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The First Day After the Blue Moon
Gabriel Agreste arose one morning, going through his routine as normal. The exactly seven and a half minute shower, the careful styling of his white blond hair, putting on his perfectly tailored suit, and a quick breakfast.
He read his emails in his office, and then the newspaper, and only those closest to him would have noticed how it wasn't quite a normal day. The left side of his mouth was pulled up slightly, almost unnoticeable unless one knew him well. His steel gray eyes kept flicking to his calendar, his lunar calendar, each glance causing his lips to quirk upwards slightly more. And he seemed to be almost vibrating from excitement.
He brushed his teeth, as one was supposed to do a half hour after eating. As excited as the man was for this day he wouldn't do anything about it before cleaning his mouth. It was an order thing, he never did anything too important until he had brushed his teeth.
Gabriel cracked his knuckles as he walked to the back of his office, a full calculating smile now on his face, activating a secret entrance to his most sacred place. The room was semi-dark, but Gabriel didn't care as he reached for the purple butterfly broach he usually left in the room, before so carefully hiding it under his caravat. As soon as Gabriel heard the click of the pin being in place, he raised his arms.
“Nooroo, dark wings rise.” Gabriel shut his eyes and leaned his head back, waiting for the familiar feeling of being wrapped in a new suit, and a mask. But it didn't come. Gabriel slowly opened his eyes, finding the room still in semi-darkness, when he expected extra illumination from glowing white butterflies. “Nooroo!” Gabriel snapped, walking around the room, checking the usual hiding places when the Kwami felt reluctant to obey him.
In the darkened corners. Under the table the broach was usually kept on. Curled up on the bottom of the circular windowsill. Nooroo was nowhere to be found. “Nooroo?” Gabriel's voice became less irritated, more curious, and a tinge of worry.
Gabriel stood in the middle of his secret room, rubbing his thin jaw, musing to himself. “How strange. Last night was the Blue Moon, and I wasn't wearing the Miraculous...so where is Nooroo?” Gabriel searched the room again, still not finding his Kwami. “He's hiding on purpose, knowing full well this is the one time I might actually have the upper hand to get Ladybug's and Chat Noir's Miraculous.” His voice was irritated again.
Gabriel went to his office, an annoyed scowl on his face. He was pretty sure the little purple butterfly like being couldn't hide too far away. Gabriel peered under his desk, checked each drawer, but only found the organized neatness of his pens, pencils, papers, and magazines covering various aspects of fashion and business.
His scowl deepened. Gabriel walked over to a window, looking out at Paris. “Somewhere out there are Chat Noir and Ladybug, no doubt weakened somehow by the effects of the Blue Moon.” Gabriel planned to release more akumas, planned to use means to find the two heroes and take their Miraculous away from them. “This close to my wish,” the grown man grumbled. Only the deep gravel of his voice gave away the fact it was a man speaking and not some disappointed child.
Gabriel turned from the window, his elbow brushing against one of his potted plants. He glanced at it, then did a double take, then leaned in with his nose nearly touching the leaves. Leaves that were covered in hundreds of tiny little bumps. Little white bumps were the vast majority, but there was one little bump that wasn't white, in fact it was a very distinctive shade of lilac, the color Gabriel now associated with none other than the little being making his quest to find his wife possible.
“Nooroo?” Gabriel whispered to the little lilac bump in the middle of a leaf. “An egg? Seriously? You changed into an egg!?”
As expected, Gabriel didn't get a response. He sighed as he took the Miraculous off, depositing it for now inside the safe behind his wife's portrait. “Guess the Blue Moon still got to you too, huh?” Gabriel glanced back at his plants, seeing the eggs were gone, vanished just like Nooroo and his butterflies would normally when Gabriel was done being Hawk Moth for the day. “I'll see if there is any change tomorrow.”
When his son came back home after sneaking out of the house for nearly two hours, Gabriel knew a lecture was owed. Though, most of his own mind was elsewhere, but the lecture had been memorized and the tone of his voice was definitely still irritated, even if most of the irritation in that moment, was focused on a tiny lilac egg and not the blond haired boy in front of him.
The Second Day After the Blue Moon
The next morning Gabriel did his whole routine again. Shower, dressing, eating, reading, and eventually brushing his teeth. This day, there wasn't the aura of excitement about him, but of impatience. Hawk Moth wanted to see if Nooroo had returned to normal and that desire was fighting against his love of routine and order as Gabriel Agreste.
Trapped in his own mind, thinking of various devious acts he could inflict in order to obtain the Miraculous he sought, Gabriel didn't notice that all his son had for breakfast was a piece of toast and there wasn't a lingering smell of camemberet about him.
As soon as he possibly could Gabriel Agreste put on the broach, turning around with a triumphant grin on his face. Only to quickly have his jaw become slack with horror to see his office filled with his old plants, and a dozen new plants. He leaned in closer, finding hundreds of tiny white caterpillars, a handful or less on each leaf, thus more plants seemed to have been magically required.
As if to annoy Gabriel even further, the caterpillars seemed to be eating in unison, hundreds of tiny jaws biting into the leaves at the same time, creating a strange and annoying crunching and chewing noise which made Gabriel's left eyebrow twitch with each crunch.
He covered his ears trying to dull the noise as he looked at each leaf, trying to locate the lilac caterpillar. Of course, it somehow ended up being on the last plant he checked, on the complete other side of the room where he had found the lilac egg the day before.
“Seriously Nooroo!” Gabriel hissed before he nearly ripped his perfectly tailored shirt trying to remove the broach too fast. “I hate caterpillars.” The man shivered slightly, memories of the strange movements and the feeling of caterpillar feet crawling across his skin (in areas where no bug should ever crawl) haunting him momentarily, before he tucked the broach back into hiding and got to work. At least he knew time for Nooroo passed even though he wasn't wearing the Miraculous. Gabriel didn't know if he would have been able to stand listening the the crunching and chewing of the caterpillars.
The Third Day After the Blue Moon
Gabriel Agreste's routine was thrown off. His shower was only five minutes. He didn't bother adding gel to style his hair, and he ate less at breakfast, meaning he was able to brush his teeth nearly seven minutes earlier than usual.
He also stabbed his chest with the needle part of the broach, but that didn't matter as much as actually putting the broach on to check on Nooroo. Gabriel had shut his eyes, afraid to open them to see larger caterpillars roaming about, crunching and chewing noises even louder than before, but this time his ears were met with silence.
He opened his eyes, hopeful that all was back to normal and he could continue with his nefarious plans. Gabriel was left to recoil in shock at finding his ceiling, the undersides of the plants in his office, and basically the underside of any flat surface had chrysalises hanging from them.
Gabriel groaned. His eyes found the lilac chrysalis, hanging directly above his head, standing out against the sea of white ones. “If Ladybug and Chat Noir are half as frustrated as me, maybe they would just hand me their Miraculous to be rid of whatever they are dealing with.” Maybe it was his breath, or his tone of voice, or the aura of frustration coming off Gabriel Agreste, but the chrysalis must have felt threatened, since they all began to shake in unison, the rattling noise even worse than the chewing from the day before.
Gabriel ripped the Miraculous off his shirt, ruining a perfectly good, perfectly tailored, white shirt. But the chrysalises disappeared and left Gabriel in silence while he stewed in frustration.
The Fourth Day After the Blue Moon: AKA Eclipse Day
Eclipse day, the best day to cause havoc, when it was possible the little black Kwami was already causing chaos on his own. Gabriel woke up earlier, shaving off moments whenever possible, scowling at his email and newspaper even though neither were particularly upsetting. He brushed his teeth, nearly twenty minutes earlier than normal.
His long fingers grabbed the broach, pinning it on and Gabriel looked around his office. It was, thankfully, finally, normal. Gabriel grinned, nearly knocking over his chair as he hurried to his secret room, ready to finally put his plan into action.
The secret room glowed from the white butterflies, and Gabriel raised his arms. “Nooroo, dark wings rise!” There was triumph in his voice, and he closed his eyes waiting to become Hawk Moth.
Except it didn't happen. Gabriel opened his eyes, to find the purple butterfly God looking at him, blinking his lilac eyes at him. “Hello! You mean light wings rise. Ready to make some heroes today!”
“No,” Gabriel seethed, tired of the cruel joke the Blue Moon had played on him. “I mean dark wings, and I plan on making villains.”
“B-but,” the timid Kwami shrank back slightly. “That's n-not what I do.”
“I am your master, am I not?” Gabriel's fists clenched, watching the little creature squirm under his gaze.
“Y-yes... B-but, I don't, we d-don't make villains.”
“I have to reprogram you all over again!!” Gabriel shouted, smashing his fists into the little table where he usually stored the Miraculous. “You listen here you insignificant bug, we make villains so I can get my hand on the Miraculous of Ladybug and Chat Noir, so I can make a wish, do you understand me?”
“U-umm...” Nooroo was trembling, just like he had the first time Hawk Moth convinced him to help create a villain, not a hero. Gabriel sighed, running his hands through his hair, messing up the style he was always so particular about.
“You don't think it can be done can you?” Gabriel raised an eyebrow, remembering how he had explain to Nooroo the first time. It had taken weeks of short conversations and threats to get Nooroo to bend to his will.
So much for attacking while Ladybug and Chat Noir were vulnerable.
“I'll show you it can be done.” Gabriel set to work. Reprogramming a Kwami was hard work, and try as he might, the sun set after the eclipse and Gabriel Agreste still could not make a villain for the life of him.
The Blue Moon had foiled all his dastardly plans.