Thanks to Katherine and Vicav for being my betas (in spanish).
I had forgotten that the messages here do not work well. If someone wants to help me correct the translation they can talk to me on Twitter. My name is the same.
The colors are mixed, as with the akuma. My vision is blurry for a moment, but I know what it is.
Two guys fight. I wish they were real guys, it'd be so much more fun.
One of the two wins. I carry the marker.
"Max, 27. Kim, 2."
I think I'm finally gonna see my friends leave that video game that I'm taking a dislike to. But Kim doesn't give up, he never does. Even when he loses by twenty-five points.
"One more. I can still win."
I hate that he's so annoying.
"For you to win, Max'd have to be blindfolded and his hands tied."
Max looks at me reproachfully. Oops, I'm not sorry.
"What Alix wants to say so unkindly, is that I need someone of a higher level."
He needs it. If he wants to get to the video game tournament for which he has trained so much and that has kept him from helping me against Hawk Moth.
"If you want, I can call Nath. He's just as geek as you, I'm sure he's be good at video games." I offer.
Kim frowns.
"Why do you invite he to my house? It's mine. I decide who comes."
Oh. I didn't know he didn't like Nath. Haven't they talked about twice in his life?
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing"
Am I supposed to believe that nothing?
"Well, since Kim doesn't wanna invite him to his house, let's go to mine."
"No. Ondine is gonna be here in a bit and I haven't told her you're here." That sounds like a great plan. "If we go to your house she'll know."
Don't fuck around, Sherlock.
"Why didn't you tell her I'm here?"
"Cause when I tell her you're gonna be there, she doesn't come."
What? I thought we made this silent deal where we ignored each other for Kim's sake.
The most surprising thing is that he has realized that something is wrong.
I get up. I pass on being uncomfortable for that little girl.
"Wait a minute, where are you going?" Max asks.
I stop at the door of the room and turn around.
"To my house."
I thought it was obvious. Kim also stands up.
"What is wrong with you?" He yells irritated.
I won't raise my voice. I'm not gonna get down on his level. I haven't created this problem. Let him use his brain.
"Ask her. Nothing was wrong with me."
I leave his room and go through the living room to say goodbye to his father before I leave.
It's when I leave his house that I find Ondine in front of me, about to knock on the door.
I watch the muscles in his face tense as she fakes a smile.
"Alix. What are you doing here?"
We could have gotten along, but if you don't show interest, you don't get it.
"Leaving" I answer.
"Why don't you stay? You have something to do?"
I can be fake sometimes, especially if it's related to Bunnyx. Now, right now I don't wanna.
"I'm sorry, I can't. I'm too busy not being around you, like you do with me." She opens her eyes wide, unprepared. "Oh wait! I'm not sorry."
I don't wait for her to say anything. I'm not gonna make a scene.
I walk home. We're close to summer and it's starting to get hot. I'm gonna have to stop wearing black clothes. I don't know what Kagami will do with her jacket, I bet she has her kwami in there.
I get home and throw myself on the couch. I take off my hat to let Fluff out.
"It's hot." She complains.
"I hadn't notice"
Fluff flies into my field of vision.
"You will cry?"
Cry? No. Rather the opposite.
"Do I have the face of wanting to cry?"
The kwami shakes her head. Afterwards, she goes off to play with the television remote.
Now I'm alone. My father and brother are looking for the guardian. It takes them a long time. Days and days when they're barely home. I stay alone, like now, and I make precooked food.
I still don't understand what the reason I can't figure it out with the miracle. And so not being almost alone at home.
I'm discovering many things with the miracle. Thanks to it, I have managed to save us several times. And no catastrophe has been unleashed.
"Fluff, why can't I see who's the guardian?"
She stops chewing on the buttons and looks at me with her head cocked on one side.
"The guardian uses magical shields to hide. You could never find out his identity. I do not know either." Fluff smiles and begins to walk around the statuette.
She's acting crazy. It's impossible for her not to know who she is. She is supposed to know everything.
"How can you not know?"
I sit with my feet on the ground. Lying down is too relaxed and I have to get serious to question her.
"I've forgotten."
I put a hand in her path, forcing her to stop.
"You've forgotten?
She nods.
"I'm very old, Alix."
She'd fool me if she were human. But she is a kwami, one of the most powerful beings in the world.
"Tell me who he is. I wanna my family to stay home longer."
I'm not clingy, but it seems that I live alone.
"You cannot use the miracle for a whim. You are already misusing it."
She stays silent. Nothing more?
"Then I'll have to find out why myself. Using it, of course."
If she is so against it, she'll have to do something.
"Nope!" She flys until she is in front of my face. "You will ruin your mind!"
She stops acting crazy and get serious. She looks to the sides. Seems to she didn't mean that.
I should feel bad for taking things out of her like that.
"What do you mean by ruining my mind?"
Fluff flies up to the figurine and sits on it. She likes it a lot.
"Reality does not change. The future you see will be the one that occurs, for your own interventions over time have already occurred to create that future. It is the definitive. It doesn't matter what you try."
That can't be. I looked into the future and saw Kagami die. And I changed it.
"If that is so, why…?"
Fluff interrupts me.
"I told you that you are misusing the miracle. Tell me, what do you dream?"
Nothing. Lately I sleep so soundly that I don't remember my dreams. When I wake up I have strange feelings. And sometimes when I meet someone, I feel something different than I should.
Like with my father. I'm supposed to be mad at him, but I feel sad when I see him.
"I don't know."
"But when you wake up, something has changed." She affirms, she doesn't ask.
"Yes."
Does that have to do with my dreams? Is this how it affects me?
"That's part of the consequences of being my holder." Like with Kagami and the storm, and Chloe and honey. "Therefore, avoid using your powers unless necessary."
But I use them very little and that's why they judge me as the worst in Triple Super. Now that I've found a way to make them useful, can't I just use them?
She seems to think this is over. Nope.
"It is." I reply. "I have to know the steps of the enemy to kill the akumas. I'll keep using the miracle, unless you tell me a real reason."
Thanks to that, I have managed to play the role of the brain of the group and be useful instead of letting Kagami and Chloe do everything.
"You will not use it because it is not necessary. There is a miracle that does just that." Is there a miracle in the Guardian box that does that? So what is mine for? "I taught you how to see the past and the future, how to use the burrow to move. You have done it wrong."
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
I've been misusing it ever since I first wanted to see the future and she hasn't told me anything.
"Would you listen to me?"
I don't say anything. She blinks a couple of times. I think she knows why I don't answer.
And that is what gives her the reason to tell everything.
She gets up from the statuette and starts circling my head. I can't stand her when she does that.
"You still wonder why you can't know Hawk Moth's identity. This is why."
I move my hands around my head. She dodges them.
"I didn't say anything." I apologize. Let's see if she stops making me dizzy.
"You have to trust that I am taking care of you." She continues. "I cannot see your future, only the infinite possibilities from a specific moment. Temporary lines. Lines that you can also see and I know and confuse."
"I don't know which one we're in, what I do know is that in most of them, knowing the identity of Hawk Moth ends in catastrophe. As I told you, he is in a very delicate situation. If you look at your future, you will go crazy for not being able to change it. If you look at other time lines, you will confuse them. It's what's happening to you, and that's why you need to stop using the prodigy in that way."
And how, exactly, knowing Hawk Moth's identity with my powers ends in catastrophe but the normal method doesn't? It has to be something else.
"What if I look at Hawk Moth's identity but do nothing? I'm getting closer to it with Max."
She finally stands up and shakes her head.
"Don't do it. You only find out things you couldn't with the miracle. Magic and technology don't get along all that well."
Oh, wow! She has released information. Surely she has been unintentionally.
"Still, if you say that fate won't change. What difference does it make? You know what will happen anyway. If it has to happen, it will, and if not, it won't."
"You are unconscious. I don't know what timeline we're on. I don't know what will happen and I don't want to risk it."
"You are unconscious." They tell me that more often than I'd like. I'm unconscious and immature. Problematic. I'm not to be trusted, so why give me a chance?
"I told you I won't do anything."
I do what I can. And with this topic, I'm being the most responsible. I highly doubt Kagami or Chloe are investigating Hawk Moth separately. Well, I don't actually do it, Max does, but he doesn't know what that information is. Only I know how to interpret it.
And I know that our enemy is a corrupt and manipulative man with a great deal of money at his disposal. He doesn't hide, which means the bribed ones know who he is.
"I do not trust you."
They knock on the door.
I point a finger at Fluff, warning her that the conversation isn't over.
They call back.
I get up fast. I'm about to announce that I'm going, when I think that they could be Jehovah's
Witnesses again. And that I don't feel like taking another sermon.
So when I get to the door, I peek through the peephole.
Kim and Max. Have they left out O
They left Ondine behind and came here? Rare. But at least they aren't religious preachers.
I open the door.
"What do you want?"
The two of them step aside, making way for Ondine, who was hiding behind them.
Why do people insist on setting up surprise meetings with people I don't get along with when it's the other person's fault?
"What is this?"
I cross my arms. I probably looks like a sulky girl, but I don't care about that cause I can't change my height. Of course, as Kim says something about the subject, I give him a pinch.
He doesn't, though he throws his arms up in exasperation.
"I really don't understand you! You get angry when Ondine avoids you and when she looks for you, too."
His girlfriend, behind him, frowns. Yes, he is an idiot. You're supposed to be seeing him for a few months, Ariel, you should know.
"I have nothing to do with this." Max intervenes.
"And what are you doing here?"
The answer comes to me alone. I'm annoyed. Not with him, but I'm upset.
He raises his eyebrows, as if he's mocking me.
"Oh, do you want me to go?"
Me alone with Hercules and Ariel? No, I don't wanna make my first suicide attempt tonight.
"Stay. Come in."
I don't say please, which would be usual here, cause I don't want them to come in.
I lead them down a hallway filled with photos of random people from other countries, maps and paintings, masks, figurines and things I have no fucking idea what they are. I just know I don't have to touch them.
"You know the rules. Nothing to touch if you don't want me to put the Chinese handcuffs on you."
My father has never been very strict. There is only one thing that made him get serious: his anthropological and archaeological objects. If my brother or I touched them he'd punish us with yes, Chinese handcuffs. Until we learned to let go, which coincidentally coincided with learning not to touch his things.
And the punishment was extended to our friends. Cause somehow, he always knows when someone has touched something. Could it be magic?
I turn to look at Ondine, who looks confused.
"I'm serious."
Kim nods.
"House Rules." Max says.
I hope our voices have alerted Fluff.
I point to my friends.
"You to the living room." Then to Ondine. "You with me to the kitchen."
She looks at Kim. He frowns, but he listens to me.
We make it to the kitchen and I rummage through to find the packet of crips.
"Oh, this kitchen is so...!"
"Cut the crap." I interrupt her. "I don't wanna hear a phrase taken from a reform program."
It isn't in the closet. In the drawer under the counter?
"It's not…" I turn with a raised eyebrow. "Well, yes it was. I am sorry. I didn't know I was making you uncomfortable. I didn't want to avoid you, but..."
"I said to cut the crap."
They aren't here. Could Jalil have eaten them?
I lift myself up and turn to lean on the counter. She is nervous.
"Are you gonna tell me the truth?"
One thing is to be jealous, which calmed down a bit when he started calling her Ariel, and quite another to avoid me. Kim must have said more than necessary.
There has to be a trigger.
"I don't understand what you mean."
She is lying. She avoids my gaze and keeps playing with her hands.
"Okay. Someday I'll know. That's for sure."
I look at microwaving as a last option. Here are the crips.
We go into the living room and I sit between Kim and Max, her on the other side of her boyfriend.
"Have you fixed it?"
She nods. I only hope that now we treat each other with real indifference.
Kim kisses her.
Seeing it makes my stomach turn. I wanna get out of here and vomit. My face feels hot and my chest hurts.
I turn my head. I must be sick. I hate seeing people kiss.
Max looks me in the eye. I see his Adam's apple move as he swallows hard.
"Now that you have solved it, you are going to help me with my contest."
Yes, a distraction.
"Did you bring the video game?"
Max freezes and blinks a few times. Not then. I turn again with some suspicion. They're separated. Kim's mouth is open like an idiot and Ondine shrugs.
Cool. Now I have to think of something fun to do at home, with four people and without breaking anything.
If I was alone with Kim, it'd be easy. I'd just have to challenge him to any nonsense and he'd make it fun.
With Max it'd be easy too. Without the video game of him here, I'd continue with the search for the Butterfly Society. He himself told me that there are things that he doesn't know how to do and he's learning.
"What if we watch a film?" suggests Ondine.
Boring.
"We could play truth or dare." Kim says.
The three of us refuse. Although if he wants a dare, I can give it to him.
I go back to the kitchen and grab some hot sauce my brother bought on a whim. Then it turns out that he doesn't eat it. And neither can I. I have tried it.
I put the bottle on the table. It's called "Get Bitten."
The three of them look at it without really knowing what the topic is about.
"Kim, I dare you to drink a teaspoon of this."
He puts on one of her typical arrogant smiles.
"That's a piece of cake. If I win..."
I raise a hand to cut it. Then I realize that this gesture is the same as my father's and lower it.
"What you want. If I win, I don't want anything. I haven't used my prize from the last bet yet."
Max frowns. Right, he doesn't know.
"Betting?" he asks.
"Which of the two would akumatize first. I won." I presume.
I look at Kim. He no longer smiles, instead he purses his lips and looks down.
We fell silent. What is that about?
I pick him up and carry him out into the hallway. He doesn't expect it at all.
"What's wrong?" I whisper. Clearly, I've said something wrong.
He widens his eyes and shakes his head.
"Nothing's wrong with me."
He's lying.
He has become like this after mentioning his akuma. Dark Cupid.
"You feel guilty."
It's amazing. Kim, with all his pride and arrogance, feels guilty.
It may be reflected in my face, cause Kim talks.
"Why are you surprised? Do you think I'm one of those crazy people who don't feel guilty?"
Crazy people who don't feel guilty? Sociopaths. Think I see him that way. Am I that mean to him?
"No, of course not! It's that you're too proud to admit your mistakes, let alone something that isn't even your fault."
"Why not? Who sent those women to the hospital? Me. I've seen the photos. It wasn't you, it wasn't Max..."
"It was Hawk Moth." I interrupt him. "Not you. You're innocent."
Once again, his expression makes me feel bad.
I guess Kim doesn't brother me as much as I thought.
Now I'm gonna find out who Hawk Moth is. Then I'll come up with a plan to stop him from being in that delicate situation that would cause a catastrophe and we'll catch him.
It's a good idea, isn't it? That's what I'm supposed to be: the girl with good ideas.
What I know for sure is that I'm not gonna see Kim like this again. I don't want.
"Fluff. Where are you?"
The kwami comes out of her hiding place behind the television.
"Didn't you bite the wires?"
"No, no. TVs are expensive." She stays still while I take the remote and zap. "I'm hungry."
A distraction so I doesn't tell her about the unfinished conversation. I also have to hide that I have already made a decision about it.
So I get up from the couch in search of the baby carrots. Either way, she has to be well fed if I'm gonna transform.
I've thought about it, more or less. It was actually an impulsive decision, but as I watched Kim try to eat the hot sauce, Max laughing, I've thought about it. And the more I do it, the more I think it's the right thing to do.
One unsuspecting Alix from another timeline lost Kagami, another left Chloe discovered.
My father wants me to be more mature and responsible. I can be. I can.
Fluff eats her carrot and I reach into my pants pocket.
I run my thumb over the engraving on my watch. A flower, something classic and appropriate to the time. On the other side is a pentagon, more strange. It had to be an order from my ancestor.
Fluff looks at my hand, like she expects me to start peppering her with questions again.
It isn't clear to me if she cares about me or the safety of our timeline.
I know the exact moment when she realizes what I'm really gonna do.
Her eyes grow much larger and she lets out a nasty screech.
"No! Haven't you heard me?" she questions alarmed.
Yes. That's why I'm scared.
I say it before I regret it.
"Fluff, transform me."
Once in the burrow, I think about exactly how I should act.
First of all: who is Hawk Moth.
The horizontal row of the portal through which I entered is my timeline. I don't wanna get lost, so I don't do anything with that one. I choose the one next to it.
The last akuma was Mylene, so I put my hand on the left side of the portal, now as a window. This time I'm not wrong, I'm sure.
The light in the place I see, the Eiffel Tower, turns warm and the sky orange, pink and blue, the colors of sunset.
I stop it there.
Then I put both hands on what from my position would be the ends of a diagonal, which doesn't exist in a circle. There are only diameters.
I move it a little to the center, giving me a view of the whole of Paris.
I move to the school and do the opposite movement to before.
There's the akuma. Now I just have to go back to when Mylene left the class and follow her.
There's the butterfly. The only trace left by Hawk Moth.
I follow it with difficulty, cause it's very small.
The insect enters a large house, confirming suspicions that he is a rich man.
Something in that house rings a bell. I'm sure I've never been inside, but I've seen it before.
I see the butterfly arrive in a dark room, where there are many more like it, white. This is how uncorrupted butterflies are.
They surround Hawk Moth, whose transformation is very graceful. I notice that his weapon is a cane.
I go back in time, my heart pounding so hard I think it's gonna burst out of my chest.
The shine covers him.
Gabriel.
Adrien's father.
It sends a shiver down my spine.
He is very close. It's scary knowing that this psycho is so close to me.
Ours.
Although, apart from that, I don't feel anything else. I'm not freaking out. Maybe I knew in my heart that he was a good candidate, and I wasn't surprised.
But he is dangerous.
And something in his situation may end in catastrophe. I can't imagine what.
What is there in him, in his environment, in his person, that can provoke horror?
Now it's time for the next step: find another timeline in which what Fluff fears so much happens.
This is much, much longer. I'm lucky that time in here doesn't pass.
To prevent what my kwami told me from happening, all visits are from afar, looking at Paris on a grand scale.
I look twenty years into the future in fast motion, waiting for the catastrophe.
After the tenth my head starts to hurt, and it hurts more and more the further I go. There are many time lines.
Until I find it. Or so I think. At this point I feel dizzy and the headache is as if a knife had been stuck in the back of my head.
I don't have to go long into the future this time. Just a year or so.
Paris is flooded, like in a post-apocalyptic movie. As I move further away, I see that it isn't just Paris. The continents and oceans are different.
Do I see it wrong? I see a little blurrier than normal.
Have I gone to a timeline too far away? I could, if it weren't for the fact that my city is the same, only this one is flooded.
It's much scarier than knowing how close we're to Hawk Moth.
I go back in time.
I see what causes it: a white light. A white light that destroys everything it touches, and rises from the Eiffel Tower.
I get closer until I see a boy dressed as a white cat.
Closer...
Adrien. He causes it.
He is his son. That's the delicate situation. His son could kill us all. Destroy the world.
Adrien has the power to destroy the world. No, it can't be. He is just a boy. Magical, by the looks of it, but just a boy.
Such a power is of the miracle of destruction. He is the holder of it.
I look at what happens, how it got to that situation.
Here the holders are Adrien and Marinette. Triple Super doesn't exist. I'm very far from my timeline. What happens in this one doesn't have to happen in mine, but I still watch it. It could be what happens here.
Here he is in love with her, instead of me. Confronting Hawk Moth and finding out who he is, they put him in a bind: his psycho father or his hero girlfriend.
He can't choose sides, something that more than surprises me, terrifies me.
Then, his father akumatizes him.
Everything blurs and I feel something hot splash down my face. I touch the liquid and look at my fingers.
White. I can barely see it on my glove.
It comes out of my nose and I know that it isn't mucus. It's blood. My blood as Bunnyx.
I open the portal to my kitchen and climb out of the burrow.
I feel my knees shake and I fall to the ground.
I can't anymore. I remove the transformation.
The moment I do, I stop seeing the kitchen. Now it's an alley.
A man is in front of me, pointing a knife at me.
I lie face up on the floor.
The alley changes to a hospital.
"You will never be able to walk again." says a man.
My mother cries at my feet.
Fluff gets in the way and yells, but I don't understand a thing.
The background behind her changes again. Now it's a meadow, with the sunlight warming me and the smell of the plants surrounding me.
I'm lying on the grass. Someone calls me.
Fluff leaves.
I close my eyes. I stop feeling the grass, it becomes hands that caress me and lips that kiss me. I open my eyes and I don't know the boy above me.
He fades away and in his place is an older woman who cuts me with a scalpel.
I'm dead.
I go back to the kitchen.
My brother arrives and yells like Fluff. He picks me up and carries me to another place. Don't know where.
I look at the ceiling.
I feel like I'm gonna forget what I've seen. I have to think fast.
Adrien was unable to choose. The scene plays before my eyes.
That means that he isn't able to distinguish between good and evil. That he is a sociopath.
The desperation on his face doesn't seem like someone like that.
It could also be, and I hope it is, that he isn't so infatuated with Marinette that he chooses her over his father. Even if he is a bad person, if it depends on him, there's nothing to do.
I knew there was something fishy about him. Disney princes don't exist.
My brother comes over and he gives me something to eat with a spoon.
"What happened?"
He is worried, although I can't see it. I feel his hand grasping mine. I squeeze it and look at his unfocused face.
"I know who Hawk Moth is."