Less than thirty minutes after his confrontation with the police, after tracing a circuitous route through three different arrondissements to make sure he wasn't being followed, Marius turned onto the street running past the apartment building they had claimed the night before. He smirked. Thanks to the Tarasque and its devastating transit of the city, Paris had been left extremely depopulated: aside from the hero who had confronted them as they escaped, Marius had not seen another person in the city until those two cops had confronted them. They had run to the next arrondissement over from the prison and stopped at the first apartment building they saw, only to find it entirely deserted with the door swinging open. The power had been off, and most of the apartments had already been ransacked, but it was more than enough for their purposes.

Above all else, it was inconspicuous.

Stopping in front of the correct building, he pushed aside the dilapidated front doors, looked both ways up and down the street to make sure no one else was there to see him, and slipped inside. Propping the doors back in place to dissuade anyone from bothering them, he looked around the interior of the building. All of the apartment doors hung off their hinges, with broken and damaged furnishings strewn around the hallway. A single light flickered in one of the units, powered by a portable generator that hummed away in the bathroom of the apartment across the hall. But from the room with the visible light, he could hear a few soft voices talking.

"Pass me that screwdriver, will you?" called Moulin.

Fournier scoffed derisively. "I'm still busy with it, Airhead."

"I won't need it for too long," Moulin insisted. She snorted. "It's not like you are working all that fast with it."

"I could if you would help me for three minutes," retorted Fournier. "This isn't exactly easy, you know. Maybe I should rip your arm off so you can see what it's like, trying to replace your own arm, working by hand!"

"Pun intended?"

"I will incinerate you."

"Relax; don't blow your top." Moulin groaned in exasperation. "Just give me three minutes with it and I'll be done; then I can help you get that thing onto your arm."

"Or you help me attach it now, and then I can actually help you with your glorified hairdryer."

"You can actually manipulate things with that unwieldy hunk of metal and plastic?" Moulin asked dubiously. "I almost think the stump would give you more dexterity."

Fournier muttered something under her breath that Marius failed to catch.

"I fail to see the appeal of this technology," Nouvel sneered. "It is quaint – perhaps it might even be effective. But it has such limitations. You are always dependant on an outside object which may be taken away or damaged. I, however, can never be caught without my abilities."

"No; you were just caught with your abilities," retorted Fournier.

Marius entered the apartment and cleared his throat. The few remaining pieces of furniture, most of which had been smashed when they arrived, had been pushed up against the walls, leaving the living room area almost completely open. Where the coffee table and couch had been, however, rested an enormous black fan, only one of three such devices in the apartment, with the other two leaning against the wall near one of the bedroom doors. The living room opened onto the kitchen, which had been left in utter disarray when they arrived, and which they had not yet attempted to sort out for themselves. As Marius walked into the apartment, Moulin pushed aside the enormous fan she had been working on, looking up at him in surprise. Fournier, however, remained transfixed by the wide assortment of tubes and wires laid out in front of her, several of which had already begun to take shape as part of her prosthetic. With her one good arm, she held up a cylindrical straight object and pressed it against the stump of her missing arm in order to test its fit, nodding judiciously as she did so. Looking up to meet Marius' gaze on his entrance, Nouvel raised an eyebrow in greeting. "All of us were caught," Marius reminded them, "regardless of whether it happened with or without our abilities. And regardless of whether it was the police or the heroes who did it, the result was the same back then. But now the story is completely different: neither group is in any position to stop us now."

Moulin arched an eyebrow at him doubtfully, tightening the final screw on her fan and pushng it aside. "So what's you great 'master plan'?" she asked doubtfully. "Or are you just planning on winging it like the rest of us?"

Marius crossed the sitting room, stepping around piles of discarded mechanical parts and electronics, and placed a hand on Moulin's shoulder. "Oh, I certainly have a plan," he assured her, squeezing her shoulder. "If we stick together, we will control this city completely by this time next week."

Fournier hummed. "I like the sound of that," she purred, moving the small remaining nub of her upper arm inside the base of the prosthetic. The prosthetic rotated slowly around her shoulder, followed by a control within the prosthetic activating with a distinctive click as she manipulated it with her stump. Satisfied with that connection, she held up her half-finished arm prosthetic and sighted down it like a barrel. With a frown, she lowered it and started tweaking the connection on the shoulder, pinning it down with her knee for leverage. "Just give me five minutes alone with those police bastards who took my arm, and I'll be happy."

"As long as you are with us, that will not be a problem," Marius assured her. "You can attack any police officer you see – as long as you can finish them off without drawing too much attention to the rest of us."

"Or if you can do it in such a way to divert their attention toward you and away from us," Nouvel interjected, arching an eyebrow pointedly. Marius nodded slowly in understanding.

"I think I can manage that…" she agreed, her voice taking on a lower timbre. "Any opportunity to introduce them to the flame will be more than welcome."

Moulin grinned eagerly. "I won't mind any chance we get to sow a little chaos."

"There will be plenty of opportunities for that," Marius promised. He smirked. Fire-Fly and Mistral were hardly threats on their own, but put together the two of them could easily plunge the entire city into utter chaos, particularly with the city and its police and its heroes having been thrown into such chaos already by the Tarasque. And so long as they could find the necessary parts to make their devices function properly, they could produce some impressive effects.

The front door creaked open again, and two pairs of footsteps plodded down the hallway in their direction. Marius frowned, leaning back against the wall. Fournier grabbed the flamethrower pistol sitting next to her and raised it to point at the doorway, only to drop her aim back down toward the floor when the newcomer entered the room. "Seriously, Water-Wench," she groaned, giving her an annoyed look. "Announce yourself! Otherwise I might boil you!"

Perrault folded her arms and glared at Fournier, flaring her nostrils. "Do it and I'll drown you!"

Marius raised an eyebrow, clearing his throat for attention. "You found what you were looking for?"

She shook her head, an amused smirk twisting up her lips. "Better." She smirked, producing a rainbow-printed headband from her pocket and placing it on her head, pushing it back to hold her hair out of her face.

Marius cocked his head, staring at the object closely. He had never seen one in person, but… "Is that…?"

She nodded, folding her arms and leaning back against the wall. "Say hello to the 'nice' people," she ordered, and a tiny, dark-green creature poked its head out of her hair, looking around the room at the assembly, its eyes wide and eyebrows raised nervously.

"He–hello," it squeaked, its voice exceedingly high-pitched, shrinking back away from them to hide behind Perrault's shoulder.

Perrault stroked the creature's head, scanning the room, her gaze settling on Fournier with her eyebrows raised in a challenge before looking back at Marius. "I found it near one of those crashed planes we passed last night on the way here."

Marius grinned maliciously. "Excellent! We could use a miraculous on our side – now that all the heroes have fled, that will put us all the more on top! See if you and your new companion can find any more of those."

The Kwami swallowed nervously, its eyes widening even further as it looked back and forth between Perrault and Marius.

"At least someone was successful today…" grumbled Papon, folding his arms with a disgruntled look on his face. Marius raised an eyebrow at him, and he paled. "I mean… it's great! Not any problems whatsoever; I'm perfectly thrilled to be here…"

Marius turned his focus on Papon, frowning. They had brought him with them on the promise of his enormous potential… yet he had done very little to deliver on that claim so far.

Nouvel eyed Papon suspiciously. "Is there something you wish to say, Elemento?"

Papon scoffed. "Oh, no; it's all good. Believe me: I'm glad to be out of that hellhole – I owe you people a bunch for that. But if I could just… you know… leave now…"

Marius sneered, his eyes flashing. "You wish to leave us? And I thought that we were now friends." He leaned in closer. "After all, were it not for us, you would still be in the prison with M. Butterfly. Do I make myself clear?"

Papon's eyes widened nervously and he gave a jerky nod. "Y–yes. Absolutely. I–um–I–"

Finally setting her prosthetic aside next to the leather straps she had designed to hold it in place with a heavy sigh, Fournier blinked and looked up, turning to take in the rest of the room. Her eyebrows furrowed. "Hey, where are Rigaudeau and Dumont? Shouldn't they be back already?"

Marius shrugged. "Dumont is busy searching for those last parts you needed," he answered. "And as for Rigaudeau… unfortunately, we will not see him again."

She raised an eyebrow dubiously. "What, did you kill him?"

"No; that was the police."

"The hell is that supposed to mean?" demanded Moulin. "He's dead?"

Nouvel scoffed. "I didn't take you for his favorite fan," he pointed out.

Moulin shrugged. "I definitely wasn't," she agreed. "That still doesn't mean I wanted to see him dead."

Finally stirring himself, Papon's eyes shot wide open. "Wait, you saw the police – they saw you!? I seriously didn't sign up for this!"

"Oh, quit your whining, ele-Mental," Fournier told him, rolling her eyes. "What's life without a little risk?"

"Still, I would prefer a little less risk," Moulin pointed out. Marius furrowed his brows, staring hard at her. Her eyes unfocused for a moment and she cleared her throat. "But if it's for a good cause, it's worth a little risk."

Fournier furrowed her brows, eyeing Marius suspiciously.

"And it is absolutely for a good cause," Marius assured them, clearing his throat. "Separate, you couldn't stand against the Heroes of Paris, or against their pet police. But the Heroes of Paris are gone. The police are stretched thin. The city is in chaos. And from the ashes of that chaos we shall emerge like a phoenix to claim our own piece of Paris. Then, even if the Heroes of Paris ever show their faces here again, we will be stronger. We will be in charge."