"Mmmph," a voice muffles from under ruffling pink bedsheets, "You don't get five more minutes, Hugo, I know better than anyone what can happen in that time… it's already…"
The sheets stop, and blue hair begins to poke out from underneath them. A left hand worms its way out, burying itself under the exposed pillow and rummaging around until it finds what it was looking for and retreats to the larger coverage with a pink-cased phone. "It's already… TEN FIFTEEN?!"
The whole bed cover forms into a tangle of linens and human limbs as Marinette attempts to scramble out of bed and fails miserably. The pulsating mass of cloth tumbles to the end of the bed and then off of it, landing with an "Ah!" from the girl caught inside. The bluenette finally manages to pull herself out, scrambling over to her wardrobe.
"Marinette, your alarm –" Tikki calls, waving her tiny arms to try and get her holder's attention, to no avail.
"I know my alarm didn't go off, Tikki!" the human replies. She emerges in an outfit consisting of a light-gray shirt with a flower pattern at the top, with a darker, almost brown cardigan and pink jeans. It's an ensemble she wears a lot, sure, but it's comfortable and reasonably stylish, and I don't have time to think about this, I have to go!
"Wait, Marinette!" the kwami tries again, grumbling and disappearing into Marinette's purse as she opens the hatch in her floor and half-stumbles down the stairs to the main floor. She barely notices her parents playing video games on the couch as she continues to the bakery below, thankful for the complete lack of customers as she steals a torsade and rushes into the bakery door… literally, into the door, colliding with a loud crash that sends her and her bread tumbling back onto the floor.
"Ow…" she groans, holding her head. She leers at the multiple doors, wondering when those got installed, until they merge back together, and she sees what lay beyond it. The puzzle finally put itself together for her.
Everything is white. The door to the bakery is half-buried in a meter of snow; all of the streets and signs and vehicles left out there are similarly whited out as a raging snowstorm shows no sign of stopping.
"Marinette," Tikki says again, phasing through the side of the purse to speak to her directly. "Your alarm didn't go off because I turned it off. An unexpected blizzard swept through Paris just a couple of hours ago and shut down the entire city. All schools are closed. With everything that's been happening, I figured you really needed the extra sleep."
"Oh, uh, well… thank you for doing that, then? One way or another, I'm definitely not tired anymore." The girl picks herself off the floor, grabs her breakfast, and more calmly makes her way back upstairs.
When Marinette returned to the first floor, she was able to process that the video game her parents were playing was the one Max made, and her mom had just defeated her dad in a match.
"Looks like I'm zero for two," Tom remarked, looking at his wife. "You beat me, and Marinette ran into the front door like you thought."
"Hey, I'm right here!" the front-door-crasher responded indignantly. "You know, you could've woken me and told me about the storm."
"We figured you could really use the extra sleep, dear," Sabine replied. "It feels like we hardly see you anymore, with as busy of a bee as you've been."
"Say, now that you're awake and have no other plans, want to join us for a round of Miraculous All-Star Brawl?"
More like as busy of a Ladybug… Marinette grumbled mentally, shaking her head as she thought about her lengthy to-do list. "I wish I could, Papa, but I think I need the time to catch up on my homework and projects. Wait, is this a new version of the game? Some of these akumas didn't exist when we beta tested it."
"It's the complete edition!" he announced excitedly. "You can also play with people online, and there's a Story Mode where you play as Ladybug! I wish games were this involved when I was your age."
She tried not to think about how that meant lots of people would be playing as her, or that it was possible for her to play as herself. "Time must be getting away from me, because I didn't think this was coming out for a couple of months still."
Sabine smiled. "It's not. Your friend generously gave us an early release. He said he wanted us to try it for his 'one-day patch', but I'm afraid I don't know what that means. I think you should play at least one round with us, get a good start to your snow day before doing whatever it is you have to do."
Marinette would've been lying if she said the offer wasn't very tempting. But there's no rest for this busy Ladybug. "You know as well as I do that 'just one round' of a video game isn't in my vocabulary, Maman. I'm sorry, but things have changed since before. I can't afford any indulgences outside of what I make time for. I also have to ask that you please not disturb me up there unless it's urgent. I need to focus."
She didn't give them a chance to respond as she hurried back up to her loft.
Marinette had a hand in her purse before she had even finished closing the hatch. "C'mon, Tikki, breakfast time for you too," she said, taking out a pale blue macaron from the bag.
"Woah, what? Didn't you just say you wanted to catch up on homework?"
"I can do that later. This 'snowstorm' is very suspicious. Paris never gets snow like this so early in the year. I know global warming is a thing, but that should be giving us less snow, not more. I'm thinking this might be the work of an akuma."
"Don't you think it's a bit rash to assume that something unexpected is actually a problem that falls on you to solve?"
"That's pretty much how my life is anymore, don't you think?" she replied in a sudden outburst of anger. "I have to be prepared for any possibility, Tikki. Not every akuma fight is going to fall into my lap, but I still have to be there to fix them anyway. Even, or rather especially, if it's not an akuma, as Lady-Ice, I have the power to help all the people trapped out in the snow. I've never left saving people's lives to letting the Miraculous Ladybugs clean up after me, and I'm not going to start now just because Marinette gets a snow day."
"I… can't argue with you there. Just, please remember to keep balance like we talked about. You really ought to use at least some of this time for your own health."
"I promise I will, Tikki, but not now. Please eat up so we can go."
The kwami did as she was asked, the spot on her forehead forming into a hexagon as ice crystals grew on her back in a shimmer of white sparkles.
"Stalac-Tikki, spots on!"
Ladybug spun around as her frostier costume formed over her arms, body, and down to her feet, but she was surprised to see that her ice skates from last time were not present, even though the ice tiara still was. She quickly remembered that her Bug Phone had an answer for this, taking it out and navigating to the user's guide. "Oh, I see…"
Leaping onto her bed, Lady-Ice pushed the ceiling hatch up like usual, only for it not to budge. Frowning, she gave it a superpowered heave with both hands, forcing the door open… and knocking a bunch of snow down onto her and her bed. I sure hope this is an akuma, because otherwise this will be an awkward conversation with Mom and Dad…
Hopping onto the roof, she closed the hatch behind her and looked out at what she wouldn't describe as winter or a wonderland. She'd never seen this much snow in her life, except in fictional shows and movies where it was definitely special effects. It was unreal, in the truest sense of the word: she simply did not believe it was a natural phenomenon.
Not wanting to waste time, she opened her yo-yo like a pocket mirror rather than her usual sliding phone and tapped a specific button on the screen. She tossed the toy onto the ground, where it started glowing and then enlarged itself until it was even bigger than the shield of the Turtle Miraculous. Lady-Ice stepped on her new sled, tying the end of the string to a spot matching where it was attached to the main body, and held it with both hands like a pair of reins.
With a flick of the string, the yo-yo sled began propelling itself across the snow, and by pulling on the string on either side, she was able to steer its direction to navigate the frozen streets.
Thankfully, and in spite of her earlier concerns, she encountered no civilians left stranded out in the cold – she hoped all the akumas had finally taught people not to stay out in the open when there was danger. It didn't take long for her to decide to head to the TVi studios to see if the newscasters knew anything about this freak storm.
When she got there, she realized that the TV station being a tall, modern cylindrical tower was both a blessing and a curse. There was no chance of the building getting buried or worse, caving in, which was a real threat for many of the older structures of the city. However, the front door was most definitely entrenched, and the only other way in would be the roof, allllll the way at the top. Ladybug found herself once again in want of an infinitely telescoping pole.
"Well well well, ice to see you, M'lady!" the answer to her wishes called from across the street. Ice Chat had outfitted himself with a pair of skis, mobilizing himself with ski poles fashioned from splitting and extending his normal staff.
"Chat Noir? What are you DOING out here?"
"Oh, you know, I just got restless lazing about in my cat tower instead of enjoying the wonderful weather we have."
Ladybug gave him her best deadpan. "You think it's an akuma too, then?"
"Pshh, yeah. One fake winter storm was unbelievable enough, even if this one doesn't have flying catfish and toy soldiers roaming the streets," he affirmed, retracting his ski poles with the press of a button and re-attaching them to each other.
"Exactly! There'd better not be any Toy Ladybug or Chat Noir this time," she added, minimizing her sled and wrapping her yo-yo back around her waist.
"The less said about those two, the better," he agreed as she held on, and they ascended the tower using his staff.
When they reached the top, they were able to see that the giant mounted radio dishes had done little to prevent the roof from being blanketed in snow. Ice Chat had to use his staff to brush snow away so they could reach the door, and Lady-Ice didn't even try opening it without planting a foot on the side of the wall for maximum force. It eventually gave way, opening just enough for them to slip in before getting wedged in the snow mounds.
Unfortunately, the building's interior was pitch-black. "Nearly all of Paris must be without power if the broadcasting center doesn't have any," the heroine remarked, pulling out her Bug Phone to activate the onboard flashlight and taking the lead. "If anyone's here, they're going to be huddling somewhere away from the exterior."
"How about the server room? Servers produce a lot of heat, so it would be the warmest, and they're usually hidden away."
"Great idea, chaton," she said with a nod, before doing a double-take to look back at him. "Hey, where's your flashlight?"
Chat reclined his hands behind his head in an easy gesture. "Oh, you know, nightvision is one of my many cat talents. Could come in handy if stealth is needed for any akumas lying in wait."
"That is definitely not why you decided to do that. You're just trying to show off."
"Sounds like it's working."
"If you really want to compare what one of us can do that the other can't, why don't you try battling the akuma all by yourself, without my Lucky Charm?"
That caused him to stop walking, and Ladybug immediately realized her mistake. "Uh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that!"
He didn't look comforted by that, so she walked closer and placed her hands on his arms in order to command his full attention. "Seriously, I'm not mad at you. I… figured it was inevitable, to be honest," she admitted, her eyes turning downcast. She had gone over this conversation a dozen times in her head, but it wasn't making it any easier to say for real. "Obviously, I'm no stranger to how difficult it can be to drop whatever you're doing and who you're doing it with to go fight an akuma. It would be unreasonable for me to expect that it couldn't happen or to tell you that you can't do it again – I don't know what your civilian life is like even to make that sort of judgment.
"But the thing is, I don't have the freedom to do that. I must show up to every akuma, even if it means leaving my friends high and dry with a lame excuse I don't think they even buy half of the time. And you know I can't do this alone. If I can't…"
She paused before she said the words count on you, trying to fight down a re-emergence of her emotions from earlier.
"… I just need to know if this will continue to be a problem going forward."
Chat remained still as before. After what felt like several agonizing seconds, she found the nerve to look back into his eyes, and she saw that they were swirling with many different feeling. Then they closed, and only sincerity shone through.
"Ladybug…" he said gently, replicating her gesture by placing his hands on her shoulders. "You know that I treasure being Chat Noir and fighting beside you more than anything else in the world. I do everything in my power to be here – I don't care who I have to leave high and dry to make it happen. The only reason I would ever stop, even for one akuma… would be if I didn't have a choice."
He paused for a moment too, almost hesitating, as if he wasn't sure whether he should continue or not. "There are commitments in my civilian life that I can't just say no to. I know that I'm not allowed to share specifics, but that's ultimately what my answer relies on. Things have gotten more complicated since we started this game of cat and akuma, and I don't know what the future looks like yet. But I'll never give up on this, on you. Um… you know what I mean."
"Yes, I do," she confirmed. "Honestly, I'm relieved that your response wasn't that you lost your miraculous again. That would have been a much tougher conversation."
"Lost my miracul–?" he started, before catching himself. "Right. Yes. Losing my miraculous. During Style Queen. Very careless. Will never happen again."
The heroine decided not to press on this point any further, reading her partner's irritation. They walked in silence for a little while, until they came across the entrance to the server room. A quick test of the handle showed that the door was unlocked, so the black-clad hero opened it quietly while Ladybug led the way with her flashlight to signify their presence.
"Hello?" she called, scanning the room with the plain white light. For some reason, she had the image in her head that the room would have been lit by the cool blue glow of the servers themselves, even though that was silly because the power was out.
"Don't be bemused, it's just Ladybug and Chat Noir," her partner added, his joke subtle beneath his concerned tone of voice.
They got confirmation of others in the room through the shuffling they heard before they received their official reply. "I hope stealing my catchphrase means you have news to share," a mid-range voice said, before its source revealed herself farther down the aisle of servers to be Paris' prime newscaster, decked in winter gear.
"I'm afraid not, Ms. Chamack," Ladybug replied. "The blizzard isn't showing any signs of slowing down, and even the rescue crews are still trapped right now. Is everyone here okay?"
Another head popped out from another aisle, this one the tan bald of Alec Cataldi. "Fine as in physically, sure, but I'm starting to get antsy with nothing to do around here. Without electricity or reception, my phone is useless!"
"Aren't you an entertainer? Do some entertaining!" Chat suggested.
Not helpful, Ladybug thought. "Anyway, we're here because we were hoping the weather people would have some information for us on the storm, despite how unexpectedly quick it shut down the city. Are they here?"
"Only if I count," a third voice answered. The heroine didn't recognize her, and her face was somehow still shadowed, only her bob-cut hair catching the light. "Our meteorologist has been on vacation all week and the weather girl never showed up this morning."
"That would explain why no one saw the storm, then, if it developed overnight."
"Mmm, you're wrong there; it's the opposite way around. I've been filling in and helping those two kids interpret the weather data, since they're inexperienced. The forecast had been suggesting a storm for today since several days ago, which one of them kept reporting on the news, until it dissipated all of a sudden yesterday. Seems it came back with a vengeance, unless our radars need to be fixed."
"Hm… I guess we should find the two weather girls and see if they have anything else that could help us. Please hang tight!"
"It's not like we have much of a choice!" Alec snarked, and she chose to ignore him as she turned to leave.
"Ladybug, Chat Noir, one more thing!" Nadja called before the heroes reached the door.
"Yes, Ms. Chamack?" the former replied.
"If you two are active for this, does that mean an akuma is involved?"
"That's what we're investigating. We think it's likely, but we haven't found anything conclusive yet."
"Which is odd, because akumas are usually about as subtle as a bull in a china shop," Chat remarked.
"Well, stay safe out there, you two."
Halfway to their next destination, the conclusive evidence they were seeking presented herself directly to them.
Ice Chat knew they were somewhere within the 11th arrondissement, but only because of the GPS on their miraculous tools. He could hardly see the buildings on either side of the roads they were travelling with the raging snow. It was when that rage intensified such that they disappeared completely that an unnatural chill went down his spine that signified danger. He didn't let it deter him, but when Lady-Ice disappeared from his peripheral vision, he turned and saw that she had slowed her sled.
"Ladybug, is something there?"
"I don't know, but I'm getting a bad feeling about it."
"We should keep moving, then. If we get cold feet, we'll get frozen like popsicles!"
"That's right…" a soft, feminine voice whispered ethereally somewhere around them. "A shame it's too late…"
The snow began to swirl around the two of them like a tornado. Ice Chat quickly doubled back towards his partner, reverting his staff before he had even reached her. She moved to do the same, but he motioned her to stop with his free hand as his skis minimized into the soles of his boots.
"We may need a getaway," he advised, hopping onto the sled himself with his staff at the ready.
The storm seemed to constrict on them, the whirling wall of white rapidly closing until Lady-Ice had to stop completely or risk touching it. That was when they heard a cackle, putting them both even more on edge.
"Show yourself, akuma!" Lady-Ice dared, though she felt rather underwhelming sitting there on a sled that was supposed to be her weapon.
A blurry face formed within the snowfall in front of them, lacking any identifying features. "Something the matter…? Not enjoying the world of Snow Wonder?"
Chat slipped around his rather defenseless partner onto the face of the sled to protect her, but the face disappeared within its snowy façade.
"So you're the cause of the blizzard, then?" he commented.
"One might say that…" the voice called from elsewhere. "One might also say my forecast merely came true…"
With a lash of Lady-Ice's string, she brought the sled around in a slow circle within the eye of the circling storm. Neither of them could see the face anywhere.
"Snow Wonder, was it?" Chat finally asked, putting on his model face. "No need for the cold reception, come say hi!"
Instead of that, the response he got was a snowball to the face. Lady-Ice couldn't help but snicker, and then she got a snowball to the face too, and Ice Chat laughed more openly at her.
And then snowballs came flying at them from all sides by the dozen. They were deceptively strong, causing both of them to cower from the impacts to avoid getting knocked off the sled despite them not physically hurting.
"Mush, Ladybug, MUSH!"
"Aah, I'm not a sled dog!" she cried, whipping the string many times so the sled would propel itself forward into the snow. Ice Chat crouched down so that she could see and so he wouldn't get tossed off.
Squinting in concentration, she had to thrash the substitute reins about like she was trying to tear them loose in order to maneuver the sled, as snowdrifts and the snow-equivalent of sandpits spontaneously formed in front of and around them. It took all of her energy just to navigate the maze of traps, and they travelled in a big squiggle instead of a line like she wanted.
"We're not getting anywhere, Chat! I need a distraction!"
"That's going to be hard when everything is just snow!"
He looked around desperately for something he could use. With all the chaos, it was hard even to make anything out, but something sticking out of the snow caught his eye to one particular dip in the snow that wasn't doing anything.
"Over there!" he shouted, doing his best to point at the vague feature as they kept turning. He also silently hoped that, if they couldn't see the akuma, the akuma also wouldn't see where he was pointing and what was there.
"I don't see anything!"
"Just trust me!"
Lady-Ice gritted her teeth, doing her very best to follow Chat's finger. It wasn't until they were almost on top of it that she was able to figure out what he saw, and by then it was too late to make anything resembling a smooth landing.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" they both screamed as they soared into the gap in the ground where the stairs into the Metro were. The sled bounced roughly off of the mid-flight landing and crashed into the second stairwell, capsizing itself and sending its two occupants careening and rolling on the subway platform. Lady-Ice and Ice Chat remained dazed as the sound of the impact reverberated off of the solid concrete walls, their orientation disabled by the pitch-blackness of an underground room without power. When the noise faded, all was deathly still.
"Talk about battling the elements…" Chat grunted as he finally picked himself off of the floor.
"No kidding…" Lady-Ice agreed. "Her powers may not be as strong in magnitude as Stormy Weather's were last time, but as long as Snow Wonder is in this blizzard, we can't touch her. She's literally in her element. Say, can I get a light, Mr. Darkvision?"
Chat turned on his flashlight at the end of his staff, pointing it at her sled so that she could collapse it back into her own tool and light. They did a quick survey of the station, only to find it as abandoned as the frozen city above.
"Thanks," she acknowledged, but the frown on her face contradicted her words. With nowhere else to go and a destination they still needed to reach, they began walking through the cold, unsettling subway tunnel.
"Is something on your mind, M'Lady?"
"Oh, I was just wondering… this is the second time in just as many weeks that Hawk Moth has made an akuma with large-scale environmental control powers."
"Wasn't Landover more of a Pushover, though?"
His pun somehow broke the icy mood, making her smile a little. "Yes, dork, but that was more because of how he used his power rather than the power itself. His main goal was to be alone so he could read; he wasn't really even trying to defeat me despite the promise we know everyone makes to take our miraculouses for Hawk Moth. If he was serious about it, I think he would've been an ample challenge for the two of us."
Chat grew quiet for a moment, understanding the implications of her explanation. "What do you think Hawk Moth's up to? Is he trying to burn through our Power-Ups? Or is there something deeper?"
"I wish I knew. Without the grimoire, I've been having to talk to the kwami to learn anything about the miraculouses, and obviously I can't do that with the Butterfly or Peacock. My main confusion right now is what's so different about Snow Wonder that she's providing that challenge? All we know so far is that she got akumatized over her snowstorm forecast suddenly being wrong, which seems really minor compared to the likes of Backwarder thinking she lost the love of her life after waiting decades, Troublemaker being overwhelmed by the demands of those nosy TV show producers and of Jagged, or even something like Sandboy's nightmares."
After a short pause, she suddenly added, "What are your thoughts, chaton?"
The question caught him off-guard, causing him to stop briefly where he was. If he was Marinette, he probably would've tripped. "Huh? Oh, well…"
It dawned on him that he had never really analyzed this too deeply. Ladybug was the tactician between the two in battle, and his superhero-related activities in his civilian life were mostly wishing for a chance to transform and making sure Plagg didn't get into too much trouble in the meantime. He didn't usually consider the fact that he was supposed to be doing his best to stop not just akumas, but Hawk Moth as a whole. Probably because that would mean the end of Chat Noir, which was something he didn't want to think about.
"Earth to Chat Noir? Are you there?"
"Oh, uh, sorry. I don't really have anything insightful to say, I'm afraid. Understanding people isn't my strong suit, and my only exposure to miraculouses other than my own is when people are wearing them. Plagg certainly doesn't explain much. I don't know much of anything about how these things work."
"Hmm," was Lady-Ice's only response before falling silent again. She truly was an inscrutable mystery at times, but he imagined she was thinking five steps ahead as usual.
"I actually have another question for you, Ladybug."
"Oh? What is it?"
"Why did you hesitate back there?"
This time, she was the one caught in her tracks. If she was Marinette, she probably would've tripped, too.
"Wha, what do you mean?"
"When Snow Wonder first approached us, you stopped in the open to observe what was happening and left yourself vulnerable. That's not the Ladybug I know. You usually think on the fly, work with what you have and create a set-up that they never see coming… with panache, I may add. The one that usually has to be careful about what they're doing is me. Something must be throwing you off your game."
His partner's expression paled, and he knew he struck a nerve. "I, uh… you-you're so infuriating sometimes, Chat Noir!" she declared, raising her voice and beginning to pace. "I mean, the last time the city was on ice, we had this discussion and it was because you were being petty about me liking someone else, and now you're going on about my superhero habits and your superhero responsibility and you're so… so…" she walked right up to him… and buried her face in his chest. "… right."
"Ladybug…" was again all he could manage to say as he wrapped her in a hug. They lingered for a moment before releasing, the spotted heroine brushing her eyes. It was then that Chat felt cold, and not from the tunnel. He promised to be there for Ladybug, but being so close felt so… close, to what his heart desired. He was providing the emotional support of a romantic partner without the romantic payoff he craved.
"What I mean to say is… thank you. For watching my back, back there and in here. I think I'm just feeling overworked right now. Talking to the kwamis every night, knowing the Miracle Box is in my room all the time… it feels like I never get a break. Also, the timing of recent akumas has been rotten lately, don't you think? It feels like they've all been disrupting the fun parts of my schedule, which makes it hard to decompress. I mean, everyone our age is enjoying a snow day while we have to go out and hunt for the akuma that caused it."
"Yeah, tell me about it," he replied curtly, putting on his model smile and declining to say anything else. It couldn't have been two hours since they talked about how difficult it was for him to make akumas with his civilian life, but what really mattered was that he was there for her when she had trouble with it, right?
The duo took extra caution when emerging from the Metro station across from Collège Françoise Dupont in case of another attack by Snow Wonder. Lady-Ice didn't think there would be since this was the way she came from, but one could never be too sure; it was also a good ruse since Ice Chat didn't know she lived here.
While the front doors were also buried in snow, Lady-Ice knew that they opened inward to a covered walkway and therefore shouldn't be obstructed. An experiment push yielded no results, however.
"Looks like they're frozen shut. Lend a hand?"
With a superpowered shove on each side, they were able to force open the doors. Inside, the courtyard was unsurprisingly abandoned, and no one came out to greet their loud entrance.
"My guess is they're in the boiler room," Chat suggested, pointing at the door to their left.
"Good call again, kitty."
It quickly became apparent when they opened the door that it might not have been a good call after all. There was no light or warmth emanating out, and when they ventured further in, they saw that the boiler had ceased functioning and the room was empty.
"Darn, not a lucky cat this time. Got any better ideas?"
"Hmm… We should probably look for signs of life instead of randomly guessing."
Emerging from the dark, they scanned the courtyard… and found nothing useful. While the rooves of the hallways kept the doors clear of snow, they were still shut, and all of the windows were completely frosted over, suggesting the doors would be frozen just like the entryway had been.
Hesitantly, Lady-Ice stepped into the courtyard and peered up at the few areas not visible from the entrance.
"Ah, up there! There's a section of the library windows that's not frosted. I think I see light!"
Ice Chat joined her and peered up. "That's great, but the library doors are the only ones that are blocked by snow. It looks pretty bad."
"The glass will probably be easier to get through, then. If you'll do the honors?"
"My pleasure, M'Lady. It's a good thing the Miraculous Ladybugs are gonna foot the bill for any damages we cause."
Chat again elevated them both on his pole, where Lady-Ice broke the circular glass pane to provide them entry. Almost immediately upon getting inside, they heard a loud shriek.
"It's over! The wolves are here!"
They looked down from the upper balcony they landed on to see that a small fire had been lit in the center of the library; some fallen books near the fire revealed them to be the fuel. Only Mylène Haprèle was visible, cowering behind a chair next to the fire, but as Lady-Ice's eyes adjusted to the lower lighting, flickering shadows of other students appeared through the bookshelves.
"Wolves?" Lady-Ice asked. "Please don't tell me there are wolves involved in this, too."
"Ah, um, sorry Ladybug…" Mylène replied, regaining her composure. "That's just what happened in a movie I saw recently. It also involved students keeping warm in a frozen city by burning books in a library, and then they got attacked by wolves. Sorry if I scared you."
The others emerged from their hiding places to greet the superheroes. The heroine recognized only Sabrina and Aurore from among the six students, plus Mr. Plusseau as the only adult.
Aurore and no Mireille means we have our akuma, she processed. But we still need to figure out how to stop her.
"What brings you here, Ladybug?" Aurore asked, resting on her umbrella with an attitude. "Fancied yourself a sleigh ride?"
"I take it you know it's an akuma too, then?" Chat sassed back before the heroine could come up with a more tactful reply.
"Yeah, it doesn't take an expert to know that snowstorms don't magically re-appear overnight after they've dissipated. People were spreading rumors at school once they heard yesterday's forecast. Especially a certain someone," she spat, glaring in Sabrina's direction, likely in reference to Chloé.
The accused girl winced. "Hey, don't look at me, Mireille got our hopes up about Paris' first big snowfall this year!"
Meanwhile, Lady-Ice had to hide her dumbfounded expression. I was at school yesterday, how did I not hear any of this?
"I see," she replied so she could re-focus. "Shouldn't she have been akumatized yesterday, then? Do you know of anything that happened this morning that would've caused it?"
"Afraid not. Caquet was as bummed as everyone else that we weren't getting snow, but she's been doing this long enough to know that sometimes the forecast is wrong. She didn't seem upset enough to get akumatized, though I didn't hear from her at all today before this happened."
"When exactly did this happen?" Lady-Ice asked sheepishly. "I, uh, may have slept through it."
"Around 8 o'clock," Mr. Plusseau answered. "I was well on my way to the school when the closure announcement was made at 8:27, but by then the snow had already blocked up most of the city. It was easier for me to shelter here than attempt to return to my house, as I imagine is also the case for the students you see here. We lost power shortly thereafter."
I guess that tracks with my 8:30 alarm… but it's strange that my house next door didn't also lose power. And it doesn't help us identify the akumatized object.
"In that case, Mireille might have been home when she got akumatized. We're going to have to investigate," Lady-Ice concluded.
She opened her Bug Phone and brought up the map again. Leaving it open, she let her string to carry it down to the ground floor in front of Aurore. As the weather girl put in her friend's address, Lady-Ice had a thought about how much trust the people of Paris put in her as a heroine. Here she was, requesting to search someone's private space without any warning or a warrant of any kind, and that person's best friend complies in helping without batting an eye just because she was akumatized. They might not even find anything related to the akuma, and the Miraculous Ladybugs certainly weren't going to erase the memories of what they found after the fact.
"Her apartment is number 405."
"Thank you, Aurore." she acknowledged as she pulled her yo-yo back up.
"Yeah, just… go get her."
The two heroes turned their backs to look at the map and make their plan. Mireille's apartment complex was pretty close to the midpoint between the collège and the TV studio.
Ladybug, as usual, took the initiative in making notes, speaking in a whisper. "The closest Metro stop runs along the same road she caught us on last time, so we'll have to take this one here and try to sneak in a back way."
"Why don't we just use the Horse Miraculous and Voyage into her apartment?"
"What?" she exclaimed a little too loudly, eliciting confused looks from those below. "No way, that's too dangerous."
"More dangerous than going outside where Snow Wonder is at a huge advantage? With Voyage, we can avoid that entirely."
"Yes, because I have to get the miraculous first. No doubt Snow Wonder is scouring the city for us right now, and with her powers, I'll have no way of knowing if she's watching me when I enter the place where I have the Miracle Box kept. That would compromise everything." It may be less likely when that place is literally 25 meters from here, but Chat can't know that.
"… right. Sorry. I shouldn't have questioned your judgment."
She said nothing, simply leaping up to the roof. He followed her as they ran to the Metro station and back into the tunnels.
"Alright, this is the stop," Lady-Ice said, her map and flashlight both up on her Bug Phone as they approached a boarding platform in the dark tunnels.
"Let's gear up for whatever comes, then."
"Of course."
"Lucky Charm!" she shouted, throwing her yo-yo into the air to exude a multitude of hearts. The hearts formed together into a long red sack with black spots, which then fell into Lady-Ice's hands.
The sack nearly pummeled her to the ground with its mass, and Lady-Ice let out an "Oof!" as she righted herself. It wasn't truly heavy to carry thanks to her transformation, but it was massive.
"What's inside there?" Ice Chat asked.
Lady-Ice gave some experimental squishes with her hands, and with some effort was able to give it a shake. "It feels like sand."
"A sandbag? You got a bag of salt the last time we did this ice thing. Do you think it will be similar?"
"Not likely, because that would be too easy. Lucky Charms are rarely that straightforward. More importantly, I don't have a free hand while I'm carrying this, so I need you to be on high alert for surprises."
He nodded and put on a serious face, and with their wits affirmed, they leapt up the stairs out into the harsh weather.
The snow wasn't as piled up between the tall buildings as it was on the street, but it was still deep enough that they couldn't just run through and had to hop their way around. There wasn't enough space to equip either of their snow mobilities. They were only a block from their destination when the snow in the alleyways began growing into walls all around them.
"No, how'd she find us?!" Lady-Ice swore.
Ice Chat quickly grabbed her and telescoped his pole diagonally, just making it over the bank as it and the others converged onto where they had been standing. The pole bent under their combined weight to land on the revealed pavement, and it flicked up out of the snow mound when he retracted it.
"Run for it!" he called, not wasting an instant standing still. Already, the snow was beginning to advance back in their direction, and more snow was drawing in from the other streets in front of them.
Her partner again thought quickly, bursting ahead and extending his staff in her direction. "Alley-oop!" he called again, and she landed on the pole, which he then heaved up with all his might to launch her over the snow and all the way to the apartment complex. He barely cleared the snow wave by climbing onto the wall on all fours and scrambling around it.
A volley of snowballs began pelting Lady-Ice from the moment she landed, forcing her to shift the sandbag over her shoulder and focus on defense with her yo-yo shield. When Ice Chat caught up, he twirled his staff to start blocking shots aimed at the heroine before she toppled from the weight imbalance.
"Get inside!" he directed. She didn't need to be told twice, quickly retreating to the door and forcing it open by using the sandbag as a battering ram. Chat followed shortly behind her. Above them, a snowy, humanoid figure scowled in frustration and moved around to the side of the building.
The two heroes bound up the stairs, only stopping to catch their breath on the second story.
"Firstly," Lady-Ice said, "that alley-oop pun was very bad."
Chat grinned widely at her. "Oh good, I was worried you wouldn't have caught that."
"Enough time around you, kitty cat, makes one ready for puns in any situation." Her expression hardened. "But no more time for jokes. Snow Wonder probably knows we're going for her apartment. We should go for a scissor attack, with one of us coming through the door and the other through the window."
"Well I can't imagine you climbing a building story while carrying that thing, so leave the ambush to me.
"Right. Find apartment 305 and listen well for my entrance above you."
Chat opened the stairwell door and saluted her on his way out. Lady-Ice quickly ascended the next flight and did the same, running down the hall until she found the placard labeled with Mireille's apartment number.
She turned the handle and pushed, only for the door once again not to budge. "Oh, come on…" she muttered. She stepped back to the opposite wall, breathed in, and then rushed at the door to shoulder tackle it and break through.
The first thing she saw upon entry was that searching the apartment was not going to happen. The windows on the far side had already been smashed, bringing in a layer of snow that covered the floor to her ankles and obscured all of the furniture. It was a mostly square room, with what appeared to be a countertop to her left and a square wooden table sticking out about halfway across. On the right wall, there were three side rooms adjacent to each other, but she couldn't see beyond the entrances.
She had only just taken in the scene when a cold wind shut the door behind her, causing her to flinch and reactively prepare her yo-yo shield.
"You are foolish to come here…" the ethereal voice from before sounded again.
The snow in the center of the room swirled together, building up into a human figure that then became the akuma herself in a flash of cyan light. Snow Wonder was hardly any different than the snow itself, with icy pale skin and a pure white robe, the long drooping sleeves and sash around the middle identifying it as a kimono.
"I'm here to help you, Mireille. You don't need to do this."
Behind the villain, Ice Chat silently pulled himself up onto the center windowsill and into the room.
"Don't start. The Heroine of Paris couldn't possibly understand…"
Suddenly, another gust blew in from outside, dragging Chat forward as more snow piled up behind him. The jig being up, he decided to jump at the chance to try and grab the akuma's sash, but his hand seemed to move through her as she floated to the side, circling the table and ending in front of the windows. The wind picked up and even more snow funneled in through the window at Snow Wonder's command.
Chat turned around to face her, and something in one of the rooms caught his eye. "Ladybug!" he called, pointing to the farthest room. "There's a shrine in that room!"
Snow Wonder grew angry at that and spread her arms, creating a blast of snow that knocked Chat back all the way into the counter. Lady-Ice jumped in front of him, her shield barely blocking the barrage of snowballs that began afterward.
"It's futile," their opponent said with that echoing voice. "You'll be completely buried soon, and then I will have your miraculouses."
Lady-Ice could see that the snow was up to their shins now, with further banks once again creeping up around them on the sides. She began looking around the room for something to use her Lucky Charm with. Aha! The sandbag… her yo-yo… Snow Wonder…
"Chat, open this!" she had to shout over the howling wind. He did as instructed, untying the string held over one of the ends. As quickly as the heroine could, she opened her yo-yo flip-phone style again and threw it forward as it expanded back into its sled form. Clutching the sandbag tightly, she leapt straight into the cover of the front dome as sand already started pouring out of it.
Snow Wonder erected another snow wall to stop the sled. Lady-Ice was up in the blink of an eye, throwing the now-empty sandbag over Snow Wonder's head to fully capture her. The akuma hadn't given up, a flurry of snow blew up around the sack as Lady-Ice struggled to hold the bag closed and get it tied. "Hurry, Chat! The bag can contain her in either form, but it's not invincible!"
Ice Chat didn't waste any time in extending his skis to race over, skidding past them and into the bedroom. Inside was a stone monolith, about four feet high, with a larger circular base. It looked like a trophy, and Chat didn't have to guess what it was from.
"Catalcysm!" he called, pressing his hand to the akumatized trophy, causing it to crumble and a black butterfly to fly out. At once, the snow settled and the sack stopped resisting.
"No more evildoing for you, little akuma," Lady-Ice said, opening her yo-yo like a ladybug opens its wings to the glowing white compartment within. She swung the yo-yo in a circle to charge up her throw.
"Time to de-evilize!"
The yo-yo caught the akuma in one swoop, closing up to perform its magic purification.
"Gotcha!"
She opened the compartment again, and a regular white butterfly flew up and away. "Bye-bye, little butterfly!"
Next, she pulled the sandbag off of a de-akumatized Mireille, and then threw it in the air as well.
"Miraculous Ladybug!"
They burst into a swarm of ladybugs, expanding into a huge cloud that swept the clouds out of the sky, and then the snow off the streets. Within Mireille's apartment, a group cleaned up all the snow and repaired the windows, and restored the trophy from the KIDZ+ competition to its place on the girl's dresser.
"Pound it!" both miraculous holders cheered as they bumped fists.
They turned their attention to the weather girl, who had sat herself up and now looked up at them with sadness.
"Was I… akumatized?"
"Yes," Lady-Ice replied, kneeling down to her level. "Is everything alright, Mireille? We heard about the blizzard forecast… but that was yesterday. Did something else happen today to make it worse?"
The teen clutched her head with eyes shut, as if trying to remember. "No…? I don't know. I had only just gotten out of bed. I remember feeling very tired, like there was a big weight on my shoulders. I can still feel it."
She turned her attention to her trophy. "I always look at that trophy when I'm sad to remind myself of what I've accomplished, to keep my head up. But today… it made me feel heavier, even though I wasn't feeling sad or angry to begin with. I thought about the forecast, and how quickly some people turned on me, like I was the one that made the snow day go away, and how much of Paris must be feeling that way because of me. I just… I don't know. That's the last thing I remember."
Ladybug's earrings beeped, and she knew there was only one spot left. "It sounds like you were frightful of your ability to influence what people think. When you're standing in front of that camera, in front of the whole city, telling them the forecast, and they listen. They trust that you're telling them the truth. When you were akumatized, you said I wouldn't understand it as a heroine… but I do. I'm in the public eye all the time. It's scary."
"Yes, but… you're Ladybug. You're a paragon of bravery, creativity, and kindness. No one looks at you and thinks about what you could be doing better, or whether you really deserve to be the heroine of Paris. I'm just the cute shy girl who happened to win a contest that lets her stand center stage in a segment of the news every morning."
"That's…" Ladybug began, her cheeks reddening from the praise.
"What I think every day," Chat interrupted. This is not a conversation Ladybug is ready to have yet.
"Huh?"
The cat hero sat down next to them to create a circle. "Ladybug is all of those things and more. I fight by her side all the time, and even I continue to be blown away by what she's capable of. And that's the thing: compared to the best, everyone else looks bad. Ladybug would be the first to tell you that she couldn't protect Paris by herself and that I'm a vital part of our team, but guess what? The press and the talk shows still call me the sidekick, the backup, and even the burden sometimes.
"Basically, if you let yourself listen to the doubts in your heart and the boos from the audience, you'll never see yourself as good enough for anything."
Ladybug found herself speechless, and she swore she saw him look in her direction for the briefest of moments. Her earrings gave their final warning, pulling her from her daze. "I… have to go now."
She stood up and unlocked the window nearby, but before she left, she looked back at her partner with the same sincerity he gave her earlier.
After Ladybug let herself out, the other two stood as well. Chat went to the same window, but before he also left, he turned around.
"I'm going to let you in on a little secret, Mireille."
"Wha? What is it?"
"I didn't choose to be the hero of Paris. My miraculous was given to me anonymously in a box, and then Stoneheart appeared and Ladybug and I were the only ones who could stop him. Before then, I was just a boy. In my civilian life, I still am. It may have been fate that brought you the opportunity to live your dream, but it's still up to you to live that dream... and make it reality."
Light began pooling into a dark observatory as a lens opened its cover blocking a large window. Now that the storm had finally passed, there was no weather to threaten the butterflies that flew around, even if that irritating Ladybug would have cleaned it up regardless.
I shouldn't think like that, Hawk Moth pondered from his usual place in the center. Defeat is not inevitable, unless I convince myself to believe that it is. That happened once and shall never happen again.
Today's experiment had been quite… informative. To find a strong enough desire that grew from a seed rather than bursting forth in a desperate moment was not easy, at least within his usual criteria of not exploiting those truly in dire straits and miserable lives. He already had enough trouble getting many of his villains to listen to him, so the last thing he – or Paris – wanted was someone who was mentally unhealthy or even unstable before the touch of his akuma. The saying goes that there is nothing more dangerous than a cornered animal with nothing else to lose.
So, as far as this particular akuma went, the results were good. Certainly much better than Landover and Frozer, despite her power being essentially a mix of the two. His main observation was how the desire changed over time: initially, it was hurt over the doubts others cast on her, but with time, it transformed into a gripping fear from doubts cast upon herself. Impostor syndrome.
He remembered the days, after dear Audrey had first scouted him, when he felt the same way. It was always Emilie that assured him to believe in himself. And now… I'm exploiting that same desire in someone else. No matter, he had akumatized himself before, too. This was strictly business. There was no room to doubt himself anymore, because if he did, he may never get back the person that let him move on from it the first time. That was a doubt he refused to entertain.
Backlit by the late afternoon sun, Chat Noir jumped through his window, landing in a kneeling position. With the last tone of his ring, his transformation dropped and formed into his equally black kwami, who wasted no time in diving into the fridge. But Adrien paused, only pulling together the effort to stand when Plagg returned with his smelly cheese.
"You look like you could use some camembert. Should I have grabbed extra?"
"No, Plagg, I'm fine," he said as he went over to his couch to mope. "… thanks."
The fact of the matter was that this was one of the most trying akumas yet, but not because of the akuma itself. The fight was difficult, but short, and they had been in worse situations before.
It was everything else that had drained him. Ladybug was seriously upset at something today. He fixed it admirably, as he was supposed to… no, as he wanted to. His heart had brimmed at the opportunity to speak the admiration for her that he held every time he saw her face. And yet, there was another truth within those words that was the dark side of their relationship. Or rather, their lack of one. He did everything in his power to meet her needs, so that she could be the sun in the sky that saved the city. He felt her radiance, but it didn't seem to permeate all the way through to match the glow of his impassioned speech. He felt dim, the same as Mireille.
It was that same feeling of being used, he realized. Of giving away – or possibly of being taken, since Ladybug was right that, as Guardian, she had no choice but greatness – and never receiving anything in turn. It was exhausting.
The vibration of his phone returned him to the real world. On a normal day, school was about to let out, and that meant moving on to the next item on his schedule. Today, that was a Chinese lesson, though he doubted he'd be able to focus.
Plagg watched his holder from his current reclining spot on his basketball hoop. It appeared that he was going to need to get into more trouble than usual today.
Chapter Trivia:
-The thing Sabine referred to is actually called a 'day one patch'. For video games available on cartridges, there's a period of time in-between when game finishes development and when people are able to buy it, as the game's code has to be compiled into a build, the build put onto all of the cartridges, and the cartridges packaged up and shipped to retailers. During that time, the developers can still work on fixing bugs on their internal version, and then they can release those fixes as a downloadable patch when the game finally launches, on day one of availability. While most solo developers don't have the time or money to be putting their games on cartridges for gaming consoles, instead opting for a digital-only release on online stores connected to the consoles or for PCs, Max is a whiz and has Markov (an even bigger whiz), so he can do whatever he wants.