To StarDaPanda225: Their dynamic is so much fun. You can definitely understand Bri's surprise, given that she's seen the Heroes of Paris in action; this story (plus Felix's next few appearances) is the account of how he goes from being a jackass with a miraculous to becoming a true hero.

To Butterfly: Generally my stories probably fall somewhere between K+ and T; I try to avoid writing anything too explicit. But in this case it felt natural for Felix's reaction to finding out Bri's a woman to be a little dirty.

To yellow 14: I suppose that's one way to make friends! But at least she caught him before he actually went into the river.

"Did you see that?" The warehouse door slammed shut, almost falling off its hinges, to emphasize the question.

Antoine tossed the circuit board he just covered in solder beads across the warehouse in annoyance. Three hours of work… He spun around in his swivel chair and fixed his eyes on Mecha-Man, who clomped across the warehouse space, past the crumpled and dented armored truck, and finally stopped next to the workbench. Antoine selected a pair of pliers from the bench and started working the stripped screws out of the chest piece, even as Gaston pulled off his silver helmet and carefully placed it on the bench before swinging his legs up and fumbling with the clasps.

"I did," Antoine confirmed tersely, flicking a bent bolt across the room so it clanged off the side of their delivery truck. "That other suit was there, and so was the Miracu-Mutt."

"The other suit flew."

Antoine removed the first section of the old chest piece entirely from the frame and nodded, dropping it on the ground and pushing it under the bench with his foot. "A working jetpack is an impressive piece of tech," he acknowledged idly, his focus on the stripped screw in front of him. "Whoever built that suit knows what they're doing." The jetpack he had designed for Mecha-Man had taken months of trial and error just to find the right power ratio to get the suit of the ground without burning through the entire fuel reserve, and he had only finished the design after studying the propulsion system on an alien pod closely for inspiration. Unfortunately, the parts to build it were not easily available and had taken most of the summer to acquire through Lynchpin's various contacts. Several smuggled shipments had been captured by the Heroes of Paris, and a handful of the pieces they had gathered had gone missing from his lab in Paris over the summer, probably lost in the Heroes' first raid when he'd been forced to relocate to the backup lab in Lynchpin's headquarters building.

"So when will I be able to fly?" Gaston demanded, shrugging his way out of the rest of the suit, leaving the legs and chest frame standing upright next to the workbench. He leaned against it and looked down at Antoine with a frown.

Antoine scoffed. "Do you have any idea how expensive the parts are for that, considering how much alien tech goes into my design?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "Even if we had gotten the full haul from this job, we would only just be able to afford all the components! And that would not leave any money left over to pay for anything else."

"What do you mean, 'if' we'd gotten the haul?" asked Gaston, eyes narrowing suspiciously. He turned to scrutinize the armored truck and let out a low curse on catching sight of the rear door hanging off the hinge. "Don't tell me…" he groaned.

"You were a little too enthusiastic when you knocked the truck over," Antoine explained sourly. "A lot of the coins fell out on the way here. We probably ended up with about half."

"And how much is that?"

"Half-mil. Probably a little less." Antoine examined the chest piece and tossed it into the corner, followed by the arm pieces. "After giving the guys their cut – plus a little extra for last time – we still ended up with enough to replace the suit's chest plate and make some basic upgrades, with a few grand left over to put in the new rocket launchers."

Gaston glared at the figures Antoine had scribbled on the suit blueprints laid out on the bench. "Every goddamn time…" he muttered, slamming his fist on the bench.

"We should have enough left over after making those upgrades to at least send something home for our families," Antoine consoled him.

"We'd better," Gaston grumbled. "Colette is getting worried since the rent is coming due and Lynchpin hasn't paid in over a month."

Antoine put a hand on his shoulder. "Your family won't be out on the street," he promised. "If it's that bad, we could hold off on the new launchers for now."

"No, the rent's only a grand, and Colette got a job at that flower shop by Notre Dame to bring in a little extra income," Gaston told him, shaking his head. "It means Richard has to spend the afternoons with his Nana, but I think he's happy enough with that." He chuckled. "I'm pretty sure it's been harder on Colette."

Antoine hummed. "I know Adine was disappointed when she had to go back to work," he commented. "The worst for her was not being home when Bridgette got out of school." He sighed. "We'll have more than that to send back," he promised, consulting a spreadsheet on his tablet before sending an email to an anonymous address.

"That's good." Gaston fingered one of the arm pieces where the metal had melted through, exposing the heat-resistant fabric beneath. "Richard's birthday is coming up and we need to get him a present."

"Know what you're getting?"

"He really wants one of those new PlayBox video game consoles and the latest edition of the Super Akuma Battle Melee game," answered Gaston.

Antoine let out a snort. "I assume I'm not the only one who sees the irony in that?"

Gaston grinned and shook his head ruefully. "I'm just glad they haven't included us as a playable character yet, considering they've added all the heroes now!"

"Mecha-Man isn't an 'Akuma'," Antoine pointed out, not taking his eyes off the schematic on the tablet. "Doesn't fit the branding."

"I'm sure the next upgrade will have a 'Lynchpin-ion Extension,'" Gaston grumbled. "Did you know that's what the Ladyblog is calling us now? 'Lynchpin-ions'? We sound like feathers."

Antoine shrugged and pulled open the first of the three crates that had been waiting for him when he returned from the heist, revealing sheet upon sheet of light brown alien heat shielding material, tightly packed together. "There are worse things they could call us."

Gaston looked over his shoulder and started. "Where did that come from?"

"My contact dropped it off while we were out," explained Antoine. "He had a shipment from Africa he was trying to offload cheap, and he agreed to let me put it on credit against this job succeeding." He carefully extracted a sheet of the thin brownish metal and held it up to the light, feeling the weight. "I think there's enough here for a double layer on the chest and some left over for the legs, though not enough to cover the leg pieces entirely."

Gaston hummed and pushed the discarded armor plates into a pile. They were quiet for a moment, Antoine stacking the heat shielding sheets and cataloging how many each piece of the suit would require while Gaston collected the scrap metal into a heap on the far side of the warehouse. "Richard will be ten next month," he finally observed.

"Hopefully we will be back in Paris in time for his birthday," replied Antoine. "One more successful job here and we'll have the suit entirely replaced and have enough to live comfortable for a year or two – even without Lynchpin. And I may have just the thing: a jeweler on the east side of the city received an enormous bequest for appraisal this week. If we can clear that out, it will be more than enough for our purposes."

"Good," Gaston replied. "Because I'm sick of fighting against these stupid heroes! Half the point of leaving Paris was to get away from having to deal with heroes all the time, but it's like they followed us here. That other suit can almost match up against me now, and that's without factoring in his pet. Without our anti-miraculous weapon load-out I just can't overpower that Mangy Mutt. So the two of them together…"

Antoine hummed thoughtfully, furrowing his brows in concentration. Over the summer, the only reason they had succeeded in repulsing the Heroes of Paris so many times had been the anti-miraculous weaponry he had developed. But without a source of chi-putty as ammunition, they didn't have anything in their arsenal that could really counter a miraculous hero. Unless… "If we can't rely on anti-miraculous hardware," Antoine mused slowly, "perhaps we need to develop some 'anti-miraculous software.'"

Gaston gave him a dubious look. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means we need to find a way to turn our opponents' altruism around so it benefits us," he replied, hardly believing what he was considering. He made a distasteful face. "We need to use their goodness to our advantage." He grabbed a piece of loose paper and started sketching out a rough design. Deploying it effectively would require using the drone, however, and the weight restrictions would be a major concern… But if he forwent half the money he planned to send home to Adine, he could buy a second, larger drone capable of carrying a sufficient payload for their purposes. As he drew what he had in mind and estimated the prices for the components, he frowned in disgust. In spite of everything, this was taking it to a greater extreme than he had ever gone before. Would he ever be able to look himself in the mirror again if something went wrong? And with his own daughter attending university nearby? But if this succeeded, they would never have to contemplate something like this again. And after everything that had happened…

Gaston looked over his shoulder at the drawing and his jaw dropped. He stared at Antoine in surprise. "Are–are you sure, boss?"

Antoine nodded, sighing heavily. "We need a failsafe."

AN: The references in here are to "The Battle for the Seine," when the Heroes of Paris were preventing Lynchpin's drug shipments from reaching Paris, some of which included components of alien technology.