Chapter 4: Look Back, Aim Forward

"I am so glad that we're still doing this."

Ladybug echoed Chat's enthusiasm. "Well, of course, we're still doing regular patrols, Kitty," she grinned at him as they completed their second hour of checking on their city. "We do so much good on them that has nothing to do with Akumas."

"And..."

"And we get to spend more time together by doing these. That's not a gotcha for me to say that, Chat," she smirked. "That's just how we are."

"Always glad to hear it. Take five?" gestured Chat, aiming towards a nearby rooftop.

"Yeah, I could use a rest."

A little stretching, a little catching-of-breath, and soon they were sitting face-to-face.

"It's good to see that you're, well... you're still all together after everything that happened," Chat told her. "That whole experience had to be so hard on you."

"I could say the same for you," empathized Ladybug. "How about this? If you'll help me cope with losing to Monarch and dooming the whole universe..."

"Which you couldn't possibly have handled any better than you did, in that situation," he interrupted, before being shushed by a small hand-wave.

"...I'll help you cope with not being there for the big showdown, which you couldn't have helped or had any way of even knowing about," she smiled. "And we'll keep each other from dwelling on those too much. Deal?"

"Deal. You and me against the world, as always," he confirmed. "That's how it works."

"Speaking of that," mused Ladybug, "I want your opinion on a few things. I'm debating about making some changes to how things work on the team. We know who has the Peacock and the Rabbit, the Moth is missing for now, and you and I have ours to keep. That leaves fourteen Miraculous that are sitting in the box..."

"You're the Guardian. It's your call, isn't it?" asked Chat. "Which I'm completely okay with."

"And I'm not okay with making that decision all on my own this time. That worked out so well before," she shrugged. "There can only be one Guardian at a time, but I want to approach this more like... co-captains. I need to know what you think."

"I'm... honestly, I'm flattered," Chat admitted. "Of course I'll help. What brought this on?"

"Oh," she evaded, "just a conversation that was going on in my head last night."

Ladybug thought back to how that talk had gone...

You're serious.

"Yes, I am," Marinette replied. "And, obviously, you're my best source of information for this."

You want me to critique your career as Ladybug? As the Guardian of the Miraculous? boggled Gigi. And you trust me enough to give you a set of straight answers?

"Why not? Like you told me yourself, you have no reason to fight me any more, and no power to do it with. You were witness to every single battle we've ever been in. Even if you felt like seeing if your Miraculous rings work on a hamster's paw, I can tell you that Tikki says that they won't and the Kwamis would eat you alive if you tried," she reasoned. "Plus, you're supposed to be my 'private advisor' now, right? So advise me. You're the man who took Ladybug and Chat Noir down. What weaknesses did you see that someone else might try to exploit?"

Hmmph. Well, for one... you gave a Miraculous to the Bourgeois girl. What on earth were you thinking, Marinette?

That got a half-laugh, half-cringe from Marinette. "That was not my idea. I didn't give it to her at first; it literally fell into her lap," she grumbled. "Once she got it, we kind of let her work with it on a probationary basis. She was actually a pretty good team player... when she wanted to be. Then she stopped wanting to be."

I have had considerable dealings with her and with her mother over the years. I would advise strongly against trusting her-

"Oh, believe me, you don't have to tell me that. I don't know her mother well, but Chloe was the bane of my existence for years," swore Marinette. "Just an awful, awful person! But..."

...But? There's a "But?" There are reasons why I Akumatized her so many times.

"I'm sitting here talking to Monarch about forgiveness and second chances. That's sort of my thing," she half-smiled. "I wanted to give her a chance to try to be better. For all of her pompousness and attitude, she's... she could be someone better. I've seen it. She just has to want to do it."

You have a rosier outlook on the human condition than I ever did. But I do like that about you, Gigi noted. Let me see, moving on from that subject... Obviously, your biggest weakness was the one that my nephew exploited. By having a single point of failure, embedding the Miracle Box in your weapon, you set yourself up for the catastrophic loss that followed.

"You got me there," Marinette admitted. "I really liked having the security of not being separated from it. Remember when one of your Akumas was tearing my bedroom apart, looking for my secrets? He came this close to finding the Box there. And doing that gave me flexibility in what I could give to whom, based on what the situation was. But given what I know now? I wouldn't do it quite like that again."

A wise general does not carry her entire army on her shoulders, strong as they may be. She delegates and distributes power so as to conquer from all angles.

"I would say that we did delegate. We went from two heroes to five to more than a dozen, when we needed them," she pointed out.

THAT is something that always made me wonder, now that I think about it, exclaimed Gigi. Almost every single person you trusted with a Miraculous was from your class in school! Did you not feel like that was too much of a giveaway?

"Well... um... look," she faltered. "I'll be honest with you. I'm not... an extrovert, someone who finds it easy to connect with other people. The biggest thing about the Miraculous was trust; each one had to go to people who'd earned my trust. I'm not close to many adults like that, and I didn't want to pull my parents into this life, so... these were people I knew well, whom I could find when I needed them, and whom I could find again and get the Miraculous back from them."

Hmmm. A fair point, he conceded. Imagine giving one to Jagged Stone, let's say, only to find that he'd fed it to his crocodile before going on tour.

"Careful. Jagged's been very, very good to me," she chided him.

The other recipients, like the Tsurugi girl and the Couffaine boy, were not in your class but were personal friends of yours. All were people connected to you in one way or another. You did not feel like you were drawing lines back to your own identity?

"...Did you figure it out?" asked Marinette. "Because of all the people in Paris, you had to be looking."

I... did not, Gigi allowed. Though looking back, I cannot imagine how I missed it. You had the connections, you had the Tome in your possession once, you have the right appearance... you appeared in other COUNTRIES at just the right time, just as Ladybug did!

"I don't even want to think about that," she sighed. "You and me and Chat all traveling the globe simultaneously... it always felt like too much of a coincidence to be believable."

Yesssss... it did.

"Anything else come to mind?" asked Marinette.

Not off the top of my head. So many things that happened seemed more reactive than premediated... like your sudden assumption of the Guardianship.

Gigi paused before continuing, as if weighing his words carefully. By the way, he asked, the old man... your predecessor. What happened to him, exactly? He seemed very different when I encountered him that one other time.

"By transferring the Guardianship to me the way that he did, the magic whammied him big time. It ate so many of his memories," she frowned. "He didn't even know who I was, afterwards."

PERMANENTLY? The memories did not come back over time?

"If they did, very little did."

Oh... Oh, my. When you see him next, tell him... that a friend of yours wishes him well? Gigi faltered. I aimed for his defeat, but surely THAT was not my intent.

"You didn't do it. Directly, at least," Marinette clarified. "It's part of the process of transferring away the Guardian role to someone else, apparently."

You... do know a safer way of doing that, Marinette? asked Gigi, cautiously. Something that will not... whammy you as well, should you pass your role onto another?

"If there's a safer way, or a way of avoiding those side effects, I... I don't know of it yet," she admitted.

There was a long pause.

MARINETTE DUPAIN-CHENG.

"Don't yell at me with my full name like that. You're not my father," Marinette snapped back, wincing at the intensity of Gigi's projected mental voice.

You are telling me in all seriousness that all this time, you have not been risking merely life and limb battling me, being thrown around by my creations, but your very MIND as well?

"Someone had to do it. For the good of the world," she maintained. "And, besides, it wasn't likely to come up where I would... transfer it out of nowhere like Master Fu did. Knowing what it does, I wouldn't wish that burden on another person."

The old man put that burden upon you, he sentenced you to that potential fate, and you didn't even KNOW the side effects when you accepted it? raged Gigi. And he called ME the villain?

"He was trying to protect an entire universe from being erased and replaced," Marinette insisted. "I don't blame him one bit. I... can't."

Marinette... surely, there will come a time when you will want to put this costumed life behind you, yes? Gigi continued. To pursue your career, to get married, to raise a family? What will you do then?

"Sure, someday?" she backpedaled. "I've had schoolgirl fantasies about the future, who hasn't? A nice house with a loving husband and three kids and a... a hamster. There, I said it," she admitted, feeling embarrassed by that. "That's how you got here like this. For the record, you were not the hamster I had in mind."

Undoubtedly.

"But do I look like I've got a handle on what happens next in my life? What I'll be doing next month, let alone in five or ten years? I'm fifteen years old," lamented Marinette. "I'm trying to pass my classes in school. I'm drawing in my notebook and trying to figure out if I have what it takes to be a designer-"

You know, I did look through one of your sketchbooks today? Gigi interrupted. I was most interested in your take on-

"Not now, let me finish," she whined. "For the very first time in my life, I really like a certain boy and he likes me back. As much. Scary much! Which is a whole other rollercoaster ride that I'm hoping I can handle! And on top of that, every few days for months, I've had to drop everything and go brawl in the streets with possessed people! Who turn into giant gorillas and ice cream zombies and flying horrors that nearly kill people that I care about."

I... I am not sure what to say.

"The kindest man in Paris, the one who made me Ladybug in the first place, lost his mind because of this responsibility. I might be next for that, if the need for it arrives. I've watched my mother, my father, my family, my friends, my teachers, almost everyone I know suffer and get transformed into something crazy and need me and Chat to save them," she continued, blurting out more than she'd intended. "So, yes, I would like a real life someday. I would like a chance to figure out who I am and who I can be. But right now, what I am is Ladybug. I'm the Guardian. And if there's no way for me to let that go, I can't think about that right now because I couldn't do it anyway."

For what it is worth... I am sorry. There are times in life when a simple apology cannot suffice, and this is one of those.

"Well," deadpanned Marinette after a moment, "that was a whole panic run on a topic I didn't plan on thinking about today. Not like that, anyway."

Why would the Guardians... booby-trap their own assets that way? puzzled Gigi. It makes no sense.

"To protect against... okay, I'm just going to be rude and say it. To protect against people like you. Or who you used to be," she declared. "So that when a former Guardian is vulnerable, a villain can't jump in with mind-reading powers or things like that and suck up all his secrets. You never thought of doing that?"

I will admit that the thought did cross my mind, said Gigi. But most of the information I had sought was in his tablet, and by the time I thought to track him down, he had been hustled out of town.

"And that's why they keep it in memory and use that safeguard," Marinette nodded. "Because tablets and tomes can be stolen. The other Guardians would have roasted him for keeping a separate record like that."

After a moment, she added, "I'm... not sure if the other Guardians can help me pass my role on... when I'm ready. When Master Fu did it, he was doing it in the middle of a battle, under massive stress, as a last-ditch method. Maybe there's a ceremony or something that can ease it and let me keep more of my own memories, a more controlled transfer. I hope so. Or at least I hope I can get to a point where I can close the box with all of the Miraculous inside, and just... put it aside for safekeeping."

They have not told you so, whether an easier method may exist?

"The Guardians are... kind of out-of-town. They don't socialize much," she explained. "I have one local contact, though I'm waiting to see what he thinks of me after my defeat."

I wish that I could ease your worries... or that I was not the cause of so many of them. If they approach you in anger, give me to them. Let them vent their wrath on the true cause of these events.

"That's noble of you, but I don't know if it will make a difference-"

It would be for the sake of Paris - you are a superb defender of its citizens, no matter what you say - and for my son, as well. You are a huge part of his life - I understand that better now - and I cannot imagine the hole that losing you would leave in him.

"Let's... let's turn that around for a minute," offered Marinette. "You did all of this - becoming Hawkmoth, sending out Akumas, trying to get our Miraculous, rewriting the universe - to bring your wife back, right?"

In a matter of speaking...? Gigi replied, slowly. Whether to join her in an afterlife or to bring her back to life and health. To ease her silent suffering in her place of rest. I still do not know which fate my sacrifice truly bought her, given how I was transformed afterwards. Is she awakening gradually as I speak, or is she resting at peace, waiting for me somewhere?

"That... I'm not sure about, either. But tell me about her," asked Marinette. "Losing her left a huge hole in you, big enough to justify this entire year of chaos. What was it about her that inspired you?"

Part of that... I could go on all night speaking of Emilie. I just may, now that you have extended me the invitation to do so...

"I'm listening."

Part of it was that... I am biased, of course, but I know that she deserved no part of her fate. There was no justice, no karmic balance in what happened to her... and, again, the same thing happens to millions every single day. We all lose loved ones and we mourn them. But unlike the vast majority, I had the knowledge that there was something specific that I could do about it. Knowing that compelled me.

Tell me, Marinette, he continued. The petite protector of Parisians. When you have the opportunity to correct an injustice, to save someone from suffering, to help others in need... if you fail to act, or you fail in your attempt, does it not haunt you deep down?

"I can't deny that," she agreed.

And so... every day, I visited my beloved wife at least once, in her suspension chamber. Every day, I told her that this was the day in which I would recover the two magic items that, combined, could bring her back. Every day, I begged her forgiveness for my failure.

"If you had told me what you were after, maybe... I would've thought differently about it?" offered Marinette.

Would you have listened to me, the dreaded supervillain of Paris? Or had reason to believe me?

"...Probably not."

And yet my villainy was precisely what was required to bring those Miraculous out of hiding.

"Back to Emilie, though. What was she like?" asked Marinette, trying to shift the conversation to a lighter note.

Ahh, Gigi smiled. I still remember the very first time that we met...

Chat Noir stared at his partner, who seemed lost in thought, an expression on her face that he couldn't quite place.

"That must have been one heck of a conversation," he commented.

"What was?"

"The conversation. In your head. Last night. That you just mentioned to me. Just now."

"Oh! Oh, yeah! The conversation! I'm sorry, I just... I was thinking back to how it went. Seemed like it went on for hours."

"Are you... okay, Ladybug?" worried Chat.

When she looked at him once more, some of the confidence behind her eyes had returned.

"I'm not all the way back to where I want to be. Some of the decisions I've made, and what happened because of them will stick with me for a very long time," Ladybug clarified. "But a little voice reminded me that the best way to live is to always be looking forward, to take wherever you're at and figure out how you can make the next day better. Sometimes it won't work, sometimes it'll feel like you're running the same treadmill over and over... but there's always hope. There must always be hope."

"That is... amazing," he marveled. "And true. And I'm so, so glad to hear that coming from you."

Chat cocked his head slightly, as if pondering something. "Who was it that you were having this conversation with, anyway?" he wondered.

"Oh... someone small, cute and kind of fuzzy."

"Ah... Tikki, of course. Gotcha," he smiled.

Ladybug let that one sit where it landed, with an enigmatic smile.

"So, what I'm thinking about is how to handle the pile of Miraculous rings that I have hidden away somewhere right now," she prompted Chat. "We do have people that we know can handle the power and use it responsibly... but are they the right people? Should we consider some new hosts going forward? Mix up who gets what? Should we give them out only when they're needed, or trust them with the rings full-time?"

"All interesting questions," he mused. "Full-time increases the risk of certain ones getting misused, of course... but also gives them a lot more leeway to help when they'd find themselves useful."

"And it means that I wouldn't be carrying around all of them at once, or keeping them in one place... where they might get stolen or discovered," Ladybug agreed. "We can have a set place for the Miracle Box if we need to, so that the Kwamis can meet and socialize and relax when they want to."

"Happy Kwamis, happy life," grinned Chat. "Mixing and matching is also a fun concept. That could lead to cross-trained heroes who are capable with any Miraculous they get... but is that preferable to specialists?"

"Wanna think it over while we do one more lap?" she asked. "It's nothing that I need answers for tonight... but I don't want to just make decisions without hearing what you think."

"Race you to the banking district?"

"You're on!"

As the heroes departed the rooftop at high speed, Ladybug drew comfort from a number of things.

It felt good to voice some of my ideas, she smiled to herself, and to see Chat's positive reactions to them. I could just declare 'this is how it's going to be' and that's that - and I've done it before, and as the Guardian I have the authority for that - but it just doesn't feel RIGHT. Especially when I've been second-guessing myself so much lately.

That grin on his face when he saw that I was reaching out to him, the good points that he'll bring to the table, feeling like a real partnership again... knowing that even after everything that's happened, he'll always have my back and I'll have his.

It's going to be different this time around. We'll make sure of that.

And I never thought I'd even think this... but thank you, Monarch, for your advice!

She giggled her way around a corner and took a slight lead over Chat in their race downtown.

As it happened, it was slightly unfortunate that they were moving so quickly. The probability of them noticing odd phenomena in the area nearby would've been slim, even if they'd been consciously looking for them; the anomalies were sporadic, happening at what seemed to be random intervals, and only lasted a few seconds each. From fifty meters away, the heroes didn't detect them at all at their current intensity.

But if they'd seen them up close, they would've known instantly that none of them were particularly natural...

*cccccCCCRACKLE*

*Thhhhhrrrruuuuuummmm*

*THWOMP.*