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Hawk Moth had reasons to watch Adrien’s class more than anywhere else in Paris. For one he wanted to make sure Adrien was alright. Two, teenagers were full of hormones and easy to akumitize emotions. Least important but most potently, high school was possibly the most important time in his life. Memories that he indulged to remind himself of his quest.
Harp flashback music
Once there was a French boy with outdated glasses, too many books and pencils to fit his threadbare bag, bargain bin clothes that he took apart and restitched by hand, and a hopeless crush on the most beautiful girl in school. Poor, thin, shy, artistic, and full of dreams he’d been an easy target his whole life and learned to cope. For the first two months of freshman year he avoided confrontation by making himself quiet and small, keeping his drawings out of sight, and never lingering after the bell rang. Until one day he stayed behind to spy his crush at basketball practice.
Foolishly too busy sketching athletic wear that would match her hair, he didn’t notice three boys approach him. They pushed him down, stole his drawings, and knocked his glasses off his face. Their taunts were inconsequential in comparison to what happened next.
“Hey! What are you doing!” Through blurry vision it may as well have been an angel come to his rescue. “Leave him alone!”
“We’re helping you, Emilie.”
“He was following you.”
“Yeah. Look at all his creepy drawings.”
The sound of ripping paper made him wince. Then he winced again as his heroine’s fist connected with the bully’s face. More shouting as he scrambled to save his glasses from being stepped on.
“Wimp needs a girl to protect him!” one of the boys gave a parting shout.
“Says the one who just got his butt kicked by a girl!”
He put his glasses on, bringing Emilie’s too beautiful for words face into focus. “Are you alright?” She crouched next to him.
“Yes. Thank you.” He blushed and hid it by looking down to collect his sketches.
“Don’t listen to them.” She offered him the torn pages. “I think you’re really talented, Gabriel.”
Harp music
“Come on.” Teenage Emilie unlocked her family’s garage and waved Gabriel inside. “There are always interesting things in here.”
“Are you sure your father won’t mind us looking?” Gabriel eyed the shipping crates nervously.
“Don’t worry.” Emilie took his hand and led him to the back. “He keeps the jewelry and small pieces in the back.”
They sorted through carefully wrapped antiques. A dented ring, a tarnished pocket watch, a cracked pair of spectacles, and other things Emilie jokingly modeled and suggested he make a dress to match. Inside a larger crate, inside a box of sawdust, Gabriel found an intricately carved, hinged box. He opened the lid to find a padded interior and a book.
The binding looked hand sewn, the pages unfamiliar material. “Emilie, do you know what language this is?”
“I don’t recognize it.” She looked over his shoulder. Gabriel carefully turned through pages of drawings, diagrams, and strange letters. “It almost looks like an ancient designer’s portfolio.” Emilie pointed to the one variation of a red and black spotted outfit.
“It’s fascinating.”
“If you like it, it’s yours. Happy birthday.” Emilie beamed at him.
“What?”
“You didn’t think going through dusty junk was your only present, did you? What kind of girlfriend would I be?”
“But this is your father’s.”
“Don’t worry, all the expensive things are in his safe.”
“Still…”
“Look, the old man and I have an arrangement.” Her happy smile turned bitter. “He gives me anything I want and in exchange I don’t tip the authorities that ‘antique dealer’ really means ‘smuggler’.”
“This is stolen?!”
“Probably not, most of what he buys is cheap junk to hide his real business.” She waved at the crates around them. “He doesn’t mind if I take things from here. He keeps a better eye on the hot merchandise.” While not entirely comforting, Gabriel accepted the gift.
Harp music
The doorbell rang. Mother muttered something incoherent from the couch. Gabriel went to the front door and opened it when he saw who it was. “Sorry for dropping by so suddenly.” Emilie apologized.
“What did the bastard do this time?”
“Nothing, I just don’t want to deal with him.” She eyed Gabriel’s mother, and her scattered wine bottles, with equal distaste as he spoke of her father.
“A year until we graduate.”
“Less than that until you get your big break.” She smiled at him. Gabriel chose not to restart the old argument of how good a designer he was vs how he needed more confidence.
They tiptoed around Gabriel’s mother and closed themselves in his bedroom. “Do you still have that book from last week?”
“Of course.” Gabriel produced the box from under his bed. “Why?”
“Apparently it’s worth more than I thought.” Emilie frowned at it contemplatively. “Dad’s throwing a fit that it’s missing.”
“It’s stolen?”
“I told you, he keeps the stolen merchandise in the house.” Emilie set the book aside and turned the box over in her hands. “He just has a buyer on the hook for this one.”
“We stole it.”
“He’s told me before I can take anything from the garage I want. That’s verbal consent for me to take it from MY house. He’s just being a pain. Besides he doesn’t suspect us. He’s blaming his source.”
“I’ve done some research.” Gabriel decided to trust her. “The paper is handmade. At least a hundred years old. The box looks newer.”
“The hinges aren’t even rusted.” Emilie agreed. She measured the sides with her fingers. “Is it just me, or is this edge wider than the other?”
They spent twenty minutes experimenting to find a hidden latch. “Artists eye for detail,” Emilie complemented as Gabriel pulled open the secret drawer. Inside were two pins. They barely got a good look at them before they started to glow.
Thus began the hero careers of Hawk Moth and Lady Blue. Not that their names were ever released to the public. Two more anonymous heroes in the history of the world. Everywhere they went, and they went many places thanks to Gabriel’s vault to success, they quietly saved lives, stopped natural disasters, once prevented a civil war, and did what they could to make the world a better place. In twenty-five years a only few blurry photos of them ever made it into newspapers and that’s how they wanted it.
Harp music
“Nooroo, what do we do he’s getting worse?” Gabriel demanded of his Kwami. Emilie said nothing. She solemnly replaced the cold packs in Duusu’s makeshift nest. Duusu, inhuman creature that he was, was a good friend. He’d been with them through the start of their careers, international travel, their marriage, and most recently the birth of Adrien; all while giving them the power to save lives anonymously. Now the tiny peacock god shivered uncontrollably from some magic fever.
“I don’t know,” Nooroo squeaked. He fluttered about in distress. “When one of us became sick The Guardian or one of his assistants would preform a magic ritual to make us better.”
“And you never saw what it was?”
“I wasn’t allowed to watch. I’m just a kwami.”
“How can you ‘just’ be an ancient god of magnificent power?” Emilie asked.
“Because we’re powerful The Guardian always kept secrets from us. We aren’t allowed to know how to access all our abilities.”
“Are you sure it can’t be in this book?” Gabriel knew they couldn’t read it but he was out of ideas. They had already tried various healing spells they had looked up online or in the library.
“That’s the grimoire of transformations. Recipes. I don’t think it’s in there.” Nooroo was just as distressed. Duusu hadn’t eaten in days. In or outside his stone didn’t seem to help. They made him a bed of towels in a basket and tried to regulate his temperature.
“He can’t actually die, can he?”
It turned out Duusu could die, or at least, something close to it. They turned their backs on him for a moment and he disappeared. His gemstone remained in full color, as if he were inside, but no matter what they did, Dussu didn’t reappear.
After some consideration, they decided it would be okay for Emilie to transform without Duusu. Gabriel never made a worse mistake in his life. Without a kwami to sustain it, the miraculous drained the human wielder. At first the symptoms were mild or went unnoticed. Then they were misdiagnosed, Emilie was tired all the time, maybe she was pregnant again. Even after they realized the cause, Emilie wouldn’t give up. She was kind, if there were lives to be saved she would suffer a cough. Each transformation became harder, took more out of her. Gabriel finally made her stop by locking away the miraculous.
They never thought the symptoms could be terminal. A few months rest and Emilie would be back to normal.
She never recovered. The broken miraculous had drained away her very life force. Eventually Emilie fell asleep and didn’t wake.
Something in Gabriel died too. Emily had been his rock for most of his life. He couldn’t live without her.
The miraculouses killed her for being a hero. If he Gabriel could melt the jewels to slag and kill their useless guardian in retribution he would.
He raged at Nooroo, called him a traitor, demanded he bring her back. Nooroo knew so little of the power of the miraculous, only one thing. The first two, most powerful gems. The power of creation and destruction were forbidden to be wielded by one person because whoever held both could rewrite the laws of reality. From what Gabriel could decipher of the grimoire, Nooroo was right.
“Please Gabriel, don’t do this.”
“Nooroo! Don’t you dare address me as if we are friends! Emilie is dead because of you!”
Nooroo shrunk away as if struck. He gathered himself then spoke again. “Master, the magic will have a price. I can’t be sure but it would probably cost a life to save a life.”
Gabriel considered this for a moment. “Your guardian then.”
“Master?”
“The inept man who lost the two of you in the first place. Without his failure none of this would have happened, Duusu would still be alive.” Gabriel hardened his resolve. “His life for Emilie’s, that will be justice.”