shakily. The man intimidated her. "We're second lieutenants assigned to the UMS Françoise -"
"Turn it off before they come back!" The man advanced on them quickly and Marinette could now see the pipe he held behind him like a club. The command center was not large, and there was not a lot of room to maneuver if the man attacked.
Agreste physically imposed himself between the crewman and Marinette, his hands up in a placating gesture. "We mean no harm. Members of our squad will be here soon to rescue us. They can rescue you as well, and anyone else who is still here."
The crewman stopped coming closer but he adjusted his grip on the pipe. "What are you?" he asked. The man's skin was not much lighter than Agreste's, but the fur covering the alien confused him.
"My name is Agreste, and I am a free Noir."
The man smiled at that, then laughed humorlessly. "Freedom is an illusion," he said and swung the pipe like a bat.
Agreste didn't exactly dodge. Instead, he threw himself at the crewman which lessened the impact of the blow. It was the man's arm that connected with Agreste 's ribs rather than the metal pipe.
"Go! Run!" Agreste shouted.
Marinette didn't need to be told twice. She tore out of there. Once she reached the hangar, she began to prepare both flyers for immediate launch, disconnecting the cables that had recharged and refueled their craft.
Agreste ran into the hangar as she finished her preparations.
"Where is he?" Ladybug asked, slipping into her seat.
"I don't know. Behind me," Black Cat answered, copying her moves in his own flyer. "I don't think he'll stay down for long. We need to go before he wises up and blows the hangar airlock."
They didn't waste time with excessive preflight checks. Once they had cleared the hangar doors, they still had the minefield to cross before they could safely engage the LSE. Talk was sparse between them at first but Ladybug finally blew out a staticky sigh and asked if her partner understood what had just happened back there. But as much as they could say, they could not satisfactorily explain what had driven the engineer to attack them.
Halfway through the mines, unfortunately, they had a new topic of conversation when a warning starting flashing and beeping across Ladybug's display. A quick glance told her it was nothing critical but it was a few minutes before she could turn her attention away from the mines floating around her to examine the warning fully.
"Cat," she said tersely, "what's the charge on your lightspace engine?"
"Eighty percent. Why?" came the distracted reply. The first two lightspace jumps had drained their engines but Agreste had recharged them while the flyers were at the station.
Marinette's heart sank. Her LSE was charged at barely 60% right now, and she was pretty sure it had been above 70% before they had left the hangar. The engine had been damaged and was leaking charge. Maintaining the shell in lightspace would only drain it faster. If the strain of maintaining the shell drained the battery completely, the shell would crack and Marinette would be thrown violently out off lightspace and into regular space, wherever that happened to be. If she was lucky, she would be able to reach a planet or outpost. If she was really unlucky, she'd be dead before she could regain consciousness. She discussed her problem with Black Cat who began to panic on her behalf.
"Don't worry," she said to both of them. "I'll just monitor it and if the power gets too low, I'll exit lightspace on my own terms."
"You'll still end up stranded," he pointed out.
"That's where you come in," she smiled. "Have Mad Dog send someone else to pick me up and bring me back. Easy! But I hope it doesn't come to that. I'll barely live this down as it is."
He growled at her humor but there was nothing else either one of them could do.
.o8o.
It had been two hours since Ladybug and Black Cat had been expected back.
Mad Dog had sent Stone Heart and Birdman to check the first station but they had returned empty-handed. Mimic and Reflecta were on route to the second station to see if the two second lieutenants could be found.
Gore was pacing in the hangar. Marinette's parents were fretting quietly in Capt. Kim's office. Nino and Alya tried not to look out of place. Colonel Damocles had been informed, but he had been through similar situations often enough to know to conserve worry and elation until they were called for.
A sensor lit up with news of a small object appearing a few kilometers away, like a flyer dropping out of lightspace. The craft was hailed immediately and urgently, but the pilot remained silent for half a minute at least. In that time, the FD was able to read enough from its call sign to determine that this was the flyer Black Cat had used for his training run and that it was undamaged.
Just as Mad Dog took over the comm to yell at the rookie, status burst forth. "This is Black Cat. Ladybug dropped out of lightspace ten minutes ago. You have to go back for her."
