AN: This happens the same night as the last chapter of "The Fashion Disaster." If you were wondering how Marinette would take finding out that she and Adrien had been targeted by a vast conspiracy which her best friend knew about, here's your answer!
To Speckleflower: Considering that he punned about 3 seconds after Ladybug gave the ultimatum…
To Dragon Lord Draco: I really like the dynamic between these two: he always protects her; she always comforts him.
To anonymousfriend27: That is a downside to publishing stories slightly out-of-order. I'm done "filling in the blanks" now, so there will be some actual stakes moving forward… You have been warned…
To Rose Tiger: I have one more Anthology chapter written, and a few more ideas, but I'm putting a lot of my writing time into the next multi-chapter fic at the moment.
Marinette wasn't sure what woke her up. She and Adrien had fallen asleep on his couch for a few hours, only to wake up starving. Tikki and Plagg had helpfully brought them some leftover pizza and then disappeared to give them privacy – or at least the illusion of it. Marinette could've sworn she'd heard Plagg snickering while she and Adrien ate and talked. It had been close to midnight when they finally crawled into Adrien's bed, he wrapped his arms protectively around her, and she was lulled to sleep by the sound of his steady breathing.
Now Marinette found herself awake at – she pulled Adrien's alarm clock toward herself – 4:30 in the morning! No one else was supposed to be in the mansion with them. While they were eating, Tikki had let them know that Alya, Max, and Nino had all left hours before. Mme Lenoir wasn't due back from Lyons until the afternoon. Master Fu was still in Australia. The two of them and their Kwamis should have been alone in the mansion. And a glance at the bookcase showed that Tikki and Plagg were still asleep, curled up next to each other on a small nest of cheese rinds and pastry boxes.
Marinette was about to close her eyes and go back to sleep when she heard another noise. It sounded like voices carrying down the hall from the entryway. All traces of sleepiness vanished in an instant. She glanced over at Adrien, only to find him still fast asleep; he had stayed up long after she nodded off, rubbing her back comfortingly to help her relax. She sighed affectionately. She wouldn't wake him up for something like this; she would have to be a terrible Ladybug to not be able to handle whoever this was on her own! She lifted Adrien's arm off her shoulder and slipped out of his bed. On her way out, she picked up Tikki and dropped her – still asleep – into a pocket of her pajamas.
"Shh!" someone was whispering. "Don't wake them up. I swear, you're louder than Daddy's elephants!"
"Well, sorry I'm not a sneaky little fox, Foxy," another voice retorted, slightly louder. "Are you going to tell me why you brought me here yet?"
"And I wonder why the twins always wake up in the middle of the night when you're over," the first voice muttered.
Marinette narrowed her eyes. As she approached the voices, they sounded more and more familiar, but what were they doing in the mansion now?
"It's not my fault those two are perpetual motion machines!" the second voice replied with a snort.
Marinette slipped into the shadows behind a life-sized statue of Himura Kenshin that Adrien had insisted on placing next to the office door. She'd hated the thing when he bought it – the burgundy kimono clashed with everything else in the entryway – but now she was grateful for the cover it provided. Rena Rouge ascended the stairs with someone Marinette didn't recognize. The unknown person wore a dark bodysuit and helmet and was at least a head taller than Rena Rouge.
Relaxing on seeing her best friend, Marinette stepped out of the shadows and stage-whispered, "You shouldn't go sneaking around people's houses in the middle of the night; you could be taken for a fox burglar!"
Rena Rouge and her companion both jumped a foot in the air. "Gah!" Rena Rouge gasped. "You nearly gave me a heart attack, girl! Shouldn't you and Sunshine be asleep?"
"Yes, we should," Marinette replied pointedly, folding her arms. "Mind telling me why I'm not?"
Rena Rouge held her hands up placatingly. "Sorry, girl," she ruefully began, "I didn't mean to wake you up. Or at least not yet. But this is something you needed to know about ASAP."
"Okay…" Marinette raised an eyebrow and glanced at Rena Rouge's silent companion.
"Right…" Rena Rouge muttered. She pointed at them in turn. "Marinette, you know Anansi; Anansi, you know Marinette…"
"Wait," Marinette began, looking Anansi down in the moonlight streaming in through the windows. "Why did you bring her here in the middle of the night? And what on earth are you wearing?"
"It's a body suit so people like you can't recognize me," Anansi retorted. "And I'd like to know what I'm doing at your boyfriend's house in the middle of the night, too, Foxy." She glared at Rena Rouge as she said the last word.
"I'm sure the bad guys are quite intimidated when they see you, Nora," Marinette told her, raising an eyebrow, "but the colors… and that symbol… and the helmet… none of it exactly matches…"
"What!" Anansi sputtered. "But I-It's-I'm – I like my bodysuit! I designed it myself!"
/"I'm sure you did your best," Marinette smirked, patting her arm condescendingly.
"Oh, no, Rainbows, you are not giving me a redesign!" Anansi turned to Rena Rouge. "Is that why you brought me to your friend's house? Because Marinette here designs all the super-suits?"
Rena Rouge rolled her eyes and pushed the office door open. "Give me a little more credit than that, A," she called over her shoulder, leading them into the office. She walked up to the portrait of Emilie Agreste and pushed a few hidden buttons. "We're here to talk business. And this does directly affect my girl here."
Marinette grabbed a jacket off the desk and threw it over her pajamas before joining Rena Rouge and Anansi on the elevator disk for the short ride down to the Heroes' Headquarters. She wasn't sure how comfortable she felt about Alya deciding to show Anansi their headquarters in the dead of night, and without consulting her or Adrien in advance. But she trusted Alya; she had to have a good reason. She studied Anansi's face carefully for a reaction as the elevator passed into the cavern and the overhead lights kicked on. Anansi's jaw dropped as she took it all in. Her eye was immediately drawn to the oblong brown shape resting along one wall.
"Is… is that… what is that?" Anansi breathed.
"Alien spaceship," Marinette replied offhandedly. "Crash landed in a forest and we brought it back here."
"And I'm supposed to just take your word for that, Pigtails?" Anansi asked dubiously.
"You sound like Plagg," Marinette muttered. Louder she said, "You realize whose headquarters this is, right?"
"Right. Of course you bunch would be hanging out with aliens, and of course you'd find a way to fit a spaceship down this tube!" Anansi shook her head. She glanced over at Marinette. "I'm just assuming that you're caught up in this somehow, considering you designed the Owl's suit. And… you know… this…"
Marinette's eyes widened. "Ohhh… so you're the one the Owl's been talking about for the last month!"
Rena Rouge rolled her eyes as the elevator disk receded into the turf. "Ladies," she interrupted them, "could we get down to business? Before we have to leave for school in a couple hours?"
Marinette nodded and followed Rena Rouge toward the grotto.
Rena Rouge led them into a recessed alcove past the grotto before pulling out her flute. "I'm sorry I didn't bring any of this to you sooner, Mar," she confessed, frowning. "Anansi asked me to keep it under wraps while she continued investigating. She didn't want any of us getting too close and alerting Lynchpin that we're on to him."
"Alerting who?" Marinette asked, furrowing her brow.
Rena Rouge withdrew a small metal object from her flute and handed it to her. Marinette rolled the lynchpin around in her palm for a minute before returning it to her, the same confused expression on her face.
"These have been popping up all over the city," Rena Rouge explained, slamming the lynchpin into the cavern wall behind her. "A?"
Anansi stepped forward. "I found the first one back in December on a burglar. He said it came from an anonymous source: someone suggested that he rob an apartment in the 16th Arrondissement, and handed him the lynchpin. He couldn't tell me anything about the person who gave it to him. Since then I've found them on dozens of criminals, everyone from purse snatchers to armed robbers. One was in the pocket of a guy overseeing a sweatshop producing knock-offs of a dress you designed."
"That's where those fakes came from?" Marinette demanded, jaw dropped open in shock. "Our Paris distributors were incensed by those! Our store alone lost out on a ton of sales on that dress! Why didn't you mention this sooner? If we'd known maybe we could have done something about it."
"Sorry, girl," Rena Rouge admitted, "it didn't even occur to me that you might do something about that dress situation. Isn't that like free advertising or something?"
"Not exactly," Marinette retorted. "It's more like it splits our possible customers by undercutting our price."
"Anyways," Anansi continued, "there have been a whole bunch of criminals running around with these lynchpins: kidnappers, hit men, you name it. One of them broke into my parents' apartment and tried to kill Alya and the twins."
"I remember," Marinette acknowledged darkly. "We were watching your family around-the-clock for a week after that…"
"'We'?" Anansi echoed. She gave Marinette a suspicious glance, shrugged, and continued, "The best we can guess, they are all working for one person."
"The Lynchpin," Rena Rouge supplied. She blew a note on her flute and cast the Mirage ball at the lynchpin she'd stuck in the wall. A series of glowing images appeared around the wall, connected together with lines and arrows, all expanding outward in a spider web pattern from the lynchpin.
Marinette stepped closer to examine the wall. She saw the knock-off dress. A network of drug dealers and arms dealers. An attempt to assassinate the deputy mayor. A guy wearing an all-too-familiar mechanized suit. And in one corner she saw – "The Heroes of Paris Fashion Show?" She looked up at Rena Rouge, shocked. "The Lynchpin was behind that, too? You knew?"
Rena Rouge shook her head. "I didn't find that tidbit out until tonight," she insisted with a nod toward Anansi. "But apparently Jagged Stone and the Owl recognized the boss man from that attack while they were out with Anansi." She pointed at a headshot near the center of the map with a small network of lines extending from it, which Marinette recognized as the leader of the robbers who had attacked her fashion show in January.
"And neither of you bothered to share?" Marinette asked, glaring at Anansi, who shrugged.
Rena Rouge scoffed. "And that's not the worst part of it. You want to know the worst part? This lynchpin" with the end of her flute she rapped the one she'd stuck in the wall "was in the pocket of your Monsieur Janet when I confronted him tonight."
Marinette's jaw dropped as the implications of that statement all crashed together in her mind. She felt like her heart had just stopped. She stared between the two sisters, waiting for one of them to laugh or say this was a joke. The ex-manager that Adrien had fired, who had been making her life a living hell for months, had been working with this Lynchpin. Janet had set Adrien up, had tried to set them against each other, had nearly split them up and ruined Adrien's company and life! "When I get my hands on that no good, low life… I am going to tie him to the top of the Eiffel Tower and cover him in birdseed so the pigeons peck out his eyes!"
"Damn, girl! I never knew you had it in you…" Anansi shook her head admiringly.
"As much fun as that sounds," Rena Rouge observed, "Lieutenant Raincomprix might not appreciate you doing that to his prime suspect. He's been arrested, and Adrien is no longer a suspect in those questionable transactions."
Marinette let out a breath in relief. "That's good to hear," she told them. "But why were you keeping all of this to yourselves? At least three of these crimes directly targeted me! You should have told me what was going on! If we'd known about this Lynchpin guy, maybe we wouldn't have been blindsided when he tried to get Adrien arrested! I didn't know, and Lynchpin almost won!" Marinette looked at Rena Rouge sadly. "I thought you were my friend. I trusted you."
Rena Rouge's lower lip trembled. "I know," she finally admitted, looking down at the cave floor. "You have every right to be angry at me for not warning you. Even if we weren't going to tell everyone else, you're the leader, and I should have told you. I'm sorry, Mar."
Marinette took a deep breath and released it slowly. Then she crossed the distance between them and pulled Rena Rouge into a bone-crunching hug. "I forgive you," she said, her voice muffled by Rena Rouge's hair. "You are my best friend, and you made things right tonight." She leaned back and glared into her eyes. "But you need to let me know when something like this is happening. Got it?"
Rena Rouge nodded as her transformation wore off. "You got it, boss," Alya smirked.
"I take it she already knew who you were?" Anansi observed, raising an eyebrow at Alya.
"You could say that…" Seeing Anansi's confused look, Alya added, "You haven't figured it out yet?"
"Alya." Marinette halfheartedly elbowed her in the ribs but matched her smirk.
"If she's going to be helping us with this Lynchpin investigation, she should probably join the Heroes of Paris, right?" Alya defended. She shrugged. "She'll figure it out eventually."
"Figure what out?" Anansi demanded, looking between the two girls.
At that moment Marinette heard a familiar voice near the ceiling, shouting, "Hey, Spots! My kid is upstairs looking for you! Are you down here?" Plagg spotted the group and flew into the alcove. He landed on Marinette's head and curled up on top of her head, emitting a low growl at Anansi.
Anansi looked at Plagg suspiciously before letting her eyes wander down to Marinette. "Wait… black Kwami… cat ears on its head… his 'kid' is upstairs and he calls you 'Spots'… Oh, hell."
If you're wondering why Marinette isn't more concerned about Alya practically telling Anansi her secret identity… Adrien and Marinette have had about 8 months to get used to the idea that all the full members of their team know who they are.
