To yellow 14: Well, there are some definite callbacks to the alternate future in "Running out of Time" in this story…

To Butterfly: I mean, if you have a space-faring civilization, they have to learn how to do it somewhere, right?

To StarDaPanda225: Unfortunately their Miraculous meeting has a lot to discuss.

Étienne stared at the creature in front of him in shock. The alien peeled the meat off another chicken bone with his finely pointed teeth and stared back at him, raising his eyebrows in an expression that resembled nothing so much as a dog inspecting a particularly interesting bone. Étienne's mind was blank. He had never been much of a science fiction fan; before Lynchpin had started acquiring alien technology, he had never even considered the possibility of alien life. He had seen the news reports when France joined the European Space Agency and scoffed: that funding could have been better used equipping their military, not playing with satellites! And even after Lynchpin acquired his first alien weapon from a site in Africa, when Étienne had gotten the opportunity to begin experimenting with the alien weapon and seen the first prototypes produced by Lynchpin's engineer, after observing what these weapons could do, the possibility of live aliens on Earth had still remained remote. He had never in all his wildest imaginings thought he would actually see one, let alone that he would be watching one eat his leftover chicken! "So what am I supposed to call you?" he finally managed.

The alien twisted his mouth up in an approximation of a grin. "'Victor' works for now," he replied. "I don't think your language includes at least four of the vowels mine does, and they're all in my actual name, so let's go with 'Victor.'"

"Fine… 'Victor.'" Étienne narrowed his eyes at the alien. "So do you expect me to believe that you've just been hanging out on Earth for the last – I'm sorry, how long did you say you've been here?"

Victor snorted. "I didn't, but good try." He sighed. "My planet has been at war with the Shunjar for a long time now, and they sent me to infiltrate one of their ships – a scout ship. My mission was to find out where the ship was going and why, and report back to our military when I knew more. I was discovered and arrested just before the ship ran into trouble."

"You're a spy," Étienne deadpanned. Great. "And not just a spy, a bad spy." Better.

Victor shrugged. "And you're a sniper who just massacred twenty people in five minutes but got scared off by an overgrown lizard. We all make mistakes."

Étienne glowered at him. "So I'm guessing you don't exactly blend in with these Shunner things," he observed. "How'd you do the whole…" He waved his hand in front of his head "… face thing?"

"Some of my race can warp light," Victor explained. His nose appeared to elongate and thicken; he passed his hand straight through the space where his "nose" was, and the image remained intact. "I can adjust the way that people see me, or even make the light pass by me altogether so people can't see me." He held out one hand in front of himself, and it disappeared.

"And that curtain thing before? That was you, too?"

Victor nodded. "Those kinds of images are a little more complicated and can't last as long – the further away and more complex the image, the more difficult it is to produce. But that's how I infiltrated the Shunjar ship, and that's how I've been blending in on your planet for the last year and a half."

Étienne raised an eyebrow dubiously. "And you've… what? Just been banging on random people's doors and eating their leftovers?"

"On occasion. Other times I have had to resort to… scavenging." Victor made a face.

"And where have you been living?"

Victor flared his snout. "Here and there. Sometimes sleeping in alleys, sometimes in the sewers, sometimes homeless shelters. I've kept moving."

"Why reveal yourself now?" demanded Étienne, folding his arms and frowning. "Why me? It can't be because you need a partner for backgammon."

"What's 'backgammon?" Victor wondered, giving Étienne a funny look. "I'm here because I've been watching events in the city for some time, and I know what you can do. I'm here because I didn't have any other choice."

"Thanks."

"I mean it! You are my last hope!"

"Yeah, sorry," Étienne scoffed. "I don't do these kinds of 'last hope' things."

"Well, now would be a very good time to start," Victor retorted heatedly, his eyes narrowing to thin slits. "If we don't act, the Shunjar will find a way to draw your planet into our war!" The alien slammed his fist on the table. "On his own he is dangerous enough; if he has help… who knows what he could do!?"

"And you think the Heroes of Paris are going to help him?"

Victor scoffed. "They're heroes; I've watched them long enough… you and I both know that helping people is what they do. But if they help this one, and he somehow contacts his Navy, they could come here. And that would draw your planet into the war – maybe even worse!"

Étienne studied the alien closely. Over a decade of military service, most of it watching people through a scope, and he had learned to read faces pretty well – or at least human faces. Give him a terrorist general and Étienne could tell you whether he was thinking about breakfast, the next mission, or his newest wife with a reasonable degree of certainty. But an alien? And an alien spy at that? Victor's face gave away nothing Étienne could understand. "So why come to me instead of the Heroes of Paris?" he finally asked. "They live for this kind of thing."

"I would have approached them before now, but I was unsure of how." Victor's ears lay flat on his head. "Now that the Shunjar has approached them first, why should they listen to me instead of him? So now if you don't help me the Shunjar will get exactly what he wants!"

"Me."

"You can help me stop the Shunjar from carrying out whatever his plan is."

Étienne raised an eyebrow at him. "And do you have any idea what his plan is?"

"In the grand scheme of things, for as dangerous an adversary as he is, there isn't much he can do on his own to manipulate your planet into the war," replied Victor, dropping into a chair at the table near the energy weapons. Étienne's grip on his pistol tightened slightly. The alien rested his hand on the table near the alien pistol but made no move to touch it. "He will need to either contact his people or else find other members of his crew who survived the crash. Either of those will require communication. And in either case his transmitter will need power and an antenna."

Étienne's jaw dropped open and he stared at the alien in disbelief. "You want us to run around town looking for your enemy alien's payphone on the off-chance that he tries to phone a friend?"

"Pretty much, yes."

Étienne groaned and ran a hand through his hair before grabbing a fistful. After everything he had experienced in the last few years, he should have been used to unusual. With miraculous and Akumas and Dark Acolytes now a normal part of the Paris landscape, why should an alien asking him to help keep the Earth out of a galactic war be so surprising?

And yet there was something vaguely unsettling about this whole incident. Maybe it was the fact that an alien had followed him to his home. Maybe it was that he was seriously contemplating a situation in which he had to stop the Heroes of Paris. Maybe it was the threat of an impending alien invasion with him as supposedly the only person capable of preventing it.

Maybe it was just the fact that he was considering teaming up with a damn spy.

Étienne had spent most of his military career in Africa. He had encountered his fair share of spies – both those working for France and those working for other countries. The French agents had been bad enough, but at least their loyalties were supposedly secure and clear and lined up with his own, though there was that French spy stationed in Algiers who had sold his team out to a terrorist cell for a prostitute… But whenever he'd had to work with a spy from a different country – whether a supposed ally or not – he'd always gotten this unshakable feeling that he was about to be turned into a pawn in someone else's sick and twisted game. And every time he felt to make sure his wallet was still there once the spy had left. Even if they were allies at the moment, that didn't have to mean anything long-term: today's allies could turn around and become tomorrow's enemies at the drop of a hat, and you would never know it until it was too late. And no one was better at playing that stupid game than the damn spies.

Whatever he might say to the contrary, Victor had an agenda here, and Étienne would be damned if he went along with some unknown agenda just because. For all his protestations to the contrary, Victor could easily be seeking to use this as an impetus to draw the Earth in to this galactic war on his own side.

But at the same time… if "Victor" was correct, the Heroes themselves could inadvertently start an intergalactic war without meaning to do it.

As much as he hated to admit it, he would need to set his differences aside and work with this alien to stop the other alien. They could sort the rest of it out after the world had been saved.

Without taking his eyes off the alien, Étienne reached into the fridge and felt around to find a bottle of wine. He pulled out the cork, swirled it around, frowned on seeing the layer of sediment at the bottom, and took a swig directly from the bottle. "Dammit all to hell," he grumbled. "Times like this I wish I'd retired years ago." He stared hard into the alien's unblinking eyes before shaking his head in resignation. "Fine. We'll do this thing."