Day 31 – Soulmates
It didn't take long for the shadow monster to defeat Papillon's hero – and with one shadow swipe the rock hero was cast aside. Dark tendrils of energy leeched out from the shadows of a building and wrapped around the akumatized hero, binding him in place.
The group of huddled heroes didn't notice any of this, still absorbed in their planning.
The shadow advanced, swift and silent. It raised its arm high above its head, aiming for the most prominent target: Paon.
With a decisive roar of victory, it swung down with all its strength, cleaving straight through Paon's head.
Paon vanished in a puff of smoke.
Anticipating resistance as its claw hit Paon, the shadow being put all of its energy into the strike. So when it swiped through air, it stumbled off-step.
"Now!"
The shadow being turned to the voice now behind it, discovering the heroes standing there. Paon stood in front of the group. He strummed his fan, illuminating the feathers. The pendant around Rena's neck flashed as another section of tail dimmed. She continued playing her flute.
With a roar of fury at the deception, the shadow lunged forward, smoky claws outstretched. Paon lowered his fan level to the monster. He waited, confidently holding his stance strong against the rushing demon creature.
"Sonic Scream," he intoned at the last second, snapping his wrist. The pulsating arc of sound shattered the air, freezing the shadow in place. He ducked aside the moment the beam left his fan.
Papillon peeked out from where she had been behind Paon. She held up a white akuma in her palms and blew it to the shadow with a gentle kiss. "Metamorphosis."
The paralysis wore off right as the akuma touched the shadow. It roared as beams of light started to pierce through the darkness.
Ladybug leaped into the air and threw her beach ball at the disintegrating demon. "Go, Paon!"
Paon threw his boomerang at the sphere. The edges of the fan hit it and the sharp points pierced through the thin material.
But this was no normal beach ball.
This was a Lucky Charm.
Instead of a gently puff of air petering out, a massive explosion ripped open, slamming into the stunned and dying monster. It stumbled back and Rena lowered her flute as the last of her illusion dropped: showing the open portal right behind the creature. They had carefully manipulated their positions to place the demon right in front of the portal.
The expulsion of air forced the demon back into the portal right as the last bits of disintegration ripped its body apart.
"Chat!"
"Cataclysm!"
The feline hero pounced forward with one hand outstretched and slammed into where the edge of the portal would be.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the fabric of reality as the portal began to chip and fall before disintegrating entirely. In the aftermath, the heroes stood panting as their Miraculouses beeped down their limits.
"Is it over?" Chat finally ventured to ask.
"For now," Paon answered. His pin beeped. "Let's discuss this back at HQ."
As they turned to leave, a low groan stopped them. They turned to the boy Papillon had akumatized earlier.
"Ah, are you okay?" she asked him as he rubbed his hand against his head. "You did spectacularly as my champion," she praised. "You're very brave."
"Thank you, ma'am," he replied. "But I was only looking for my friends. They ran out of class so suddenly I was worried about them. I can't find them anywhere. When I saw that massive creature, I just wanted to help. I didn't want my friends to get hurt."
"Nino?"
Chat's incredulous exclamation caught Ladybug and Rena's attention also.
"Hey Chat Noir. Nice to see you again, dude. You know my buds, right? Have you seen them anywhere?"
"Actually, Nino, I believe they all ran into the Metro stop over there," Ladybug said, pointing.
"Hey, thanks dudes. You guys were awesome, by the way."
"Thanks, Nino, so were you," Chat said.
Papillon gave him another warm smile. "You did very well for a hero, young man," she said.
"Thank you, ma'am."
More beeping forced the heroes to rise suddenly and dart over to the next rooftop, out of sight of Nino. Paon sighed. "Fine, you three go establish your alibi, then meet back at headquarters," he amended.
The three teenagers nodded before heading off toward the Metro.
Back at the manor, Gabriel had his shoulder properly bandaged and resting in a sling with an ice pack resting on it. He draped his jacket arm over the sling. He swallowed a few tablets of pain medicine that Emilie handed him, along with some of Master Fu's tea. Then she left to prepare the recharge food for their kwamis. Nooroo and Duusu immediately dove into their respective dishes and began to devour the contents.
It didn't take too long for the rest of the teenagers to arrive. Emilie held out the treats and their kwamis scarfed the food down. The humans accepted the food that Gabriel motioned to on the counter and grabbed platefuls of fruit and finger sandwiches to restore their appetites.
"Are you certain you're okay, Mr. Agreste?" Marinette asked, staring at his shoulder with concern.
He nodded. "I will be fine. It's just a minor injury. It will be healed in a week or two."
"Is that creature gone for good?" Alya asked.
"I don't know, dear," Emilie answered, sipping her tea. "We could ask Master Fu, but somehow I think the answer is going to be 'no'."
The three teenagers slumped.
"Don't act so discouraged," Gabriel admonished. "The last time a portal was so effectively destroyed like this, it held them at bay for two years."
Adrien's eyes widened. "Two... wait, do you mean...?"
"Yes, dear," Emilie said. "That's what Gabriel and I were trying to do. Research and close the portals. They can appear anywhere in the world, but they do have certain preferential focal points. Places they're most likely to show up. That's what we were attempting to research."
"So my Cataclysm can close portals?"
"Well," Emilie said, "it's more of a combination of the right chain of events. The disintegration of the monster at the same time imbued the doorway with too much energy. You sealing it with Cataclysm added to that and it caused the portal to collapse upon itself."
"Will it ever reopen?" Marinette asked.
"That one most likely will never reopen," Emilie answered.
"That one?" Alya asked, her sharp reporter's skills honing in on the loophole.
"Yes, that one," Emilie said. "There are many other potential sites. And many other potential pathways. The shadow creatures can slip in easier between the cracks, weakened and only a faint glimmer of their true potential. Once we see those, we have precious limited time to pinpoint the location and plan for its sealing. We got lucky today."
"Not all luck," Gabriel muttered. "We did have a fair idea of where it would show up. Just not when exactly."
"And that, perhaps, is what we need to study further," Emilie added.
Gabriel winced as his shoulder twinged. He set down his drink. "Forgive me, I am going to take my leave of this and tend to my shoulder. You all did brilliantly out there today," he said, favoring them with a rare smile. "Now go spend some time with your friend Nino. You all deserve a break."
"Thanks, Father!" The boy beamed and a warm flush of happiness shot through him. Adrien didn't hate him. "You were pretty amazing yourself."
And he didn't realize how much he needed to hear that simple praise coming from Adrien until the words left his son's mouth.
"Thank you, Adrien." Gabriel reached over and roped him into an awkward one-armed hug for a brief moment before releasing him.
The kids grabbed a handful of snacks and darted out the door with their kwamis in tow. Adrien shot him one last sunshine smile over his shoulder before he vanished after his friends. Gabriel sighed as they left and Emilie chuckled.
She helped him upstairs and into his pajamas, settling beside him in bed. "It's a bit early for sleep, isn't it?" she teased.
"I'm injured. And achy." Gabriel closed his eyes.
Giggling softly, she curled up next to him. He wrapped his good arm around her. "Why do I get the feeling we might have a new hero joining us soon?" she mused.
He released a long sigh of resignation. "Knowing Fu, probably," he agreed.
"In the meantime, I've come up with another plan on how we can get our oblivious son together with that sweet girl he adores."
Gabriel cracked open one eye. "Oh?"
"We'll need to get Rena's help."
He chuckled. "I don't think that will be a problem."
"Mmm, me neither."
And she snuggled into him, her head rising and falling gently with his breaths. He was so glad he didn't lose her again. Didn't lose Adrien. They achieved a victory today. And despite the lingering ache in his head and the throbbing pain in his shoulder that the medicine was only now beginning to dull, he wouldn't change the outcome of today for anything in the world.
He had his soulmate next to him.
And that was enough.
The End
Author's Note: Super thank you to PerditaAlottachocolate for helping with ideas, beta-reading the stories, and her support to encourage me to keep going when I really didn't want to. She's done the themed month challenges before and I applaud her for being more successful at it than I was :)
Also, check out her final installment of her super fluffy Marichat story, "Next Rainfall." Again, I'm not a Marichat fan, but this story definitely made me melt with its fluffiness.
Final thoughts on this month. I didn't much like it. I'll be honest. I love fluff and I love happiness and warm fuzzies to death. But I didn't like how I stressed myself over coming up with a prompt for each day. It made several chapters way too short for my liking, and the daily updates meant I wasn't able to devote as much time to each prompt as I would have liked, going back and buffing it up and editing it more carefully. There are a lot of chapters I feel could have had... more. More descriptions, more words, more expanding upon the brief moments I created in those chapters, more... world building, I suppose. Had I taken the time I normally do to write the story in its entirety before posting, a lot of these prompts would probably have been ~3k words or so, just because I would have expanded upon a lot of things. It went from "this is my best effort" to "this is good enough for today". And I hated that sense of mediocrity. I felt I was cheating you guys out of something I know I could do better on.
So why did I keep doing it? Why not just settle down and focus on one or two prompts? Well, it was a challenge. It was something I had never done before and I wanted to test myself. Also, at the time I decided to write this there was an influx of "bad evil abusive Gabriel" stuff out there (in the form of both fics and other things) and that just makes me super depressed, because Gabriel is my favorite character. I wanted to dedicate this entire month to him and the fluffiness between him and Emilie. But mostly him.
Will I do another month like this? No, probably not. The people organizing Fluff Month dropped out and quit promoting the stories and submissions very early on in the month, so quite honestly the only thing keeping me going was knowing that the twenty of you who read this story were waiting for the next installment :) Thank you all for your support, you guys are really the only reason this story was completed!
