41 Dwelling
Alix played with the watch she got for her fifteenth birthday from her father, she opened and then closed it then opened and then closed again. She was sitting on a chair in front of her computer screen it was late in the evening, but it was a Friday evening.
This wasn't exactly the same watch as she got for her fifteenth birthday. She smiled. It was the watch she got from the future self, from Bunnix, and the future self took the other watch from her, the one that was working.
This was a broken miraculous, one destroyed by a cataclysm, that was what Bunnix have said when she given it to her, when they made the exchange, so it wasn't working … or it was, because Bunnix was Bunnix when they found her in that stone.
She turned around on the computer chair, she turned and turned in circles until she got dizzy and then she turned some more, because she was bored, she opened and closed the watch with each circle, and sometimes she changed the direction of the rotation.
She was going to get a miraculous, at least she used to believe that. But she was becoming less certain in the last week. Hawk Moth was defeated. Was there any reason for her to be given a miraculous at all, and a time travelling one on top of that?
Marinette and Adrien defeated Hawk Moth and Mayura, they took their miraculous and the magical jewels were safely stored somewhere, not to be used or at least abused in any recent future. That meant that there were no more akuma or sentimonsters to be expected.
She wasn't certain if she was getting a miraculous at all. Then she looked at the device in her hand, the silver pocket watch, it was a miraculous, Bunnix told her so, but it wasn't working … then again she was meant to have it she saw herself from the future, but that was before … the recent events.
Yeah, it was passed to the youngest child in the family. She guessed that meant she wasn't getting a younger sibling. She chuckled awkwardly when she remembered what that meant. Well, she was fifteen when she got it, so it was plausible back then that she was the youngest child.
The room was spinning around her, but her brain processed movement so well that she wasn't nauseous. She continued to play with her watch, it was nice, antique and special, but what if it was never meant to be a miraculous, what if it was destroyed forever?
What if Adrien and Marinette changed the future somehow when they defeated Gabriel and Nathalie? What if all those monsters that Bunnix talked about were not about to appear in her lifetime? The future was not set in stone.
She was set in stone for thousands of years until Chat used his cataclysm on the stone and destroyed it and woke her up from her sleep, her stasis, whatever that was. Well he didn't do it to her, he did it to future her, he was going to do it. She smiled. Yes he was going to.
"Alix?" Her father inquired as he knocked on the door. She was making some noise while she turned around in her chair and it was late at night and her whole home was quiet although everybody was probably awake deep in their own thoughts and theories.
"Hi dad … " She greeted in a rather disinterested tone. "No, I'm not asleep yet, it is not a school night." She spoke flatly and did not even look towards the door, she continued to play with her watch, open and close it, nothing appeared.
"Alix, daughter, would you like to know more about that watch?" Alim Kubdel asked cautiously, he was supposed to tell her the story the day he gave her the watch, but he let her go away that day to go and meet her friends for her birthday, the story could wait.
"Hey, dad, I'd like to hear that story too." Alix clearly heard her brother Jalil from the hallway. Of course her older brother was awake, he was probably interpreting more Egyptian hieroglyphs and had several theories on how they did whatever they did in the ancient kingdom.
Alix was not in the mood to hear any story from her father, or at least any boring story about excavations and family heritage, and she was even less in the mood to listen to any crazy new theory that her brother Jalil had.
But she was bored, it wasn't a school night, her homework was mostly done (or as done as she was ready to deal with it), save the stupid romantic poem, that was to be done together so she did not touch it, not that she was particularly looking forward to it.
It was the watch that her father wanted to tell her about, but … what if he noticed it wasn't exactly the same watch, that she switched with Bunnix, wait, the future Alix did tell her it was the same watch, but this one obviously suffered from a cataclysm.
Well, it wasn't really obvious, she did not see any difference, except, this one did not turn light blue at her touch, did not produce any light blue holographic projections and did not produce a fluffy white rabbit rather confused about what was going to happen and what used to be.
The other problem was that Jalil's crazy theories have been proven right once he was given a chance to test them (or that one time he took a chance and did it while akumatized, if that was any kind of a proof).
Apparently, her older brother was able to prove his less crazy theories on his own, when funding agencies and his father allowed that, otherwise he would not be considered an accomplished archaeologist at this age.
Alim and Jalil were having an argument in the hallway weather or not Jalil should know the story, and the way they spoke was slightly uncomfortable of the late hours of the evening, but Alix was used to it, they often had scientific discussions at all hours.
"Come on, let's got to the kitchen and you can tell me all about it." Alix was already at the kitchen door when she finished talking and her father and her brother barely remembered to stop arguing while she said so, then they turned to each other, each ready to continue.
"And Jalil can listen as far as I'm concerned." Because she was cool with it, she was embarrassed by his appearance on the TV and some of his theories that he truly believed were true and managed to dig out evidence to support it.
Then her eyes darted towards her father, but she did not see any specific concern there. What if her father was going to tell her that this was a time travelling miraculous and her brother was not supposed to know her superhero identity.
She took a cup and poured some chocolate milk inside. Yeah, she liked the hot chocolate, but she seldom took time to make one, and it was the middle of the night. Her father and brother also poured something in their cups.
She threw herself on a chair after she put the cup on the table. She put the watch on the table. She flicked it open then she closed it, then she flicked it open, then she closed it again. Alim and Jalil exchanged a look and took their seat.
"Could you stop that? It is family heirloom, you should show some respect, and be careful, you're going to break it … " Jalil spoke in a rather irritated tone. Alix remembered how the watch was broken once before, and got fixed afterwards although it wasn't broken by an akuma.
Maybe because it was a miraculous? Maybe because it was breaking the object that caused the akumatization in the first place? Ladybug also cast a cure after Time tagger, did she fix this miraculous again when she did that?
Alim put his hand over Alix's gently and she finally stopped to open and close the watch and then she turned her eyes towards the man. They stared at each other for a few moments, Alix straightened up and let the watch stay open.
"It doesn't work." Alix muttered to her father and then her eyes switched back to the watch. A plain silver watch that showed the correct time but no light blue holographic projection and no secret messages for superheroes.
"What do you mean? It works perfectly!" Jalil countered, grabbed the watch and compared the time on the watch with the time on his phone. Alix leaned forward and her hands followed the watch as if she wanted to grab it from him, but he finally just took her cup and sipped chocolate milk.
"It shows the correct time, I guess." Alix muttered and took one more sip of her milk. Her father looked at the watch and then looked back at her, then he sighed, then he looked at Jalil, and back at his daughter. "It used to have other functions." She added.
"What functions? Does it have complications?" Jalil was turning it around. When he did not find anything, he put it back on the table and looked at his sister, then at his father and then back at her and his expression demanded answers to the questions he did not even think how to say.
"This watch can signal us when it is time to do certain things, like pass it on to the next generation." Alim finally spoke as cryptic as he wanted to, Jalil was his son, it was right for him to know why it wasn't his heirloom but his younger sister's.
"But I didn't find any complications … " Jalil fiddled with the watch, opened it, turned it around, closed it, turned it around, pressed the winding button and turned it then pulled it back out and nothing happened. Alix wanted to snatch the device back but he held it out of her reach.
"One of our ancestors, he was the youngest in a family so he had no inheritance from his family and had to learn a trade, he served on a merchant's ship, he travelled as far as China and that was when he got the watch." Alim explained.
"But you told me that it was made by our ancestor and it was in our family for centuries, or for many generations … " Alix looked at the watch, she imagined the watch was much older, just because her future self arrived with one in a piece of stone from ancient Egypt.
"That is true, but pocket watch was invented in sixteenth century." Alim continued in a tone of a teacher explaining a lesson to attentive pupils.
"And why did it go to her? I mean, men used to wear pocket watches, women wore those wrist watches or bracelet watches, you explained to me how Elisabeth I got one … and then it became a fashion." Jalil protested as he observed the said watch on the table.
Alix stared at her wrist watch, the one that that measured everything she did and how fast she did it and was perfectly synchronised with her phone and it showed all those numbers including the time and she never saw the device as a sign of her femininity.
"The pocket watch always went to the youngest child in a family, I got it for my fifteenth birthday." Alim continued to explain calmly as he was used to many questions and crazy theories from his older child as much as he was used to impatience from his daughter.
He stared at his daughter and begged her to understand with his eyes, well aware of the jealousy of the older siblings, he had survived that too, now it was her turn. Alix knew plenty about that, Jalil was often put in charge of her, although his grasp for reality was somewhat questionable.
Alix understood that hint as if perhaps she was not supposed to show that watch or the blue hologram to her brother. Perhaps it was a form of a disguise, to mask the watch as nothing special, just like she used to think about it when she first saw it.
"And when your sister, Alix, when she had her fifteenth birthday something happened with this watch and I knew it was time to pass it on to her." He observed his daughter carefully and she returned one firm nod, then she looked back at the watch and smiled.
So the watch probably showed a hologram to her father that instructed the man to pass it on to his daguther. That made sense actually. So she saw the same hologram in the restaurant when her father opened the watch.
"What happened? Did it stop?" Jalil mocked and teased. Alix rolled her eyes, Alim sighed. But then Jalil's eyes almost popped out, he ran away to his room and then returned back with some papers and spread them across the table.
"These are the hieroglyphs taken from a tomb, one that was adorned by a piece of stone and look at this part." He pointed to a hieroglyph that depicted the sign on the miraculous that appeared when Bunnix was using. "I always thought it looked like a pocket watch."
Alim crossed his arms, but Alix leaned forward.
"Then there is this rabbit here, he is holding a round object with a small depiction of the symbol." He pointed to another hyerolgyph on another page of the papers scattered on the table. Alix felt cold shivers go down her spine and at the same time she felt giddy.
"But this depiction here." Jalil pointed to another hieroglyph. Then he extended his arm and reached for the watch that sat on the table. "I'd say it looks exactly as the decoration on this pocket watch." He held the watch side by side with the picture.
The resemblance was obvious. Alix knew what it was, she knew what it meant and she knew how it all got there, but she was not able to say, because she was hiding an identity she did not even get yet, but she had time, she had to grow and become cool.
"In that case, I would say that the artist who decorated the watch took inspiration from that hieroglyph." Alim stated with all the authority of the Louvre Egyptian exhibition director.
Alix tried not to release a breath of relief too loudly, but if anyone heard her, they did not give that any significance. She stared at the papers some more, these were the copies of the original hieroglyphs from all the stone pieced that actually stored Bunnix. It was a clue.
Her father continued to talk about this history of chronograph, different time keeping devices through history, especially those excavated in Egypt, as well as several mysterious objects found set in stone and only partially recovered that were thought to be more advanced for their time.
Jalil continued to argue how ancient cultures and societies were able to invented astrolabe and other measuring and computing devices, they were surely able to invent a device that measured time better than a sun dial.
It wasn't the most boring Friday night she ever spent with her father and her brother, nope, she played some more and annoyed her older brother while she fiddled with the precious family heirloom while the young man developed new crazy theories.
The next day, Alix set aside all her questions about the watch, she woke up early, too early, but inspired, she took the bed sheet from her bed and her spray cans. Marinette made a banner for her race, she was going to make a banner for her classmates and their fencing tournament.
It didn't take her long once she had an idea, she observed the idea on a sheet of paper and opened her window, she was just going to spray paint a graffiti of their names in silver and light blue, sort of a neon blue and then just add a little green and darker blue for the colours of their eyes.
Just before Alix left her home, she observed the watch once more. She wasn't sure if she should take it with her or not, but finally she took it and packed it in a small side pocket of the backpack where he put her banner, water bottle and a notebook for her homework.
Alix might have years before she became a wielder of a rabbit miraculous, but she was going to practise patience and be prepared, because when that day arrived, it was going to be a major disaster and she was a weapon of the last resort.