Chapter Twelve: Equilibrium

"So, uh…is it weird to be surrounded by a bunch of me's?" asked Alix.

Upon being guided back to the Warren, she and the others had been placed into the care of a doctor. A doctor who happened to also be a Bunnyx. A Bunnyx who also happened to be a version of her father. Needless to say, this brought some confusing emotions.

"It's something we all have to get used to," he replied, scanning her with a strange device. "I'm sure you had quite the culture shock the first time you came here too, right?"

She certainly had. Right now, though, she had only one thing on her mind, and hadn't gotten the opportunity to ask before now, what with being rushed here. "...What did you guys do with Death's Head?" she asked.

The elder Kubdel shrugged as he went about his business. "You'll have to ask the Director about that. I'm told she wants to talk to you when we're done here."

"And…are we?"

"Just a moment…okay." There was a beep from the device, which the doctor promptly put away. "I'm sure you'll be glad to hear you weren't affected by Death's Head's powers. You and your friends are all Cataclysm-free…though the same can't be said for the Hunters." He glanced off to the side.

Alix felt a pang of guilt. "I'm…sorry about them. He just came out of nowhere, there was nothing we could do!"

"No, no, it's not your fault," he told her. While she knew he wasn't her father, this sounded more assuring coming from him. "I'm good at dealing with the various dangers of the multiverse, but psychology isn't my strong suit. Anyway, you're free to go now. Don't want to keep the Director waiting."

"Nope, sure don't," Alix said under her breath. She got up and headed out, hesitating slightly before she left. Was it weird she wanted to ask this guy more? Although she concluded it wasn't, she left the room anyway, and to her slight surprise, found that Adrien was outside waiting for her. "Adrien? I thought you'd have gone ahead with Marinette and Gabriel."

"I thought about it, but I wanted to wait for you," he said, gazing out a window. From the Warren, you could see all sorts of timelines passing by, each one flowing like an enormous river. "I don't think it really hits you just how many realities there are until you see them for yourself. I mean, there has to be, what, millions? Billions?"

"If that." She joined him by the window, staring out at the sight. Although she had been amazed by the multiverse's beauty the first time she had arrived at the Warren, over the years it had dulled thanks to her disillusionment with the ITAA. "I wonder if there are other ITAAs out there…"

Adrien thought about it for a moment. "Huh. I'd normally say there wasn't, but it is a big multiverse. Infinite realities could mean infinite spaces between those realities."

"Yup. Infinite realities. And yet somehow, you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger screw-up than me."

"Where's this coming from?" Adrien asked, turning to her. "We made it out, Alix. We all did."

"No, we didn't," she said solemnly. "Time-Hopper, Killer Bee, and Darner are all dead because of how stubborn I am. Not to mention the Marinette, Adrien, and all the others from my universe. It seems like no matter what I do, I'm never good enough to save anyone." She leaned against the window, pressing her head to the glass.

"…Are any of us?"

Alix turned to him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, that's the reason we work so well together. We all failed, all of us." He stepped away from the window and began pacing. "You couldn't save your friends. Marinette couldn't save her Cat Noir. Gabriel couldn't save his universe. I couldn't save my father. We all have that one thing on our minds, that we wish we could go back and change. And as much as I wish we could, if we keep obsessing over that, a lot more people are going to die. They're the ones we should be focusing on: the ones we can still save."

As she took in his words, Alix looked over at him. Something he said had caught her attention. "What do you mean, you couldn't save your father? You never mentioned him before."

Taking a deep breath and letting it out in a sigh, Adrien retook his spot next to her, gazing out the window. "Back in my universe, I told you I wished for a world where Miraculous never existed. But I never told you why, did I?"

"Mm-mm."

"It's because…well… Long story short, my Ladybug, my Marinette, killed my father."

There was a long silence after that. "She…did?" said Alix, having a hard time believing that. "Like, just…straight-up murdered him?"

"To be fair, he was still Monarch at the time," Adrien continued. "Neither of us knew who he was until after. He had attacked me, and I was pretty hurt at the time, so I wasn't aware of what exactly happened, but when I came to…there was my dad. Lying there."

Alix took a moment to formulate a reply. "I'm sorry about that. I can't imagine what that must've felt like."

"But at the end of the day, that wasn't the worst part. If that had been as far as it went, I'd have mourned him, and then…moved on, I guess. I'd already lost my mom, what's one more parent going to matter?" He laughed humorlessly. "I wasn't even mad at her at first. She was just trying to protect me."

"When you say 'at first,' I take it something happened to make you mad at her?" Alix guessed.

Adrien nodded. "Even though our arch-enemy was gone, Paris still needed protecting. And so we stayed Ladybug and Cat Noir. But as time went on, I noticed that she…she didn't feel guilty. At least not enough to open up to me about it. She saw how hard it was for me, and she didn't even try to reach out. She basically said 'sorry I killed your dad, now let's move on.' I guess she thought that because, in her mind, she was justified, I shouldn't bother feeling bad about it."

Alix looked over at this reflection of her lost friend. She knew Adrien had always kept his pain below the surface, and this was no exception. But for this to affect him enough to try and rewrite the universe…

"That's why I stole her earrings. I had to make this right, and that was the only way I knew how. But I couldn't just wish him back–I knew doing that would take someone else away, and I wouldn't wish that on anybody. So I did the next best thing: make it so none of this would have ever happened. No Hawkmoth. No Cat Noir or Ladybug. None of it. You all saw how well that went."

Yet another universe brought to the brink of desolation. At least with Death's Head in custody, that would never happen again. "Did you ever confront her about it?" she asked.

"Sort of. Not as much as I probably could have, though. Looking back, I was blinded by…I wouldn't call it hate. More like desperation. It just…it felt like she had abandoned me, you know? I'm sure that wasn't her intention, but she acted like she was entirely in the right. Like, I get it, he was a bad guy, but he was trying to give us a better life. Did that make how he was doing it okay? No, of course not, but…did that make what she did okay?"

Alix had never been the physical type, but right now, Adrien seemed like he needed a hug. So she gave him one: a side-hug, but still. "It's like you said. We all made mistakes," she told him. "Once you get your universe back, you'll have your chance to make things right with her."

"Are you sure that's going to happen?" he asked. "Last I checked, Death's Head did a number on it."

"There's no damage that a Miracle Cure can't fix," she assured him. "If I know Director Bunnyx, that's exactly what she wants to talk to her about. Now c'mon–we've kept her waiting long enough."

The two left their spot, heading for the control room. In truth, Alix was less concerned with punctuality, and more trying to get Adrien's mind off his pain. After all, that was how she had processed everything that happened to her all this time: pushing it down deep within. She had seen what happened when she let her desire for revenge get the better of her: it ended with the Hunters dead.

She tried not to think about all the looks the other Bunnyxes were giving her as they climbed the stairs. Were they looks of pity? Disappointment? Hostility? She'd rather not know. The two of them passed through the doors, where the Director, as well as Marinette and Gabriel, were waiting.

"Hey! Good to see you two are alright," Marinette said.

"'Alright' is relative," replied Adrien. "So, you captured Death's Head…but the Hunters died in the process, all those timelines are still broken, and we have no idea what to do next."

Director Bunnyx nodded, and Alix looked away guiltily. "What happened to Time-Hopper and her friends was undoubtedly a tragedy. However, there is no doubt in my mind that they would be honored knowing what their sacrifice was able to accomplish. Here, as I showed your friends."

She turned their attention to a monitor showing a room on one of the lower levels. Several Bunnyxes maintained a large tank, in which a figure floated. Through the murky fluid and several wires connected to him, Death's Head was still.

"Why's he still here?" Alix asked with a scowl. "Don't you have some way of separating him from the Kwami? Or at least, y'know, destroying him?"

"Your friend had some of your same suggestions," the Director said, nodding towards Gabriel. "But as I explained, we are trying to better study his physiology. If we can learn more about how he became so powerful, or better yet, what drives him, we should be that much closer to reversing the damage he has caused."

"And as I explained, we already know what he is after," said Gabriel. "He said something about rewriting the multiverse so that every Agreste family could be together. He's simply Hawkmoth on a wider scale–and infinitely more cruel."

"But we still don't know how he planned to do that," said Marinette. She moved closer to the monitor to get a better look at him. "And you'd think destroying entire timelines wouldn't help him. Why exactly was he targeting the wishes?"

"That, at least, we have an answer for." The Director hit a button, changing the screen to a series of readings, as well as diagrams of Plagg and Nooroo. "Death's Head possesses the powers of destruction and transmission," she explained. "As such, he is able to transmit himself across dimensional lines by destroying the barriers that keep them separated. However, there is a catch to this. Although he is able to dematerialize and rematerialize his body at the atomic level, because he lacks the power of creation, he is in danger of decaying the more he uses his powers."

"Which explains why he'd need to find more ladybug earrings to restore himself," Alix surmised. "And the black cat rings?"

"As far as we can tell, he grows in power with every ring he absorbs," said the Director. "By absorbing instances of Gimmi, he is able to acquire both at once. As for why he does not feel the need to absorb instances of Nooroo's power, we aren't quite sure."

Gabriel looked at his counterpart with disdain. "And you're absolutely certain he is contained?" he asked. "I shouldn't have to tell you that him escaping here could prove disastrous."

"Indeed you don't–and not to worry, he is very much unconscious," the Director explained. "Our power dampeners mean that none of his powers will be able to break through that glass, even if he were to awaken. You have nothing to worry about."

Though not quite satisfied by this answer, Gabriel had no choice but to take her word on it. The five of them went on to discuss other things, turning their attention away from the prisoner.

But down in the room where he was contained, even the Bunnyxes keeping a close eye on him were unaware of what he had planned. The Director's claim was true: Death's Head was indeed unconscious. But although he was dormant, his power was not. And while he could not break through the glass, he had other ways of escaping.

Driven entirely by instinct, something began to emerge from within him. Crawling out from his mouth and into the tube supplying him with air, an Akuma made its way up and out of the containment jar into the air pumps. From there, it fluttered unseen through the machinery's inner workings, finally ending up in the overseer's box.

The Bunnyx watching over these procedures was to be Death's Head's first victim within the Warren. Before she could notice anything amiss, the Akuma had already possessed her, warping her mind and body into a Rippler. This shadowy being then pulled itself up to the control panel, and, using what little remained of its host's memory, deactivated the power dampeners.

Alarms rang out within the chamber as the fluid within the tank started to drain. "What's going on!? Who authorized the prisoner's release!?" demanded one of the Bunnyxes.

"Nobody! It's like it just shut off on its own!" shouted another, desperately trying to stop the process before it was too late.

But it already was–Death's Head's eyes shot open, and in one fluid movement, he shattered the glass that contained him, sending shards and fluid raining down. She stepped down from the tank, pulling wires and tubes from himself.

"My my my, it really is good to be back," he drawled. "I hope you all enjoyed my previous show, because I've prepared the encore to end all encores! Hold your applause, now…here comes the main event!" His mouth split open impossibly wide, releasing an entire swarm of Akumas from within that each proceeded to seek out a host.

Some of the Bunnyxes tried to escape, while others moved to engage Death's Head. But unprepared as they were, none escaped from his assault. The time-travelers fell in droves to the Akumas, each adding to his new army of Ripplers. Death's Head himself cheerfully strolled through the chaos surrounding him, approaching a box hidden behind a console.

Picking it up, the box dissolved from his touch, revealing his hat. He placed it upon his head, his mouth spreading into a rictus grin. "I do love a good reunion!"