After a quick nap (he deserved it, after all), Plagg cautiously headed for Mr. Agreste's office. He wasn't there, which was a little surprising. Nathalie was, though, so Plagg carefully skirted around the room (through the wall, which was gross and dusty and musty and this was why he left the detective-ing to Tikki and Wayzz and the others). He ignored the safe for now- he could inspect it whenever- and instead dove through the floor to follow the passage from the floor-elevator down, over, and then up towards Hawkmoth's lair.
Hawkmoth's occupied lair.
Plagg lurked in the shadows behind Hawkmoth, careful not to disturb any of the butterflies. Hawkmoth looked agitated and on edge, clutching his staff- or, rather, the thin sword that had apparently been hidden in the staff.
...okay, yeah, that would definitely do some damage if that hit Ladybug or Chat Noir. Plagg made a mental note to mention it to Adrien. That would be a nasty surprise if it came into play in the middle of a fight.
"I would have thought that they would have attacked by now," Hawkmoth was muttering. "What, are they waiting to attack in the middle of the night or something? Because mark my words, I will be ready no matter what! No one can get past my security!"
...okay, so it sounded like maybe Mr. Agreste was planning on really locking the place down at night. That could be a problem if the superheroes wanted to go out on patrol, since Adrien might find himself locked in or locked out. If there was an akuma attack, then Adrien might not be able to get out without triggering some alarms.
Well, if that was the case, then Plagg would have to be sure to accidentally destroy some of the wiring controlling the metal shutters that snapped down over Adrien's bathroom windows. They could manage with just one small window open.
For the next few hours, Hawkmoth paced and fumed. He didn't seem particularly inclined to make any akumas, though why Plagg didn't know. After all, an akuma would be a distraction. It would draw the superheroes away from him, so he could stop stressing so much.
Plagg briefly wondered if it would be wrong of him to wish that his Chosen's father would keel over from stress. Mr. Agreste would deserve it.
Finally, Hawkmoth decided that no one was coming for him right away. He detransformed and stepped back onto a certain piece of floor. Before Plagg could fully focus on what was happening (he had been drowsing a little, so sue him), the floor was opening up and taking Mr. Agreste back the way he came.
Very efficient, very slick, very dramatic, very high tech, and, most importantly of all, very mechanical. One small broken piece and Mr. Agreste would get stranded halfway under the house. Plagg hadn't seen any doorways or exits of any sort leading off of the tunnel that the floor-elevator took, which meant that if something broke, Mr. Agreste would get stuck down there. He would no doubt call Nathalie, and she would have to step out of the office to find a suitable mechanic to fix the problem. If they needed to get into the office undetected, an elevator break-down would be an excellent diversion tactic.
Plagg would thoroughly enjoy breaking Mr. Agreste's stupid toys.
After another glance around the lair- Plagg had been hoping that Mr. Agreste would leave Nooroo up here so he could talk to the captive kwami, but no such luck; he would have to try to corner the other kwami at night, once Mr. Agreste fell asleep- Plagg plunged back down through the house. He loitered in the office, making sure that Mr. Agreste wasn't going to move anything from the safe, and only once Mr. Agreste headed off to bed, complaining of another headache, did Plagg zip back to Adrien's side to moan for cheese.
His stomach had never been so empty! He had done so much legwork, and that deserved a reward, right?
"I requested a second portion of macaroni and cheese at dinner," Adrien told Plagg, pulling out a Tupperware container full of warm, gooey, cheesy goodness. "I claimed that I had been practicing basketball in my room all afternoon and it made me really hungry so I would get more. I thought you deserved it, for all of the discoveries you're making." He looked exhausted, even more so than he normally did at the end of the day. Plagg wondered if trying to pretend that everything was still okay was taking a toll on his Chosen.
...he was definitely not the right kwami for the emotional stuff.
"Did you learn anything?" Adrien asked. Then he froze and glanced around. "You don't think the room is bugged, do you?"
Plagg glanced around and sniffed at the air before doing a quick circuit of the room just to be sure. "Not bugged. I suppose we should probably check on a regular basis until we can get Nooroo to feed your father some story as a diversion."
"What if he hears the story but doesn't believe it?" Adrien asked anxiously. The tension was clear on his face. Having to live in the same house as Hawkmoth was clearly starting to take a toll on him, even though he had only known for a few hours. "But then he tells Nooroo that he does, just to make us get our guard down?"
"He can't trick Nooroo, not when Nooroo is paying attention," Plagg told him. "He probably got tricked on your father's intentions initially, because he likes to see the best in everyone. He probably sensed the curiosity, because he was looking for it, and there were probably some other emotions too, I don't know-" Again, Plagg was not the kwami to ask about emotions, they were annoying and cheese was much better- "but if he's looking for lies, or deception, then he'll find it if it's there." Plagg was of the opinion Nooroo could stand to be more cautious, but the other kwami would probably never listen.
Adrien looked marginally more relaxed. Marginally.
"I learned that I should probably destroy the shuttering mechanism on one of your bathroom windows," Plagg said, eying the macaroni until Adrien opened the contained and pushed it towards him. "And I probably should explore the other security stuff and see what else needs destroying so you can come and go freely." He gobbled up one noodle, humming happily at the cheesy sauce, and then refocused for a moment. "And Hawkmoth has a pretty dangerous weapon, so we should be careful about attacking him when transformed. I know where his little elevator tunnel goes, and I did happen to spot some good places where I could make it break if we need him out of the way and not akumatizing anyone for a bit."
Adrien looked alarmed at the information about the weapon. Plagg somewhat regretted mentioning it, but someone had to remember to tell the old man about it and Plagg sure wasn't going to remember everything.
Also, Adrien was going to have to deal with Plagg talking with a full mouth because he couldn't keep himself from the mac 'n cheese any longer.
"I didn't get to look in the safe yet," Plagg mumbled a few seconds later around a mouthful of cheesy deliciousness. Man, if this was the reward he got for doing detective work, maybe he should do it more often. "I figured I would do it after Nathalie left, since you father already went to bed."
"And you'll count the number of scrolls and check the pin and see what else there is," Adrien said, either to remind Plagg or to remind himself of what they were trying to do. "How many scrolls there are, if there's anything else that we need to know about."
"Mm-hm," Plagg managed, his mouth stuffed full. "And then I come back and you take notes, and then I go to see if I can talk to Nooroo and see what all your father knows."
Adrien nodded. Plagg suspected that he would probably stay up until Plagg came back with news about what all his father knew. Plagg didn't blame him- Adrien probably didn't feel particularly safe with the thought that Hawkmoth might suspect who he was, especially when they lived in the same house. Hopefully Plagg would have some good news and Adrien would be able to stop worrying so much and get some sleep.
Or maybe Plagg would come back, gather his Chosen up, and hightail it back to Fu's house. It depended entirely on what Plagg discovered.
After the macaroni and cheese was thoroughly polished off, the container licked clean and he had washed the meal down with a lovely creamy piece of Camembert, Plagg felt energetic enough to venture out again. He took the time to disarm the security stuff around one of Adrien's bathroom windows so they would have an escape route, and then he dashed through the mostly-dark house towards Mr. Agreste's office. Nathalie was only just heading out, leaving the office dark and empty.
Perfect.
Plagg proceeded cautiously, making certain that he was alone. His eyes scanned the room, looking for shapes that weren't supposed to be there, but he found nothing.
He was free to explore.
Without even pausing, Plagg dove through the portrait and into the safe. He paused to let his eyes shift. If he were a normal cat, he would need a little light to see. But since he was a cat god, he wasn't particularly bound by such earthly rules.
Maybe his vision was a little greener than normal, but he could see details on the things around him just fine.
The scent of magic and power (and dust) hung heavy in the air, not anywhere near as nice-smelling as cheese. Plagg first made his way down to the middle shelf, the one that had held the book and the peacock pin. The pin looked really, really strange with his green-tinted vision, but that didn't matter.
Plagg held his paws out and placed them against the pin. The rush of magic he felt was overwhelming.
Yup. That's definitely the Peacock, all right.
Well, at least they knew where it was so they could recover it. As long as Adrien's father didn't completely freak out and try to rearrange all of the things he hid, they could just come in and take it once they got all of the persnickety details about hiding their tracks figured out.
Plagg glanced over the stuff about Tibet again (it wasn't magical) and then headed up a shelf. There were a few scrolls there and a stray book or two. Plagg flipped through the book and found design illustrations of the akuma next to what had to be redesigns, with notes in the margins about what improvements he should have made. There were a few with just the original drawing of the akuma, with the words "COMPLETELY USELESS" scrawled in a heavy hand next to them.
Plagg sniggered.
He flipped through another sketchbook and found it mostly blank. Some of the pages had scribbled ideas about emotions Mr. Agreste wanted to look for and target in the future, along with the powers he would want to use. Interesting, probably good information for Ladybug and Chat Noir to know in case those kinds of akumas ever did pop up, but ultimately too much for Plagg to keep track of.
So he headed down to the bottom shelf.
This shelf had a lot more stuff. There was a whole pile of scrolls and notebooks. It would be pretty fast to count the scrolls, which was most important, but it would take forever to look through the books properly and make sure that there wasn't stuff copied (and potentially attempts at translation made) from the books and the scrolls. Plagg wasn't certain what Fu would do if Mr. Agreste did have stuff like that, but that wasn't exactly his problem.
Overall, Plagg counted fourteen scrolls. They all had the same writing style, he discovered, and he couldn't see any drawings on them, which was good. Mr. Agreste would notice for certain if drawings randomly rearranged themselves or disappeared on his scrolls. He peered through the first book on the pile and saw a whole lot of notes, written in a very cramped hand.
He had better get a whole lot of cheese for this. Plagg wasn't meant to be a detective. He hated reading.
Scowling, Plagg started scanning the page. There were some mentions of the Miraculous, but most of the scribbling was notes about some Tibetan monk temple in the middle of the mountains. There were all sorts of notes about the myths about the location and what had happened there, some of which contradicted each other.
Plagg squinted. Huh, some of that stuff was sounding strangely familiar. There was a drawing of the place described in the myths- just a sketch, really- and it was ticking at some old memories-
Oh, right. It was the training center for young people- boys, mostly, if Plagg's memory was serving him correctly- who wanted to become Miraculous holders. Dozens were trained, and only a few were chosen. It was the most structured the Miraculous distribution had ever gotten, and the kwamis had all hated it. They were missing plenty of suitable holders in the general population, it had been annoyingly focused on research of the Miraculous instead of do-gooding, and the temple's trainees had been ridiculously skewed towards boys. It had been doomed to fail, really, and Fu's mistake that had led to the training center being destroyed had been a long time in the making.
So Adrien's father had been trying to find it, then. That was... good to know, Plagg guessed. It was probably old news, since Mr. Agreste had already found the Miraculous and the scrolls and book and everything. But maybe the pages would include information on why Mr. Agreste had been trying to find the temple in the first place. That could probably be important.
Deciding that that was quite enough information for one night, Plagg pushed everything back into place and zipped back out of the safe. Keeping low to the ground, he skirted back to Adrien's room to tell Adrien what he had found and to get some more cheese. He arrived to see Adrien diligently pretending to work on his homework, the windows behind him shuttered.
Apparently Mr. Agreste could trigger the home defense system remotely without being in his office. Either that, or Nathalie had been ordered to initiate the lockdown despite the absence of an obvious immediate threat.
"The peacock is real," Plagg reported once Adrien looked up. "And there's fourteen scrolls. There's some sketchbooks in there, too, but the ones on the top shelf are just a record of all of the akuma and their powers. The ones on the bottom I only glanced through, since there were a lot, but they seem to be journals. I'll need to go back sometime to read them, I guess. I just glanced at them, but they seemed to be from before your father went to Tibet. Can I have some Camembert?"
"From before my father and my mother went to Tibet, you mean," Adrien corrected. He reached under his desk and opened the mini-fridge he had stashed there, pulling out a few slices of Camembert and handing them over to Plagg. Plagg pounced greedily. "So fourteen scrolls, you said? Master Fu should probably make a couple extra just in case my father had some out."
Plagg barely heard, too busy savoring the delicious creamy Camembert. Adrien had been generous with his slices this time around.
"It's probably going to take a while for Master Fu and Wayzz to get all of those replicas made," Adrien fretted. He glanced at a bit of wall- probably actually in the direction of his father's office, if Plagg thought about it- and looked anxious. "Weeks, probably."
Plagg yawned- he had been working pretty hard, after all- and nibbled on the cheese some more. This whole deal was going to mess his sleeping schedule up so much. He was probably going to turn into a nocturnal kwami, and that was always so boring. It was hard to get in proper naps when Adrien was running all over the place with classes and photoshoots and seeing his friends.
"So are you going to go see Nooroo soon?" Adrien asked anxiously. "I just- I mean, I should get ready for bed soon, probably, but there's no way I can sleep if- if-"
He didn't need to finish. If his father was waiting for Adrien to let his guard down, then that would not be great, probably.
...darn it. Plagg was going to have to become a nocturnal kwami, wasn't he? He'd have to sit up all night like some sort of guard kitten and make sure that no one came into the room, even if Adrien had locked his doors.
Ugh. Messing up his sleep schedule like that always gave him indigestion.
"I gotta get my energy back up first," Plagg informed Adrien. "And I need to be positive that your father is asleep. The last thing we need is for me to get spotted again."
Adrien looked morose.
After another half-hour, Plagg zipped out of Adrien's room again. He had to pause in the atrium area- where exactly was Mr. Agreste's bedroom? He had definitely never been there before- before he caught a trace of Nooroo's magic aura.
...okay, it was possible that he should have maybe detected that before. The entire house smelled of butterfly. Ugh.
Following the trail, Plagg sniffed his way up to Mr. Agreste's room. He paused as soon as he got inside.
If Plagg had thought that the security on the rest of the house was ridiculous...well, he hadn't actually seen ridiculous until now. An iron plate had slammed down over the door as well as over the windows, and if Plagg really focused, he could tell that there were laser beam motion detectors crisscrossing in front of the windows.
...actually, that was pretty stupid. If Mr. Agreste was in the room and somehow missed hearing the sound of superheroes banging against the metal shutters, then how would he catch the sound of an alarm? And what good would it even do him to have an alarm to tell him after intruders had broken in?
Weird. Weird, weird, weird.
Mr. Agreste was definitely asleep in bed. He looked completely conked out, unlike the purple kwami perched on the bedside table next to him. Nooroo perked up when he saw Plagg, and then zipped towards him. Before Plagg could say anything, Nooroo was pushing him through the wall out into the hallway.
"I don't want him to wake up and overhear us," Nooroo whispered once they were in the hallway. "I already did some damage control, and I don't want that ruined."
"What does he know?" Plagg wanted to know right away. "How much did he see?"
"He saw a flash of green," Nooroo told him, and Plagg winced. "He figured it had to be either the cat or the turtle kwami, and I told him- well, I told him that there was no way it was you, because you're too lazy-"
"I'm what?" Plagg demanded, only just remembering to keep his voice down. "I am not!"
Nooroo fixed him with a look. "You normally aren't the type to explore, unless it is in search of cheese. And don't complain, my Master bought it! But I had to tell him that there's a Guardian that hands out the Miraculous and that he's the turtle and it would make sense for him to send his kwami out as a scout, because he was suspecting Adrien and that was the only way to throw him off."
Plagg almost pouted, then realized that Nooroo had a point. Wayzz and Fu were the type to go poking around. Plagg preferred to leave that kind of work to his Chosens.
"However, he is still suspicious of Adrien," Nooroo told Plagg, and Plagg cringed. That was not good news. "He saw Adrien's ring right after he saw Chat Noir's ring close up after one of the attacks. The magic interfered, so he isn't positive that the ring shape is right, but if he checks again and it matches..."
Plagg scowled. He could change the shape of the Miraculous (and he had before, so it would blend in better with the times), but it was always so. much. work. and it took a ton of energy. And he would just be changing it a little, and then what about when the superhero duo next turned up on TV? Mr. Agreste probably followed that, and he would keep a close eye on the Miraculous and note any changes.
He and Adrien would have to go talk to Fu again right away, apparently. The old man would have to think of some solution.
"He's getting close to cracking the code on the book, I think," Nooroo whispered. "Too close. And if he does, he could access new powers! Even with the magic fighting against him, that would be awful."
"We're planning to replicate the book and the scrolls and replace them with similar-looking fakes," Plagg told Nooroo, smirking a little. It wasn't often that he was the one who knew the Plan. Of course, that was usually because he wasn't paying attention while plans were being discussed because there was cheese nearby and plans were for his holder to pay attention to and remember, but those were minor details. "And the fakes would have letters scrambled around or altered to make nonsense."
Much to his surprise, Nooroo's eyes grew wide in alarm. "You can't! I mean, it would get the real things to you guys, maybe, but my master rarely looks at those anymore. He has everything scanned into his computer and he does all of his deciphering work on there."
...okay, that would probably be harder to deal with.
"I could tell you the password to that account," Nooroo told Plagg. "He has it under a different- a different user, I believe it's called, all separate from his design stuff. But how would you make practically identical files and switch them out really fast? And the office is really guarded- either Nathalie or Mr. Agreste is always in there, practically, and once they leave for the night or for a long time during the day there's a motion detector set up."
...somehow Plagg had missed that. It wouldn't pick up him, of course, but if Nathalie turned the system on when she got called away during their diversion, that could destroy their whole plan.
"I need you to tell me everything you know," Plagg told Nooroo, frowning. "Everything."
Adrien looked relieved when Plagg popped back into his room.
"Well, your father thinks that it was Wayzz that he spotted, not me," Plagg reported immediately, diving for the cheese Adrien had set out. He had been extra-generous with the amounts, Plagg could tell. He decided not to tell Adrien that he had actually made a detour to the kitchen on the way back to see if he could sniff out a little more of that divine macaroni and cheese. He had found it all packaged up and cold in the fridge, so he had contented himself with some slices of Swiss instead. "But he has noticed your ring's similarity to Chat No- what did you do to the Miraculous?"
Because the ring that Adrien had been fiddling with was not the Miraculous. It was a similar size, maybe, but the face shape was different. It was more square, and the prongs were flatter.
"It's from Master Fu," Adrien told Plagg, grinning. "He thought that since my father had seen the shape of the Miraculous up close, that I should wear my ring tucked inside my shirt on a cord around my neck when I'm around my father or during photoshoots and wear this instead. Then he might see this ring and see that the shape is different, and then decide that he mis-saw the ring before and that I'm not Chat Noir."
...that was annoyingly smart. But hey, at least that left one fewer problem for Plagg to remember that they had to solve.
"Thankfully between my loose shirts and my jacket the Miraculous doesn't leave a lump," Adrien said, glancing down at himself. "But I'll have to do something else during photoshoots, because Father or the photographer will notice if there's even the tiniest bump in my shirt. Maybe I can just turn the necklace around and have the ring hanging down my back or something. I just tried seeing if I could wear it as a toe ring or something, but it dug in a lot and hurt."
"Or I could watch the ring for a bit," Plagg said with a yawn. "For a little extra cheese, of course. I normally nap during your photoshoots and I won't be able to if I'm watching the ring, so I require extra compensation. And no putting my ring on your smelly feet, or you'll make me sick."
Adrien nodded.
"Nooroo said that your father had been looking at your photos from the shoots to try to figure out when you started wearing the ring, but there's no clear shots of the face of the Miraculous at all and the ring doesn't even appear in any shots until nearly a month and a half after the first akuma appeared," Plagg reported. Nooroo had been a veritable spring of information. Clearly he paid more attention to his surroundings than Plagg did, probably because he didn't have much else to do. "So he doesn't have an exact timeline of when you got the ring."
"Thank goodness for pockets in fall fashion," Adrien sighed, looking relieved. "The photographer always has my put my hands in the pockets for those shots. And I didn't have as many shoots as usual right after I started school, though that probably had less to do with my schoolwork and more to do with him being more busy since he was just starting to terrorize the city. But a month and a half in? I can work with that. I can come up with a story."
"And Nooroo had a bunch of other information," Plagg told him. "Get your pencil out. I wanna tell you everything before I forget it, and then I want some cheese and I want to sleep. It's been a really long day."
Against all odds, Adrien slept through the night. Plagg stayed up at first, before deciding that Adrien's father wouldn't be trying to come for the ring tonight. Even if he did, the doors to Adrien's room and the one uncovered window were both locked, and the noise it would make to open either would wake up either Adrien or Plagg.
Even though he had slept for most of the night, Plagg was still dragging the next morning. Adrien had clearly noticed, and was plying Plagg with cheese. He was enjoying some cheesy scrambled eggs when they heard Mr. Agreste's voice. Adrien straightened, but it was hardly an unusual response. Plagg had heard Mr. Agreste scold his son for his posture enough to figure out where the reflexive response came from.
"Father," Adrien said, sounding impressively normal. "Is your eye any better today?"
"Moderately. The doctor said that it could take several weeks for it to stop hurting, though."
Plagg yawned and tuned out the conversation. It was just boring chit-chat, maybe more than father and son normally exchanged but also nothing important. His time would be better spent enjoying the cheesy eggs.
He was so focused on the eggs that Plagg almost missed Mr. Agreste's comment about Adrien's ring.
"Nino gave it to me for my birthday," Adrien lied easily, so smoothly that Plagg briefly wondered if his Chosen had ever seriously considered going into acting. "He thought that I might like it. It does give me something to fiddle with while I'm thinking in class so I don't accidentally disturb anyone."
"I see. May I look?"
Plagg peered carefully out of the bag, keeping himself hidden and his eyes narrowed as he watched Adrien slip the decoy ring off of his finger without hesitation so his father could look at it. It was a good quality ring, Plagg had noticed the previous night, actually metal like the Miraculous and not easy to damage at all. Even so, it probably would be within Adrien's friend's budget range easily enough. Mr. Agreste took the ring and inspected it, and Plagg watched with great satisfaction as something in Mr. Agreste's face fell. He did a good job of hiding it, of course- that cold, emotionless mask only slightly budged- but clearly he could tell that the ring was not the Cat Miraculous. He handed the ring back to Adrien, who slipped it back on.
"That was quite thoughtful of your friend," he said. "And quite tasteful. Impressive, considering that he goes around calling adults 'dude'."
Big words, coming from someone who threw temper tantrums whenever an akuma fight didn't go his way. Plagg had heard all sorts of stories from Nooroo. It was very tempting to share some of those stories with Adrien, just to try to cheer him up a bit.
"Well, I must be off," Mr. Agreste said after a short pause. "I'm quite behind on my work since I had to take yesterday off. Don't forget that you have an extra fencing lesson this afternoon."
"Of course, Father."
"I think that went well," Adrien murmured after his father had left. "I could see that he was surprised that I gave him the ring so easily. And he definitely saw that the face was different than, y'know..."
"Right." Plagg peered at the door, listening as Mr. Agreste's footsteps as he walked into his office and he stopped. "You might want to ask Nino to lie about the ring in case your father asks, though. Just to be safe. And, uh- do you have any more of those eggs? Or any extra cheese to put on them?"
A/N: Ah, Plagg. So much fun to write.
I think I mentioned that there's going to be a companion story to PatBC with non-Plagg POVs, and that is next on my update schedule. It'll be Mr. Agreste's POV of the last three chapters.
As always, reviews make my day! :)