Past
Adrien adjusted the earpiece hidden behind tufts of specially combed hair for the fifth time in the last thirty minutes. "Just for the record; I am not comfortable with this."
"Noted, Sunshine." Rena Rouge's chirped in his ear, "Also, for the record; it's either this or we break in and do things the ugly way."
Her 'assurance' did very little to settle the uncomfortable weight in his stomach, nor was the birds-eye-view of London offered to him from the highest floor of the apartment building. Chat Noir never feared the fall, he was a born daredevil wrapped in the powers of mischief and calamity; Adrien held no such courage.
No, Chat Noir was staying at home in Paris today. It was only Adrien standing alone in the sterile hallway, distracting himself with the pattern of the bland, expensive wallpaper that covered the building head-to-toe, and chewing on his lip. It was only Adrien who spent the last five minutes to summon up the courage to knock on Aunt Amelie's door.
She knew he was coming, of course, he had called ahead to announce his visit; but it didn't make him feel anymore welcomed when he knew what he was really here for.
"I don't like deceiving people," He grumbled meekly as he tugged on his collar. "Especially relatives."
"It's not like you're lying to her." Rena hummed, drawing out the last syllable until her journalistic imagination could conjure up a reasonable argument. "You're just… Not telling her entirely why you're interested in Felix."
Adrien directed an unamused scowl, that would do Gabriel Agreste proud, out the window to where Rena shimmied across the outside of the building. "That's called lying by omission."
She returned his scowl with a wink, "Never heard of it."
He groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "This is what I get for working with an online journalist."
"Damn right, Sunshine." Rena giggled, jumping across to his window and just barely catching the windowsill with her hands. Though her mischievous grin would easily fool you to thinking the chance of falling was non-existent. "Now, do what you do best; act dumb and look pretty."
He tapped his finger against the glass just over where Rena's head would be, suddenly imagining how easily he'd push her over if the glass wasn't in the way. "Oh. Wow. Thanks, Alya." He said dryly.
Alya peers through Rena's mask through half-lidded, unimpressed eyes. "Boy, I love you, but I had to suffer through three years of your 'Just a friend' bullshit." She twisted her hand to mimic thumping herself on the head. "You're as dumb as bricks sometimes."
Adrien opened his mouth to make his rebuttal, but there was none to be found. He turned away, hiding his frown as he replied, "Point taken."
He'd debated on whether to come as Adrien or Chat for over an hour. Chat arriving at Amelie's doorstep as an authority figure tracking down a potential criminal or victim felt more straightforward, less manipulative. But Amelie had lied to Chat before, and she certainly had every reason to cover her son's tracks from the grieving, dangerous partner of his latest victim.
It made sense to be here as Adrien, but sense didn't make it any easier a pill to swallow. Dragging Adrien to the forefront masking his unease with a friendly face, trying to coax his aunt into giving him details while Rena Rogue slipped in to rummage through her room; it made him feel sick, made him feel like…
Well, like he was channelling his inner Lila.
Too late to back out now, he thought before reaching for the doorbell.
The door swung open almost instantaneously, revealing the beaming face of his aunt grinning up at him. Without hesitation, her hand sprang forward and caught his arm, yanking him inside before he could muster a greeting.
"Oh, Adrien! Thank God you're here." She cried out, ushering him through the apartment in a rushed flurry of movement. "I was about to open this darling bottle of rose with no one to share it with."
By the strong fresh scent pooling from her lips and the subtle sway to her step as they cut through the room, Adrien figured she'd already gone through one bottle too much.
The apartment was about as expansive and busy as Adrein remembered. A brightly lit marble room where all but one wall was split off into towering strips of window. An overabundance of chairs and tables wrapped around the boundaries, with Uncle Colt's old piano, still kept in pristine condition, taking centre stage.
While Adrien had his complaints about the atmosphere of the mansion, he always thought that Amelie's apartment encapsulated the mansion's worst traits. In that it didn't feel like a home, it was too sterile and polished to be ready for a party at a moment's notice – it was more like a display you'd see in a store to advertise what a home could look like, but with none of the scuff and clutter of life that showed you people had lived there.
Adrien's smile wobbled as they came to a stop by the table, where Amelie fled to the tall dark bottle like she was pulled there by a magnet. "Isn't it a little early to be drinking, Aunty?"
"Nonsense, it's never too early to celebrate." She waved her hand dismissively, popping off the top of the bottle and plucking a glass to fill. "And a visit from my favourite nephew is aways cause for celebration."
As Adrien took the now weighty glass, all he could focus on was her smile, and how it didn't quite reach her eyes. Despite all the energy on display, Amelie looked exhausted. "I'm your only nephew."
She paused at that remark, swirling the glass in her hand, staring into its contents like it would give her a powerful rebuttal. Yet, she found no answers in her drink, only a brief reprieve.
A sigh escaped her lips, the exaggerated smile weakening to a more genuine and softer one as she moved closer, reaching up to grab Adrien's cheek and lightly squeeze it. "And you're the best at it."
Before she could pull her hand away, Adrien put his own hand over hers, pinning it against his cheek. He knew he couldn't come right out and say it, everyone in this family seemed to have a problem with saying what they really think directly, and Amelie was no exception, so he hoped his comforting grin and leaning into her touch was enough to communicate a silent trust. He wasn't just another guest, she didn't need to pretend around him.
"How…" Her voice came out as soft and quiet as her breath. "How have you been?"
"I haven't been doing so good." Adrien said bluntly, and he wasn't lying there, but it didn't break his smile like he thought it would. "But I have a lot of great people to support me."
A relieved gasp, as if she'd just realized she was allowed to breathe, followed. "That's great. That's… Wonderful." Amelie said, fighting a thick, diminishing edge to her voice like she was on the edge of sniffling. Looking between the two of them, you'd think Amelie was the one who lost someone important.
"I never knew Marinette," She said, "But Felix told me that she was an amazing person."
Now that made Adrien cock his eyebrow, disbelief written all over his face. "Really? Felix said that?"
"In his own way." Amelie giggled, wiping her free hand over the red-tinged rims of her eyes. "The fact that he'd talk about her at all is a marvel in of itself."
With that, she drew away from him, returning to the comfort of her liquor. She held the glass low, tucked against her stomach and sheltered by her elbow and a half-turned away angle; like she was hiding it from him.
After her retreat, Adrien fought the temptation to close the distance again. She didn't seem to want physical comfort at the moment, so instead he invited her to take comfort in him from afar. "Are you okay, Aunty?"
For a moment, Adrien could recognise the flash of temptation pass through her eyes, her lips wobbling between a frown and the fake smile, knowing how easy it would be to just lie. "I could be better." She admitted, casting her hand out to point towards the windows. "Those drapes, for example, could be less crumpled."
Before he could tell her that the drapes looked fine, she was already scuttling towards the flower pots set up just below them. "And these flowers are a complete mess." She half-giggled and half-growled, much like a particularly painful hiccup.
She busied herself with the flowers but could only muster her split-focus for combing her fingers through roses and lilies for half a minute. Her head snapped back to her glass, narrowing her eyes in sudden offense before downing its contents in one gulp.
"And… And…" She braced herself against the wall, breathless, with glassy eyes desperately scanning the room. "Do you want another drink?"
Adrien held up his full glass, "I haven't even started mine yet."
It didn't even look like she heard him, just idly nodding her head, eyes unfocused and distant, stuck in her own thoughts. "Of course. Of course."
Her feet gravitated towards the table, dropping her hand to brush her fingers over an open book lying there. It was a large, dusty old book that reminded Adrien of Marinette's diary, complete with sticky-notes, bookmarks and uneven paper sticking out the side. It was a photo album.
The details were blurry on first glance, but the cold chill that hit him was enough to recognise his father's eyes staring up at him.
Amelie was holding the camera, her grinning face squished into the side of the frame, the blush of alcohol bright on her cheeks. The scene behind her was that of a drunken Gabriel hanging off of Emilie's arm, a crude smile on his lip as he reached forward to tug on Colt's handlebar moustache. And Adrien could almost hear his father's voice asking Colt if it was the real deal between hiccups.
It should be a warm picture, a reminder of better times, but all Adrien could think about is that three out of the four people in that photo were dead. Of course, he'd seen many pictures of his father and mother after their deaths, but those were always marketing ones, those headshots of his parents playing a character for the photographer, not real pictures capturing a moment of them just living.
And Colt, well, Adrien was sure almost nobody showed up to the man's funeral, let alone kept pictures of him.
Looking at them was almost like looking at ghosts, trapped in the memory of stolen moments now tainted by their eventual fate.
"Aunty…" He muttered.
Amelie glanced up at him with a thoughtful hum, as if she only just then realized that he was there. "Oh, that? I'm afraid you caught me in the middle of reminiscing." She said with a weak giggle.
She sank down into her seat and gestured to the one beside her. Adrien reluctantly dragged himself to her side, but couldn't bring himself to sit down, to settle as her fingers idly flipped through the pages.
A few seconds later he heard her coo loudly, drawing his attention to a miniature reflection of him having his bow tie adjusted by his mother.
He vaguely recalled it being the night of his father's first big show under Audrey. He remembered being so nervous that night, Gabriel had been away for an entire week to work on his designs and Adrien had been so fearful of embarrassing his father. No matter how much Emilie assured him, his mother just couldn't get him to settle.
"Do you remember this?" Amelie sighed, "You looked so darling in your little tux."
Adrien frowned, "I remember Felix teasing me mercilessly."
Age had not dulled Felix's tongue, it had only taught him how to be more conservative of when to use it. As a boy, Felix had no filter or hesitation in comparing Adrien to a girl's dress up doll and laughed himself silly when he saw Adrien in anything fancy. As a boy, Adrien had no where near the wit to make a decent comeback, so he settled for calling Felix a butthead and sicking his mom on Felix.
One day those comments came to a sudden stop, right around the time Felix grew cold and reserved. Adrien never knew why, and a part of him missed childish barbs, but considering how Felix's preferred wardrobe would end up as refined suits and fancy vests; maybe Felix knew he had to stop before the irony hit him.
Adrien felt his hand tense up, bitterly reflecting on his current relationship with his cousin. How'd we get here Felix?
Amelie, unaware of Adrien's plight, had moved on to the picture below it. "And here's you and your uncle on the piano."
The size difference between pre-puberty Adrien and the mountain of muscle that was Colt Fathom was comical, especially when the two were sat side-by-side squeezing into the little cushioned seat before the piano. Colt had to practically hang off the side of the seat to give Adrien room to sit.
Adrien hadn't minded back then. The two had a game where they'd try and force the other off the seat during the course of a song, and of course Colt would stonewall Adrien until he let Adrien shove him off and dramatically collapsed to the ground.
"Hey, I remember this." Adrien cracked a small smile, leaning closer to the image, almost tricking himself to being back there. "Uncle Colt swore that someone would get shot if he had to hear that 'Darn Mo-Snart crap' one more time and taught me some 'real' music."
Little Adrien had always been amazed by the man's size and beguiled by the funny accent. He remembered hanging off Colt's arm just to be taller than everybody else, or watching Colt clash with the dull atmosphere, or listening to Colt's exaggerated stories about America – all while his mother warned him to not take the wrong lessons from the trigger-happy cowboy.
Adrien had a good relationship with his uncle.
The reminder stumped Adrien.
When had he forgotten that?
"Look, look, this one here's my favourite." Amelie drew his attention to another picture of Colt sitting at his piano, though this time it was atop a stage, with Emilie in the foreground holding a microphone to her lips.
Adrien whistled, "Ah, that is a rare one; a day where Emilie Agreste and Colt Fathom got along."
Adrien never fully grasped what went on between his mother and his uncle, maybe it was that Colt was only family by arrangement, perhaps she feared he would encourage Adrien to act out, perhaps the two simply didn't click.
It's not that Colt was hard to hate or anything, he was good at getting on people's nerves, and his marriage to Amelie was not a happy one – it was that Emilie didn't click with him. Which was weird, because Emilie Agreste clicked with everyone, she was the type of woman who could make friends with a guy trying to mug her.
Whatever it was, it left Colt firmly viewed as 'my husband's friend and my sister's arranged husband'. The two could be civil on the surface, but whenever they locked eyes, you could see their faces scrunch up and lips purse like there were a few million little insults trying to burst free.
"It helped that they were both drunk while doing this." Amelie smoothed out her hairline once more, her glass left forgotten – unneeded in this moment of nostalgia. "God, was this only ten years ago? It feels like I've aged a lifetime."
At some point during his thoughts, Adrien's hand found itself over his aunt's, squeezing. "At least you have these." He said gently, "We lost a lot of photos when… The day my father died."
His father's demise hung in the air, heavy and poisonous. And yet, Adrien realized, it was manageable – it was something he could speak of without pause, at least with his aunt.
Her eyes stared up at him, hesitant to speak lest she smother his confidence or sweep aside his pain. But Adrien gives her a smile and a nod, assuring her that there was nothing she needed to intervene in. He was as fine as he should be.
The interruption smothered her laughter, but Amelie managed to keep up a weak, but genuine, smile. "A pity Emilie and Colt died before you youngsters became so obsessed with posting pictures on the internet."
Adrien stroked his chin as she continued to flip through pages, occasionally sighing at the memories. It was morbid to think, but Adrien found himself stunned by how much there was of Amelie's late husband. "I didn't expect so many of Colt in here." He said out loud.
He caught the way her body suddenly stiffed, her voice breaking through stiff and short. "He was my husband, Adrien."
"Yeah, but…" Adrien grimaced, realizing that there was no nice way to word this matter. "Well, you two… You two always came off like you hated each other?"
There was one lesson in life that Adrien learned growing up; Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother – Colt and Amelie Fathom yell.
While Emilie and Colt's distaste for each other was a quiet, cold rage that simmered under the surface of fake smiles, passive aggressive jabs and swears under their breaths, Amelie and Colt had a much more honest dynamic. As long as it wasn't in front of the children, they had no problem letting their disdain for each other speak freely, of picking on every little detail the other failed in. The two were arranged to be married by their parents, and neither party was happy with it.
Adrien and Felix got the gist of the birds and the bees when hiding in Colt's office, sheltered under his desk while Colt and Amelie spat at each other with some less than child-friendly remarks. Thought, admittedly, it took a few years for Adrien to get who was the dead fish and who was good for nothing but puffing air.
In that light, it made sense why Felix had been confrontational when they were little, he didn't exactly have any other examples to follow. In contrast to Felix's parents, Adrien's were the most sickeningly lovey-dovey couple you could find; if he was in Felix's position, he'd be annoyed at the kid with the better life too.
However, when Adrien looked back at his aunt now, he didn't see that bitter fire that made you think she was about to chuck something at someone's head. He watched her stare down at the picture of Colt pushing his cowboy hat over little Felix's head, Felix's pout just visible under the brim, through soft eyes. It wasn't entirely fondness, but it wasn't entirely anger; it was something in between wrapped in regret.
"I don't think I hated him in the end." Her smile strained as her voice slipped into a quiet hum, "Not really. Even if his difficult personality was an acquired taste." She brushed her finger over Colt's face, baring her teeth with anger that had no outlet to let loose upon. "Our situation made it easy to want someone to hate, someone we were allowed to hate freely."
"It was a complicated relationship." Amelie admitted, leaning back in her chair. She tried to look calm, to play it cool, but Adrien could feel the tension from how hard she squeezed his hand back. "Sometimes, it felt like we brought out the worst in each other so no one else had to see it."
But we did see it, Adrien thought sombrely. Everyone could see the tension clearly; everyone could hear the barbs and feel the strain. Everybody saw it, especially Felix.
Adrien could hear a light sniffle, and only a sniffle, because Amelie Graham De Vany would never allow herself to tear up. "I wish we had more time to sort it out, or that I could have…" She drummed her fingers against the edge of the page, lost. "Gone back and said some things that needed to be said."
Her eyes fall back on her glass, her hand reaches out for it, but for whatever reason she stops herself, and her grip on Adrien tightens. "Maybe him and Gabriel would have still been friends."
The last time Adrien had seen his father and his uncle in the same room had been eight years ago. He would have been about ten years old, with the majority of his life spent knowing the two as friends. Despite that, the memories of a time where his father didn't speak of 'that man' like he was the source of everything wrong with the universe felt more like stories of another lifetime.
"Do you know why they stopped? Father never talked about what happened between them." Adrien asked, furrowing his brow as he tried to remember the exact moment everything changed. Was it around the time Colt started to get sick? "He and mom almost acted like Colt didn't exist."
For a moment, Amelie went out of her way to avoid meeting his gaze, staring at something shameful, something that made her shake, just over his shoulder. "I have my suspicions, but… No." Her eyes finally met his, confirming that she was sure on that. There was a theory on her tongue, but it was something she didn't dare consider. "I just know that one day, everything just changed. And then him and Felix became distant. And then… And then…"
And then Colt Fathom threw himself from his office window.
On the same night, Emilie Agreste fell into a sleep she would never awaken from.
Adrien kneeled beside his aunt, cradling her hand in his as he fought back against the sudden tightness of his throat. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything."
If you asked Felix, he'd say that he hated his father and always did. If you asked anyone else, they'd tell you that Felix was a momma's boy through and through. If you asked Adrien, he'd tell you every time Felix got jealous whenever Colt paid Adrien any attention, every time Felix bragged about Colt being able to kick every other dad's ass, or every time Felix imitated Colt's mannerisms by accident.
One day, Felix might have lost that love for his father, and he might have shrugged off Colt's suicide, but it did exist in the first place. Adrien just wished he knew what Colt did to lose it.
"It's okay." Amelie assured him, using both hands to clasp his fingers and hold them close to her chest. She gave a painful laugh and a crumbling smile. "I thought I'd be past this five years later."
After a moment of silence that Adrien couldn't hope to fill, she shot him an uneasy glance and let her words slip out shaky and ragged. "Sometimes, it becomes so hard to remember those days." She admitted, "I close my eyes and try to take myself back, but soon I just find myself stumbling into blank spaces."
"I know how that feels." Adrien said, leaning his head against the back of his arm. "I can barely think of what my father was like before mother's passing."
Suddenly, her hands pulled away, leaving a cold longing in their absence. For a moment, Adrien felt fear claw at his heart, wondering if he said something wrong, if he just revealed he was a bad son who couldn't remember the best of his dutiful parents. But it was only for a moment before Amelie's fingers caressed his cheek and urged him to look up, look to where her other hand held out the album to him.
"Take this." She said, her smile getting stronger by the second.
The photo album felt heavier than it looked, burdening his hand not just with the weight of its body, but the weight of its value. It suddenly felt like he was holding a priceless and fragile artifact, and he was so close to dropping it and letting it smash.
"Aunty, I couldn-" He tried to say, only for Amelie's finger to push his lips shut.
"No arguing with your elders." She chided, pushing the book against his chest. "Keep it safe, keep it close. I… I have a lot of your mother and father in their early years."
Once more, her fingers brushed over the book's cover tenderly, grasping it, and the memories it guarded, for perhaps the last time.
She chuckled quietly. "Heh, I didn't approve of Gabriel at first, but I was still determined to take a picture of every moment, you know?"
"Thank you." Adrien sighed, clutching the book close like he would an infant. There was nothing else he could say; Aunty Amelie's word was final.
He turned the album over, opening it up for himself, carefully as he did it. Instinctively, he turned to the latest pages, curious what the last thing Amelie thought worthy of remembrance was.
Marinette's face, beaming with pride and adoration right back at him, struck him harder than he thought it could.
It was the day of some pool party Adrien didn't remember the reason behind, a good month or so after his father's demise. The last time everyone had been gathered together before graduation day. Amelie had caught a sneaky pic of Marinette and Adrien cuddled up on a bench.
Adrien remembered that moment as clear as day. He had his eyes closed at the time, deeply thinking about how lucky he was to have so many people there to support him, how lucky he was to have Marinette, how lucky he was now that their war against Monarch was finally over, and how right it felt to have her wrapped around his side, sighing softly.
And with the new perspective offered by the photo, he could tell Marinette was thinking the same thing as well. They were content, they were happy – the way they should have been.
He drew his thumb over her face, imagining it brushing her floundering hair to the side, wrapping it around her ear where he'd keep his hand rested, ensuring that nothing stood in the way of her shining eyes meeting his own.
"Adrien, what would you say you dislike about Marinette?" Amelie's interruption with a blunt edge smashed through Adrien's daze with a verbal hammer.
Adrien peered back up to Amelie, feeling his face heat up in response to that knowing smile she shot him. "Uh, what?"
She shrugged, "Just go with it for a moment, for me, please."
He nodded slowly, unsure. Something he disliked about Marinette? That wasn't possible. He was her boyfriend, and she was the love of his life, how could he have anything he disliked about her? This had to be some kind of test. But he also knew that Amelie wouldn't do something so pointlessly cruel, so that left him still going along with her curiosity.
After many pauses leaving his lower lip wobbling, he pulled himself together and answered. "Well, uh… She can get really jealous sometimes." He weakly gestured to Amelie, waiting for her to interrupt and put an end to this odd line of questioning, but she continued to stare back at him expectantly.
"And when she's jealous, she becomes a bit hard to be around." He continued, cautiously. "She gets a little petty and sensitive."
And she was the best girlfriend ever, and she was the greatest hero ever, and she saved him in God knows how many different ways since the day he met her. So, none of that stuff mattered. He could say it because he knew they were just minor things, things that weren't worth bringing up, things he didn't need to bother her with.
But then, some things were a little more than minor, he could admit.
"And she's stubborn, or prideful. Like, like…"
He bit down on his bottom lip, a surge of irritation hitting him as he looked down at his thumb brushing over his miraculous. She wasn't just Marinette, she was Ladybug too. And Ladybug left a lot of mess for Chat Noir to clean up.
"I get the need to do things by yourself, but there's…" He sucked in a sharp breath, disbelieving he could even talk like this of a dead woman. "God there's a lot of things she left behind that are so much more complicated than they need to be because she refused to let anyone else help her."
Saying it out loud felt like he was gasping for breath, coughing out some rancid smoke that had a choke hold on his lungs. He didn't like saying things like that, especially about someone he cherished much like his father, someone who was the centre of his entire world. Chat Noir was the firebrand, the talker who could dare to get petulant and petty to the people he respected.
Amelie squeezed his shoulder, and suddenly all that pressure disappeared.
"It's okay, Adrien." She said softly, "It's okay to acknowledge that Marinette was less than perfect."
Adrien shuffled his knees, uncertain. "I just don't see the point of speaking ill of her."
"It's not speaking ill."
Amelie leaned forward, grasping him by his arm and gently pulling him to standing height. "You know how many people talk about your mother like she was a saint after her death?" She said it so casually, like a joke without the laughter. "I love my sister dearly, but she was human like any one of us."
She led him over to the opposing side of the room, where there sat a panting depicting Amelie and Emilie's side of the family, with the twin girls sitting in the foreground. Amelie reached out towards the depiction of Emilie's face. "She was loving, kind, compassionate and supportive."
Just before Amelie's hand could reach its target, it stopped short and reeled back as a frown materialized. "But she could be petty, she could be dismissive, she could be ignorant."
Adrien stared at the painting in disbelief, unable to associate any of those words with the woman whose smile shined with the radiance of a jewel. "I can't imagine her being that bad."
"Under the right circumstances, even she could be…" Amelie froze, staring past the painting, past the walls, past this very world and peering into something that made her entire body falter; a memory that invited a chilling air. "Cruel. Cruel and vindictive."
A sigh before her hand returned to her chest, fighting to still her beating heart. "And I feel like forgetting those parts, denying her those flaws… That isn't how you honour the dead."
She turned back to Adrien, grabbing him by both shoulders. One of them was using the other as an anchor, but Adrien didn't know which. "You honour the dead by celebrating who they were, both the good and the bad, by knowing that they're still worth celebrating even with their faults."
"Aunt Amelie?"
"Your father didn't just love your mother, he worshipped her. I doubt a day went by that he didn't feel worthy of her love." She rolled her head back onto her shoulder wearing a weary smile, as if fearful that her neck wouldn't be able to stand the sudden weight on it's own. "I think that's why when she passed, he became so consumed by the grief, why he couldn't dare entertain the notion of moving onwards. He thought that she gave his life value."
"I'm worried." She stated plainly after a minute. "Our family is no stranger to loss. I'm starting to think we're cursed at this point."
Her thumbs rubbed his shoulder in soothing circles. "And I hope you honour Marinette." She continued, leaning closer with a smile struggling against the stressed sag of her cheeks. "And I hope you know that you are worthy of a good life even if she's not a part of it anymore, and that…"
One hand ventured down Adrien's chest, ending its journey where the twin rings hung from his neck, bound together by string. "That you may keep your mother and your father safe, right here." Her fingers grasped the rings, holding them up to Adrien's eyes for a second before closing her hand over them in a fist, hiding them from view.
"But it is you, and you alone, who define what you are – what makes you real. Okay?" Her fist, as well as her voice, shook as she asked for validation, for understanding.
He nodded, "I do, Aunty. I do."
Another beat of silence dropped and, looking into Amelie's desperate and pleading eyes, Adrien couldn't around the bush anymore.
"I'm worried about Felix." He stated firmly. He didn't know in what way he was worried about Felix, whether he was worried about what Felix had been wrapped up in or worried about what Felix had done, but he was worried.
Amelie nodded, trading a glance that seemed to communicate the exact same feelings right back at him. "I am too, Dear."
"Do you…" He stopped, started, stopped and started again. He had to say this, invite this question and the underlying accusation that backed it into the room, but damn was it hard to say. "Do you think he could do it? Kill Marinette?"
A hundred answers flashed through her eyes in a matter of seconds. None of them comforting, none of them convenient, and none of them true.
She didn't avert her gaze to reply, looking him straight in the face through eyes that eerily reflected his own in that moment. "I'm sorry, Adrien."
That's all she can say, all she can say with confidence. She doesn't know what Felix is doing, and as much as she instinctively wants to defend her son, she can't honestly bring herself to deny the possibility that Adrien had been dreading. She can't give Adrien the comfort of Felix's innocence, nor the closure of his guilt, all she could do was say that she was sorry.
And for Adrien, it was hard to swallow; but it was enough.
"I love you, Aunty Amelie."
Her eyes widened, tenuously following the flow of his arm to find his hands on her shoulders, keeping her steady, keeping her close.
"And I love Felix too. No matter what happens."
He stared right back at her, letting her to realize that his and her gazes, in that moment, were the same. He wasn't comfortable lying to her after all.
"You know that right?"
At long last, the water pushed itself over the red rim of her eyes and trickled down her cheeks as tears. She nodded silently, any noise or words she sought out quickly choked to death in her throat.
They didn't know who made the first move, the aunt or the nephew, they just knew that the next moment they were swept up in a comfortable hug. Two lost souls cut off from the ones they loved the most, just trying to find peace in something that wasn't a bottle.
Chrysalis wasn't taking any more of his family from him, Adrien swore on that.
Present
Marinette never thought she had problems with heights, but then again, she never swung over a deadly drop without Ladybug to shoulder her fall.
To be fair, even Ladybug wouldn't feel safe hanging from a rope with Hawkmoth holding the only thing keeping her from plummeting.
"Why am I the one dangling over the death drop again?" She yelled up line where the rope disappeared under the glimpse of Gabriel's hair peeking over the edge of the railing.
"Because otherwise you'd have to admit that you're heavier than me." He didn't raise his voice, but his words still created a booming echo – the acoustics of the lair must have been tailor made to carry his voice.
Marinette scoffed, her irritation at Gabriel working wonders to distract her from how tightly she griped the rope and the remote they'd collectively decided to name a 'portal gun'. "I hope you crack your head open when you leap out of this portal."
"Request noted, Bug."
The two knew that they had to get down into the sewers, it was the only place that was still up in the air and could potentially lead somewhere if, as Marinette had seen, most of Paris had sunken to low levels.
Problem was that past a few centre meters down was completely unknown territory, an immeasurable drop shrouded in complete darkness. For all they knew they'd use up all the rope they could find just to still be hanging over a fatal height.
Fortunately for them, Max's invention was the perfect tool for probing the unknown.
That's how she ended up at the bottom of a rope, clinging for dear life with a flashlight taped to the helmet on her head, searching for any stable ground to fire a portal at. Theoretically, they could continue making portals and just feed the rope through for potentially infinite length.
She made long, sweeping motions with her head, trying to highlight as much of her surroundings as possible. Putrid tendrils infested with a purple rash-like pattern twisted in and out of the stone, dividing the wall into fragments where more of that purple mud, which may or may not be magic blood, poured from the seams.
Eventually, her light illuminated something she could use. An opening in the wall she recognised as the entrance to the sewer tunnels from her and Chat's many meetings there, offering two pathways flanking a steady stream of the tainted blood. She hadn't even needed to make another portal, maybe some of Tikki's luck was still with her afterall.
With an unsteady hand, she held the remote forward, every slight rattle as it passed over her fingers making her heart quake. For once in your life, Marinette, don't choke. Don't choke. Try as she might, she was frustrated to find that she couldn't get a good angle on the opening. The range on the portal gun was rather short, and it was made to face the opposite direction it was fired in to fae the user.
Marinette decided to move her gaze elsewhere, finding a chunk of wall sticking out on the opposing side, though positioned a little lower than the opening. It wouldn't be an impossible jump, but it would be a precarious one.
Holding her breath in a vain attempt at calming her heart, Marinette's thumb pressed down on the button and fired a blast. There was a brief flash of blue before the imitation voyage hit the wall, tearing it open to reveal a perfect picture of Gabriel crouched down by where her rope was secured, brow creased in tension.
"I got it!" She called through the portal, taking a moment to appreciate Gabriel's surprised jump at her voice coming through.
The image of Gabriel shifted to him approaching the viewpoint, leaning in a bit too close to observe the portal's surroundings. "What am I looking at?"
Marinette turned her headlight back on the passageway. "A way forward."
Gabriel nodded, "Looks good on my end."
"Go on then," Marinette said breathlessly, waving her arm towards the opening. "Jump!"
Gabriel's face froze in a wide-eyed realization, and Marinette could suddenly see his fingers twitching. Tikki's voice made a joke about him bearing a stunning resemblance to her whenever she tried, and failed, to ask out Adrien. But Marinette was confident she never faced Adrien like she was going on a death march.
Right?
Gabriel's voice dropped to a low, clumsy drawl. "It occurs to me that I've never been the most athletic man…"
"You have a running start, you'll be fine." Marinette said dryly, the ache clinging to the rope doing a good job at keeping her empathy at bay.
"Maybe I can find a ladder or-"
"Hawky," She snapped, "Jump through the damn portal or I'm coming in there and kicking you through."
She watched Gabriel nervously back himself up to the railing, unsteadily glancing down the drop before making a loud gulping noise. He pushed off the railing and took off into a- Well, Marinette wouldn't really call it a sprint. It was a drunken flailing motion where his feet veered off course with every step, making Marinette imagine a lasso yanking him forward by his hips.
In a split-second he slammed into the portal, briefly dominating the screen before his body dived through. Any airtime was cut short by his hips slamming full force into the bottom lip of the opening, leaving his arms to desperately scramble for any sort of foothold or anchor as he slid off the edge.
At the last second, as his chin made a desperate act to dig into the stone as he was dragged down, his right hand stretched just far enough to catch an uneven surface to cling to. Even bathed under the white beam of Marinette's headlight, the red in Gabriel's face was the brightest sweating tomato she'd ever seen.
He awkwardly angled his leg to push against the point where the opening and the next wall met, trying to create some stable leverage. "I'm pretty sure I broke something." He huffed and puffed.
It took several minutes of twisting, grunting and heaving in complete, incredibly awkward silence before Gabriel managed to push half of his body onto the platform. As he swung his legs over, Marinette could spy all the fresh grime and tears now added to his outfit.
When he secured his position, he slowly pushed himself to his feet and set himself up against the wall, one hand disappearing behind the top of the opening to grab hold of something while his other hand was held out to her. "Alright, now you jump."
Technically, Marinette had the less dangerous jump. From her position, the opening was below her, and if she could trust Gabriel to grab her all she had to worry about was closing enough distance to get pulled in.
It was still daunting as hell to intentionally plummet into the abyss.
She threw her weight back and forth. One. Two. One. Two. Each swing pushed her further forward. One. Two. One. Two. Each swing was punctuated by her stomach growling. One. Two. One. Two. She did this so many times as Ladybug.
Marinette didn't know when she let go, she just knew that at some point she could hear herself squealing as her body dropped. Her brain caught up with the experience just in time to catch Gabriel's outstretched arm, slamming her heel into the wall below and propelling herself into the momentum of Gabriel's pull.
Before she could acknowledge the wave of revulsion at being so close to Gabriel, however briefly, she was face down with her nose buried between cobblestone blocks. Score one… For Marinette… Ow…
She got to her feet, patting herself down and biting back a groan. Gabriel had taken the initiative to push on through the passage, thought he came to a sudden stop just at the edge of her vision. Marinette moved to catch up with him, ripping the flashlight off her helmet to more effectively wield it in her hand.
When she reached him, the spray of her light illuminated the rest of the tunnel. It didn't continue onward in a straight line, instead it sank into a slope, like a water slide with no water and a 90% chance of ripping through your skin on the way down. While the tunnel's total length sunk out of sight, she could just catch a speck of light shining through the deepest depths, suggesting that there was more than just the abyss on the other side.
She heard Gabriel grumble next to her, "Oh. Great. Another bottomless pit."
"Relax, it's on a slope." She assured him, testing the brickwork with her foot to showcase how the cracks were big enough to use as a foothold. All those days spent with the rock-climbing wall in Adrien's room were about to pay off. "As long as we move carefully, we-"
As they say, everybody has a plan until the rock you're leaning on for leverage crumbles under your weight.
Marinette only had a split second to spot Gabriel's shocked face illuminated by the now airborne flashlight before her body fell forward with her misplaced foot. Her shoulder hit the slope first, shooting a harsh sting through her forearm as her body moved to tumble deeper and deeper.
The glare of the flashlight disappeared, and darkness swallowed her whole, leaving every bump that stabbed into her along the way an utter surprise. She didn't have time in-between to tense up, to brace herself for the next blow. However, in that sense, she didn't have time in-between to fear what came next either.
She told herself the best thing she could do was just try to keep herself breathing. Deep breaths numbed the pain. Deep breaths got her through all the worst dentist appointments. Deep breaths would get her through this.
"Crap. Crap! CRAP!"
Screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs was basically the same thing as breathing out.
After a few more tumbles her body found itself upright, giving her just enough leverage to dig her heels into either side of the shaft and stretch her hands out, combing the surface for anything to slow her down.
Just when she thought she'd ran her throat ragged and that the coble stone was about to start ripping off skin layers, her descent came to a stop. Spreading out all four of her limbs finally managed to make herself big enough to get her stuck, and just in time too.
Below her, she found the source of the light she'd seen earlier, now a violent, pulsating purple hue that washed over her front. It was more magic blood, only this one was moving on its own, the movement and texture not that dissimilar to slime boy, and it was bubbling, boiling. In other words, it was something she was determined to never touch.
"Oh my kwami, I thought I was done for there." She sighed, feeling beads of sweat drip from her forehead and cup her cheeks.
"Alright. Alright, I can make this… Make this work." She huffed out, mouth desperately wiggling to try and reclaim all the air she lost screaming. "I've seen this in movies, I can just slowly shuffle my way back up."
That was the plan.
It was a good plan.
A plan that went to hell when she suddenly heard Gabriel's muffled cries.
Cries that were getting louder.
She didn't have the energy to even be afraid, she was just annoyed. "You have got to be kidding."
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and silently cursed whatever kwami was personally ensuring her misfortune before Gabriel's body slammed into her and sent both of them tumbling into the sludge.
Suddenly, she was small. Insanely small. She felt as if her entire body had contorted to be folded again, and again, and again until she could be compressed into a sardine can. It wasn't painful. It was like getting your tooth taken out at the dentist, the chemicals keeping your gums numb, but you could feel the pressure of the tooth being yanked around. You don't feel the pain, but your mind tells you how much pain there should be.
And then, after what could have been seconds or minutes, she found herself flat on the cold hard ground, rain beating down on her back.
"That… Was the worst water slide… Of all time." She grumbled, fighting her own blurred vision and one hell of a headache as she tried to stand up.
By the time she'd managed to stop her knees from wobbling, with the support of the wall behind her, her vision pulled itself back together. The first thing she saw was a dumpster, leading her eyes up to examine the grimey concrete walls that flanked her on both ends, then dusty, boarded up windows that stretched to the end of the passage where she could just catch the blur of a car careening past.
A car?! Marinette rubbed her eyes, clearing out the fog that had fallen over her brain, and put her surroundings together. She was in an alleyway, in a city, a city that had people in it. "We went the right way after all? Aha! Ladybug Luck is ba-ack!"
A storm bellowed overhead, lighting up the akumatized sky every few seconds with flashes of electricity. The familiar fluttering of butterflies prompted her brain to notice that a certain someone was missing from this equation.
He should have ended up in the same spot as me, right? She peered down the alleyway, speaking in a harsh whisper. "Hawky? Where'd you go?"
A loud rumbling answered her call, drawing her attention back to the dumpster. It shook a couple of times before the lid was suddenly forced open by Gabriel's long, thin fingers pushing through. Soon enough, his utterly dishevelled mess of a body was sitting up in the dumpster, a banana peel perched on the perfect position to frame his twitching eye.
"Now I know I broke something." He grumbled, his expression as cold as the grave.
Marinette had to clamp her hand tightly over her mouth to stop her laugher from escaping, pushing that energy down to bouncing on her heel like a little girl standing outside the candy store.
"Well would you look at that?" She manged to breathe out, quirking her brow up at Gabriel. "We found-" The laughter broke free, cutting her off in an eruption of giggles. "We finally found a home that suits you! Ha!"
His glare would have been smouldering if it wasn't for the old tissues and candy wrappers hanging from his shoulders. "Brave words for a woman in range for a rotten fruit to be shoved down her throat."
Needless to say, the first thing they did when Gabriel removed himself from his home-away-from home was start up the portal gun again. It worked perfectly, giving them a gateway back to civilisation without having to go down the strange sewer portal again. Gabriel took this opportunity to clean himself up. He wasn't going to face the end of the world without proper attire, of course.
That left the two peering around the corner of the alleyway's end. Immediately, the two found themselves blinking away the glares of neon signs that bathed the street in obnoxious vibrant colours. It was vaguely familiar to Marinette, a street she'd pass through on her way down to Luka's family boat, but now the simplistic nature had been drenched in advertisements.
It was a den of sin and scum straight out of a movie. The street stretched out like a canvas of vice and allure, adorned with gambling attractions, bar signs, and seedy looking men and woman wrapped in little clothing luring passersby to the nearest business while drunks stumbled past. It was so bright you almost couldn't see the grime seeping into the walls, or the way everyone struggled to maintain their smiles.
She looked back to Gabriel, "I think we found our 'City of lights'."
His eyes narrowed. "Oh great, just what Paris needed; sickly neon grunge." He scoffed, his eyes training on a group of people circling a drunk man, laughing at how he struggled to get to his feet. "Whose bright idea was it to turn a piece of Paris into the Las Vegas strip?"
Marinette's eyes found a face, one immortalized as a sign that dominated the scene, one that she just now noted as being printed alongside every advertisement, one that perfectly fit this aesthetic. "I have a good idea."
She pointed to the domineering sign, an artistic depiction of a large, fat, balding man throwing heaps of money up and down. Below him, bedazzled letters spelled out 'Bob Roth thanks you for your patronage!'.
His image was everywhere now that Marinette looked at the bigger picture. Every corner, every wall, every billboard, every advertisement had that mustachio'd face tucked away somewhere like a seal of approval.
"Bob Roth?" Gabriel's eyes squinted under a furrowed brow, perplexed. "Like… The artist?"
Marinette stared at him, dumbfounded. "You're kidding right?"
Gabriel looked back with a blank expression, not a flicker of recognition.
"The owner of Rob Roth Records?" She said, tapping him on the forehead with two fingers. "You akumatized him twice? Moolak? Gold Record?"
Gabriel's expression remained unmoving, leaving Marinette to pinch the bridge of her nose and groan. How best to describe Bob Roth to the uninitiated? "He's every greedy record producer villain in a rock-an-roll movie."
Gabriel's face unfurled with an understanding hum that only served to frustrate Marientte even more. No further explanation required. "And somebody decided to put him in charge of Paris? Or, at least, this part of Paris."
Before Marinette could reply a dark shift passed through Gabriel's eyes, his muscles tensed up and suddenly his arms shot out to yank her back into the alley. His long neck pushed past her head, peering around the corner cautiously while his hand pushed down to make a 'get low' gesture.
Marinette followed through without question, crouching down before she joined him in peeking from her hiding spot. Around the corner she now saw a new group of people take to the streets, and these ones easily distinguished themselves from normal folk.
The thing that instantly stood out was their skin. It was blue, with the texture of something impossibly smooth for flesh, looking more like clay. There were two of them, standing taller than most people, with sleek white armour pieces strapped to them. At first, she thought they were wearing helmets, but with how seamlessly the neck passed into the top part, she was sure that their entire head was simply shaped like that, a knight's helmet with only a thin slit across where eyes should be to suggest a face.
The clay comparison became more apt when the left one's hand started to change its shape, the 'flesh' being pushed around and moulded as if by an invisible hand until it took on the sharp edge of a sword it then used to cut a lump of gum hanging from the wall.
"Whoa, what are those?" Marinette asked in a low whisper.
Gabriel didn't reply straight away. Instead, they just observed the two for a minute, the only way to differentiate the duo was by the numbers on their chest. B-95 and B-96. 95 was busying himself with cleaning off the wall while 96, judging by the finger wagging motion he was giving, was scolding the man in front of him for defamation of public property.
"Looks like Paris has a new police force." Gabriel suggested, "Are they the task force you mentioned earlier?"
Marinette wanted to immediately say no, but now that Gabriel put the idea there, she could see the resemblance. They too looked like a modified version of the miraculized soldiers, but there was something distinctly off about these two; something distinctly inhuman. "They kinda look like 'em, but… No, they're something different."
"Wait, on their back."
Marinette followed Gabriel's finger to where 95 now stood with his back to them, revealing a large symbol etched between his hips and his shoulder blades. "The peacock symbol, just like with Sentry." She looked up at Gabriel uncertainly, "Do you think they could be sentimonsters?"
One sentimonster was already a nightmare. The idea of multiple running about felt like a weight had been wrapped around her ankles, dragging her further and further into the dread of their situation.
Gabriel shook his head confidently, but his voice betrayed his doubt. "Impossible, there's way too many of them."
"Maybe they're a sentimonster that spawns clones or something." Marinette suggested, "We won't know until we get in there and start asking around."
Gabriel shot her an incredulous look, judgment on the tip of his tongue but unable to voice it with anything more than a scoff.
"What?" Marinette asked, pursing her lips.
He slapped the side of his head, letting out a high pitched gasp. "You can't be this dense." His voice sank into an unnaturally jovial wheeze, pushing his fake grin as far as humanly possible to further mock Marinette. "Oh yes, we'll flag down random passersby on the street, ask them how the weather is, and hope they don't notice Paris' biggest supervillain and superhero have risen from their graves to pester them."
He ended his little performance with a low bow that let her embrace the full frontal view of his condescending sneer, tipping his imaginary hat forward like he expected her to tip him for his wise words of wisdom.
Marinette could only roll her eyes, pushing him back by the nose. "That wasn't the plan, Dummy." She turned on her heel and looked back into the street, spying a grungy-looking clothes store across the street advertising their 'Christmas in Summer!' deals. "Obviously… We're gonna need disguises."
Past
Sitting in a circle in the dark with only a central light to warm them, sharing snacks with their kwamis and stealing glances across the circle; it was almost comfy enough for Adrien to think they were out camping, waiting to trade terrible campfire horror stories. Though, with Alya seated at the helm, a blank conspiracy board and a marker at her side, they still were getting that story.
Except reality was more depressing than horrifying.
"Alright, let's review." Alya said, uncapping her magic marker like she was unsheathing a deadly blade. "Chrysalis." She jotted the name down on a purple post-it note and slapped it onto the whiteboard, dead center.
Around the note she drew her list in-synch with her words. "Butterfly holder. Female. Roughly our age."
"Former ally of Hawkmoth." Max added.
The room turned to him, Adrien cocking his brow as he asked, "Wait, where'd you get that from?"
Max shrugged, tilting his coffee cup forward to gesture back to Adrien. "From what Ladybug told you, the only opportunity Chrysalis would have to snag the butterfly miraculous would be during the final battle with Monarch."
When Adrien said no more secrets, he meant it. He made sure to tell his new team everything he knew, and everything Tikki was allowed to say. The unfortunate part was that, while Tikki wanted to help however she could, she was still unable to go against any request her previous holder placed on her; such as keeping certain secrets. Which meant there were still holes in Adrien's knowledge that made this all so complicated.
Max pulled one finger back from his cup to emphasize his point. "Thus, she was excluded from Monarch's Miraculized army, and knew exactly where Monarch was." He paused to take a sip, leaving Adrien to nod in understanding. "That implies she has some personal ties to Monarch, she probably even knew his identity."
"Ooo, maybe she was his kid or something." Nino laughed, wiggling his fingers over his nose in a 'boo' effect, perfectly framing his hearty grin. "A dark apprentice being trained in the background rising from the shadows to avenge her father!"
"Yeah, like Hawkmoth could have a kid. Could you imagine that guy as a father?"
While Adrien sniggered at the idea, Alya simply rolled her eyes at how casual Nino was being about it. "Moving on." She stated, slapping down another note in Chrysalis' sphere of influence. "Defect."
"Akuma." Luke noted straight away.
"Powers unknown." Said Chloe with a pout.
"With a miraculous." Adrien added.
"Powers unknown." Chloe repeated, sinking into her seat with a groan.
Nino shrugged, "Maybe his power is guns?"
"Or something to do with explosions." Alya suggested, stroking her chin. "He almost blew up Chat and Ladybug, right?"
Adrien leaned back in his seat, pondering. The only person who'd had any direct experience with Defect was Marinette and Tikki, and Tikki unfortunately admitted that while she was with Marinette for that fateful battle, her memory of it was fractured, blurred; most likely a side-effect of the holder dying while transformed.
It's part of why he was glad that Tikki wound up staying out of this meeting for now, instead finding herself helping Nathalie with her duties. He knew if Tikki were hearing this, she'd start blaming herself for not being able to remember anything important. Besides, Adrien had the sneaking suspicion that Tikki found Nathalie's responsibilities therapeutic. The chores, the organisation, the plans upon plans; it probably felt like she was back with Marinette in a way. And Nathalie certainly didn't mind the aid.
"His bullets are definitely not normal." Adrien hummed, "Tikki said they chased Ladybug down like they had a mind of their own, and the longer it went on, the bigger they got."
"Did he mention a motive or goal?" Max asked, staring down at his cup with a furrowed brow.
Adrien's face cringed at the thought, knowing just how absurd what he was about to say sounded. "He said that he and Chrysalis were going to save the world."
Chloe scoffed, "From who? Themselves?"
Once more, there was little more to go on and, after a minute of silent, awkward glances, Alya pulled out her next note. "And then we have Argos, of cou-"
Suddenly, Chloe was out of her chair, violently pointing at Alya like she was about to accuse her of murder. "No, no, you have to use the green sticker, Cesaire."
Alya's face went still while her eyes roamed the rest of the group for anyone who could make what she was hearing make sense. "What?" She asked, holding back an awkward chuckle.
"Green for ambiguous." Chloe said with the most 'duh' voice, "We don't know Argos' side in this, so he's on the mystery colour." She said it simply and with irritation as she glanced over her nails, like Alya was missing the most obvious factoid in existence. "I didn't put together all these stickers just so we could ignore the colour coding scheme."
Nino squinted up at Chloe, "Who cares about the colour?"
Chloe turned around with a scoff, tapping Nino on the nose. "Organisation is key to any good conspiracy board; it helps the brain remember things better." She crouched down by her bag, pulling out a bedazzled trapper keeper with hundreds of little post-it notes sticking out of the side. "And it also makes my schedule look super fun!"
Adrien had never seen Alya look so dumbfounded, forcing her hand over her eyes in a desperate effort to focus on the moment. "You know, if you put this much effort into your studies, you wouldn't have had to cheat off of Sabrina all these years." She mused.
Chloe didn't even look offended by the remark, she just sunk back into her chair with a satisfied smirk.
"Okay, so let's look at the Task-"
"What about the third partner?" Adrien said, his voice trailing off as he suddenly found Alya scowling at him. He was the second person to cut Alya off, and she was already tired of it. He continued quietly. "Accelerator told us that there's a third member of the villain team here."
Alya rubbed her temples, sighing. "Well, we're assuming that's Argos right now."
"Makes sense," Luka said, nodding along. "That's who the sentimonsters would report to, right?"
Adrien shot to his feet, shaking his head. "It doesn't make sense. Accelerator was pretending to be a part of our team, she'd use Argos' name if it were Argos."
The unflattering looks the room shot him was a real kick to his confidence, but he pushed on, pacing between his thoughts. His gut was telling him there was more to this, and he wasn't willing to let any stone remain unturned if he could help it. He just needed to find a way to explain it that made as much sense to them as it did to him. "Besides, she talked about this guy like he was the real boss behind the operation, and I really doubt Felix is the one in the driver's seat for all this."
He stared at Alya with a nervous grin that was far too wide, a kicked puppy pleading for validation. All Alya could do was sigh again, raising her hands up defensively in a calming manner "Okay, okay, but until we get more info, we're gonna just refer to our mystery man as mastermind."
There was a pregnant pause as Alya looked to the board, silently debated her next move, and eventually gave in to the inevitable. "Chloe, do you have another-"
Chloe shot up wildly waving a stack of purple post-its. "Naturally!"
Alya stared into the void, questioning how much coffee it would take to ease her soul after this. "This is ridiculous." She muttered, snatching the post-its from Chloe and practically stomping back over to the conspiracy board.
But Chloe, the walking she-devil she was, couldn't end it there. She made sure to lean in real close with the smuggest of cheshire grins as she spoke. "Utterly ridiculous."
Alya was a quiet volcano, quaking in isolation until the crust gave way to the final eruption. "Now," She emphasized her first word through gritted teeth, her eyes narrowing past Chloe to spy Nino and Adrien trying to hide a chuckle at her frustrated state. "Before I was rudely interrupted; what do we know about the Miraculous Task Force?"
Luka, ever helpful and ever peaceful, seemed to brighten Alya's mood somewhat with an actual addition. "Funded by Kagami's mom." It went on the board word-for-word, which made Adrien briefly pause to ask himself if they were ever going to refer to Tomoe as anything other than 'Kagami's mom'.
"Led by that Chalot dude." Nino added.
Chloe chimed in with a slight hiss to her voice, drawing her finger through the air to mimic an 's' symbol. "And suspicious with a capital 'S'."
Luka cocked a brow at Chloe, "Just because they're making us look bad doesn't mean they're our enemy."
Adrien crossed his arms, pointedly adding "They first showed up the same day that Ladybug died."
Max and Luka traded unconvinced glances before Max shrugged. "Not exactly a silver bullet, is it?"
"What about all the tech they've been showing off?" Nino threw his hands in the air, showing off the news report playing on his phone – a showcase of the Task Force training facilities.
"I ain't no scientist, but there's no way they're pulling all this off without some miraculous stuff of their own to test it on." He kicked back in the chain, pushing it into a delicate and precarious tilt just to cast his gaze across the lair to where Su-Han was scanning through one of his many tomes. "That's how it works, right? They gotta… Reverse engineer it or something."
Su-Han looked up; a thoughtful glance creased by worry weighing down his brow. "This so-called anti-miraculous technology does concern me greatly."
"Don't the Guardians have counter measures for miraculous users?" Alya asked curiously. Even if Marinette hadn't told Alya about that 'miraculous fu' stuff Su-Han mentioned during their first encounter, it was a solid assumption to make. After all, if you were going to give people the power to tap into the concepts of reality at will, you'd want to have some way of countering the holders if they ever went rogue.
"We have our techniques, spells and weapons yes." Su-Han's eyes returned to the page he was reading, one hand lightly running his fingers over the paper while the other stroked his chin. "But I never considered that someone could pervert them like this."
Luka's usual smile looked slightly more strained, adding an exasperated edge to his words. "Okay, even if the task force is suspicious, what would they get out of siding with a supervillain? You think they wasted all that money and planning just to throw it all away when Chrysalis wins?"
Without hesitation, without consideration, without thought, Chloe, the girl who had to sound out 'accountability' phonetically, spoke with perfect clarity. "Fiduciary responsibility, obviously."
Silence fell with the force of a bad slapstick routine, everyone's jaws as far to the floor as humanly possible, just gaping at Chloe.
Adrien himself felt sheepish; he didn't even know 'Fiduciary' was a word.
"…Chloe, can you even spell that word?"
"Shut it, Couffaine." Chloe scoffed, holding her well-manicured nails out for inspection. When no one else filled the silence, she rolled her eyes and continued. "For the corporate elite, you have a responsibility to your investors to make sure the money train doesn't slow down."
She moved over to Nino, swiping his phone out of his hand and showing off the news report once again, this time tapping her nail against the subheading 'The heroes Paris needs now more than ever'. "The name of the game is money, and the Task Force makes that money from super villains. Play the game poorly, they look like losers and lose money. Play the game well, the game ends and they lose money."
Alya snapped her fingers, realization dawning over her features. "But if they control both sides of the game, they can make sure there's always a villain around to justify their existence without overwhelming them." She paused, once more finding a new threshold for being dumbfounded. Idly, she pinched herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming. "Huh, it feels weird to give Chloe credit."
Chloe pouted, dropping Nino's phone back in his hands. "Hey, I may not know much about your boring subjects, but I know my way around money."
Adrien wasn't as impressed. Or satisfied, to be more accurate. "So, we went from a mad man trying to rewrite all of reality to a get rich quick scheme?" He cast his gaze around the room, holding his arms up like the very notion sounded ridiculous on his tongue. "That doesn't seem right."
Max peered up at him, studying his expression. "It's a solid theory." He stated bluntly.
Adrien groaned, exasperated as his arms fell by his side. "Oh, come on, there's something bigger going on here, I can feel it."
Alya shot him an unimpressed, half-lidded look she'd usually reserve for Marinette going through one of her episodes. "Is this about that dream again, Sunshine?"
Naturally, the investigative journalist had been the first-person Adrien told about his miraculous memory vision.
Naturally, she hadn't believed a lick of it.
Adrien crossed his arms, looking more and more like a child as he grumbled. "It wasn't just a dream, I'm telling you."
Nino got up to join him at his side, lightly squeezing his shoulder. "Have you been sleeping lately, Bro?"
"It was a vision!" He cried out to the room, desperately looking for anything to seem convinced.
"Plagg didn't even recognise the Chat Noir you mentioned." Alya pointed out, gesturing behind Adrien to where Plagg sat in his own little corner, munching on a cheese wheel.
Adrien scoffed, "Plagg doesn't remember what he had for breakfast last week, and he literally eats the same thing every day!"
Plagg's giant ears twitched, the inclusion of his name stealing him away from his cheese-based revelry. "Hey, why's my name getting dragged through the mud?" He whined, propping himself up on his food. "I mean, you're right, but…"
Adrien broke from the circle, crossing the room to reach Su-Han's workspace and picking up a random tome. "Su-Han, back me up; was there any sentimonster invasions back in the feudal era?"
Adrien's eyes stared down at Su-Han with a hopeful gaze, but Su-Han could return nothing but the cold, hard, disappointing truth. "We have no records of anything happening in Japan around that time." He sighed, leaning back to adopt a more thoughtful expression. "In fact, it was one of our most peaceful periods. Magically speaking, of course."
Suddenly, Alya's hand was over his and he was looking over his shoulder, meeting her soft gaze. "Look Adrien, you have to accept that a dream, or vision, or whatever isn't anything we can go on."
He wanted to push the point. He knew he was right, that there was something a past Chat Noir was trying to tell him, but he knew she was right too. Pushing it further with nothing to back it up would only waste everyone's time and make him look like an oafish brat, whining that he wasn't getting his way.
He nodded, sighing. "Fine. I get it. You're right."
"Good, now-"
He interrupted her again, this time with a Chat Noir smirk to face off against her twitching brow. "I'll just have to find proof."
He could just hear her mutter 'I swear to god, Agreste. One day.' Before a smile broke through and the two made their way back to the circle.
"Now, moving on to-" Alya interrupted herself for once, spotting Chloe already pressing the next post-it down; labelled and everything. "Thanks, Chloe. Sentimonsters."
Max counted off his fingers as he, with a weary sigh, listed off the unfortunate truth. "They can have any power, look like anything and can now be mass produced."
"How can the peacock make this many simultaneous sentis?" Nino asked, scratching his head.
Adrien's expression tightened, nodding his head in agreement. One senti was already enough of a threat, he didn't know where to start in countering an army of them. "It shouldn't be able to do that, right? Otherwise Shadowmoth or Mayura would have just spammed them at us back then."
"It is well within the peacock's capabilities." Su-Han's voice, a cold stone quality to it, made Adrien jump. "The issue lies in the user's capabilities."
When Adrien turned around, he found Su-Han standing with a tome opened and hanging from his hand, presenting the page to everyone in the room. "The miraculous transformation channels the power of the kwami using your body as a vessel. Each use of your power takes from you."
The page was an illustration of a being with multiple stick-like limbs and disconnected body parts – a kwami's true form, if Adrien was remembering correctly. Next to it, a human silhouette was depicted being torn apart.
"The limitations of your powers are not the limitations of the kwami, but the safeguards of the miraculous to stop you from inflicting unimaginable damage upon yourself, to ensure that anything taken is returned."
An arrow stemmed from the 'true' kwami and wrapped around to a representation of a miraculous, which then led to the kwami form Adrien was familiar with. A human was once again placed next to the kwami, but this one stood tall and strong.
"The peacock takes emotion to forge a sentimonster." Su-Han flipped a page over, depicting the peacock kwami, Nooroo, draining something from a half filled-in heart, a human slumbering under it. "For Argos to create this many without dismissing any of them, it would wreak havoc upon his heart to the point it should render him a hollow creature."
Adrien caught Luka's gaze and, even on a glance, the boy suddenly looked sick. Half of this was a metaphor or two too much for Adrien not to feel a certain disconnect, but for someone like Luka, who was very in tune with the ways of the heart and the way it connects to his music and view of life, the idea of an 'empty heart' must have been terrifying to consider.
When Luka finally spoke, his voice was oddly cold. "What if he took the emotion from someone else?"
Adrien turned back to Su-Han, brow raised. "Is that possible?"
Su-Han nodded, a twinge of disgust at the idea pulling at his frown. "The peacock user can draw emotion from other sources. Though they tend to take from themselves because your own heart is easier to understand, and to manage, than that of another."
"Accelerator confirmed that Chrysalis was keeping the people she replaced alive." Adrien couldn't help but look to Chloe, the idea, however dreadful, finding a silver lining of hope in her eyes. "Maybe that's the loophole, a prison of middlemen who create the sentimonster mimics without consequence whilst keeping using the prisoners' memories to help play their part."
"Great, so the fake people are gonna be even harder to spot?" Alya groaned, "Are we gonna have to just keep waiting around for them to reveal themselves?"
Max clasped his fingers together, his tightly knit gaze faced squarely with his knees. "How do we stop another Accelerator from getting us while we're alone and infiltrating the team again?"
The question hung in the air like the night-time winds, carrying a dreadful, but no less true, implication that lashed out at wherever they're exposed with an ice-cold chill.
Nino raised his hand hesitantly, the thick tension of their silence making him feel like he was in a classroom again. "Hey, uh… How does Argos make sentimonsters?"
Adrien tilted his head, "He makes the little feather things, remember?" He pinches the air between his thumb and forefinger, pretending to catch a feather and wave it around.
"No, I mean- Like, does he just order a sentimonster to look like Zoe and BAM." Nino's hands shot out along with the volume of his voice, "Or does he have to tell it what Zoe looks like?"
"I don't get it." Adrien looked to Alya for a rational translation, but she was just as confused as he was. "Is there a difference?"
However, Max's brain seemed to catch up quicker than everyone else, his face brightening up. "Ah, if the sentimonster's appearance is based solely on the creator's knowledge of the person they're mimicking," He snapped his fingers again and again, the sharp sound indicating his thought process starting over and over to better gather his thoughts. "Then we can identify ourselves to each other by hiding proof of our identities on our bodies."
Adrien's lips parted in pleasantly surprised hope, shooting Nino a grin before whipping around to double check with Su-Han. "Well, Su-Han? Would it work?"
After a moment of consideration and flickering thoughts, Su-Han slowly nodded. "It's a solid strategy, I admit."
All at once, the tension that held everyone hostage dissipated, for the moment at least. It was not silver bullet, but it was a win, it was a solution that made this paranoia business a little more bearable.
Alya clapped her hands together, "Well, what are we waiting for?"
Chloe scrunched up her face, pulling herself to the edge of her seat to enter full-on think mode. "But what should the symbol be?"
"Who cares?" Asked Nino as he plucked the magic marker from Alya's board, "Just make it a cross or something."
As he approached, Chloe waved her arms in front of her, forbidding him from stepping any closer. "I'm not letting that magic marker anywhere near me until we agree on a fabulous design!"
Alya rolled her eyes. "Don't be such a baby, Chloe."
"I'm thinking a music note."
"Don't encourage her, Luka!"
Next Time - Moving On:
"Do you wanna run the tour idea by Nathalie before we do anything?" He asked, digging through his pockets for his phone. "I can call her."
Kagami held her hand up. "Patience, Adrien." She waved him off before adding snidely and with a mischievous grin, "We wouldn't want to interrupt her date."
Adrien felt his brain shut down. It took a good minute for it to reboot and process the ridiculousness of such words.
"…Her what?" Was all he could get out.
It wasn't that he had a problem with the idea of Nathalie dating or anything.
He most certainly didn't.
But she simply wouldn't! He knew Nathalie. She didn't go on dates. She probably thought the very idea of romance as something beneath her or a waste of time, that's why she and his father never became official. Besides, who could she possibly be interested in? Who could compare to his father? It was a ridiculous idea. An utterly ridiculous idea.
"Isn't that Nathalie over there?"
"What?"
He followed Kagami's finger in a daze, peering over a divider in the middle of the restaurant where a familiar tuff of dark hair with a strip of rebellious red stood out from the masses.
"What?"