To The Keeper of Worlds: Yeah, heroes don't get simple date nights too often…

The next evening, Adrien and Marinette rode the elevator down to the Heroes of Paris' Headquarters beneath the mansion. Adrien wrapped his arm around Marinette's shoulders and she leaned into him, but they were otherwise quiet and somber. When the elevator stopped, Adrien took her hand and led her to the back corner of the butterfly garden, where they had sectioned off an area the size of Marinette's bedroom for Max to use as a lab. Adrien knocked on the door sharply before letting himself in.

Max himself crouched over the long metal table that took up most of the middle of the room, with Markov the robot hovering beside his head, a red light on his dome showing that he was recording a video. As they approached the table, they could see Max holding something that appeared to be a circuit board with a pair of tweezers while tracing shapes on it with a plastic stick and muttering to himself. Adrien cleared his throat, and Max finally looked up from the table, pushed a pair of binocular magnifiers up away from his eyes, and replaced them with the Miraculous pince nez he'd placed in his shirt pocket.

Kaalki lounged on the far end of the table, nibbling bites off of an apple core and looking bored. Tikki and Plagg immediately flew over to her, and the three Kwamis phased through the wall into the butterfly garden, whispering quietly to each other.

"You said you had something to show us?" Adrien asked, stopping and leaning against the table.

"I analyzed this weapon," Max announced, "and you are not going to believe what I discovered."

"After everything we've been through, you'd be surprised what I would believe," Adrien replied, grinning. "So what is it?"

"I have no idea."

Marinette giggled. "Okay… that I wouldn't believe!"

"No, really, what is it?" Adrien asked, furrowing his brow.

"I'm serious," Max repeated. "Obviously it is an energy weapon of some kind, but that is as much as I know." He frowned.

"Do you know where it came from?" Marinette asked.

He threw his hands in the air. "I have no idea. As far as I can tell, it appeared completely out of nowhere. Human technology has only so much variation. If it were American or Russian or Iranian or… if it were terrestrial, we would be able to see the influence of other human designs. But this… it is completely foreign. Take this circuit board, for instance: it operates on the same principle as the circuit boards I used to build Markov, but the wiring is completely unlike anything I have ever seen!"

"I have run countless searches of military and private databases," Markov supplied, "and there is no record of anything matching this description in any of them."

"It even comes down to the materials it is made of," Max added. "Some of these compounds – the superconductor in the wiring, in particular – are not actually found naturally on Earth!"

"That may be," Adrien objected, "but something about it felt… familiar. I don't know exactly what it was, though. Maybe the energy it was using?"

"Could it be based on the miraculous?" Marinette asked. "Maybe that's why it feels familiar, because Akumas sometimes use energy beams."

Max shook his head. "Can't be miraculous-based," he told them. "Markov and I have been analyzing the miraculous, remember? The miraculous all have minor variations, but the energy they use is constant. I cannot track miraculous energy yet, but I can tell you that whatever energy this weapon is emitting, it operates on a completely different frequency from that of the miraculous."

"What about magic?" Adrien tried. "Something other than miraculous magic, I mean."

"No, this is definitely not magic" Max insisted. He pointed to the internal workings of the weapon. "It has a power source here that seems to operate on a similar principle to a battery, and all the wiring is in the proper places to power the targeting mechanism here and the photon emitter here. Miraculous weapons do not require an energy source apart from their Kwami."

Whatever it is," Markov told them, "this weapon is certainly technological in nature. But this technology is far ahead of even me!"

"So what should we do about this thing?" Marinette asked.

"I have some more tests to run with it," Max answered. "With your permission, Adrien, I would also like to purchase some of its component parts and see if there is a way for me to reverse-engineer this weapon to create our own version of it – for purely scientific purposes, of course!"

"Go for it," Adrien replied with a shrug. "The budget can cover it, right?" When Max nodded, Adrien added, "Just make sure the mansion is still standing when you're done: I don't think our insurance covers 'mad scientist!' But can you tell us anything?"

"I–" Max hesitated. "I have a wild speculation, but that's all. I said some of the compounds aren't found naturally on earth… but they have been discovered in meteorites."

"'Meteorites,'" Adrien repeated. He glanced at Marinette, whose face perfectly mirrored his own concerned look. "Perfect."

"Just because Max said some of the materials come from space doesn't mean aliens," Marinette said hopefully.

The two of them were just stepping off the elevator disc after collecting their Kwamis and leaving Headquarters. Adrien glanced around the office, taking in the furnishings, all of which still reminded him of his father. Despite Marinette's gentle encouragement, he still had yet to redecorate or move into the office. All of his memories in that room were of standing on the wrong side of the massive desk, pleading with his father to allow him a few hours with his friends. Were it not for the elevator to Headquarters, he would as soon avoid the room entirely.

He looked over to see Marinette watching him intently. "You know, you could just Cataclysm that desk," she suggested.

"The idea has more appeal to it every time I see that thing," Adrien muttered. "Maybe next time."

Adrien held the door open for Marinette to precede him out. He followed her without a backward glance. The rest of the house, at least, had taken on more life in the past few months. When Adrien had handed Marinette a thick envelope of Euros and asked her to redecorate the mansion's entryway, she had certainly outdone herself. With his permission, she had removed the family portrait from the wall and replaced it with a large group photo of all their friends. The family portrait had found a new, temporary, home on the opposite side of the mansion in a little-used back room. She had designed and commissioned Agreste to fabricate tapestries for the entryway's walls which, if you knew what to look for, showed the history of the Miraculous through the ages. One even depicted the branched history of the Graham de Vanily family in their Guardianship of the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculous – or as much as his father has told them of his mother's story. Interspersed with the tapestries were smaller pictures of Adrien with his friends. Since she had finished redecorating, Adrien had almost felt at home walking through those front doors for the first time since his mother's "disappearance."

Adrien took Marinette's hand and led her up the stairs to his room, past a row of pictures showing Adrien and his family in happier times. "It's not just the meteorite thing," he told her, his eyes lingering on a photograph of himself with his arm around Marinette. "That also explains why they felt so… familiar."

"You mean…"

"Cat Bug Noir," Adrien confirmed, frowning. "Don't tell me you didn't think the same. The weapons may look a little different, but the energy they emit, the destruction they cause… It can't be a coincidence, Bug."

"Old Chloe did say something about alien invasions," Marinette admitted, shuddering. "The thought did cross my mind."

"The older-us probably took all the alien weapons left behind after the invasion, handed them to the older Max just like we did, and he tinkered around with them, just like he is now, to make the energy weapons that Old-me eventually used." Adrien grimaced. "It fits."

Marinette squeezed his hand reassuringly. "I know what you're thinking, Kitty," she told him, pushing the bedroom door open and dragging him inside after her. "Now stop it."

"Don't tell me you aren't thinking it, too," he retorted, flopping on the couch and pulling her down onto his lap. She shifted to wrap her arms around him. "It's all happening again. That future where you die is happening again."

"It doesn't have to," she reminded him, running her fingers through his hair. "Our future is not set. Maybe knowing that it's coming will help us avoid the worst of that future. Maybe the other-us didn't get a chance to look at the alien weapons before the invasion came, and maybe having one now will help us prepare better this time. But even if it's all true. Even if that future does happen, there is no one I would rather have by my side to face that future – whatever it holds, however it ends – than you, Kitty."

Adrien nodded and hugged her to himself fiercely, burying his face in her hair. "And I swear, Milady: whatever else happens, it will not end the same way for us."

"I trust you," she whispered, nestling into his chest, "with my life."

"And I trust you both to forever be hopelessly, sappily, romantic," Plagg interjected, phasing out of Adrien's shirt pocket and folding his arms. "You were squishing me! I thought it would get better when you weren't pining after each other; but it's only gotten worse now that you're dating each other! You see? This is why I prefer cheese. Simple, uncomplicated cheese."

"Do you expect me to believe you never romance your cheese?" Adrien retorted. "Because I could hear you last night!"

"Charlene is different," Plagg muttered grumpily.

"You two don't pay any attention to this grumpy old cat," Tikki said, finally phasing out of Marinette's purse. "He slept through the Romantic Period." She grabbed Plagg by the ear. "You two have fun out here; I'll handle him."

Adrien suppressed a chuckle as Tikki dragged a whining Plagg over to the bookcase where Plagg had made his nest. He looked down at Marinette, to find her already staring at him, a questioning look in her eyes. He smiled. "I'm all right, Princess. I promise."

"I know," she said, sliding off his lap to sit on the couch next to him. "Or at least I know that you will be."

Adrien nodded, conceding her point. He turned his gaze to his hands, flexing his fingers slowly. He wasn't entirely okay just yet; the physical scars from that fight may have healed, but the emotional scars still lingered. He knew the same was true for her; they'd cried themselves to sleep in each other's arms enough times in the last month for that to become abundantly clear. Nevertheless, they would get through it the same way they always did: together.

"We don't even know that it is aliens yet," Marinette finally said. "Max has been wrong before; maybe this is just some highly-experimental military project or something. We won't know until we talk to the men who found it."

"Maybe you're right," he admitted, unconvinced.

He glanced back at Marinette, who was looking around the room critically. He followed her gaze to see her staring at the rock climbing wall. "Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?" he asked her, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, we haven't done the climbing wall in a while," she confirmed. "Race you to the top?"

"You're on!"

Adrien was brushing his teeth in the bathroom when he heard soft footsteps coming from the bedroom. He concentrated on his teeth as the footsteps grew nearer. Finally he leaned over, spat, and looked into the mirror. "Were you lonely, Princess?"

"No fair," she pouted, de-transforming. "I can never sneak up on you."

"What can I say?" He grinned. "My hearing is just that claw-some!"

Marinette rolled her eyes, even as she wrapped her arms around his back. Adrien turned around in her arms to hug her back and took in the sight of her in her pajamas. "I take it you weren't just lonely," he observed. "Couldn't sleep?"

She shook her head, bunching her fists up in his shirt. "I was just closing my eyes when I saw you. You-you were being dragged away by aliens. And there was nothing I could do." She closed her eyes. Adrien put a hand to her face to brush away the tears forming at the corners of her eyelids. "It's so stupid!" She weakly punched him in the chest with both fists.

"Shh… It's not stupid," he soothed, holding her tightly. He grimaced. "To be honest, if you hadn't come here, I might have gone to your house instead. But you're safe. I'm safe. We're together, and nothing can pull us apart."

"We're safe," she murmured with a shuddering breath. "We're together, and nothing can pull us apart."

"Besides," Adrien added, "if a bunch of aliens did try to abduct me, I'd Cataclysm them all to dust before I let them take me away from you. And I'd do worse if they tried to take you…"

"I know," she said, burying her face in his chest. "It's just a nightmare."

"It was enough to scare you out of your own bed in your own house, and into mine," he reminded her. "Do your parents know you came over?"

"I left a note."

He nodded and led her back into the bedroom. "We have an early appointment with Sabrina's father tomorrow, so we should get to sleep." He slid under the covers, and Marinette lay down beside him, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her hair. "You're safe now," he whispered, earning a contented sigh. "Good night, Princess."

"Good night, my Prince."