To Geft: That is pretty likely. Of course, just because they try to attack doesn't mean they'll make it past Cat Noir or the senti-guardian in one piece…

"So… I know I'm not exactly one to talk… and I know you're almost as new here as I am… but is this… normal? For Paris, I mean?"

Nyagwai' arched an eyebrow at Buck and slowed down slightly, pressing a hand to the stitch in her side. Buck gasped, panting for breath, and stopped, bracing his hands on his legs. Turning away from him, Nyagwai' quickly scanned the intersection before them before leaning over the railing and glancing down at the walkway alongside the river below street level. A few civilians had been walking along the riverfront when Pegasus had first portaled them out of the Agreste Mansion, shortly after Adrien had ordered the lockdown. However, in the hour since then, the number of people on the streets had steadily declined, as had the number of vehicles on the road. Although while the number of vehicles had dropped, the level of traffic had actually increased. Two blocks back, they had passed a car that had been struck by an energy blast from above and caught fire, forcing traffic around it. A taxi had been stalled in the middle of an intersection, and it had taken all their strength for Nyagwai' and Buck to push it over to the side of the road.

Light flared up from somewhere south of them, drawing Nyagwai's eye up to the top of Montparnasse Tower just as an energy beam shot out of one of the windows near the very top of the building, aiming toward a spot midway between them and the tower. Tensing, Nyagwai' eyed the tower cautiously and thumbed her communicator.

"We are a little preoccupied at the moment," Impératrice Pourpre responded briskly.

Nyagwai' let out a breath. "There is a sniper at Montparnasse Tower," she reported, accelerating across the gap to the closest building. Buck broke into a jog next to her, breathing heavily from exertion.

"We will look into that," Pegasus assured her, before the communication terminated.

As she hid in the shadow of a small café, Buck poked his head out from under the awning and glanced south in the direction of Montparnasse. "I see a couple of drones," he reported. "And – is that Mecha-Man?"

Nyagwai' put her hand on his shoulder and leaned out, looking in the same direction as him. A brilliant white light shone from a spot to their south, moving quickly in the direction of Montparnasse Tower. A beam of energy shot out from the tower, and the flying figure rolled to one side before a pair of yellow flares appeared to either side of it and streaked in the direction of the tower. The tower seemed to shudder in the light of the fire near its base. "Damn," Nyagwai' muttered, her mouth falling open. "I'm… pretty sure he's supposed to be on our side…"

"Overkill much?" Glancing back at Nyagwai', Buck raised an eyebrow. "But you still haven't answered my question."

She frowned, her brows furrowed in thought. She had only been in Paris for four months, admittedly; that hardly made her an expert on the city, or on the Heroes of Paris. When her team had come to Paris to fight the Tarasque, when they had spent six weeks and Angola together, she had accompanied them… but that could hardly count as experience with Paris. Finally, she shrugged, raising an eyebrow at him. "I mean, it isn't not normal for Paris," she answered, her lips twisting around. "Or at least, not according to Lupa Gris' stories of her year here. With the number of criminals running around – some of them with miraculous that don't belong to them," she added under her breath, "sometimes the Heroes of Paris really have their hands full trying to deal with all of them."

Buck quirked his eyebrows at her dubiously. "You know, the United Heroez have plans in place for dealing with these kinds of situations."

"As far as I can tell, Paris does, too," Nyagwai' pointed out, leading the way out from under their overhang, glancing up toward Montparnasse Tower nervously. Mecha-Man had disappeared; the tower still stood. "The Heroes of Paris do work with the police; Impératrice Pourpre's father is in charge of the police, right?"

Buck hummed dubiously. "I suppose we've had this kind of thing happen a couple times before in Philly," he admitted. "Actually, my grandfather retired after the Ringmaster's people tried to steal the Liberty Bell by holding Citizens Bank Park hostage – he managed to rescue the hostages and contain the bomb, but he realized the stress was just too much for him to deal with anymore."

Nyagwai's eyes widened. "That's… a little crazy. What were they trying to accomplish?"

He shrugged. "I don't think they ever really said. Bell figured out what was happening before they could get away with it, and, um… the Spirit got to them and took them all down."

"Sounds like you've seen a lot of excitement," she observed, quirking an eyebrow at him.

"Not too much," he admitted, shaking his head. "Since Liberty Bell finally shut down the Ringmaster's operation in the city, it's been fairly quiet for the last year or so. At least when giant abominations against God and man aren't wandering the streets!" He sucked in a deep breath and rolled his neck. A pair of narrow speedboats raced past them, moving downriver, chased by a police boat. After watching the three boats until they were out of sight, Buck raised an eyebrow at Nyagwai' dubiously. "Still, are you sure that the entire city going up in flames while heroes and villains battle in the streets is normal for Paris?"

Nyagwai' smirked. "Well when you put it that way…" She stifled a laugh. "From what Marinette has said, this is pretty much what Paris was like for the two years that Hawk Moth was around: he would send out his Akumas every few days, and some of them were perfectly capable of taking over the entire city and then some."

"Damn." Buck shook his head ruefully. "I mean, I remember seeing on the news some of the stories about the crazy happenings on the other side of the ocean, but it never felt all that real. It's a little different actually being here." He glanced down the street behind them as someone on a jetpack streaked over their heads. "This is a little more than Amethyst has ever managed to do…"

"Truthfully," Nyagwai' admitted, her mouth set in a thin line, "I'm pretty sure this is more than Night Bat or the Lynchpin has tried before, too."

Buck grinned. "Good thing they've got us to help them out, if that's the case!"

"Absolutely," Nyagwai' agreed, narrowing her eyes and searching the riverfront carefully. "And maybe if we're really lucky, we'll run into the two miraculous-stealing assholes…" she muttered, frowning. The city around them had quieted down since Mecha-Man took care of the sniper in the tower; down the next side street, she could see lights in a couple of doorways, a handful of people standing on apartment balconies and looking around. Nyagwai' let out a breath, trying to center herself and focus on the task at hand. Her miraculous would return – sooner or later, she would find the man who had taken it, and she would make him pay.

Beside her, Buck tensed very suddenly. "Did you see that?" he hissed, staring intently at the bridge ahead of them.

Nyagwai' froze in place, following his gaze toward the space below the building, where a small boat – little more than a rowboat – rocked in the steady current. Beside it stood a pair of figures, indistinguishable from the shadow of the bridge if they hadn't been moving slightly. "What do you think they are?" she muttered to Buck, watching the two carefully.

"Trouble," he replied curtly, looking up and down the wall for the closest stairs down to the lower walkway. He jogged forward, Nyagwai' close behind him, and took the stairs three at a time, building momentum with each step until his burst out onto the walkway and barreled straight toward the two people.

Nyagwai' took in their appearance in an instant – the quarterstaffs in their hands, the close-cut robes that swayed around their legs. "Acolytes!"

One of the two reached into his sleeve and flung something at Buck, who didn't slow down, narrowing the distance between them rapidly. The Dark Acolyte swung his quarterstaff around in a tight circle at Buck's head, but Buck ducked and bobbed in the opposite direction before coming back with an upcut to the jaw. Leaning backward to evade the blow, the Dark Acolyte jumped out of the way and aimed a kick at Buck's head. Snarling, Nyagwai' flicked out her wrist to deploy the hand claws that Paola had designed for her, slashing wildly at the Dark Acolyte in front of Buck. The other one drove his foot into Nyagwai's side, and she stumbled back a pace before resetting and punching that Dark Acolyte as hard as she could. The man dove out of the way, and Nyagwai' dropped into a fighting stance.

"What, were you going to ambush us?" Nyagwai' demanded, glaring at the two Dark Acolytes. "It's not gonna work!"

The Dark Acolyte sneered. "If you throw in your lot with the Miraculous abusers, then you will share their fate!"

Ducking a quarterstaff and diving forward to place himself between the two Dark Acolytes, Buck scoffed. "If by 'share their fate' you mean 'kick Dark Acolytes' asses', then I agree!"

One of the Dark Acolytes scowled, kicking Buck in the face. At the same moment, the other one lunged at him in a tackle. Nyagwai' dove forward, knocking Buck to the ground and out of the Dark Acolytes' path. Behind them, one of the Acolytes managed to hold up, but the other did not, stumbling forward into his companion. Surging back to his feet as they tried to reset themselves, Buck caught them both in a flying tackle, knocking them to the ground on the edge of the riverwalk.

"You're going to come with us," Buck growled, his eyes narrowing as he loomed over the two Dark Acolytes. One spun his quarterstaff, but Nyagwai' stomped on the staff, wrenched it from his grasp, and threw it into the river.

Glaring up at them furiously, the other Dark Acolyte grabbed his friend by the shoulder. "Not likely," he retorted, rolling over the edge and pulling the other Dark Acolyte after him.

Nyagwai' rushed to the edge and looked over, just as the boat drifted away from the wall and out into the middle of the river. "And you'd better run!" she shouted after them.

Buck let out a breath, rolling his shoulders, and stretched his back. "Damn," he grumbled, staring after the boat. "I was hoping we could question them and find out where our miraculous are."

Nyagwai' hummed, nodding, and sighed heavily. "They might not have known anything," she pointed out sourly.

"Maybe not… but it feels like I haven't accomplished anything since arriving. I'm no closer to getting my miraculous back."

"It's only been a couple of weeks since you arrived," she argued. "My miraculous has been in their hands for over a year."

"Yeah…" Buck furrowed his brows, glancing back up toward the street above them. "Any idea where we should go now?"

Nyagwai' shrugged helplessly and led the way back up the stairs to the street level, looking up and down the road. A couple of vehicles rolled past, around the same time that an orange arc passed beneath their feet, expanded away from them, and suddenly condensed back in the direction from which it had come. "I'm… not sure," she admitted, shaking her head. Keying her communicator, she asked, "Where are we needed?"

A robotic voice responded promptly. "Where you are currently is acceptable," Markov told her. "The chaos north of the river appears to be 30% contained, but there are reports of disturbances two blocks east of your location."

"Understood." Nyagwai' glanced back at Buck, whose mouth set in a thin line, his eyes narrowed intently. "We'll see what we can do then."

"Very well then."

Nyagwai' let out a heavy sigh as she scanned the street around them, looking for any sign of the disturbance that Markov had mentioned. She could hear energy blasts from the north. The wind picked up from that same direction, and a pungent odor stung her nostrils. Nyagwai' winced, wrinkling up her nose and fighting the urge to gag. "Oh, what is that awful smell?"

"It smells rancid!" Buck covered his mouth and nose, his eyes watering. But as quickly as the smell had come, it disappeared. "Oh, that's so much better," he grumbled, glaring in that direction in annoyance. "Now let's–" He suddenly fell silent, his eyes widening as he stared at something above and behind them.

Her brows furrowed in confusion, Nyagwai' slowly turned to look in the same direction as Buck faced. There, standing on top of an apartment roof four blocks behind them, was the Bearator, outlined by the flickering firelight behind him. Nyagwai's eyes flashed, and she immediately dropped into a fighting stance before sprinting straight toward him. This was why she had come to Paris! She could finally stop the monster who had taken her uncle's miraculous, who was abusing the miraculous that was rightfully hers! The Bearator, however, was too far away, too high up, for her to get to him. She had only crossed half a block before he finally jumped from that rooftop to the next one, and from there to the top of the bridge in front of him, sprinting across the guard rail and springing from there to the roof of another building on the opposite side of the street.

"We have to go after him!" shouted Nyagwai', pointing in the Bearator's direction

Buck, however, put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. "He's too far away. We need to worry about other things, at least for tonight."

"But he's right there!" she insisted, her eyes widening, staring at him pleadingly.

"And we'll get another chance," he told her. "But I don't see him anymore. And there are people down there who need our help."

Nyagwai' glared at him for a long minute. This was the closest she'd come! She had to see it through! But at the same time, Buck was right. Those people needed them. Finally, she sighed, her shoulders slumping. "Fine. But next time, he won't get away from me."