Victor looked down at his hand, his brows furrowed. Carefully he smoothed out his facial features, concentrating on the light around his head and shifting it around to project the illusion of a completely expressionless face. In his time on this planet, the people around him had attempted on multiple occasions to teach him various card games, and while the exact mechanics of each game differed wildly, this one thing had remained consistent: the importance of the so-called "poker face." Thumbing through the cards and thinking back on the rules as Prism had explained them, he finally looked up at the four heroes seated with him around the folding table, pushing a couple of stones toward the pile in the center. "I will match."

Next to him, Harba glanced back down at his cards, nodded slowly, and tossed the same number of pebbles into the pile. "Same."

Tenedaw frowned at her own hand, sighed heavily, and tossed them into the center. "Too rich for me," she complained, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms behind her head. Raising her eyebrows, she scanned the table carefully, her eyes stopping on Victor for a moment longer than anyone else.

Prism cocked her head in surprise. "But… you only got two cards. You could get anything with the next three."

Tenedaw shrugged noncommittally. "I would rather just watch the rest of you."

Waktiman shrugged, calling the bid with his own stones. "Fair enough."

Harba chuckled. "This game is kind of addictive," he observed, organizing his pebbles into neat piles of five. "I'm not sure if I should thank you for teaching us, or if I should blame you for giving me another time-waster!"

"For myself, I appreciate the opportunity to learn more about your culture," Victor interjected, allowing his illusory poker face to drop and giving the others a toothy grin. "And after spending the majority of my time with the same few people living at the Heroes of Paris' mansion, it is nice to meet new people."

Prism smiled, quickly dealing out another two cards each to the four of them who were left. "Happy to oblige," she assured them. "I'm just glad I found this deck of cards in the Red Cross supplies! Can you imagine how boring it would be to spend days on end sitting around without cards to play?"

Tenedaw scoffed. "There are other things we could try to do, but the options are pretty limited, even at the Angola temple."

"Does Mali have more options?" asked Harba, raising an eyebrow.

She frowned. "I think we both know the answer to that question." Victor cocked his head curiously. Tenedaw rolled her eyes. "The Malian temple is built over a small spring of water, surrounded on all sides by sand," she explained.

Waktiman hummed. "Our temple is in an ancient Moche pyramid, with farming fields on the terraces leading up to it. Any time I tell – told – Águila Altíssimo I was bored, he would send me outside to pull weeds."

"That's more than I could say about our temple," Harba told him. "Ours is underneath the Sphinx, and aside from the hydroponic garden, practically nothing can grow in the area."

Prism laughed, grinning proudly. "Well our temple-island has almost anything you could want: water, gardens, cattle, art and music… we even have a theater – both for movies and for plays."

Victor let out a slow breath, looking down at the table in front of him. While Paris offered quite a bit in the way of amenities, he had experienced relatively few of them. Even though he could make himself appear human while out in public, it was such a taxing proposition for a long stretch of time that he very rarely used it to go out – at least not without a valid reason. Adrien and Marinette had both offered to accompany him anywhere he needed to go in the city, but with how busy they were, he was loath to take them up on the offer.

Finally, Prism dealt each of them two more cards. As she passed out the second round, Waktiman picked up his new cards, shuffling through his hand rapidly, frowning. Finally he groaned. "It sucks that we're just stuck here with nothing to do but play cards and think about Paris."

Victor froze, staring at his new cards without really seeing them.

Harba raised an eyebrow at Waktiman. "Do you have a better idea?"

He sighed heavily and looked away. "I mean… not really…" he admitted. "But it's not like we had a clear plan in New York – we just went and did what we could and somehow it worked out in the end – or at least it worked out as well as we could expect."

Tenedaw eyed him with interest, leaning forward slightly. "I'd forgotten that you had faced one of those beasts before Paris. What was it like? That was the Ox, right?"

He nodded, his mouth set in a thin line. "It was… it was pretty wild," he replied. "We were supposed to go and help the United Heroez against it, but they didn't want our help at first. Then they got into trouble and needed our help. So we just… jumped in and started helping them out. I even saved a couple of them from getting squashed by the Ox. We didn't know what we were doing, so all we could do was throw whatever we had at it and try not to die."

Prism scoffed darkly, arching one eyebrow at him in a challenge. "Yeah? And how did that work out for you in Paris?"

He sighed heavily and his face fell. "Not–not so great," he admitted, his shoulders slumping. "We lost…" He let out a breath "… too many."

Prism nodded, her shoulders sagging as she let out a breath. "Yeah. We did, too. We–we had no idea what we were getting into."

Victor's mouth set in a thin line, his lips hiding his teeth. "Even living at the Headquarters of the Heroes of Paris, I knew very little of what we could expect from facing those monsters," he told the others. "Yet even what expectations I had were blown out of the water by the event itself."

Tenedaw swallowed heavily, shuddering. Subtly she leaned toward Harba, leaning forward to fold her arms in front of her. "I thought the Scorpion was bad enough – but now they're saying we'll have to go and fight the whole thing?"

"That does seem to be the plan," Victor agreed, bobbing his head. "Although I doubt that I have any more information than anyone else."

Harba's expression turned hard. "Good," he declared. "We need to put an end to it once and for all."

"Is that a smart idea, though?" wondered Tenedaw, raising an eyebrow at Harba. "Remember what happened with the Scorpion – or what almost happened?"

Victor cocked his head to one side.

Waktiman hummed doubtfully, glancing at Victor and Prism. "Do I have to be the one to say it?" he asked. Finally he sighed. "What happened with the Scorpion?"

Harba shrugged. "It tried to rip my mother apart, but Tenedaw helped rescue her."

Waktiman arched an eyebrow. "As bad as that is, would you rather leave the Tarasque on the loose?"

"No – of course not," Tenedaw insisted, shaking her head adamantly. "It hurt so many people; of course we need to stop it. But that still raises the question: how are we supposed to stop it? Will this other miraculous people keep talking about really solve our problem?"

Victor shrugged. "Ladybug and Cat Noir are at least hopeful for success."

Harba cleared his throat, tossing another couple of stones into the pile. "So… Victor," he began. Victor turned to him in surprise. "You've been all over the galaxy, right?"

"That… is correct," Victor admitted hesitantly. "Why do you ask?"

"Had you ever seen anything quite like… well… this before?" asked Harba.

Victor cocked his head to one side in confusion, eyeing the other carefully. He began to shake his head but stopped when he saw the meaningful raise in Harba's eyebrows. "I… have seen many monsters I my travels," he confirmed, nodding. "Not like the Tarasque, but… One I saw during my first mission was an enormous brute, the product of an experimental chemical compound that a splinter sect of Shunjar had created. Instead of testing it on one of their own, they had used it on a Volpine prisoner. He grew to massive proportions, and the experiment pushed his strength up far beyond that of a normal person."

Tenedaw's eyes widened. "What did you do about it?"

Victor shrugged. "Working together, several of us created an image of a larger version of the monster and incited it to attack the illusion. That kept it distracted, but only momentarily. Unfortunately, all we had time to do while it was distracted was to take samples so our scientists could figure out an antidote."

"How long did that take?" asked Waktiman, tossing another couple stones into the pile before Prism passed out the last card.

"We… didn't," Victor admitted quietly, looking down at the table. "He was too far gone. So we had to just… kill him. With a bomb."

"But you did manage to defeat it, right?" pressed Harba.

He nodded firmly. "Oh, yes, of course we did." He grimaced. "It just cost us far more of a price than we expected."

Prism hummed. "Sounds like this wild monster we had to take down in the Outback a couple years back. It was causing trouble for local ranchers, so we had to get rid of it. It had already killed a couple of the ranchers before we found out about it."

"Did you ever figure out what it was?" Waktiman wondered.

Prism frowned. "Not exactly. I only ever saw it from a distance, while the others got in closer to try and subdue it. At first we thought it was just an emu–"

"An emu?" demanded Waktiman, snorting in disbelief.

She raised an eyebrow. "Those monsters can be dangerous, and they can be destructive and deadly, especially when you get enough of them together." She sighed heavily. "But this was something far worse than that."

Harba hummed. "But you managed to stop it, right?" he pressed.

She nodded, cocking her head and staring at him suspiciously. "What are you getting at?"

He shrugged. "Only that we can stop these kinds of creatures together, even when they terrify us." He glanced at Tenedaw, who looked at him with her eyes wide open. "Whatever happens, we can face this creature together, and we can come out on top."

Tenedaw nodded. "I know," she acknowledged. "But it's still not going to be easy."

Victor shook his head. "Certainly it will not be easy. But it will be important."

Prism cleared her throat. "Okay, so now you will add up your cards – three cards adding up to a multiple of ten, and then add up the last two. Highest ones digit for the sum of the last two cards wins. I have 6."

Harba glanced down at his hand. "4."

Waktiman shook his head. "I can't get 3 cards to add up to 10."

Prism grinned. "So… just down to you, Vic. What d'you got?"

Victor frowned, adding up the cards in his hand. "I have… 0," he looked up at her. "My last 2 cards add up to 10 exactly."

"Really?" She stared at him in shock, shook her head ruefully, and tossed her cards into the center. "I guess you win." She sighed. "But who's up for another round?" Harba nodded eagerly. Tenedaw glanced at him but reluctantly agreed as well. Waktiman shrugged. Prism gathered together all the cards and started shuffling them.

As he counted his "winnings" and organized the stones on the table, Victor looked around at the group of heroes. Although the heroes had lost in Paris, they had not been defeated permanently. They had friends on their side, and they would return. And so would he.