The three friends walked out of Fu's apartment mentally drained, their faces a sharp contrast to the lively Paris street on the brisk, sunny morning.

"I'm going to go home for a bit. See my dad, try to ignore the looming death cloud following us," Chloé announced, and Marinette snorted at her blunt appraisal of their situation.

They both kissed her cheek in farewell, and went their separate ways.

"Home sounds good. How about a bakery stop, chaton?" Marinette looked up at Adrien.

"Chocolate cures all ails," he agreed readily, and linked by arms intertwined around each other's waist, they started to amble as one down the cobbled street.

Alya dropped her bags gingerly-careful not to wake Trixx-in her apartment, marveling again at how cool it was inside as soon as she got out of the sun. Jordan may be hot, but it was a dry heat compared to Paris in the summer. Although, she couldn't decide which wrecked more havoc on her curls. Thank god a braid was always a classic style or else her hair would be a constant bush no matter what she put in it.

Unwrapping her scarf, she hung it up on the line out her window, over the semi-enclosed center of the building, and hoped the wind would dislodge any remaining sand from her week camping in the desert. She walked into the kitchen, poured a cold glass of water, and reached for her phone that she had left near its charger over the past few weeks. There was no reception where they'd been anyway, and she'd rather use her solar panel to charge her multiple cameras. It had been a final field trip for a photojournalism class, but she also was taking videos and hoping to try her hand at nature documentaries. Unfortunately, living creatures were few and far between, but she got some great time lapse videos of the night sky. Paris may be the city of lights, but the stars over the desert ? There was no competition.

Now all she had to do was edit and upload her final work to her class blog. She was anxious to get started, but also hesitant because it was her final assignment in Jordan. Her international journalism program back at her home university was setup to send the students abroad randomly, just as it would be were they sent on real journalistic assignments. They could request regions, and usually the best students had a higher chance of getting the general area they wanted, but Alya chose to let them send her wherever. When she'd gotten Jordan as her first placement, she was a little disappointed. She spoke fluent French, Spanish and English, so she had been hoping for a placement in Africa or South America. Her focus was human rights journalism, and a big part of that investigative process was interviewing locals who experienced the conditions or situations she was researching. Her arabic was non-existent before coming to Amman, and while some people knew some broken English, as soon as she left the city, communicating was impossible. She'd picked up a bit, but not nearly enough to do the kind of interviews she was used to. It was a challenge, but it forced her to learn new techniques. Bonding and communicating with people in other ways. Making connections with some locals that she shared a language with enough for them to want to help her, and focusing on the visual part of her journalism. She'd become particularly attached to her elderly neighbor, alsayidat Hani and her daughter Aquilah. Aquilah was studying English at the local university, and she'd been instrumental in helping Alya interview some locals on more than one occasion. But even without Aquilah, the challenge invigorated her, and she honestly had begun to thrive in in the ways of communicating nonverbally.

She was excited to head to Croatia next and focus on the immigrant crises there. It was something she'd been wanting to cover, and a topic she felt passionately about, but somehow the foreign streets of Amman that seemed very overwhelming at first had finally started to feel like home, and now she had to leave and start over somewhere new. At least she had a few more weeks. She was planning to spend her break here and then head straight to Croatia in the new year. She looked down at her phone. Or, maybe not...

She started to scroll through her notifications and almost dropped her glass of water. She expected a few messages from Marinette and Nino, maybe Adrien and her siblings too, but the magnitude of increasingly urgent texts and emails startled her. There were even multiple ones from Chloé, so she knew something was wrong.

Trixx floated over, having finally awoken from the little makeshift den she created in a pocket of Alya's camera bag.

"Woah," she said, looking through the texts. They were all cryptically asking how she was and when she'd be back, without saying much else. They were obviously trying not to worry her, but the convergence of all her friends-especially all her miraculous friends-checking in at once could not be a coincidence. The messages started a few days after she had left, so ten days had passed without her responding.

She checked the time and cursed. It was 2 am their time. Maybe Nino? She walked over to her calendar and checked the date. He was supposed to be in Copenhagen today. It was his last show. She knew he was trying to go back to Paris for winter break, but didn't know when. Looking at the schedule again she realized it was the last week of Marinette's term, so more than likely she was up late with her designs.

Making her decision, she pulled up her laptop and video-called her best friend, hoping she had the app open and would see it. The melodic ring echoed through her minuscule apartment and Trixx hovered to her right, just out of view of the camera in case Mari wasn't alone.

"ALYA!" Marinette practically screamed at her. She was in the living room section of her apartment, a single light from her desk lamp casting an eerie glow on her face. Tikki and Plagg came to hover just over her shoulder, each wearing their own expression of relief at seeing her. That worried Alya even more. What had they thought had happened? What's going on?

"Aly?" she heard a vaguely male voice in the background and then saw a bundle of blankets move and promptly roll right off the couch, resulting in an echoing thud on the floor. Marinette cringed, squeezing her eyes shut and grimacing as the body smacked against the coffee table, but didn't turn around. Suddenly a grinning bespeckled face alongside a much smaller green god appeared in the screen.

"ALYS!" Nino yelled, echoing Marinette's earlier tone of elation to see her.

"Not that I'm not touched by all your enthusiasm, but what the hell is going on? I leave to do my final project for two weeks, and suddenly the miraculous are under attack?" She was trying to talk to both of them, but Nino's face was still occupying most of the screen.

"Nino, back up. Sit down," Marinette physically shoved his face away from the screen and pointed to another chair for him to bring over. "Why do you say that? Has something happened?" The concern was palpable in Marinette's voice and eyes.

"Chloé mentioned to be careful in her text, and if I had any doubts that something was going on, your face just confirmed it. What's up, girl?"

"We don't-" she looked over at Nino who was drumming on the table and avoiding her eyes. "We don't really know. There's someone following us. Well, Chloé mainly and Nino for a little bit too. Adrien and I haven't seen her… Apparently there's this ancient artificial miraculous and it's hunting our miraculous...Nino could explain it better." Marinette trailed off her rambling, and looked to Nino to continue. Nino had become their miraculous encyclopedia over the years, so if this issue had something to do with miraculous lore, he'd be all over it.

"Okay, Al. Here's what's what."

He went on to explain what Chloé had dealt with for a month and then what happened to him just before he left Stockholm finishing with what Master Fu had told them.

"So, for the last week, we've been trying to put together any information we could find on Desymaic and mentions of his experiments as well as look out for Miss Cargo Pants," Alya snorted at Chloé's nickname. Classic Chloé to focus in on the crazy lady's fashion choices. "But…" Marinette trailed off, giving her a pointed look.

"But your favorite investigative journalist has been MIA for two weeks, got it." Alya nodded and Marinette stuck her tongue out at her. "Okay, send me the info you have, including the correct spelling of that philosopher's name and any description you can make of the woman following you."

"I can do one better. I had Chloé and Nino describe her, so I made a sketch. Sending them now."

Alya opened her email, looking over some things, and adding to the notes she'd been taking while Nino was talking. Then she sat back.

"Balance," she murmured to herself, putting something together. "You and Adrien haven't seen her?"

"No," Marinette responded, noting the look in her friend's eye. "I know, it's strange. She found Chloé and Nino and tracked them. Chloé wasn't even widely known, and somehow she found her in London. So if she is able to do that, why hasn't she found us in Paris? The most obvious place."

"She's herding us," Alya declared. "And it's working. As soon as they could, Chloé and Nino ran back to Paris, and now all four of you are in the same place. And if what Fu said was right and this thing does want all the miraculous, maybe she targeted Chloé for the collective manipulation of the civilization miraculous?" Alya paused, working through her thought out loud. The civilization miraculous would be the most efficient way to manipulate them all at once, but Fu had said that the stone already possessed an approximation of all their powers, so that didn't make sense... Why Chloé specifically? It had followed Nino, but it had terrorized Chloé… She looked up when it came to her, but one look at Marinette told her that her friend had already gotten there.

"Or," Marinette finished for her. "It sees her as the weakest link. At least to the public, she'd never really seemed like a fully integrated member of the team."

Alya snorted, finding it funny that anyone would ever look at Chloé and think she was weak, but Marinette had a point. She seemed like the outsider in their group. Alya looked up at Marinette and Nino then. Nino looked surprised by their declarations, but Marinette just looked resigned.

"But you suspected all that. Targeting Chloé, the herding..." Nino looked over at Marinette in shock. "That's why your texts have been so cryptic," Alya continued.

"I wasn't sure," Marinette responded. "I wanted to talk to you first, but I didn't want to alarm anyone, especially Chloé, or make you come running back before you confirmed my suspicions." She sighed and looked wryly at her best friend. "Which, of course, you just did."

Alya smirked at her best friend. She may be an art major, by Marinette's mind could rival hers in working out a conspiracy. They'd already managed to thwart one as it was. Despite being so different in most things, their minds could be uncannily in sync sometimes.

"What was your plan then?" Alya asked, but already knowing the answer and Marinette just smiled.

"You already said it."

"Balance." Alya nodded, noting how Nino's head whipped back and forth between the two girls and she almost felt guilty. Nino was crazy perceptive, but best friends had their own secret language, and even after all these years, he still couldn't quite keep up with Marinette and Alya's.

"Balance," Marinette confirmed. "I think it needs us all together for whatever it is planning, but some things Fu has said makes me also think we need all of us together to destroy it."

"Well," Alya sighed, sitting back in her seat. "Looks like I'm coming home for Christmas after all."

Marinette didn't even try to contain her squeal of joy, and despite the circumstances, Alya was happy to be seeing them soon too.