Chapter Text
The walls curved above and around him in smooth, pitiless glass.
“Come on, kid. Breathe.”
He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
“You can breathe. Deep breaths, Adrien. In and out, like this.”
Just beyond the curve above him he could see faces. Hovering over him, silent, eyes staring, always staring.
“Don’t pass out on me, just hold on.”
The first shovelful of dirt scattered across the dome of the glass coffin.
A sharp pain in his finger brought Adrien back around, gasping for breath. Plagg was hanging off his hand, fangs still clenched in his index finger, staring at him with wide, green eyes.
Adrien brought a hand to his chest. His heart was hammering so hard he couldn’t take a breath, and his vision was fading at the edges. His hands were numb, his arms were weak, and his head was spinning.
Plagg zoomed up into his face, resting his paws on Adrien’s cheeks. “Take a deep breath, kid. You can do it. In and out, come on.” He sucked in a deep, theatrical breath—for a kwami—and blew it out. The stench of camembert flooded Adrien’s nostrils, and he tried to anchor himself to that.
“Five things you can see, Adrien. Come on.”
He knew this. They’d been through it before. “Plagg?”
“That’s good, yeah. You can see me. What else?”
Adrien’s eyes scanned the room. He knew where he was. He knew he was in his room in the Dupain-Cheng home, knew he was sitting at his desk where he’d dozed off while planning his mother’s memorial service. His mind knew all of this…but his body thought he was locked in a glass coffin being buried alive.
Like she was…
“Adrien!”
Plagg’s voice brought his focus back, and he concentrated. “It’s blue? The, the walls?”
“Good, good. What else?”
It was easier now. His bunk bed. The patterned curtain in front of the closet. The folded clothes on the dresser he hadn’t put away.
He could hear the rumble of traffic outside. The murmur of voices in the bakery. The faint music from the headphones he’d been wearing when he fell asleep. The flutter of a bird just outside the window.
Plagg walked him through the rest of it. Three things he could touch, two he could smell, one he could taste. Slowly the world seemed to fade back in like normal. He blinked a few times and rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Sorry, Plagg.”
“Wanna tell me what that was about?” Plagg demanded. “You were snoozing, then suddenly it was panic city.”
Adrien groaned and covered his face with both hands. “It’s the same dream I’ve been having since the funeral.”
“Same nightmare.”
He nodded at Plagg’s correction. “It’s me in the coffin, but it’s the coffin from the basement. And I’m still alive when they start to bury me.”
Plagg sighed. He nestled up on Adrien’s shoulders, rubbing the top of his head along his jaw. “Kid, your mom was already gone,” he said gently. “I swear to you, there was nothing more you could have done. She was already gone.”
“I know.” He rested a hand on top of Plagg, squeezing his eyes shut. How long had she been down there, below the manor? Her body kept alive by his father’s machines, kept pristine in that glass coffin?
He knew it was nothing but her body, just the empty shell of Emilie Agreste, but burying her had been the hardest thing he’d ever done.
“Maybe you should take a break from this?” Plagg suggested, floating down to land on the program Adrien was drafting for the memorial service.
Adrien shook his head. “It’s okay. I want to do this.” They’d had a small graveside service for his mother, but it hadn’t felt like enough. He’d wanted…something else. Something more. Some way to show his love for the woman who had brought him into this world (one way or another).
It was Luka who’d suggested the memorial service. Adrien could play some of the music she loved, and those who had known Emilie—or even just knew about her—could have a few words to say. Adrien’s aunt, Amelie, his mother’s twin, wanted to sing one of her favorite songs. Even Félix, his cousin, wanted to participate.
“It’s almost time for patrol,” Plagg reminded him. “You’ve gotta take a break sooner or later, kid.”
He leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “We’re supposed to meet Nightlock today.”
Plagg wove a lazy circle in the air above Adrien’s head. “That’s not my problem.”
“Yeah, you don’t have to listen to her. Always ‘you two take too many risks’, and ‘you told me you captured the villain in eight minutes, but it was eight-point-two’.”
The kwami snorted and landed in Adrien’s hair. “If she’s that bad then just quit. We’ve never needed the other heroes before.”
Adrien shook his head, wincing when Plagg hung on to his hair to keep from being tossed off. “Ladybug wants to keep working with her.”
“So? We can go rogue!”
He reached up and caught the kwami, pulling him down to eye level. “Do you think that’s a smart move when we live in her house?”
Plagg stuck his tongue out. Adrien rolled his eyes and stood up from his chair, grabbing his jacket on the way out. “I guess a little walk couldn’t hurt. You coming?” he called over his shoulder.
With his kwami nestled under his collar, Adrien waved to Marinette’s parents as he made his way outside into the Paris sunshine. In the months since he’d come to live with Marinette’s family, he’d started to adjust to a quieter, slower pace of life. He’d stopped modeling, except when his friends asked him, and his new therapist had recommended he let himself heal a little more before returning to fencing (the idea of a masked figure lunging at him still made him nervous). But Aunt Amelie had found him new Mandarin and piano tutors, so he was able to keep learning with those.
There was just enough time to walk through the park near the bakery, taking in the sights and sounds of the afternoon, before he ducked down an empty alleyway to transform into Chat Noir. Then he was up the walls and over the rooftops to meet Ladybug on Marinette’s balcony.
She was already waiting for him, checking something on her compact. “Nightlock hasn’t cancelled the meeting yet,” Ladybug said with a sigh when Chat Noir landed.
He rested the end of his staff on the ground to lean against it. “We could always ditch?”
Ladybug rolled her eyes and snapped her compact closed. “Come on. We’d better meet her.”
Chat Noir let her lead, enjoying the freedom of running across the rooftops with Ladybug. It wasn’t that they didn’t like their liaison to the United Heroez, it was just that Nightlock had a habit of treating them like kids sometimes. And sure, they were just teenagers, but they’d also been protecting Paris for over a year now without any outside assistance.
It was one thing when Majestia stepped in with her knowledge or skill to help capture a foe they’d never faced before, but Nightlock wasn’t even a frontline hero. She first appeared four or five years ago, and usually just provided information and technical assistance for heroes operating in the UK and western Europe. Her base of operations was somewhere close to Paris, so she was the one who kept in contact with Ladybug and the other Miraculous users, as well as transporting any superpowered enemies they defeated.
“There’s her van,” Chat Noir said, pointing to the nondescript black vehicle heading for the alley near their meeting place.
“She’s right on time,” Ladybug replied with a sigh. “Let’s get this over with.”
Chat Noir grinned and started to extend his staff to jump to the next roof, when a burst of unseasonably cold wind swept along the street. He ducked down, bracing Ladybug with an arm around her waist when her feet started to slide. “We’ve got company,” he announced, sharp eyes already picking out the cloaked figure on a rooftop across the street.
“Two over here,” Ladybug replied. “Looks like they’re—get down!”
He dropped flat onto his back, pulling her on top of him, as an icicle shot past them. “Talk about the cold shoulder,” he quipped as she rolled away into a crouch. He grinned when Ladybug groaned, then leapt out and over street, dodging another icicle. “I count five!”
“Me, too! Do you see Nightlock?”
Chat Noir spotted the van. It had stopped in the middle of the street, ice spreading over the hood and grill. He twirled his baton around to deflect another icicle and ran for the van, coming around the back corner just in time to see a sixth cloaked figure wrenching the driver’s side door open.
“Ice to meet you,” he yelled, slamming his staff against the ground to launch himself feet-first at the cloaked figure. “But keep your hands to yourself.” The cloaked figure staggered away, and Chat Noir glanced up to check on their liaison. “You okay in there?”
“You’re early,” she panted. She was dressed the same as ever, in a black armored suit with a deep cowl and a goggled mask covering her eyes. Only her mouth and chin were exposed and a few whisps of blonde hair that never seemed to stay under the hood. “Thank god.”
“Who are these guys?” he asked, taking a defensive position in front of her.
“We arrested their boss about six weeks ago,” she replied, grunting as she tugged at her seat belt. “I didn’t think they’d target me—do you mind?”
He sliced through the belt with his claws, and Nightlock was free to pull herself out of the van and stand beside him. “So, you put their boss on ice?” he asked.
“Locked up in the deep freeze,” she retorted. Chat Noir grinned. It wasn’t always someone tried to match his pun game.
Chat Noir saw a blur of red out of the corner of his eye and turned the other way, deflecting a kick from one of the cloaked baddies. Ladybug took up her position behind him, both of them shielding Nightlock. “We need a plan,” she announced.
“That’s usually your forte, Milady,” Chat Noir replied. The guy he was fighting swung a haymaker at him, and he ducked down enough to plant his shoulder against his solar plexus and drive him back. “We got six of ‘em. Any ideas?”
“Eight,” Nightlock added wearily. She pointed up, and now he saw two more poised on another rooftop. One of them had what looked like a cannon on his shoulder, and as they watched he fired another icicle toward the heroes.
Chat Noir dove to the side, nearly colliding with the man he’d been fighting. Ladybug managed to shove Nightlock out of the way before the icicle hit, so that it missed them and embedded itself in the dashboard of Nightlock’s van.
“We need to stop the cannon,” Ladybug shouted. “Chat?”
“Got it!” He dropped low, kicked his opponent’s legs out, then followed it up with an elbow to his neck, knocking him senseless. He jammed his baton against the ground and shot himself up and over in an arc, watching the man with the cannon track his movement.
Nightlock screamed a warning, and Chat Noir looked down to see her racing down the street towards another member of the gang, who was leaning on the hood of a parked sedan with another cannon pointed right at him. He twisted in the air as the cannon fired, and the icicle caught him along the side instead of impaling him.
He dropped. Their suits offered some protection from harm, but a four-foot icicle fired out of a bazooka was going to do damage no matter what. Chat Noir tried to catch his breath, to catch his balance. He’d lost his trajectory toward the guys on the roof, so the best he could do was land awkwardly on a light pole.
Nightlock was wrestling the guy with the bazooka, and it didn’t look like she was winning, so Chat Noir launched himself away from the light pole and toward her. He saw the man wrestle the bazooka out of her hands and smash her across the face with it, and then Chat Noir was on the roof of the sedan aiming a kick at the cloaked figure’s face.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She flinched back when her goggles sparked. “Just hit the equipment. Ladybug?”
Ladybug was nowhere in sight. She was making a plan and counting on him to be a distraction. “Get on my back,” he said, dropping to the ground next to Nightlock and kneeling in front of her. “We’ll make a run for it.”
“I don’t think so!” Nightlock backed away. “I’m taller than you, kid. In case you forgot.”
“Well, I’m stronger than I look,” he replied, winking over his shoulder. “Besides, they’re after you.”
Before he could say anything else, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and threw himself up and back, knocking Nightlock off her feet and curling over her as best he could. The icicle skimmed across his shoulders, knocking the wind out of him.
Nightlock groaned as her head bounced on the pavement. She said something in German that Chat Noir was almost certain was a curse, then pushed him away to roll to her feet. “This is getting ridiculous.”
“Close your eyes!”
At Ladybug’s familiar voice, Chat Noir shut his eyes and brought his arm up to cover them. Even with that, he still saw the bright burst of blinding light.
From the yelp beside him, Nightlock hadn’t listened to Ladybug’s warning.
He spotted her then, at the end of the street. She had a big camera in her hands—red and black spotted, of course—and some sunglasses from one of the street vendors on her face. He ran toward her, shoulders lowered, easily tripping one of the half-blinded cloak guys who staggered into his path.
“You should have said freeze,” Chat Noir complained as soon as he reached her, diving forward to knock down one of the cloaked men who had stopped to rub at his dazzled eyes. “Y’know…instead of cheese?”
She probably rolled her eyes, but he couldn’t see behind the sunglasses. “Let’s put the puns on ice, shall we? Ready to do this?”
Chat Noir grinned. The guys in cloaks were starting to pick themselves up, and he turned his back on Ladybug as she raised the camera again. The flash sent his shadow running out in front of him, and for a moment he saw into the deep cowl of the closest of the gang. It was just a guy, with a little blond goatee and one of those thin black masks over his eyes. He stopped to cover his face, cursing in English, and Chat Noir took the opportunity to whack him on the back of the neck with his baton.
He didn’t want to risk hurting the guy more than necessary, so he just hit hard enough to stun and swept his legs out from under him. The guy was down for the count, but just dazed and not unconscious. It was risky, but Chat Noir really didn’t like hitting people like this with his full strength. They didn’t even have any powers, as far as he could tell. Just numbers and some fancy guns that shot ice missiles.
Speaking of…he dodged to the side, the icicle barely scraping his ankle as it flew by. The street lit up with the flash again, and Chat Noir used the confusion to race forward. With Ladybug at his back, he didn’t have to hide his eyes every time she used the flash on her camera…though he wished the Lucky Charm had brought something more practical. Just once, couldn’t it give them a straightforward solution?
“Look out!”
The sudden roar of a motor nearly overpowered Ladybug’s shouted warning. Chat Noir dived to the side as a motorcycle shot past, its driver wearing a familiar cloak. Another followed it. Chat Noir climbed to his feet, just in time to see the lead biker swerve to the side to make a grab for Nightlock.
“No!”
Nightlock had dodged back, but the second biker spun around behind her. He got an arm around her waist and hauled her up, scattering bits of stone as he gunned his engine. Chat Noir grit his teeth and sprinted toward them, using his staff to leap up in an arc, but the motorcycle was already speeding away with its struggling passenger.
He landed hard, still running, and something slammed into his shoulders from behind and sent him rolling. The roar of another engine filled his ears as a hand grabbed his collar, and he made a grab for the arm holding him as the man lifted him a few inches off the pavement.
“Time for a ride, kitten,” the man holding him sneered, revving his engine.
Then he was off, dragging Chat Noir with him, following Nightlock’s captor, leaving Ladybug behind.