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“Father,” Adrien asks, tentatively cautious. “My class is running a club that I would like to join. It will run after school for two hours on Tuesdays, so it doesn’t interfere with my usual schedule. It will not be affecting my homework or my grades.”
“What is it for?” Gabriel asks. He doesn’t know when Adrien grew into someone Gabriel no longer knows how to interact with. He feels lost sometimes, stuck without a compass. The only constant he has left is villainy, but it isn’t a good constant to have left.
“Nathaniel and Marc are running a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.” Adrien smiles, as though he’s happy that Gabriel is asking these questions instead of outright saying no or yes. “They want the entire class to be involved.”
“That’s...rather ambitious of them, isn’t it?”
Adrien shrugs. “I know that both of them are creative enough to pull it off. And I really want to be there.”
And then it clicks. Dungeons and Dragons is a storytelling game. It is only a matter of time before someone gets hurt, and teenagers are always ripe prey for akumatization.
“You may go. Enjoy your...game.” It comes out incorrect, but he knows that it’s good to let Adrien have fun from time to time. It keeps him motivated to do the things that aren’t quite as entertaining, he imagines.
“Thank you, Father!” Adrien is so excited that he ends up jumping out of his chair, leaving his dinner behind altogether.
Gabriel just shakes his head and finishes his own dinner.
***
On Tuesday, Hawk Moth stands in his chamber with the butterflies. He holds a dark one in his hands, prepares to release it.
There’s a flare of negative emotions.
He lets the akuma out and directs it towards the session.
“Your story begins in a forest,” one of the leaders (Dungeon Masters) says. “You are all wandering randomly in the forest, when you hear the sound of an axe falling against a tree. What do you do?”
The emotions are gone, as he recognizes that they’re swept in the story.
“I assume it’s just a logger trying to cut down a tree, and move on,” one girl, the goth, says.
“This is the Forest of Indestructible Trees,” the other leader says. She’s wearing a pin that reads “elle”, so despite the cognitive dissonance… “Yet you continue to hear the sound of an axe meeting wood.”
“Then he’s running a fool’s errand,” one of the others pipes up.
“Well, I’m going to tell him,” Adrien says. “Perhaps I can even help a bit.”
“You’re a level one Paladin. You can’t just persuade the tree to fall,” one of the other party members says.
“Well, then, I’ll take my friend,” Adrien puts his arm around a friend's shoulder, “and we’ll try and talk to him and persuade him otherwise.”
“Well,” the first leader says, “you’re going to need to find the person responsible first. Roll for Perception.”
“Thirteen plus two. Fifteen.”
“Also fifteen. Twelve plus three,” Adrien’s friend — oh, that one — says.
“Both of you find the woodcutter. They let out a yell of frustration and swing again. What about the rest of you?”
“I hear the scream and walk over, but I don’t want to be noticed by any of them.” Hawk Moth notices the screen covering her portion of the table, similar to the ones the leaders of the group have. There’s some kind of a secret involved there. He vaguely recognizes her, but he can't quite remember.
“Roll Stealth.”
“Sixteen,” she says, letting the dice go. But her hands cover it before anyone can see the number, so he can’t know what the roll was.
He could go fly over her shoulder, but he doesn’t want to draw too much attention to the butterfly.
“You make it over to the clearing unnoticed by the woodcutter and the other party members.”
It’s silent for a few moments.
“Since none of you want to take agency, the rest of you are all together at the time, having just come from the town outside the forest. The village has said that there was a person attempting to chop down one of the trees of the forest,” the other DM says.
“There are a lot of people here,” one of the students points out. “Are you sure you don’t want some of us to leave?” More bold than he would expect from the one he typed as the shy girl.
“No!” one of the DMs answered. (He really needed to learn all of their names. He made a note to ask Adrien when he got home.) “We want to have everyone included, no matter what.”
“Or at least as many as we can,” the other one says. “We’re going to try. And if you want to speak up, you can always tell us.”
Well, at least this would be entertaining.
“Back to the show! What are you going to say to the person?”
Adrien looks over at his friend. His friend quickly speaks up. “What...what are you doing?”
“‘Can’t you see I’m trying to cut down a tree?’ the character answers, grunting in frustration,” the red-headed DM dictates.
“Don’t you know this is the Forest of Indestructible Trees?” the pink-haired girl pipes up, sounding bored. “Why are you trying to cut down trees here, of all places? I thought all the professional loggers would know better.”
“Roll Intimidation.”
“Eleven.” The girl sighs.
“‘I know where we are. And I’m not a professional at this,’ the logger answers.”
“I don’t think trying to intimidate them is the best way,” the one with a robot hovering nearby says. “We need to talk them down, or find out why they’re doing this.”
The group eventually gets out of the logger that they need some wood from the forest to appease a god that sent them to do tasks. Ten of them.
“Sometimes,” one of them says, “there must be branches that fall off the trees sometimes, right? Or like, dead wood that fell off.”
“I enter the clearing,” the designer girl - he remembers better now - says. “And I hold out a branch of wood.”
“‘Thank you,’ the logger says.”
“I ask them, ‘which deity are you indebted to?’” she says softly.
“Roll Persuasion.”
“Eighteen.” She grins.
The entire party looks at her. “Wait, where did you come from?” the girl sitting next to her says, in-character.
“It doesn’t matter.” Designer girl shrugs. “All that does is that I have what they need. Wood from the Forest of Indestructible Trees, yeah?”
“‘The deity’s name is Nilone,’ they say. ‘And it was wood from the forest. How did you get this?’”
“Wood from the forest. Not necessarily from the trees. This is from the bush I was cowering in.”
“That’s very clever of you,” Adrien says. “You don’t need to hide from us.”
“I wasn’t sure how I would be received. Half-elves aren’t exactly well-received in human or elf lands. And…” Designer girl looks a little sheepish. “It took me a little bit to think of that workaround. I wasn’t even sure if it’d work, but if it’s just wood from the forest...this is wood from one of the plants in the forest, not necessarily the trees.”
“We could use someone like you hanging around,” pink-haired girl says, and then turns to speak to the DMs. “And we want to stay with you and help you through your tasks.”
“‘You technically aren’t allowed to help me,’ they confess. ‘I’ll have to grab my own branch from the bush. But I could use some escorts. I’m not the greatest of fighters.’”
“Then we’ll help train you,” the girl sitting next to the designer girl says. “And we’ll defend you from whatever might be on the road. But we won’t help you with the tasks themselves.”
“‘That sounds good to me. I’m Winter,’ they say to you. And then you all hear a growling noise from nearby.”
“Can I roll Investigation to see what it is?” designer girl asks.
“Go ahead.”
“Thirteen.”
“It’s a mountain lion, but there’s something else about it that you can’t quite put your finger on. But then it approaches you, and you see that its eyes are glowing red. It’s been possessed. Roll initiative.”
And, in that moment, he finally gets why Adrien would enjoy something like this.
Over the coming weeks, he learns the class’s names. Marc, the DM with the shifting pronouns. Nathaniel, the other storyteller. The two of them appear to be in a relationship. Marinette, the plucky designer with a secret around her character. Alya, the girl sitting next to her, playing a character that’s part-dragon. Nino, Adrien’s best friend, playing a musician. Fitting. Juleka, the one that wears purple and black. Alix, the pink-haired girl. Max, the one obsessed with probability. Kim, playing a reckless fighter. Rose, playing a character darker than he imagines most would expect from her — but the personality of her character is light and optimistic despite being a former assassin. Ivan, the overly large one that was his first target. And Mylene, the most soft-spoken of them.
He also grows more invested in the task — how they defend Winter as they perform their tasks for a deity that none of them know (though he agonizes over the right person with a History check identifying what Nilone presides over — there’s a cleric in the party, you never know if the deity is the right domain and the cleric could just...contact them or something).
Gabriel also starts to put himself more in Adrien’s life. Coming to his events in-person, making a statement by sitting in the bleachers for a fencing match.
It’s fun. And he...realises, astoundingly, that he hasn’t akumatized anyone in weeks. Not since all this started. He hadn’t realized, between his own work with the company, being in Adrien’s life...it has left him with barely any space to be a villain.
Nathalie approaches him one day on that very subject. “Are you still going to look for people anymore, sir?”
Somewhere along the way...he let it go. And he doesn’t know when that happened.
He needs to get back on it.
Thankfully, he knows today is the last session — and he knows there will be plenty of feelings that result from that.
“Storyteller,” he says to Marc, flying into the pencil as they were walking to the bathroom, alone. “I am Hawk Moth. I know you are devastated that this story is coming to a close. So I give you the ability to make your stories come to life—”
“Marc?” He hears Marinette come around the corner. The connection flickers. “I—you know, most of us are down to run another campaign, yeah?”
And he loses the connection entirely to the sound of a pencil dropping.
He can’t. He can’t do this anymore.
“I would like to offer you an apology, Adrien. I have neglected my duty as a parent, and that has become more and more apparent since we lost your mother. Emilie is very dear to me. But I need to acknowledge that she will not return, no matter what I seek in my quest.”
Adrien looks shocked. “I…”
“You do not have to forgive me, not straight away. I know that it can be difficult to forgive. But I will continue to take care of you and wait as long as I need to for you to accept my apology.”
“You...were Hawk Moth, weren’t you? And you wanted the Miraculous to bring her back.” Adrien’s voice wavers a bit, and Gabriel briefly wonders how Adrien put it together — but Adrien is intelligent in a lot of ways.
“I was.”
“Then renounce your Miraculous and that of the Peacock. And whatever else you may have. That’s my condition. And don’t...fall back. It’s been amazing to have your support.” Adrien swallows. “I need some time.”
That is perfectly fine. What even is the point of keeping the Miraculous if he doesn’t want to bring Emilie back?
Ladybug. Chat Noir. This is a public announcement, brought to you by the person that used to be Hawk Moth. I will be leaving the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculous, as well as the original copy of the grimoire, at the base of the Montparnasse Tower at midnight tomorrow.
I sincerely regret my actions. To all those whom I have hurt, you do not have to ever forgive me. But I would prefer to keep my anonymity. The humiliation of realising that those around me have handled what drove me to villainy better is more than enough punishment. The look on my son’s face when he realised what I had been doing is punishment enough for me. But if you do want more justice, I will not fault you for looking for evidence on the book and the Miraculous.
Hopefully, you will reclaim them, and they will be in the rightful hands from now on.
-U.P.