To Butterfly: In a very roundabout way, I think I based the necklace on Vixen from DC Comics, though her totem gives her animal abilities rather than animal communication.
To anonymousfriend27: You don't have too long to wait.
It was a warm, early spring day, the sun was shining, and the zoo wasn't terribly crowded: a perfect afternoon for skating. Spring break had just started, and Alix had no intention of opening another school book until at least next Sunday. Instead, she fully intended to spend as much time outside with her friends as possible. Except today, apparently: Marinette, Juleka, and Chloe were all at Adrien's press conference, and literally everyone else she had asked had backed out for one reason or another. She'd hoped at least Kim would want to go skating with her after school, but even he had already had plans. It was just as well; Kim would just slow her down!
The first indication Alix got that something was wrong came when the snakes in the exhibit she was skating past all lifted their heads together and started hissing and swaying in time. She frowned at that, but shrugged; Jalil had described the snake charmers in Cairo making snakes behave similarly. Then a groundhog ran into the pathway right in front of her. Alix had no time to stop or turn, so she jumped over the groundhog. She came down a little off-balance, swung her arms wildly, and nearly fell over onto her backpack before she caught her balance, spun around twice, and stopped.
"That was sick!" She reached down and picked up the groundhog under its front legs. "You're a little late for Groundhog Day, you know," she told it. She glanced around to find its habitat, which was on her right. She was about to place the groundhog back in when she saw a trio of other groundhogs trying desperately to squeeze between the bars and escape. "Okay… in no universe is that normal," she muttered, dropping the groundhog she was holding over the fence and poking another one's head back inside. Seeing a large stone inside the fence, she extracted her field hockey stick and prodded the stone over to cover the hole. "You should be grateful I'm not using this on you," she commented, waving the stick at them.
A sudden trumpeting from the other side of the zoo – followed immediately by a colossal crash – drew her attention. She was about to go over and investigate when someone who could only have been a superhero jumped down in front of her, swung his stick, and knocked a turtle flying back into the water of its habitat. "You're not safe around here, Al – er – citizen!" the hero shouted, before running away again.
Alix stood still, jaw hanging open, staring at where the hero had been. Did that dude… have a Mohawk? "I thought the weirdness was going to end when Hawk Moth was defeated," she muttered before skating toward the crashing sound she'd heard.
She had only covered part of the distance when the ground beneath her skates started shaking as though an earthquake was coming. Alix looked around wildly, searching for the source of the disturbance. People ran around the zoo in all directions in a panic. Then her heart nearly stopped: a herd of wildebeest was charging straight at her.
Alix pushed herself to move! She shot over to the side of the path, trying to squeeze as close to the fence as possible. How could there be wildebeest stampeding through the zoo? She knew better than to try stopping the beasts; nothing would stop them short of a brick wall! All she could do was stay out of the way and hope –
"Mommy!"
Crap. A little boy, no more than six years old, was standing in the middle of the path holding a Carapace doll in one hand. Without thinking, Alix pushed away from the fence. The lead wildebeest was only a dozen meters away. She put on a burst of speed, willing her legs to pump faster. The beast was almost on top of her when she barreled into the boy, grabbed him under the armpits, and dove forward, off the path, into the tiny strip of grass beside the path. She tumbled, landed on her back with the boy on top of her, and rolled over, putting the boy against the exhibit and her back to the herd.
Alix lay there, holding the boy tight, trying to shut out the thunder of hooves, for what felt like an eternity. Finally the thunder died and the last wildebeest ran past them. Alix hazarded a glance, only to see that the coast was clear. "Are you okay, kid?" she asked, pushing herself up to her feet and reaching down to help the boy up.
"I – I think so." The boy's lower lip trembled and he stared at her wide-eyed.
Alix stared back at him awkwardly. She grimaced. "Um… it's a good thing you had Carapace, huh? He protected you, right?"
"Yeah…" He looked down at the doll and then back at her. "Thank you," he finally said.
"You're welcome, kid." She grabbed his hand. "Now where's your Mommy, huh?"
Fortunately, it only took a minute or two of searching before Alix saw a woman looking around frantically. "Is that your mother?" she asked, pointing.
"Mommy!" The boy took off running, with Alix skating slowly behind him. The woman bent down and pulled the boy in close before looking up to see Alix. She took Alix's hand in gratitude, to which Alix nodded awkwardly before disengaging to skate away.
Rounding the next corner, Alix saw a trio of porcupines waddling down the path toward her. With a muttered curse, she reached into her backpack for her padded field hockey gloves. She slipped them on without taking her eyes off the porcupines, and bent down to grab one. The porcupine growled and gnashed its teeth at her as she picked it up. She hissed in pain as a couple quills poked through her gloves, but gritted her teeth and dropped the porcupine back into its habitat. Then she turned around to find the remaining porcupines standing still and shaking their heads in confusion. With substantially less trouble, she placed them both back inside their cage alongside the first one.
"You really should be more careful with these things!" she told them, wincing as she fumbled at the quills, trying to pull them out of her palms without taking the gloves off. With much grunting and cursing, she finally managed to extract the quills and remove her gloves. Her palms throbbed painfully where she'd been stuck. "I used to think you were cool," she muttered, glaring at the porcupines. "Not anymore."
She stuck a stick of gum in her mouth to take her mind off the pain in her hands. Then she turned away from the porcupines and saw King Monkey down at the end of the path, staring at a couple flamingos and a lizard. "Need some help, Monkey Boy?" she asked, skating over to him and blowing a bubble.
"Actually, yeah." King Monkey plopped the lizard into her arms. She grunted at the added weight. "If you bring this back where it belongs, I'll herd these birds back to where they belong."
"You got it, hero," she answered, turning to skate away and looking for the lizard exhibit. It only took a couple minutes to find M. Césaire wandering around the zoo with a shell-shocked look on his face. "Hey, um… I'm Alix, a friend of Alya's?" she called. "Could I give this to you?"
"Alix, of course," he replied, stirring out of his reverie long enough to accept the lizard from her. "I can see to it that this girl gets back where she belongs. Thank you. I – I can't believe what just happened here! They… they just went crazy! I just hope no one was hurt!"
"Good thing a couple of the heroes were around," Alix commented.
"I suppose it's a good thing another hero was here, too, young lady," M. Césaire told her, raising an eyebrow. "I saw you rescue that little boy before. Thank you."
"Just trying to help," Alix muttered, embarrassed. "I'd better get going." She shot away, back towards the flamingo habitat.
Alix rounded the corner just in time to watch a bear knock King Monkey sprawling to the ground. He landed on his chest and groaned. The bear grunted before turning around and sitting down, directly on top of King Monkey.
"What the actual hell," she breathed, her jaw dropping in shock. "Hey!" she shouted, waving her arms as she raced toward the spot. The bear looked up at her in some confusion – since when can bears look confused? she wondered – and let out a low growl. She bent over carefully and swiped a stick off the ground before straightening up and running the stick along the bars of the habitat she was skating past. The bear growled and glared at her. "That's it…" she murmured, shooting past the bear and ducking under a paw that it swiped at her head.
She heard a grunt from behind her and spun around, skating backward while watching the bear, still running her stick along the fence bars, daring the bear to chase her. She abruptly changed directions, racing toward the bear on the other side, just out of its reach, running the stick along the fence on that side of the path. This time it slowly lumbered to its feet, moved away from the fallen hero, and reached out further to swipe at her with a front paw.
"Come on," Alix grunted, staying close to the bear but just outside its reach. Finally the bear followed after her and waddled away from King Monkey. "That's it, girl," she muttered. She turned to check on the fallen hero as the bear waddled off down a side path.
Just as she was spinning around, King Monkey was bathed in golden light. She blinked against the sudden brightness before looking back. At first Alix thought she was seeing things, but then she realized this had to be real: King Monkey was gone, and there was Kim, lying in exactly the same position that King Monkey had been, with a tiny monkey-creature nudging at his head.
"No way," she breathed, eyes bulging. Kim? A superhero? That just didn't make sense! And yet… it kind of did. Alix had only seen King Monkey in action on a handful of occasions, and some of those times, Kim had been in the area right before. King Monkey was playful, joked around, rarely took things too seriously… the more Alix thought about it, the more she realized that King Monkey couldn't be anyone but Kim!
"King Monkey!" someone shouted behind her. She spun around to see the other hero from before – the one with the Mohawk. "Oh! Al – ahem – citizen! What… what happened to him?" he asked, looking down at Kim. "And have you, um, have you seen King Monkey around?" He scratched his scalp next to his Mohawk awkwardly.
"And you are…?"
"Oh! Um… I'm… Geber," he stammered. "I'm… kinda new at this. And I lost my partner. Great first mission…" he muttered to himself.
Alix gave him a nonplussed look. She was about to tell him that his partner was unconscious on the ground when she realized that he must not know that Kim was King Monkey. Kim would kill her if she revealed his identity – rather, Kim would try to kill her if she revealed his identity… "Oh! King Monkey! Yeah! I saw him go… that way!" she finally told him, a little louder than necessary, picking a direction at random. "You go look down that way, and I'll help Kim here. I think he had a bad run-in with a flamingo."
"Um… thanks…" the new hero said, giving Kim a concerned glance before running in the direction Alix had pointed.
Once Geber had disappeared, Alix raced over to Kim and dropped to her knees next to his head. "Come on," she whispered, slapping his cheek. "Wake up, you stupid jock!"
"Who're you calling a 'stupid jock'?" Kim coughed, rolling over onto his back.
"You, Monkey-Brain," she retorted, arching an eyebrow at him.
"I'll have you know, I–" He stopped, glanced down at himself, and looked at her in confusion. "Wait, why did you call me 'Monkey-Brain'?"
She stared at him. "Seriously?"
He blanched. "I–I have no idea what you're talking about, Alix." He chuckled awkwardly, staring at her with an innocent expression. His shoulders slumped. "Ugh, fine. But you seriously can't tell anyone."
"Duh. I didn't even tell the Chicken Kid," she scoffed. "I know how to keep a secret."
"Good." He pushed himself to his feet. "Now, if you'll excuse me, the super-awesome, super-amazing King Monkey has a job to do. Are there any more animals out?"
"There's a bear," Alix reported. "But there's no way you're going on your own. You need help."
"Please, I was doing just fine on my own."
"I saw that. You had that bear right where you wanted it: sitting on your back while you lay there unconscious!"
"I… I knew what I was doing!" Kim insisted. Alix stared at him dubiously. "Fine," he finally conceded. "But I'm the hero here, so you need to listen! Otherwise, you could get hurt, and Ladybug would murder me if I allowed you to tag along and you got hurt."
"Whatever you say," Alix snorted. "But that's pretty rich coming from the guy that just got knocked out by a bear!"