Chapter Text
A new school year has started, and our protagonists are no longer high school freshmen! Yaaaaaay. Yuzuriha can hardly believe she’s been Carmine for an entire year already. Plus, things are only going to get more intense, because Kaseki has decided to pass on the role of the Guardian to her!
At least it’ll make it much easier for her to distribute Miraculous to on-call heroes now. And luckily for Yuzuriha, the Miraculous Box manages to camouflage itself just fine amongst her craft supplies. She is going to have to rearrange her snacks budget though. Oh, but she can make SO many more tiny outfits for them now!
But before Yuzuriha can go fabric shopping again, she has an interview to get to. Yes, even though Chrome is very successful with CarmiNews, the regular news stations do get to do interviews with the heroes on occasion. Minami will be interviewing them in a much more formal setting than Chrome’s usual setups too (ie. the heroes sit on a park bench while he points a mic at them), so Carmine is just a teensy bit nervous. Kurodora tells her to relax, it’ll be just like when Chrome does it, just stuffier.
However it is distinctly not like Chrome does it, in a very particular way. Minami’s boss still wants her to dig deep for information that not even Chrome would be able to get, and Minami herself is a bit uncomfortable with the questions, which get into personal life stuff like families and dating.
Frustrated with the network pushing her to unethical means and ends, Minami is reakumatized into Newsflash, while a nearby television screen turns into a sentimonster called Televicer (Televisor + Vice) that can show her a live feed from security camera drones, making her very difficult to sneak up on.
Carmine concludes what they need is some help. She thus approaches Gen, who was also slated for an interview with Minami.
Gen is extremely surprised that Carmine would want to recruit him after the Kyūbi situation. Carmine says his creativity in that fight is precisely why she’s asking for his assistance.
“Asagiri Gen, this is the Miraculous of the Fox, which grants the power of Illusion. You will use it responsibly, and return it when the job is complete. Can I trust you?”
“From a man who lies for a living, it might not seem like much,” Gen says, “But you have my word.”
He takes the box and opens it. Out pops Trixx, and Gen yelps.
“Oh my goodness! Now that is certainly not stage agic-may!”
“Hey there! I’m Trixx, and I’m your kwami!”
“A kwami?” Gen taps his chin. “It sounds an awful lot like kami, wouldn’t you say?”
“Buddy, I’m older than the concept of language,” Trixx says. “Anyway, to transform, just say ‘Trixx, let’s pounce!’”
“Alright Trixx.” Gen grins in an almost sinister fashion, touching the pendant in an elegant pose. “Let’s pounce.”
With a swish and a flick and a bow, Gen transforms. His outfit looks something like a magician’s coat, and he wields his flute a bit like a wand.
Being an adult, the new Fox hero can create as many illusions as he wants, and he uses them to distract and confuse Newsflash, often with a bit of humorous flair. When Newsflash demands to know what’s going on, the orange clad hero appears before her with a smirk.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Kitsune, the master of mental trickery!”
Newsflash is defeated, and Gen remarks that it was a lot of fun to use his talents not just to entertain, but to save people. Carmine agrees with the sentiment, though she privately thinks about how Gen might not consider it nearly as fun if he had to do it all the time. Say, why can’t she just give people Miraculous to keep?
Tikki reminds her that keeping more than two active Miraculous out at once is a security risk, since the more people they trust, the more people there are for Sphinx Moth to target. Yuzuriha acquiesces, though she’s starting to think that being unable to confer with Kurodora in civilian form is more of a hindrance than a help.