Every part of Tyran-X's body ached. He lay face down on the pavement, and something heavy lay on top of him, directly over his spine. As he returned to consciousness, Tyran-X ran through a quick inventory of his bodily systems, stopping on the pressure to his back, which blossomed outward and radiated along his arms and legs. The object on his back dug tightly into the small of his back, but he could still feel his tos. Carefully he pushed himself up on all fours, and crumbled bricks and masonry poured off of him to either side. The air in front of him was thick with green poison and dust. The distant sound of the Tarasque's roars rumbled through the walls. Looking around, he groaned. He was in a small, enclosed space, inside the fallen building. The sickly green smoke that had suffused Paris ever since the Tarasque came into being seeped in through the damaged windows and cracks in the wall, clinging to the ground but rising in height steadily. In the light filtering through the cracks, he looked around to find Miss Pinky, sitting up against the wall, examining something on her rake's handle, next to a mechanical form almost the same height as a man. Its eye holes flickered with sparks. Tyran-X groaned, feeling a headache starting to form behind his eyes.
Miss Pinky looked up at him in surprise. "Are you okay?"
He grimaced, rubbing his forehead. "I've… been better."
Cautiously she helped him into a sitting position. "I was just trying to get Turing back on line," she explained. "But he took some serious damage. I don't think I can do anything for him."
Tyran-X coughed. "What's going on outside?"
She let out a breath, her shoulders slumping. "I heard a lot of shouting outside a couple minutes ago – the Tarasque is still there. It sounds like it's getting closer, and whoever was fighting it just started to pull back. Everyone is trying to escape. And I just heard something on the communicator about an evacuation?" She hugged her knees.
"Good for them… maybe a few innocent people won't actually die today." He eyed Miss Pinky carefully. Her jaw clenched and she squeezed her hands into tight fists. He frowned, leaning his head back on the rubble behind him. "But it looks like we're stuck here for now." The Tarasque's bellow sounded out, closer this time. "But for how much longer…"
She exhaled. "Bengalia and the others will come for me," she informed him confidently, folding her legs and resting her elbows on her knees. "They won't leave me."
He hummed sardonically. "Nice that you have people who care about you…" he mused dubiously.
"They do," she insisted, working her mouth nervously and looking around anxiously. "There's no way that Bengalia won't come back for me. They'll rescue both of us when they get here."
He raised an eyebrow. "They would rescue me?"
She furrowed her brows and stared at him in bemusement. "Well, of course. You may work for the Lynchpin, but you're still a human being. Of course we would rescue you."
He scoffed. "They didn't–"
"I'm sorry!" she shrieked, and gasped, wide-eyed, covering her mouth with her hand and staring at him. Her shoulders slumped, and she whispered hoarsely, "I'm sorry. About your wife, I mean. I'm so sorry that she's dead… that it was my actions that got her killed. Words can't possibly express my regret."
Tyran-X's mouth set in a thin line, his eyes narrowed. Only dimly was he aware of the Tarasque's growling snarls from outside, drawing closer and closer to their location. By her own admission last summer, Miss Pinky was the cause of all his misery, all his suffering. She was responsible for Béa's death. Here she was, at his mercy, with the Tarasque bearing down on them. If nothing changed, these would be their last moments alive: the Tarasque would stomp through here, and that would be it. But now, at the end… maybe it was time. What did she have to say for herself? He stared at her, silent, daring her to speak.
She looked down at the ground, her eyes closed. "I didn't know anyone was in the car," she whispered hoarsely, coughing weakly. She smacked her chest once before she continued. "I should have checked – I know that now. I had only been a hero for a month at that point; I was still new and inexperienced. That's not an excuse for what I did; it's just an explanation. Rena Rouge had asked me to create a distraction, and I thought the best way to do it was to grow a hedge maze. The car was right there, and I just incorporated it into the maze. Then the Lynchpin's people showed up and started trying to get rid of the maze, and then they brought in the flamethrowers to burn it away. So I left."
Tyran-X blinked. "It was Lynchpin's people who burned everything!?" She nodded. He folded his arms, glaring at her suspiciously. "But Ladybug and Cat Noir–"
"Were never there," she interrupted. She sniffled. "It was only ever a Mirage. Rena Rouge created it to pull attention away from me so I could escape." She looked at him, her eyes shining with tears. "I am so, so sorry for what I did. I am sorry that my actions put you on this path. And I'm especially sorry that I–I killed…" She swallowed heavily. "That I got Béatrice killed. All–all I can ask is for you to forgive me."
Tyran-X stared hard at her, taking in the anguish written across her face. When Béa first died, he had been filled with an indiscriminate rage, but especially against Ladybug and Cat Noir. Then he had held this transgression against Miss Pinky for almost a year, ever since he had found out in Rouen that it was her fault. He had lived in the anger. He had reveled in the search for revenge. So much of his life over the last year had been devoted to this singular mission of revenge. The so-called "Heroes of Paris" pretended to care about people, but they had killed his wife. What forgiveness could there be for that?
But, then, what forgiveness was there for any of the crimes he had committed? He had destroyed the Champ de Mars, the Trocadero, so many other places. He had assisted the Lynchpin in bringing his products into Paris, hurting more and more people as they became dependent on the drugs. He had hurt and almost killed several of the heroes, to say nothing of civilians. All in service of revenge… against the very hero now sitting in front of him defeated, begging for forgiveness. And now they were trapped here with the Tarasque bearing down on them, its roars growing ever closer. All because the Heroes of Paris wanted to stop the Tarasque and protect innocent people. His shoulders sagged. "I–I forgive you," he finally forced himself to answer her, the words at once bitter and relieving in his mouth. "I… I realize it wasn't just your fault what happened." He frowned, resting his head back against the wall. "I guess it was Lynchpin's fault – at least as much as yours or anyone else's."
She sniffled again. "Thank you," she whispered. She stared down at the ground, hugging her legs. Clearing her throat, she looked around helplessly. "But what are we going to do?"
He furrowed his brows in thought. The Tarasque roared, shaking the building around them and knocking a clock that had been hanging askew from the ceiling loose. It clattered to the ground next to Tyran-X. It had to be less than a block away by now. Finally he examined the room around them. The building's street-facing wall had crumbled, and the building itself had collapsed over them, leaving them in a sideways apartment. Perhaps he could get them out, but the Tarasque was right there, one of its legs now barely visible through a crack in the masonry. Miss Pinky's leg looked like it had started to swell. Another roar sounded out, and the rubble vibrated around them. Tyran-X grimaced. "Can you put any weight on that ankle?"
She frowned and tested it, wincing and stifling a gasp as she pressed it against a bookcase in front of her. Nevertheless, she gritted her teeth and gave him a jerky nod, looking around the ground around her. "If I can find my rake and use it as a crutch… maybe."
There was only one way out of this.
"When I say," he instructed her firmly, "run. And don't look back."
She cocked her head in confusion. "What are you–?"
"Dino-Quake!" Tyran-X surged to his feet and stomped one foot, sending a crack in both directions through the ground: first toward the Tarasque to the north, and second in the opposite direction, toward the south and safety. The building around them shuddered and shifted as the ground split apart. With a tremendous creak, the apartment building broke. Finding the rake in the rubble with his foot, Tyran-X kicked it through the air at Miss Pinky. "Now!"
Miss Pinky caught her rake, pushed herself up, and started hobbling toward the crack in the building opposite the Tarasque. "Come on! Let's go!"
Tyran-X ignored her, however, as the chasm beneath it destabilized the wall in front of him. The wall crumbled and collapsed, and Tyran-X stared up into the face of the Tarasque, towering high above them. The seam in the ground ran its full length through the ground beneath it, cutting straight between its legs. It snorted, acrid smoke pouring from its nostrils. It pawed the ground, mouth open and razor-sharp teeth on full display. Its eyes glowed a malevolent red.
"You aren't the only one with fire power!" Tyran-X roared, the fire building in the Tarasque's eyes reflecting in his own. "In-Dino!" Tyran-X lashed out with his lasso and cracked it like a whip within the seam, directly between the Tarasque's front pair of legs. With a rending sound the ground split apart once more, forming a cross with the Dino-Quake seam, and the new seams shot out directly toward the Tarasque's front paws. Something cracked below the surface, as two geysers of lava erupted from the ground, directly beneath the Tarasque's front paws. Something hissed near the ground. The Tarasque reared up, threw its head back, and shrieked in anger as lava covered the ground, bubbling up onto its paws. Behind him, Tyran-X sensed Miss Pinky backing away, slowly edging through the rubble. "Go!" he shouted to her. "Get out of here!"
"Come with me!" she screamed back.
The Tarasque bellowed and brought its paws back down, sending a shockwave through the ground. Miss Pinky stumbled, only catching herself by jamming her rake between two pieces of rubble. Tyran-X spun his arms to maintain his balance, and dropped one foot back. The Tarasque's eyes glowed, and red fire burst from them, lancing straight at Tyran-X. He tensed his arms and legs. Suddenly, the air between the Tarasque and Tyran-X exploded in a massive concussion as the natural gas caught fire and detonated, sending another shockwave rippling out through the air in all directions. Tyran-X jumped backward and spun his lasso in front of himself as a shield, blocking most of the blast though some still snuck through. Fire licked at the ground at the Tarasque's feet. The Tarasque howled in anger and sent another wave of fire at Tyran-X, setting off a second concussive explosion.
He could feel the exposed skin of his face crackling from the intense heat. Coughing into his fist, he brought up a mouthful of blood – something must have ruptured from the force of the explosion. But he had come this far; he couldn't stop now. He spat out a mouthful of foamy blood, his teeth bared in a feral snarl. "Di-Nado!" Tyran-X spun his lasso in a tight loop, catching all the fire in the air and sending it back into the Tarasque's face. The Tarasque snorted out green poison breath, which caught within the swirling maelstrom of fire, sending sparks flying in all directions. Tyran-X continued to spin his lasso, holding the Tarasque back with its own fire and poison. But it couldn't last for long.
Miss Pinky had barely made it to the end of the block before the Tarasque lumbered forward, into the hellish inferno. Tyran-X stepped backward, back into the destroyed building where they had been trapped. The Tarasque's tail lashed out over its head, reaching for him over and over again. Tyran-X sidestepped the first attack, concentrating on keeping the Di-Nado between himself and the Tarasque, but the second and third both caught him in the chest. He gasped. His lasso dropped from his limp hands and Di-Nado faded, as he was knocked prone on the ground. He coughed, glaring up at the Monster in defiance. The Tarasque strode forward, and its paw rose above him. As the paw descended, Tyran-X looked past the paw and saw Béatrice, smiling warmly and holding a hand out to him.
"I'm coming home, my love…"