Chapter Text
“Relax, Adrikins,” Chloé said, exasperated, tugging Adrien’s hood back from his face. “No one’s going to recognize you.”
Adrien scowled at the nickname and pulled the hood of his dark sweatshirt back over his head, glancing around quickly to see if anyone was looking. No one was.
“No one even knows you exist,” Chloé continued, adjusting her jacket. Adrien was pretty sure she was carrying a gun underneath it, but he didn’t want to ask. He didn’t need to know.
“Not so loud,” Adrien hissed, shoving his hands in his pockets and hunching over a bit.
Chloé sighed. “Adrien, honey, you’re making yourself look more suspicious.” She reached a hand up to his head again, but Adrien swatted her away. “Fine, fine. But keep your head up and stop looking around so much. You look ridiculous.”
Knowing that Chloé was probably right, Adrien tried to relax and walk as if he were just another person on the street. Which he was. He had to remember that. Still, he couldn’t help but notice a group of people standing in front of a cafe, whispering as he and Chloé approached.
“What are you—” Chloé followed his gaze. “Oh. Don’t worry about them. They’re looking at me, not you.”
Sure enough, as they passed, Adrien caught a murmur of “Queen Bee” and his shoulders instantly relaxed. Of course. They were looking at the famous superhero walking next to him, not Gabriel Agreste’s secret love child. He really needed to chill out. No one knew who he was. To everyone but the girl walking next to him, he was completely anonymous.
Holding his head up high, he walked down the relatively busy sidewalk with Chloé, trying not to gawk at everything around him. He’d never been in this part of the city before. He’d never been in any part of the city, except for the neighborhood where he lived, and only at night. Here there were so many sounds and lights and people, all going about their daily lives. Into and out of shops, cars, people finding and losing each other. Adrien simultaneously marveled at how much people were getting done, and wondered how on earth they could possibly get anything done.
It was incredible.
“Hey!” Adrien was about to step off a curb when Chloé forcefully yanked him back by the back of his jacket. “That’s the road! Do you want to get hit by a car?”
“Sorry,” Adrien said, only now noticing that everyone else around them had stopped to wait at the corner as the vehicles on the road zipped past.
Chloé shook her head at him, but she wasn’t actually mad. “What would you do without me?”
“Well, I’d still be stuck in my house, for one.” Adrien still couldn’t believe that Chloé had managed to bully his father into letting him out of the house—on the condition that she accompany him in case anything were to happen. As an experienced fighter and powerful prodigy, no one could argue that Chloé wouldn’t make a good bodyguard.
“Damn straight.”
The light changed, and the people waiting at the corner all stepped off the curb and walked in front of the cars, which were now at a standstill. Adrien looked inquisitively over at Chloé.
Chloé rolled her eyes and looped an arm through his. “Yes, now we can cross.”
Well, it wasn’t his fault that he’d never crossed a busy street before.
They were halfway across the street when Adrien heard it—a loud crash, not far away, coming from behind them.
He stopped in his tracks and turned around. “Did you—”
“Don’t stop!” Chloé tugged on his arm.
“But—”
“I know, but you can’t stop in the middle of the street!” Chloé grabbed his hand and they ran.
Another crash, louder this time, followed by several screams. People around them froze and looked around, unsure where the commotion was coming from.
Chloé cursed and lifted her wrist to her mouth, pulling Adrien down the street as she spoke into her communicator. “Send team communication. Emergency on Magnolia Street, near the train station. Most likely an akuma. I need backup.” She pulled Adrien with her into an alley, where most of the view was blocked by towering signs and random debris, where people had dumped their unwanted belongings.
Adrien turned away as Chloé started yanking off her clothes and shoving them into her bag. He peeked around the corner. Car alarms were blaring, and people were running in every direction, as if unsure where to go for safety.
He’d only ever seen akuma attacks on the news, safe at home. None of them ever seemed to stray into the area where he lived. He certainly hadn’t expected to be caught in one on his first day out of the house.
“Stay here,” Chloé said. Adrien turned towards her just in time to see her put her black domino mask in place. She was dressed in her Renegades uniform—a yellow and black bodysuit, black boots, and fingerless black gloves. It was the first time Adrien had seen her wearing it in person. She’d put it on in record time. She must have been wearing part of it under her street clothes.
As Adrien watched, she raked her hands through her hair, pulling it into a tight ponytail, then slung the belt holding her holster and ammo over her shoulders so it rested crosswise over her body. “I’ll come get you as soon as it’s safe,” she told him, tossing him her bag. “Don’t lose that. And stay in hiding!”
Before Adrien could protest, Queen Bee was gone, running down the street towards the commotion.
Adrien clutched the bag to his chest, listening with all of his might. He couldn’t see anything from the alley—and he didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
There was a loud thump from the street and Adrien jumped, retreating farther back into the alley. He watched the entrance, not daring to move—
A streak of green ran by, and Adrien released the breath he’d been holding. Carapace had been running fast, but Adrien had still recognized the green hood and shield. It looked like the rest of Queen Bee’s—Ladybug’s—team was showing up. He hoped the Renegades could take care of it quickly. And that his father wouldn’t decide that Adrien should never be allowed out of the house again, for “his protection”.
A crash sounded, much closer than before, and out of instinct Adrien threw himself to the ground, curling up in the fetal position and covering his neck and face with his arms.
The windows in the building next to Adrien shattered, glass smashing into the opposite wall and sprinkling the alley with razor-sharp shards.
As soon as Adrien deemed it safe, he carefully lifted his head, heart pounding wildly in his rib cage. He couldn’t stay here. The supervillain was getting closer.
Slinging Chloé’s bag over his shoulder, Adrien peeked out of the alley just long enough to make sure it was safe (or as safe as it could be expected to be), then he ran down the street.
He only made it a hundred yards before deafening footsteps overtook him. A shadow fell over him as he whipped around, staring up at the towering purple monster of a person leaning over him threateningly.
Adrien fell back against the wall behind him. There was nowhere to go. Would he be smashed? Grabbed? Thrown? Would his neck snap? Would it hurt?
Farther down the street, Renegades were yelling, but they hadn’t caught up to the supervillain yet. They wouldn’t get here in time.
My father was right, Adrien thought helplessly as the purple giant leaned down, monstrous hand reaching to grab him. His entire body felt strange. Tingly. Especially his hands. Was this what it felt like when you knew you were about to die?
Screams. Car alarms. His eyes were closed—or were they open? Adrien didn’t know. There was no one in sight. Adrien pressed his palms flat against the wall behind him—and then there wasn’t a wall. He was falling, then he tumbled to the ground, face up.
A giant fist punched through the wall above him. There was a shout, and a flash of light, then it retreated.
The building creaked. There was something wrong with the wall. It was turning black, disintegrating. Turning into dust. Cracks ran along the plaster, turning into fissures that spread threateningly.
There was a deep thud from outside, and the entire building trembled. A light fixture crashed down and shattered on the floor. Adrien backed up, looking around frantically, but there was no way out. The building was going to give. And Adrien was trapped.
He tripped blindly over a chair and grabbed the table for support—only to watch in horror as the wood crumbled in his hands. He yanked them back, but the table groaned and collapsed into a pile of debris.
Adrien didn’t think. He couldn’t think. As the ceiling finally started to come down, he turned and ran, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He dove underneath another desk, curling up tight and squeezing his eyes shut.
Plaster rained down. Chunks of concrete smashed inches away from him, gouging holes in the floor. Something hit the table above him and it cracked. It wasn’t going to hold. It wouldn’t hold the weight of the ceiling collapsing above him. It wasn’t going to—
The noise suddenly ceased. There was only silence.
No, that wasn’t true. Adrien could still hear the yells of the Renegades, the howls of the supervillain. But inside the building there was only stillness.
Adrien dared to open his eyes and found that the entire building was glowing with swirling red light.
Ladybug.
Adrien couldn’t see much past the rubble from underneath his desk, but as he watched, the light flickered over the cracks in the wall, bouncing from ceiling to foundation, sealing them up tight. There was a loud groan, as if the building was settling back down, then the light faded away. The building was still riddled with holes, and Adrien was trapped by huge amounts of rubble—Ladybug must not have had time to completely fix the building—but the ceiling was no longer in danger of collapsing on top of him.
Adrien tried to turn around, but he was trapped on all sides by the desk he was under and a particularly large chunk of rubble.
He pushed against the concrete with his shoulder, but it didn’t budge. It probably weighed a ton. There was no way he’d be able to move it. His breath quickened, and he felt sweat drip down his temple. He couldn’t get out.
He could wait for rescue—he was supposed to wait for rescue. It probably wouldn’t be long.
But he could feel his heart racing. He didn’t like small spaces—had never liked them. He hated the feeling of being trapped. Of being stuck.
He shoved against the concrete, harder this time, but it didn’t move. Adrien pushed harder, starting to panic. Sweat beaded at the back of his neck, and he pounded against the desk, but to no avail.
Almost without thinking about it, Adrien lifted his hand and pressed it against the concrete. It immediately cracked where he touched, and crumbled away enough to let Adrien shift it out of his way as he crawled out, panting.
His sleeve was ripped, and his hands were riddled with scratches. Adrien almost laughed to see that he still had Chloé’s bag slung over his shoulder. Then he imagined Chloé’s reaction if he had lost it, and he actually did laugh. Much too high, and he couldn’t stop. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he was freaking out, but he didn’t know what else to do.
He had to get out of here.
Adrien hauled himself to his feet and carefully picked his way through the halfway-collapsed building. He had confidence in Ladybug’s ability, but he wasn’t ready to tempt fate so soon after his brush with death.
Heart pounding in his ears, he ducked through a hole in the wall. The supervillain was a block away, thrashing and trying to knock a red spotted superhero off of its back. Ladybug. Rena Rouge was running after the supervillain. Adrien didn’t see Carapace, but there were glowing green force fields scattered along the street protecting the buildings and any lagging civilians. Queen Bee was nowhere in sight, and Adrien hoped desperately that she was okay.
The supervillain roared. Changing tactics, it reached down and grabbed two cars parked on the street and lobbed them both in Adrien’s direction.
One of them sailed straight towards him, and Adrien scrambled back. He only made it a few steps before he tripped and fell to the ground, barely catching himself. The sidewalk immediately blackened and cracked. Adrien quickly rolled to the side, scooting himself away.
He raised an arm, bracing himself for the impact, but it never came. Ladybug leapt from the supervillain’s back to a nearby roof, braced herself against a chimney, and threw her grappling hook, catching the airborne car by the bumper. The cord pulled taught and the car crashed harmlessly into the empty street, thirty feet away from Adrien.
The other car landed squarely on one of Carapace’s force fields over the building by Adrien, and he watched the Renegades turn away as soon as they saw that it hadn’t hit or trapped anyone.
But that wasn’t quite right. Adrien could see that the smashed car was slipping, sliding ever so slowly towards the street, where a few families stood huddled, waiting for the attack to be over.
Carapace and Queen Bee were nowhere to be found. Ladybug and Rena Rouge were busy with the supervillain. No one else was within earshot. There was no one to help. No one knew what was going on.
“Move!” Adrien yelled. The group looked over at him curiously. He waved frantically at them. “Get out of the way!” He started sprinting towards them, but no one moved. They were frozen with fear, or maybe confusion. The car made a screeching noise as it slipped farther down.
Adrien ran, not towards the group, but towards the billboard towering over them, shielding them. With a yell, he extended his hand and planted it on the beam holding it up.
The metal rusted immediately, dark fissures spiraling outward from his hand. With one shove, Adrien tipped the sign over. It came crashing down amid a series of ear-splitting shrieks, hitting the building next to it and shielding the terrified civilians.
Not a moment too late, the car finally slipped and tumbled down the side of the forcefield, hitting the billboard hard enough to dent it.
Adrien sagged against the broken beam and gasped for breath, careful not to touch anything with his hands. Wide eyes peered at him from underneath the shadow of the fallen advertisement. Fear. Of him? Of the near miss? Adrien didn’t know.
Adrien suddenly realized how quiet the street was, and he glanced up. The supervillain was gone. The Renegades must have released and destroyed the corrupted butterfly while he was distracted.
There was a movement out of the corner of his eye, and Adrien turned to see Ladybug standing half a block away with her grappling hook dangling from her hand. Her hood blocked her eyes from Adrien’s view, and her spotted mask covered the bottom half of her face, shielding her expression from Adrien. But she was looking right at him.
Adrien froze. How well could she see him? His hood was up and he was standing in the shadows a hundred feet away, but that didn’t mean anything. Was he going to get in trouble? He’d destroyed the sign to protect those people, but did she know that? How much had she seen?
The wind picked up and Ladybug’s hood fluttered. They made eye contact for an instant, then Adrien turned and ran.
Queen Bee caught up with him a few blocks away, stepping out in front of him from an alley and catching him around the waist with one arm as he bolted past her. She was much stronger than she looked, but Adrien was heavier and had more momentum, so he blew past her, almost knocking her over before he skidded to a stop.
“Woah, there. What the hell?” Queen Bee rubbed her arm and scowled at him. Adrien noticed that her bag was slung over her shoulder with her ammo belt. He must have dropped it when he fell trying to avoid getting crushed under the car. “What is wrong with you?” She reached towards him, but Adrien yanked his hand away.
“Don’t touch me.”
Queen Bee retracted her hand, and Adrien could see that she was hurt. But he wasn’t going to risk turning his only friend to dust.
“What’s going on?” Queen Bee reached towards him again, but Adrien shrank away and clutched his hands to his chest, careful not to touch. He couldn’t touch. He couldn’t—
“God, you’re shaking. Come here.” Queen Bee looked around, then led him into the nearest shop, which happened to be a cafe. It was deserted.
Queen Bee sat Adrien down at a table and pulled a chair over so she could sit next to him. “Do you need to go to the healers?”
Adrien shook his head.
“You’re okay, honey. We took care of it.” She reached for his hands, but Adrien yanked them away. She couldn’t touch him. He couldn’t touch.
Queen Bee shifted and instead started to rub his back in slow soothing circles. “Adrikins,” Queen Bee said calmly. “Everything’s okay.” For some reason, the nickname he’d hated since childhood did something to steel his nerves.
“I’m a prodigy,” Adrien whispered.
Queen Bee stilled. “A prodigy?”
“I destroy anything I touch.”
Queen Bee sucked in a breath. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Show me.”
“What? No!”
“Adrien, you have to show me.”
“No! I don’t want to touch anything! What if it gets out of control? I can’t—”
Queen Bee grabbed him by the shoulders. “Adrien, calm down or I will paralyze you and drag you to the healers.”
Adrien shuddered and shut his mouth. He had no doubt Chloé would follow through on that threat. He’d never been on the receiving end of Queen Bee’s paralyzing touch—and he’d like to keep it that way.
“There we go.” Queen Bee picked up a menu from off the table and tried to hand it to him.
Adrien just scowled at her.
“Adrien,” Queen Bee said warningly.
Adrien, still frowning, reached out and grabbed it. The paper instantly darkened and turned into dust.
“Oh, wow,” Queen Bee said. She brushed a finger through the dust and inspected it. “I’ve never seen a power like that.”
“See?” Adrien said. “How am I supposed to touch anything without destroying it? I won’t be able to do anything ever again.”
“Oh, that’s what you’re worried about?” Queen Bee asked. “Don’t be so dramatic. That’s my job.” She plucked a napkin out of the dispenser on the table and held it out to him. “Superpowers are always overwhelming at first. You know that.”
Adrien just looked at the napkin skeptically.
“Go on,” Queen Bee urged when he didn’t move.
Adrien sighed and took the napkin. It crumbled into dust.
Queen Bee didn’t seem discouraged. “You’re hyped up on adrenaline still,” she told him. “Try to calm down.” She took another napkin.
It took three more napkins, but on the fourth try Adrien had managed to get his heart rate under control, and when he took the napkin carefully from Queen Bee’s hand, it didn’t darken or disintegrate.
Queen Bee smiled. “There we go. I knew you could do it.”
Adrien let out a breath, making the napkin in his hand flutter. Okay. It wasn’t as bad as he was imagining. He could touch things without disintegrating them.
The communicator band on Queen Bee’s wrist chimed, lighting up briefly, but she ignored it. “We should take you home.”
The napkin in Adrien’s hand crumbled as he snapped his head up. “We can’t tell my father,” he said urgently. He’d just gotten the tiniest bit of freedom, and he knew Gabriel wouldn’t hesitate to take it away. Whether it was because his son had been in danger or because his son was the danger, it didn’t matter. “My father will never let me out of the house again.”
Queen Bee muttered some very not nice words under her breath. “Okay,” she said after a second. “Hold on.” Angling herself away from Adrien, she pressed the top of her communicator band.
“Queen Bee? Where are you? We need to debrief.”
Holding the band up to her mouth, Queen Bee said, “Sorry, Ladybug. I’ve got a bit of a…” she glanced sideways at Adrien. “Family emergency. I can’t debrief today.”
There was silence on the other end for a second. “Okay. I guess I’ll tell them I dismissed you.”
“Thanks, Ladybug. And I need to ask a favor, but you can’t ask any questions.”
There was a much longer pause this time. “What is it?” Ladybug asked cautiously.
“When you debrief, don’t tell them I was the one to call in the alert.”
Smart, Adrien thought. As a member of the Renegade Council, Mr. Agreste would know that Ladybug’s team had been called in today, but if he didn’t know Chloé was the one to do it, there was no reason to think Adrien had been in danger.
“Alright.”
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
Ladybug just sighed. “Yes, you do.”
“See you tomorrow.” Queen Bee ended the call. “There,” she said. “Good?”
Adrien blinked from where he was still staring, entranced, at Queen Bee’s communicator. “What?”
Queen Bee rolled her eyes. “Oh, get over yourself.”
“That obvious, huh?”
“Just don’t go thinking you’re special. Half the city has a crush on her.”
“Including you?”
Queen Bee stuck her tongue out at him.
Adrien grinned, but it faded quickly. “You won’t tell anyone?” he double-checked.”About my power?”
“Who would I tell?” Queen Bee asked, pulling off her domino mask and putting it in her bag. “I’m one of like, five people who even know you exist.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I won’t tell. Pinky promise.” She held up a pinky, but Adrien shook his head. “Sheesh. I hope you’re not going to refuse to ever touch anyone again. That could get awkward.” She pulled out her ponytail and shook out her blond hair, running her hands through the black streaks. Five of them.
Chloé didn’t like to talk about how she’d got her power. The one time she’d brought it up to Adrien, she hadn’t even told him what the trigger was. All she said was that she’d paralyzed five people in self-defense when she was six years old, and for each person, a black streak had appeared in her hair. Those first five people had never regained their mobility.
Adrien didn’t know if Chloé could still permanently paralyze someone, or if that was just a first-time thing. As far as he knew, she’d never done it since. Paralysis usually wore off anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours. And he knew she wouldn’t permanently incapacitate someone like that, even if she could. So did it really matter whether she could or not?
“If you really want to hide your power, you’ll need much better control over it,” Chloé said, snapping Adrien’s attention back to her. She had taken off her boots and gloves and was pulling on her street clothes over her bodysuit. “I can help you train.”
Adrien hesitated. Honestly, that sounded pretty appealing, but did he really want that? Wouldn’t it be dangerous? Not that he knew what that training would even be.
“Don’t make that face. I train tons of dangerous prodigies at Headquarters. Renegades who are way too volatile, or civilian prodigies who need better control over their powers.”
She had a point, but Adrien wasn’t quite ready to commit yet. “I spend a lot of time with Catalyst,” he pointed out. Nathalie was his father’s second-in-command, co-founder of the Renegades, a member of the Renegade Council, and one of the few people who knew of Adrien’s existence. When she wasn’t working with Gabriel Agreste at Headquarters, she was at the Agreste Mansion, tutoring Adrien. “Even if she doesn’t enhance me, just being near her could make me a lot more dangerous.”
“All the more reason you need to be properly trained. And if things get out of hand, I’ll just paralyze you.”
For some reason, that last bit made Adrien feel a lot better. “Thanks, Chloé.”
“Anytime, Adrikins.”