To Lyger 0: Or that's what she would have done, if Felix hadn't been in danger…
"Chaas, Tentacles out!" The brilliant pink-and-silver light washed over Cara as the Kwami was sucked into the pendant. She squeezed her eyes shut, but too late; even through her eyelids the flash of magic left spots in her vision. Nervously, Caravela opened her eyes and looked down at her new miraculous suit, which appeared almost identical to her old, torn suit but with pink replacing the light blue and burgundy in place of the dark blue on her leggings. Wrapped around her waist was a long elastic cord with a grip on one end. She picked up her trident, which she had leaned against a tree next to her before transforming, and secured it to her back on the suit's built-in clasp. Looking around the small clearing they had chosen for their first training exercise, lit up by the bright noontime sun, she found her companion and raised her eyebrows expectantly.
"[Excellent,]" observed Dhuan, nodding slowly, a contemplative look on his face. "[Now, as Chaas explained, your cord will be far more effective in a fight than this trident – miraculous tools are virtually indestructible, while this technology is not. In addition, miraculous tools are designed to function well with miraculous abilities, and it is through the cord that your Dissolution will be channeled; it would annihilate this trident, should it make contact with it. But if you wish to have the versatility…]" He shrugged. "[Do not complain if it snaps the first time you try to use it!]"
Caravela nodded, frowning. "I know," she acknowledged. "But considering that one of my weapons will simply immobilize most targets and the other will completely atomize anything in its path…"
Dhuan hummed, pursing his lips as he examined her. "[Very well,]" he responded, folding his arms. "[But now, let us begin. How much training do you have in hand-to-hand combat?]"
She shrugged. "I've done a little jogo do pau lately – it translates okay with my trident," she told him. "But not too much beyond that. Carapace has offered training for all of us, but I haven't really taken him up on it – not nearly as often as Estevão." She let out a heavy breath. "Most of the time, it's been enough for me to just jab the bad guys with my trident."
"[With the Jellyfish Miraculous, that will no longer be the case. Therefore, our first order of business is to rectify that lack of training,]" decided Dhuan, dropping into a defensive stance, his knees bent and hands raised, and nodding for Caravela to do the same. "[We will begin with some basic sparring to build your muscle memory.]"
"Are you sure?" she asked doubtfully, copying his posture. "I've seen enough miraculous users in action to know that they're – we're – pretty strong…"
He smirked, his eyes lighting up in amusement. "[We shall see.]" Suddenly he darted forward, swiping at Caravela with one hand, his fingers bent. As if in slow motion, Caravela watched the blow come in and leaned back away from it, raising her own hand to push his hand away. Dhuan spun with the momentum, leaping into the air and aiming a sweeping kick at Caravela's side. Caravela jumped back away from the blow, faster than she would have thought possible, and stumbled as she landed, swinging her arms to recover her balance. Leaning forward to keep her center of gravity over her feet, she drew her trident from her back and stabbed at his chest. Dhuan casually batted the trident aside and stalked toward her, easily leaning to one side to avoid her follow-up jab. "[Not the trident,]" he told her, grabbing the trident's shaft and jerking it out of her hands before she could react. Without looking, he tossed it off to the side where it caught in the ground, waving back and forth. He stepped back, giving her space "[You already understand the trident well enough. Use your cord; you must learn to handle the cord properly. Then perhaps you can combine the two.]"
With a sigh, Caravela grabbed the elastic cord around her waist, her hand automatically finding the handle. It uncoiled with a thought, and she held it out to one side, letting the end drag on the ground. "Better?"
Dhuan bared his teeth and raised an eyebrow in amusement. "[Precious little good it will do you like that!]" he called, lunging toward her. She flicked the cord out at his chest like a whip, and he dropped to all fours, springing at her hips and grabbing her around the waist. She raised her free hand in a fist to bring it down on his back, but she hesitated for a moment. Before she could decide, he flung her backward away from him across the clearing. At a thought Caravela contorted around in midair, planted her hand on the ground, and sprang off to land on her feet. "[Good!]" He loped toward her, crouching forward with his fingers spread and outstretched. Caravela took a step back away from him, looking around the clearing. "[Twirl the cord! That is the secret!]" he instructed. "[Constant motion for a constant shield, even when you do not consider it necessary.]"
Caravela slowly spun the cord in front of her, as she had seen Ladybug do on many occasions, picking up speed as she went. Faster and faster the cord spun, until it was nothing but a shimmery, silvery blur. Dhuan swiped a handful of pebbles and twigs from the forest floor and hurled them at her shield, and they turned to powder on contact. Finally, Caravela's racing heart began to slow down and she took in a deep, calming breath.
With a satisfied smile, Dhuan straightened up. "[Now do you see?]"
She nodded slowly and stopped spinning her cord, allowing it to drop to the ground. "I do," she agreed. "But what now? More sparring?"
He hummed. "[No, I think now it is past time for you to test your Dissolution in action.]" He pointed to one of the trees along the edge of the forest. "[Strike it with your cord and say 'Dissolution,']" he instructed. "[But you must be careful to only strike the target, and to concentrate on the narrowest understanding of what the target is. You wish to dissolute the tree, not the continent!]"
Caravela blinked dumbly, but nodded. "Dissolution!" she shouted, swinging the cord behind her before bringing it forward and cracking it against the tree in question. The tree shuddered as a sickly pink light illuminated it from within, starting from the spot where the whip had contacted it. Suddenly, that pink light shifted and spread up and down the tree through the trunk, extending from the roots belowground up to the tips of the branches, which began to turn black and emit smoke. All at once, the outermost edges of the tree began to disintegrate, blackening and dissolving away from the outside to the inside. In less than a minute, the tree was no more, leaving in its place nothing but heat. Caravela's jaw dropped. "I did that?" she gasped, staring at the spot. Her stomach clenched, and she turned on Dhuan, only vaguely aware of the beep coming from her pendant. "And if I hadn't been careful enough, that would have happened to the whole continent!?"
He nodded soberly. "[That is the curse of the Jellyfish]," he explained gravely. "[Without the utmost care, it can cause far more damage than intended.]"
She grabbed the miraculous and started to pull it off. "There is no way that I'm going to do that again!"
Dhuan covered her hand with his own, holding the miraculous in place around her neck. His eyes bored into her own with such intensity that her eyes started to water. "[And that is why you are a good candidate to hold it,]" he replied. "[The Jellyfish, you see – like all miraculous – is merely a tool. With Chaas' power, it can accomplish great good, but it can also be turned to great evil. You understand that, so you will not–]"
"What the hell was that!?" demanded an unfamiliar voice.
Caravela's heart stopped, and she spun in surprise to find a tall, heavyset man in the robes of a Dark Acolyte, leaning on a quarterstaff and standing in front of a large group of similarly-dressed men and women along the perimeter of the clearing. Looking closer, Caravela recognized one or two – perhaps she had seen them in Paris.
Dhuan stepped between Caravela and the Dark Acolytes. "[What are you doing here?]" he demanded, his arms folded and his eyes narrowed dangerously.
The man arched an eyebrow dubiously. "Does it speak English?"
"He has a name," Caravela replied, her eyes narrowed. She flicked her cord on the ground and spun it to one side. "Now what are you doing here?"
The man stepped forward, raising his quarterstaff and pressing a knothole to deploy a pair of blades from the ends. Twirling it to one side, he lay it along his arm with one of the blades pointed at Caravela's face. "We are here to prevent you from annihilating the world with your miraculous abuse!"
"Who said we are going to abuse this miraculous?" Caravela demanded, frowning. Her miraculous beeped insistently. "We are only using it to stop the Tarasque!"
He scoffed. "All miraculous use is abuse!" he intoned, spinning his blade-staff over his head and stabbing one blade into the ground. "And we are going to cull those who would abuse miraculous!"
A low growl emanated from Dhuan's throat, and he pounded one fist against his chest. "[If you would hurt a miraculous holder, it will only be over my dead body!]" he bellowed, falling down to his hands and knees as, with a rending shriek, his tunic ripped apart. Dark black fur sprouted from every inch of his body, and he grew almost a meter in height, his weight doubling with pure muscle. His fingernails lengthened into long claws, his mouth and nose merging together into a short snout, and his ears migrated up onto top of his head. Caravela's jaw dropped, copying the expressions on the Dark Acolytes' faces as Dhuan – now transformed into an enormous black bear – rose up onto his hind legs. He bellowed, sharp teeth bared, and, falling back down onto all fours, lumbered forward, aiming straight for the Dark Acolyte leader, who pulled his staff from the ground and held one blade out in front of himself, his hands trembling. Dhuan brought his front legs off the ground and batted the blade aside with one front leg, slashing at the leader with his claws and he came down on top of him. The man rolled out from under him, barely keeping his grip on the blade-staff, and hurled a bolas at Dhuan with exploded as the balls clacked together. Dhuan shielded his eyes with one paw, rearing up on his back paws and pounding his chest with a snarl, blinking in confusion as he searched for the Dark Acolyte leader. Three of the other Dark Acolytes immediately leapt at Dhuan, piling onto his back. He roared in rage, sunk his claws into a man's arm, and threw him to the side, into the trunk of a tree. The Dark Acolyte's back slammed into the tree with a tremendous crack, splintering the wood, and the man slumped to the ground, letting out a rattling breath. With the other two still clinging to his back, Dhuan lumbered after the leader, who sidestepped away from him, moving ever closer to Caravela.
Quickly recovering from her shock, Caravela rotated her cord-shield in front of herself at an upward angle, just as the leader jumped, slashing at her with one of his blades. The blade bounced off of the shield and deflected to one side, but the leader built on the momentum to swing the back end of his staff around at her, sliding the second blade underneath her guard. The blade struck her forearm, just below the end of her suit, and a thin line of red blood appeared. On the far side of the clearing, Dhuan grabbed one of the Dark Acolytes in his teeth, shaking him around and hurling him to the ground beneath his paws, as two others pulled out long weighted ropes and tossed them over his back. Dhuan batted one of the ropes away, freeing a foreleg and swiping at another Acolyte, who nimbly leapt away from him. A third Acolyte flicked something at Dhuan which stuck to his fur and popped, and he roared furiously, his fur smoldering in that spot.
"Why are you doing this?" Caravela demanded, jumping away from the leader, shaking her injured arm. "Don't you want to stop the Tarasque from destroying the planet?"
"Of course we do!" he retorted, slashing at her with one end of his staff and striking her in the leg. A force like a shot rippled through her lower body as the staff connected, and Caravela stumbled backward. The leader stalked closer. "Do you think that the abuse of miraculous will stop the rampage of a monster that is drawn to miraculous!?"
"What?" Caravela's jaw dropped and she stared at him in bewilderment. "You're insane!"
"These Monsters only came because of the miraculous!" the leader declared, swinging his staff back around and avoiding her shield. Caravela dodged aside, and the blow struck the back of her leg. "Their abuse draws the Beast!" She fell to the ground, and the leader stood over her, blade held to her throat. Dhuan let out a last roar of protest on the other side of the clearing. Caravela swallowed hard, staring up at the leader. "There shall be no more miraculous abused."
