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Luka is on edge the whole way home.
“Viperion is coming to pick me up,” Marinette had said. He’s been thinking about the way she said it over and over. She’d said it so easily, but it was a lie. Why had she lied? He almost wanted to call her out on it, before he remembered where he was. Who he was.
Luka understands that everyone has their secrets, and he will never force her to tell him everything about herself. It has been clear to him from the beginning that Marinette has aspects of her life that she does not want to share with him or with anyone. Luka’s best guess is that she has some sort of prestigious celebrity client for her designs — someone who cares more about privacy than Jagged Stone. He doesn’t know for sure, though, but he definitely knows she’s hiding something. It had been clear on that day in the beginning, when she had run away from him after he had given her a ride to school. He can only assume that there’s a reason that he did not say her words when she said his. Whatever she’s hiding, whatever she is carrying, is something that Luka cannot help her with. Only Viperion can.
That had been a hard pill for him to swallow at first. In the beginning, he had felt much more himself with her as Luka than when he was transformed. Had her soul rejected his? Why did it only count when he dressed up as something else?
Maybe he gets it now. Marinette will always be late to events and leave them early. She might never stop making excuses about where she has been. She and Viperion have that in common. Maybe, though he does not know what she is hiding, he is one of the only people who understands.
Juleka keeps giving him weird looks on the metro home, but he cannot explain it to her. When Viperion had first revealed Marinette as his soulmate, Luka had expected his sister to connect the dots. But if she has, she has said nothing to him. He will not be the first one to say something, not when it would be betraying Ladybug. He owes her that much.
He can’t exactly pull out his second phone in front of his sister, so he waits until they get home to text Marinette. He bolts for his bedroom, grabbing his burner phone from his backpack. Too wired to sit down, he simply leans against his bedroom door as he sends her a message. Sass exits the bag and hovers around Luka’s head, silent for now.
to: LOVE OF MY LIFE AND ACTUAL SOULMATE!!!!!!!!!
Hey, I just got back from hanging out with my friends! Are you back from yours yet?
The text remains unread. Luka is not one to double text — he wants Marinette to reply to him on her own time, whenever she is comfortable doing so. However, this time, he considers sending a second one right afterwards. He just has this gut feeling that something is wrong.
Not knowing what to say in a follow-up text, Luka calls. The phone rings once, twice, three times, and then: “Hey, it’s Marinette! I can’t come to the phone right now, leave a message!”
It’s not that Marinette has never missed a phone call from him, because she has. Sometimes, she disappears for a handful of hours, but she usually gets back to him by the end of the day or, at the latest, by the next evening. Getting her voicemail in itself is not the end of the world, but it makes the pit in Luka’s stomach even worse. He hangs up without leaving a voicemail, not wanting to bother her.
He’ll fake sick to get out of dinner and he’ll make a house visit. The bakery should be open for another thirty minutes or so — maybe he can be one of the last customers, politely inquire about if Marinette has come home. She had clearly wanted to be alone at the bus stop so he will not say hi to her. As soon as they tell him that she’s okay, he’ll go home.
Is he spiraling? Is he being creepy? He can’t tell. His fingers itch to send her another text, but instead, he tosses the burner phone onto his bed and reaches for his guitar. He starts off playing a few notes, but that turns into Marinette’s song. The melody melts into his body and untangles the knotted ball of yarn that is his heart. After a few minutes, he feels calmer. Better would be too strong of a word.
“Marinette is probably fine,” Luka tells himself, but it still feels like a lie. “I should stay here and not bother her. I don’t want to be overbearing.”
Sass simply looks at him, perhaps finding issue with that notion. Luka stares right back and realizes that the idea of staying here is just too much. It’s his duty to protect Marinette, after all, and maybe that means pushing the boundaries sometimes. If it turns out that she’s having a peaceful night at home with her family, he’ll ask for her forgiveness. “I’m going to transform, go check on her,” he tells his kwami.
“I supposed as much,” Sass says. He doesn’t tell Luka that it’s a bad idea.
Before he transforms, Luka shoots Marinette one last text.
to: LOVE OF MY LIFE AND ACTUAL SOULMATE!!!!!!!!!
Hey, I’m a little worried. I’m gonna swing by the balcony. Sorry to drop by unannounced, I know it might be pushy, I just want to make sure that you’re alright.
Luka stares at the text after he sends it. It doesn’t deliver. Could her phone be dead from the beach day? What if she’s still walking home with no working phone? Or she’s somewhere with no service, which is equally scary, because that means she’s not home.
It just makes Luka’s decision easier. He opens his mouth to say his transformation words when both of his phones chime simultaneously. A moment later, he can hear chimes from the other room, suggesting that this is a region-wide alarm. It’s the akuma alert sound, and it makes his heart sink in his chest. No, no, no.
Except it’s not an akuma alert, merely a pop-up with a link. Before the link, there are two words.
For Viperion
Luka clicks the link.
The link directs to a video stream on a platform seemingly created just for this. There is no text chat, not like with the beauty live streamers that Juleka likes. The video takes a few moments to load and then starts playing. The stream is set up as security camera style footage, with multiple perspectives of the same location. There’s a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, even a bathroom with a camera recording the happenings within. At first, there is no one inside, and then —
The front door in the living room opens and two figures come in through it. The first is a man, taller than any human Luka has ever seen and glowing like the sun. He has a girl flung over his shoulder, but it’s not until he throws her onto the couch that Luka realizes it’s Marinette.
He almost drops his phone in shock but recovers it so that he can see what happens next. This can’t be happening, he thinks. His mind buzzes with all the potential horrors that this situation could entail. Surely that’s an akuma who brought her there. Sure, Papillon has encouraged akumas to burn Paris down, to hurt or remove what is necessary to get the Ladybug and Chat Noir miraculous stones, but he’s never… surely he would never hurt her in a way she cannot recover from. There are some things that even Ladybug cannot fix.
But Luka is not dumb enough to put any faith in Papillon. “I left her alone for thirty minutes,” he says, and he doesn’t realize that he’s trembling until the phone screen starts shaking. “I left her alone for thirty minutes, Sass.”
“She needs you,” his kwami says. Sometimes Sass is snarky or otherwise unhelpful, but he’s just serious now. “Notice the location in the livestream. Does anything look familiar?”
Luka looks. The camera in the living room — the very room that Marinette is in right now, talking to an akuma (alone, Luka’s head whispers, alone because you let her go) — also shows the window to the outdoors. Luka sees apartment buildings and streetlights. He notices a billboard, and even though it’s blurry through the camera, he recognizes a blond boy in white.
Adrien.
(A memory:
Viperion is walking Marinette home from the park and they pass an Adrien Fragrance advertisement. She looks up at it for a moment too long, with an expression on her face that Viperion finds himself disliking.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says. She turns to him, offering a reassuring smile. “You know, I had the biggest crush on him once.”
Once. Viperion had known about the crush from Juleka, of course, but hadn’t known its current status. “He’s a pretty cool guy,” he replies, though it’s a bit hard to force out of his mouth. “When did that end? Your crush?”
She tilts her head, considering. “A few weeks before you met me, I’d say.”)
There are ridiculous amounts of Adrien billboards throughout the city. What makes them even more ridiculous is that none of them are the exact same — different slogans, poses, and backgrounds make each of them unique. Luka imagines what that conversation in the boardroom looked like: “You will see my son’s face, and you will like it!”
He’s not sure exactly where Marinette is, but maybe if he can get there, he can figure it out. He sees the moment that she notices the camera. Her eyes widen in horror and her shoulders stiffen. The akuma is saying something but Marinette is still looking at the camera. Maybe it’s setting in for her, then, where she is.
Luka doesn’t realize the akuma has opened the door until Marinette starts to run towards it, and he can only watch as the akuma flings her across the room. Her back slams into the wall hard and the akuma draws his weapon. Instead of backing down, she starts cussing him out, calling him a “little boy". Luka’s proud of her resilience but mostly terrified by her lack of self-preservation. He knows that being passive is against Marinette’s nature, but he finds himself wishing she would be, just this once. Just so she could be safe.
The akuma must wish so too, because he shoots her with an arrow. Luka doesn’t even have time to freak out before the arrow melts like molten gold, and Marinette looks pained but not grievously injured. Okay. Weird magic arrows, then. It makes him think of Dark Cupid, and he can only hope that Marinette won’t hate him when he rescues her.
Because he will. He has to.
After he transforms, Viperion checks his communicator to see that Chat Noir is transformed, too. Once he’s away from the houseboat (surely it wouldn’t do for his mother to walk in on him while transformed) he sends Chat a call.
“Hey, man,” Chat says upon picking up. He doesn’t sound that calm either. Viperion has had limited personal conversations with Chat Noir, but sometimes, when the cat mentions Marinette, he wonders if they know each other. Now is certainly not the time to ask, and to be honest, Viperion doesn’t even care to. He just wants his girl back. “I just transformed — where do you want to meet?”
It’s rare to see Chat all business. Viperion had been expecting an are you okay but is glad that there isn’t one. He doesn’t know what he would say, not when the answer is obviously no.
Viperion gives him a location close enough to where he estimates Marinette’s location is and far enough to be out of akuma range. By the time he gets there, Chat is already present and pacing around a rooftop.
“Viperion, hey,” he says. Viperion realizes that Chat’s communicator is pulled up to the livestream. Chat looks like he is about to say something else, but he stops when he sees Viperion focus in on Marinette.
“No one is coming for me,” says the Marinette on screen, looking sad and resigned and oh, so tired. His heart hurts just looking at her.
I am, Viperion thinks. I’m coming. I swear it.
He swallows and it feels dry in his throat. If he has any shot at getting Marinette out of here by morning, they need to get started now.
“Have you heard from Ladybug?” Viperion asks, finally looking up at Chat Noir. Now, in close quarters, Chat looks exhausted. His face is pale and his eyes are sunken. Viperion isn't much better — he’d just spent all day at the beach with his friends and hasn’t slept at all. His body is begging him to rest, his muscles resisting with every step, but he just can’t. He’ll sleep when Marinette’s safe. (Even then, though, the idea of sleeping alone in his room after this seems impossible. If only he could sleep with her in his arms.)
No thinking about what happens after, he reminds himself. Find Marinette. Keep her safe. That’s all that matters.
“No,” Chat Noir says. “She’s not suited up and until she is, nothing’s going to go through.”
“So we need to save Marinette without Ladybug, then,” Viperion counters. “We can’t wait forever. What if Ladybug’s sleeping? I can’t wait until morning. I just can’t.” The idea of leaving Marinette alone in that place for hours could make him throw up. She deserves to be at home with her family, safe and protected. He had promised to protect her.
“Maybe she’ll come soon,” Chat Noir says encouragingly. “I know m’lady will come as soon as she hears the news. Maybe she’s taking a longer time than expected coming back into town?”
It is true that Ladybug is usually the first one on the scene. Viperion doesn't mean to make any criticisms of her character, (not yet, anyway) but it doesn’t stop his skin from feeling itchy and gross. It’s just not right, having Marinette in trouble. Viperion’s heart is in that apartment. The feeling is physically painful, as if he has had a limb removed.
“Well, fine,” Viperion says, again. “We still need to figure out what building she’s in. You see that Agreste billboard? I think that one’s just a few blocks down.”
Chat Noir scrunches his nose. “Can you tell them apart? The billboards?”
Viperion would be embarrassed if there was any space in his heart for it. The idea of being an Adrien Agreste superfan is a little nauseating, especially when that guy has brought Marinette so much stress. Not that it had been intentional on Adrien's part. “Only because Marinette can. He’s one of her friends.”
“Oh.”
On this billboard, Adrien is in the ocean, splashing water on the camera. He’s in his swimsuit with a tank top on, looking to the side and laughing. On the left side of the billboard is the newest Gabriel perfume that Viperion will always be too poor to purchase. Sometimes, the Adrien ads just say the Agreste name, but on this one, there are three words.
Take a chance.
Something about it frustrates Viperion beyond explanation. It’s as if its taunting him to go get her right now, to ignore Chat Noir’s request to wait for Ladybug. Viperion’s not stupid — Ladybug and Chat Noir respect his opinion, but he’s still the newest permanent hero. Orders are orders.
“You’re sure it was this one?” Chat asks. Instead of answering, Viperion reopens the livestream. Marinette is throwing kitchen knives at the security camera in the living room, knife block on the coffee table. She narrowly misses the first one and reaches for another in the block. He understands the sentiment — if that camera goes out, she can make an actual attempt to escape — but selfishly wishes she wouldn’t do it. It’s been reassuring, being able to check to make sure she’s still unharmed.
He swallows, shakes the thoughts out of his head. It’s not why he opened the livestream. He checks outside the window on camera — it’s the same design as the one in front of them. In fact, if Viperion squints, he can see the same brick background, and —
Two figures in front of the billboard, one vaguely blue and one vaguely black. It’s the two of them. He debates telling Chat to get out of the camera’s sight, but decides that they’re too far away to be identified. Viperion snaps his head and looks around at the surrounding buildings: an office building made of reflective glass, a short brick building, and a tall tower of concrete.
“I think it has to be that one,” Viperion says, gesturing to the tall tower. “With the angle it's at, she’s too high up to be in any of the other ones.” He can only guess what floor Marinette is in — maybe the tenth, the fifteenth? — but he has a pretty good estimate on what side of the building she’s in. He looks back at Chat. “I can’t wait for Ladybug. Not knowing that Marinette’s in there.”
He expects some pushback, but Chat just nods. He even has the decency to look ashamed when he says, “I really thought she’d be here by now.”
Viperion understands. Ladybug is the shotcaller, the rational one. Chat respects her, maybe even loves her. If she were here, chances are, Marinette would be at home safe by now. But she’s not here, he thinks, and that’s when the anger sets in. She could have fixed this all by now and she’s just not here.
He’s angry with himself for putting Marinette in this situation in the first place. He should have revealed himself as Luka right then and there, should’ve never brought up this stupid superhero-civilian relationship idea. He thought she’d be safe — that Ladybug would help keep her safe.
He’s an idiot. He’s put Marinette in irrevocable danger — danger that won’t cease until Papillon is defeated.
“Surely we can’t just walk in,” Chat says.
“It’s definitely a trap,” Viperion replies. “But he’s nowhere to be seen, for all we know, he’s on the other side of Paris. What else do we do besides go in?”
Chat doesn’t seem to have a counter for that, so they head for the front door.
The first time, Apollogy shoots Chat with an arrow before they even fully get through the door. Viperion resets.
The second time, he gets thrown down a stairwell and lands knees first. He resets before the pain can set in.
The thirteenth time, Apollogy dangles Chat by his ring. Viperion resets as Chat’s finger slips out, both of them with their eyes shut.
The hundredth time, they make it up multiple floors. They must get too close to Marinette, because Apollogy disappears further into the building. Viperion resets as soon as he hears her scream, unwilling to see what’s happened to her. He spends the next thirty resets recovering from the adrenaline rush and the failure, resetting at every missed dodge.
The next few hundred tries, they get no closer to Marinette. Eventually Viperion loses count. He gives it a few more tries after that, but eventually, he knows there is no hope. “It won’t work, Chat,” he says. “We need to figure out something else.”
“No, we can do this,” Chat says, oblivious to the thousands of attempts and the hundreds of times he’s been wounded. Oblivious to the fact that they’ve done anything at all. “If Marinette’s in there, we have to try.”
Viperion doesn’t like the idea of walking away from Marinette. But walking towards her hasn’t helped, either.
“I’m sorry,” he says. His bracelet is already beginning to beep. “But it won’t work. We tried everything more than once and I’m out of time. We just need a new plan.”
While they’re sitting outside arguing about whether to leave, Apollogy tires of waiting for them. Viperion hears footsteps as the apartment complex door rattles. You can’t win this, he reminds himself, grabbing Chat by the wrist and running.
Apollogy curses, clearly having wanted to lure them into the same hopeless battle they’ve done hundreds of times, unbeknownst to him. Viperion assumes that they are being let go until something pierces his back. He stumbles, almost sending Chat to the concrete as well.
“Oh man, are you okay?” Chat asks, stopping to check on him. “Are you gonna go all berserk on me?”
“Why did you stop,” Viperion says, all one breath, and then they’re running again.
“That was too reckless,” Sass tells him as soon as they’re alone. His kwami is eating all the gummy snakes in Luka’s bag, the tail of one sticking out of his mouth. “You did what Apollogy wanted.”
“I know,” Luka says. He certainly had been acting recklessly, and he still feels the remnants of that in his fast heart and itchy skin. “I need to refocus. I’m just having a hard time.”
“The arrow you were shot with,” Sass says. “Do you know what it did to you? The air around you has changed. I can taste it.”
“I know,” Luka says again. On Apollogy’s livestream of Marinette, Luka heard the gist of the villain monologue imparted upon her. If he checks his right wrist, he should see new words. Words that will be the last words Marinette says to him, not the first. “That won’t help me refocus, Sass.”
“Perhaps,” Sass says. “Perhaps it will remind you what you are fighting for.”
Luka pulls out his phone. There are no messages from any friends or family, but that’s not too surprising considering the hour of night. Hopefully Marinette will be home safe or sound before anyone wakes up. Speaking of, he thinks, and navigates to Apollogy’s livestream. It’s still live and with more viewers than before.
Marinette is standing in the living room, surrounded by shards of glass or maybe ceramic. She is hovering over a box — no, not a box, a knife block — and retrieving a knife from it. For a second, Luka forgets how strong she is, but then she hurls the knife at the security camera and he’d be an idiot not to remember.
He flinches as the knife bonks off the camera. From his phone’s livestream, it looked to be headed straight towards him. Nothing about the video quality changes, so he suspects the knives will do nothing. A selfish part of him is relieved, since at least he can still keep an eye on her, but he can’t imagine what it must be like, stuck in there for the world to see.
Luka exhales, mind made up, and looks at his right wrist.
In Marinette’s pretty handwriting, it says “I’m so sorry.”
Viperion is still thinking about it after transforming back. Typical Marinette, apologizing for whatever their end will look like, especially since he’s probably going to be the dumbass who gets himself killed. When he finds Chat again, he’s talking to a girl — no, a woman, older than them.
Katerina is an eighteen-year-old genius with old glasses and space buns. She’s also one of the shortest people that Viperion has ever met, probably about Myléne’s level. “Thank you for letting me talk to you,” she says first. “That Apollogy guy? His name’s Warren. He’s in my biochem class. I think I’m the reason that he’s, well, like this.”
His whole body is screaming at him to leave this conversation and go back to Marinette, but he can’t deny that information like this will be helpful. “Can I ask what happened? Between you?”
Katerina tells him a story about an inappropriate classmate, a shared pencil, and weeks of harassment that followed. She tells him about the worst month of her life, and Viperion thinks he must be a really bad superhero, because all he can think about is the fact that Marinette’s stuck at that guy’s mercy. At least he remembers to thank Katerina for sharing.
Tikki is nicer than Sass, but equally as straightforward. Viperion is still processing the fact that he’s meeting Ladybug’s kwami when she tells them that Ladybug’s not coming.
“Is she okay?” Chat asks. “It’s not like her to be unavailable during something like this.” Viperion is inclined to agree with him.
“She’s fine, don’t worry,” Tikki says. He wonders if she always sounds so cheerful. “She’s just, well, wrapped up in something!”
“She’s still out of town, then?” Viperion asks.
“I’m sorry, Viperion, but she just can’t be here right now,” is the reply. He reads past the dodged question. So no. Ladybug’s back in town and still isn’t here.
Chat seems to take that as a full answer, already planning their next move, but this whole thing is doing something funny to Viperion’s gut. He shows up to akuma fights even when he’s wrapped up in things all the time. He cancels gigs and hangout sessions with Marinette, precious as they are, when the akuma alert sounds. Of course he doesn’t want Ladybug to be sick or hurt, but what is so much more important than Marinette?
“We’ll have to do it without her,” he says. There’s no other choice, but it’s not like he and Chat had made any progress earlier. They hadn’t known how persistent Apollogy would be, not before speaking with Katerina.
There’s an idea. “Apollogy is obsessed with Katerina,” Viperion says. “I’m not going to put her in danger, but Apollogy doesn’t need to know that.” They’d walked into his trap earlier and now it’s time to make one of their own.
Chat looks skeptical but listens to his plan anyway.
Katerina goes to hide out at a friend’s while Viperion and Chat broadcast that she’s at her totally-not-a-trap dorm room alone. All they’d needed was the confirmation that Warren doesn’t know her address and they’d set the whole thing up. Chat should be there now, baiting Apollogy, while Viperion gets to go find his girl.
He passes the dozens of cops loitering by the building's entrance. We can’t enter, they say, boss’s orders. But they tell Viperion that they think they’ve got Marinette’s unit number locked down, so at least there’s that.
The building is silent when he enters. Everyone who isn’t Marinette has long since been evacuated, and hopefully Apollogy isn’t even in the district. He takes the stairs two at a time, unwilling to get stuck in an elevator but knowing it’s a long way up.
He expects interruptions, minions, but there’s just silence. It gnaws at him, makes him wonder if Marinette’s even still here at all. Has she stopped throwing knives and shattering ceramic? Is she still fighting to escape, not trusting him to come get her?
Almost there, he thinks, and then he is. There are two doors on this floor, and one of them is still open, probably abandoned in the evacuation or disrupted by Apollogy. The other one is shut, but Viperion doesn’t need to look twice at the unit number to know she’s in there. He just knows.
He should probably take a second to compose himself, or breathe at least, but none of that matters. He just opens the door.