Tikki emerged first.
She had been hiding under a cushion next to Marinette. As soon as the door closed on mister Agreste, the Kwami peeked out, then she pushed the cushion away and flew up to stare at the exit. Her antennae were falling limply on the sides of her head. She looked exhausted.
Marinette raised a cupped hand so her Kwami could land, but Tikki did not even notice it. Instead, she jumped in the air when Bella called her name.
"Tikki!" the butterfly Kwami exclaimed. "Tikki, Tikki, Tikki!" - She zipped to her sister and started twirling around her, gleeful. - "Tikki! It's been so long! When was it that we last saw each other? How are you? I'm so happy!"
She was nothing but a spinning blur of pink sparkles. She only stilled when Plagg dropped from the ceiling fan. That got another squeal out of the previously murderous Bella.
"Plagg!"
She dashed to him, but he only gave a tired grunt, floating down to the table.
"The seal," he said.
Bella landed next to him, disappointed.
"You're not usually that businesslike."
"Your chosen kidnapped my chosen," the black cat snapped. "So I'm not that happy to see you."
"Alim is alive?"
Tikki joined them, frowning.
"He is in pretty bad shape. Gabriel was holding him captive to deliver him to the cops or to the Guardian, but someone else found him. From what Plagg tells me, he took a bad beating and needs healing magic."
Bella narrowed her eyes.
"Someone else."
Plagg groaned.
"We'll have plenty of time to explain later. Remove the seal !"
"Someone else," Bella repeated, spinning into place to look at miss Sancoeur, then Tikki, then Marinette. She discarded them as candidates. "Who?"
"Queen Bee," Tikki replied with a sigh. "It's not important now. What matters is fin-"
"Bee. I should have known. Why is it that Waspp's holders always end up murdering mine? None of my butterflies ever killed her heroes! She should have-"
Plagg growled.
"If you start whining about Brutus again, I swear…"
"It was one of the greatest betrayals in history !" Bella protested.
Tikki intervened.
"Bella. Now is not the time."
The sulky expression vanished from the pink Kwami's face. She stared at her sister with wide, angry eyes.
"We need to release the seals," Tikki insisted. "They were put on us when the previous Chat Noir nearly corrupted Plagg, but they are crippling us rather than protecting us right now. We have to work with Gabriel."
"I won't do a single thing he asks me to," Bella retorted. "I haven't forgotten that Cataclysm he threw at Alim. I had to watch my chosen be half-paralyzed, stuck in a wheelchair for three years while I was too weak to help him. I have no intention of helping Gabriel. Not now, not ever."
"LIFT. THAT. SEAL. OFF. ME!" Plagg screamed.
Nathalie jumped out of her bones. Marinette caught herself shrinking away.
It was easy to forget what kind of creatures the Kwami were. It was easy to forget how powerful, how old and how scary they were. They never showed you the godly side of them. They used their magic to unlock lockers while shouting 'tadaa!', they chewed on everything that looked like food, they curled up like plushies next to your pillow. You did not get to see tendrils of dark magic oozing out of their bodies. You did not get to see yellow sparkles crackle in the air around them. You never heard their voice echo in a room and break into a thousand more.
Bella sighed.
"Alright. I'll do it for you . For Tikki, though, we'll have to decide on a price."
Plagg glared at her, eyes narrowed to glowing slits.
His sisters rolled her eyes.
"I haven't lifted a seal in three thousand years. Tikki, you start, and I'll repeat."
The red kwami rubbed her face, wincing.
"Miss Sancoeur, Marinette. Would you mind finding food for us while we we do this?" she asked. "Bella doesn't eat solid food, but liquid honey or any soda will do."
" Not the diet ones!" the butterfly protested.
"Sugary soda," Tikki amended. "Please."
The teenager and the woman exchanged a look, then left the room. They made their way to the elevator in silence, then Marinette sighed.
"I didn't envision Bella like this," she said.
"What did you envision, then?"
"I… I don't know, actually. Not a five-thousand year old child throwing a tantrum."
"I'd be very wary of said 'child'," Nathalie commented. "She might appear fickle and sulky, but I doubt she would have escaped capture for millennia by being featherbrained. She does not care about those 'seals'. Let us see how she behaves when the topic of Alim Kubdel comes up."
Marinette realized they were standing in front of the elevator, waiting, but that neither of them had called it. She pressed the 'down' button.
"What happened?" she asked. "I… I only got there in time to see him stab miss Lenoir. I… Adrien didn't explain much over the phone."
Miss Sancoeur looked around to make sure they were alone.
"Gabriel found out that Adrien was, well, your partner. It… He was unstable to begin with. But you know that part." - She shook her head. - "I found Gabriel. There is a GPS tracking feature on his phone, so I kept an eye on that."
"You didn't tell us about that!"
"Of course not. I told you before that Gabriel doesn't react well to confrontation. I wanted to get to him first and bring him home, which I did ."
Marinette had to lean against the wall at that point. Her legs felt weak. She still frowned.
"If you had taken us with you, we'd have kept Hawk Moth under watch," she pointed out.
The elevator arrived with a ding. The doors opened. Nathalie did not move.
"He was under watch," she said. "He was in perfect health, surrounded by cameras, in a cell he could not escape, waiting to be delivered to that 'Fu' person. I thought we could let everyone rest for a bit before dealing with the rest. I had not counted on Anne-Laure putting a tracker on me ."
The teenager pushed herself away from the wall and entered the elevator before the doors could close.
"Alright. Alright , I see your point." - Her stomach lurched. - "About Anne-Laure, she was… I mean, he stabbed her in a bad place, is she…"
"I called the hospital but they wouldn't tell me anything. You, yourself, promised she would live, while you were transformed as both Chat Noir and Ladybug." - She frowned. - "There is someone I could call, however."
Marinette did not even get to ask 'who?': Nathalie's phone was out, and she quickly dialed a number. Whoever she was calling picked up near instantly.
"Mister Bourgeois," the woman said. "This is Nathalie Sancoeur, mister Agreste's assistant. I hope I'm not calling at a bad time?" - They heard muffled apologies and some mumbling. - "Ah. I believe that's precisely what I'm calling about. I was having lunch with an acquaintance of mine, works for 'Paris Mail', and there's word of paparazzi making their way to the Georges-Pompidou hospital because of some rumors about one of your family members. I just wanted to give you a heads up." - More mumbling. - "That's dreadful! Will she be alright? Oh. That's a relief! Yes. Please tell her I wish her a speedy recovery. Thank you. Yes. Goodbye, mister Bourgeois." - She hung up. - "Miss Lenoir is perfectly fine. They are keeping her for observation."
Marinette gaped at her.
"What?" Nathalie asked. "He's the mayor of Paris. He would have been called the second someone figured out who Anne-Laure was."
She pushed zero on the elevator's floor numbers board. The doors had long closed on them. It started moving.
"There should be vending machines in the hall," the woman added. "I think I saw some. We'll get some sugar into you before we head upstairs."
The girl nodded. It was hard to be confident and to take charge of the situation when you couldn't stand upright without conscious effort.
They found the vending machines by the entrance, next to a plastic bench nailed to the wall. They sat with six cans of soda, two packs of Mikado biscuits for Tikki and two boxes of cheese crackers for Plagg (camembert was not commonly found in snacks dispensers). Nathalie had Marinette wolf down three cereal bars and one energy drink. The woman went for coffee, two cups.
"We have to hurry," Marinette murmured. "We don't know what Hawk Moth will do to Adrien."
Her companion didn't answer. The woman blew on her coffee instead, trying to get it from charring to drinkable.
The teenager stared down at her energy drink.
"I met mister Kubdel," she said. "Once or twice. He was a bit harsh on his son, but… He seemed… normal. What does mister Agreste say about him?"
"Gabriel is barely able to remain coherent when discussing that man. I don't think you realize the extent of the trauma Hawk Moth inflicted during their… their last 'meeting'. But I talked to Kubdel. I think as long as Adrien complies with the orders he receives, he will be safe."
"But what if we don't comply?"
"Have you ever given in to Hawk Moth?"
Marinette shook her head. She had not. It had nearly happened, when enemies had left her with no other choice, but Chat Noir had stopped her. When he had not been there to do so, she had been lucky enough to see a different solution at the last minute. The two of them had never given in. But Adrien had never been a helpless hostage before.
That doesn't make any difference, she chided herself. There's always a better way.
"You know, I have an interesting job," miss Sancoeur told her. "It involves a lot of negotiating, a lot of bargaining. Threats, sometimes. Bribes. Lawyers. But, mostly, it's me and my phone, having to talk people into giving me what I want. What Gabriel wants. I know when to push. I know when to give up."
Marinette studied her face. Nathalie was quiet and composed.
"In other circumstances," Gabriel's assistant continued, "I would tell you 'release the Kwami. She can be captured again'."
"But you are not."
"I am not. I cannot be reasonably certain that Kubdel will hold his side of the bargain up. He cannot be trusted. I talked to him, and what I saw was a man who strives to be pleasant, yet finds it difficult to rein his anger in. He is unstable. He has nothing left to lose. He only cares about Bella, and we don't know what he will do once he has her back."
"So we can't negotiate."
"We could. In both cases, we risk losing Adrien. If we do negotiate, however, we could be releasing a dark goddess for nothing."
Marinette took a deep breath. She crumpled her empty can.
"I don't get it! He has a family! He has two children he evilized ! Why would he do all of this?"
"You became Ladybug a year ago, something like that, didn't you? You were fourteen, maybe fifteen?"
The young hero nodded.
Nathalie pursed her lips, looking at her coffee cup.
"At that age, he was Hawk Moth. But he did not get a soft, cuddly companion like that red Kwami is to you. He was chosen - targeted - by an evil being who made sure to establish herself as his only friend. He was vulnerable, possibly abused, and she helped him. So he values her above everything. She will always come first. She made sure of that."
Marinette crushed her can until the jagged aluminium hurt her fingers. She threw it into the garbage.
"Let's go get ready," she said, collecting the rest of the cans and the food.
Miss Sancoeur nodded, taking one sip of her first cup of coffee and carrying both to the elevator. On the way up, they discussed tracking Adrien's phone and where he supposedly was. When they walked into the hotel room, Tikki and Bella were sitting on the table, conversing in a language Marinette did not recognize.
"Where did Plagg go?" the teenager wondered.
Both of the Kwami pointed at the ceiling. A few seconds later, through the open window, she heard yelling. Not much of the screaming was intelligible, but she recognized Plagg's voice, and what he was calling mister Agreste was not flattering.
###
"You should probably just go and find a doctor," Adrien commented when mister Kubdel leaned against the vault's door, only to slide down and sit on the floor.
His captor looked about to pass out and, while the teenager had rarely seen real corpses, corpses in movies looked a good deal healthier than Alix's father.
In comparison, Adrien was feeling peachy. The cut on his throat had dried up, though the crust on it cracked when he moved his head. He was tied up against a statue. His arms were tingling behind his back. He was not comfortable by a long shot, but he did not suffer from life-threatening injuries.
Now, when it came to mister Kubdel's medical situation, the boy wasn't so sure. The man became weaker and weaker as the minutes passed.
Of course, he was stubborn.
"Boy. Kindly be silent," he replied to Adrien's advice.
"Has it occurred to you that if I am concerned, I mean me , now, in my situation… You should probably be?"
Hawk Moth grunted.
"I mean I'm pretty tied up right now," the young hero added, "but if I wasn't, I'd drag you to the hospital myself. Which, in case you forgot, was the plan before you decided to stab someone to escape."
" Boy ."
Adrien went silent. He had seen Kubdel go ballistic over being argued with. He had learned his lesson.
Hawk Moth sighed and took his watch out of his pocket. When he opened it, a translucent blue bird spread its wings and hovered above the clock's face. Its light mixed with the golden glow cast by the magical khopesh, coloring the room in shades of yellow and turquoise.
"It's a tracker, isn't it?" Adrien asked.
"Yes."
"For the Firebird."
Kubdel scoffed.
"Firebird is the fancy name four English-speaking heroes chose for themselves. Zharr is a peacock. His ability to burst into flame does not change his species."
"So were you actually looking for the peacock Miraculous, in Brazil?"
"Did they ever tell you that-"
"Curiosity killed the cat? Can't say I ever heard that."
The joke got a pained grunt out of mister Kubdel, who shifted against the door.
Adrien frowned, sincerely worried for his archnemesis.
"Did you need that Miraculous too? I thought you were just after Tikki and Plagg's."
"Tikki and Plagg's are the ones we need . But Bella would be pleased to find all of them. She misses her siblings."
"Then maybe she shouldn't attack them?"
"Do not talk about a situation you know nothing about, boy."
"So. Admitting you get the Miraculous. What do you want with them? I mean 'absolute power' is all fine, but it does open up a ton of possibilities."
Mister Kubdel started laughing. It hurt him, so he coughed and curled up in pain, but he could not quite stop himself. A minute went by before he calmed down and, after that, he kept wheezing for a while. He coughed. He took a deep breath. He looked up at the ceiling.
"Once upon a time, a human magician of no little skill trapped ideas inside a box," he recounted. "It was quite the feat. It took him and his followers a decade of collecting concepts in the form of energy, in an enchanted device he had invented himself. Even then, the ideas spoke to him through the gold and silver walls of the box. He heard them thunder and scream and beg. He figured out he could not control them in that form, however, so he devised a new spell."
Adrien, who had listened with raised eyebrows at first, quickly found himself frowning, then paling.
Kubdel went on, with a polite smile on his face. His tone was the same he would have used to narrate historical facts to the Louvre's visitors.
"He found a way to transfer the howling, shrieking ideas into gems and metals. It was a grisly process, that all quantic gods remember well. It involved fire and smoke and animal souls, and fancy pieces of jewelry. The magician created three sets of seven artefacts: the Marvels, the Malefices, and the Miracles. And then, he handed the jewels to his servants, to do as they pleased with."
Adrien stared at him with wide eyes.
That sounded horrendous. Could it be true? Wouldn't Plagg have mentioned it?
"That's just… That's…"
"One man turned gods into slaves," Hawk Moth finished. "Some of them grew resigned. Some of them are still howling and begging. So, you ask me what I would do if I had absolute power. I would do the humane thing: I would free Bella. I would free the others, if they so wished. The Miraculous are nothing but prisons."
The teenager swallowed. It felt like a ball of steel was moving down his throat.
Absolute power. The power to create anything. The power to destroy anything.
Anything.
"You want to destroy them," he said. "You want… to destroy... the Miraculous."
"Wouldn't you, if Plagg asked you to?"
"It's Bella? It was Bella , asking you for this, all along?"
"Isn't it her prerogative?"
Adrien spluttered. He did not know enough about magic to measure the consequences of destroying a Miraculous. He had no idea what would happen. Even so, the end did not justify the means.
"Wouldn't it kill her?" he exclaimed. "What would happen to her? Do you even know?"
"Does it matter?"
"Of course it does!"
Kubdel shook his head, smiling.
"Have you ever been trapped? Really trapped? Forced to do things that you want no part in, day after day after day?" - He raised his hands and drew the shape of a box in the air. - "You find yourself in a cage you cannot escape. And not only are you trapped in that cage, coerced into those things … when you ask for help, people tell your 'but there is no cage!'. You go to them begging and they answer 'you must be imagining things'. 'That person you call a jailor is taking good care of you'. 'You are a liar!', 'Why would you invent those horrible stories?'. And so you stop pleading for help. You resign yourself. You endure. Any way out sounds like a good way out."
Adrien knew enough of Hawk Moth's timeline for those words to mean more to him than what was being said. You could tell mister Kubdel was younger than Gabriel and Alice. How old had he been when people had refused to help him? How broken had he been when Bella had found him?
Kubdel got back to his feet, leaning against the door.
"Finding someone who not only believes you, but is willing to rescue you? It doesn't happen to everyone. But Bella gave me the weapons to help myself and I fully intend to return the favor."
"At what price? " Adrien protested. "You have been terrorizing the city. You have killed people, you have ruined lives, you have akumatized your own children."
"My children remember nothing of their transformations," Kubdel commented. "As for the rest, I couldn't care less."
He walked to the safe he had locked the candy cane in and opened it to take the artefact out.
Adrien pulled on his restraints.
"What are you doing?"
"Leaving," Kubdel replied. "I used your phone. Your father has probably narrowed our location down by this point. If he does release Bella in the next…" - He checked his watch. - "Twenty-five minutes, she will know where to find me. I expect he is more likely to raid this place. I'd rather verify that theory from a distance."
He collected the magical khopesh, then Adrien's phone, which he threw on the debris of a destroyed statue. The teenager looked at it, hopes he didn't know he had crushed.
His enemy came back to him.
"Let's go."
###
Nathalie kept herself in check until young Marinette Dupain-Cheng - in her Ladybug costume - zipped out of the window to land on the closest roof.
Even after that, Nathalie watched the girl hop from building to building until she was out of sight. Then the woman walked to the table, where Plagg was curled up around his ring, next to the electrum box in which Gabriel had shoved Bella's brooch the instant she had attempted to bargain for Alim Kubdel's release.
Gabriel was sleeping on one of the room's beds, fully clothed, over the covers. He had conceded that he would be useless while hallucinating . Nathalie had promised to wake him up before Ladybug's departure, but lies were an integral part of their relationship, weren't they?
She picked her phone up, checking the battery, then put it down again.
Ladybug would call her as soon as she would be near the location they had pinpointed when tracking the location of Adrien's phone. Nathalie's tablet was plugged to the wall and Plagg was keeping an eye on the map, in case Adrien and Hawk Moth changed location.
That was if they had kept the phone, of course, but Nathalie tried not to be pessimistic.
She looked around for her purse, collected it from the chair it was on, then locked herself into the bathroom with it. The room was small and cramped, but it would do. Nathalie sat on the edge of the bathtub and opened her purse. She got her foundation out, along with her eyeshadow, her face powder, her liner, her mascara, her lipstick, and her golden little box of blush.
Then she started the long, arduous process of drawing her facade on.
Two minutes in, after a first sob and some tears, she had to clean her foundation away to start over. She calmed down. She ordered herself to keep it together. She applied the foundation, again , and tears rolled down her face. At that point, she stood and turned the sink's faucet on to wash her face with clear water. It would help with the makeup disaster. It would help her calm down.
By the time she was done cleaning her face, she was weeping. She had to sit down on the bathtub again, because of how hard it was to breathe. She curled up with her face in her hands, waiting for it to pass.
In time, the sobs receded. She managed to dry her eyes, to wipe her nose, to tidy herself up. Her throat unclenched. So she stared at herself in the mirror, wondering how to best conceal her puffy eyes. She rubbed her cheeks with the tip of her fingers to get rid of errant eyelashes. When she was sure, certain, adamant she had calmed down, she tried to apply foundation again.
Plagg found her sobbing a few minutes later.
He watched her for an instant without commenting.
"Ladybug is calling," he announced when, having wiped her face and collected herself, Nathalie turned to him.
"I'm coming," she said, shoving her makeup into her bag.
Plagg carried her phone to her as soon as she walked out of the bathroom.
"I'm here," Nathalie told Ladybug.
The first thing she heard, rather than words, was the panic in the teenage heroine's voice.
"I'm sorry," the woman said. "Can you repeat that?"
"It's a vault," Marinette repeated. "It's a vault in a storage building. And I called Adrien's phone with mine. I mean, as a civilian. So I heard the ringtone, and nobody picked up. I don't think there's anyone in there. Just his phone."
The world went blank. Nathalie distantly registered dropping onto a chair. She couldn't quite hear. She couldn't quite breathe. Her arms were shaking so hard she thought she would drop the phone and a tingling feeling spread from her fingers to her elbows.
"Miss Sancoeur?" Marinette asked. "Are you still here?"
Nathalie swallowed.
"Miss Sancoeur?" the girl called again.
"Give me a second," the woman replied, putting the phone down.
She breathed in, turning to the golden box that contained the Butterfly Miraculous. Plagg landed next to it, frowning, and tried to block Nathalie's hand when she reached for it. Gently but firmly, she pushed him away.
"I wouldn't," he said when she picked the box up.
"Hush," she whispered.
She knew very little about Bella's powers. As a Parisian, however, she knew some general facts, so she knew enough. She opened the box and let the brooch fall into her palm.
Bella emerged, a dozen white butterflies bursting out of her body and landing on the closest surfaces. The Kwami looked at Nathalie, her posture and expression screaming 'distrust'.
"Have two hours gone by?" the creature asked.
"Yes," the human replied, pinning the brooch to her collar.
Bella's eyes widened in panic. Nathalie paid it no mind. She closed her eyes.
"Transform me," she murmured.
###