"Nathalie, what's going on? " Adrien snapped when his father's assistant, after that hurried u-turn, failed to give the right of way to a blue Volvo and swerved to avoid a crash.
She did not stop. On the contrary: she sped away.
"Nathalie!" Adrien yelled.
She was in no state to drive. She had barely slept in the last two days and it was a miracle that she could still walk in a straight line. Speed-racing through the crowded streets of Paris was definitely not an option.
"I'm an idiot, I'm a damn moron , I am an IDIOT," she ranted, not even peeking at him.
"Nathalie!"
She took a deep breath.
"I messed up, " she said. This time, it sounded like she was talking to Adrien and not to herself. He had never heard her use that word before. "Plagg!"
The Kwami popped out of Adrien's messenger bag.
"Yes?"
"You're a cat?" Nathalie asked, her tone laced with anxiety. "With the cat senses?"
"Of course I have the cat senses."
"And the sense of smell?"
"Yes?" Plagg replied, confused.
"Alright. Is there food in the car?" - Both Adrien and his Kwami blinked at the strange question. - "Is there candy ?" Nathalie amended. "Can you check?"
The teenager's eyes went wide. That conversation he had eavesdropped on echoed through his mind. 'This one was Candy Warper's,' Anne-Laure had said about her cursed candy cane. 'Teleportation, but you knew that, and remote-controlling candy.'
Plagg zipped from one corner of the car to the other, checking under the seats, slipping into the trunk, diving into Nathalie's purse. He dashed out of it and landed on his chosen's knees, dropping three gummy bears on his lap.
Nathalie looked down at them and started swearing in an uninterrupted flow of expletives Adrien had no idea she even knew .
"Out!" she yelled. "Out, throw them out."
The boy did, opening his window and dropping the candy on the street while Nathalie accelerated.
She kept ranting.
"And you talked about putting a tracker on your father and it didn't register ! I didn't even consider there could be one on me, I should have known ."
"Come on," Adrien pleaded. "Please calm down. We don't know if something has happened yet, for all we know, miss Lenoir won't do a single thing."
Nathalie stared at the road, slaloming between cars in a way that involved not using one's blinkers, overtaking cars by the right side and using the bus lane when at all possible. He patted his seatbelt.
"Maybe I should transform and go check," he suggested in his most polite voice, sincerely worried they were going to get killed.
She pursed her lips.
"Call miss Dupain-Cheng. We'll give her the address." - So she had figured out Ladybug's identity. - "Also take my tablet from my purse…" - Adrien opened her handbag and found it impeccably arranged, with every type of item categorized and sorted in the adequate pocket. He took the tablet out. - "And open the browser, the url to the hideout's surveillance camera is 198 dot 154 dot 0 dot 21, slash, camera, slash, 1."
Adrien struggled to keep up with the typing, but the browser helpfully autocompleted the url from its history. It took a few moments for the video to load, then the image of the cage mister Kubdel was kept in appeared. He was pacing, just as he had been when Nathalie had showed Adrien the feed, not an hour before. Thankfully, he was alone and unharmed.
"He's fine," the boy announced, keeping his eyes on the screen and dialing Marinette's number.
His girlfriend answered near instantly.
"Hi!" she said. "You're already up?"
"Yes, I… Er, we have a problem!" he exclaimed, summarizing the situation. "I doesn't look like anything is happening, but we're on our way and it would be great if you could join us…" - Nathalie gave him an address. - "... On the Rue des Forges, in the industrial district. The Garfield packaging factory."
How had Gabriel even managed to escape their notice for so long, with that habit to register his hideouts to fictional cats or to their creators?
"Okay, I'll get there as soon as I can," Marinette answered. "Can you transform so we can use the tra-"
"NO!" Adrien yelled when Anne-Laure appeared behind the unsuspecting mister Kubdel on the security footage.
"What?" his partner gasped.
"She's there ," the blond explained as miss Lenoir kicked mister Kubdel behind the knees to make him fall. "Just g-"
All he heard was the tonality. Marinette had hung up.
###
Marinette had never showed up to school as early as at seven in the morning. Not since she had started walking there on her own, anyway. Her parents rose early. Marinette, however, could sleep through the noises of the bakery, two alarm clocks and (just the once) the Akuma-induced collapse of half the city block. She was a heavy sleeper. That being said, to stay asleep, one had to fall asleep, and she had spent her night patrolling, then staring at the ceiling.
At some point, she had given up on sleep entirely.
Much to her surprise, several of her classmates were sitting on the school's entrance stairs when she arrived. Nino and Ivan were talking about music, with the DJ yawning and pressing one side of Ivan's headphones to his ear. Kim and Max were lounging higher up. When Marinette walked closer, she spotted darkening bruises on Kim's face. He definitely had a black eye.
"Hey, Marinette!" Nino exclaimed, joining her. "What happened? You're… reverse late?"
"You mean 'early'?"
"Nah. Early would be 'one minute before on time'. You're like early-early."
"I couldn't sleep. And you're early too."
"Yeah, kind of. I took the bus with Ivan today, we had some mp3s to share."
Marinette nodded then lowered her voice.
"Did Kim get into a fight?"
"Er, something like that? He went to see Alix. You know, with her dad and everything, er… Anyway, I think he annoyed her a little too much."
Kim, who was well within earshot, rolled his eyes.
"I didn't 'annoy' her. I told her if she thought I was an ass, she could punch me."
Marinette blinked.
Her classmate rolled his eyes one more time.
"She needed to punch something , okay?"
The young designer stared at him.
"I. See. That was… strangely… considerate," she commented. She couldn't imagine the state Alix was in, though she figured 'angry' would be at the forefront. Alix didn't like to appear weak. "Did it help?"
"I think so? I mean she thanked me."
Nino sighed. Marinette looked down at her shoes, nodding.
"The funeral is in two days," Kim announced. "Are you going?"
I'll show up if I manage to drag Adrien's father to a police station, she thought.
"I. Yes. Who is going?"
"Most of the class except, you know, Chloé, who doesn't give a shit. Even Sabrina said she'd show up."
Marinette nodded again, lost in thought.
They could never repair what Gabriel had done. Never. There would be no magical swarm of ladybugs to wash away everything that had gone wrong. Nobody would be brought back to life. Alix's family was destroyed forever. And, unlike Hawk Moth's possessed victims, Gabriel was fully to blame for what he had done. He could not get away with it. She would have to deliver him to the cops, regardless of how much it would hurt Adrien. And it would . Where would he go if his father was arrested? Did he have relatives who would take him in? Would he end up in foster care? He had already lost a parent and now he'd have to see the second be sent away. Would he ever recover from that?
She didn't think he would ever forgive her in any case, but she could live with that. Gabriel had chosen his path and that path had caused grief to everyone around him. He had hurt Adrien time and time again and you couldn't let him continue to do so. You couldn't excuse his actions.
Marinette wished Alice had not excused his actions.
Maybe the previous Ladybug would have been miserable if her husband's memories had been wiped away, but it would have given Adrien a clean start in life. He would not have grown to love a man who abused him more often than he showed him affection. Maybe he would have grown up without a father but with a mother who loved him. Maybe Alice would have met someone else, someone good . In any case, Adrien would not have been forced to handle Gabriel's actions. He would not have had to deal with the fact that his father was a murderer. Instead, his own mother had laid out the foundations for the mess they were in. She had known the kind of man her husband was, yet she had enabled him.
Now, everyone was paying the price.
"Are the doors still locked?" she asked, turning to the school's entrance.
She had never arrived that early.
"No," Max replied. "Just closed. Mister Haprele was cleaning the entrance when we arrived and he needed them shut. You sh-"
Marinette's phone started ringing. It was Adrien. Her heart started racing and she excused herself with one gesture to Nino, walking to the corner of the street to take the call.
"Hi!" she said. "You're already up?"
"Yes, I… Er, we have a problem!" Adrien announced, voice muffled by motor noises.
She lowered her voice to a whisper so her classmates would not hear her.
"What's happening?"
"I was about to come to school, I'd have told you, I… Mister Kubdel is alive ," her partner blurted out, his voice frantic. "He is Hawk Moth, my father has him locked up somewhere."
Marinette froze, gobsmacked. That did not make sense. There was a body. Mister Kubdel's car had been found. Alix's family was preparing his funeral .
The young designer was still digesting Adrien's words when he dropped the next bomb.
"Nathalie thinks miss Lenoir figured out where my father keeps him and that she's going there right now. I doesn't look like anything is happening, but we're on our way and it would be great if you could join us…"
Marinette heard miss Sancoeur speak in the background, which meant she knew her real identity… but then again, she had probably been too blatant. She would handle that later.
She wrote down the address Adrien gave her and promised to hurry there, then tried to suggest a transformation into Chat Noir. The tracking system built into their weapons would be a blessing in the current circumstances.
Adrien shrieked a 'no' into his phone.
"What?" his girlfriend exclaimed, her heart jumping to the middle of her throat.
"She's there ," Adrien explained. "Just-"
"I'm on my way!" Marinette replied, frantic.
She realized in the same instant she had ended the call before talking, but her partner would understand. She turned to Nino.
"My, uh, cousin is… locked on her balcony!" she shouted, already starting to run. "I have to go! No one else has the key! I'll be right back!"
A minute later, she was out of sight. A few seconds after that, she had transformed and was zipping from roof to roof, speeding to the address she had received.
She could not fathom how thing had gone so wrong.
Well, actually, she could. They had done nothing. They had not watched mister Agreste closely enough. They had not accounted for the fact that his own son was Chat Noir (a fact that would definitely have changed Marinette's approach). They had underestimated him. They had underestimated Anne-Laure Lenoir, who seemed harmless enough, who just wanted to smoke and eat and wander the world. Marinette had been so busy with everything else that she had barely spared a thought for the woman. She had barely even wondered how and why the retired Queen Bee had left Chloé behind. At no point had she stopped to question what had brought her back. Adrien had told her he had gotten her to visit his father, and that had been enough of an explanation.
Why would Ladybug have considered that Anne-Laure could hold a grudge against Hawk Moth, just like Gabriel? Silly idea! Who would think such a thing?
Anyone with half a brain.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
It took her fifteen minutes to get in sight of the packaging factory. It did not look like a secret lair that doubled as a prison. Then again, mister Agreste's first hideout had been a lawyer office. That was even less indicative of criminal activities (at least the kind of criminal activities the fashion designer indulged in).
Marinette looked around, trying to find signs of Chat Noir or of Nathalie Sancoeur.
Her partner was nowhere in sight - had he already gone in? - but miss Sancoeur's grey car was driving away.
That could only mean trouble. Ladybug gave chase.
She followed the grey Audi down the street, even passing it as it turned the corner and parked next to a pile of discarded tires and garbage. Ladybug landed next to the car right as Nathalie opened the door. The woman was alone.
"Where is Adrien?" the teenager asked. "What's going on?"
Then she how hard Nathalie was shaking. Her hands were clutching her bag so hard her knuckles had turned white.
"A-Adrien… I-I m-mean Chat Noir went to the f-factory. I-I-I had to leave," the woman explained, trying to regain her composure. "I-I had to drive away."
She looked wracked with guilt.
"Of course you had to!" Marinette exclaimed. "You're a civilian! If you had stayed, you would only have put yourself in danger."
The young heroine did not add that Nathalie was no usual civilian, seeing how she was privy to her employer's murder plans and to the location of his hideouts. Once the immediate problems would be taken care of, Ladybug would make sure to ask her share of questions.
"You don't get it," Nathalie said, opening her bag. "I have the Butterfly Miraculous on me. I have that enchanted letter opener. I couldn't bring them anywhere near Hawk Moth. If he somehow escapes… It's too risky."
Marinette blanched.
"Go," she said. "Hide, don't go anywhere anyone would expect you to be. I'll handle this, and once we have mister Kubdel and miss Lenoir secured, I will call you. And, when I call, ask me the name of your cat. "
"I don't have a… Oh ."
"If I give you a name, you'll know something went wrong," Ladybug added, turning away and throwing her yoyo at a lamppost. "And now I have to go."
###
Chat Noir shoved aside the shelves that concealed the basement door, then used the key Nathalie had given him to unlock the armored door itself. As soon as he opened it, he heard screams, even though the factory had been silent as a tomb a second before. Count on his father to invest in the best sound isolation money could buy.
The young hero raced down the stairs.
He found Anne-Laure towering over a curled up mister Kubdel, who was covering his head with both arms. His hands were bloody.
"SPEAK!" his assailant yelled.
They were both inside the cage. Miss Lenoir's Candy Cane was on the floor at the opposite end of the room, out of the cage, totally out of reach.
Adrien did not waste time.
"Cataclysm," he murmured under his breath as he ran to the cage.
He hit two bars - just two bars - and did not even wait for them to be done shattering to skip into the cell. As soon as he was in, he planted his staff in the middle of the gap he had created, between shards of rusted metal. He made it grow until it stuck both to the floor and to the ceiling like a replacement bar.
Miss Lenoir had whirled to him.
"W-" she started, taking a step towards him.
She didn't get to finish that sentence. Chat Noir grabbed her extended arm and threw her away from Hawk Moth. At was to be expected from someone scaled walls and grappled her way into fortified mansions, she did not fall. She did not trip. She barely stumbled. A second later, she was dashing back to Adrien and shoved him back.
"What are you doing ? We need to make him talk!"
People used 'foaming at the mouth' as a figure of speech often enough. Anne-Laure actually was .
Chat Noir pushed her away, in a calm but firm gesture.
"No. Not like this," he retorted, staying between Kudbel and the blonde.
"Not like… Why are you defending him?" she yelled. "He killed Alice!"
That hit Adrien like a punch to the gut. He swayed. He tried not to take a deep breath, because Kubdel had moved back against the bars and was observing them.
"Did he say he did?" the superhero asked, as coolly and professionally as he could manage. The mask and the costume helped. He could wrap 'Chat Noir' around his pain like a cloak.
Anne-Laure frowned.
"Not yet , but-"
"Well then I guess you can leave now, because if you are not out of my sight in the next thirty seconds, I will be delivering you to the cops along with him."
Adrien punctuated that announcement by raising his chin and clenching his jaw.
His Miraculous beeped.
Miss Lenoir took a step to the side and tried to walk past him to get to Kubdel, but he blocked her way. She scoffed.
"Kid, I know you mean well," she said, pushing him away, "but you have no idea the kind of psycho you're dealing with here."
Once again, Chat Noir shoved her back.
"Yep, seems that way. I have to hand it to you, though, you're quite the wasp in bee's clothing."
Mister Kubdel inched away, pressing himself against the bars of the cell, right where Chat Noir had broken in. There was probably enough space between the real bars and the staff for the man to slip through. The young hero whirled to him.
"Don't even try ," he snapped.
Looking away from Anne-Laure was a mistake. She kicked the back of his knee. His leg gave way. He stumbled back, collapsing against her, only to be grabbed by the waist and lifted in the air. She bent back and threw him over her head, sending him rolling on the floor while she saltoed and landed on her feet. A second later, one of those feet connected with mister Kubdel's stomach, then the second crushed his wrist.
The next beep of Chat's ring went unheard as Hawk Moth yelled in pain.
"Once again, Alim," Lenoir spat. "What did you do to her?"
Adrien bounced back up and charged. The blonde raised a hand to stop him.
"Take one more step and I will fucking cripple him, kiddo," she threatened. "I'm not going to kill him, I'll hand him over after he talks, so chill . No need to play the white knight here. God knows he doesn't deserve one."
"Everyone deserves one," Chat Noir retorted, circling them and trying to come up with a way to rescue Hawk Moth - of all people, Hawk Moth - from torture.
It was a peculiar situation, all things considered, but Adrien had no doubt he was doing the right thing. If answers about his mother came at that price, he did not want them.
"Yeah? Tell that to the people he slaughtered. Tell that to Benoît Lagrange who died as Blood Moon, when his power of flight deserted him. Tell that to the teen girl who was cut to pieces as Candy Warper, whose soul is still trapped into a fetish. Tell that to the people who lost everything because they didn't get forgiveness for what they did under his Akuma's control."
Chat Noir's ring beeped again. This time, the sound echoed around them.
Anne-Laure looked down, startled. Her expression grew harder still as she looked back up to meet Adrien's eyes.
"Just go before you transform back," she said. "It's bad enough he knows who Gabriel is."
The boy did not move. He glared back.
A minute passed.
There was another beep.
"Oh for f…" Lenoir mumbled, grabbing Chat Noir's staff and trying to pry it from the floor and ceiling to make an opening in the cell.
She did not manage to. It was stuck there and would not move unless Adrien wanted it to. She turned to him, eyes wide. He watched her gesture at the staff, ignored her, and walked to her and Kubdel.
Alix's father was studying his face. The man was battered and bruised, with a bloody nose that looked broken, a split lip, a black eye. If he was in pain, he had forgotten about it: he was too busy assessing the situation.
The young hero crouched.
"Can you stand?"
Kubdel's eyes narrowed.
"I don't know," he replied, shifting uneasily and trying to sit up.
Lenoir immediately kicked him in the chest, a blow that Chat Noir managed to block but not altogether stop . The boy shoved her leg away. He grabbed the front of the sweater Hawk Moth was wearing - a formless thing, very unlike the sharp suits the man wore in and out of costume - and pulled him up.
Yellow lightning washed over Chat Noir, who reverted back into Adrien. Plagg landed on his shoulder an instant later.
Hawk Moth's eyes widened.
"You are their son ," he said. "You… Ah. Of course, you are. How did I not see it?"
The teenager ignored that, just like he ignored Anne-Laure's muffled stream of curses.
"Here's how things are going to go," he announced in his coldest tone, staring at Kubdel with a composure that would have made Gabriel proud. "I'm going to get you to an hospital, so we can make sure you are not bleeding internally or something of the kind. And then I will give you two options."
Adrien had not been given much time to consider what the available options were. Not in circumstances like these. He had always pictured Hawk Moth's capture as an epic showdown with Akuma and storms of magic. He had imagined taking the Butterfly Miraculous back, and delivering a defeated stranger to the hands of the law.
Kidnapping had never come to his mind.
As things were, their options were limited and none of them were good.
"Adrien," miss Lenoir sighed. "Don't. Don't give him options. You don't have any. Leave him to me and I'll hand him over to the guardian."
He would not look at her. He had never been that angry in his life, and the last few days had set the bar high.
"You don't get a vote," he told her. "Neither does my father. Not after this. You used to be heroes. You should have been better than this. Actually, if you were like this to begin with, I doubt you deserved a Miraculous. So either you follow my lead, either you walk away now knowing Ladybug and I will find you and drag you to the cops for assault. Do I make myself clear?"
She huffed but she stayed.
Mister Kubdel leaned against the bars, holding his belly.
"So what would the options be?"
Adrien clenched his teeth.
"I assume Bella told you about the normal punishment for rogue Miraculous holders? The memory wipe?"
Hawk Moth narrowed his eyes.
"She did."
"Well, that's your best option. We take away all your memories of being Hawk Moth, of ever meeting your kwami, and we let you go."
"That's twenty years worth of memories, young man. You would effectively erase me."
Adrien let out an exasperated sigh. He could feel Plagg's tail twitching on his shoulder.
"That's the option where I don't have to tell Alix what you did. I sure hope it will erase you and leave only your memories of caring for her and your son. Because, you know, Alix is my friend . She's in my class. I like her. So you might go home with holes in your mind the size of a small planet, but she'll still have you. And I will keep an eye on you for the rest of your life, to see what kind of person you are without your evil Kwami's influence. And if there's anything left of the man who Akumatized her, who Akumatized both of his children, I swear I'll tell her everything. But if you can be a decent person, then you still have a chance."
By the end of that tirade, Adrien was shaking, more from anxiety than from anger.
Mister Kubdel mulled over that then nodded.
"What's the other option?"
"The other option is 'we drag you to the cops'," the teenager snapped.
"I'd take the first one if I were you," Plagg chimed in. "It's much nicer than what you deserve. The boy is my kindest Chat Noir yet."
Hawk Moth breathed in. The corner of his lips twitched and curled into a faint smile.
"I see."
Anne-Laure winced.
"You can't give him to the cops. He's going to lie his ass off and pretend he's your father's innocent victim. Gabriel would get arrested."
Adrien sucked his cheeks in.
"First, I trust the justice system. I have to. And then , Father is a grown man. He made his own choices while fully aware of their consequences, so let him deal with them." - He turned to Kubdel again. - "You. Think about those options carefully because I'll be asking for your answer as soon as a doctor confirms you aren't dying on us. Now let's go ," Adrien said, pushing the man through the opening left by the two destroyed cell bars.
Kubdel took two steps forward then lunged for the candy cane. Of course, that was hardly unexpected, so Adrien tripped him. Anne-Laure ran to the magical artefact and shoved it into the inside pocket of her vest.
Adrien sighed and pulled their captive to his feet.
Just go, just go, just go. Call Ladybug, call Nathalie, call an ambulance, just go, he told himself.
Anne-Laure grabbed Kubdel by the shoulder and pushed him up the stairs, keeping a firm hold on him. The man walked hunched, with an arm wrapped around his abdomen. He was also grinding his teeth. Adrien followed them out of the staircase then put his own hand on Hawk Moth's other shoulder, so they would both be holding him.
"What now?" Lenoir asked.
Adrien took his phone out of his pocket and called Marinette's number. It went straight to voicemail.
"Ladybug should be here soon," he sighed. "I'll call Nathalie."
By that point, the Butterfly Miraculous had to be stashed away in a safe location. Adrien would need to ask her for cheese. Plagg was exhausted.
"Alright," Anne-Laure replied. "Find something to tie this bastard up, alright?"
Kubdel rolled his eyes.
"What, are you expecting me to run with broken ribs and a sprained knee?"
"You seemed fine to me when you tried to get the candy cane a minute ago," the blonde snapped.
Adrien stared down at his phone, mind wiped blank. Plagg peeked down and waited a moment, then nudged him.
"Nathalie," he prompted.
"Right."
He called her, giving her the quickest rundown of the situation. She listened, hung up, and texted him that an ambulance was on the way. So was she.
The boy put his phone away and ran his hands over his face. Then he heard Ladybug's voice.
"Chat?" she was calling. She ran into the building the very next second. Her eyes drifted from Kubdel to Adrien. " Chat? "
He had never felt such overwhelming relief.
"Ladybug!" he exclaimed, turning to her just in time to see her blanch and open her mouth.
Then he heard a moan behind him. He whirled to Anne-Laure and saw her bending over. Hawk Moth fist was buried against her stomach, and a dark red stain spread on her clothes right around it. Kubdel pulled her in front of him as a human shield and moved his hand away.
He was holding a bloody, rusty shard of steel.
Adrien's eyes went wide.
The bars had shattered and fallen to pieces when he had hit them with his Cataclysm. He remembered the sounds the pieces of metal had made when they had hit the floor.
He heard himself scream. He reached for Anne-Laure just as Kubdel grabbed the candy cane from her inner pocket. Hawk Moth shoved her away and grabbed Adrien's extended hand. By pure reflex, the boy pulled his ring off and dropped it.
A split-second later, everything went dark.
###