To GuenZhenXuan2020: Not as an additional power of the Ladybug Miraculous, but more as an application of Tikki's power (with or without her holder's involvement). Plagg's power unrestrained can cause untold destruction, so what would unrestrained creation look like? I don't think Marinette is quite at the point of unleashing a plague on Europe just to get Lila! Yet…
To Rose Tiger: Considering everything they've been through, it would take a lot to ruin their relationship at this point!
To anonymousfriend27: That's a fair point. Adrien's comment to her about Givenchy was something of a tacit acceptance of whatever decision she might make in that regard. But the question of Marinette being pushed out or deciding to leave became such a minor thing for them after the "I'm being arrested" and "Adrien's cheating on me" issues that learning the truth allowed them to move past it, especially since neither of them had given any outward indication of discontent with Marinette's role at Agreste. Remember, if it hadn't been for the non-arrest, they would have cleared everything else up in about 30 seconds!
To Dragon Lord Draco: I hadn't thought too much about "Angry Tikki" before reading it in a couple other stories. Then I started thinking about what "weaponized creation" might look like…
To sierranevadas84: Thanks for catching that! You are correct that the Black Death first arrived in Europe in the mid-1300s, but it returned many times between the 14th and 17th centuries. I was thinking of the 1500s, but checking on this I found an outbreak in the 1460s in Paris that killed about 40,000 people. Then in the 1470s there were two huge outbreaks in England. So maybe those three were "Tikki's Revenge"?
Alya started pacing the length of the butterfly garden, Trixx resting on her shoulder, the moment she reached the Headquarters level while waiting for Max and Nino to join her. Normally the calm environment could soothe her nervous energy, but this evening it just gave her time to think. She had tried to be her usual, confident self for Marinette's sake – the girl had gone through enough drama with this situation on her own without Alya feeding it. Now, in the privacy of the butterfly garden, with only Trixx for company, Alya could allow herself to really consider her worst fears.
Someone had sent that photograph to Marinette intentionally. They had gone to enormous lengths to make it look legitimate, good enough to possibly even fool Alya herself if Marinette had shared it – no, it would have fooled Alya under any other circumstances. But why? Why go to such lengths? What did they have to gain from it? Alya knew she didn't have all the facts yet, but her mind couldn't stop racing ahead with rampant speculation.
The elevator plate slipped into the ground with a whoosh, and Alya turned around to see Max and Nino jogging toward her, Kaalki and Wayzz hovering behind them.
"Seriously, babe, what's wrong?" Nino asked, stopping in front of her and looking at her in concern. "You haven't said anything, you stormed off without waiting for us to collect the Kwamis… Something's wrong."
Alya ignored the question and fixed Max with her most intense look. "Max, I emailed you a photograph. I need to know everything you can give me, down to the photographer's shoe size. My program found a couple tiny anomalies, but barely enough to register. I know it's a fake, but it is good."
"… Right," Max agreed. He opened his mouth to ask a question, thought better of it on seeing her expression, and disappeared toward his lab.
Alya grabbed Nino's hand and dragged him along with her as she paced the garden. "Something isn't adding up in all of this," she muttered. "The photo is obviously a fake, but it's too professional. And the timing… Marinette gets a picture of Adrien supposedly cheating on her at a time they aren't together, and it arrives right after he was not-arrested by the police–"
"Wait, Adrien cheating?" Nino interrupted, indignant. "Not my brother. No way."
"Of course he wasn't, he was on patrol at that time," Alya retorted, waving her hand dismissively as they turned to retrace their steps. "Try to keep up, babe. Obviously whoever sent the picture didn't know that. If they knew he was Cat Noir, they would have picked a better time, when he didn't have such a clear alibi. So their identities are safe. 'Alibi'… if he wasn't on patrol, he wouldn't have had an alibi!" She turned on Nino. "How did you win those tickets?"
He shrugged. "It was a radio contest. I got a call that evening from someone at the radio station, right before I called you. Why?"
"Convenient," Alya muttered, leaning against the pod next to the lab. "Suddenly Adrien's 'alibi' disappears on him. But why would someone go to such lengths to break up Adrien and Marinette?"
"I have no idea."
Alya wasn't paying attention to him. "Whoever it was, whyever it was, they miscalculated." She slammed her fist on the pod and chuckled to herself. "It's a good thing, too. They didn't realize Marinette is too nice for her own good. Any other girl probably would have dumped Adrien right off after seeing that picture, but not her. Of course she couldn't do something like that on top of the police thing."
"If you're done shooting blind, I think Max has something," Nino told her pointedly, wrapping an arm around her waist and guiding her to the lab door, where Max was waving to them.
On entering the lab they saw a pair of metal boots sitting on the table in the middle of the room with wires and diodes all around them. A number of wrist gauntlets lay next to the boots in various states of disassembly, with Markov hovering over them and chirping to himself. Max led them past the table to his computer, where he quietly pointed to a monitor showing a blown-up version of the same picture Alya had seen before. Various lines and shapes had been superimposed over it.
"What am I looking at?" Alya asked, leaning in to examine the image.
Max pressed a button and the lines disappeared. "This is the image that you sent me, correct?" When Alya nodded, he pressed another button. "These lines, as you know, show where the light source would have to be to create the shadows on the picture." When she nodded, he pressed another button. "And this shows an approximation of the shape that would have created these shadows if they were to align with the rest of the picture, given that Adrien was added in digitally."
"So it's confirmed?"
"The metadata does not lie," Max told her simply. He pulled up a page of coding on his second monitor and pointed out a few figures. "Whoever did this covered their tracks well. But I am better. These values here were repaired incorrectly. The image was definitely manipulated digitally. They did it really cleverly, however: instead of adding Adrien entirely, they superimposed his image from a different photograph over that of another person so the shadows would still be there. Unfortunately for them, the original model was a centimeter taller than Adrien."
"This arrived right after Adrien was taken in by the police," Alya told him. "My gut tells me that's not a coincidence. What do you need to check the police investigation?"
"Seven seconds and a smart phone," Max replied, smirking. "That is only for what the police have online; anything that is not online will require a phone call to Lieutenant Raincomprix."
Markov flew over and projected the police report onto the wall. "The police log shows that they received a tip regarding suspicious financial activity," he reported, highlighting the line in question. "A forensic accountant is in the process of going through their financial records, but his report is not yet available online."
"Max?" Alya raised an eyebrow at him.
"Give me five minutes," Max promised, turning to the keyboard and cracking his knuckles.
Alya and Nino quietly walked around the butterfly garden while waiting for Max to summon them back. Alya stopped by the grotto containing the miracle box and slumped against the wall, sliding down to the ground and burying her face in her hands. Nino sat next to her, wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and squeezed her reassuringly.
"Trixx says I'm supposed to be able to see through illusions," she confessed. "He says that a Fox Miraculous holder not only creates illusions to suit their own needs, but also helps the rest of the team by cutting through the falsehoods and false fronts put up by the team's enemies. The team with a good Fox is rarely deceived, because the Fox is too sly to fall for the illusion of a smooth lie."
"Sounds like exactly what you want to be," Nino told her.
"And that's why you are becoming such a good Fox, Alya," piped up Trixx, floating over from where he had been stalking a butterfly. He sat on her shoulder and nuzzled into her hair.
She snorted and continued staring at the ground. "Then why does it feel like we're chasing our tails? This conspiracy is so spread out, so diverse, we can't get a handle on it."
"We're not talking about Adrien and Marinette anymore, are we?"
"Maybe we are; maybe we're not. That's the problem!" Alya nearly shrieked the last word, slamming her fist into the grass. "We don't know if this is Lynchpin, or if it's a coincidence. We don't know how bad the conspiracy is, just that it's bad. It's a squid with its tentacles in everything. Every time we cut one off, a dozen more grow back. And while our team is out there chopping off tentacles left and right, Nora's no closer to finding the heart."
A small voice coughed in front of them, and they looked up to see a slightly-put-out Kaalki hovering at their eye-level. "If you're done freaking out," she drawled, "Max found something for you." The Kwami turned her tail and led the way back to the lab, muttering, "Although why he couldn't deliver his own message instead of using me as his own personal Pony Express I will never understand!"
Max had pulled up two different sets of financial numbers on his computer screens and was hurriedly highlighting specific transactions. He didn't turn around when they entered but simply pointed to the screens. "Whoever did this certainly was thorough."
"'Whoever…'" Alya repeated. "So Adrien is innocent." At a look from Nino she hastily added, "I mean, we already knew that, but it's nice to have evidence."
"They uploaded a virus into Agreste's server that wiped and replaced their records from the ground up. Everything is exactly the same, but they seamlessly added in all of these duplicate transactions. I suspect the bank records were also altered to match, but it will take more time to confirm that."
"Is that Agreste's backup?" Alya asked, pointing to the other screen.
Max shook his head. "The electronic backup on Agreste's own servers received the same treatment as the original. I suspect the paper copy in the office was replaced as well. As I stated, they were exceedingly thorough. No, this is the backup from our server. We are fortunate that the virus did not find our backdoor and exploit it to alter this copy. If it had, we may never have found or recovered the altered data. As it is, the original had only a couple points of metadata out of order to cue me in to the alteration, something that most people would simply overlook."
"So do you know who did it?" asked Nino.
Max hesitated. "I… have a suspicion – and it is approximately 67% certain – but I still lack sufficient evidence to confirm it." He switched windows and pointed to a line of code. "This is the virus that altered the financial records. An identical virus attacked the security system and wiped and replaced 80 minutes of footage. Markov is working on recovering it as we speak. But the interesting piece is this line here. It has popped up in several viruses recently, one of which was likely a prank. In that instance it attacked the PC version of Ultimate Mecha Strike IV and caused all of the characters to transform into spiders. The hacker responsible, as you would expect, goes by the name–"
"Spider," Alya finished, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Max stared at her in surprise. "You have heard of him?"
"Only that he's working with some bad people."
Markov chirped excitedly and flew over to them. "I finished with the security footage!" he exclaimed, projecting the image. "There's still too much corruption in the video file for it to be any use, but I was able to recover this still image. Someone was in the building between 0117 and 0234 two nights ago. They erased the record of the computer in Adrien's office turning on, but failed to erase the record of it turning off."
"We've got them!" Nino shouted, pumping his fist.
"Not so fast, babe," Alya told him, putting a hand on his shoulder and frowning.
"Can't we just show all of this to the police?" he asked in surprise.
"Sure, Max could open a portal straight to the police station and drop all the evidence on Lieutenant Raincomprix's desk. Then he would ask how and why the Heroes have such high-level access to Agreste's computer system, including a remote backup of all Adrien's computer files, financial records, and security footage. What do we tell him then?"
"We could say we hacked in," Nino offered.
"That's illegal, and it still would only give us access to the altered records, not the originals from our own server," she reminded him. "Besides, that would be admitting that we were looking into this when it hasn't made the news yet and the police haven't requested our help. That looks bad for Adrien – almost as bad as if we were to tell them a half-truth and say that he gave us backdoor access to his computer system months ago! At best we would throw suspicion on Adrien all over again for aiding and abetting his father's crimes by suggesting that we thought we needed to keep tabs on the former Hawk Moth's company. At worst, the police realize that either we are friends of Adrien's or Adrien is himself a hero, possibly unmasking all of us and compromising our Headquarters. And I'm honestly not sure which is the best-case scenario and which is the worst-case!"
"What shall I do now?" Max asked, shuffling uncomfortably.
"See if you can find any usable evidence that doesn't tie directly back to us," she instructed. "And track down the accounts that money was funneled through. Whoever did this is going to come for the money eventually, and that could lead us back to their accounts – and if we're lucky, back to them. And in the meantime we can at least give Adrien's company its money back and clean out whatever's in these accounts right now."
"But what are we going to do for Adrien?" Nino pressed.
Alya groaned in frustration. "If the worst comes to the worst and they do arrest him, we hand everything over to the police and deal with the consequences. Marinette would skin all of us alive for it, but hopefully Sabrina or Chloe could smooth some of it over through their fathers. But for now, I think I need to pay someone a visit. Send that security picture to Adrien and Marinette, and tell them to call me if they recognize who it is."
Nino raised an eyebrow at her. "Does this mean I'm on babysitting duty tonight?"
"This means you're on babysitting duty tonight."
The pod next to Max's lab is the alien vessel they found in "An Interrupted Date." Regarding the speed with which Max can access police files, that was set up after Hawk Moth's defeat (in the Epilogue to "Mind Games").