Mme Bustier clapped to get the attention of the class, and the buzz of chatter slowly died down. "I'm very pleased with how you all did on your last assignment," she said pleasantly. "Some of you have really stepped up, and I do appreciate it. Now it's time to move on to our next assignment." Then she noticed Marinette's still-empty seat. "Alya, is Marinette still in the girls' room?"
Alya glanced at the empty seat beside her. She hadn't heard anything from her best friend at all since Marinette had fled to the restroom forty minutes ago. "Uh, I don't know, madame," she admitted.
Suddenly, the bell rang, marking the end of school, and Mme Bustier sighed. "Tonight I want you all to read chapter three of 'The Breathtaking France, the First Thousand Years.' Then answer this simple questionnaire." She passed out a packet to every student in the class, handing two to Alya. "See to it that Marinette receives her homework, Alya," she said quietly.
"Yes, Mme Bustier," Alya replied as she slipped her friend's homework packet into the bag she'd left behind.
Alya couldn't find Marinette anywhere. She'd tried calling her in front of the school, but no response. Searching the bathroom yielded no results; it was like her friend had just vanished into thin air.
"Uh, guys?" Alya asked, cornering Rose and Juleka in the locker room. "Have either of you seen Marinette?"
Both girls shook their heads, worrying Alya. Where had Marinette disappeared to?
Deciding to go ask M. Dupain and Mme Cheng if Marinette had headed home, Alya pulled her books out of her locker and tucked them into her bag, shutting the door behind her. Sighing, she picked up Marinette's bag and hoisted her own bag over her shoulders.
Then she caught sight of Chloé tucking something that looked an awful lot like Chaton Minuit's baton into her purse.
Alya gaped, then quickly hid behind the row of lockers, watching Chloé. Glancing around secretively, the blonde girl continued shoving things into her bag, finally stuffing a black lump of fabric in and zipping her purse shut. Then she turned and headed in Alya's direction.
"What are you looking at, Césaire?" Chloé snarked, catching sight of Alya before she could straighten up and act unsuspicious.
She thought quickly. "Uh, just dropped something, don't mind me," she said.
"Whatever." With that final word of wisdom, Chloé strutted away, nose in the air. "Sabrina! Let's go."
Once the door to the locker room had swung shut behind Chloé, Alya let her shock show on her face. "Chaton Minuit is Chloé Bourgeois?"
She needed to think about this for a while.
A few minutes later, on the front steps of the school, Alya dialed Marinette again, this time leaving a voicemail. "Hey, Marinette. Ring me ASAP. We gotta talk." She hung up, then spotted Nino heading down the stairs. "Nino, wait!"
"Yeah?" he said, turning to face her with an expression of polite confusion.
She rushed down to meet him. "Come with me. I need your help!" Grabbing his wrist, she dragged him into the street.
"Um, Alya?" he asked. "What do you need my help with?"
"You'll see," she said, dialing Marinette again with her unoccupied hand. Voicemail again. "Ugh."
They finally stopped in a relatively private spot by the Seine, and Alya let go of Nino's wrist. He rubbed it carefully. "So–" he started.
Alya shushed him, once again calling Marinette. When it went to voicemail again, she groaned. "I hate it when she goes AWOL," she complained. "She's not calling me back! Where is that girl?"
Nino laughed. "Seriously. My man Adrien's the exact same way," he told her. "But I guess you gotta be sly when M. Control Freak is your daddy-o. That's a cool phone charm, by the way," he added, catching sight of the tiny, round, black acrylic charm dangling off her phone case with a green paw print stamped on.
"Thanks," Alya said, showing it off to him. "I just got it." Then her phone buzzed with a notification from the TVi app, and she pressed on the pop-up, bringing up a news broadcast. On-screen, Nadja Chamack said, "Once again, Crimson Beetle and Chaton Minuit have saved Paris from the clutches of a menacing villain."
Alya muted her phone, leaving the broadcast on. "I think I've just sniffed out who the real Chaton Minuit is," she told Nino.
She could tell he was intrigued. "What? Who?"
She gestured for him to come closer, finally whispering in his ear, "Chloé."
Nino burst into laughter. "Chloé? Seriously?" he gasped out. "She's too self-absorbed to think about anyone other than herself, much less save Paris. You are cray-cray, lady."
"Hey!" Alya said indignantly. "I am so not. Anyway, I have proof."
He finally stood up straight, taking a deep breath to calm down. "Alright, let's see your proof, then."
"Well, I don't have proof as in I don't have it on me, but I know what I saw. Chloé has Chaton Minuit's baton. I saw her put it in her bag. And I need your help with getting physical proof."
Minuit landed on her balcony and detransformed. Plagg collapsed into her hands, groaning. "Give me cheese," he gasped out.
"You're so dramatic," she said fondly, putting Plagg in her purse and giving him his cheese biscuits. "Here."
Climbing into her bedroom, Marinette caught a glimpse of the clock on her phone and gasped. "Oh, no, I missed the rest of school," she said. Scrolling through her notifications, she felt even worse. "How many times did Alya call me?"
Sighing and resolving to call Alya back once she'd spoken to her parents, she headed into the bakery. Her maman caught sight of her from where she was managing the cash register. "Marinette, Alya dropped your school bag off for you," she told her, holding the bag up for her to take.
Marinette took it. "Hey, Maman…" she started, feeling guilty.
"You seem so forgetful these days, Marinette," Sabine said gently. "Maybe you just need some fresh air and extra exercise for that growing brain of yours!"
"Good idea, I'll start tomorrow," Marinette agreed. She knew she couldn't tell her mom that she was so forgetful because of all the exercise she was getting by fighting akumas, but that didn't stop her from feeling bad about it.
Sabine kissed her on the cheek and told her to go do her schoolwork, and Marinette took her advice. Heading back up to her room, Marinette pulled her tablet and schoolbooks out of her bag, mumbling, "Chaton Minuit saved Paris from destruction once again, but who's gonna save Marinette from her homework?" A sticky note stuck to her tablet caught her eye. "What's this? 'Call me,'" she read. "'I know who the real Chaton Minuit is.' Huh?"
"Do you think she figured it out?" Plagg asked, phasing out of her purse.
"Nah. Alya's always jumping to conclusions before she has her facts straight," Marinette said, pulling the sticky note off her tablet and setting it to the side as she busied herself with emptying the rest of her bag.
"What if she jumped to the right conclusions, though?" he continued. "I might get taken away from you. Who would give me cheese biscuits and cheese-covered garlic bread then?"
"Don't worry, I've got this covered." Sitting down at her desk, Marinette pulled out her phone, calling Alya back. It didn't go through. "Huh? Dang. No signal." She headed up to the balcony to see if it was any better outside, only to catch sight of someone working on the cell tower. "What's going on?" she asked.
"Sorry, routine cell tower maintenance. No signal for the next hour," the man said before turning back to his work.
Marinette sighed, letting out a yawn as the exhaustion of the last few days caught up with her. She'd try again later.
Alya met up with Nino on the steps to school the next day, just like planned. The two of them watched Chloé head up the stairs, greeting people as if she were the queen and they were her loyal subjects. "Hey there! Hi! You look totally fab! Uh, no, not you. Hey, it's still a month from Halloween, you know?" The poor kid she'd just insulted blushed red, embarrassed, and tried to cover their outfit with their hands.
"You need to have your head examined," Nino told Alya. "If she's a superhero, then I'm the Wizard of Oz."
"I'm telling you, I saw what I saw! She's Chaton Minuit!"
He sighed. "Can you prove it?"
Alya nodded, determined. She would prove to Nino that she was right. Even if she didn't know what it would mean if she was right. If Chloé, of all people, was a superhero.
And my celebrity crush, she thought disgustedly. If she turned out to be right, maybe she'd have to do some crush-rethinking of her own.
Finally, Chloé disappeared into the locker room. Alya shoved Nino forward. "You remember your lines, right?" she asked.
Nino nodded.
Alya pushed open the doors of the locker room. "Now go, and don't mess up!" she warned.
His posture stiffening, betraying his nerves, Nino gave an awkward smile at Chloé.
"What do you want, Lahiffe?" she said, turning away. Behind her, Alya made a 'go on' gesture, phone ready to record.
"Oh, uh, Chaton Minuit! Look over there!" he said quickly, gesturing to the window.
Chloé glanced over, then frowned, turning back to Nino. "What kind of lame joke is this?" she demanded.
"Uh, well, did you see Chaton Minuit yesterday?" he babbled. "Isn't she amazing? I wonder who she really is." Alya made a throat-cutting gesture, her face a mask of panic, and Nino paled. She was going to murder him.
"Up too late DJ-ing, Lahiffe? Obviously, you didn't get your beauty sleep," Chloe snarked, neatly side-stepping him.
"Chloé? Alya's looking in your locker," Sabrina said.
"Uh, that's a lie!" Alya said, holding her phone above her head as Sabrina tried to reach for it. "I so was not!"
Kim snatched the phone out of Alya's grip and showed it to Chloé. Nino caught sight of it over her shoulder. It was a picture of the inside of Chloé's locker.
Chloé smirked, taking the phone from Kim. "Who's the little liar now?"
Marinette sat up, rubbing her eyes. She caught sight of the still half-filled worksheet she'd been sleeping on and gasped. "Oh, no! What time is it?"
"You're late for school," Plagg said, floating past as he munched on a piece of Marinette's stash of emergency Camembert. Where did he even find it? I thought I hid it from him, she thought dazedly. Then the meaning of Plagg's words hit her.
"Plagg!" Marinette complained as she shot out of her chair and stuffed her homework and school supplies back into her bag. "You should have woken me up!"
"She's guilty of invasion of privacy!" Chloé accused Alya as the two of them sat in M. Damocles's office. "I have proof!"
"What?" Alya exclaimed, incensed. "All I did was take one measly photo!"
M. Damocles sighed. "I'm sorry, Chloé. But there's no school policy on invasion of privacy."
Clearly grasping at straws, Chloé said, "Then… then breaking and entering!"
"I didn't break into her locker! It was open!"
"And nothing was stolen, then?" M. Damocles asked.
"Only my very soul," Chloé said dramatically, clutching her chest. "My locker is my secret garden! He who enters uninvited burglarizes my inner being, steals my life force!"
"Right," M. Damocles said tiredly. "An hour of detention for you, then, Alya."
"Are my ears failing me?" Chloé gasped. "Did I hear you're only giving one hour of detention to a... a heinous criminal? Sabrina!" she cried.
Sabrina, who had been hanging back scrolling through her phone, stepped forward and showed the rulebook to the principal. "The school rules clearly state that any student guilty of theft should be suspended for one full week," she said matter-of-factly.
"Yes," M. Damocles said slowly, "but she hasn't stolen anything."
Chloé sniffed. "I'm not sure my father would share your point of view on the situation," she threatened, pulling out her own phone.
"Uhhh, well, now, Chloé, let's not bother your f-father, I mean, the honorable Mayor, with a minor locker situation…" M. Damocles stuttered.
Chloé pressed the call button on her phone, which began to ring.
M. Damocles hung his head. "What I mean is, you're suspended for a week, Alya."
Grinning smugly, Chloé hung up the call.
"What?!" Alya cried, all but leaping out of her seat in anger. "This is so unfair! I am so protesting this on the school blog."
M. Damocles glanced at Chloé, who was shaking her phone threateningly, and sighed. "The school blog is hereby suspended as well."
Alya turned the full force of her glare on Chloé. "She's no superhero, she's a super-psycho," she spat out. I should have listened to Nino, she thought to herself. It's my own fault I'm in this mess. Mine… and hers.
She turned and picked up her bag, racing out of the school before she could say or do anything she might or might not regret, like punch Chloé in her stupid, smug little smirk. Taking the stairs almost two at a time, Alya angrily tried to call Marinette again, hoping her best friend would be available for once. But once again, she heard Marinette's perky voicemail recording and cut the call before she could say anything.
Then she heard the light fluttering of wings, and suddenly there was a voice in her head that wasn't her own.
Lady Wifi, I heard through the grapevine that you're seeking to unmask Chaton Minuit… and I'd like to help you, if you agree to help me too.
"Help you how?" she asked suspiciously.
Bring me Crimson Beetle's earrings and Chaton Minuit's ring, and you can unmask them both. What do you say?
"I'll expose the lies of anyone who covers up the truth!" she spat out. "Sign me up!"
And the world faded into a haze of purple.
Nino tried to focus on his notetaking, but his thoughts churned furiously in his head. Alya had been suspended. And it was at least partly his fault. He knew he'd messed up his lines, but then Alya had been caught and somehow got suspended for taking a single photo of the inside of Chloé's locker? Oh, she really was going to murder him once he left school.
Someone tapped his shoulder, and Nino jumped, looking around to see Marinette. He hadn't even noticed her come in. "Where is she?" Marinette hissed, gesturing to Alya's empty seat.
"She got suspended," Nino said guiltily.
"What?!"
"Marinette, if you're going to come in late, would you please do so discreetly?" Mme Bustier said crossly, at the end of her rope.
"Sorry…" she apologized, then went right back to whispering to Nino. "What happened to her?"
"The short story? She got suspended for breaking into Chloé's locker. I mean," Nino said as he remembered the whole scheme she'd roped him into, "Chaton Minuit's locker…"
"WHAT?!" This time Marinette's yell was so loud it startled several students into dropping their styluses.
"That's it, Marinette!" Mme Bustier snapped. "Go to the principal's office!"
Grumbling, Marinette picked up her bag and left the classroom.
"What are you talking about?" Adrien whispered to Nino, apparently having heard Nino and Marinette's exchange.
"Exactly what I said, bro. Alya says Chloé is Chaton Minuit! She's gone crazy!" He sighed. "And now she's suspended…. If she still believes Chloé's a superhero after this, I'm going to scream." He turned back to his notes, mentally preparing himself for seeing Alya again. Oh, she was going to be furious. The only thing she'd asked him was to not mess up his lines, yet here they were.
Mme Bustier droned on for another couple of minutes before the screens on their tablets flickered, switching to a feed of the principal's office. A masked woman in a black bodysuit with a glowing wifi symbol on her chest paced in front of M. Damocles.
"I'm Lady Wifi, revealer of the truth!" she said. "For our first exposé, your principal would like to share a little tidbit with you. So, Denis Damocles," she said, turning to face M. Damocles, "is it true you wrongly suspended a student named Alya today?"
M. Damocles sighed. "Yes, I did," he said, ashamed.
"So you were biased?" Lady Wifi pressed. "Unfair? Totally unjust?"
"Yes, I was," he admitted.
Nino caught sight of the paw print charm dangling from Lady Wifi's phone, and suddenly everything made sense. It was Alya. And she'd been akumatized.
"So, will you reverse her suspension and let her return to class?" Lady Wifi continued.
"Yes, I will," M. Damocles said.
"Perfect! So, for my next scoop," she continued, "I'll be taking you to meet the girl who's been hiding behind the Chaton Minuit mask!" She swiped the screen of her phone and a pink pause sign appeared on M. Damocles, freezing him in place. "Stay connected!" The video broadcast ended.
"Everyone, for your own safety, go directly home right now!" Mme Bustier called. "And don't forget to read chapters four and five!" she added, almost as an afterthought.
Nino quickly tucked his tablet into his bag and rushed out the door.
He speedwalked down the street, heading toward his home. He was walking past an electronics store when his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, then dropped it as it started to glow, watching in shock as Lady Wifi materialized right in front of him.
She turned to face him. "Nino Lahiffe," she said, reaching down to pick up his phone and giving it back to him. "What a coincidence! I was looking for you."
He quickly covered his head with his hands. "Please don't kill me," he whispered.
Lady Wifi laughed. Honest-to-goodness laughed. "Why would I kill you?" she asked, amused. "You didn't do anything wrong!"
"What?" he gasped. "You made that gesture in the locker room! The throat-cutting one!"
"Oh, that was just to tell you to stop talking," she said. "You were about to spill the whole reason you were distracting her to Chloé. Kind of pointless in the end, though," she added thoughtfully.
"Then why were you looking for me?"
"I've actually been looking for you because I need your help," Lady Wifi told him.
"With what?" Somehow, despite knowing Lady Wifi was an akumatized Alya, Nino didn't think she'd hurt him.
"I'll explain later, but first…" Lady Wifi turned to face the electronics store and opened it. "Follow me."
Nino did as she said, watching as she strode confidently to the phone section of the store. "Hold these for me," she said, piling boxes of brand-new phones into his arms. When Nino's arms were full, the last few boxes teetering at the top of the stack, she pulled out her phone. "Hold still," she instructed.
And Nino blinked, and the next thing he knew, he was standing in the dining hall of Le Grand Paris.
"What the heck? Where are we?" he asked. "How did I get here?"
"I downloaded you and the phones and teleported to Chloé's hotel," she told him. "Then I uploaded you here."
"You downloaded me?" he repeated, dumbfounded, as he set the boxes of phones down. "What do you mean by 'downloaded me'?"
"I'll show you once you finish helping me," she said. "You have your phone with you, right?"
"Yeah," he said.
"Perfect. Now we have to open these boxes and turn the phones on," she told him, already pulling the first box off the stack and picking at the tape.
They worked in silence for a moment, which struck Nino as odd for such a huge hotel. "Why is there nobody here?" he asked.
"Most people fled once they saw me," she said amicably, "and I either paused or downloaded the ones who didn't. We can't have anyone here when we set this up."
"Set what up?" he asked, opening another box and pressing the button on the phone inside.
She didn't say anything. He got the sense that he wasn't supposed to know.
Nino cleared his throat. "So, uh, what did you need my help with? This honestly doesn't seem like something you need someone else to help you with," he said.
"Oh, yeah! I need you to record for my blog," Lady Wifi said cheerfully. A loud rrrip accompanied her words as she tore tape from one of the boxes.
"What?" he asked. Of all the things he'd expected her to say, that one ranked very low on the list. If it was even on the list.
Lady Wifi nodded. "I mean, best-case scenario, anything I record goes onto the cloud. But I can't guarantee that," she admitted. "After all, I am an akuma. And in case my plan fails and Crimson Beetle and Chaton Minuit escape, they'll miraculous-crimson-beetle me and my footage will be gone. Which is why I need you to record so I'll have something to post on the Heroic Herald."
"Oh," he said. She'd clearly put a lot of thought into this. "Why me, though?"
"Well, you've already shown me that you'll go along with my crazy schemes," she told him, grinning. "You know, one of my last thoughts before being akumatized was that I should have listened to you. Honestly, I don't know why you listened to me."
If Nino looked away from her, he could almost imagine it was Alya he was talking to, and not her akumatized form. He sighed. He didn't even know if she would remember this after Crimson Beetle and Chaton Minuit won, having never been akumatized himself. "Sure," he said after a moment. "I'll help you out."
"What?" Crimson exclaimed when he saw Chloé wearing Chaton Minuit's costume, her blonde hair braided on the back of her head as she waved her baton around, fighting an imaginary enemy. "Alya was right? But how?"
"Hey, bugaboy," someone said behind him, and Crimson jumped and whirled around to see the real Chaton Minuit landing on the rooftop. "What are you doing?"
He wordlessly pointed between Minuit and Chloé, gaping. Looking through the zoom function on his yo-yo again, he breathed a sigh of relief as he saw Chloé trip over something, showing none of the natural grace that Minuit herself possessed. Then he immediately felt bad for being relieved that his childhood friend had tripped and fallen flat on her face.
"You didn't actually think that I was Chloé, did you?" she asked, lying down on the rooftop beside him and pulling out her baton. "She's more of a Mimic than anything else."
He laughed. "Nice akuma reference," he said.
She blushed. "Thanks," she told him.
Across the street, Chloé's phone began to ring, but when Chloé went to answer it, she flung it across the room as it started to glow. Lady Wifi materialized, shooting a pink pause button at Chloé and freezing her in her tracks. "We've got Wifi," Minuit said. "Let's go."
They quickly leaped across the street onto Chloé's balcony as Lady Wifi busied herself with her phone. She shot several video cameras into the air, then shot something at the ground.
And Nino materialized there, his phone clutched in his shaking hands.
"–gonna warn me? Hey!" he said, glancing around in shock. Then his eyes widened as he caught sight of the superheroes gaping through the window. "Uh, hi?"
Across the room, Lady Wifi started her broadcast. "Everyone thinks the girl beneath the Chaton Minuit costume is a little angel. Think again, people! The real Chaton Minuit is…" She tore off Chloé's mask. "Chloé Bourgeois, everyone!"
Crimson shoved open the sliding glass doors. "We've got you, Lady Wifi," he said, ready to throw his yo-yo.
"Who are you?" Lady Wifi asked indignantly.
"Crimson Beetle and the real Chaton Minuit?" Minuit said.
Lady Wifi turned to look at the still-frozen Chloé. "But I thought you were Chaton Minuit!"
"Sorry to bust your news story. Next time, make sure you've got your facts straight," Crimson snarked.
"Ugh. Nino, are you recording this?" Lady Wifi asked. When he nodded, she grinned. "Good." Then she pressed something on her phone, causing the pink pause button on Chloé to disappear. Chloé stumbled forward, tripping, then fell on her face again. Lady Wifi laughed.
"Alya?" Chaton Minuit asked hesitantly.
"Alya's been disconnected. News flash! I'm Lady Wifi," Lady Wifi said. "Crimson Beetle, Chaton Minuit, let's find out who you really are!"
"Hey!" Minuit called. "That's sensitive information!"
Crimson grabbed her wrist and tugged her out of the room. He dragged Minuit into the stairwell, racing downstairs.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"We need a plan," he told her.
Minuit nodded. "I think Lady Wifi's powers come from her phone," she said. "So if we take her to the basement, maybe her powers won't work."
"No service, no power," he said. "Nice one, Nuit. Is she following us?"
"Yeah," Minuit said, glancing up. Then her eyes widened as a series of pause buttons fired into the wall right where she'd been a moment before. "She is definitely following us."
"I've got you now, Chaton Minuit!" Lady Wifi cackled.
They finally reached the bottom of the staircase, waiting for Lady Wifi. "So," Minuit said conversationally, "what do you do when you're not Crimson Beetle?"
"Huh?" he asked, confused. "Is now really the time for that?"
"I guess not…" she said, sighing. Then her cat ears twitched as she took in the silence other than her and Crimson's quiet breaths. "I think she went back into the hotel," she finally said.
They began to run back up the stairs, a considerably more arduous process than sprinting down. "You know," Minuit said in between shaky breaths, "we might actually know each other in normal life. We'd never know."
"There's like two million people in Paris, Nuit. That's incredibly unlikely," Crimson replied. "She locked all the doors!"
"Not all of them," Minuit said as they stopped in front of the only door in the entire stairwell that Lady Wifi could have gone through. "Think it's a trap?"
"Totally," Crimson agreed.
Minuit was about to push open the door when she heard quiet footsteps above. She turned her gaze to the ceiling. "Come out, Wifi," she said suddenly, and Crimson cast her a startled look. "I can hear you."
A moment, and then there was the quiet tapping of footsteps on the stairs. Finally, someone rounded the corner, recording with a phone.
"Ni–" Crimson Beetle let out a sudden cough. "Ahem. What are you doing here, random civilian?"
"Um," Nino said. "Alya– I mean, Lady Wifi told me to record stuff? For her blog? Specifically you guys, for some reason. I would have thought she'd want more footage of herself as an akuma, but I guess not."
"Okay, but why are you doing it?" Crimson continued. "She's an akuma!"
"She won't hurt me," Nino said confidently. "Besides, it's kind of my fault she was akumatized, just a little bit."
"It's no one's fault but Hawkmoth's," Minuit insisted.
Nino shrugged. "Even so, she's still my friend. And she wanted footage for her blog, so I'm getting footage for her blog. It's good practice, anyway, in case I need to record footage someday."
Crimson and Minuit exchanged a glance, then Crimson sighed. "Just please don't get in the way, okay? I don't want you to get hurt, N– civilian," he said.
"Nino," Nino said. "That's my name."
"Nino," Minuit repeated. "Got it." Then she put her hand back on the door. "Crimson, get ready for an ambush in three, two, one… now!" She shoved open the door, the two of them rushing through, yo-yo spinning and baton at the ready.
"So much for the ambush," Crimson said after a moment. There was no sign of Lady Wifi in the room.
"Where is she hiding?" Minuit asked, walking further into the room. Her eyes fell on the cloth-covered tables, a single phone left in the middle of each one. "And what's with all these phones?"
Suddenly, a pink light formed above one of the phones, causing Lady Wifi to appear. She immediately started to shoot her pause buttons at them. Minuit ducked, and behind her, Crimson tossed his yo-yo toward the akuma. It wrapped around her, then suddenly collapsed into a heap on top of the table.
"Ha! You can't get me," she teased from behind them. Minuit spun around to find that she'd teleported to a table behind them.
"Crimson! It has to be the phones. She teleported to Chloé's phone when we were watching, remember?" she told him. "Break them!"
The two began to make their way across the room, smashing every phone they came across. Sensing that her plan was failing, Lady Wifi sprinted into the kitchen, where Nino was standing out of the way like they'd instructed him to. The akuma yanked him into the room, Minuit following in their wake, and Crimson made to go after them before the door was slammed in his face. A pink lock symbol materialized on the door, and he gasped. "No, no, no… I'm coming, Minuit!" He pulled up a map of the hotel on his yo-yo, squinting at the tiny screen. "The service elevator! Of course!"
Back in the kitchen, Nino watched as Lady Wifi pummeled Chaton Minuit with attack after attack. The cat superheroine dodged the attacks effortlessly, but he knew she was bound to get tired eventually. "Um, Lady Wifi?" he asked, voice wavering. "Is this really necessary?"
"Stay out of it, Nino," Lady Wifi told him.
"Our identities have to be a secret from Hawk Moth!" Chaton Minuit said. "Otherwise, he would target our families and our friends!"
"Paris deserves to know who their supposed superheroes are!" Lady Wifi insisted. "Sure, you're not Chloé, but what if you're some other bully?"
One of Lady Wifi's locks caught on Chaton Minuit's wrist, pinning it to the wall. She tugged at it fruitlessly, but it was no use. Lady Wifi sent a second lock at Chaton Minuit's other wrist. The superheroine was well and truly stuck.
Nino's hands began to shake. He put his phone down on the countertop, the camera still facing Lady Wifi, as the akuma shot a camera symbol into the corner of the room. "Who is Chaton Minuit?" Lady Wifi began, as Nino began to sneak up on her. "Is she a superhero or a super-weirdo? How can we trust the girl when we have no idea who she really is? We have the right to know!" Right as she turned to face Chaton Minuit, Nino leapt at her, knocking her down and pinning her to the ground.
"What? Nino!" Lady Wifi snarled. "Get off!"
"I can't let you do this," he said.
"Ugh! I shouldn't have trusted a civilian with this, even if you helped me before," she said, rolling her eyes. She surged to her feet and shoved him across the room. His head hit the freezer door, sending a spike of pain through it. "Now to go back to what I was doing before. Time to unmask Chaton Minuit!"
Sitting up and gingerly rubbing the back of his head, Nino caught sight of Crimson Beetle climbing out of the service elevator. The superhero put a finger to his lips before he could cry out, and Nino nodded in understanding, wincing as the movement triggered a slight headache.
"Why won't this come off?" Lady Wifi said across the room, drawing his attention again. The akuma was fruitlessly tugging on Chaton Minuit's mask, but it wouldn't budge.
"Uh… because it's magic?" Chaton Minuit tried, shrugging as best as she could with both of her arms pinned to the wall.
"You're out of minutes, Lady Wifi!" Crimson Beetle suddenly called.
"Oh, how romantic! The bug's come to save his precious kitten," she said sarcastically.
Crimson Beetle looked confused. "Why are you the second akuma to think that we're romantically interested in one another?"
As he stood up, Nino glanced at Chaton Minuit, who was blushing furiously.
"Whatever! I don't have time for this," Lady Wifi said. She turned and started shooting glowing pause symbols at Crimson Beetle, who stepped backward, dodging. Then he tripped on Nino's foot, sending them both sprawling into the freezer. A pink lock symbol materialized on the door, meaning they were well and truly stuck.
"DON'T LOOK!" Crimson Beetle shrieked at him.
Nino quickly turned away from him. He'd only seen some kind of pink light on the superhero's back. "What happened?"
"One of my earrings fell off," Crimson Beetle said shakily. "My transformation is only half-on right now."
"Right," Nino said, not really understanding what earrings had to do with anything, but figuring that if the normally cool-under-fire hero was that upset about it, it was probably important. "Do you need help finding it?"
"Yes, please," Crimson Beetle whispered.
Nino shivered. "It's so cold in here," he said.
Minuit glared balefully at Lady Wifi. She may be Alya's akumatized form, but Minuit wasn't facing her best friend right now, she was facing someone who wouldn't listen to reason.
"Well, well, well…" the akuma said. "What should I do with the two of you?"
A butterfly mask suddenly flared to life around her face, then she grinned. "If you don't get him out fast, your crush will soon be slush," she told Minuit. "Good luck with your bug-sicle! And Nino, I guess. Well, I'm out of here. I've got other news to cover!" She pressed a button on her phone and dematerialized into pink light, then vanished.
The locks suddenly disappeared from Minuit's hands. She lowered her arms, rubbing her wrist. Deciding to not question the sudden reprieve from Lady Wifi's relentless attacks, Minuit activated her Cataclysm. "I'm going to free you two now!"
"Wait!" Crimson called. "Give us a moment!"
"What happened?"
She heard the two of them whispering inside, then a reply of, "You can Cataclysm the door now!"
She did as Crimson said, pressing her hand to the door and melting it into ash. Crimson and Nino were sitting huddled together in the center of the freezer.
"I definitely don't need ice for my head now," Nino joked, his teeth chattering.
"You used your Cataclysm," Crimson noted. "There's not much time left."
"Yeah, but I have an idea," Minuit told him. She brought him and Nino close together and whispered her plan. They both nodded, ready.
A moment later, Nino giggled as he put a frying pan over Lady Wifi's camera symbol, holding it in place as Crimson Beetle rushed over to the service elevator. "I'll turn off the antenna," he whispered.
Minuit nodded. "Good luck." Then she shut the elevator door and pressed the button, sending Crimson down.
Once the elevator lined up with the exit on the floor below, Crimson clambered out of the service elevator to see a furious Lady Wifi running straight for him, pause buttons shooting out of her phone. He scrambled for the stairwell, barely managing to close the door before a pink pause symbol made contact with his face.
He breathed a sigh of relief, turning and racing up the stairs. Once he'd reached the top, he shoved open the– thankfully unlocked– door and burst through.
He glanced up and saw the wifi antenna above the stairwell access. "There you are," he said. "Lucky Charm!"
A crowbar fell into his hands. "What am I supposed to do with this?" he asked, turning it over and inspecting it.
Crimson glanced around and spotted an abandoned water bottle someone had left behind while fleeing the hotel. He glanced at the crowbar in his hands, then the router. And grinned. "Bingo," he said.
Using his yo-yo to grab the water bottle, Crimson scrambled on top of the stairwell access and immediately used the crowbar to pry the wifi antenna open, revealing its circuits to the air. Right at that moment, though, Lady Wifi appeared, teleporting to the top of the wifi antenna. "Nice idea, little bug, but I'm not gonna let you cut me off that easily," she said ominously. She began to fire pink pause buttons at him, and he had to backflip off the stairwell access to avoid them.
Crimson kept dodging Lady Wifi's attacks, trying to maneuver around her. He began to pick up random things and throw them at her, distracting her long enough to shoot a pause button at each object and destroy it in midair.
With each object he threw at her, he crept closer and closer to the antenna, finally climbing onto the stairwell access and splashing the circuits. Sparks flew before the circuit let out a puff of smoke, and Lady Wifi cried out. Crimson used his yo-yo to capture her now-useless phone out of her hands and dash it against the ground, letting the akuma go free. He captured it and purified it in one smooth motion.
"Bye-bye, little butterfly," he said, waving as the purified white butterfly fluttered away. Tossing the abandoned crowbar into the air, he called, "Miraculous Crimson Beetle!"
On the roof of the hotel, purple magic bubbled over Lady Wifi as she transformed back into Alya.
"What?" she mumbled, rubbing her head, just as Minuit and Nino burst onto the rooftop.
The two superheroes fist-bumped. "Pound it!"
"Nino?" Alya said as her eyes adjusted. "Crimson Beetle? And Chaton Minuit? Wow! Can I get a quick interview?" She searched around for her phone, but when she picked it up and turned back to look for the superheroes, they were gone. "Oh, no."
"Dude, you were akumatized," Nino said, kneeling down next to her. "Are you okay?"
Alya nodded absentmindedly. "I just… I can't believe Chaton Minuit and Crimson Beetle were right in front of me and I couldn't get an interview!" she yelled, throwing her hands up in frustration. "Just– why?"
Nino laughed. "Glad to see you've got your priorities in order."
"Please tell me someone got footage of my akumatized self," she said, looking up at him pleadingly. "At least then I'd have something to post on the Heroic Herald."
"Believe it or not, your akumatized self thought of that," he told her. "That's why I'm here. I was supposed to record stuff for your blog. I'll send you the videos when I get home."
"Thank you," Alya said gratefully.
"Wanna know something funny?" Nino asked, holding his hand out for her to get to her feet. "Your akumatized self– her name was Lady Wifi– Lady Wifi made me help her rob a phone store," he said with a grin. "I'm pretty sure those phones are back where they belong, but it was pretty hilarious in hindsight."
"No way. An actual phone store? How many phones did you guys get? What'd you even need them for, anyway?"
"Marinette? Are you here?" Alya glanced around Marinette's bedroom, but there was no sign of her best friend.
"Alya, dear, Marinette is up on her balcony," Mme Cheng called from downstairs.
"Got it!" Alya replied, already climbing up the stairs to Marinette's bed. She could hear Marinette's 'waaagh!' of surprise, grinning to herself. "Wanna see my new smartphone?" she quickly asked as she climbed onto Marinette's balcony. "It totally puts my old phone to shame! Just look at these pics! The camera quality is insane on this thing!" She swiped through a few photos she'd just taken to show Marinette the difference.
"What's with all the photos of Adrien?" Marinette asked, taking the phone from Alya.
"I downloaded those off the internet, don't worry," she explained. "And, well… with a mask and a costume, don't you think that Adrien looks a little bit like Crimson Beetle?"
Marinette squinted at the quick sketch she'd done on top of one of the photos she'd downloaded from the internet. "You're not wrong…" she said thoughtfully. "But it doesn't matter. What are the chances Crimson Beetle goes to the same school as–"
Alya cast her an odd look. "The same school as what?" she asked.
"Never mind," Marinette said quickly. "It was dumb anyway. Why'd you get a new phone? What happened to your old one?"
"Girl, it's the funniest story," Alya told her. "Apparently Lady Wifi robbed a phone store, right?"
"She did?" Marinette asked. "Why?"
Alya shrugged. "I don't know, but it doesn't really matter. So apparently she stole like, more than a dozen phones or something– Nino knows better than I do, she kind of roped him into helping. The point is, she entered my information into those phones to set them up, and when Crimson Beetle did his 'Miraculous Crimson Beetle' thing, it sent the phones back to the store in their original packaging– but get this. It didn't wipe them. For some reason, the magic didn't work on the data in the phones. Which makes sense if you think about it, because how else would people get videos of akuma battles?"
"So that means you had a dozen or so phones registered to your name in some random electronics store," Marinette said, catching on. "Is that right?"
"Exactly. So then some guy buys one of the phones, then complains to the phone store, and they have to unpack a bunch of the phones to find one that doesn't have my information in it. And because they found more than a dozen, they reached out to me and let me know that because there were so many, they were willing to give me one of them in exchange for my old phone and an extra hundred euros. So I went down to the store today and did the exchange. Therefore," Alya continued, waving the phone, "I got a brand new phone for the low, low price of my old phone plus a hundred euros. Can you believe that?"
"No way," Marinette said. "That's crazy."
Alya shrugged. "I mean, being akumatized has kind of only led to good things for me. M. Damocles cancelled my suspension after being publicly called out, I got a brand new phone for cheap, and my akumatized self got Nino to record stuff for me. And apparently, Chloé is definitely not Chaton Minuit, which means I don't need to let go of my celebrity crush on her." Alya sighed. "Things are looking pretty good right about now, wouldn't you say?"
Notes
Alya/Nino is a great ship. One of my favorite ships in this fandom, in fact. But they really don't have much buildup in canon before they become a couple- their only interaction is literally in Lady Wifi before Animan! (I think so anyway, if I'm wrong, pls let me know). So I'm giving them the screentime and development they deserve :D
also, yes, animan will be changed greatly with the new premise :)
if you've got any nickname ideas for the two superheroes please leave them in the comments! i will make sure to credit you :D
i also updated the tags :D
as usual, thanks to √i and absurdistkiwi! leave a review if you liked this!