Past
"You're distracted, Gami."
Kagami was always a reserved person, preferring to sit back and observe the people around her instead of getting involved unless addressed. Her being quiet, even with Adrien, wasn't out of the ordinary. But on the other hand, Kagami was not a subtle person; at least, not socially.
When she needed to hide something, she went all out with trying to mask her real emotion, three-inches of disciplined stone that to most people came off as a silent scowl warning them to stay away. So, gazing across the table and watching Kagami glare down at her plate like her steak had personally offended her, Adrien knew there was something she was trying to avoid.
"There's no point in stating the obvious." Kagami replied shortly, not daring to meet Adrien's gaze.
He nodded, idly tapping his fork against his plate. "Uh huh, and there's also no point in deflecting instead of answering."
Narrowing his eyes, a terrible, terrible idea came to mind that Chat Noir would applaud. He stabbed into his own steak with his fork, ripping off a piece and brandishing it in front of Kagami. With a flick of his wrist, he launched the piece of meat across the table, intending it to hit Kagami's shoulder.
Tomoe and Gabriel would have a heart attack if they knew that this wasn't the first time Adrien had done this to Kagami.
Unfortunately, instead of landing on it's target, his projectile was easily blocked by Kagami's fork, plucking it out of the air and holding it under her nose. Her eyes glared, but a wryly smile tugged at her frown.
"Nonsense." She said, "There's plenty of point in deflection when I don't want to address the issue."
"The great Kagami Tsugri admitting to running away?" Adrien gasped, pressing his hand over his heart dramatical. "Damn, you must have done something bad."
His eyes widened, scandalized, before he leaned in, speaking a forbidden tongue through a harsh whisper. "You watched an R-Rated movie, didn't you?"
At that, Kagami did manage to crack a smile, laughing. "No, but now that you've put the idea in my head, I did want to catch the latest Jake Bullet movie."
Adrien wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. "Oh, my heart can't take it. My perfect, obedient angle is turning into a rebel before my very eyes!"
Kagami crossed her arms, her brow cocked. "Is that supposed to be an impression of my mother?"
"Of course not!" Adrien shook his head.
He looked over his shoulder, as if he expected Tomoe herself to be summoned to the restaurant at the mere mention of her name, before turning back to Kagami with a cheeky grin worthy of his alter-ego. "Your mother wouldn't be able to see the transformation."
"A blind joke?" Kagami snorted, "What has gotten into you, Mr. Perfect?"
"What can I say?" Adrien shrugged, "You're a bad influence on me, Kagami."
She hums thoughtfully, "I try."
The idle chatter and clatter of the restaurant around them seemed to grow louder the moment the two fell silent, drowning out the underlying tension with white noise. They'd kept it light; their words were jovial and innocent, but Adrien could still feel the strain to Kagami's every word.
He couldn't think of a smoother lead into this, so Adrien simply set his fork down, sighed and asked sincerely. "It's about Felix, isn't it?"
"It's about this entire situation." Kagami admitted bitterly.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" Adrien caught Kagami's narrowed gaze and figured that was the wrong question, following up in a low tone. "Can you talk about it?"
The mask became a full-on wall between Kagami and everyone else, no expression, no flickers to betray her thought, just a body as stiff as a corpse locking away the storm inside. As someone from a similar background, upbringing and social fears, Adrien could guess the battle she was having with herself. She was going over what she knew for sure and what she was assuming, what she could say without inviting consequences, what she needed to say and what she feared Adrien would judge her for.
The wall broke to reveal a tired Kagami. "A lot is happening."
"And are you involved?"
"Not in any significant way." She was quick to say, a slight shudder to her eyes betraying an earnest fear. "I try my best to stay out of this Task Force nonsense as much as I can." Her lips continued to flap long after she'd ran out of words, like there was more to say but she simply lacked the ability to speak it.
When she realized that she couldn't summon the context she truly wanted to add, Kagami fell back into her chair sighing. "My mother still drags me to meetings to sit in the background like a piece of furniture."
Adrien's brow furrowed in worry. In becoming the faces of their parents' brands, it had become second nature for either of the two to treat conversation like an interview. Any answer had to go through ten different filters and progress could only be made through loopholes.
He'd thought that years of friendship and newfound freedom had tempered such habits, but it looked like whatever was happening with Kagami had pulled it back to the forefront. There was something she was forced to hide, and until she got it off her chest it was going to weigh on her shoulders.
I know you want to help me, Kagami, he thought, I just need to find a loophole that'll let you.
"Is Felix safe?" He asked cautiously, testing how far he could delve before Kagami's taught defences flared up.
"…I don't know." She answered honestly, clasping her hands together. "He's keeping something from me. He's involved himself in something dangerous, I know it."
Adrien sighed, idly pushing his steak around his plate. "Felix has always been the ambitious one. Never knew what 'in over your head' meant."
The audible crack of her knuckles struck his ears as a particularly unpleasant sound, her fingers relentlessly pushing against one another. "There's so much going on around me, so much… Wrong that needs to be corrected, but I'm just…" Kagami's whole body seemed to tilt off-course, bitterness dripping from her lips as she caught her reflection in the cutlery, as if she were disgusted by what she saw. "Powerless to do anything about it. I just watch."
Adrien reached forward to pry her hands apart, smoothing his thumb over her knuckle. "Hey, you're telling it to me; that's doing something."
She looked at him dead on, her eyes cold. "That only serves me in the end, not anything that matters."
"Your mental health matters to me." Adrien said firmly, staring her down with an intense gaze that seemed to momentarily knock the girl off-balance.
He didn't let up, not needing to say anything else for the moment. Just keep his grip on her hand, refusing to let her sink any further into whatever darkness she was letting cloud her head, until she knew that he wasn't going anywhere.
When she sighed, it almost sounded like a laugh, breaking his gaze to look away and regain her composure. She wasn't one to say thank you out loud, so instead Adrien got his gratitude from how she softly squeezed his hand.
There was still something there, an ache that he needed to soothe.
"And besides," He dramatically coughed in the most unsubtle segway possible, "Maybe there's ways you can help more."
Kagami peered back at him through a cocked brow. "Oh?"
Adrien shot her his most 'innocent' smile. "It just so happens that I've been reconsidering my position on your mother's offer."
"You have?" Kagami tried not to scoff in disbelief.
"I mean, the Task Force is really impressive and everything." He spoke up, emphasising his tone to be as convincingly unconvincing as possible. "And the city does need all the help it can get!"
"It's just there's still some things I'm unsure about." He explained, propping elbow on the table and resting his chin on his fist. "I thought that maybe I can clear it all up if I, you know, got a tour of the facilities or something."
Kagami narrowed her eyes, unsure. "Adrien, are you sure you should be saying this to me?"
She understood that his innocent request to tour the facility of his enemy was anything but innocent.
Adrien gave a winning smirk, far too proud of himself. "I ain't saying anything out of turn, Gami. Just making sure my money's going to the right place" Then the smirk transitioned into something more genuine. "And even if I was, it's not like I'm not saying it to someone I don't trust."
The two stared one another down, a sliver of hesitation still holding Kagami back.
"I remember telling you that things were getting dangerous." Kagami said.
"I recall." Adrien stated dryly.
"And encouraging you to stay out of it for your own good."
Adrien's face didn't so much as twitch. "You were insistent, yes."
"I don't want you getting hurt, Adrien."
"Then you shouldn't be so damn inspiring."
"Adrien-"
Adrien pushed himself to his feet, a fierce glint in his eyes. "You know, I look at the people around me, my friends, my family, even the average stranger."
His body trembled as he spoke, inviting thoughts of his father, of Marinette, of the resistance, of all the people who didn't have a power to them that still tried, even if in vain, to help Ladybug and Chat Noir against akumas. "And I see so many of them being heroes in their own right, all while I'm just sitting on my ass and wasting a fortune on meaningless junk."
Then he thought of himself, of the many times that he was ready to give it all up, to push his responsibility on another, for selfish reasons. "You've all been protecting my butt for too long." He said honestly, knowing he'd never be able to finish counting the amount of times Kagami had pulled his head out of his ass. "It's time I stepped up to the plate."
Finally, Kagami smiled. A weary smile, but a smile all the same. They'd found their loophole.
"I'm sure my mother could have such a tour arranged." She said slowly, tapping her fingers against Adrien's hand warily. "I hope you'll be on your best behaviour; our security is the best, and Chalot would be watching over you personally."
"Thank you, Kagami." Adrien said, "Whatever's going on with Felix, we'll figure it out."
Under her breath, Adrien caught her muttering "Damn right."
They settled into a comfier atmosphere, the tension between them dissipated like it had never been there in the first place. They moved onto lighter topics, having polite, but senseless, arguments about the latest anime they were binging, getting Kagami up to date on Chloe's attitude adjustment, and a surprisingly heated discussion about oreos.
By the end of it, they were working out how much to tip their waiter when a thought struck Adrien.
"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?"
In a most ungentlemanly manner, Adrien's body leapt from his seat, dragging itself forward until it dropped from by the divider. He pressed himself up against his vantage point and looked at the dreaded scene once more. His surroundings faded away, leaving only the woman he had known since birth who was indeed sitting at a table, in something other than her trademark all-professional suit, gazing across at… At… At some guy!
"That's Nathalie." He whispered under his breath in the same cadence as admitting to a crime.
"We've established that." Kagami added drily, trying to shield him from view before people started wondering why a man was crouched down in the middle of a restraint and spying on the other customers.
"With a man!" He hissed.
"Scandalous, I know."
Adrien looked back at her and was shocked to find that Kagami almost looked, dare he say it, amused.
"Kagami, this is serious!" He whined.
Kagami rolled her eyes. "It's just a man."
"Exactly, it's a man!" He stated with an insistent look in his eye, as if that was a good enough explanation.
It was at that moment that Nathalie decided to giggle at something her date said, a sound that was almost alien to Adrien. He didn't even know Nathalie could giggle, he always assumed the most she could show humour was in thoughtful hums and eyebrow twitches.
Did Nathalie have a twin sister? It was the only explanation that made sense.
Adrien gestured wildly at the supposed couple, only failing to draw anybody's attention by pure divine luck. "He could be anything. A criminal, a creep, a super villain, or even worse; a dentist."
Kagami looked over the man, who had a name tag reading 'Paul' hanging off his brown suit, sceptically. "He has more of a lawyer look to me."
"My god."
"Adrien-"
"Look at the way he's eating his food! That's unnatural." Adrien gasped out, exasperated as the man consumed his food with a series of the tiniest nibbles known to man. "He must be a sentimonster."
Kagami yanked Adrien away, forcing him to look at her. "I'm sure Nathalie can handle herself." She insisted.
Adrien's shoulders fell, realizing there was no point in struggling. "B-But what if she can't?" He asked in a quiet, pleading voice.
"Adrien, your mother is allowed to have a life outside work." Kagami said softly, patting him on the shoulder.
He had no desire to correct her, he just pouted. "Why didn't she tell me she was on a date?"
"Well, considering how you're acting now…"
A sigh gave way to a frown as Kagami led him back to their seats. He wasn't angry at Nathalie or anything, she could damn well do what she pleased, though he did feel instinctively protective of her. It wasn't like his father was still around, or that Nathalie and his father ever got farther than stolen glances and questions of what could be, but seeing her like that, seeing her with some stranger. It just felt conclusive.
His father died a year ago. Marinette died a month ago. For so long, there was something open-ended about it all, like everything in his world was stalled enough to hope that this all could just be an unfortunate dream, that he could still pretend he was back there in better times. He thought Nathalie was in the same boat, but there she was, continuing to live her life.
Time had stopped for him, but for everyone else it continued like normal; the world was still spinning onwards.
He felt Kagami's arms sink around him long before he registered her voice. "People move on, Adrien."
"Do I have to?" He asked quietly.
"Not until you're ready."
Present
Gabriel found it difficult to recall what his original assessment of Marinette Dupain-Cheng was. The moment she'd been unveiled as his most hated nemesis seemed to filter everything that came before through a Ladybug coloured lens. He knew, at the very least, that he'd never trusted her even without the mask.
She had been an annoyance, an interloper who encouraged dangerous habits in his son, and had the audacity to continually reject his every attempt to akumatize her. But again, it all came back to the Ladybug connection in his mind, as if he always subconsciously knew that she was a bigger threat than she let on, that getting her out the way or under his thumb was crucial to his success, that she was a threat to more than his ego.
Without that, all he had to make his original perspective around was what he knew of her type. The fan girl. The mindless, drooling, snivelling, shallow and, most importantly, obsessive fan girl. Yes, he'd dealt with many of her ilk since Adrien first caught the world's eye. He truly hoped that that part of her personality was just an act and that his arch enemy wasn't some crazed, doe eyed stalker that tracked his son's every movement. Oh yes, despite his foggy memory as Monarch, he distinctly remembered his son's face being plastered all over her room.
He certainly knew his son had enough restraint and dignity to not save hundreds of photos of his crush for some creepy altar to them!
Despite how it would appear, he didn't push for Kagami as Adrien's perfect partner just because Tomoe desired it also. Kagami was simply all Adrien could ever need, the love of someone who knew him, who understood him and his position, who saw him as more than just a model, and who knew how necessary it was to keep Adrine safe from a cruel and merciless world that hide behind a pleasant façade.
Marinette was a threat to Adrien, plain and simple. As Ladybug she continued to stand in the way of saving Adrien's mother, and as Marinette she recklessly dragged Adrien further into the dangerous world with no consideration for how easily he could be taken advantage of.
Now, Gabriel sat in the remains of his atelier, watching the girl in question tear through pieces of fabric (that they had 'acquired' from the Christmas themed store) with a pair of scissors. And she looked almost harmless. Almost.
It was perhaps the first time he'd seen the girl smile, grooving to a tune in her head as she wrapped herself up in her work. A palpable energy brightened up her face, leaving a shining light in her pupils, a gentle aura that exuded calmness; a state that never materialized whenever she faced him before.
He could imagine her as a younger girl, yet untouched by the tragedy of her future, wrapped in the warmth of her parent's bakery. Surrounded in tattered fabrics and scrapped designs with a needle hanging from her lips and her face scrunching up in thought. That image prospered as an impossible heat refusing to be consumed by the cold reality of this ruined future.
It was only when her eyes focused on him, those occasional moments where she was forced to acknowledge his presence, that her warmth faded and the cold threatened to trickle in. And, on some level, that fact stung more than Gabriel cared to admit.
Maybe she wasn't a malignant adversary, just a dangerously ignorant one. She was all heart without the temperance of experience. The type to reduce any situation to which side sounds the nicest. As far as Gabriel knew, she'd had a pleasant upbringing with good people, raised in the better parts of Paris, her only experience of the world's harsh underbelly was Audrey's daughter and her war with him.
Even as Ladybug, her plans and powers were all suited for the short-term, for the low consequences. Damage was undone, akumas were puzzles, people had no reason to work against the only person who could protect them. And then she had been betrayed, she'd been tricked by Felix, lost every miraculous, had her life flipped upside down by simply trusting the wrong person.
Yet she still helped Felix. She still reached out to Gabriel at the end of it all. She foolishly dropped her guard and extended a hand to him during his darkest hour, when she could have so easily, and so efficiently, taken the miraculous and left him to rot.
And Gabriel still couldn't figure her out. What was her angle? Was she really so foolish? Was she blinded? Did she not have the stomach to end it? Was it just about Adrien? Even now, while trading glares and sharp remarks, she still made her efforts.
She confused Gabriel. And Gabriel hated being confused.
"I look ridiculous." He grumbled an hour later, frowning as he looked over the green checkered ensemble Marinette had put him in, made from the recycled remains of an elf costume.
His eyes moved up to see her barely containing her laughter, holding out a long Santa Clause beard to him. "You'd look ridiculous no matter what I gave you." She added, popping the inside of her cheek. "The supervillain suit is the only thing you look natural in."
Gabriel hummed in the same manner as a growl, unable to dispute her point even if he wasn't happy with it. Instead, he ran his fingers over the material, admiring how well her modifications adapted to is proportions. "What was the problem with our ordinary clothes again?"
"Even your ruined clothes look too fancy for a seedy post-apocalyptic scene like this." She gestured to the pile of odd shirts and pants piled up in the corner, all screaming high society even through all the stains and tears. "We'd stand out like a sore thumb."
"And how, pray tell, does you having a beard draw less attention?" Gabriel hissed, tugging on the fake beard hanging from Marinette's chin. "As much as I can insult your looks, you're not a match for an old man."
"Well, you see, I thought… That having something 'odd' on my face would make people more likely to look away from me. Simple."
Gabriel yanked down on the beard, grinning at the light yelp that escaped her. "You glued it on by accident, didn't you?"
"…Maybe." She pouted, before holding out another fake beard towards him. "At least we'll match."
Another non-committal grunt instead of a rebuttal before he snatched the beard from her hand, holding it up to the light to give it a disgruntled once over. "Is this really necessary?"
She drew her finger through the air, wiggling it over his brow where all the tension of his face seemed to dig in. "It draws attention away from your iconic resting scowl face."
The follow up toothy grin as Gabriel's left eyes twitch two more times convinced Gabriel that he was wrong about her not being malicious, she was loving every sadistic moment of humiliating him. If she could have come up with a use for the elf ears or Rudolph nose, she would have. He wanted to go back to her beating him within an inch of his life; that was much more dignified.
Another snort of a laugh cut mercifully short caused his head to snap in her direction. He opened his mouth to make another comment, but she slapped his words away by just raising her hands. "Trust me, I'm great with disguises."
He scoffed, "Didn't you try to sneak into my son's boys-only party once using a drawn-on moustache and a terrible accent?"
She shrugged, undeterred. "It worked, didn't' it?"
He found himself biting down on his tongue and swinging his body around to escape her amused gaze. "Touche." He grumbled through gritted teeth.
Marinette could feel Gabriel's eyes on her as they walked down the street. She used to think it was more than a little unsettling back when he was just Adrien's cold-as-ice father, but now that she knew him as a threat it was- Well, not comfortable, but convenient. He made his presence known no matter if she was looking at him or not, meaning it was easier to keep a read on the man in case he tried anything.
And, as much as it pained her to admit, on some level it made her feel a fraction safer charging headfirst into foreign territory. She was flanked on all sides by strangers grumbling and leering at her as she passed, every corner was the reveal of a potential threat, and she was woefully unprotected. Feeling someone she knew, someone who had a vested interest in keeping her alive for his sake, keeping watch of her gave her enough of a safety net to breathe easier.
There was something disorientating about walking through a twisted image of your home. It's close enough to how she remembered the streets, she could just recall familiar turns or paths across the roads, or buildings that once housed different shops. But it wasn't the same. Something about it, something tangible and flickering in the corner of her eye, just told her that it was wrong, that it was no longer home; that she was no longer welcome.
"Where do we even begin looking for our ghost guy?" She asked, lightly turning her head to look over her shoulder without completely looking away from ahead of her.
Gabriel hummed curiously as he side-stepped a man hurrying past, catching a glimpse of paper bills marked with Bob Roth's face hanging loosely from the man's pockets. "Bob Roth rules over this area. It's most likely that he has something to do with the phantom's current capture." One of the bills escaped into the air. He caught it between his fingers, holding it under his nose. "Assuming that he works under Lila."
"So, what do we do?" Marinette asked, spreading her arms out to gesture to the different statues of the man popping into view. "Look him up and ask him?"
Gabriel came to a stop in front of what looked like the remains of a bus stop, a large map of the area hanging off a crumbling wall. "For now, we should start asking around, get the lay of the land. We're not going to get anywhere flying blind."
Marinette scoffed at the title of the map, denoting the district as 'New Roth'. She drew her finger over the 'You are here!' marking, raking her eyes over the flurry of 'Points of Interest' marked up in big bold letters. The 'Bob Roth Experience', Moolak Bank, Roth Affairs and Amusements, the 'X, Y and Z Front' and Roth Royal Mansion. The man managed to squish an impressive amount of self-indulgence in his little corner of Paris, Marinette had to admit.
She found her eyes stopping on one name in particular, tapping her searching finger against the title 'The Golden Record'. It had an expensive ring to it. A small blurb by the corner of the map identified it as a concert hall turned into a club, where all aspiring stars perform for the chance to impress Bob and become his new talent. Well, if they were looking for him, that'd probably be where he'd spend his time the most; finding contract to write up.
Marinette turned her head to see Gabriel following her movements. "Problem is, 90% of the people here look like they'd be the villain of a stranger danger PSA." She shrugged, "I feel like we're gonna get stabbed or stuffed into a windowless van if we ask them any questions."
Gabriel sighed, "It's not like we have any better options to choose from."
To Marinette, the moment that followed proved beyond a doubt that God was listening, and he loved proving Gabriel Agreste wrong.
"Free your tastebuds on the Liberty!" A young voice called over the noisy bustle of passersby.
"The Liberty?" Marinette whirled around, peering through the crowd until she saw the source of the voice.
It was a young woman, dressed up in pirate veneer, balancing on a crate and waving a poster about for all to see. She was nestled off to the side of the street, where the road curved and the pavement opened to a little square reminiscent of a park, only the grass and trees were all wilted and purple. She didn't recognise the man, but she did recognise the ship pictured front and centre on the poster. "That's the Couffaine's ship!"
She didn't wait for Gabriel's input, diving into the crowd before her anxiety could catch her, driven only by the memories of Luka and Juleka in her mind's eye. For the first time since waking up in this god forsaken nightmare, hope dared to flourish in her heart.
"Uh, hey there, Miss!" She skidded to a halt in front of the girl, leaning a inch or so too close for comfort. "You said something about the Liberty?"
The girl reeled back, wide eyes tentatively peering back at Marinette. "Oh yes!" She stuttered for a moment, before clearing her throat and throwing herself back into character. "I-It's only New Roth's hottest restaurant. Delicious delights that don't even melt your mouth. Only on board the Liberty!"
Marinette heard Gabriel doubling over behind her, grumbling little insults about Marinette 'disappearing' and making him chase her. She paid him no mind, instead raising a curious brow at the girl. "...Don't you mean melt in your mouth?"
The girl gave a wolfish grin and snorted when Marinette's face fell. "Some joints use that monster blood junk in their recipes. 'Cus it's all organic or something." She shrugged, pointing out a man walking pass with a misshapen, rot-coloured ear on full display. "Tends to, uh… Do some unpleasant stuff to the body."
Marinette let her mouth hang open at that mental image, hearing Gabriel let out a disgusted groan behind her. "Well. That's unpleasant."
"You're telling me." The girl shook her head incredulously like one would talking about childish mischief before shoving a flyer into Marinette's hands. "Here's a flyer and a coupon. I hope to see you at the Liberty."
And with that, the girl hopped off her crate and started to drag it into the park, spotting a new crowd of potential customers on the far end.
Gabriel watched her retreat with a scrutinizing sneer. Softly, he murmured. "Honestly, if she's not going to do the accent, why even dress up as a pirate?"
Marinette rolled her eyes, tugging on Gabriel's sleeve to draw his attention to the flyer in her hand. "Focus, Hawky."
"It'll be a relief to see some friendly faces." Already, she felt her heart growing lighter as her eyes roamed the paper, instantly locking onto the depiction of the Couffaine family, Jagged Stone included, standing on the bow of their ship.
She stuffed the flyer in her pocket, turning her smile back towards the map across the street. However, when she tried to move forward she was only able to take two steps before she was stopped. Gabriel had gone completely still, turning himself into an anchor that Marinette's insistent hand was attached to.
"Come on," She said, tugging on his sleeve repeatedly, but nothing changed. She was a child trying to get an adult to move. "We've gotta find Luka!"
Gabriel sighed, slightly turning his gaze to stare down at her through cold, contemplating eyes. "I think you'll have some trouble with that."
"What do you-"
Marinette had no choice but to follow the incline of his head. It turned back towards the wall, resting his sight on a large screen hanging from the brick wall, one that the girl and her crate had been blocking prior. It had various headshots of people lined up on the display, each with a name, a description and a price.
And one of those headshots were Luka's.
It was a bounty board.
"Oh. Oh no."
Dead or Alive
Name: Luka Couffaine
Alias: Viperion
Designation: Miraculous Holder
Status: Claimed
Marinette found herself unconsciously approaching the board, falling down against it and gripping the edges for dear life. No matter how hard her heart sank, she couldn't stop at Luka.
Dead or Alive
Name: Alya Cesaire
Alias: Rena Renegade
Designation: Akumatized Miraculous Holder
Status: Unclaimed
Dead or Alive
Name: Ivan Bruel
Alias: Minotaurox
Designation: Miraculous Holder
Status: Claimed
Marinette could feel her shoulders shaking, her eyes squeezing shut and demanding tears to fall, but all she could feel it the harsh, dry horror creeping through. The dread overwhelmed every other reaction she could make, no sadness, no anger, no disgust, just acceptance that this nightmare wasn't going easy on her.
Luka and Ivan were captured or killed. Alya was akumatized for god knows how long. Her friends, her family, her home had been hurt and she hadn't been there. Luka was being hunted down and she was sleeping.
"Looks like our back up won't be arriving any time soon." Gabriel stated in a voice so cold Marinette could swear the temperature dropped.
"Can you just shut up for a minute!?" She cried out loud enough to make Gabriel jump back, almost roaring it as she slammed her fist down on the screen. "Damn it… Damn it!"
That dread continued to flourish as a desperate, obvious and simultaneously terrifying thought flashed through her mind. She wanted to let go. She wanted to drop it all and run away, find somewhere to hide where she could curl up, cry and vomit out this tension that suddenly had a stranglehold over her.
She didn't want to see the other entries, but she had to look. She had to know if his name was on there.
Dead
Name: Chloe Bourgeois
Alias: Queen Bee
Designation: Miraculous Holder
Status: Unclaimed
Dead
Name: Nino Lahiffe
Alias: Carapace
Designation: Miraculous Holder
Status: Claimed
"This… This can't be happening…" She pressed her hand over Nino beaming, bright, loving face and could only picture every worst scenario in her mind. Did he go down fighting? Did the cowards ambush him? Was he alone when it happened? Did Alya know? Is that what got her akumatized? Or did Nino die knowing the love of his life was under Lila's control?
It was such a sinister little grey area, leaving such a definitive, yet undetailed description of Nino's fate. He didn't deserve this. None of them did. They deserved so much better. They deserved Ladybug protecting them, doing her job, saving the world.
When Chat Noir's face materialized on screen, Marinette felt something break inside. Where the other pictures had been old headshots, filled with bored looks or goofy smiles taken in a simpler time before everything went wrong, Chat's was different.
He looked weak and empty, like a painting that had all the colour, all the life, drained from it. Those bright green eyes that once beamed with energy, confidence and mischief, now stared at the camera with complete resignation. This was not the Chat Noir she'd left behind. He wasn't even Chat Blanc. He was the Chat Noir that had lost any hope.
Alive
Name: ?
Alias: Chat Noir
Designation: Sentimonster Miraculous Holder
Status: Unknown
She brushed her thumb over the image, imagining that he'd come to life and nuzzle his cheek against the palm of her hand like old times. "Oh Kitty…"
The file was incomplete. That was the thin sliver of doubt that allowed some form of hope to blossom. They didn't know Chat's real name, they were under the delusion that he was somehow a sentimonster and they didn't know his status. That meant he could be okay, that meant he could be out there somewhere, waiting for her.
That meant there was still hope, it had to. She didn't know if she could survive seeing his name confirmed.
Still, she couldn't stop herself from shaking, nor her nose from sniffling. And yet, she still could not summon any tears to properly express how much she wanted to cry out in the middle of the street, left with only the rain pouring down her cheeks as a substitute.
"They're probably not dead." Gabriel spoke up quietly, his voice the closest the man could muster to gentle.
She didn't reply, desperation for the hint of a lifeboat in this sea of misery overriding her natural instinct to snap at the man, the creature, that was arguably partly responsible for this in the first place.
He continued slowly and, though Marinette did not dare turn her eyes away, she could hear a soft, almost comforting note quietly carried through his stiff tone. "If there's one thing we know about Miss Rossi, it's that she values humiliation above all else. And considering our situation, a board saying that Carapace is dead means very little. Probably just some lie to demoralize Rossi's enemies."
Gabriel stopped, and somehow Marinette knew he was doing that tick where he pointlessly fixed a tie that wasn't there, before spluttering. "Most likely she has them in a jail cell as trophies to show off." It was almost like he was afraid that he was getting too close to being an actual human being and had to stomp out any hint of sincerity before she caught it.
In the moment, her breaking heart didn't care, it just wanted to find any excuse not to let itself shatter. Nino was the only confirmed kill, and even then, there was always the chance that whoever reported his death to be mistaken. She knew every one of her heroes were a force of nature in of themselves, and she refused to believe that a brat like Lila got the best of them until the body was in front of her.
It wasn't the most logical belief, but it was an important belief. And for once, Gabriel wasn't interested in mocking it.
Steadying herself, she continued through the list, finding more entries about akumas, some familiar and some not. However, she eventually came to stop on one entry in particular, one that replaced her dread with bafflement.
Alive
Name: Marinette Dupain-Cheng
Alias: Ladybug
Designation: Miraculous Holder
Status: Unclaimed
"Why am I on this board?" She asked in stunned awe, turning back to Gabriel who looked less perplexed.
He fixed his glassed, pushing them down to the tip of his nose as his brow furrowed in contemplation. "If our phantom friend is to be believed, you were never actually killed; you were captured." Gabriel hummed, tapping his knuckles against his chin. "And, as far as we know, you're not in Lila's possession anymore. Meaning, from her point of view, you returning as a threat is always a possibility."
A small part of Marinette found some comfort in that thought; the idea that while Marinette was lost to the world without a miraculous to her name, Lila was still afraid of her. It helped remind her that, despite all the carnage, Lila Rossi was a brat she'd beaten before, and she could do it again.
Gabriel moved past her, navigating the screen back to it's original position, sorting the bounties by the highest pay out. "What boggles my mind is that you're not the one with the biggest bounty."
Marinette curiously followed the direction of his finger as he pulled the top earning bounty into frame and, just as he said, the result took her by surprise. Enough so that she had to double check the name just to make sure her eyes were working.
Alive
Name: Max Kante
Alias: Pegasus
Designation: Miraculous Holder
Status: Unclaimed
"Pegasus is Paris' most wanted?!" Marinette exclaimed.
What the hell could someone as gentle and nonconfrontational as Max have done to be the most wanted man in Paris?
In her shocked state, Marinette lost her footing and fell back.
Only for her back to land against something flat, hard and three times her size.
"Interested in the bounty board, are ya?" A voice with the high-pitched cadence of mickey mouse took her by surprise.
Marinette pushed her head back to get a look at her last-minute saviour, only for her eyes to meet the faceless features of a knight's helmet fitted on a body with the squished texture of clay. Not a man, not a human; a sentimonster. All while Marinette was stood directly in front of a picture of her face identifying her as an enemy of the state.
To say Marinette was panicking was an understatement.
She lurched forward, dropping right into Gabriel's shoulder as he immediately moved to shield the screen from view. "Oh! S-Sorry, I didn't see you two there. Heh. Heh."
Looking back at the two it was as hard to distinguish emotion as it was to distinguish the two knights, the sole difference to identify them by being the numbers on their chest plate. B-95 was the one she practically ran into, and now his hand had morphed into a mop made of fingers that he used to rub the spot she'd touched him quite incessantly.
"Don't worry puny human," He grunted, slapping his mop hand against his chest plate. "We're made of stern stuff."
95 leaned in, cupping his hand over his mouth to loudly whisper, "I'm pretty sure it's sterner stuff, 96."
96 immediately reverted to growling like a child, stomping his foot as he rounded on his partner. "Why do you always have to correct me?"
"Why do you always have to be wrong?" 95 hissed back.
96 threw his hands up in the air, pointing at Marinette exasperatedly. "You're embarrassing me in front of the human!"
Even without eyes or lips, somehow the little innocent tilt of the head 95 made managed to communicate a look of curious condescension. That look you'd give an animal in the zoo performing some mundane and pointless task that almost, almost, resembles something human. "Pffft, like she even understands what we're saying. Everyone knows humans are dumb."
"Hey!" Marinette cried out.
96 stuck his mop in front of his partner's head, pushing 95 back with a light, one-handed, shove. "Don't mind 95, he traded his manners for a hat."
The sentimonster huffed, crossing his arms over his chest; again, more child-like than Marinette originally envisioned for the intimidating looking knights. "And then that stupid akuma took my hat." He grumbled.
With no care for personal space, 96 leaned in closer, peering down at Marinette with his finger drawn over his shapeless chin; an expression of curiosity, she assumed. "Say, you look mighty familiar there, human." He said slowly, "Are you someone important?"
The two paid no mind to the loud noise of desperate button mashing coming from Gabriel's sudden desperate attempt to push Marinette's picture off the screen.
95 shrugged, "Maybe she's one of Boss Roth's new stars?"
Marinette stumbled out some strained laughter, holding her hands up defensively. "I-I just have one of those faces, you know?"
96 tilted his head, looking to his brother to confirm that they both shared the confusion. "…I thought all humans had faces?" He murmured.
Marinette found the time to slip out of their direct sight, leaving their non-existent eyes to fall upon Gabriel, hunched over and trying his darndest to keep his head down.
"Hey, you!" 96 suddenly drew closer, crouching down to catch a better glimpse of Gabriel's features. "I don't think I've seen your face around here before."
95 looked to Marinette, clapping his hands together. "And 96 has a perfect memory, so he'd know ya!"
"O-oh, him?" Marinette drew out every syllable, her mind racing through every bad outcome of what were most likely Lila's lackies finding out that Hawkmoth was still alive and well in the span of a second.
Think, Marinette. Think! You've come up with more convoluted lies on the spot just to justify running into Adrien, you can do this!
"He's not from around here." She blurted out.
The two rounded on her. "He's not?"
She darted out of their way, sliding behind Gabriel and pushing his body forward like a shield. "No, no. This is my grandpa!" She explained, resting her chin on Gabriel's shoulder in as caring and casual a gesture as she was willing to stomach, sharing an incredulous stare with Gabriel in the process.
"Oh, that's why you have the same beard."
"He's… Um…" She snapped her fingers, "Foreign?"
Gabriel suddenly coughed, putting more base and rasp into his voice. "Sono solo un vecchio normale con una vita normale."
As it so happened, Gabriel spoke fluent Italian.
"Yep, he's German."
Marinette did not.
"Came all the way from Germany to see Paris." Marinette confirmed with a wide, fake-as-hell grin. She did not catch Gabriel's exasperated side-eye.
Suddenly, there was a disgusted gasp from 95 and, before Marinette could register the reaction, he launched himself up and into 96's arms.
"H-He's German?!" He exclaimed, shaking like a leaf.
96 inched both of them further away from Gabriel, speaking in a hushed whisper. "Is he contagious?"
"What? I said he's-" It took a second or two for Marinette to catch the misunderstanding, dawning on her like a headache. She shook her head. "…No, he's not contagious."
"Oh, thank the mother." 96 sighed, relieved, before dumping 95 on the floor like he was garbage.
"I was sweating there for a second." 95 hopped back up like nothing had happened, scratching his forehead. "Even though I can't sweat."
With newfound confidence, 96 maneuverers around 95 to stand over Gabriel, reaching forward to brush his fingers over the fake beard. "I do adore your grandpa's beard though. So luscious, and full, and thick, and wavy!"
96 moaned, pressing the back of his hand against his gleaming forehead. "Oh, I'd do anything for some hair. Something to cover this dome of shame." He turned to look back at 95, "Do you remember 81?"
"Of course, I remember 81." 95 scoffed, "He'd never shut up about that curly majestic mane Mother gave him. Always bragging."
Marinette's brows furrowed, "I'm sorry, your mother gave one of your brothers hair?" And sentimonsters have mothers? She added in her head, thinking it was too rude a question to ask out loud.
95 seemed to misunderstand her confusion, waving his hand dismissively. "I could hardly believe it myself, but he earned his perk fair and square."
"Perk?"
"Knights that perform great service are rewarded with a wish from the mother, a perk!" 96 exclaimed, leaning on his brother's shoulder and drawn a line over where there'd be lips. "Like, 92 wished for a mouth so he could understand why you humans love stuffing animals in your mouths."
"Who is this mother?" Marinette asked.
It was apparently the worst question to ask as, even without the aid of a face, the way the two sentimonsters jumped up like they'd been electrocuted screamed horror.
"Who is the mother?!" They exclaimed loudly and at the same time.
96 turned to 95, "She wants to know who mother is."
95 slapped his hand over his cheeks, aghast and hissing. "I told you humans were dumb."
"But even the dumb know the mother." 96 reasoned, tapping his finger against his forehead.
Desperate to cut off any suspicion, Marinette cried out. "You could say-" She cut herself off, lowering her volume to a more reasonable sound. "I've been living under a rock for the past few years."
Technically, it was true.
The sentimonsters stared at her blankly, more so than they already were, for what felt like an eternity. For a moment, Marinette thought her explanation would fall through and they'd slap the cuffs on her.
Instead, 95 rubbed the back of his head and simply said "That doesn't sound very comfortable."
96 shook his head, just seeing it as just another odd human thing that wasn't worth questioning if Marinette was lucky enough. He raised his hand up, opening his fingers to reveal the peacock burned into his palm like a brand of ownership. "Our mother is the creator of every sentiknight across Miraculous Paris! We live to make her vision a reality."
He bent over to throw his arm around Marinette's shoulder, pulling her to his side as he stretched out his hand to point to the corrupted Eiffel Tower peeking over the horizon. "You humans call her 'Mad Moth'. She lives in Cocoon, tirelessly spending night after night trying to save the world."
There's that justification again, Marinette thought to herself, recalling Defect's own explanation for Chrysalis' motives. How does turning Paris into a nightmare world save anybody?
For a moment, Gabriel broke character, his curiosity outweighing the knowledge that he wasn't supposed to be speaking English. "Save the world? From what, exactly?" He asked.
Fortunately, the discrepancy went completely over the brother's heads. "From those that destroyed it." 95 explained like it was the most obvious piece of trivia in the world, "We're here fight any monsters the akuma storms make. So, they don't disturb her."
"And because Boss Roth asked for more knights for security." 96 added.
Marinette and Gabriel shared the same knowing look, their thoughts and conclusion eerily in sink. Chrysalis with the butterfly to Mad Moth with the peacock and the butterfly, it followed the same evolution of Hawkmoth to Shadowmoth. Chrysalis and Mad Moth, and as such Lila, had to be one in the same.
She cleared her throat, knowing that despite how simple-minded, almost childish, these two seemed, it was obvious that they were currently their best source of information. "Sounds like Roth is protecting something very important for her."
The Phantom was imprisoned by Lila. He's somewhere around here. Roth had to be the one in charge of keeping him locked up.
"Yeah, exactly!" 96 exclaimed, snapping his fingers. "How'd you know?"
"Intuition." Marinette replied with a wink. Innocently, she clapped her hands together and gave the most doe-eyed, ditzy look she could muster. "Say, do you know where Roth is keeping whatever he's protecting?"
It took her by surprise how happy 95 seemed at her question, jumping for joy at the prospect of being able to help her. Once again, these potentially dangerous sentimonsters kept reminding her more of little kids playing dress up, innocent and almost adorable.
"I'm not that good with directions, but I think it's that-" A swift smack across the head beat back 95's message, delivered by a more ill-tempered 96. "Ouch! What did you do that for?"
96 raised his hand, threatening a repeated strike if 95 missed the obvious answer. "It's top secret, you dummy!"
"But I really wanna impress our new human." 95 moaned, his posture hanging loose.
96 groaned, taking hold of 95's shoulders and shaking them. "Talk like that is gonna get us recycled!"
There was a pause where Marinette could almost see the lightbulb turning on in 95's head. "Aw man. I didn't think of that."
"We gotta get back to hunting criminals." 96 grumbled, yanking the limp 95 away from them, calling back over his shoulder, "Stay safe, puny humans!"
Marinette and Gabriel watched the two retreat in stunned silence, waiting until their figures disappeared around the nearest corner before daring to speak their mind.
"They're certainly… Interesting." Marinette said, wiping her fingers over the tense sweat that now coated her brow. "I don't get it. They look harmless, and they act like little kids. Why would Lila make that her foot soldiers?"
"Don't let it fool you, Bug." Gabriel grunted, "They're sentimonsters, until we know absolutely everything about them, they could have anything up sleeve."
Marinette sighed, taking in the fractured remains of her home once more. "Just what did Lila do to this place?"
Gabriel's brow furrowed, a dark thought crossing his mind that he couldn't quite decide whether it was worse or better than their original assumption. "I'm starting to think that this outcome wasn't Lila's intention, but the result of a plan gone wrong."
Before the weight of his words could sink in for Marinette, he quickly rounded on her and added on with a befuddled sneer, "Also, I was clearly speaking Italian. In what world does Italian sound remotely similar to German?"
"How am I supposed to know the difference between German and Italian?" Marinette snapped back, "My mother's Chinese and your son knows more mandarin than me."
That new nugget of information left Gabriel looking dumbfounded, and Marinette feeling foolish for sharing that detail with him. Great, he was totally going to be throwing that one back in her face later.
"Let's head to the Liberty." She sighed, bringing up the flyer again. "If nothing else, some food will do us good."
Gabriel nodded, "On that, I can agree."
As the two turned away, they neglected to notice movement occurring by their feet, at the base of the pavement where a sewer grate was shoved aside. Under it, there was revealed a single, enlarged eye peering out from the darkness. It watched them leave, a gentle breeze causing the Liberty's flyer twitching in Mairnette's hand, almost like it was waving the water over.
A low rumble escaped the manhole as the eye narrowed, a raspy, guttural roar bubbling to the surface and drowned out by the rain. "Gah…" The voice spat, "Gah. Brie. El."
Something emerged from the manhole, something neither human nor sentimonster, something that had it's eye set on the two. "Gabriel. Bug." It slinked towards the bounty board, it's silhouette akin to a man hobbling on one leg, with every step being followed by the sharp hiss of something melting. A few buttons were pressed, a second later those buttons were melted off the board, and Marinette's face was displayed once more. "Bug will burn."
Next Time - The Future Is Here:
Adrien pushed it to the back of his mind for now, Chalot's comparison bringing a burning question to the forefront. "How did you know my father?" He spoke carefully, unsure of if the question was appropriate. Nathalie hadn't been able to figure out the connection when he asked her about it, but both times mention of his father had entered the conversation, a sudden, palpable pressure seemed to surround Chalot.
And that pressure only increased when Chalot came to a dead halt in the middle of the hall. The only part of him that still moved was his fingers, twitching like they were itching to wrap around something and squeeze as hard as they could.
Chalot's head tilted back, leering over his shoulder as he spoke, his voice stone cold. "We were friends once, if you'd believe it."
"Ooo, quick, Luka, read his mind!" Chloe squealed.
"What do you mean, read his-" Luka paused as it dawned on him what exactly Chloe was mistaken about before deciding it was better not to try and explain it to her, "It's hard to get a read on someone's inner melody through a monitor."
"You need to get up close and personal, huh?" Chloe scoffed, "Your psychic powers suck."
"Luka's psychic?! I knew it!" Nino yelled hard enough to make Adrien grimace and rub his ear, "Read me. Read me!"
"Guys, focus!" Alya groaned
Adrien tightened his expression, trying to mask his team's interruption with a faced of deep thought. He stared back at Chalot under a furrowed brow, asking "Why haven't I ever heard of you then?"
It left his lips in a far more accusatory tone than intended, but Adrien didn't try to correct it, he just stood firm.
"…Maybe it was more one-sided than I'd like to admit." Chalot admitted after ten seconds of ten, ponderous silence. His voice matched the arc of a deflating balloon, the boisterous undercurrent that joined Chalot's every interaction dissolving in an instant.