Chapter Text
“Adrien?” Aunt Amelie’s eyes widened, her face suddenly pale from shock.
“Um...I can...explain?” he offered, hand still raised.
She shoved herself up to her feet, spinning around to pace away from him. They’d locked themselves into a small room, though , so she could only take a few steps before she had to turn around. “ No, no, no...this can’t—you can’t—oh, what do we do?” Her hands were up by her temples, gripping the flyaway hairs that had escaped her braids.
Aunt Amelie glanced at Adrien, shook her head, and whirled around to pace the short length of the room again. Adrien watched her, his heart aching inside his chest.
“This is...what do I do?” Aunt Amelie muttered. “I don’t...oh, Adrien….”
“Please don’t be mad?” he whispered. Plagg was hovering protectively in front of him, despite his fatigue.
“Mad?” Aunt Amelie spun back around staring down at him. “Oh, no, Adrien. I’m not mad.”
The tone was softer and more gentle than he was used to, but the words were familiar. He shrank back against the door behind him, curling his shoulders inward. Adrien couldn’t meet his aunt’s eyes anymore, and he ducked his head and unconsciously wrapped his arms around himself. “You’re furious?” he guessed weakly.
Aunt Amelie heaved out a sigh. Adrien heard her move, and fought not to flinch when she drew close to him. When nothing happened for a few seconds, he risked a glance up to find his aunt on one knee in front of him.
“I’m not mad, dearest,” she said. Her voice was gentle and soft, though her expression was still hard to read. “I promise.” She held a hand out, palm up. He hesitantly took it, and she rubbed her gloved thumb across the back of his hand and tried to smile, though it didn’t reach her eyes.
“You’re not?” He didn’t want his aunt to be angry with him. She might demand that he stop being Chat Noir and he couldn’t give up Plagg, not after everything they’d been through...but he didn’t want to lose the only family he had left.
“No. I’m frightened.” Aunt Amelie’s smile was weak, and she rested her other hand against his cheek. “Being a hero is dangerous, dearest. You can get hurt...oh, Adrien, you are hurt.”
The blood on his face had dried, and it pulled against his skin when Aunt Amelie brushed a thumb over it. “I’m okay.”
“That’s not...you could die.” She sucked in a breath, her smile dropping as tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. “Adrien...you’ve died! I can’t...I’ve lost you, and I didn’t even—”
Adrien leaned forward, wrapping his arms around his aunt. She clung to him, shoulders trembling as she fought to control her emotions. “I’m okay,” he repeated weakly. “Really, Aunt Amelie...I’m here. I’m okay.”
His aunt whispered his name, her face pressed into his shoulder. Adrien closed his eyes, tilting his head down to rest his cheek against the side of her head. “ You’ve been through so much, dearest,” she choked out. “All on your own...oh, Adrien, I’m so sorry.”
Something inside him hurt. Some deep, nameless ache that he hadn’t even realized was there. Like he’d been carrying a little bit of every injury he’d ever sustained with in him since the first day he’d put on the black cat Miraculous. Ladybug had healed him every time, sure, but no one had ever hurt for him like this before.
When his father found out he was Chat Noir, he’d been furious. He’d only seen it as a means to an end; using his control over his son to get what he’d always wanted.
When Marinette found out, she was kind and sympathetic, but she’d been too focused on the recent injuries from his father and the aftermath of everything that had happened. They’d talked a little about his relationship with his father and what life had been like with him, but she hadn’t mentioned much of anything else.
No one had ever wept for everything he’d lost along the way. For every hurt and fear and defeat that he’d never been able to share. For all the times his confidence had been knocked out from under him, for every humiliation, every loss of control.
It was like his aunt was sharing some of that pain with him now. She knew—and the United Heroez probably had extensive files on the Miraculous users, so she probably knew almost everything—and she held him and cried for him.
Aunt Amelie finally pulled away, fighting to control her emotions as she gave him a gentle smile. “Your mother would be so proud of you.”
“Really?” Adrien couldn’t keep the hope out of his voice.
“Oh, yes. Very much so.”
The thought burrowed deep into Adrien, filling his chest with warmth. “And what about you?” he asked. “She’d be proud of you, too.”
Aunt Amelie scoffed and waved a hand dismissively. “She’d laugh and call me dramatic, tell me I missed my calling and should have been an actress like her.”
Adrien grinned. “I don’t think it’s that bad,” he protested.
“Well, you don’t know everything, dearest.”
He raised his eyebrows, staring at her, and Aunt Amelie shook her head. “It’s a long story, Adrien. Let’s just say this is my attempt at revenge,” she said, gesturing to her costume.
“Revenge?”
She sighed. “Your uncle was not a good man. Therefore, I made it my mission to do as much good as I could with every resource at my disposal. He’d be rolling in his grave if he knew how much of his money I donated to charity after he died.”
Adrien opened his mouth to ask another question, but a black blur zoomed up in between them and cut him off. “Kid,” Plagg whined, “I’m hungry!”
“Right. Sorry, Plagg.” Adrien gingerly felt around in his jacket pocket and found a slightly squashed wedge of cheese, which he offered to the kwami. “Aunt Amelie, this is Plagg.”
Aunt Amelie was staring at the little creature. “So he’s your…?”
“He’s my kid,” Plagg replied through a mouthful of Camembert.
Adrien glanced at his aunt and shrugged. “Long story.”
“We’ll have to have tea when this is over,” she replied, pushing herself up to her feet. “We have a lot to discuss. Can you transform again, Adrien?”
“Once Plagg’s done eating.” Adrien had to duck to dodge a splatter of cheese as Plagg ate with obvious satisfaction.
“Good. We need to keep moving.” Aunt Amelie tied a black cloth mask over her face. It covered her from forehead to nose, her green eyes visible through slits in the fabric. She tugged her cowl over her head, covering her pale blonde hair. “Can you contact Ladybug?”
“I can try.” He stood up, leaning back against the door when his body twinged in protest. “Plagg?”
The k wami groaned, still licking cheese off his paws.
“Claws out!”
…
“Ladybug?”
She dropped to a crouch, pressing her back against a nearby storage container. “Chat?”
“Yeah, I’ve got her...it’s so good to hear your voice, Milady.”
“Likewise.” Ladybug shifted to the side, peeking around the corner of the container. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
“Ah, we were hoping you could answer that first question.”
She already had her compact out, tapping into the tracker app Max had installed. After Chat Noir had been kidnapped by Kid Thunder, she’d made sure the two of them—and Nino and Alya—could track each other any time they were transformed. “You’re close, but I’m not sure where you are.” His location was a bout a hundred meters away, but Ladybug couldn’t tell where he was being held. She’d been tracking the bikers that attacked them, but that had just led to an old dockyard. The docks were in disrepair, but the warehouses were still in use...though she hadn’t had any luck finding her missing comrades.
“Hang on a second...Nightlock’s with me.”
Ladybug gave a small sigh of relief as the communicator buzzed with static. She trusted Chat Noir, but he could be reckless. Nightlock didn’t have any powers, but she was sure the older hero would look out for him. They could take care of each other until Ladybug was able to rendezvous.
“Ladybug?” Nightlock’s familiar voice filtered in through the communicator. “We’re underground, in a series of connected tunnels. There should be sewer access nearby.”
“Got it. Give me a sec.” Ladybug tapped her compact a few times to pull up a database of the Paris sewer system. It transposed over her map of the current area, and she studied the lines of connecting tunnels that ran nearby. One was close to the blinking dot that represented Chat Noir’s position.
“The sewer tunnel is east of your position,” Ladybug finally explained. She poked her head out of cover again, verified that the area was clear, and hurried across the open ground to duck behind an abandoned cargo truck. “If you can get to the sewers, follow them to the north. I’ll meet you there.”
There was a sewer entrance in one of the nearby warehouses, but she planned to bypass that to find a manhole. Whoever these thugs were, they’d probably holed up in one of the warehouses and she didn’t want to risk running into them before she could meet up with Chat Noir and Nightlock.
“Will do. Stay safe, Ladybug.”
“You, too.”
She kept the comm line open, only half-listening to scraps of the conversation between her comrades. It sounded like Chat Noir and Nightlock were getting along, which was good. Her friend hadn’t always had the highest opinion of their United Heroez contact, but it sounded like they’d put their differences aside.
With a flick of her wrist, Ladybug wrapped one end of her yo-yo around the railing of the rusted catwalk that circled the upper story of one of the warehouses. She pulled herself up easily, landing lightly on the creaking metal. She kept herself low, leaning up just enough to peek in through one of the upper windows before moving along.
And stopped.
A flash of light had caught her eye, and she focused on the distant movement on the first floor of the warehouse.
She spotted the familiar cloaks of the men who’d taken Nightlock and Chat Noir, scurrying around a device in the center of the warehouse. Ladybug narrowed her eyes as she stared at it, trying to make sense of everything. If she let her eyes go a little blurry it looked like a mechanical flower—or maybe a satellite dish, if the dish was in segments instead of a smooth bowl.
Earlier, she’d asked Alya about any villain groups that used ice weapons, and Alya had sent her information about someone called Dr. Glacia. He’d been arrested by the United Heroez a few months ago, but most of his subordinates had escaped. He was an environmental activist who took things too far; like his plan to solve global warming by freezing the cities that contributed most to climate change.
At the center of the device was a blue-gray crystal, as long as Ladybug’s forearm. She ducked below the window again to check Alya’s information on her compact. From what she could tell, based on what Alya had sent her, this was Dr. Glacia’s city-freeze device. Energy would be focused through the crystal in the center, blasting up a column of swirling, frigid air that would create an artificial blizzard above the city.
They could blanket Paris under six feet of snow, or even ice, within hours.
She risked another look, memorizing the device’s placement. Thick black cables ran across the floor into a door against the far wall—the service hatch that accessed the sewers. They were probably plugged into the city’s power grid, meaning Paris would power her own destruction if these men weren’t stopped.
Ladybug ducked back down, hurrying across the length of the catwalk to swing herself over the nearby street on her way to rendezvous with Chat Noir.
They could put a stop to this. She just needed a plan.
…
“...I don’t know if they can use it yet, but we can’t let them,” Ladybug said, after explaining what she’d found to the others.
Chat Noir nodded glumly. That was probably why these guys had gone after Nightlock. As one of the United Heroez liaisons, she’d usually be called on to handle negotiations with groups like this. They’d tried to demand to trade Chat Noir for their leader, but that hadn’t been their first plan. Obviously, they’d originally been planning to leverage this device for Dr. Glacia’s freedom.
Free our boss or we freeze Paris .
Nightlock had pulled out a handheld computer, and she pulled up a blueprint of a device and showed it to Ladybug. “Did it look like this?”
Ladybug nodded. “Without the generator,” she added, gesturing to the side of the screen. “They plugged this one right into the power grid.
His aunt made a thoughtful noise and tapped something on her computer. Chat Noir watched her work for a moment, trying to hide his smile. Now that he knew who she was, he thought he could see a few of her mannerisms. She hid them well, so he wouldn’t have noticed until now...but now it was obvious.
The way her lips pressed into a tight line when she was focused on something important. The way she always shifted her weight to her left foot when she was talking. Her head tilted slightly, and he was already leaning forward in anticipation—that was usually a sign she’d figured something out.
“They’re in the power grid,” Nightlock said slowly. “Ladybug, did you see how they’re connected?”
“I couldn’t get close,” Ladybug explained. “I just saw the cables.”
Nightlock nodded. “ In the plans, Dr. Glacia’s generators are heavily shielded, but if they’re just drawing off the grid we might be able to overload the device. We’d need a strong electrical surge—if we could focus it here...but the trick would be finding enough power to do this.” She shook her head, glancing back up at Ladybug and Chat Noir. “We’d need a lot.”
“How much?” Chat Noir asked. An idea was circulating in the back of his mind, and when he met Ladybug’s gaze he could tell she was thinking something similar.
“A few thousand amps, at least,” Nightlock sighed. “A bolt of lightning would do the trick, but I don’t suppose you have one of those on you.”
Ladybug inhaled softly. She glanced at Chat Noir again, who grinned at her before turning to Nightlock. “I have an idea,” he announced, “but...you’re going to have to trust us.”
Nightlock raised her eyebrows. “Chat Noir?”
“Me and Ladybug.”
The hero’s eyes darted over to Ladybug’s face before turning back to Chat Noir’s. He nodded. “It’s okay. You can trust her.”
Nightlock sighed. “We’re going to have a long talk when this is all over,” she said tiredly, shoving her hood back and tugging her mask down. “What’s this plan of yours?”
Ladybug sucked in a breath, her eyes wide. She looked from Nightlock to Chat Noir, and Chat Noir sidled over to his aunt’s side to drape an arm over her shoulder. “Well? What do you think, Milady?”
She sighed, but a genuine smile crept across her face. Ladybug flipped open her compact, slipping her fingers into the extra-dimensional space that connected her to the Miracle Box. “Amelie Graham de Vanily, this is the Miraculous of the Hedgehog, which gives you the power of Thunder,” she announced, pulling out a familiar silver bracelet and placing it on the palm of her hand. “You will use it for the greater good, and o nce the mission is over you’ll return the Miraculous to me. Can I trust you?”