Adrien started running across the city before he realized he had no idea where his father's compound was. He'd spent the entirety of his time there shadowing the man and passing his various ability tests, but it had all been in an attempt to win his trust. Adrien had never actually made it to the inquisitive phase.

Changing course, he decided to head for a location he knew all too well. There had to be some clue in his house as to where the headquarters were, and if not, the worse he could do is get himself captured again. It might put Wayzz in a tight spot, but if what Tikki said was right, then it would all be over tonight anyway.

He arrived in the backyard, looking both ways before shifting and slipping easily between the wrought iron gate and through the hedge. Shifting back and brushing stray leaves from his arms, he hopped onto the stone porch and opened the door to the sunroom. Though it may be his favorite room in the otherwise cold house, the sizable backyard and extraneous rooms were still a ridiculous symbol of wealth in the overcrowded city. Adrien had always been envious of the cozy row homes and apartment complexes. Desperate as he was for some human interaction, even the neighborly feuds he'd hear about or see on TV seemed dreamy in comparison to his isolated existence. Now Adrien could see that it was all born out of necessity. It was all to protect his father's past from catching up with him and then, after his mother's death, it had all been to put on the perfect show. Play at the perfect life and land that crucial promotion. Take over the MRA and take over the city.

Adrien walked through the opulent doors to the main house and hated himself for being so blind for so long. He was so desperate to find some redeeming qualities in his father, find the part of him that made his mother fall in love all those years ago, that he'd stuck his head in the sand and refused to see Gabriel Agreste for who he truly was. He may not be all bad, but he certainly wasn't good either and too many people had already been hurt because of it. Too many more still could be. One of them was Marinette, and he refused to let that version of reality come to pass.

Adrien made a bee-line for his father's study, hurrying towards the safe behind his mother's portrait. He'd been acting before, but he had a purpose. If there was any hint as to where headquarters were, it was here.

He swung the painting open, careful to have it completely out of the way before touching his hand to the cool metal of the vault. Not bothering to shift, he sent a burst of destruction through his fingertips and watching in satisfaction as the metal crumbled, but didn't disintegrate. Instead, he swung it open, pleased to see the contents unaffected. He was slowly getting better at this.

Rummaging through paper after paper, he came up with nothing and was at the verge of losing hope when he saw a locket. He recognized it instantly, remembering how it never left his mother's neck. Adrien picked it up, rubbing it between his fingers gingerly. Feeling the indentation of an inscription in the back, he flipped it over and was shocked to see his parent's initials followed by a set of coordinates.

"It can't be that easy," he murmured to himself, pulling out his phone and plugging in the numbers. To his surprise, it was just that easy. The coordinates marked the center point of a park on the edge of the city. A bit more searching and Adrien discovered that it had been bought by a private company about a decade ago and completely refurbished, fitting the timeline of his mother's death perfectly. Scrolling through satellite images, he found three small buildings on the edge of the park, fitting with the few rooms where he'd noticed natural light during his time there.

That's where he was headed.

Looking up a quick route, he tucked his phone away, ignoring the pings of Plagg's increasingly threatening texts, and shifted. He didn't have time to spare.

Sprinting across the street and up to the nearest rooftop, he truly broke out in his full speed, away from the obstacles and shocked gazes of street level. He vaultd across buildings effortlessly, his feet following the path without his mind needing to engage. He usually loved it, the intense freedom of the wind in his fur and the instinctive rush of running faster and jumping higher. But today was different. He'd gotten in enough trouble during his time as a métamorphe to be familiar with the feeling of running for your life. It was terrifying but exhilarating, a game of cat and mouse that Adrien excelled at.

He wasn't running for his life, though. He was running for Marinette's, and if he never experienced this body-cripplingly terror again, it would be too soon. All he could think of was everything she hadn't done yet. All the dreams she'd whispered to him over the phone or in the few stolen moments they shared. Of being a fashion designer. Of studying abroad. Of traveling to meet her maman's family in China. And all the things they hadn't done yet. He wanted to stroll along the Seine with her, hand in hand, in perfect and blissful silence, the only noise her contented sigh as she leaned into his arm. He wanted to make her laugh until she snorted, boisterous and joyful and so Marinette. He wanted to watch her roll her eyes at him, jaw slackening as she groaned at a horrible joke he'd told. He wanted a million little moments strung together that spelled out the rest of their lives, intertwined and sparkling like a string of twinkling lights on an eternal evergreen tree.

He slowed, reaching the park and dropping to a crouch as he squeezed easily through the gates and prowled through the shrubbery towards what he spied as the main building. About ten meters away from an entrance, he froze, seeing two men he recognized as guards taking a smoke break. He crouched further, cursing the rustling of a tall grasses as he watched their heads whip in his direction.

"Probably just an animal," the one stated with a shrug, clearly content to ignore the noise, but the other looked at him sardonically.

"We are animals, you dimwit."

Adrien closed his eyes, trying to breath in quiet shallow bursts, until he heard them stop talking and looked again to find one man missing. The hair on his back began to rise.

"Serpe, come on. Can't we just finish our break? You're not actually on duty right now!" The other man called, and Adrien begged for his friend to listen to him. He started to back up slowly, hoping to make a mad dash as soon as he was far enough away, when he heard a hiss from his right followed by a sickly sweet smell filling his nostrils.

His eyelids started to droop, but managed to spot a snake with a diamond shaped head circling him. A shadow fell over them both and Adrien managed to look up.

"I just wanted a simple break," the reluctant accomplice sighed leaning down to grab him by the scruff of his neck. He tried to hiss in protest, but gave in to the losing battle with his consciousness and the world faded to black.

Nathalie frowned at the news of Gabriel's current interrogation before dismissing Wasp with a flick of her head. So the girl had figured it out. She'd be lying if she said she was surprised. Nathalie could tell from the first time they'd met that that girl was too clever for her own good. It would have been better if Nathalie had been able to deal with her the way she'd wanted to from the beginning, but of course Gabriel had been blinded by the girl's powers...all her potential.

Now, Adrien's little girlfriend was causing just the trouble Nathalie knew she would. Luckily, it was too late to matter.

Gazing down at the slowly awakening form of her prisoner, she smirked. It was time for this charade to stop. It was time to make Gabriel pay.

Kicking the black cat at her feet, she was rewarded with a half-hearted hiss as two green eyes slowly blinked open. She looked down at him, tapping her foot in impatience when he didn't immediately shift back. Sighing, she pulled out her MRA-issued side piece, adjusted the settings and pointed it in his direction in annoyance.

"Remember our old friend the IER I told you about? Well," she smiled down at him. "It works both ways. Either you shift, or I make you," she warned.

He still didn't move. Rolling her eyes to cover a quick glance to check and make sure her own protective bracelets were in place, she pointed her piece and shot, involuntarily cringing as she heard Adrien scream through the forced transformation. She'd learned the hard way what it felt like the one time she forgot to make sure her reflecting cuffs weren't secure. She'd never made that mistake again.

As he lay panting on the floor, his golden hair reflecting blindingly under the artificial lighting, she had a brief moment of panic as the memories of Gio hit her. Just as young...The same pain in his eyes...His strawberry locks so similar… But this was not her brother. Her dead brother, she reminded herself and latching on to the familiar anger instead.

She looked away quickly, trying to pass off her brief moment of empathy as indifference while she switched her gun from "shift" to "kill". Reaching down to grab a still-dazed Adrien by the collar,she yanked him up. The boy stumbled into a standing position, only finding his balance when she wrapped her arm around his neck and placed the cool barrel of the gun to his temple.

"Walk."

He hesitated, meeting her eyes in the glass door before them with a cold calculation that startled her. She'd practically watched this boy become a man, and despite his usually sunny disposition she sometimes forgot that he was still his Father's son. Living as he had for the last decade had forced him to become just as keen as her. He didn't act on it much, preferring to ride out the wave his father's eccentricities and dissociative tendencies, but Nathalie could see in his eyes that he had not been unaffected by his upbringing, regardless of the way he chose to live his life.

Adrien took a step and then another, each deliberate and slow as she guided him through the corridors of the complex through a series of nudges with the gun firmly against his head. They reached their final destination and she took a breath, preparing herself for the moment she'd imagined in her head an endless amount of times, before leaning to scan her iris and. Waiting with anticipation as the doors opened, she watched with disdain as Gabriel stomped with the agitation of a petulant toddler and shouted for her once again.

"Really, Gabriel," she scoffed with a roll of her eyes. "Enough with the dramatics."

Striding through the doors with purpose, Nathalie held her head high as she took in the scene around her. The girl sat in apparent shock, her eyes trained with an intensity on Nathalie's prisoner that confirmed her suspicions that they were in league together. No matter, they were both inconsequential in her plans anyway, merely a means to an end.

Then Nathalie's eyes turned to her true target and felt her lips curl in pleasure at the barely perceptible shock that crossed Gabriel's face. She wracked her brain for the last time she'd seen a flicker of such genuine emotion cross his features. He must have been truly worried. Good.

"Miss me, Bugaboo?" Adrien's voice echoed through the room and Nathalie's eyes darted back to the girl who rolled her eyes despite the tension in her posture. Gabriel's eyes flickered between the two and Nathalie instinctively tightened her grip on Adrien's neck, burying her gun further into the thin flesh of his temple. At the sound of his son's intake of breath, Gabriel's eyes spun back to Nathalie, exactly where she wanted them.

"What is this, Nathalie?" His features turned tender, regarding her the way she remembered when he'd first found her, only a child… Memories pelted at her from the past.

Cold city streets...her and the boys escaping from yet another government child care facility determined to split them up, to send them to separate homes...They just had to make it another year, Nathalie was nearly eighteen...Then they found the park, private but eternally abandoned and thought it was a safe haven sent from the gods...He found them there, huddled under a dense clustering of trees, a blanket fort padded with cardboard to help insulate them from the cold...He held out his hand, gave them warmth...Unlocked a part of themselves, their heritage, they'd never knew existed...Practically raised them...Protected them…

Until, one day, he didn't.

"Nathalie," Gabriel sighed in exasperation, running a hand across his face in exhaustion. "Let my son go. Tell my why you're throwing this little...temper tantrum."

Nathalie started at his last words, her grip loosening on Adrien as her vision went red.

"Temper...Tantrum?" She gritted through her teeth, trying to think through her anger when a blast of pain flared through her left arm and she dropped it from Adrien's neck instantly. Shocked by the perfect handprint charred into her flesh there, she let Adrien scramble towards his little girlfriend, tucking her burning limb against her stomach and training her gun on Gabriel instead.

He took a step towards her, his hands swinging blasely at his sides as his eyes continued to stare her down, evaluating her the way he evaluated all of them. She couldn't help but laugh.

"You think you see everything, don't you?" She sneered, her nose crinkling in disgust. "You size up every single person who walks through these doors, passing judgement as if you can see their past, present and future in a glance. But you don't, do you?" She lifted her gun further, training it exactly on the center of his chest even as tears threatened her vision. "You used to be my hero, some all-powerful, all-knowing savior sent to take us from our pathetic lies. I knew you were a monster, but it didn't matter because I thought you were on our side. That you would protect up," Nathalie took a deep breath, steadying the emotion in her voice. "Then Gio and Rafa were taken, and you sat idly by. You said we had to bide our time, that we'd make them pay one day, but it's all just some act. Now I know better. You weren't a savior. You weren't even a monster. You're just a fraud and a coward, no better-no stronger-than any of us, and you certainly aren't omniscient. You didn't see this coming, did you, Gabe?"

She spat the name she knew he refused to let anyone call him since his wife and watched as anger uncoiled in his gaze. Slow and deliberate, like a serpent tensing before an attack.

"Your brothers were foolish," his voice was quiet but it roared in her ears. "I had only just started at the MRA. I was in no position to save them, but-"

"But they'd rue that day," Nathalie finished with a humorless laugh. "When Gabriel? When you gained more power? When you were president? When our army was stronger? Well, guess what? All those are true, and nothing has changed! The statiques still live their lives while we cower in the shadows!"

"We've had this discussion, Nathalie. We can't just obliterate the statiques. We need them-"

"Why?"

"To make them suffer!" Gabriel shouted back, his eyes taking on the manaicaly edge she'd come to approach warily, but she was throwing caution to the wind tonight. "To make them pay for what they have done. To watch them live a life of inferiority. They are more useful to us alive than dead."

"You still don't get it," she looked at him in exasperation. "I don't want them to live inferior lives. I don't want them to live at all," she shook her head at him. "They took my brothers from me, slaughtered them like animals. You don't understand-"

"Insolent child!" Gabriel's voice thundered through the barren room. "They murdered my wife! Don't tell me what I do or do not understand about those cretins." Gabriel stepped towards her, his gaze piteous through his palpable anger. "You lack the vision necessary. I was foolish to ever believe you could follow in my footsteps."

She stood, regarding the man who promised to protect her-to protect her family- and realized he needed to die. She had the vision necessary. He would just never understand it.

"You're only one person, Gabriel," she shook her head sadly, dropping her gun to admire it in her hands as she realized what she must do next. "So you can't really understand. At least not yet. And you're right, it was foolish to believe I'd follow in your footsteps," she lifted her head and leveled a cold eyes at her once-mentor. "I walk behind no man. It's time for a change in leadership."

She stared at Gabriel, but lifted her gun to point in a completely different direction. "But first, let me show you what it feels like to truly lose everything."

Her eyes turned towards her target, hunched over his girlfriend's form and completely oblivious as to how his life hung in suspension, and fired.