Hello! I'm back, and very sorry for the lengthy wait. To be honest, this year has gone by in a flash! I thought it'd been a couple months, at most, bu s, it's been much longer. Excited to be here once more, though! I hope you enjoy!
Content warning for overt bigotry (homophobia, xenophobia, islamophobia) and descriptions of underage drinking.
For such a pipsqueak, Princess Fragrance is kinda terrifying.
It's the witch cackles, Chloé decides; having the pipes required to be the lead vocalist of indie metal band Kitty Section, Rose's evil laughter is shrill and loud.
She hasn't changed much otherwise, unlike some other Akumas; she's still recognizably Rose, even in a bold, near-black outfit with narrow pink lines for accents, skin-tight around her torso and forearms, but puffy around her shoulders and hips, alluding to her royal theme. She has thigh-high black heels on, giving her just a couple extra inches in height, if that. On her chest, she bears a rose emblem in the shape of a halved heart, and her blonde hair has turned into a neon pink statement and a half, matching her crazed eyes, now framed in a black, mask-like tattoo, harshly contrasting against vivid green skin – the latter, in her opinion, completely ruining the look.
It's not hard to tell what her Akuma-given powers are with just a few moments of observation; her perfume bottle has been turned into some kind of ornate spray gun, shooting out streams of multicolored vapor or gas, which only appears to be effective if a person is hit by the full stream, as opposed to breathing in any leftover fumes. Each color has a different effect, of course; the pink or violet perfume seems to take people over or make them fall in love with her – already, half the people in the school's courtyard have sworn eternal fealty to the Princess, which seems to her like a bit much – the blue vapor freezes whatever it touches, the green stench seems to stink so bad it makes people projectile vomit or even pass out on the spot, the yellow color makes people laugh uncontrollably, the red gas just sets shit on fire, and the orange spray drives people into a violent frenzy.
Bingo, she thinks. Time to get a ridiculously fake tan.
As much of a crapshoot as this plan has been, it's not entirely random; the first phase has all but proved already that Hawk Moth pays special attention to François Dupont, a major hint that should narrow down the suspect pool and help them unmask their archenemy. The second phase of the plan is not related to Hawk Moth at all, but rather at drawing out the mysterious Miraculous Holder that's been stalking her; given Juleka's conclusion that he's trying to catch her messing up, Adrien came up with the idea of having her fuck up on purpose (her words, not his), thereby posing a direct danger to Ladybug and Cat Noir's mission and hopefully forcing the man to intervene. That's where they got lucky with this Akuma, of course – not all of them have powers that could turn a Miraculous Holder against their fellow heroes. Sometimes, the possessed villains just kill or destroy whatever's in their way in maniacally creative ways.
Marinette seemed doubtful that it'd work; after all, Cat Noir has been forced to turn sides or eliminated in one way or another trying to protect Ladybug a number of times, and he's not being stalked by a seemingly judgmental old Holder. But Chloé's kind of an expert on double standards, so she has a feeling that might be the case here – and she's willing to help things along.
At any rate, once they have enough information – she seems to be heading for Le Grand Paris, where the princess should be at right now, she's set her followers on finding and capturing Chloé, and most importantly, that the colorful fumes seem to follow a set order – and having waited long enough that Hawk Moth shouldn't suspect they were already at the school, Ladybug dives in, Chloé holding off on joining her for a few extra seconds to be safe.
"Out of the way, Ladybug!" –Princess Fragrance barks, as soon as she spots the teen heroine, aiming her perfume gun. "You're obstructing a royal meeting!"
"There's a Queen right here." –Ladybug smirks, nodding at Chloé, who lands behind the Akuma. "And I doubt she's impressed."
She sneers, her wings dissipating into motes of amber light. "Yeah, you can do pink or you can do green, but you gotta pick, girlfriend. You look like fucking fruit sherbet."
The Princess huffs. "I'll take no fashion advice from the walking caution sign, thank you very much." –she huffs. "Now, if you'll excuse me, a beautiful princess awaits me!"
The Akumatized girl blasts a stream of red perfume, which Ladybug blocks by twirling her yo-yo into an inexplicably impenetrable shield, dissipating the gas. Chloé tosses a couple of honey blobs at her, but she does so half-heartedly – she purposefully aims wide, and they're easily evaded, the Princess firing back with a multicolor barrage. Chloé tosses a much larger one that actually overshoots the Akuma and almost hits Ladybug, forcing her to leap back to avoid getting stuck.
"Hey, watch it!" –she yells, rather convincingly.
"Oh, shut up, I had a terrible morning." –she retorts.
Evil Rose laughs cruelly, shooting an underhanded blue stream that grazes her shoulder, freezing the joint solid. It hurts like a bitch, even with the Miraculous' protection, so cold it feels like burning, forcing her to dive behind the cover of a nearby pillar and try to swipe the ice away. "I hope you enjoy the cold shoulder, false monarch! Give up your Miraculous now, and I'll only make you my servant! But if you keep getting in the way…"
She spots a girl hiding beneath the stairs to the second level. The girl yelps when she notices, bolting for the nearest exit, but the Princess levels her weapon. "…you'll burn just like her!"
There's a slight second of hesitation, she notices – a tremble in her trigger finger, the slightest adjustment to her aim, like Rose's good nature is fighting tooth and nail against Hawk Moth's influence – but it doesn't stop her from firing a red stream and hitting the girl on the back, pretty much in the exact same spot that she got burned when fleeing from Robocop.
Chloé winces with sympathetic pain.
Flames erupt, knocking her over as she shrieks from the burns. Ladybug rushes in and blocks a second shot aiming to finish the poor girl off, launching her yo-yo and swinging over to fight the Akuma hand-to-hand. Chloé zooms by in the opposite direction, her hands already pooling some healing honey and splattering it all over the blaze as soon as she reaches the writhing teen. The fire goes out immediately, but she's still clearly in a world of hurt, grabbing onto her hand with such strength that her knuckles lose all color.
Chloé doesn't know this girl. She looks seventeen or eighteen, so she's probably in lycée, studying at the campus behind the main collège grounds – she doesn't recall seeing her before, but after seeing her face, she's not sure she'll ever be able to forget her. This is, to be honest, kind of their fault; Rose would've never gotten Akumatized if not for their plan, obviously, so the agony that this girl is going through – even though it'll fade away as soon as Ladybug saves the day – is a direct consequence of their plan.
Unfortunately, she most likely won't be the last victim of the day. All in the name of catching that bastard, she tries to reassure herself.
"Stay down and don't move a muscle." –Chloé tells her, as soft as she can manage, which isn't very. "The honey will heal you, but it takes a few minutes for something this serious."
The girl's a bit delirious from the pain, but she manages to nod through her tears and gritted teeth. She turns to the fight and stalks closer, trying not to draw the attention of either combatant and analyzing the action – Princess Fragrance mostly relies on her fairly unwieldy spray gun, which makes her pretty terrible at close quarters combat, but Ladybug being a single target means that she can't quite dive in and take advantage of that; in fact, it's quite the opposite, as she's forced to dodge and defend, keeping just far enough away so that her lightning-fast reflexes can keep her safe.
Queen Bee needs to intervene, and soon. Fortunately, she's already spotted Cat Noir prowling above them, anxiously waiting for the next phase, and she's memorized the order of the colored perfumes – blue, red, yellow, green, violet, and the one she needs for this plan to work, orange. Arguably, the violet scent would be worse; she'd be directly serving the Akuma, which would make her far more dangerous to her fellow Holders and thus more likely to elicit a response from the stalker, but it would also come with the risk of potentially being commanded by the Princess to give up her Miraculous, not to mention leaving her as a fully capable fighter with intimate knowledge about Ladybug and Cat Noir.
Orange should do just fine. Now she just needs a distraction.
"You need a distraction, right?" –Juleka whispers, right behind her.
"What the fuck!" –Chloé hisses. "What, you read minds now?"
"And teleport." –she smirks as the blonde balks. "Kidding. I've been hiding nearby and I know the plan, obviously."
"So then you know that your part of the plan is done, right?" –Chloé reminds her. "It's too dangerous for you – even if this is Rose we're talking about."
Juleka shrugs. "Hey, you guys are about to beat up my girlfriend. I'd like to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible, at least."
Chloé huffs. "You don't seem too disturbed by Princess Fragrance." –she says, deadpan. "You realize that's your girl, right? Possessed by a madman and looking like the understudy for the Wicked Witch of the West?"
The goth blushes. "…what? The name could use some work, but the look kinda does it for me."
"Ugh. And here I thought you were one of the few people with taste in our godforsaken class." –Chloé laments. "Whatever, we can't waste any more time. If you wanna distract her, go for it, but do it on my mark."
Juleka smirks, staying put while Chloé moves into position. There's a blue blast, deflected by Ladybug's yo-yo onto the ground, then red and yellow ones, both dodged. Monsieur Damocles comes yelling out of nowhere holding a chair above his head, and gets immediately blasted in the nose with the green stench for his troubles, immediately dropping him to the floor, holding his stomach as he moans and his wrinkled face takes on a sickly pallor. Princess Fragrance tries once more, but a hit to the blaster from Ladybug's weapon makes the violet shot go wide.
"Now!" –she hisses.
Juleka springs into action, leaping out of cover and speaking up for a change. "Rose…! I know you're in there, please come back to me!" –she urges, dramatically extending a hand. Chloé wants to roll her eyes at the goth's acting, but she has a decision to make now, sharing a look with Ladybug.
The original plan was to have her take a hit for Ladybug, but Chloé's been mulling it over a bit; if Marinette is right and that's not enough for the stalker to act, then maybe taking a hit for a quote-unquote random civilian would be enough. It'd be more egregious, if nothing else – to ostensibly lose the fight to protect a girl that should be just fine as soon as the Miracle Cure blasts across the Parisian cityscape would arguably be a terrible judgment call as a Miraculous Holder, even if it's generally the right thing for a hero to do. Ladybug seems to understand this, in the milliseconds that their gazes lock – she clearly doesn't like it, but this is Chloé's (and Juleka's) choice, and she'll respect it.
Princess Fragrance takes her attention off Ladybug, who does her best not to interrupt the distraction, despite her conscience screaming at her to protect the goth girl. A visible tremble passes through Rose's arm as she aims at Juleka. "There is no Rose, lovely Juleka. There is only Princess Fragrance! – and I am no longer yours." –she says. "This is a tale of royalty, my dear, and you are decidedly not."
Juleka shrinks into herself. It's clearly overacted a bit, but Chloé can't help but wonder if her feelings have been genuinely hurt. "You won't shoot me. You love me!" –she claims.
Rose winces. "I-I…I will!" –she says, but doesn't. Chloé frowns, a bit annoyed – she does actually need to shoot for this to work, after all.
She barely starts thinking about how to get things back on track when that dreaded butterfly outline appears over her face. For once, though, she's kind of thankful for the madman's intervention. "Yes." –Hawk Moth says. "Yes, you will."
All hesitation forcibly erased, Princess Fragrance shoots. Queen Bee bursts forth, as fast as her luminous wings will take her. The shot lands, and her vision goes red.
It goes against Cat Noir's every instinct to let Chloé get blasted by Rose's Akumatized form. She stumbles to her feet, her wings twitching as she struggles to fight off the corruption.
"I apologize for taking over the narrative for a moment, my dear Ladybug." –Hawk Moth says. "But, as I'm sure you'll agree, the show must go on."
The butterfly outline disappears, and the Akuma regains control, sparing a final, pained look for Juleka before priming her blaster once again. "Ack! You've distracted me long enough!" –she hisses. "I'll be back for your Miraculous, Ladybug – and with the aid of Princess Shuri of Wakanda, the smartest person in the world, taking it will be a piece of cake!"
She points her blaster downward, and unleashes a powerful torrent of black smoke, which propels her up into the air and towards her obsession. Making sure he wasn't spotted, Cat Noir dives in, landing softly on the courtyard.
"Starting to feel like we've bitten off a bit more than we can chew with this one, milady." –he says, nodding at Chloé.
Queen Bee loses the battle right then and there; she looks up, and her eyes, wide open and twitching, are no longer those of Pollen – now they rather mirror the Princess's, pink sclera streaked with blood-red veins, her vivid, violet irises turned to pinpricks, betraying her all-but-mindless aggression. She actually snarls, baring clenched teeth and breathing heavily, and she buzzes like the world's biggest, angriest beehive.
Coupled with the splash of orange across her neck, torso, and hips, she looks like she's just viciously murdered the Cheetos mascot.
"I can't believe she sacrificed herself like that." –Ladybug says, sounding honest but also like she's playing it up in case they have an audience. "Can you hold her off? We can't afford to let the Akuma have free reign of the city."
Cat Noir brings out his collapsible staff. "Sure thing, Bugaboo. I'll join you as soon as she's back on our side…or down for the count."
Queen Bee charges at Ladybug, but he blocks her and the spotted heroine tosses her yo-yo at the roof, fleeing the school. "Oof." –he says, barely standing his ground. "Feisty today, are we?"
The blonde growls, literally foaming at the mouth, and shoots a glob of honey at his foot, sticking it in place. Cat Noir instinctively steps back, which puts him exactly far enough for Chloé to punch him in the face so hard that he goes flying, ripped piece of concrete on his foot and all, through four walls and a steel support beam, ending up on the street outside the school.
"…ow." –he mutters, holding his nose. A few drops of iridescent fluid cling to his clawed glove – he's bleeding, at least as much as the Miraculous allows him to. Wow, he thinks, a bit light-headed as the wound swiftly heals, she must've gone all out.
She's not done, of course, bursting through the wall right behind him. Cat Noir scrambles to his feet, splitting the bo staff into escrima sticks to better defend against a flurry of vicious punches, each one delivered with murderous intent. He deflects them all, managing to put a bit of distance between them and tossing one at the ground, where it bounces up and crashes into Queen Bee's chin, forcing her to stumble back as he catches the thrown weapon.
Cat Noir then reunites the sticks into his regular staff, bracing himself and extending the weapon so it hits Queen Bee right in the solar plexus, driving her halfway through a car parked behind her.
"Feel like taking a timeout yet?" –he smirks, casually leaning on his staff like a cane.
Chloé growls as she frees herself from the wreckage, then turns around and lifts the car overhead, launching it at him with a roar. Oh, crud, he thinks, hastily jumping upwards and turning in the air, perfectly using the co-pilot's door of the rushing car as a platform to push off with his hand, clearing the vehicle. Unfortunately, he's forgotten that his opponent can fly, and staying airborne leaves him just vulnerable enough for her to tackle him out of the air and through the nearest storefront.
Which, as it happens, is the Dupain-Cheng bakery.
Frightened customers – tourists who don't have their Akuma alerts set up, probably – all but stampede out of the bakery as Chloé pummels him, pinning him down with an elbow to the neck. He blocks a few blows, then hooks his legs around her hips and throws her off, causing her to crash through a counter filled with a fresh batch of pains au chocolat. Unrelenting, she generates a bunch of honey from her palms and clenches her fists, turning it solid, into sharp crystals, charging forward and trying to run him through.
Adrien's pretty sure that the crystals won't actually pierce his suit, but he'd rather not find out if he's wrong. He grabs his staff and bats her aside, but she quickly recovers, continuing her murderous path.
"Cat Noir, here!" –Tom Dupain says, barreling out of the kitchen and tossing him a fresh sac of flour. He drops the baton and grabs the sac, using the momentum to turn in place and absolutely decking Queen Bee with it.
The bakery explodes with white powder. He barely sees the silhouette of Queen Bee struggling to recover before he dives towards Tom, yanking the baker away and back into the kitchen where Madame Cheng is also hiding. "Thanks, but you need to get out of here!" –he urges them. "Queen Bee's been taken over by the Akuma and she's wrecking everything in her path!"
As if to punctuate his warning, she bursts through the wall right then and there like the freakin' Kool-Aid Man. Cat Noir does notice something interesting, though – all that flour seems to have messed with the perfume clinging to her, because she seems to be twitchy and erratic, as opposed to her previous furious determination.
Arguably, this could make her even more dangerous, but the conclusion here is that the effects can be messed with – maybe even overcome.
Chloé rips off an industrial mixer and throws it at them, fast as lightning. He barely manages to extend his staff so the ends lodge into the roof and floor, acting as a makeshift barrier and stopping the mixer in its tracks, falling down in a mangled mess. He yanks it out of place and charges forward, vaulting over a debris-laden counter and flying in with a kick to her chest. She blocks it, stumbling back and reaching for a nearby rack of knives, throwing them haphazardly but with enough power to kill a man, even with the blunt end. He drops the baton and deflects them all, each and every one safely away from Marinette's parents, but this is the first salvo; she reaches for all sorts of baking implements, and even a fresh batch of dough, throwing it all at him alongside globs of honey like maxim guns over the trenches.
Cat Noir dodges and deflects everything – and winces when he hears the Dupain-Chengs get stuck to the wall by Queen Bee's honey, despite his warnings – and comes out of it without a scratch, so perhaps he gets a little cocky, especially once he spots the water pipe above her. "You're just about out of ingredients and I need to join my Lady in battle." –he says. "Let's get you cleaned up and back on the heroes' side."
There are only two big mason jars left, which she tosses at the same time; Cat Noir smirks and yanks them out of the air, holding them up. "And that's your ammo gone." –he drawls, only then staring at their contents. The jar on his left hand is full of yummy-looking strawberry preserves, while the one on the right…
Ah, crud.
Glass shoots everywhere as Queen Been extends her hand and the jar explodes, honey coating him and pretty much everything around him in a three foot radius. Chloé makes a fist, and he's frozen in place from the neck down, completely immobilized. She must not be pushing the limits of her honey's strength in day to day life; most Akumas are able to break free from her crystallized honey with some effort, but he feels like he can't even move a muscle.
He plasters on an awkward smile. "Alright, I'll admit it; that was pretty claw-ver."
Despite the possession, Chloé's face twists as it usually does when she cringes at his puns. He gasps to himself; maybe that's where his best hope for breaking her free of Princess Fragrance's influence lies. Okay, Cat Noir, he thinks, time to annoy your best friend back to normal.
It feels like being drunk.
Chloé's only been drunk once. It was at a political gathering, a year or so ago, her father trying to raise funds for his ongoing re-election campaign. The meeting was full of people trying to curry his favor, as usual, but one of them stood out to her from the others – a priest who doubled as the headmaster of a notorious Catholic school in the city, acting affable and loudly laughing along with her dad's terrible jokes throughout the function.
It had struck Chloé as odd that he'd be in attendance; after all, Maire Bourgeois has never claimed to hold any strong religious beliefs, so there would be no reason for the priest to assume he'd be able to push his agenda.
She'd gotten bored of entertaining the son of some local business owner, a seventeen-year-old blonde with dumbass written all over his face, who seemingly couldn't tear his eyes away from her cleavage for two fucking seconds. She'd made some half-decent excuse to bounce and wandered the grounds around the hall the event was held at, somehow ending up by a private room well into the night, where she'd heard her father's voice and, naturally, crept closer to snoop in on him.
"I understand your position, of course. It would be unwise to alienate potential voters – even if they are people who shouldn't be able to vote. Still, if a rejection is out of the question for now, then perhaps simply dropping support of these immigrants from your talking points surely wouldn't hurt?"
"W-well, you said it yourself, Father; the Muslim community is full of potential voters, and given my vocal support in the past, they'll of course expect me to continue! B-besides, it has always been my position that all who embrace France are welcome to join in our trademark joie de vivre, wouldn't you agree?"
The priest sighed. "If only they did embrace the culture and people of France, Monsieur…alas, they bring foreign customs and refuse to adapt to our ways, all but demanding that we bend ourselves backward to conform to their standards. I've heard whispers, Maire Bourgeois; some have started to talk about a trend that might suggest that there is a movement to replace native Europeans in their homelands." –he said, conspiratorially. "Granted, some of the people saying these things are, perhaps, not the most savory types. But look out to the streets of Paris on any given day, count the headscarves, and…well, these voices begin to make some sense, no?"
Her dad could only manage a nervous laugh. The priest must've been on a roll, though, because he took it as a cue to continue ranting. "And that's just one of the forces attacking our way of life, of course; why do we allow the homosexuals to take over our city and shove their ungodly culture, if one can call it that, in our faces? In that of our children? You have a young daughter, do you not? Are you not worried that she is exposed to the influences of such sinful lifestyles?"
The priest left out, of course, the fact that her father typically attended the parade himself, if only for the media appearance. In fairness, her dad didn't point it out either. "Oh, I…I trust that Chloé is smart enough to think for herself."
If he had left it at that, it would hardly be worth reminiscing about.
"…but yes, I suppose there are some unsavory examples that she could do without following."
In another context, it might've been a harmless comment. With the benefit of hindsight, she honestly wouldn't be surprised to find out that he was actually taking a shot at the priest himself – her father is a bit vapid, sure, but he's not really the type to give this kind of rhetoric the time of day. But in the moment, and not too long after she'd finally owned up to her crush on Marinette and her identity as a lesbian, no words minced, it had seemed like her father was staring her right in the eyes, rejecting the person she had finally accepted she was.
Alcohol was always plentiful at these events. About as angry at the world as she was when her mother abandoned them, and significantly more reckless, Chloé nabbed a bottle of Domain Leroy and hid it in her purse. She didn't drink the whole thing – she dropped it and it shattered in her bathtub, wasting hundreds if not thousands of euros, drinking in front of the mirror – but she did get wasted.
Chloé truly doesn't get how so many people seem to love it. It's one of the worst feelings she's ever had, rivaled only by the dread of almost falling to her death that fateful day, and the feeling of Hawk Moth's cold, magical blade easily sliding through her torso.
She never would've guessed how much bodily autonomy mattered to her, but losing control of her body, even partially, caused her to swear off ever getting drunk again. It'd felt like she was the clumsy puppeteer of a massive, distant meat marionette, a tiny little mouse trying to move the limbs of a concussed elephant. She'd felt like her mind had been pulled from her brain, her eyes barely staying open – like the slightest movement took all of her willpower to perform, only for the motion to seemingly send gravity into overdrive and pull her to the ground with the strength of a fucking black hole.
She'll drink a bit here and there, but the prospect of commanding her body to move and it refusing to comply is too disturbing to ever seek it out again. Even if she were living some sort of 'sinful lifestyle', to quote that jackass in the cassock, that's one part of it she won't ever partake in again.
All of this is to say that being possessed and driven to a frenzy by Princess Fragrance feels exactly like being drunk, so Chloé's monumentally pissed off – not to mention that the targets of her current mindless wrath are her best friend and the parents of her one-time crush.
They're in a precarious position now; the Dupain-Chengs are trapped against the wall, and she has Cat Noir on the defensive. Her body seems to want nothing more than to keep going – read: finish them off – but she's using all of her damn willpower to stay her hand. She watches, as if a dream, as she grabs a couple of jars beside her, staring right at Cat Noir's inhuman green eyes. He's trying to tell her something, but it's hard to make out the words, like she's three rooms away in bed, buried beneath the covers.
Upon close inspection, she realizes that one of the jars contains honey, obviously for baking. She frowns to herself, slightly confused as to why it seems so important, then gasps as her body throws the jars and Cat Noir deftly catches them. Her arm thrusts forward and the jar with the honey explodes, coating him and most of the kitchen in the sticky substance.
Cat Noir, you useless furry, she laments. Then again, even she didn't know she could manipulate honey she hadn't produced herself.
The Black Cat Holder speaks again, now encased in crystallized honey up to his neck – and maybe it's the shit-eating grin, or the momentary confidence from outsmarting him, but a single, clear word gets through the haze permeating her mind.
"…claw-ver…"
Of course, even in the face of doom, he spouts a goddamn pun. She groans, and to her surprise, her body seems to react almost accordingly; she has little more control than she did a moment ago, but perhaps her subconscious, or whatever part of her mind continues controlling her body, retains some semblance of memory beyond the basics of moving around and, y'know, duking it out with another superhero.
Cat Noir keeps it up. "I may be trapped but I'm feline fine!" –he blurts out. "You must think I'm claw-ful fur-midable to have trapped me like this, don't you?"
Even the Dupain-Chengs have to cringe at that one. Her feral self stutters, and she feels like she can almost take control back, but the Frenzied Queen Bee must have quite enough of the Black Cat's Holder, because in a moment of clarity, she manages to toss a glob of honey at his mouth, shutting him up.
She curses. It wasn't enough.
A blade of crystallized honey forms out of her clenched fist again, and she stalks forward with lethal intent, but Madame Cheng yells out. "Don't you dare harm a hair on his head!"
Chloé winces to herself. It's hard to hold it against her, but she hasn't forgotten how Marinette's mom threatened her, back when Stormy Weather struck. Clearly, as her conscious self remembers, so does this half-feral version of her; she grits her teeth, turning her attention to the Chinese woman, and her body trembles as the ethereal buzzing of a million angry bees fills the room. She switches targets, ignoring Cat Noir, and heading straight to Madame Cheng with a singular focus.
She gets tunnel vision as she approaches; Cat Noir's urgent mumbling and Tom's panicked words get completely tuned out, as she focuses exclusively on Sabine's grim determination. To her credit, she doesn't even blink, even as her hand rears back to stab through her neck.
Chloé tries desperately to focus all of her willpower on overcoming the possession at the last possible second – like taking in the world's deepest breath and yelling as loud and for as long as she possibly can, pulling on invisible lines that bite into her figurative fingers and yanking away so that her actual hand will miss. It works, but only just; the thrust strikes a mere inch from the woman's neck, one of the jagged splinters cutting skin-deep and drawing a trickle of blood.
A lot of things happen at once, then; as Sabine yelps from the pain, she's struck from the side at blistering speed, sending her careening off to the side. The cacophony of broken crystal accompanies this blow; Cat Noir has freed himself, somehow, and he barks his Cataclysm into existence, swiping it against a pipe above their head, which immediately rusts and tilts down, a torrent of water flowing down to the floor.
She rises, and tries to pounce at him, but Cat Noir takes the half of the broken pipe pointing towards her, and aims the water spout at her, hitting her smack dab in the face and upper torso. Almost immediately, the oppressive veil on her mind lifts; she regains control of her limbs, shocked and washed clean of Princess Fragrance's influence by the sharp bite of simple cold water.
She coughs, awkwardly laying on her rear as the tip of Cat Noir's baton extends to a mere inch from her forehead. "Are you back?" –he asks, understandably wary.
Chloé grunts, batting the staff away and wiping away some excess water from her face. "It's me, alright." –she says, morose. "That fucking sucked."
Cat Noir relaxes a bit, his usual smirk returning. "Got worried for a second, there. Even the best of my puns couldn't snap you out of it in time."
She scoffs, then notices the Dupain-Chengs still stuck to the wall. A wave of her hand, and the honey gets pulled back and absorbed by the suit, letting them back down. "You realize that was utter disgust bringing me back, right?"
He shrugs. "I'm just gonna assume you're embarrassed about how much you loved them."
"Woe is Paris. One of its heroes has already gone delusional from workplace stress." –she says, sarcastically. She holds up a dab of healing honey for the cut on Sabine's neck, but the older woman pulls back for a second – probably not completely convinced that she's back on the side of the angels. She relents after a moment, and the wound is gone in seconds. Chloé sighs. "At least you managed to break yourself free in time. How'd you do it? That was the strongest crystallized honey I've made yet."
"I, uh…" –he trails off, awkwardly. "I didn't."
She frowns. "What do you mean?"
"It's true, Queen Bee." –Sabine says, still a bit shaken. "Some sort of flying metal object came in and bounced all around the kitchen. It hit you on the shoulder, then struck Cat Noir free, and went right back out the room."
"It was like a tiny UFO!" –Tom adds. "Some kind of discus, though it was so fast it was hard to make out much detail."
"Hard to miss the color, though." –Cat Noir says, giving her a meaningful stare. "It was green."
The duo says their good-byes – and Chloé apologizes profusely, which the Dupain-Chengs insist is unnecessary – and head out towards Le Grand Paris, where Ladybug went to fight the Akuma. They only make it about halfway when the Miracle Cure bursts out from the hotel, however, washing over Paris and setting everything back to normal.
"Whoa. That's unexpected." –Adrien says, his ring beeping thrice. "Not that I don't trust that milady can take Akumas out on her own, but I figured she'd stall till we got there."
"We took too long." –Chloé surmises. "Damn it, this was a terrible idea."
"Hey, that's not fair to anyone involved." –he reminds her. "Sure, it probably could've gone a little better, but now we know pretty much for certain that Hawk Moth has a particular interest in our school, and we even drew out your 'biggest fan', even if he didn't actually introduce himself. Honestly, we did what we set out to do."
"Yeah, and I almost killed two people in the process." –she says, bitterly. "Face it, Cat Noir: we just got lucky."
He shrugs. "Considering one of Ladybug's powers is literally good luck, that's not as much of a criticism as you'd like it to be." –he reminds her. "We took a calculated risk, and it paid off! Don't bother with what should've or could've been."
She grunts. "Yeah, yeah. Go get your girl already, tomcat. I need to fly around and clear my head before I head home."
"I'd remind you that the school day isn't over, but I highly doubt you care." –he says, with a cheeky smirk. "Talk later?"
Chloé nods, and takes off. Adrien stays a bit, watching her go – worried, of course, but she appreciates that he lets her have some space. She's not gonna spiral out of control over this, like she has in the past, so she doesn't actually need anyone to mind her.
She thinks so. Probably.
Queen Bee flies around for a while, watching as the skies turn dark gray and what'll surely be an afternoon thunderstorm forms over the city. She likes it all; the booming thunder, the distant flashes of light, and the sound of rain on metal and stone.
Pollen thinks she's a little bit nuts for this. Bees hate the rain, after all.
She thinks about the fight, trying to figure out what she could've done better, but after an hour of mulling it over, she decides that Cat Noir is right; considering how crazy their scenario was, they really did achieve what they wanted. And as risky as it was, too, they had their contingencies – it's not like she was left to rampage on her own, after all, and aside from some magically fixed property damage and drawing a few drops of Madame Cheng's blood, she didn't really hurt anyone. All in all, this was a win.
Chloé ponders the implications of what they think they've figured out; if Hawk Moth really does have a special interest in the school, then it stands to reason that he could be someone they know, or at least be connected to the people they hang around every day. It's kinda terrifying, to think that he might be so close, but it's also exciting – they have an honest-to-goodness lead, which means that, after a few months of constant terror and destruction, they can finally move on from just responding to Hawk Moth and his Akumas, and go on the offensive.
She's left uncomfortable about the mystery Holder, however. His intervention suggests that he wants to see them succeed, but if that's the case, why not simply introduce himself and join them? Why is he so fixated on her? Did he finally intervene because she 'failed' Ladybug and Cat Noir, as they assumed, or was it something else?
The first few drops start to fall, bringing her out of her reverie. Chloé figures it's time to head home and turn in early – maybe book her first mani-pedi in weeks and chill with a cheesy romcom – when she's suddenly struck down, batted out of the sky and sent crashing into a nearby ceiling. She groans, shaking debris out of her black and gold hair, and slowly lifts herself up.
"Stay down, Bee Holder." –a notably old but authoritative voice orders. "You will not be warned again."
She turns to the source of the voice. There, stood across from her atop a chimney, is the man they've been looking for; he's about her height, once tall but clearly hunched by age, with a slim build and excellent form – kung fu, she thinks, though she doesn't pay enough attention to Caline's lessons to know much more than that. He wears a cuirass made of that magical armored fabric the Miraculous provides, bright green plates over dark green 'leather', complimented by similarly colored pauldrons and tassets. He wears loose pants colored dark brown, same as his elbow pads and the protruding undersuit around his neck. He has a domino mask, too, framing yellow eyes with green pupils, likely the same as his Kwami's, a wispy grey mustache and goatee, and his head is crowned by a wide, slightly conical hat in that traditional Asian style, made from the same material as Ladybug's yo-yo and Cat Noir's staff.
"Well, I guess this plan worked better than I thought." –she mutters, rising to her feet. "So, who the fuck are you?"
The man narrows his eyes in contempt. "I am the Jade Turtle! – Holder of the Miraculous of Protection, Keeper of the Eastern Miracle Box, and last of the Order of the Guardians." –he announces, pointing an accusatory finger at her. "Listen well and obey, Bee Holder: you have harmed an innocent in the course of wielding the limitless power of a Kwami, and have thus proven unworthy of bearing a Miraculous in the eyes of the Order!"
He takes the hat from his head and fastens it to his left wrist, like a shield. With fury in his eyes, he bellows. "Renounce Pollen at once!"
Master Fu is here! Like many others, I've also reworked his character a bit – he's kind of a combination of Fu and Su-Han, wise and compassionate yet recalcitrant and vengeful. He doesn't just say it for effect – he really is the last of the Guardians, and I'm sure it'll come as no surprise that Hawk Moth was involved in their destruction. It's very satisfying to finally get here, and I'm very excited to write his part in this story!
Also, congrats to the people who correctly deduced that the princess was Shuri :D this chapter was already far too long for my tastes, and her relatively small scene kinda messed with the pacing, so I ultimately cut it out, but I'll post her encounter with Ladybug and Princess Fragrance as an entry in the anthology series, From His Vantage Upon the Moon, hopefully soon-ish!
Some trivia for y'all:
-I kinda cheated with some of the descriptions on this one; all credit to the Miraculous wiki, where I sourced most of it from. I am as bad at noticing and describing physical traits and clothing in fiction as I am in real life.
-I like to think each of the perfumes has a specific sent – pink/violet smells like the person you love the most (and would not affect aromantic people, like Alyx!), the blue smells like really intense mint, the green smells like rotten food (particularly eggs and fish), the yellow smells like laughing gas, the red smells like burning charcoal, and orange smells like noxious contaminants and chemicals.
-To be honest, odds were really pretty good that they'd get an Akuma with possession abilities – a fairly high percentage of them do in canon, after all. If they didn't get one, they probably would've just waited for the next Akuma that did and improvise from there.
-I think it's important to remember here that as smart and resourceful as these kids are, they're still just teenagers; Chloé's literally going on a hunch that the mystery holder will hold her to some kind of double standard, but she really has no idea if that's actually the case. And like many of you pointed out, this is a VERY reckless plan, even though they've accounted for some of the risks.
-The older girl that gets burned isn't meant to be anyone special, lest you think that was some kind of cameo. Just an example of the consequences of this plan.
-I don't want to make it so Hawk Moth intervenes for every single Akuma, but I do want him to be more proactive with his villains than he is in the show, actively keeping them focused and working towards their objectives. Every Akuma should be a serious attempt to take the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculouses, or at the very least learn something about the heroes that can facilitate that with a later Akuma.
-Is Shuri actually the smartest person in the world? I dunno, I think after a certain point the difference is negligible. Shuri, Reed, Tony, Bruce, Victor…they're all on pretty much equal footing in terms of raw intelligence, but they have their specialties, and they'd all be superior to each other in at least one aspect.
-While it's a bit played up for effect, having grown up Catholic and listening to podcasts studying extremists like Alex Jones, the priest's rhetoric really isn't that far off from some very messed up real life people and ideas (in particular, the priest alludes to the alt-right's Great Replacement theory, which is pretty freakin' stupid). Lest you think I have anything against any one religion, I don't! But I don't respect people who use their preferred belief system as a cover to hate.
-Do you agree with Chloé? Will André accept his daughter as she is, when he inevitably finds out?
-I don't like to talk about personal stuff much, but Chloé's opinion on getting drunk is pretty much 1:1 my own. Someone I considered a friend got me wasted for kicks, and it was one of the worst experiences I've ever had – like I was fully conscious, way in the back of my mind, desperately trying to puppet this clumsy, unwieldy bag of flesh and bones and balking at everything I did and said. I know it sounds stupid dramatic – millions and millions of people do it every day, after all – but everything she describes is exactly as I felt it. Like Chloé, I can still drink a bit – and even enjoy a michelada every now and then – but I just can't ever bring myself to feel trapped in my own body like that again, and I felt like that was a pretty Chloé-like response to that experience.
-The title of this chapter is a reference to my favorite song in the Deltarune part 2 soundtrack!
That's about it from me! I apologize once again for the extremely long wait, and I hope I can see you back here soon! Feel free to leave any questions or comments here, or send me an ask over on tumblr (darthkvznblogs). Until next time!