To yellow 14: Emilie has had a policy before not of not handing out miraculous – that's Ladybug and Cat Noir's decision. Plus most of the miraculous in her box aren't actually hers to distribute… And there definitely aren't all that many good candidates at the moment!

To Guest: There are definitely other medical professionals around; the Paris Police Prefecture includes emergency medical services, and a lot of their EMS personnel are still there. But considering the needs of Paris, they are really busy. Regarding the tracker, it may still be operative… assuming that it survived the merging process intact. But even if it did, the Tarasque's poison has been interfering with communication devices.

Cruising down Boulevard Saint-Michel, Ramus carefully scanned the businesses on either side of the street. Several had already been picked clean by the looters; a couple more had their front windows boarded up. Of the businesses they drove past, only two had lights on inside – a butcher's deli and a pharmacy, both adjacent to each other. Light glinting off of something above the buildings drew Ramus' attention upward, to a small drone hovering just above the two businesses. He nodded in evaluation. Idly, Ramus wondered how many of these businesses' owners were still in the city, and how many others had survived and might return to reclaim their property and rebuild someday. So many people had been killed; so many more had fled, either out of the city to one of the refugee camps that they had heard about in the surrounding suburbs or with the Heroes of Paris who had escaped all the way to Africa. Certainly the population of Paris had plummeted overnight when the Tarasque had stormed through – according to the best estimates, it had dropped from a city of 10 million to under 1 million.

Would Paris ever recover from that blow?

As they continued down the street, their patrol car passed a group of men in orange vests, most carrying shovels and brooms, while two pushed wheelbarrows. The work detail, consisting of looters arrested over the past week, clustered around a building that had collapsed recently, working under the close supervision of two regular officers to shift the debris off of the sidewalk and street in order to open it up for easier travel. Several workers shifted the debris with shovels, clearing the debris away from the still-standing buildings to either side. One man picked through the rubble to find any bricks worth salvaging, stacking them up in an enormous pile on the edge of the sidewalk. Another loaded the broken pieces into a wheelbarrow and poured the accumulated detritus into the wide pothole immediately in front of the building. Two more were working their way down the street, nailing boards up over the broken windows of stores.

"Think this will get fixed?" Roux asked quietly, gazing hopelessly out the window.

Ramus let out a heavy sigh, frowning. "I don't know," he admitted finally, giving a one-shouldered shrug. "I sure as hell hope it will. Ladybug has fixed so much other damage over the years, it seems almost blasphemous to think she couldn't fix something like this. But most of the time she's fixing more recent damage, not things that happened weeks ago. And now it's been almost a month, and there's no end in sight. So I guess… who knows?"

Roux looked at him forlornly. "What about those who died?"

"You're thinking about Danny, right?" Ramus raised an eyebrow. Roux shrugged, averting his gaze and swallowing hard, taking a long drink from his water bottle. Ramus hummed. "I mean… she's raised people who were killed before, hasn't she?"

"I think so…" Roux agreed. "Chabat swears – swore – up and down that he'd drowned when Syren flooded the city a couple years back. But when I mentioned it to Angelique the other day, she wasn't so sure." He fell silent; his shoulders slumped. "She probably didn't want to get her hopes up."

Ramus' mouth set in a thin line. "Probably." He frowned, examining Roux's drawn face out of the corner of his eye. He seemed… thinner since his run-in with Sandy. "How are you feeling now?"

Roux barked out a humorless laugh, raising his half-emptied water bottle. "I've been guzzling water almost constantly since it happened, so there's that."

"Not planning on a reprise, are you?" Ramux asked sharply. Roux had only been cleared to return to duty that morning – and even then, it was only because they were so shorthanded.

Roux pursed his lips, frowning. "If you're going to take it out of me for going off on Sandy like that, you can save your breath. Angelique almost ripped me apart when she came down and I told her what had happened." He sighed heavily, stifling a sniffle. "She said she already lost a husband; she doesn't need to lose a brother, too."

Ramus nodded firmly. "Good for her. But if you try pulling a stunt like that again," he added harshly, "I will bench you until you get your head on straight."

"Yes, sir."

Ramus turned onto Boulevard Saint-Germain, careful to avoid the sinkhole that had opened up above the Metro station at that intersection. He clenched his jaw. With all of the destruction around them, it was almost impossible to find anything in the city that hadn't been affected by the Tarasque's passing in some way. Even buildings far from the Tarasque's path showed definite signs of damage from the seismic vibrations its steps had caused. Arrondissements without other evidence of damage had been cut off from electricity when the city's power grid went offline, and some blocks still had not been reconnected. And of course communication outside of the city was virtually impossible since the phone lines had snapped.

They were just passing the first side street when a sudden gust of wind picked up, almost blowing their patrol car over onto its side. Roux's eyes shot wide open in shock, and Ramus spun the wheel rapidly in that direction, pointing the car's nose into the wind to keep them upright.

"The hell!?" shouted Roux, gripping the door handle tightly.

"Alert! Potential super-criminal activity! Boulevard Saint-Germain one block east of Saint-Michel! Suspect presence of Mistral!" Ramus called, activating the car's radio from his prosthetic as he pushed the pedal all the way down to the floor. The patrol car's engine strained to keep them in place against the force of the wind, the tires whining as smoke curled up from the undercarriage.

"Unit Two en route!"

Gritting his teeth, Ramus gunned the engine, suddenly jumping forward as the wind died down around them. The car tore down the street, barreling over piles of crumbled brickwork that had fallen from the roofs to either side. The car skidded to one side as he fought to right it, decelerating quickly. Not too far down Rue de la Harpe he could see a group of four people standing in front of the money exchange. One, a woman in a dark-colored jacket, caught Ramus' eye, her face oddly familiar. The man closest to her swung a metal pipe at the woman's head, only for the pipe to stop mid-swing, a meter from her head. The woman clenched her fist, and the pipe ripped from the man's grip and flew to one side to embed in the brick wall between them. In the same motion, she threw an uppercut at the man, and a thin column of rock burst through the sidewalk beneath his feet, striking him in the chin and knocking him backward so he collapsed against the wall behind him. Another man yelped and backpedaled away from her, eyes wide, only for a tree root to poke through the cracked sidewalk, tripping him up. With a roar, the third lunged at her from behind in a tackle. As his arms closed around her chest, she jabbed her elbow back into the man's gut, and he let out a pained grunt. Elbowing him again, she stomped on his foot, grabbed his arms, and pushed them away from her, breaking his grip. Pushing him back, she stepped forward and spun. The man stumbled backward a pace, clenching his fist. Before he could attack her again, however, she held out one hand. A wave of fire erupted from her hand and licked over his face, burning away his facial hair and catching his shirt on fire. The man spun around, shrieking, and ran away from her, only for a streetlight's crossbar to slide down the pole and clothesline him. He fell onto the verge of brown grass, rolling around in the dirt and covering his face with his hands.

Roux raised an eyebrow at Ramus. "I don't think that was Mistral," he observed wryly.

Shaking his head, Ramus activated the radio again, slamming on the brakes just in front of the woman. "Um… cancel that alert; it was a vigilante, not Mistral. Unit One can handle this."

The woman glared down at the criminal slumped against the wall at her feet, who was not moving, his head sagging onto his chest. Sighing, she twirled two fingers in a circle several times and clenched them into a fist. As she did so, the tree roots that had tripped the second man crawled up the side of the building and wrapped themselves around the first man's arms and legs, pinning him in place.

"I think you got them," Ramus commented, failing to keep a chuckle out of his voice. He stepped out of the car and leaned against the door on his side as Roux joined him. The third man moaned in agony, still batting feebly at the flames licking his shirt.

Elementa shrugged, arching an eyebrow at Ramus. "A girl can't be too careful, what with all the criminals running around the city lately. After all, it's not like the fine men and women of the Paris Police Prefecture can keep us safe these days…"

Ramus frowned, foldig his arm over his prosthetic. "Somehow, I don't think you of all people really need to worry about that," he pointed out curtly. "But speaking of…" He nodded meaningfully at the man whose shirt was still burning.

Elementa rolled her eyes and waved her hand casually. "Fine." A mist of water collected out of the air above him, raining down onto him and extinguishing the remaining flames. The man whimpered as the crossbar wrenched off the streetlight, elongated, and wrapped around his arms, pinning them behind his back.

"Was all of that really necessary?" asked Roux, his arms folded. "It didn't exactly look like any of these guys had powers."

"Well, they're not going to forget this lesson any time soon," she replied with a shrug. Her eyes narrowed, darting back and forth between Ramus and Roux. "Why? Are you planning to arrest me when I'm out here doing your job? Because I think we all know how well that would go for you, Lieutenant."

Ramus let out a breath. "There's a time when I would have been tempted," he admitted. "Defending yourself and stopping criminals is all well and good, but there is such a thing as overkill – and from what I saw, you clearly crossed that line just now." He shook his head. "But no. We're not going to arrest you – that's a can of worms I have no interest in opening. And with everything that's been going on in the city these last few weeks, we need people like you more than ever. Despite your… questionable methods."

She cocked her head in surprise. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"The jailbreak last week?" Roux prompted.

Elementa shrugged noncommittally.

"La Santé's super-criminal wing sustained some damage from the Tarasque. A group of super-criminals took advantage of that fact to escape," Ramus explained. "Including your old friend, Dynamus." Her nostrils flared dangerously. "And unfortunately, we are not in a position to stop them."

She raised an eyebrow doubtfully. "What about that other officer I met… um, Gouger, right?"

"Out of commission," Ramus informed her, his mouth set in a thin line. "Two of mine are out of action temporarily – another couple were killed by the Tarasque." Roux flinched. "Our department is spread thin as it is, and the regular police officers are hardly equipped to fight Dynamus or his companions. So you can keep on going like this – tracking down looters and vandals to kick their asses – or you can help us out and really make a difference with the situation in Paris. Which would you choose?"

Elementa cocked her head to one side, arms folded, examining him carefully. Frowning, she finally shrugged. "When Gouger asked me that question a couple months ago, I laughed – why join with you people when I could do it on my own? But now? After watching the Tarasque tear through Paris and rip apart the university campus where I live and study?" She sighed heavily. "Maybe it's not such a bad idea to work with others."

Ramus nodded and handed her a small handheld radio. She eyed it dubiously. "We'll be in touch."

As they loaded the three looters into their patrol car and drove away, Roux frowned. "It's great that we have one vigilante now to help Chrysaor," he observed, doubt in his voice, "but Mind-Wipe has at least six on his side. We're going to need a few more if we're – they're – going to stand a chance. Especially when they have at least one miraculous."

Ramus frowned. "So it would appear."