all there is to lose

by Sadwinistic

Summary:

A week before Adrien Agreste’s 17th birthday, his mother, Emilie, disappears. It's a week and a half before his father, Gabriel, says a word to him, before his father leaves his office, before his father even looks him in the eye.

Adrien’s birthday goes by without any word from either of his parents. At Crystal Cove High, no one except for Chloé knows that Adrien's mom has gone missing. Chloé is the only one who gets him a gift for his birthday.

It is a week after Adrien's turned 17 and a week after his mother has disappeared when he finds the note she left.

*Find the pieces of the disk and destroy it.*

No word as to why she left, how she did, if she would be okay—only something about finding a disk.

———
that scooby doo au i’ve been talking about on tumblr

you do NOT have to be familiar with the scooby doo mystery incorporated show to read this fic!!

Notes:

the rating and the archive warning may adjust if i decide to throw in some graphic violence, but otherwise this fic is teen and up. also there’s no posting schedule, this fic might be updated twice in one week or once in a three month period with no in between. :)

anyways i hope u enjoy <3

Chapter 1: chapter one

A week before Adrien Agreste’s 17th birthday, his mother, Emilie, disappears. It's a week and a half before his father, Gabriel, says a word to him, before his father leaves his office, before his father even looks him in the eye.

Adrien’s birthday goes by without any word from either of his parents. At Crystal Cove High, no one except for Chloé knows that Adrien's mom has gone missing. Chloé is the only one who gets him a gift for his birthday.

It is a week after Adrien's turned 17 and a week after his mother has disappeared when he finds the note she left.

Find the pieces of the disk and destroy it.

No word as to why she left, how she did, if she would be okay—only something about finding a disk. In anger, Adrien runs from his house and into the streets of Crystal Cove, looking for something, anything, to distract himself from his mother.

He finds himself at the Dupain-Cheng bakery, where the owner’s wife asks him if he’s okay. He says that he isn’t, but could he maybe buy a croissant? She says that yes, of course he can. He searches for his wallet, knows that he had it on him recently, but realizes that he must have left it with his backpack at home. Awkwardly, he smiles at the owner’s wife, explains that he left his wallet at home, and says—"Perhaps another time, then."

The owner’s wife stops him before he can leave. “You go to school with my daughter, don’t you?"

Adrien tries to keep his face from reddening. "Yes, I know her. Marinette." Know her is an understatement. He watches her every day, waiting for her to look back at him. He’s been in love with her ever since she stood up for him during recess in third grade when Kim and Max were making fun of his bowl cut (which, admittedly, he didn’t count it against them—it was an awful haircut). Chloé had had a dentist appointment that morning, and Marinette was the only person who made any move to do anything. "S-she’s in my history class, and Chem. Oh, and Homeroom. And English. Really, she’s in almost all of my classes." Mission failed. Adrien’s face feels abnormally hot by this point.

"What’s your name, dear?" the owner’s wife says.

"Adrien," he murmurs, scuffing the toe of one of his shoes with the other.

The owner’s wife smiles, a little knowingly. "Take one, then. A croissant. On the house."

Adrien’s eyes widen and he looks up at her. With his mouth open, he stumbles back, and nervously his shoulders creep near to his ears. His mother would have pushed them back down, whispered for him to relax. The muscles in his upper back clench and his shoulders rise higher. "No, no, really—it’s fine. No worries."

"Please, Adrien," the owner’s wife says.

After a long moment, his mouth twists with uncertainty. He nods. "I’ll pay you back, next time. Double."

The owner’s wife laughs. "I’ll tell you to keep it."

"I’ll put it in the tip jar, then," he says, relaxing the slightest.

She smiles, and there’s a twinkle in her eye. "Alright. Take one, then."

He does. He also smiles at her, and thanks her profusely, and even when he walks out and is across town and almost back to his house, the croissant is still warm by some sort of magic.

Adrien thinks the magic might be kindness.

~*~

When he finds his mother’s note, he only tells Chloé. Who else could he tell? His father doesn’t speak to him for a week, so that doesn’t give him any opportunity to show the man. His father’s assistant, Nathalie, is always busy, and so is the bodyguard. Adrien doesn’t have any other friends at school.

But Chloé doesn’t know the first thing about solving a mystery. Neither does Adrien. So Chloé helps him make a poster to put up in school. And it’s simple, really—his phone number and the title ‘Mystery solver(s) needed, ASAP’—but it makes him feel a little better.

It’s two days before they get a call. Adrien is at Chloé’s house, and they’re watching The Princess Bride. The lights are out and it’s almost seven p.m. They both jump at the sound of his loud ringtone, but he reaches for it almost immediately and picks it up with a breathless hello.

“You need some mystery solvers, right?” a girl’s voice says. It’s a familiar voice, too, to Adrien. His heart sinks a little, though, knowing that it isn’t his mother on the other end, seeking to console her son after her disappearance—or, God forbid, give some answers.

“Yes,” he says. “I do.” He can’t place the voice on the other end.

“Can you meet tomorrow in the Chem lab?” a different, muffled voice asks. “Wait,” the girl says, “You go to Crystal Cove High, right? You’re not a creep?”

Adrien laughs uncomfortably. “No, I—I’m a junior.”

“Cool, alright,” the girl says. “We’re juniors, too. So, can you meet tomorrow in the Chem lab?”

“Eight a.m. good?” he asks.

The girl huffs on the other end. “Sure, eight is good.”

Adrien nods, even though she can’t see him. “Thank you,” he says.

“Don’t thank us, yet,” she says. “We might not even be able to solve your mystery.”

For some reason, he can’t help but hope anyways. (Curse his silly heart.)

After he hangs up, he turns to Chloè. “First call! They want to meet tomorrow morning at eight.”

Chloé twists her mouth into her version of a smile. “That's great, Adrikins.”

Adrien leans back into her couch, throwing his head back. With a wistful sigh and a smile of his own, he peers over at his best friend. “I hope they’ll be able to find her. My mom, that is.”

Chloé stares at him for a long moment, but doesn’t say anything to his thinking. “Do you want me to come with you?”

Adrien hesitates, but in the end he nods. “Thanks, Chlo.”

She nods back, and presses play on their movie. “Of course,” she murmurs.

He smiles, hope blooming in his chest, right next to his silly, silly heart.

~*~

When he gets to the school, only a few other cars are in the lot. He and Chloé make their way towards the school, shoulders collectively creeping near to their ears in the chilly fall air and the tension building in them both. They head down the empty halls to the Chemistry room, their footsteps squeaking and echoing behind them.

No one is in the room when they get there. Frowning, Adrien checks his phone—8:02 a.m. And then, before he can voice his concerns and overthink the situation, the quick and heavy footfalls of three, four, maybe even five people come down the hall and through the open door. The people responsible follow quickly after, all of them out of breath and bent at the waist as they stumble through the doorway.

Adrien and Chloé step back. Adrien recognizes the group—all four of them—and something catches in his throat, makes his heart thump uneasily.

Standing before him is Marinette Dupain-Cheng, her ex-boyfriend Luka Couffaine, and her best friends Nino Lahiffe and Alya Cesaire. These were the mystery solvers who had answered his plea. How ironic, really. Yes, they’re the only mystery solvers that he knows of at the school, but they’re also the only people he regularly keeps an eye on. He had thought—well, he hadn’t. Not really.

“We’re here,” Nino says, standing up straight and adjusting his hat, which sits backwards on his head. “We’re here.”

“Good,” Chloé says flatly beside him.

“Thank you,” Adrien says, smiling, trying to make up for his best friend’s iciness.

“Adrien Agreste, right?” Alya says, nudging her glasses up the bridge of her nose. She smiles slightly, but it falls away quickly. Of course they know who he is—the mayor’s son is hard not to recognize.

He nods, and pulls the note from his mother out from his jacket pocket. “I… I need to find someone.”

Luka steps forward, a hand on Adrien’s arm. The gesture is comforting, slightly. Adrien looks down, though, at his hands and the note he’s folding and unfolding there.

“My… mom. She’s disappeared.” Blinking back tears, he shoves the note towards Luka, who takes it. “This is all she left behind.”

Luka’s arm doesn’t fall away as Alya, Nino, and Marinette come closer to Luka and the paper in his hand, nor as they read it and whisper amongst themselves. Behind Adrien, Chloé steps closer to put a reassuring hand of her own on his shoulder and grabs his hand in her other one. He tries not to listen to the group beside him and their whispering, but can’t help it.

“What does she mean by disk?” Nino asks.

“Maybe a CD or DVD,” Marinette supplies.

“This might be something bigger than what we’ve dealt with before,” Luka says, biting his lip. “The mayor’s wife—” He stops himself. Adjusts. “Bigger, you know.”

Alya asks with a smile that almost looks giddy, “Has that ever stopped us before? Something big? Don’t you know who we are?”

Luka smiles a little crookedly, and shakes his head, but says, “Alright, then.”

“If you think—“ Marinette begins, but she stops, and she shrugs. “Sure, why not?”

“Let’s do it, then,” Nino says, adjusting his hat again.

They all turn to Adrien and Chloé, smiles of varying sizes across their faces.

“We’ll do it,” Marinette says, and Adrien lets out a watery breath.

“Thank you,” he says, and he nods, and he smiles back at them, and he takes one of his hands and rubs at his eyes with it, and before he knows it, he’s laughing and crying and Chloé’s pulling him into a hug, and Nino is patting him on the back.

We’re going to find you, Mom, Adrien thinks to himself.

~*~

Crystal Cove Truths: History

Written by Alya Cesaire at 8:45 PM

The first documented case of the ‘curse of Crystal Cove’ is from 1630, when a garrison of Spanish conquistadors mysteriously vanished from the harbor.

The ‘curse’ struck again in 1765, when an entire town of missionaries likewise disappeared.

Things were quiet concerning the ‘curse’ until about a hundred years later, when Cletus Darrow found gold here and renamed the town Crystal Cove. Most people thought that the ‘curse’ had been lifted, until the entire Darrow family disappeared one Halloween and was never seen again.

Since the disappearance of the Darrow family, Crystal Cove has been a hub of ‘paranormal’ activity, like the ghostly deep-sea diver Captain Cutler, Miner ‘49er, Charlie the Haunted Robot, and Space Kook. All of these examples ended up being fake, however, and real people were beneath the costumes. Captain Cutler was someone hijacking boats; Miner ‘49er’s real name was Hank; and Charlie belonged to a Mr. Jenkins, who thought it would be easier to run an amusement park that had a crazy robot. Despite this, many claim the ‘curse’ of Crystal Cove to be real. Many go on to claim that other paranormal activities have happened in Crystal Cove, as well, and that those things are connected to the ‘curse’.

Crystal Cove Truths is a blog dedicated to looking into these claims further and delivering the truth to Crystal Cove citizens.

~*~

“Marinette, don’t you think you should let the mysteries be?”

“Maman,” Marinette says with a sigh, pulling a shirt with large cut-off sleeves over her head, “I’ve only got one thing on my mind—solving mysteries and building traps.” After adjusting her shirt in the mirror, she reaches for the hairbrush on her vanity.

Sabine meets her daughter’s eyes through the mirror of the vanity. “That’s two things, dear.”

Marinette parts her hair into two sections and begins pulling one side into a low pigtail. “You know what I mean, Maman. I just want answers. We all do. Is that wrong?”

Sabine bites her lip. She can’t really justify herself without sharing more than she wants to. “I just wish you’d go back to the small ones, like when you were young. Finding your father’s wallet, figuring out who ate the last of the cake.”

Marinette looks back over her shoulder at her mother. “I’m seventeen,” she says quietly.

“I just don’t want you to end up making a mistake that you’ll regret,” Sabine murmurs. Like I did.

“Like making a bad trap?” Marinette says, turning back to her mirror to pull her remaining section of hair into a pigtail and tie it with a ribbon.

“Life isn’t all about making traps,” Sabine says, and something in her is holding her back.

~*~

Nino closes his eyes and presses his phone to his ear, wishing he was anywhere else but home. Alya is on the other end, working on an article for her blog, Crystal Cove Truths.

“My parents are still worried about this ‘mystery phase’ that I’m going through,” Nino says. “They told me to find new friends, or they’ll start looking into sending me off to some camp.” His head falls into his hands and he pulls at the chunk of curly hair sticking out from the bill of his hat.

“Seriously?” Alya asks bitterly. She pauses, and on the other end of the line, she stops typing and takes a deep breath. Her voice softens as she speaks again. “I’m sorry, babe.”

Nino shakes his head. “I might move in with Luka if they keep going like this.”

“If you gave my friends a fucking chance, you’d see how wrong you are. They don’t—I’m not in constant danger, Papa. We’re careful.”

“If that’s the case, then you wouldn’t be out til two, three in the morning solving mysteries and coming home bruised and with cuts all over your face!”

“We’re careful enough, Pa!”

“You have been until now! But what about next time? What if you got seriously hurt?”

“We wouldn’t, Papa—can’t you just trust me?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

“I’ll be here for you either way, Nino,” Alya murmurs. “No matter what.”

Nino smiles the slightest bit. His grip on his hair eases a little. “Thanks.”

~*~

“The gang is just misunderstood,” Alya says, pushing her breakfast around on her plate. “We’re just solving mysteries—all the kids are doing it, really.”

“They’re not,” Ella and Etta chorus. Alya tosses a look their way, willing them to be quiet.

“And what about this Nino Lahiffe?” her mother asks, going back to the conversation she’d been having with Alya. “There must be other boys, I’m sure.”

“None like him, Mama,” Alya says.

“That’s the point,” her father says, rolling his eyes as he walks into the kitchen.

“Papi!” Alya cries in disbelief.

“We just want you to have a stable life, like your sister,” her mama says, reaching out a hand for Alya’s.

“Nora is a wrestler!” she exclaims, pulling her hands away from her mama as she sets her fork down. “How is that stable?”

“She has a career and isn’t just courting death and solving mysteries for free.”

“She’s courting death in the ring,” Alya mutters, and stands, headed for the trash can, where she pushes her food in.

~*~

Luka steps quietly onto the houseboat, and he’s suddenly glad he wore dark clothes this time. He can see his mom through a window, bathed in cold yellow light and staring into a near-empty glass of wine. Breathing deeply, Luka carefully makes his way across the boat and to the door leading into the room where his mom sits. As quietly as he can, he turns the knob and opens the door, slipping into the room and shutting it softly behind him.

With his dark clothes, he blends in to the dark paneling of the walls of the dining-kitchen-living-room conglomerate where his mom sits dejectedly. Luka reassures himself with this thought as he moves along the wall towards the small stairwell that leads to the bedrooms, but refuses to breathe nonetheless.

As the seconds slowly tick by, and as Luka silently begs his mom not to turn around and catch him as he makes his way towards the stairwell, he watches her.

Grey has streaked her hair for many years, now, but it is only on very early mornings like these that he realizes how old his mother has become. Staring into the almost empty glass of wine, Anarka’s shoulders droop low, and the skin of her face sags under her cheeks and jaw, soft and almost papery-looking. (Normally, he doesn’t notice the wrinkles, or the sagging of her skin—she fills it with loud, raucous laughter or hearty smiles. It’s only when she looks like this—so dejected and broken—that he sees it.) Her glasses have long since slipped off—Luka can’t even see them in the room—and her hair, wild and messy, but usually so alive-looking, is now flattened to her skull in some sections and snarling and knotted in others. Her top, now just a simple white tank, is half-slipping off of one shoulder, and she only has one shoe on.

She’s a messy drunk, Luka knows. How many nights had he and Juleka had to take their mother by the arms and heft her over their shoulders to take her down the only-long-on-these-nights stairs to her bedroom, just so she didn’t wake up in some impossibly tight ball that acrobats can only be subject to? How many nights had he and Juleka washed their mother clean of any spills and dressed her in more comfortable clothes, waiting with baited breath for the moment she woke up and snapped, thinking that they were some sick forms of Jagged come to humiliate her?

Luka can’t count how many nights. But they stopped doing those things a long time ago, after Juleka started sneaking out to visit Rose to play in their band (which Anarka had forbidden, without any reason—but they both knew why she’d said no. It was the same reason she drank.) and Luka got with Marinette and started solving mysteries with the gang.

When Luka reaches the stairwell, his mother has nodded off, and a bit of her hair has fallen into her glass, stuck to a damp side.

He’s good, then, for tonight, and doesn’t have the chance to face any wrath for his nightly activities. He’s only slightly guilty when he steps into the dark stairwell without a backwards glance.

~*~

When Chloé reaches the hotel, she doesn’t spare a glance towards the people in the lobby snapping photos, laughing, and oohing and ahhing through the postcards and souvenirs that her father brought in to increase profits. She heads straight up to the long, spiraling staircase, almost jogging, to her room. If she’s quick enough, and if she takes the time to peek into the hall before entering, she can escape her mother’s daily trek through the hotel for ‘inspiration’. Chloé thinks it’s just a daily trek to look down her nose at others and feel better about herself, but if she encounters her mother, she’s sure to be reprimanded for anything the woman deems unworthy.

Chloé narrowly avoids her mother as the woman steps into the elevator at the end of Chloé’s hall, and, breathing deeply, she waits three long seconds before darting into the hall after her and unlocking her suite’s door.

Once inside and with her suite locked again, Chloé slides to the floor with her back to the door. In the silence of her room, she pulls her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them. As soon as she’s settled, she stares out of her balcony’s glass doors until she can’t remember where she lives, or what her parents are like, or how tired she is of running and trying to fit inside of other people’s expectations.

~*~

A woman by the name of Emilie Agreste sits at a desk in Crystal Cove’s library with her head bent low over a book. A lamp spills cold white light across her book and the other things at the desk—newspapers, magazines, and books of various thicknesses and sizes. Every once in a while, the librarian rolls by with a squeaky cart and drops off more material at Emilie’s desk. Neither of them say a word.

~*~

The town of Crystal Cove has been called ‘haunted’, it’s been called ‘criminal-central’, it’s been dubbed ‘some sick reiteration of Gotham City’, and it’s been called every variation of curse words and vile things that people could think of. All of the things said about it are true. They’re also not—these words describe the people, not the town.

The town itself, well—the town of Crystal Cove doesn’t sleep well at night. That’s all that can be said about it.

Chapter 2: chapter two

Summary:

The search for Emilie Agreste begins, we find another mystery on our hands, and someone has been watching Adrien… 👀

Notes:

I LOVE EVERYONE WHO COMMENTED IM GIVING U KISSES AND HUGS AND CAKE AND THE MOST LOVE EVER every time i got the notification that someone commented on this fic i LEGIT sprang up from Whatever i was doing to go read ur comment. not even lying. one of the comments i got the notif for with my alarm one morning and i LITERALLY woke up to read the comment and squeal. and that was on the first snooze, when i usually take like. four snoozes before even opening up my eyeballs. so. 👀 yk what’s up. ur comments wake me up, give me motivation, and make me squeal and giggle and kick my feet !!! i love u all <3 and i am crying at the amnt of love u have given this fic <3

also i figured out how to paste stuff into ao3 and not have it completely slaughter me (hooray!)!!

The search for Adrien’s mom begins with Adrien and Chloé sneaking everyone into the Agreste house while Gabriel, Nathalie, and Gabriel’s bodyguard are all at Crystal Cove’s mayoral offices.

While everyone else tries not to marvel at the wealth shown off by Adrien’s parents, Adrien and Chloé lead everyone through the rooms relevant for searching: Gabriel and Emilie’s room, the library where Emilie spent most of her time in the months prior to her disappearance, and Adrien’s room, where the note had been found.

The first stop is Gabriel and Emilie’s room.

Marinette and Alya go straight towards the small bookcase across from the bed that’s decorated with photos, books, and various trinkets, examining what they can. Adrien explains and points out different things concerning whatever Marinette and Alya ask about, nervously shifting from foot to foot. Chloé and Luka are digging through the two bedside tables, not saying a word to each other, and Nino steps around the room, examining the art on the walls. 

“What’s this?” Marinette says, and points into the trashcan beside the bookcase. In the trashcan are several pieces of what looks to be a vase—or what used to be one, at least.

Adrien steps towards where Marinette is standing and crouches low. “This is my mother’s favorite vase… I-I don’t know why it’s broken.” He doesn’t look at Marinette or Alya as he reaches into the trash can and brings out a few of the pieces. The vase is completely shattered from whenever it broke, which doesn’t make sense to Adrien—

“Maybe it fell from off of the bookcase?” Alya asks.

“That’s the thing, though,” Adrien says, looking across the room at where the vase should have been. “It’s always been on the floor.”

Marinette crouches down beside Adrien and reaches for another piece of the vase from in the trash can. “It would have had to have been picked up and dropped or thrown from a height of a few feet at least to be broken into this many pieces,” Marinette says, voicing Adrien’s thoughts. 

“Yeah,” he says quietly, and puts the pieces of his mother’s broken vase back into the trash can. Something inside of him wants terribly to question this, to come up with a reason—and one that doesn’t threaten to break him—for why the vase is broken.

Across the room, Chloé and Luka have found nothing. Together with Nino, who hasn’t found much of interest in the art on the walls, they come up behind Adrien, Marinette, and Alya, ready to move on to another room. 

Adrien looks behind him and sees them all, and in this he feels relieved—he can move on from the broken vase and think about other things, and not the implications of said broken vase, but still make progress towards figuring out more on his mother’s disappearance. “Let’s go, then,” he says with an easy, practiced smile that reaches his eyes just enough to claim the real thing. 

When he stands, he holds out a hand to help Marinette up—and not at all to also know what her hand in his feels like—and after she’s stood and has dropped his hand, he leads everyone into the library his mother has spent the past few months inside of. 

Except, the thing is, none of the books that he would see, day in and day out, stacked up all around her, are there. And the books aren’t on the shelves, either. The books aren’t anywhere in the library like they were the day after his mother’s disappearance. 

When Adrien stops in the doorway of the library, everyone else behind him has a slew of questions as they bump into him. Mostly what , or what happened , or why’d you stop , or is she in there, or something?

“It’s changed,” he whispers, almost breathless. He takes a single step into the room and then another, and another, and then he’s on his knees and holding himself around the stomach. “H-her books, they were in here. The day after she disappeared. And—and now… where did they go?”

Chloé comes up behind him and crouches low. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and holds him tightly, whispering into his ear—“It’s okay, Adrien, we’ll find them, and we’ll find her,” she says. As she does this, she glances around the library, at the now almost barren shelves. She hasn’t come over to Adrien’s any more than she usually did in the past few months, but she did see Emilie and her precarious stacks of books, and now… well, they’re all gone. And Chloé doesn’t know where they could be—if Emilie took them with her (if she went willingly, which, why would she do that to Adrien?), if they were taken because they linked Emilie to whoever took her ( why would someone take her? ), or, who knows, maybe the two things aren’t related at all, as unlikely as it seems to Chloé.

Around her and Adrien, Marinette, Alya, and Luka are looking at all of the books that remain, and the state of Emilie’s desk area, which is, quite frankly, bare and unimportant unless it matters how cleanly and neatly everything was taken. (It does, to the others.) Nino is on the other side of Adrien, holding one of his hands tightly and looking behind him at the state of the door (which is normal—no scuff marks, signs of struggle, or broken knobs. There’s no lock on the door.) and then at the windows across the library, which are similarly normal and untouched and fine.

“How many books did she have with her?” Alya asks, turning back from the shelves to look at Adrien.

“Almost fifty, I’d say, at least on the day she disappeared,” he replies, looking up at her.

“So, not an easy load to carry out,” she says.

“No.”

At this point, the others seem to have gathered all the information they need to move forward, and they converge around him once more. Chloé and Nino let him go and get to their feet once they’re sure he’s going to be okay. This time, it’s Marinette helping him up, rather than him helping her. Adrien relishes in the feeling of having her hand in his again, but drops it quickly to lead them out of the library and up to his room, where he’d found his mother’s note. He has to get out of the library, he feels, and as soon as possible.

Adrien’s room is much like that of the princesses’ rooms he sees in the movies—he has a very large and extensive closet, courtesy of his father’s salary as a politician and the money his father receives from his past design work on Tsurugi Industries’ technology, and his bed is abnormally large for one teenager to fill. A thin, dark green canopy covers his bed, and he has an ostentatiously large desk for his schoolwork (although, granted, in the movies, it’s usually a vanity). 

Nino goes straight for the closet doors and groans as he opens them up. “No wonder your outfits are always such an affront to the eyes,” he says, looking over his shoulder with a half-grimace, half-smile. There’s something pointed in his gaze, though, towards Adrien’s outfit of dark blue jeans (split into two different shades at the seams) and a dark pink hoodie with light shades of yellow, orange, and green for the sleeves, hood, and large front pocket. “You’ve got nothing else to choose from.”

“We’ll fix that up,” says Marinette offhandedly as she heads for the desk. “Is this where you found the note from your mother?”

“No,” Adrien says, ignoring Nino, “I found the note on my bed after I woke up one day.”

“You couldn’t have rolled over it and not seen it, I guess,” Nino pipes up, smiling over at him.

At Adrien’s noticeable confusion, Alya leans over and whispers, “Normally, people don’t have closets that size or beds this… large.”

“They don’t?” he asks, completely distracted from his mother by this. “What do they have?”

“Normal-sized closets and normal-sized beds,” Luka says with a light smile. As he says this, Chloé glares over at him, to which Luka raises an eyebrow at her and shrugs.

“When did you find the note she gave you?” Marinette asks, reminding him of the task at hand.

Adrien shakes his head from the others’ comments and turns to Marinette, saying, “About nine days after she left. The day she did leave, I couldn’t find her. I talked with her a lot the day before, and then the next morning, I woke up and she was gone. It was only nine days later that I woke up and there was her note next to me and I looked—” he takes a breath, takes a moment to calm down, “—I looked all over for her again, but I couldn’t find her.”

“Alright,” Marinette says, and she looks right at him. “It’s okay. We’ll find her.” This is the first time that she—the leader of their group, the face of their operations—has said that they’ll find his mother. He realizes this with something heavy weighing on his chest, with the smallest doubt that maybe they won’t, that maybe she left of her own accord, but then—she’s looking at him. She’s giving him the fiercest look he’s seen since they were in third grade, and he—well. What else is he supposed to do but believe her?

“Okay,” he says quietly. “Okay.” (He believes her.)

“Did you already search your room for any other clues from her?” she asks him, and she’s still staring at him, all fierce and brave and he remembers, now, that has a crush on her so massive that it’s unbelievable.

“Yeah,” he says, almost wishing he hadn’t, so that they could stay like this for a little while longer (but also not—because if they did, he might explode with the speed at which his heart is beating and his face is heating up).

~*~

Nino turns the radio up as a good song comes on and as he crests another hill. “Almost there,” he calls to the back of the van, where Adrien, Chloé, and Luka are sitting. Alya is sitting beside Nino on the bench, with Marinette beside her at the window. No one shows any recognition of what Nino had said—Alya and Marinette are on their phones, Luka is braiding some shoelaces into a belt, and Adrien and Chloé are talking quietly.

They’re entering downtown and are headed under their first bridge when Nino calls out again—“Almost there! Less than five minutes.”

“Thanks,” Adrien calls, and Nino nods, glad for some response, even if it was from Adrien, whom he didn’t expect to want to talk to him after all of the confusion at his house. 

Honestly, Nino’s been meaning to talk to and clear the air with Adrien—he really hadn’t meant to hurt the guy’s feelings and had just been making jokes to try and lighten the mood, but… it seemed to really tear the guy up, Nino feels. Adrien hasn’t been avoiding Nino the past few days, but he’s definitely been not as comfortable with him, and Nino doesn’t want to let that go on for much longer if he can help it.

They’re just about to reach the second bridge on their way to school when one of the sewer caps from the road flies into the sky, a thick green pillar of smoke propelling it into the air. Similarly-green wisps of smoke collect like fog over the surrounding road. Screams fill the van as Nino swerves just a little dramatically to side in his lane, cursing under his breath. As he waits for a long moment for the call to keep driving away or to stay braked in place, something growls from outside. A tall, broadly-shouldered shadow steps closer to the van through the smoke, its movements jerky and stilted. 

Marinette cries out as the creature turns towards her side of the van, and Nino and the others watch on in horror as she furiously cranks her horribly slow window up. The clawed hand of the creature slaps against Marinette’s window just as it closes, and everyone, including Nino, despite feeling the relief of the creature not being in the car, still screams again, because it’s touching the car, and that’s somehow just as bad.

Some of the smoke in the air clears away enough for Nino to see the glowing eyes of the creature as it pulls back and shoots green slime from its arms at the side of the van, pushing it away. Everyone continues to scream, and Nino tries to press on the gas, but the van begins to rock back and forth, causing him to slide into Alya while his hands lose the wheel and his feet lose the pedals. 

And then, at once, the van falls back down to the ground, righted once more. Adrien’s head pops up between Nino and Alya’s, and he cries, “What was that?” 

The thought echoes throughout everyone else’s minds, and honestly they’re all scared to hell and back, but Alya looks over at Nino nonetheless with a smile stretching across her lips. “It looks like a mystery to me. What do you guys say?”

“And what about school?” Chloé asks from the backseat, her voice a little shaky. I actually would rather go to school than anything else today, she thinks.

“Ever wondered why we miss so much class?” Luka asks, wrapping the shoelaces around one wrist and tying them together.

“No,” Chloé says honestly and quite vehemently.

“I do,” says Adrien helpfully and with a big smile despite the terror he’s still feeling.

“Whether you’ve thought about it or not,” Marinette says, not looking at any of them as she opens up her door and steps out into the still clouding smoke, “I think this is just a little more important than school.”

~*~

When they find the opening to the cave some short distance in from the sewer cap that had flown into the sky, Adrien swings his borrowed flashlight around him, quickly spotting the group of barrels overflowing with some sort of glowing substance and marked radioactive. Above the barrels is a sign reading DANGER painted in big red letters.

Everyone moves toward the barrels except for Chloé, who hangs back. “Shouldn’t we heed the sign that says ‘danger’?”

No one responds to her, and they instead move towards the main attraction.

Luka bends especially close to the barrels, narrowing his eyes. “These are military. From the oxidation, they’re probably 30, 40 years old,” he explains to the group beside him.

Chloé moves closer, examining the barrels from some—but less than before—distance. Adrien sweeps his flashlight behind him again and steps away from the group to look around. 

The cave has large, cone-shaped rocks jutting up from the ground and down from the roof, and, oddly enough, vine-looking things hang from some parts of the roof of the cave. As he walks, he sweeps his flashlight back and forth, looking for anything of interest.

After some time, something glints in the warm yellow glow of the flashlight. Adrien steps closer, and, bending down, reaches for it. 

“Hey,” he murmurs, picking it up and bringing it close to his face. Louder, he calls back to the rest of the group, shouting,  “I think I found something!”

As the others search for where he is, Adrien examines what he had found more closely. It looks to be a locket, with a big round face that has a question mark engraved upon it. From the bottom of the locket stretches a long, thin piece of metal. The entire thing, minus the chain attached to the locket that makes it a necklace, looks like a magnifying glass.

When he goes to turn it over in his hand, Adrien’s thumb bumps the side of the round part and the face of the locket pops open. A melody plays from somewhere within—something eerie that gives him chills.

Within the locket, however, is a picture of Adrien’s mother and aunt. The sisters are young in the photo—about his age, it looks like, and they’re wearing matching lockets fashioned into magnifying glass shapes, although his aunt’s is worn as a brooch rather than a necklace.

“Good work, Adrien,” Marinette says, looking around his arm at the locket. “Could be a clue.”

Adrien blushes under Marinette’s praise, but his shoulders creep up towards his ears. “I’m not so sure—or at least, I don’t think it’s a good one.” He quiets. “This is a picture of my mom and my aunt Amelie.”

Nino, on the other side of Adrien, shakes his head and puts a hand on Adrien’s shoulder in a reassuring manner. “I’m sorry, man—that really sucks.”

Chloé comes around, in front of Nino, and looks closely at the locket. “Why would it be down here?”

“I don’t know,” Adrien says, uncertainty making his voice tilt up towards the end. “M-maybe she was attacked by the monster outside, and it brought her down here?”

Alya and Luka come around to see the locket as well. Luka cocks his head to the side as the melody from before continues to loop.

“That’s possible,” Alya says. “Anything is, at this point.”

“Yeah,” Luka says, looking up at him with a small smile, “I’m sure we’ll figure it out, Adrien. Don’t worry.”

Adrien smiles around at them and tucks the locket into the inner pocket of his blue and pink jacket, that, like many of his other jackets, has its colors separated at the seams. The others part from him to continue looking for clues in the cave, and Adrien does his best to focus on the task at hand and not on his mother’s locket.

Several minutes later, as Adrien is making his way back near the radioactive barrels from before, Chloé finds a hardhat on the floor of the cave. She alerts everyone half-heartedly, not thinking it means anything, but then she looks up. What she finds are three shriveled up corpses cocooned to the ceiling.

Understandably, she screams.

~*~

After the police have been called and arrive, nearly all of the teens are asking questions. Nino and Chloé are asking about the safety of themselves and the citizens, Marinette and Alya are asking about causes of death and victims and future incidents, and Luka is asking about how the radioactive substance from below will be contained, but Adrien is stuck looking at his mother’s locket and wondering if she faced a similar fate to the construction workers in the sewer.

Sheriff Roger Raincomprix has little care or concern for any of their questions and insists that the teens be quiet and stop obstructing justice. He also insists that the teens stop inhibiting the profits that Crystal Covians will receive from the newest tourist attraction, although this garners a more frustrated response than the initial demand.

When Sheriff Raincomprix and the EMTs begin taking the bodies away—as the corpses weren’t just corpses, but had heartbeats still, unknown to the teens—Alya cries out that they won’t be able to figure out more clues without a body. 

“Luka and I will go talk to Sheriff Raincomprix, babe,” Nino says, putting a hand on his girlfriend’s shoulder reassuringly. “We’ll figure something out.”

The others walk forlornly back to the car—Adrien and Chloé go to sit in the back of the van and Alya and Marinette go to sit on the front bench. None of them saw Luka and Nino coming back with one of the bodies as figuring something out , but neither of the boys explain themselves until after Nino is a considerable distance from the scene of the crime and headed back towards the school.

“Why the hell are we packing a dead body in the Mystery Machine, Nino?” Alya asks incredulously.

“You said you needed more clues, babe!” he cries, turning onto a different street. “I was merely providing, with Luka’s help!”

“Don’t bring me into this,” Luka says from the back of the van, where he’s holding the body steady with the boot of one shoe and already back to work on his shoelace belt. “I just came along.”

“I don’t think she meant for you guys to bring back a dead body, Nino!” Marinette cries from her seat by the window, ignoring Luka’s plea to leave him out of it.

“Well, it’s a little late, now, Marinette,” Nino says frustratedly, pulling his hat low over his head and turning into the school parking lot.

“What are we doing here with a dead body?” Chloé asks somewhat nervously. 

“We’re taking it to Ms. Mendeleiev,” Luka says quietly, wrapping his shoelace belt back around his wrist for later. He leans over to open the back of the van as Nino gets out of the driver's side and jogs to where he is. With just a few small grunts, the two boys heft the body into the air once more and stand outside of the van.

“Are you guys coming, or not? You wanted clues, right?” Nino asks, struggling just the slightest under the weight of the dead body.

Marinette and Alya grimace but get out and move towards them, but Adrien and Chloé hesitate. 

“Are—are you sure?” Chloé asks at the same time that Adrien asks, “You really want us to come with you?”

Chloé’s question holds a hint of disgust and nervousness, but Adrien’s question is more asking if the gang wants them , mystery un-solvers un-extraordinare, to help solve a mystery.

“Yeah,” the gang answers in unison, to varying degrees of “obviously,” and “of course,” and “why wouldn’t we?”

And so Chloé and Adrien step out of the van to follow—Chloé with more apprehension and Adrien with a giddy sense of belonging—and everyone heads into the school towards Ms. Mendeleiev.

When they make it to Ms. Mendeleiev’s room, the Chemistry class within is just leaving. Upon seeing the group entering and what they hold, Ms. Mendeleiev shoo s out the class she’d been teaching a little faster. When the gang and Ms. Mendeleiev are alone, the latter guides everyone to one of the lab counters and motions for them to set the body down. 

No one questions Ms. Mendeleiev as she takes a stethoscope out from her lab coat and puts it on to examine any life within the cocoon. 

“He’s alive,” Ms. Mendeleiev murmurs to herself, “but he appears to be in some sort of dehydrated stasis…” She looks up from the victim in the cocoon and glances around the group. “I’m unsure of what it means, but I’m guessing that it’s temporary.”

“Do you know what could have done this?” Alya asks, with a pen at the ready and a notebook that no one had seen her pull out.

Ms. Mendeleiev turns back to the cocoon and presses at it with a gloved finger. “The cocoon material appears to be organic, but I’ll need to do further tests.” She looks up at them all again, with narrowed eyes and a doubtful gaze. “The Sheriff is alright with this, yes?” she asks.

Everyone watches as Marinette looks Ms. Mendeleiev in the eye with a pleasant smile and says, “Yes, of course, Ms. Mendeleiev. You think we would steal a body?”

Ms. Mendeleiev cocks her head to the side. “Anything is possible with this group.”

~*~

Félix Graham de Vanily is not stupid, nor is he heartless.

As soon as he hears about Emelie Agreste disappearing—from his mother, whom Gabriel asks first about his missing wife—Félix knows that Adrien will be having a hard time with this. After all, Félix had had a similar situation with the disappearance of his father. 

Félix doesn’t reach out to Adrien, as that isn’t his style, but he does keep a much closer eye on his cousin while they’re at school, and he follows him home to make sure that he’s okay.

Because of this, Félix notices when Adrien starts hanging out with Dupain-Cheng and her gang of violent and nosy friends days after his mother disappears. And if he’s honest, this worries Félix. He’s heard about Dupain-Cheng and her friends getting into trouble—nearly twice a week, even!—with the police, the mayor, the school, or all three in the same swing. He doesn’t want Adrien caught up in the sorts of things that Dupain-Cheng and her friends get into. 

Or at least, not without back-up present. 

So Félix follows them. He follows them all to Adrien’s house, then to school each morning, and then back home, and he follows them into that dreaded sewer, even though it stinks and it goes against everything in his body to go down that tiny hole and into that cave of awfulness where he can’t breathe.

But he does it for Adrien. Because he’s not stupid, nor is he heartless. And because he knows what it’s like to lose someone who used to be in your life all of the time—no matter how awful or claustrophobia-inducing their presence was—and he knows what it’s like to turn to anything, and especially danger, rather than face the feeling that you might not have been wanted, and that this could be why they aren’t there anymore. (And as messed up and confusing as it is, Félix knows for a fact that that’s a rollercoaster of emotion that can make you do dumb things.)

~*~

Interspersed within the time that he spends watching Adrien, Félix continues to vie with Kagami for the spot of top student at Crystal Cove High as he has been for the past three years. Or, well— she competes, and he only does enough to annoy her and take her spot, because it’s fun, and he likes to see her angry face. 

Every two weeks during homeroom, Crystal Cove High announces that fortnight’s top scholarly student. Given that Félix and Kagami have homeroom together, and that they happen to be seated right beside each other due to some sickening science, or perhaps math, or maybe just coincidence, they get to make it very clear to the other just how much they enjoy being that fortnight’s top scholarly student and beating the other one.

Since the start of their freshman year at CCH, Kagami and Félix have been the only two students holding the honor of being that fortnight’s top scholarly student, except for the one time that they were both sick (coincidence, and not at all because of how physically close they had gotten in the fencing match the day prior) for two whole entire weeks and unable to convince their teachers to send them the work online. The student that had won that time had not been another fortnight’s top scholarly student again.

All of this to say: Félix enjoys his competition with Kagami, and even as much of his time is taken up with watching Adrien and making sure his cousin doesn’t get into trouble now, Félix makes sure to put just as much effort as before into annoying Kagami and making her work very hard to win the fortnightly top scholarly student position. This is why, as he pulls into the school parking lot an hour early, he takes Kagami’s favorite spot in the lot and parks there.

This is also why he makes his way to Kagami’s locker first, and not his, and slips a cheeky note in there—telling her how easy it was for him to finish the Physics test, because he knows that that’s the subject she spent hours studying for in order to score a 98.9%, while he easily scored a 99.9% on the same test—before he works his way to the library. In the library, Félix settles into one of the tables in the back and pulls out his English textbook to study a little bit more for the test he has in an hour and a half. 

When his hour is up in the library, Félix heads to his homeroom. Once there, he takes a moment to watch Kagami’s expression change from one of careful indifference at the gaggle of girls gossiping behind her to a downright violent glare as she leans forward and rests her chin on one fist to stare at him. Except, as his gaze lowers down her face, he notices that it’s not quite a fist. A positively elegant middle finger is extended from the rest of her fist and, he notes with glee, he is most likely the recipient of said middle finger.

Félix smiles as pleasantly as he can at her, which isn’t too hard for him, as seeing her makes him feel like smiling pleasantly—or smirking smugly, or maniacally laughing, or glaring with evil intent—anyways. When he gets closer to his seat, he shrugs off his shoulder bag with a carefully placed middle finger aimed right back at her. 

And then, like nothing has happened, they both adjust their fingers to a more respectable position and pretend as if nothing has happened.

And really, it hasn’t. Not yet , they each think to themselves, quietly scheming for what to do next to their rival. 

~*~

When Félix gets home from school, his mother is usually dancing to her records in the kitchen as she makes them both an early dinner. And since her husband has left them, she listens to the happier songs, rather than just the sad ones, while she does it. And since her husband has left, she wears the clothes that she wants, rather than just the ones that hide her fat rolls. And since her husband has left them, she smiles and laughs, and so does Félix. 

Tonight, dinner is spaghetti, with the tomatoes from their garden, and bread that she made that morning. Once he’s dropped off his bag in the living room (where later she’ll play the piano and he’ll do his homework, and then they’ll watch trashy reality TV or one of her cheesy romances), Félix comes into the kitchen and begins to set the table. 

“Do you need me to cut a salad?” Félix asks between the chorus and the second verse of the present song. 

“No, darling,” she says, glancing over her shoulder to smile at him, “I have zucchini keeping warm in the microwave.”

“Picked this morning?” he asks, smiling back at her. 

“Mhm,” she hums, turning back to the spaghetti. 

Minutes later, she turns off the spaghetti and brings it to the table, and Félix turns down the record player and brings the sautéed zucchini to the table with a serving spoon. When they both sit, they don’t sit at opposite ends of the table—they sit right beside each other, her on the end and he on the long side, and they eat and talk about their days like this, close to one another.

Félix tells her about Kagami and their jabs for the day, and he tells her about his assignments, and he tells her about Adrien. His mother tells him about her day at home—how she went through the garden for tomatoes and zucchini and found two ladybugs, how she made the loaf of bread they now eat, how she continued sewing the suit she was making him for that year’s end-of-the-year dance, and how the couple in her the latest romantic novel she’s been reading are doing, and finally how dinner went. Félix listens to his mother’s day with a smile, and laughs at the newest lengths the characters in her novel are going to to avoid telling the other about their feelings, and he feels something warm and bright swell within his heart at seeing how happy and at peace his mother has been since Colt—her husband, and his father—left them seven months before. 

Félix loves his mother, and she loves him, and his father is long gone. He wants this for Adrien, he knows, too—happiness, and peace—but he doesn’t think that either of those things will be found by looking for Emilie Agreste with Dupain-Cheng and her friends, as much as he knows that they really do have the best chance of finding her. So as his mother tells him about the things in her day, and as she does so in clothes that she likes, in a place she feels safe in, and with a smile he’d almost forgotten the appearance of while his father was around, Félix determines that as much as he doesn’t like the idea of Adrien hanging out with Dupain-Cheng and her friends, he’ll follow behind to make sure that Adrien doesn’t get hurt.

Because Félix Graham de Vanily isn’t stupid, nor is he heartless. And if Adrien can get the parent he actually likes back, then Félix will make sure he survives the journey. For Adrien, and the life he wants him to have.

Notes:

over the past week or so i developed the most MASSIVEST crush on this guy i’m tutoring for school and i see him Once a Week now (blessed wednesdays) and so i Really tuned into those feelings for whenever adrien is thinking abt marinette 💀 anyways NOBODY tell him about my crush on him!! i will Die if you do. also!!!! i do have an art blog where i happen to post Quite a Bit of art for this au, if u would like to see that stuff (u can find me at @sadiedoodles on tumblr!!! check the scooby doo au tag for art >:D… and if u check the reblogs, i usually throw some 😏 lore 😏 (is that what it’s called ?? 😭😭😩) and stuff in there for this au under my main, @sadwinistic, sooooooo 👀 plus on my main i’m insane and u can always shoot me an ask or dm me about this au 😏🤩😌👀🫶✌️)

also comments are 😏 much appreciated as always 😏 and they make writing more chapters so much more fun and cool and motivated!!! see: the note before this chapter 🤩😭🫶

Chapter 3: chapter three

Summary:

The gang decides to check out the newest vaguely food-like shop in town and they make some progress both in the search for Adrien’s mom and the mystery with the cocoon and the sewers.

They also gain a new member to their group.

Notes:

hey sorry for not posting this chapter for almost two months, i had some rough stuff come up 🫣 but it’s HERE NOW!!! enjoy the graphic depictions of softness and pining

and as always, lmk what u think in the comments :D i love to know what u think of what’s going on !! >:D

The gang—Marinette, Nino, Alya, Luka, Adrien, and Chloé—decide to check out the newest snack—sweet?—shop in town, Fruietmeir’s, while they brainstorm ideas for what it means that the cocoons are made out of organic material.

When the gang gets to Fruitmeir’s, there’s a line flowing out of the building and halfway down the block. They dutifully step into line and accept the twenty minute wait, discussing the latest assignments from that day as they do.

The building of the newest shop in town looks like a clown bought a palace and wanted it to be relative in size to its tiny clown car. Within the shop, the same theme runs through, with short spiraling pillars that are topped with tiny flags decorating the space along the walls and waitresses dressed in a mashup between formal wear and jester outfits—they wear gaudy hats that look like little castles of Fruitmeir’s… food , and short, bright green dresses that sport puff sleeves and lighter green hems as thick as the horrendous green pompoms on the tips of their white knee-high boots. Along the walls of Fruitmeir’s, paintings of garish clowns wearing jesters hats are hung in sparkling, golden frames; fuzzy black-and-white photos of circus tents and castles are sprinkled within the clown portraits. Even the menu that holds technically only one item—but is somehow, in a feat of what could be greed but is more likely stupidity, is stretched out across several items with varying prices—looks like it came out of a clown’s castle.

When the gang finally gets inside Fruitmeir’s, they’re greeted by the only clown in the establishment—Fruitmeir himself. As the man speaks, he twists several differently colored balloons together, as clowns do. “Welcome to Fruitmeir’s! Remember, it’s not ice cream, it’s not frozen yogurt—I really don’t know what it is!” The clown pauses and lifts his completed creation in the air. “Would anyone like a shrimping boat made out of circus balloons?” he asks.

No one answers him.

“Why are we here again?” Chloé asks, whispering into Adrien’s ear. 

“They wanted to try the new place,” Adrien replies, clearly excited.

Chloé grimaces and tries not to look at anything except for perhaps her feet.

When they get their… food , many of the gang are unimpressed.

“I don’t get the hype with this stuff,” Alya says, pulling away from her cone with a slight frown.

“What even is it?” Chloé asks, staring down at her small bowl of the stuff. She pokes at it with her spoon, and it jiggles back at her, translucent and neon green.

“You heard Franklin Fruitmeir,” Nino says as he takes a large bite out of one of his cones. (That’s right—one of them. He bought five.) “It’s a secret! That’s why they call it Fruitmeir’s.”

The gang tries not to watch as Nino devours not only his five cones, but Alya’s cone, too, and Chloé’s bowl. Luka, modest as ever, eats four cones of his own. Marinette and Adrien end up throwing theirs out after finishing what they could (which isn’t much, to be honest).

“You know,” Marinette says as they’re walking back to the van, “If that cocoon does turn out to be organic, we might have an honest to goodness monster in Crystal Cove!” At the thought of the traps that could trap such a creature, Marinette loses focus on where she’s walking and almost trips over the curb. 

Adrien, ever the gentleman, catches her.

“My guess is,” Luka says, raising his brows over at Marinette as she’s righted, “the cocoon is a multi-celled mutation. It’s probably a result of radiated allotropes and free-radical implosion.”

“I didn’t understand a word of that,” Alya says, opening the driver’s-side door of the van to slide onto the bench, “but I honestly don’t believe that this is a monster. It’s probably just like all of the other ‘monsters’ in Crystal Cove—just some person trying to serve their greed.”

“Even so,” Marinette says with a grin as she opens her door and slips up next to her best friend, “the trap to catch this creature is sure to be good.”

“If you’re making it, I’m sure it will be,” Luka says as he climbs into the back of the van. 

Adrien and Chloé climb up behind him. Adrien smiles and says, “I can’t wait to see what you come up with—I’ve only heard stories so far of the traps you make.”

Marinette smiles back at him, and something within Adrien bursts. He thinks it’s akin to light.

Nino starts the van and pulls out of Fruitmeir’s slowly, careful of the enormous line still coming out of the establishment. “So, Fruitmeir’s was a success, right?” he says with a smile.

Luka is the only one who says yes.

~*~

Adrien and Marinette decide that the next step for solving the mystery of his mother’s disappearance is to talk to his aunt, Amelie Graham de Vanily, who was in the photo in his mother’s locket that they had found in the sewers. The gang decides to approach Amelie in her home after school one day, and as they stand on her porch, they debate seriously over who should knock first. 

“I’m just saying,” Nino says, “I do have the loudest knock.”

“Marinette’s the leader of our group,” Luka says, leaning against one of the porch’s large white pillars. “Maybe she should knock.”

“Adrien is the one actually related to her,” Chloé says, crossing her arms.

“What if I don’t want to knock?” Adrien asks, stepping behind Marinette. “It’d be weird to just… knock, and have her open it to me and a bunch of strangers.”

“You have a point,” Nino says, twisting his hat around on his head nervously. “That would make any of us knocking weird, too, actually.”

“Just rock-paper-scissors it,” Alya says, reading through an article on Amelie Graham de Vanily on her phone.

Marinette sighs, leaning back and almost touching Adrien with her shoulder. “Or we could draw sticks.”

“I hate drawing sticks,” Nino says, and he twists his hat around on his head again. “I always get the short one. Are you sure you won’t knock, babe?” he asks Alya.

“No,” she says, not even glancing up. “I’ve got to finish reading this article before we meet Amelie.”

“What about alphabetical order, then?” Luka asks, rubbing hard at the bridge of his nose. “Whoever’s last in the alphabet has to knock.”

Nino and Adrien both take a moment to whisper their way through the alphabet. They eventually land on N with the last member of their group, and Nino clearly starts with N . 

“Luka,” Nino groans, twisting his hat around his head again. “That’s still me! That’s still weird!”

Luka smiles a very small smile and looks away. “Or we could go through reverse alphabetical order starting with our last names.”

Nino and Adrien go through their alphabets again, and both groan loudly when they land on L , with the last member of their group. ( Lahiffe clearly starts with L .)

Nino doesn’t say anything this time, but he twists his hat around his head again and again as he considers actually knocking, if only to get it over with. Maybe I can knock and then step behind someone else quickly enough that whoever answers doesn’t see that it was me who knocked , he thinks.

Félix, home from following the gang at a small distance, steps through the group scattered across his porch. “You’ll end up with a bald ring if you continue doing that,” he says as he passes by Nino, who is still twisting his hat around on his head. Félix unlocks and opens the front door to his house and pushes through it, leaving the door open behind him.

Marinette steps up to the open door but doesn’t cross the threshold. “Do you want us to come in?” Marinette calls through the doorway, but there’s no response.

Chloé, tired of waiting and tired of the circles and circles of conversation, pushes Marinette in and follows quickly after. The rest of the gang stumbles after them through the door, and a similar situation happens within the Graham de Vanily home to what happened when the gang entered the Agreste home—everyone stops and stares a little at the wealth until someone draws their attention away with a distraction.

“Adrien!” Amelie Graham de Vanily calls, appearing at the end of the hall with her arms wide open.

She’s fat, and wears a white blouse with large puff sleeves and a pair of black-and-white vertically-striped capris. In one of her hands is a tall glass of strawberry lemonade, and pinned to the front of her blouse is the brooch that matches Emelie Agreste’s necklace. “It’s so lovely to see you again!”

“Aunt Amelie,” Adrien says shyly, stepping forward to welcome his aunt with a large hug. 

Félix appears in a doorway leading to the room that they’re all in, holding several glasses and two pitchers on a tray in front of him. He makes his way around the group and moves towards a large but lowly-set round coffee table surrounded by a number of assorted stuffed chairs and loveseats. He pours a bit of strawberry lemonade from one of the pitchers into a cup and goes to sit down in one of the chairs. When the rest of the gang—minus Adrien, who is still hugging his aunt—looks over at Félix, he waves a hand for them to come and sit around the table. 

They do, although Chloé is the first to approach, then Marinette and Alya (the latter of whom is still reading an article), and then finally Nino and Luka as Adrien and Amelie part and similarly follow. 

Once everyone has settled in, Amelie gestures towards the cups and pitchers. “Please, make yourselves at home, take a drink. What can I help you all with today?” she asks with a pleasant smile as she sits cross-legged on the loveseat beside Adrien.

None of them had really thought this far ahead, but Marinette speaks up as their makeshift leader. “Luka, Nino, Alya, and I,” she gestures as she speaks, “solve mysteries in our free time. About a week and a half ago, we saw a poster that Adrien and Chloé’s had put up. In the poster, they asked for help on a mystery, and we offered up our services. They were wanting to find Adrien’s mom, who I’m sure you by now know has disappeared.”

“Yes, yes, I’m aware,” Amelie says with a solemn nod. 

Marinette continues. “Well, a few days ago, another mystery came up, and Adrien and Chloé were with us at the time. We went off to investigate and gather some clues, obviously, and while we were doing so, Adrien found a locket that we believe to be his mother’s.”

At this, Adrien pulls the locket from a pocket in his pink-, yellow-, green-, and orange-colored hoodie and holds it out to his aunt.

“Inside of it,” Marinette says as Adrien opens up the locket, “we found a picture of whom Adrien confirms are you and his mother, although you’re both much younger.” 

Amelie takes the locket with gentle fingers from Adrien’s hand, holding it close to her. After a moment’s hesitation, she unpins the brooch at the front of her blouse and holds the two identical pieces of jewelry beside each other. “What would you like to know?” she asks, glancing up at Marinette with an unreadable look in her eyes.

“Do you know the whereabouts of your sister?” Alya jumps in, finally looking up from her phone. 

“No,” Amelie says, but something in the way that she says it makes Alya cock her head to the side, questioning.

“Do you know why she might have been in the sewers?” Marinette asks.

“No,” Amelie says. “I don’t. She doesn’t like tight spaces.”

“Have you heard anything from her?” Adrien asks. Hope—like a rock—is stuck in the top of his throat.

Amelie turns to Adrien with a sad look on her face. “No, Adrien.”

Marinette looks down at the ground between her beat-up sneakers and frowns. She had genuinely thought that Amelie would have some answers.

“Are you going to keep looking for her?” Amelie asks after a long moment of silence. “Emelie, that is?”

Marinette looks up, now, her gaze narrowed and serious. “Yes.”

Amelie smiles. “I’m willing to help with anything you need in your search—she’s my sister, after all. If any of you need a place to crash, to evaluate things, or you just need a place to hang out, you can always come here. I’m also… very knowledgeable, about many things. We used to be avid researchers, my sister and I, and I haven’t lost my touch or what I learned.”

“Thank you, Aunt Amelie,” Adrien says quietly, turning away. He, like Marinette, had thought—had hoped— that his aunt would be more helpful. It seems she won’t be, he thinks.

“We’ll probably take you up on that offer,” Marinette says with a small, careful smile. 

“Can we also ask you about Emelie if any questions come up?” Alya says, looking up again from her phone. Now, she’s reading about Emelie and Amelie’s relationship.

“Of course,” Amelie says warmly.

A small silence follows as everyone—minus Alya and Adrien—smiles a little awkwardly.

“I would like to help,” Félix says moments later, crossing an ankle elegantly over his knee. Everyone turns to stare at him, including Alya and Adrien. Marinette and Chloé’s mouths in particular are wide open with confusion and surprise. “With the mystery solving, that is,” he amends. After a longer moment of silence, he adds, “please.”

Marinette is the first to speak. “Why?”

“Because I want to,” Félix says flatly. With his elbows on the arms of his chair, he steeples his fingers together under his chin.

“You don’t even know us,” Luka says slowly.

He sighs, but says, “I know Adrien.” As an afterthought, he adds with a roll of his eyes, “and Chloé.”

“ We don’t know you,” Nino says, reaching up to pull the bill of his hat lower over his eyes. “How can we trust you?”

“You can’t,” Félix says matter-of-factly. “But you’ll learn to.”

Alya glances up from her phone and the article there. “It’s dangerous. We’re out far too late, we’re constantly getting scratched and bruised up, and our clothes are always getting ruined. Plus, on occasion, we are arrested.”

Félix doesn’t verbalize the fact that only Marinette and Luka are currently wearing torn-up and dirty clothes. Instead, he tosses his mother a glance. Amelie shrugs her large shoulders at him, but doesn’t say a word. “My mother doesn’t mind,” he says. “I think she may even believe my getting arrested would be good for me.”

Amelie smiles, but doesn’t elaborate for the group.

“And if we don’t want you getting hurt?” Adrien says quietly. “What then?”

“Before you joined these hooligans,” Félix says, staring straight at his cousin with a gaze unfilled with anger, “did you ever think to ask me if I didn’t want you getting hurt?” Did you pause to think about the danger you’d be getting into? Did you pause to consider that, in trying to find what you’ve lost, that you might get lost, too? he thinks, and something in his heart shifts and breaks a little.

Adrien is silent, but he doesn’t look away. 

“I didn’t think so,” Félix says, but his voice is carefully controlled. He doesn’t allow the hurt to thrum beneath his words, even in the most miniscule amount. What has just broken within him breaks a little more, even so. “So why don’t you let me join?”

No one answers him.

Félix rolls his eyes again. “I’ll prove myself, I’ll gain your trust, I’ll be all emotional when necessary, I’ll even drive your silly van if you need me to, I’ll write you up a resume, just please—for the love of Adrien , let me join you hooligans on your mystery-solving schemes.” Just let me keep him safe , he adds on silently. I can’t lose anything more this year.

“What skills do you have that would go on a resume?” Alya asks, mildly interested as she glances up again.

“Basic self-defense, cooking skills, basic knowledge of treating wounds, basic sewing skills, driving skills, defensive driving, acting, fencing, and gardening.”

“Gardening doesn’t seem super applicable,” Alya says slowly. 

Félix shrugs. “I added it because I’m good at it, and it might become useful at some point, knowing the wide variety of mysteries you all have already tackled.”

Alya nods.

“Fine,” Marinette says, blowing her cheeks out wide. “Fine. You can join.”

“Thank you,” Félix says, and he smiles.

~*~

When the gang discovers that Ms. Mendeleiev has been cocooned, they head straight for Amelie Agreste’s house. 

Once all there, they sit around in about the same seats as the last time they were here. Amelie, Félix, Adrien, and Chloé are quiet as Marinette and Alya explain things until Amelie has all of the facts—that Nino and Luka stole the body in the first place, what Ms. Mendeleiev was able to tell them about the body and the cocoon it was in, and now how Ms. Mendeleiev is cocooned. Nino and Luka are silent the entire time, although their silence is more out of guilt than anything else. And, well—looking at the facts in that light, and considering the amount of clues that could have been discovered from the body and its cocoon after Ms. Mendeleiev analyzed it, it makes sense that Ms. Mendeleiev would be taken out of the question as soon as possible.

“I should have listened to my parents about the mysteries,” Nino says once Marinette and Alya finish explaining things. He groans, dropping his head in his hands. “Ms. Mendeleiev shouldn’t have paid the price for my awful ideas.”

Amelie and Félix stay silent as the gang comforts Nino.

“We all helped steal the body,” Marinette says quietly. “Eventually.” At this, Luka puts a hand on Nino’s shoulder, patting his friend in a comforting manner.

“You guys didn’t even want me and Luka to steal a body! You guys fought me on it the whole way to the school,” Nino cries.

“We went with you into school, though,” Alya says, rubbing a hand over her boyfriend’s back. “And we didn’t make you take it back.”

“Come on, Nino,” Marinette says, crouching low in front of her friend. “You’ve never backed down from a mystery with us before.”

“She could be dead!” Nino cries angrily, throwing his hat to the ground and grabbing his hair in his fists. “All because of me and my stupid ideas!”

“It’s because of your stupid ideas , babe, that we know there’s a high possibility that she’s alive,” Alya says, leaning closer to wrap her arms around his back.

“There’s still that possibility that she is dead,” Nino mutters, sniffling loudly.

“Do something about it, then,” Félix says, finally speaking up from where he sits. 

After a moment of hesitation, Amelie adds with a small smile, “You can’t find a solution with Ms. Mendeleiev if you don’t solve the mystery, Nino.”

“How do we even solve the mystery, though,” he asks, looking over at Amelie, even as his head is still in his hands, “if we don’t have any information on the cocoon?”

Félix butts in with a roll of his eyes. “You guys still have the first clue—Dupain-Cheng has a sample of the nasty substance.”

“Oh, yeah!” Marinette cries, standing and reaching for her bag. When she pulls out a nearly empty container, she turns back to the rest of the gang with wide eyes. “What happened to the sample?”

Luka looks up from consoling Nino and frowns. “Me and Nino shared that a little while ago—it’s Fruitmeir’s.”

Marinette asks, “You ate the sample?” and, at the same time, Alya says, “No, that’s a sample from the cocoon.”

“No,” Nino says, looking up from his hands, “it’s Fruitmeir’s! We ate it, we should know.”

“It literally says sample on it!” Marinette cries. “Why would you guys eat it?”

“It was Fruitmeir’s!” the boys say.

Félix rolls his eyes, but a small smile flits across his face when his mother looks over at him, almost laughing herself.

Adrien reaches for the container and takes the lid off. When he dips a finger into the remaining goop and puts said finger in his mouth, Marinette, Alya, Chloé, and Félix cringe. Amelie pointedly closes her eyes and covers her mouth.

Adrien frowns with disgust. “Yeah, that’s Fruitmeir’s.” He puts the lid back on the container and passes it back to Marinette.

“And you got that from the cocoon?” Luka asks, pulling away from Nino to take the container from Marinette.

“Directly from it,” Marinette says, grimacing.

“So that means…” Luka trails off.

“The cocoon is made from the same stuff as Fruitmeir’s dessert,” Nino says, turning to the container to take a finger of the remaining goop to eat.

“That’s supposed to be dessert?” Chloé asks, recoiling into the chair she’s sitting in. “Gross.”

“But if the cocoon is made from Fruitmeir’s dessert,” Alya says, “that means that the monster might not actually be a monster at all.”

“See?” Félix says, looking at Nino and Nino alone. “Mystery almost solved.”

Nino sits up a little and smiles. “ Thanks ,” he whispers to Félix. Inside, Nino feels a little better— maybe it’s not all bad, he thinks.

“What now?” Nino says, a little rejuvenated.

“What do we know about Franklin Fruitmeir?” Adrien asks, shifting in his chair to lean forward.

“Well,” Alya says after a moment, scrolling through her phone, “he showed up in town out of nowhere two months ago, and his business is booming. Before that, I can’t find anything. But he’s hiring for female servers right now.”

“I’m not working there,” Marinette, Chloé, and Alya chorus sternly. 

Nino looks at Luka, Adrien, and Félix. “Guess we’ll be ladies then,” he says with a shrug.

“I can’t work there, either,” Luka says, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “I won’t be able to eat anything Fruitmeir’s again if I see how it’s made.”

“Don’t ever ask me to dress up in a disguise,” Félix says, shaking his head with finality.

“I thought acting was on your resume?” Alya says with a smile.

“It was,” Félix says with a nod. “Even so.” 

Nino raises an eyebrow over to Adrien, who shrugs and smiles the slightest. “Guess it’s just us, then,” Adrien says. “I’ve never dressed like a girl, though.”

“We’ll fix that,” Marinette says, eyeing his current outfit with a narrowed gaze. “We’ll get you and Nino hired and ready for tomorrow’s night shift.”

~*~

The next day, the gang—with Félix as the newest edition—meet up at Marinette’s house.

Marinette files everyone through the bakery downstairs, and Tom and Sabine send them up to Marinette’s room with two trays of snacks and wary, strained smiles.

“Stay safe,” Sabine calls up softly after the group. 

“Please,” Tom adds in the same soft tone.

“We’ll try,” Alya calls back with a smile.

“Thanks for the snacks,” Adrien and Nino call back as well.

Once everyone is in Marinette’s room and settled across her chaise, the stairs to her loft, the rolling chair from her desk, and around on the floor, she rolls a corkboard from inside of her closet and unfolds the three sections so that it’s flat and displays a very convoluted plan.

The plan isn’t just for the whole mystery and the clues that they have—that’s on the other side of the corkboard. The side facing everyone just concerns Adrien and Nino’s disguises, cover stories, resumes, and any other details that Marinette felt were pertinent at two a.m. the day before.

Once the corkboard is unfolded, Marinette grabs two more seats—these foldable chairs—also from the closet, and arranges them so that the two face each other in front of the corkboard. She also pulls up a rolling cart that has several drawers within it—some for make up, some for sewing supplies, and some for trap-making supplies.

Next, Marinette grabs a small wand that has a pointing hand on the end of it and points it at Adrien and Nino. “To recap,” she says, like she’s a teacher and they’re her students, “Adrien and Nino have already sent off their resumes to Fruitmeir’s, and start tonight—they didn’t have to do an interview, luckily, but they still have to pass as female for their shift.” She points to two designs tacked up to the corkboard. 

One of the designs is a simple summer dress with a boxy neckline and simple sleeves. Up the side of this dress is a generous slit. The fabric is decorated with flowers of various colors and sizes on top of light green fabric. The second design is a thickly-strapped dark green dress with a sweetheart neckline that falls to the knees of the model that wears it. Around the waist of the dress is a wide belt of black fabric, and tiny silver cats run along the hem of the dress. 

With her pointer, Marinette points at the first dress. “Nino will wear this one with his sneakers and a black curly-haired wig.” She points at the second design. “This one is for Adrien, and he’ll wear a pair of Luka’s sneakers and a blond straight-haired wig. You both’ll have A cups because I’m low on extra toilet paper today, but I’ll see if I’ve got two extra push up bras in your sizes if you want.”

At the last part, Adrien blushes a little, but he nods like everyone else and doesn’t say anything.

“Alright, then,” Marinette says, and pushes the corkboard over. “Nino, if you want, you can get dressed on the other side of the divider,” she says, pointing vaguely with her stick towards a tall paper divider unfolded so that it portions off some of her room as a dressing room. “Adrien, I can do up your makeup and hair now in this chair.” She points to the chairs that were unfolded in front of the corkboard.

“Won’t I get it messed up when I put on the clothes?” he asks, standing with uncertainty but heading over to the chair. Behind him, Nino gets up with Alya, and they make their way to the partitioned section of Marinette’s room, Alya presumably helping Nino with his outfit. Luka leads Chloé and Félix to a few backpacks set up in a corner of Marinette’s room, and the three of them go through a series of checklists for the backpacks, making sure that everything is present. Chloé and Luka are especially tense through the whole ordeal, but Félix acts as though he doesn’t notice this.

“No,” Marinette says, sitting across from Adrien and taking a brush to his hair, pushing it back. She pauses, thinking. “Well, actually—your shirt and jacket might be a problem,” she says, looking at his bright yellow shirt and blue and pink denim bomber jacket. “The dress zips up, so you can step into it and pull it over your shoulders just fine without messing up your hair or makeup, but you’ll have to take off your shirt before we start.”

“Oh,” he says, looking away and then back over to her. “Okay,” he says, and he tries not to blush. He takes off his jacket and drapes it over the back of his folding chair and then, after a moment of hesitation, takes the bottom of his shirt in his hands and pulls it over his head. He doesn’t see Marinette’s blush or the way her eyes scan his torso—from the baby rolls of fat just barely tucked into his awful jeans (they’re divided, again, at the seams, with neon yellow corduroy fabric and dark-wash blue denim, and Nino has made seven comments already today about these fashion choices) to the way his chest shudders with an uneasy breath to the little round scars that look like white freckles dotting his skin in a pattern she’s curious to connect together sometime—as his shirt goes over his head and is balled into the pocket of his bomber jacket. All he sees is Marinette ducking her head away as she turns towards the drawers beside her and wordlessly pulls out a blond wig.

Now that Adrien’s sufficiently shirtless and Marinette’s sufficiently speechless (and at a boy she’s hardly paid any attention to! Except for maybe that time in the sewers, or that time—), Marinette pulls the blond wig in her hands over Adrien’s head. Adrien’s skin tingles where her cold fingers press at his skull, pushing his actual hair beneath the wig and adjusting the hairline of the fake hair. She fastens the wig to his hair with small brown pins that rub along his skull with every tug of the wig. With the strange tingling and soft pulls and tugs, Adrien’s eyelids feel especially heavy and almost fall closed on several occasions with how pleasant it feels.

When Marinette finishes pulling the wig over his head, Adrien watches as she takes up her brush again and a large green scrunchie. She leans closer to him for a moment, reaching over his head with the brush, but then, with a frown, she stands and comes up behind him. After a moment, Adrien feels a gentle tugging at the back of his skull, and again, he’s on the verge of falling asleep at how pleasant it feels. Her cold fingers brush along the nape of his neck every so often, but the most of the pleasant ordeal happens with the wig he wears as she brushes it into a high ponytail. With each gentle pull of the hairbrush in her hands, the wig and all of the pins in it rub along his hairline, making him feel fuzzy inside.

Adrien wonders, in the silence of this intimacy, how he had lived as long as he’d had without feeling so nice and warm. Neither of his parents had ever brushed his hair like this—or, at least, not that he can remember.

When Marinette finishes brushing his hair into a ponytail, she comes back around to sit in front of Adrien. As she turns wordlessly to the drawers and digs through them—eventually finding a wide piece of plastic and a small brush—Adrien blinks a little blearily at her, still feeling all fuzzy and like he’ll fall asleep at any moment. (He thinks about the future—he’ll jump at the chance for any disguise if it’ll feel like this again. He’ll jump at the chance to be this near to her again, to feel like this again, to—) Marinette looks at him with narrowed eyes for a moment, and then goes for one of the small boxes on the wide piece of plastic that’s filled with a sparkling black powder. She darts forward with the brush in one hand and whispers, “Close your eyes,” and then, when he shuts them tightly, she puts a hand to his cheek and rubs her thumb over one of his eyelids and says, “Relaxed—keep them closed and relaxed.”

So Adrien relaxes with a small breath and tries not to move when Marinette’s thumb drops from his eyelid and to his cheek and the small brush presses gently there instead. He doesn’t open his eyes, not even when she pulls away and then comes back several times, or when she brushes a larger brush over the hill of his cheekbones, or when something wet and slightly sticky is pressed and rolled across his lips—he just keeps breathing in and out, relaxing and relaxing and holding onto the peace of the moment.

When she tells him to open his eyes, Adrien does, but his eyelids feel a little heavier and he has to blink several times to relieve the feeling that something’s in his eyes. As his eyes finally focus, he sees her waving around a black wand with bristles and goop along the end. 

“What’s that?” he asks, his eyes widening marginally. 

“Mascara,” Marinette says matter-of-factly. “It won’t hurt you.”

Adrien grimaces, but makes himself relax.

Marinette leans closer—so close that he can feel her breath on his lips in the two inches that span between their mouths, so close that her nose threatens to bump into his—and puts one of her hands on his cheeks again, directing him. She whispers for him to keep his eyes open, to look at her, and—can he do anything else? He does as she says, and he feels more than sees the brush push up against his eyelashes, and then press down on his lower lashes, and then she’s moving to his other eye and applying the mascara there, too. 

When she’s finished, Marinette pulls back from her work with a satisfied smile. “Want to see?” she asks, and Adrien nods.

Marinette holds up a mirror from the drawers beside her, and Adrien smiles at his reflection. 

He looks beautiful, obviously. Green and black sparkling powder decorate the space above his eyelids, fading to white just below his eyebrows, and it makes his green eyes pop. Black mascara adds to the effect and a light pink, sparkling powder dusts his cheekbones. On his lips is a dusty rose lipstick, glittering and sparkling in the afternoon sun filtering through Marinette’s windows.

“Ready to get dressed?” Marinette asks, standing and setting the mirror back onto the drawers beside her. “You can get undressed, put the dress on, and then I can help you with the bra,” she says, as if this is the most normal thing, and not him getting undressed in his crush’s room. Adrien dies a little inside of embarrassment but nods and stands as well. 

Marinette guides him to the partitioned portion of her room, where Nino is getting the last of his bra stuffed by a laughing Alya. When they see Adrien and Marinette, they quicken their pace and Nino bends down to get his clothes from the floor. They leave the makeshift dressing room, shooting Adrien big smiles as they head over to the makeup and chairs and sit down. Nino and Alya set to do Nino’s makeup, laughing and talking still, and Adrien turns to Marinette, who’s still with him in the makeshift dressing room. 

She doesn’t look like she’s going to leave, so Adrien asks if she’ll turn around. She does, and he takes off his pants quickly. Already shirtless, Adrien finds the process easy as he takes the dress thrown over the partition into his hands.

The fabric of the dress is thin and soft, but somehow feels sturdy as he holds it open for his legs to step into and pulls it up over his bare legs and underwear. Rather than pull the straps up over his shoulders, Adrien holds it up under his armpits and tries to tie the belt at his waist.

Marinette comes to his rescue after a moment, having turned around at his murmur of being covered. She turns him around with careful, gentle hands at his hips that make him blush. Adrien follows her pushing and bends his arms at the elbows so that they don’t obstruct her access to the belt of the dress. Marinette adjusts the whole of the belt, adjusting it at his front— only to make it even , she tells herself—and ties it slowly in the back. When she has to tie it not once, not twice, but three times due to her fumbling, messy fingers, Marinette blames it on not getting enough sleep.

“Sorry,” she whispers behind his shoulder. Adrien feels her breath hit his skin and has to keep himself from shivering at the contact. “I keep messing it up.”

“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” Adrien murmurs back, even as he wishes silently for her to try if it means she’ll stay this close.

“I know,” she says, but she doesn’t. She’s Marinette—it has to be perfect, if it came from her. It has to be. And not just because of Adrien, not even close.

But they move on. (This isn’t enough for her to open up to him. She can’t, not yet.) She takes a bra from over the partition and puts a hand on the back of Adrien’s shoulder, holding him where he is.

“It’s a little more complicated, doing it like this,” she says, “but it’s your first time, so we’ll just keep going as we are.” She takes the top of back of the dress and tugs on it, silently telling him to lift his arms and let the dress drop to his hips. It does, even as Adrien rushes to grab it before it doesn’t fall to the floor and leave him just in his underwear. It doesn’t fall past, even without his help—Marinette guessed his measurements correctly. Instead of telling him this, Marinette steps around him with the bra so that she’s in front of him. 

The bra fastens in the back with three hooks, and Marinette is holding out the straps for him to put his arms through. Adrien does this and Marinette steps behind him again. 

“Lift your arms out straight,” she says, and her cold fingers dance along the middle of his ribcage and his spine as she hooks the bra and adjusts the straps from the back. As she turns around him again—ducking her head under his arm, as his arms are still out—she adjusts the bottom hem of the bra. There’s no wires in the bra, just seams lined with a thicker material, in hopes to make the disguise a little more comfortable.

As she comes around to Adrien’s front, the bottom hem of the bra is all lopsided despite her previous efforts—but he doesn’t know that it’s not so lopsided that she has to do what she’s doing, but he’s not complaining when she sticks her now hands between his skin and the whole of the bra, pulling it down and, well. He’s really not complaining when her hands linger there. And her hands—they aren’t cold anymore—they’ve warmed by touching him. 

But then her gaze meets his, and even if she’s slow to pull her hands from his skin, he still feels the absence of her. It’s like walking into a snowstorm with only a thin layer between him and the weather; he feels it like frostbite, like cold winter air.

“Now, um—now you can pull the dress up over your bra,” she says, looking away from him. She doesn’t offer her help, nor does she just help him as she did before. Instead, she turns away and grabs a half-roll of toilet paper.

When they begin to stuff the bra, Adrien’s dress is already fully on, so there’s not as much skin-on-skin contact as there would be. But really, there’s hardly any contact at all, as Marinette wraps her entire hand with toilet paper before pulling the top hem of the dress from his skin and stuffing the toilet paper into the bra there. And even when she pulls her hand from his dress, she’s careful to keep her skin from touching his. 

Adrien actually kind of misses being half-naked, if only for the loss of contact.

It isn’t long before his bra is sufficiently stuffed with toilet paper, thanks to Marinette’s newfound speed. It isn’t long before they’re just standing there, him staring at her and her staring at the empty toilet paper roll in her hand, nervously fiddling with her fingers. 

And then she looks up, and something in her expression softens. “You look nice,” she says.

“Thank you,” he says, blushing deeply. After a moment, he looked down at his socked feet. “I… don’t get told that, very often.”

Marinette looks up at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

“My… outfits.” He frowns. “Fashion sense, you know. I’ve been told a lot that I don’t seem to have one.”

Marinette grimaces. “Well, you don’t—but it doesn’t mean you don’t look nice. That day in the cave, or the day we agreed to help you, or that day we did presentations on World War I, or—” She stops herself before she starts listing off every encounter she’s had with him. “You—you just—you look nice. All the time. Just, well. Sometimes your clothes are a little strange, color-wise, but it doesn’t mean you look bad.”

“Do you mean that?” he asks, his gaze serious but all the while vulnerable. “Do you really mean that?” In his head, a voice echoes— “you’re a disgrace, an ugly, undeserving mark on—”

“Yes,” Marinette says, interrupting the voice. She holds his gaze and almost smiles at him. “I mean it.”

“Thanks,” he says softly. “Thank you.”

Notes:

the last scene alone was over five pages in the document 💀💀😭😭 (which isn’t like. a lot for me. but it’s a Lot for this fic. so. 😭😭😭) anyways this took so long!! because!!! life got in the way and my health stuff got worse

HOWEVER. today i am posting a finished chapter three for this fic, chapter four is outlined and ready to be written, i’m making progress on a feligami-centric fake dating enemies-to-lovers fic, AND i posted the first chapter to a lockwood & co. and spy x family mash-up damianya and friends fic. so. there’s all of that, too.

also, to those of you interested in my Crush (literally probably no one, although a few of u (ily, btw) wished me good luck with him), there has been No progress, except i happen to like him even MOre than before (as crushes go, i suppose *sigh*) and my time with him has been severely limited to just five more weeks (independent study program my beloathed) 😭 i would make a move except for i don’t do that And also it would SUCK to start something and have to end it so soon… so i have resigned myself to pining away silently for those five remaining weeks…….

anyways let me know what u thought of this chapter!!! and any theories or ideas you have, bcos it’s crazy cool to read over them and giggle mischievously in the comments when i reply to u >:D and if u want to see drawings i did for this au, u can always check out my #scooby doo au tag on my art blog on tumblr, @sadiedoodles, or u can message me on my main (@sadwinistic) about this au and i Will love u forever and go nutso insane :)

Chapter 4: chapter four

Summary:

Tonight, Adrien and Nino start their fourth shift at Fruitmeir’s, we see what Chloé and Luka’s relationship is like, and we get a peek into Adrien’s past and the reasons for his clothing choices.

Notes:

posting this chapter, the art of the main cast i did (that someone asked if i could include with this chapter; the pictures are at the very end, but you can also find them on my art blog, @sadiedoodles, on tumblr), and posting chapter five tonight :) hope you enjoy!! >:D

Adrien and Nino had clocked in for their fourth shift at Fruitmeir’s two hours before. For each of the prior shifts, the rest of the gang—Marinette, Alya, Chloé, Luka, and Félix—had waited outside, not about to let their friends go off into danger without the promise of backup. 

For that fourth shift, the rest of the gang does much the same that they’d done before, although the plan is different than before due to Fruitmeir’s trust of ‘Adrienne’ and ‘Nina’ and his allowing them to lock up on their own tonight. Each of them—minus ‘Adrienne’ and ‘Nina,’ who’re wearing their disguises again tonight—are wearing clothes ready to be dirtied and torn up, as none of them knows what they’ll be encountering tonight in looking for evidence to strengthen Alya’s theory about Fruitmeir being the monster.

Marinette and Luka donated many of the outfits the group is wearing now, although Félix wears his own gardening clothes. Marinette and Luka both have loose tank tops with the sleeve holes hanging low to their hips, although Marinette is wearing a tight black long-sleeved crop top under hers. Marinette also has the shoulder strap of her expandable toolbox thrown over her shoulders. Both her and Luka also wear jeans, and so do Chloé, Félix, and Alya. Alya is wearing a form-fitting long-sleeved top designed by Marinette; Félix wears a simple white t-shirt that’s stained brown and green from grass and dirt; and Chloé is wearing a form-fitting unaltered tank top and sweater. 

In this business, form-fitting is often the best option—as the gang never knows what sorts of things will be out to catch or snag them and their clothes—but Luka and Marinette were limited in the shirt department given it was laundry day at the Dupain-Chengs. 

Two hours into ‘Adrienne’ and ‘Nina’s’ shifts, the gang is mostly quiet. Félix reads a book and does some English homework in the driver’s seat, his feet propped up in the open window of his door, which is kicked open into the sidewalk. 

In Nino’s absence, Félix has been deemed the safest driver of the gang and so he’s been sitting there for the past three shifts and now this one. And, really, it’s no surprise that he’s been elected driver in Nino’s absence. Luka and Chloé have never driven before, Marinette is an atrocious driver and no one lets her near the driver’s side of a car since the Incident, and Alya has debilitating anxiety with being behind the wheel of a car due to Crystal Cove’s monsters’ habit of jumping into traffic. Félix is also trained in defensive driving, thanks to his mother, too. Considering all of this, it really is no surprise that Félix is the one next in line for the driver’s seat.

Next to Félix, Alya completes some Chemistry homework and, when that’s finished, she begins writing up citations for and editing an article going up on her blog the next day. Beside her and up against the passenger’s seat of the van, Marinette builds a pulley system and organizes her expandable tool box for this particular mystery and monster. Periodically, she’ll look out the window and, using the binoculars around her neck, will survey the inside of the dreaded clown’s tent palace that is Fruitmeir’s, looking for anything amiss or troubling. In the back of the van, Chloé and Luka sit across from each other on the benches and work at the pop-up table between them. Every once in a while, they pass snide comments back and forth. Chloé is working on a Chemistry assignment and Luka is working on his Economics homework, and though they’re both struggling in their respective work, neither will stoop to the level of asking the other—a known successful student in the others’ troubling class—for help. To do so would mean to swallow their prides and attempt to work beyond their hatred of the other. (An impossible task, if you couldn’t tell.)

And everything is quiet like this, for the most part. Félix makes no sound except for the scratching of his pencil on paper and the flipping of pages, and from Alya much the same can be heard. From Marinette, there’s no sound except for the clinking and clacking of metal and the occasional whispered curse as she pinches her fingers with her pliers. And from the two teens in the rear of the van, there’s nothing but the sound of sighs, groans, and then a growing argument as their annoyance with the other rises to a climax.

“Can you shut up?” Chloé bites, glaring up at Luka, who is frustratedly flipping through his Economics textbook and muttering under his breath. “I can’t concentrate with your mumbling.”

“Not like you could concentrate anyways,” he retorts, “at least, not with your attitude and ego taking up so much space in your brain.”

“Well, excuse me for knowing who I am, what I want, and not taking shit from anyone.”

“Oh, so that’s what you’re calling it?” Luka asks, looking up from his textbook with a raised brow. “That’s a lot of words for someone with a mental capacity as small as yours—I’m surprised you managed it with your arrogance already taking up so much of the focus.” 

“Oh, screw off, why don’t you?” she hisses. 

“May I?” he asks, cocking his head and smiling thinly at her. “Thank you for your permission, Your Highness.”

“Can the both of you screw off, please?” Félix asks flatly, not even bothering to look up from his books. “It’s very hard to do anything with the two of you bickering back there.”

“You can go outside, if you’d like,” Marinette says, peering through her binoculars into Fruitmeir’s. “Maybe go off about fifty to seventy-five feet away so we can’t hear. We’ll text if we need you.”

Luka glares at Chloé but gets up from his seat, opening the back of the van. “After you, Princess,” he says, sweeping one hand out in a wide gesture for her to exit the van.

“Why can’t you just shut up?” she asks, frowning and looking at him with narrowed eyes. “We wouldn’t even have to get out into the cold, then. If you can shut your mouth for longer than a second, I’m sure even I could manage it.”

“Well,” Luka says with another thin smile, “unlike you, I’d like a chance to try and get some semblance of sanity back when I’m forced to be around you. Talking it out seems like the best option, as Marinette suggested.”

Chloé’s frown deepens, but she gets up and steps out of the van, watching to make sure Luka follows as well. He does and closes the van doors behind him. Within the van, three sighs of relief sound. They each continue their respective work quietly in Luka and Chloé’s absence.

Luka leads Chloé to a dark storefront on the other side of the block and makes sure his phone is ready to alert him—loudly—if the gang needs his help. Chloé does the same before crossing her arms and turning to Luka with a grimace.

“So, how do you think you’ll get your sanity back, Mr. Know-It-All?” she asks, cocking one hip to the side and looking at him with raised brows. “We talk to each other more than enough, don’t you think?”

Luka plants his hands on his hips and rolls his eyes. “Well, I thought perhaps we could have something of a normal conversation, but no, you can’t even give that a chance, can you?”

“I would, if there was anything telling me it was a good idea—but all I can see is telling me that I’m talking to a fake and a liar,” she says. “And not even a good one, at that,” she adds with narrowed eyes.

“Not even a good one?” he says sarcastically. “Oh, how you wound me.”

“No, not even a good one,” Chloé says, ignoring Luka’s unfazed attitude, “because if you were, you could hold it in when laughing at someone whose differences are out of their control. But no,” she says, lowering her voice, “you can’t even grasp some basic decency or see past your own intelligence to care about anyone but yourself unless it benefits you.”

Bewildered, Luka is speechless for a moment before he explodes again. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about!” he says, throwing his hands up in the air. “What are you even referring to—”

“You laughed at Adrien,” she hisses, leaning forward. Her anger has clearly been built up over time without him even knowing it, evidently, and from some small thing he can hardly remember. Build many mountains out of molehills? he thinks. “And before that, you think I didn’t see you pretending to care about the victims and those who came to you and your group of amateurs for help? Like it didn’t benefit you to care? But the minute that’s all accounted for,” she yells, taking a step forward to poke at his silly shirt sporting obnoxiously large sleeve holes that advertises some silly band she’s never even heard of, “you throw all your kindness and understanding out the door because it suddenly doesn’t matter! Yeah, sure, I don’t know what I’m talking about—I’ve seen it!”

“Well, you must be blind!” he cries, taking the wrist of her poking hand in one of his and holding it firmly away from him. “That was a week and a half ago! And if you’re just gonna go around making mountains out of molehills, why aren’t you yelling and chasing down Nino? He laughed at the same things I did and he’s said more things about Adrien that you—in all of your shortsightedness—could easily take offense to!”

“I’m not yelling at him because he actually cares when it matters!”

“I think you’re being a little biased, here,” Luka says lowly, grimacing with some measure of disgust. He raises his brows and steps away from Chloé, rolling his shoulders back as if shrugging her off. “I don’t even understand what you’re mad about. It was a while ago, and others have done a lot worse.”

She rips her hand from his and plants her hands on her hips, now. “You don’t understand how I could be angry when you acted like you cared at the very start—when it was money and a good reputation on the line—and haven’t cared since? You don’t see how I’d be mad about that? Nino at least has been taking the time to comfort Adrien and talk to him!”

“We don’t even get paid half the time,” he says angrily, putting his arms out from his side and shaking his head. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand. “And everyone already hates us! Plus, why do I have to talk to Adrien? What if I don’t want to be shot and killed for it by his guard dog?”

She narrows her eyes at him, holding herself back from responding to the guard dog comment. Right now is about Adrien, not her. “And you didn’t think, not for one second, that the son of one of the richest men in town could pay you? Or that, for finding the wife of one of the richest men in town, your reputation could be helped? Do you seriously expect me to believe you didn’t think of those things and that it didn’t make you act like you cared?”

“Alright,” he says, his eyebrows drawing together, “fine, I admit it—the thought did cross my mind, but I didn’t care because of it! And I genuinely did and do care, not that you see it, since—”

“How could I see it!” she interrupts with a cry. Bitingly, she continues. “It’s fitting, you know,” she says with a roll of her eyes, leaning back. “You’re so smart, but you can’t seem to show someone you care in a way that makes sense, can you?”

“You don’t even know me!” he shouts, and the words echo around them. She doesn’t know who he is—she met him just two weeks ago. “So just shut the hell up until you give me a chance and actually get to know who I am! Or—better yet, just leave me alone!”

She stares at him for a long moment, her mouth working its way into a thin line. “If you hurt Adrien at all,” Chloé says lowly, “I’ll make you regret everything—joining your stupid group, talking to Adrien, all of it. Understand?”

“Just leave me alone!” he cries, waving his arms about. “I don’t care—I wasn’t going to hurt him at all!”

Chloé narrows her eyes, but after a moment of examining Luka’s expression, she turns away and makes her way back towards the van.

As she walks, she feels something boiling within her—a rage, a protectiveness, a desire to make sure Adrien—her only friend—doesn’t get hurt by these people. And who is he? she thinks. Who is Luka to act like I didn’t make sense, that what I said was crazy? He was the one who was overly compassionate when Adrien asked them to find his mom and he was also the one who hadn’t comforted Adrien at all or even really talked to him, for that matter, since then. It just doesn’t make sense to her—the only explanation is that Luka was acting that first time. And, really—that makes sense. The chance at a better reputation, at being paid for their services, yadda yadda, all of that—it makes sense to Chloé why Luka would want those things and act, pretend, for them. But he won’t be hurting Adrien by the end of it, not if Chloé has any say. 

(Plus, he literally called her a dog!)                                                                                                         

~*~

Luka stands in front of the dark storefront for a while, just trying to calm down. She makes him so angry. Yes, she sticks up for Adrien and wants to protect him, yes, she’s pretty, yes, she’s smart, but—really? She’s also incredibly arrogant and sometimes even cruel and she’s never, not once, not even from the very beginning, given him a chance. She hadn’t even given him the chance to make comments that other people were also backing up and agreeing with without jumping down his throat about it, not even thinking that, you know, when someone’s trying to lighten the mood, sometimes they make digs at other small, unimportant things, like sizes of beds or clothing choices. And it had just been a few comments!

And who is she! he thinks. Who is Chloé to yell at me and not Nino—not that Nino deserves it; it’s the principle of the matter—for something we both did, and to act like she knows who I am! Who is she to claim she knows me enough to say I don’t care about people right? Who is she to say she knows anything about me! We’ve only known each other for two weeks!

Chloé knows nothing about Luka or his situation—not about his mother and the way she treats him and his sister, not the way his mother gets drunk without a care in the world. She doesn’t know how his mother treats other people when she gets like that. She doesn’t know about his dad and the way he’d left Luka’s family, and Chloé certainly doesn’t know about how much Luka’s struggled just to make it this far. She doesn’t know a thing about him—not the way he cares or what he wants, not about who he wants to talk to and certainly not about what he’s willing to put up with.

Chloé knows nothing about who he is, and it’s her fault, really—she hadn’t given him a chance at all.

But Luka, now—he knows who she is. She’d just shown herself.

~*~

Chloé’s parents started giving her an allowance when she turned fourteen. Her mother had said it was for clothes and her father had said it was for school, but it was Chloé’s, and it was on a card, and she and Adrien had been making plans for that allowance for nearly eight months, so she used the money how they’d planned. 

(“It’ll be you, you know. That’s what matters, Adrien,” she had said.)

The first order of business was finding good online clothing stores. Given that Chloé had grown up with her mother, she knew how to find a good one—and the right ones for their mission. 

(“It’ll be wholly you,” Chloé had said as they wrote up a list of the different things Adrien was looking for. “An act of defiance, but it’ll be all you.”)

It was the color for Adrien. Before, he’d been restricted to wearing the whites, greys, and blacks his parents had picked out for him. But now—now, he could choose. And he wanted color.

(“They’ll go nuts,” Adrien said, softly at first, and then, again, loudly and with a wide smile, “They’ll go nuts!”)

(And there was something in him that worried, that stewed over this—but he was with Chloé, and being with Chloé made him think that things like this, like his parents getting mad over different clothing choices, was positively mad in and of itself. So Adrien did his best not to think about it and to focus instead on the idea—and the joy—of putting on clothes each day that he liked and wanted to wear.)

So they opened up several tabs and looked at several different designers. They looked at monochromes, at the seam dividers, at tie-dyes, at rainbows, at stripes, at detailed designs, at soft pastels and thick knits, and they settled on the ones that Adrien liked best.

(“They will!” Chloé said, shouting along with Adrien in her wide, silent room of the hotel. “And it’ll be you—that’s the most important part, okay?”)

He wanted to defy—he wanted to riot! He wanted to break out of the realm of expectation. Monochromes were too much like what he had already, and so were the stripes, the soft pastels, and the thick knits. Rainbows, detailed designs, and tie-dyes weren’t enough, either. If he really wanted to set himself apart, to go outside of everything he’d ever known—he’d have to defy the societal expectations placed upon him by his parents. He’d defy by defying uniformity in its most base form.

(Adrien looked at Chloé, first with surprise, then with admiration, then with love, and finally: determination. “Yes, that’s the most important part.”)

So they bought everything Adrien could possibly think of and that he liked from the patchwork designers, as Gabriel and Emelie Agreste were firm believers that things shouldn’t change color at the seams. Then they moved on to statement pieces—a term Chloé had learned from her mother; something to draw the eye, something so different from what your wardrobe was that it made a statement—and bought all of the garishly and wonderfully colored ones that made Adrien smile or laugh.

(“I think this will do,” Adrien said after they’d finished, turning to his best friend. “I think it’ll do. Thank you.”)

(He couldn’t remember, for a small, blissful moment, why he’d ever doubted—questioned—worried about this and what it would mean.)

The packages were sent to the hotel, just to be safe, because Adrien couldn’t receive these things at his home, where his parents might find them and throw them out. No—they had to be careful. They had to be safe. Chloé insisted that that was the best option.

(“Of course,” Chloé said, reaching out a hand for Adrien’s arm. “I’d do anything for you, you know. You’re my best friend.”)

~*~

It was only three weeks after Chloé turned fourteen and started getting an allowance that it all went to hell.

“What are you wearing, Adrien?” his father asked. “Is that—patchwork?” he said with a grimace, his disgust palpable in the air.

Beside his father, his mother frowned. “Where did you get those clothes, dear?”

Adrien pulled his chair quietly from the long, expansive table and sat. 

Adrien wore a hoodie divided at the seams into blue and pink fabrics, noticeably sewn together with thick black thread and separated by color at each and every seam along the arms, main body of the article, the pocket, and the hood. He wore a pair of jeans that were white on his right leg and dark blue on his left, and even his sneakers were patchwork, looking a little bit like a quilt with their many colors and thick threads and plain black laces. But this was the most important thing of all: he walked with a confidence he hadn’t ever had before, with his head held high and his shoulders straight and not slumped or hunched, and something twinkled—like a star, like a sun, some bright, shining thing hailing from the dark depths that had always been—in his eye.

Adrien looked up at his parents, schooling his expression and not allowing a wide smile break across his face as it threatened to do. The looks on their faces made him hesitate, made his urge to smile disappear. I look great, he thought to himself, even as something nervous made him hunch in a little on himself. I look great, he told himself. 

“They were gifts,” Adrien replied, because they were. Chloé had told him that—that it was a gift from her to him, for him to be able to wear the clothes he wanted to. 

“Who would give you such awful clothes?” his father asked, sneering and setting down his fork, his breakfast forgotten. Adrien hunched a little further, his shoulders dropping a bit from their previous confidence. 

“People made these clothes, Father,” Adrien said slowly, thickly. Something akin to honey running down his throat at his father’s reaction, although less sweet and more sour and bitter, made the words come out oddly. “They’re not awful.” 

The light in his eyes faded, blinking in and out of existence.

“Go upstairs and change, Adrien,” his mother said softly but firmly. She didn’t say please.

Adrien shook his head, something in his voice firm despite the growing feeling that he was doing something wrong. He felt sluggish with it, almost. “I can’t go back to the blacks, greys, and whites again.”

For a moment, that light in his eyes hesitated, hovering on the edge of visibility.

“You will,” his father said loudly, leaning forward. “Imagine what people will think—say—if they see my son dressing like some… s-some ragdoll! Adrien, this is unacceptable.”

“I can’t, Father!” Adrien said, and tears welled up in his eyes. He shrank back a little, hunched himself even further. The sluggish feeling that he was in the wrong washed over him, swallowing him whole. At once, he was repentant—tears in his eyes, shaking, trembling, and face ducked low. This was a mistake, he thought. This was all a huge mistake. “I can’t go back,” he said quietly. “I can’t.”

“You will,” his father said lowly, darkly. Adrien felt like he couldn’t breathe with the feeling that he’d made a horrible mistake. Still, he hesitated on the idea of making it worse and saying that he no longer had the option to go back.

“I can’t!” Adrien cried, covering his face with his hands. When he continued to speak, his voice was muffled. I’d better say now, he thought. Get it over with in one fell swoop. His stomach dropped out from beneath him in preparation. “I can’t! They’re… gone.”

“Why did you do it, Adrien?” his mother asked, and her voice was soft like velvet. But just like velvet, something about it felt off and strange to Adrien. He waited for the other shoe to drop, for his parents to become angrier with him. “Why change your entire wardrobe?”

His father was silent across the table, his anger rolling off of him in waves, but he was waiting for Adrien’s answer, too. Adrien waited, too, for disaster to strike.

Adrien’s shoulders crept up near to his ears with the overwhelming anxiety, and in a moment, his mother was at his side, pushing his shoulders down and pulling his hands from his face with them.

“Relax,” she insisted quietly, and again, her voice was like velvet—soft and off-putting.

Adrien’s shoulders were stubborn against his mother’s grasp, but she pushed them down with her strength and power even so. With his shoulders, his arms and hands were pushed down, revealing his face. Defensively, Adrien reached his hands back up to cover his face and crumpled forward towards the table. The weight of his mistake sat heavy on his lungs, making his breath come out in uneven, ragged gasps. He couldn’t tell them why he did it. They would hate him, they wouldn’t understand. In his hands, Adrien’s mouth opened in a silent cry. What have I done? he thought. This was an awful idea, I—

“Adrien,” his mother whispered, an arm around the back of his shoulders and her mouth at his ear. “Why did you do it?” Something—he didn’t know what—thrummed as an undertone to her voice. His stomach churned. The feeling of being in the wrong rose up, choking him, holding him down.

But he answered, because it was his mother. His mother hadn’t ever hurt him, he reasoned with himself. His mother was never angry, he reasoned with himself. His mother would understand, he hoped desperately. She had to.

But he didn’t include Chloé—he would never do that to her. She was his best—his only—friend. He couldn’t stand it if she were—if he could never see her again because of it. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t survive.

“I don’t like wearing whites and blacks and greys,” he said quietly, carefully. “I-I wanted—I just wanted to wear something I liked.”

His mother’s voice, like velvet, was altogether relaxing and upsetting to Adrien. “I understand,” she said softly. “I understand. But do you—do you understand how important it is that your father has a good reputation with the town?”

“Yes,” Adrien said, although he didn’t. That feeling of being in the wrong—with his not understanding the reason, it became a little less powerful. 

Still, his anxiety grew: his stomach knotted and something pushed at his throat, pushed and pushed and pushed, burning a hole into him until he felt he would throw up. Surely he would be punished. He just—he didn’t know how. Or when. 

“Good, good,” his mother said, rubbing one hand along his chest and one along his cheek, pushing his hands away from his face. “Now, we’ll change your clothes out quickly and by tomorrow, everything will be back to normal, okay?”

No, he thought, his heart feeling like it was being squeezed tightly with her words. He couldn’t let it—his newfound freedom—go. It was fear of losing that that made him speak, made him let his mother’s hands free his face.

“B-but,” Adrien said, latching onto something Chloé had taught him, “what about a compromise? Can’t we—can’t we compromise?” Compromise was something business-like, political. Something to do in warzones, if he was remembering correctly. Adrien felt strangely like he was in a warzone. Compromise would save him, surely, then? He’d done something wrong, yes, but something in him didn’t want to go back—not completely, at least. Compromise would give him enough freedom to satisfy his wrong wants and give him the chance to apologize, yes?

His mother flinched, as if unprepared for his words, but she composed herself with a tense, uneasy smile. “What would you propose?”

“What if I were to wear the clothes I liked to school, but to events that I attend with you and Father, I wear my old clothes?” Adrien asked, hope brimming in his chest as he smiled back naively at his mother through his tears. This might be okay, he thought to himself. I’m doing alright at this. Perhaps this wasn’t the mistake I thought it was. I may have been wrong in wanting to wear the clothes I liked, but perhaps I still can sometimes. The anxiety and its hold on him—on his throat, his heart, his lungs—slackened.

When father spoke up from across the long, expansive table, his words hit Adrien like spit to the face. Adrien was startled by this and his smile fell away. Within him, that feeling—that sluggish beast from before, making him feel like he had done something wrong—raged up, holding his breath in its hands and squeezing his heart tightly. “That doesn’t change things! You don’t get it, do you? Adrien—you’re a disgrace. You’re an ugly, undeserving mark on this family and the Agreste name, and there’s no way that—”

His mother stood abruptly, her hands falling from Adrien’s form. “That’s too far, Gabriel,” she said, voice soft like velvet. “You’ve gone too far.”

The feeling of him having done something wrong hesitated, but as Adrien’s mind latched on to his mother’s words, the feeling worsened, making him feel even more out of breath. His father had gone too far in saying what he’d said, but his mother hadn’t said his father had been wrong. I must have been, then, he reasoned with himself, feeling all at once guilty and hurt and like he’d be flattened with the weight of his mistake. 

“You know that I’m right!” Adrien’s father cried, standing as well and dropping a heavy fist to the table. The force of it reverberated across the expanse between father and son and, despite the distance, Adrien flinched back into his chair, shrinking inwardly in on himself once more. What have I done? he thought. There’s nothing I can do to fix this. Distantly, he realized that his father was proving him right. Adrien had been in the wrong, not his father. “You know that he’s putting everything at risk here by dressing like some homeless person who makes their own clothes.” His father took in a ragged, drawn breath and stared down at Adrien’s mother. “You know that I’m right,” he repeated quietly, but it was quiet in the manner that a knife is quiet when it slices down through the air to meet trembling flesh and form. Adrien felt eerily as if the knife was rushing down towards him, whistling through the air to punish him for doing the wrong thing.

Adrien’s mother didn’t deny it. She didn’t argue it, didn’t refute it. She didn’t even claim it wasn’t true, as if it might have been a reflection of reality but she would argue it because she didn’t believe it. Even more than before, he felt like he’d done the wrong thing, that he deserved whatever happened next. (Knife meets flesh, slices open, cuts deep. Quiet, quiet—like velvet to the touch.)

But as Adrien watched his mother, something in his heart broke, and broke, and broke again. As much as he felt he had done the wrong thing, he still, somehow, wrongly, horribly, badly wanted to wear the clothes he liked. The fear and the ache and submissiveness he felt in response—yes, it was awful and bad, it was horrible, he was wrong, but something in him, some probably sick piece of his heart, still yearned and wanted, desired for that same happy feeling he’d felt getting dressed that morning.

Adrien suspected that Chloé had planted that piece of him in his heart—she had cultivated it, motivated it, encouraged it. She had given it what it wanted. And just that one relationship, just that one person, just that one piece of his heart felt utterly destroyed at the thought of trying to go back to his old clothes. He just couldn’t go back. He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t go back to what he had been before, what he had made himself wear for his parents’ sake, what he had done to try and please them. He ached to please them, but the part of him that was so, so tired of wearing those awful clothes was stronger. 

So his mother’s reaction—and his father’s—hurt. As much as he saw it justified (but also not, also not—why did it matter that his father had a good reputation with the town?), that stronger part of him was hurt.

The act—the act he and Chloé had planned for months and months—the act that was so wholly and completely him, the act that was him just wearing different clothes, well. It was seen as being disrespectful. And his father—stoic, now, across the long table—had just told Adrien that he was a disgrace for it. That Adrien was ugly for attempting such a thing. That Adrien was undeserving because of it. That Adrien was a disgrace to the family and the Agreste name because he wanted to wear clothes he liked. And Adrien’s mother—why, she hadn’t even denied it, or tried to argue it wasn’t true. And that something in him, that stronger part of his heart, it ached. It hurt. (Knife to the flesh. Velvet to the touch. Skin, blood, heart.)

That something in Adrien, that part of his heart, it asked—no, it said—that this was an inadvertent agreement. That his mother, by not denying his father’s words, had inadvertently agreed with those statements. (Knife. Velvet. Flesh.)

And Adrien understood the velvet of his mother’s voice, even if only for a moment. And he understood that he was hurt and that, despite being in the wrong, he wanted the thing his parents felt was wrong, disgraceful, and ugly. He wanted himself, and to be that boy fully.

~*~

That night, Adrien’s mom came to his room and looked into his closet. She stared at it for a long while, even going so far as to leaf through the hangers displaying what he had. After a while of her doing this and Adrien watching with a building anxiety, she spoke.

“I talked with your father, Adrien,” she said, her voice soft like velvet. He waited for the unsettling feeling—the other shoe—to drop, sitting cross-legged on his bed. “We agreed on your compromise, although you can’t do something like this again without discussing it with us first, or we’ll change out your clothes again.”

Adrien nodded frantically, holding his smile back with wide eyes. He could wear the clothes he liked.

His mother turned and watched him for some time. After a moment, a small smile broke across her lips, although there was something that unsettled him in her gaze. 

“Thank you,” Adrien said quietly, but it was quiet in the way that you thank someone with a knife for cutting your arm and not your throat.

~*~

Being dressed as he was is not uncomfortable for Adrien—the hair, well, that’s an adjustment for him, and with the dress, it’s a little strange to have his legs out and about all of a sudden, but overall, he’s okay with it. He almost feels a little normal, after the third night in his disguise. By the fourth shift he has as ‘Adrienne,’ not even the makeup is bothering him. 

And getting to know Nino—that’s not so bad, either. Adrien was hesitant at first; the comments on his clothes hadn’t gone unnoticed, and, being as it was that Chloé was his first and only friend ever, Adrien wasn’t sure, at first, if Nino was being friendly and trying to break the ice with the comments. 

But in being disguised with the other boy, Adrien has come to learn that Nino jokes about a lot of things, and he’s never meaning to be cruel about such comments. Adrien has also learned that Nino actually, genuinely cares about him.

Adrien first had an inkling about Nino’s care for him while in his mother’s library, when Nino had stayed beside him, holding his hand tightly and making sure he was okay. He next saw it in each time Adrien was sent off by Fruitmeir to go somewhere alone, or at least, without Nino: while Adrien was gone, Nino would text him, asking are u okay dude? want me to come with?. (Adrien would reply— i’m okay. thanks :)— and smile, a little bit, to himself.) And when Adrien came back, Nino would look him over, turn him around, and pat him on the shoulder. “Glad you’re okay, man,” he’d whisper, and Adrien would smile, something soft blooming in his chest at the other boy’s words. 

So Adrien getting to know Nino—it isn’t a bad thing, not in the least. Adrien might even call Nino a friend at this point.

They’re in the back room of Fruimeir’s, cleaning up and shutting things down, when Nino says something. All of the other employees have left by now, and all that the boys have to do now is actually close down the shop before they give the rest of the gang the signal and let them in.

“So,” Nino drags on, shutting down Fruitmeir’s first machine for the night. 

“So,” Adrien copies, wiping down the counter in the same room. He glances over to Nino very briefly as he does so, but ultimately turns back to the counter with a small smile.

“I… noticed that you get a little uncomfortable when I, um, well—when I say things. About your clothes,” Nino says, shutting down the next machine. He tugs nervously at the bottom hem of his dress. 

Adrien hesitates, not quite ready to talk about it. At this point, he’s not even sure how he himself feels about the comments. He decides to shift the conversation instead. “Why’re you asking now?” he asks, softly, gently. Not hurt—just curious. 

“Well, we’re alone now. I didn’t want to bring it up when we’re around everybody else, you know?” Nino asks, reaching up to twist around a cap that isn’t there. Because he’s disguised and not himself—he puts his hands back down at his sides, grabbing the material of the dress there in his fists.

Adrien nods, humming a noncommittal response. He finishes wiping one counter and crosses the room to the other counter, beginning to wipe it down, too. The silence hangs over them both for some time. Nino waits for a while, nervously adjusting the bottom hem of his dress and shifting on his feet, before he moves towards the next machine. 

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly after a while. “For… making my comments. I’d only meant them as jokes, but the—the past few days, I’ve noticed you look more and more uncomfortable with them. You… you don’t have to explain yourself, but if you don’t want me to make the comments, I’ll stop. I’ll stop if you want me to.”

Adrien doesn’t say anything for a moment as he begins to wipe down the various sprayers above the counter he’s finished cleaning. 

When he does speak, his voice is quiet and small. “My parents—from a young age, they dressed me in blacks, whites, and greys. Those were the only colors I was allowed to wear. 

“They dressed me like that until I turned fourteen—or, rather, until Chloé turned fourteen. I… didn’t like wearing those clothes or the colors. I hated being told what to wear and when. 

“So when Chloé turned fourteen and started getting an allowance—and one on a credit card, at that—we went online to search for designers and clothes my parents would… hate. And she bought me all the ones I liked, and within a few weeks, we changed out my entire wardrobe.”

Nino had stopped turning off the machines. “And… your parents? How did they react?”

Adrien finished wiping down the sprayers and turned to the sink, rinsing his washcloth there. Over the water, he speaks. “They hated it, obviously.” He does his best to keep his voice even and without trembling, but a few cracks and drops slip in despite his efforts. “They… called me a disgrace for it. Ugly. Undeserving. A mark on the family name, for wanting to wear the clothes I liked.”

“They both said that?” Nino asks, his voice louder—nearer. He’s just behind him, hesitating on the edge of their relationship, hesitating between the careful distance they’d maintained thus far and becoming closer friends.

“No,” Adrien says, ducking his head. He feels a little invalidated by saying what he is—his mother hadn’t said, she hadn’t agreed with his father, so he can’t possibly claim it as if she did. But she’d done just as much by not saying anything at all, he thinks. For as much as he loves his mother, Adrien still feels hollowed out when thinking back on that day. He’d been in the wrong for wanting what he’d wanted, yes, but the part of him that being around Chloé had influenced felt his parents had been in the wrong, too, by saying—and agreeing—with what they’d had. “My father said those things, but my mother didn’t try to deny it or argue with him about it.”

A hand on his shoulder—gentle, soft. Nino is at his side, warm and comforting. “That’s really shitty of them both,” he says quietly, looking at Adrien. “I’m really sorry.” 

“But I—you… I know that that’s not what you’re saying when you make comments on my clothes,” Adrien says, his shoulders creeping up to his ears. On his other side, the ghost of his mother is pushing them down and telling him, with a velvety voice, to relax. “At least, I know that now.” He forces himself to drop his shoulders, to untense the muscles beneath Nino’s hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Adrien,” Nino says, ducking his head to look him in the eyes. “I’m really sorry, and knowing what your parents said to you, what I said doesn’t sound much better. I won’t make those comments, not from now on, Adrien—I promise.”

Adrien looks over to Nino, searching the boy’s made-up face (he wears purple and silver eyeshadow tonight with silver eyeliner; black lipstick applied by his girlfriend hours earlier is fading, now). Something in him actually, truly relaxes at seeing Nino’s open expression staring back at him, full of honesty and compassion. “Thank you,” Adrien says. “I… appreciate it.”

Nino smiles at him, wide and gentle and friendly. “Now, should we finish cleaning up and get the others in here to finish up this mystery?”

Adrien smiles back at Nino and wrings out the washcloth in his hand, draping it over the sink faucet before him. “If you want to get the rest of the machines turned off, I can signal the others and make sure everything’s cleaned up in the front.” 

“Sounds good,” Nino says, turning away towards the machines again. 

But as Adrien is stepping out of the room, Nino turns back. “Adrien?” he calls, a little hesitant and a little nervous.

Adrien turns back, a hand on the doorjamb, half-in and half-out of the back room. His expression is wide and open and is a bit lighter than before. “Yeah?” he asks.

Nino relaxes and smiles. “You really do look nice, though—in your outfits? You—you’re really confident with what you wear. And it shows. It makes you look nice.”

“Thanks,” Adrien says, hesitating on that line between the front and the back of Fruitmeir’s. Something in him shifts, and he speaks slowly but confidently, for the most part sure of himself and what he’s saying. “And, you know, you really can continue with your comments. Now that I know how you mean them, they’re… a bit funny.”

Nino looks at him, thinking. “Alright—well, we’ll see.”

Adrien nods with a smile and steps over the line, weaving his way through the tables and chairs and stools in Fruitmeir’s, examining the floor for anything else to pick up. Nino turns back to the machines and turns each one off quickly, hoping to hurry the night up.

In the silence of the back room, with nothing else to accompany him but the sound of Adrien’s distant footfalls, his relaxed manner fades slowly. 

In its place, fear grabs Nino by the shoulders. Its cold fingers press into his skin and it breathes down his neck, making him twitch to the side and keep glancing back over his shoulder for something—something. Anything. A hint of green. A tall figure. Things that make him wish he were home and in his warm bed, hidden under the covers, and not here, ready to deliberately upset and perhaps even chase after a monster.

But he and the gang have a job to do tonight, so Nino pulls himself together.

 

—

art for the characters in this fic that i made :)

Notes:

hiiiiiiii 🫣🫣🫣

you can also view the above art at this link (https://www.tumblr.com/sadiedoodles/734568887882022912/from-top-to-bottom-left-to-right-the-whole-gang) on my art blog

no updates on my crush, i think it’s been crushed (aka Gone.) 😔 not too sad about it, just kind of meh 🫤

anyways let me know!!! what u thought of this chapter!!! who did you side with in chloé and luka’s argument, if anyone? who do you think is in the right (if either of them!)? what did you think about the scenes with adrien and chloé? did it make you sad or were you kinda meh 🫤 about it? how do you feel about adrien and nino’s friendship, now? how do you feel about the Next chapter? and Lastly, do you want me to continue asking questions like these at the end of the chapters?

also!! i had a really good writing week and wrote TWO chapters, so you can check out the next one by clicking below !! :)

Chapter 5: chapter five

Summary:

The gang searches Fruitmeir’s for clues, but they find a bit more than that… And later, they get a strange call…

Notes:

chapter fiiive is heeeeere!!! let me know what you think!!

Chloé, Luka, Marinette, Félix, and Alya enter Fruitmeir’s a few minutes later, having received Adrien’s signal. Just as they enter, Nino steps out from the back, locking the door behind him on the darkened room. 

“How was work?” Félix asks Adrien, looking around Fruitmeir’s clownery of an establishment with a raised brow. 

“It was nice,” Adrien says. “Not very eventful.” With this, he turns to Marinette, frowning and lifting a hand to hover just above his face. “Can I take this makeup off, please?”

“Sure,” Marinette says, handing him one of the bags in her hands. “There are some spare clothes in here, too, if you’d like to change. I don’t know what kind of stuff we’ll find tonight, but it’ll probably be best to be covered up some more than you are in your uniform.” She hands Nino a bag as well, and the boys set off for the bathroom. Around them, the others explore the rest of Fruitmeir’s for anything to connect Fruitmeir to the green monster and confirm Alya’s theory.

Adrien and Nino dress quickly into their changes of clothes. When they exit the bathroom, both are wearing jeans and sneakers, although the sneakers are stained and dirty, borrowed pairs from Luka. Adrien wears a spare gardening shirt from Félix, too, and Nino wears one of Luka’s altered tank tops with the sleeves cut low to the hips, his lucky hat, and Luka’s big jean jacket. With the falling temperatures of autumn, Nino’s been feeling extra chilly of late. Once the boys exit the bathroom, they set off to explore with the others.

In the time it takes Adrien and Nino to change, Félix has unlocked—using less than legal methods, Nino might add—the backroom and is exploring there with Luka, who examines the machines and nozzles the other boys had been working with before. Chloé and Alya have gone off searching for hidden walls and rooms along the expanse of the wide front room, and Marinette has found a door labeled ‘supply closet’ behind the back room but connected to the front room, cleverly hidden by the awful decor and paint choices of the establishment. 

Marinette goes to open the closet, but it’s locked. She turns to her expandable toolbox and expands it a few rows, digging through a few boxes for her small, also expanding, lock-picking kit. Upon not finding it, she digs out her phone and calls up a newer contact with a sigh.

It rings and rings, but eventually goes to voicemail. A tinny but otherwise familiar voice rings through and Marinette groans. “This is Félix, but I’m not here right now. Leave a message.”

“What part of ‘everyone leave your phones on and have the volumes turned up’ means don’t pick up when someone calls you?” she mutters, pulling her toolbox back together and clasping it closed. She then stands and pulls its shoulder strap over her shoulders before making her way to the front of Fruitmeir’s, where she finds Félix exiting the back room. Behind him, Nino locks it again and steps up next to him, adjusting his hat comfortably on his head.

“You’re supposed to have your phone on, you know,” she says to Félix, irritation lacing her voice.

“What’d you need?” he asks, pulling out his phone and turning the volume up.

Marinette rolls her eyes and looks back towards the supply room. “I can’t find my lock-picking kit and you seem like you’d know how to do that. There’s a supply room back there and I can’t get in.”

He frowns and puts his hands in his jeans pockets. “I’m not great at it, but I do carry some tools around.”

“Psh,” Nino butts in, rolling his eyes. He bumps his shoulder into Félix’s with a half-smile. “He’s good enough at it, Mari. He opened up the back room just fine before I locked it up again.”

“Yeah,” Luka says, leaning back on his heels with a smile. “Made it look easy, too.”

“Can you guys stop yapping and come help me and Chloé look for secret walls or doors?” Alya calls over. “There’s something about the walls here that doesn’t quite make sense.”

“Nino, Luka, Adrien,” Marinette says, pointing to them as she speaks, “you guys go help Alya and Chloé. Me and Félix are going to try and unlock the supply closet and make sure nothing’s amiss there.”

“It’s Félix and I,” Félix says, but before Marinette can sigh and roll her eyes at him correcting her, a scream rings through the air, startling them all. Rather than follow Marinette’s orders, everyone starts off at a run for where the scream originates. 

They discover the source of the sound beside the supply closet, curled up on the floor with her knees pulled close to her and her hands over her head. The door to the supply closet is wide open beside her, and green goop—Fruitmeir’s green goop—is splattered all over the boxes, buckets, and mops scattered within the closet. 

“Chloé!” Adrien says, rushing to the girl’s side and putting his hands on her shoulders. Alya, on the other side of Chloé, is looking off towards the wall across from the supply closet with narrowed eyes.

“What happened?” Nino asks, crouching low beside Chloé and Adrien. Behind them, Luka, Félix, and Marinette step into the supply closet cautiously, making their way around the green Fruitmeir goop and the boxes and buckets to examine a large hole in the floor. 

“I-I came to search the walls on this side,” Chloé says, throwing her head back against the wall and exposing her tear-stained face, “but while—while I was over here, the door flew open to the closet and the-the monster. The monster from before—” she breaks off with a sob, covering her mouth with her hands as she resumes crying.

“It’s okay,” Adrien whispers, brushing back the hair that had fallen from her bun to her face. “It’s alright now.”

“Yeah,” Nino says quietly, ducking his head to smile a little at Chloé. “We’ll find the monster and catch it.”

“We’ll unmask it, you mean,” Alya says, stepping away from Chloé, Nino, and Adrien. She drifts over to the wall, pressing at the corner walling that lay directly across from the supply closet. Beneath her fingers, something shifts. 

“Come here!” she says, grimacing and pressing harder at the wall. “I need some help,” she says, and Nino, Adrien, and Chloé come up behind her. Nino places his fingers at the corner and, with Alya, they pull at the wall, shifting it to the side. Beneath the wall, something metallic click-click-clicks.

With a whoosh, the wall comes away, jutting out from the corner about a foot.

“I didn’t see it run off,” Chloé says quietly, looking at the wall with wide eyes. “By that time, I had ducked my head—but it must have slipped back here in that time.”

“You guys know how the outside of Fruitmeir’s looks like a tent?” Alya asks, putting her hands on her hips and peering out past the opening of the wall. She ducks her head back in with a smile and pushes the wall back into place. “How the fabric of it drifts some, but the walls in here are sturdy. When we were here last, I—I couldn’t remember where exactly, but something had shifted in the wall.”

“It’s mechanical, too,” Adrien says, tapping at the wall with a finger. “We heard that clicking—it must have been some mechanism behind the door.”

“And it was so heavy and hard to push away because we were pushing it against whatever command it had been given, meaning that there’s some remote or something out there that can move the wall back and forth,” Nino says excitedly, adjusting his hat on his head with a grin. “Marinette’s gonna get a kick out of this, yeah?”

They all look back for Marinette, ready to tell her about their find, but she’s not behind them—she’s across from them, ducking out of sight in the supply room. Beside her, Félix and Luka are holding her arms, lowering her, it seems, to the ground.

“What’re you guys doing?” Nino asks, walking closer. 

The three turn to look over their shoulders at him and, in unison, say, “We found a hole.”

Chloé raises her eyebrows but follows Adrien, Alya, and Nino as they make their way into the supply closet to stand behind the other trio. Once there, they all see the hole in the ground.

“Why’re you lowering Marinette into it?” Adrien asks, shifting on his feet uneasily. “You don’t even know what’s down there.”

“Exactly why we are sending her down there,” Félix says with an sly look, as if he’s enjoying the thought of sending her into some random hole of darkness. Even so, he evens out his expression into something more pleasant and unassuming, smiling at Adrien. “She’s the lightest between her, Luka, and I, and we won’t know what’s down there unless someone goes down to see it.”

Adrien frowns, but Marinette nods and tells Félix and Luka to keep going, so Adrien keeps quiet. 

Beside him, Alya starts to speak. “We found an opening in the wall, just as I suspected there was. I think that’s how the monster escaped after scaring Chloé and how we didn’t see it when we got to her. It’s something mechanical, too, Mari, and we think it has some device controlling when it opens and closes—a device that the ‘monster’ must have on their person.”

“Did you try going behind the wall to see if there’s any other systems on the outside that will give clue to other openings in the walls?” Marinette asks with a muffled voice. At this point, all but the top of her head is down in the hole and Félix and Luka are on their knees, still holding tight to her arms to lower her slowly into the darkness. Both of the boys are also considerably more tired than before, each with deep frowns marring their expressions as they continue to lower Marinette into the hole. “Also, could someone shine a light down here so I can see how far I’ve got to go before there’s ground?”

Félix grunts and Luka groans as they bend even lower to the ground, adjusting their grip on her arms as they go. “Unless you want to be dropped, I don’t think Luka or I should do it,” Félix mutters. Behind him, Adrien quickly steps over the boxes and buckets in his way to shine the flashlight from his phone down into the hole. From what he can tell, it’s a long way down.

“Do we have any rope?” Adrien asks, his voice wavering with concern.

“I’ve got some in my toolbox—” Marinette says, but she’s interrupted by Félix and Luka’s frustrated grunts. 

“We’re not pulling you back up just to drop you down again, Mari,” Luka says with a heavy breath. “It’s too late for that. And while you’re not the heaviest person, you’ve got that massive ass toolbox and this angle isn’t the easiest.”

“I’ve got more rope in the van,” she calls back up. “If I can get that—”

“He just said we aren’t pulling you back up,” Félix says with another grunt as he slowly maneuvers his legs out from under him so he’s on his stomach. Luka does the same on the other side of the hole, and Marinette drops even lower. 

“That’s a long drop down,” Adrien says quietly. 

“We’re going to drop her down as much as possible,” Luka says tightly, “but you might want to get some rope from the car while you check behind those openings in the walls if you don’t want to be dropped this far, too.”

But before Adrien and the others can even turn back to leave the supply room for rope and the openings in the walls, the door slams shut behind them with a loud thud and a hard click.

“Don’t tell me the door just locked,” Marinette says from the hole, some measure of fear in her voice. “We don’t even know if the monster has another entrance down here from the openings in the walls.”

“Guess we’d better hurry up, then,” Félix says irritatedly. “But at least now we can get you lower into the hole without dropping you to your death.”

“Don’t make jokes like that,” is the only reply from the darkness as both Félix and Luka slip into the hole after her up their shoulders. Adrien and Nino are quick to race to the other boys’ help, grabbing their legs to keep them from falling all the way in.

“Wait!” Chloé cries, stepping up the hole. “Can we get that rope up here before you’re too far down?”

“What if you can’t get it now?” Luka cries, his voice echoing Félix’s thoughts exactly: they’re both monumentally done with the changes in plans at this point. 

“If I can get one arm free,” Marinette calls up, “I can reach the rope from my toolbox.”

“And how do you reckon we hold you up by one arm without dislocating your shoulder?” Félix calls back sarcastically, dropping a little lower into the hole before Adrien tightens his hold on his legs. 

“Just do it,” Marinette bites back. “I’ve had them before—I can just pop it back in.”

“Fine, okay,” Félix says, having given up trying to reason with the girl below him. “Luka’s going to let go of your arm and hold onto the one I’ve got, alright? Try not to jostle around.”

“Okay,” is the only reply. 

Then Luka lets go of Marinette’s arm, quick to grab the one Félix has a hold of. Distantly, they hear an intake of breath and a hiss, but then there’s the clanking of metal as her toolbox and everything in it is jostled.

“Someone’s going to have to reach down here and grab the rope when she lifts it back up,” Luka says quietly. Alya and Chloé nod, looking at each other.

“I can go in if you hold me back,” Chloé says, shrugging.

Alya nods and slips her phone into her back pocket. Then, Chloé is kneeling next to the hole with Alya’s arms wrapped around her stomach. As Chloé leans into the hole, too, Alya holds her above ground with a deep frown.

Marinette’s hand comes up once more with the rope in hand. It’s too far for Luka to reach as he is, so he calls back to Nino to drop him in a little further. Nino does, and Luka lets go of the arm Félix has a hold on and grabs Marinette’s other arm. “Gotcha,” he whispers, and beside him, Chloé’s hands brush the skin of his arms as she reaches for Marinette’s hand. Goosebumps rise over his skin and he grimaces, but Chloé’s cold hands grab the rope from Marinette and she’s lifted out of the hole and away from him. 

Then Marinette is whispering up at them, something thin in her voice. “Drop a little lower, Félix?” she whispers up to him. “I’m not quite level, and it’ll be easier if I am when it comes time to let me go.”

Félix nods and calls up to Adrien to let him down a little lower. After this, they drop Marinette into the hole until Adrien and Nino have slipped Félix and Luka into the holes up to their calves. 

It’s at this point that Alya and Chloé, both now on either side of the hole, shine their flashlights down into the darkness. What they reveal is that, below them, Marinette is about fifteen feet above the ground still. Even so, Félix and Luka can’t go any lower before they risk falling in, too, and at somewhat greater heights and worse angles. 

“If we let go now, do you think you’ll be able to drop into a roll and not damage anything?” Félix asks, something like concern making his voice waver the slightest. 

“Yeah, that should work,” Marinette says, but inwardly, she’s not really sure. Yeah, she’s done this before—but it always, always, without fail, hurts like hell to be dropped into who-knows-what onto unknown terrain.

“Okay,” Félix says, turning his head a little to look over at Luka, whose gaze has already met his. Concern fills Luka’s expression, too, and something like worry, but there’s a determination there. They can’t go back, even if they wanted to, Luka thinks. With how tired they already are, they risk dropping Marinette at an even higher point, which is something they shouldn’t—won’t—leave as an option. This is their best bet. 

So they drop her: warm, sweaty hands slipping against pale, trembling arms until all they hold is the damp air of the cold blackness around them. And as soon as the weight of Marinette’s form has been let go, Félix and Luka are being pulled back up to the floor of Fruitmeir’s. 

Below them, Marinette rolls a few times before collapsing to a stop on the dark ground, surrounded by complete and total darkness but for the shadowed bodies slipping into the hole above her. 

With tears in her eyes from the force of the fall, Marinette shifts on the ground, trying to catch a breath. Nothing had broken or dislocated, thankfully, but it’s definitely rock that she’s landed on, she notes with a grimace. She’s sure to have at least a few bruises, later, much to the dismay and disappointment of her parents, but she’s relatively okay, all things considered. 

Once she’s caught her breath, she sits up in the cold, damp, dark and digs her phone out of her pocket. Luckily, she’d invested long ago in a tank-like case for her phone, so it was undamaged except for a couple of new scratches along the case. Turning on her flashlight, she swings it around and above her, examining her surroundings.

“It’s the cave we were in the other week!” she calls up, getting to her feet with a small groan. Already, behind her, Alya is being lowered into the cave slowly, her flashlight in one hand and her other hand holding tightly to the rope that also sits tied around her waist and between her legs like a harness. 

Alya is dropped to the ground and meets Marinette some distance away, looking around them. By the time Chloé touches down to the bottom of the cave, Marinette is expanding her toolbox and pulling the small pulley system she had engineered in the van from it, laying out several of her tools before her in a semi-circle. Next, Adrien, Nino, and finally Luka are sent down before it’s Félix’s turn. 

There’s nothing from Félix for a few minutes as Luka, Adrien, Nino, and Chloé stand in a circle beneath the hole and the now-empty harness dangling few feet from the ground (now untied, so that Luka could get out of it). After those few minutes, the rope shifts roughly five feet higher, jerking around in the air. Following this, Félix comes down the rope slowly, climbing down it with a measured, almost perfected grace. 

It’s only as he’s climbing down the last few feet of rope—and is subsequently about eight or nine feet from the ground—that the rope jerks again and is yanked upwards with him on it. 

They’re all quick to respond, chasing after Félix as he swings to the side—up, up, up, and around and around and around in a circle.

“Drop!” Nino shouts, leading the chase. “You have to let go now!”

“The door must have been opened,” Félix calls back, gripping the rope tightly as he looks down, measuring the distance to the floor of the cave with narrowed eyes.

“You tied it to the door?” Adrien calls out. 

“It was locked!” he cries defensively.

“Well, it isn’t now,” Chloé says tightly, looking up at the hole above her and the monster peering down at her. Her voice is high-pitched and she takes a few steps back, watching the monster the whole time. 

Nino glances back for a moment. The flash of bright green that he sees in the opening of the hole is enough to make his whole body grow cold. “Marinette!” Nino shouts. “The monster is back!”

“Give me a minute!” she calls back, digging through her toolbox and grabbing a few things before closing it down and swinging its shoulder-strap back over her head.

“It’s gone, now,” Chloé says, “but I don’t know when it’ll be back, or from where.”

“The door’s still open, apparently,” Félix says irritatedly, after a moment, still swinging. “That hooligan couldn’t even be bothered to close it behind him.”

“It could be a she,” Adrien calls up to Félix.

“Or a they,” Luka adds.

“Not helping!” Félix says as he decides to continue—although slower—down the rope despite its continued movement. 

Below him, as soon as the rope slows its swinging, Nino is grabbing on to it to hold it steady. Félix gratefully hurries his descent.

Marinette, in all of the continuing chaos, has begun setting up a trap. With Alya’s help, she connects her previous pulley system to one of her handy expandable cages and climbs up one steep side of the cave to hang it up. (The cage is metal and jointed and, when it’s dropped down, part of Marinette’s pulley system presses one of the cage’s buttons that expands it. The joints go out to a certain point before they drop down to the ground. Strong magnets connect the joints at the bottom when they run out, resulting in a tall metal cage.) Beneath the cage and some distance away, Marinette makes a hole in one of the rocky structures sticking up from the ground of the cave and hammers the base of her pulley system into it. Once that’s complete and Alya has made a marking in the dirt below the expandable cage, the girls move to make other adjustments to their surroundings that will—in some convoluted manner only Marinette is privy to—make the monster fall into her trap. 

As they do this, Félix finally reaches the ground with Nino’s help. When Félix is safely on the ground, he and Nino join Adrien and Chloé in searching the rest of the cave for other entrances the monster could surprise them with. Luka watches the hole through which they all entered for signs of the monster returning through it, ready to alert everyone.

It is Félix and Chloé, split off from Adrien and Nino, who find another hole in the cave that leads to another dark room. Almost laughingly apparent, there’s green Fruitmeir goop dripping from the edges of the hole. They alert the others of this find and all meet back up with Marinette and Alya, who explain what needs to happen—in the simplest terms possible—for the monster to actually fall into the trap.

Alya and Luka then follow Félix and Chloé back to the hole, where Alya pulls up her GPS program and identifies the hole as being only twenty yards from Fruitmeir’s, which would put it—

“Directly under the Crystal Cove Bank,” Luka says slowly, peering up into the hole. “Félix, can you give me a boost up? I wonder if maybe…”

“You can see if there’s anything inside?” Félix finishes. “Say no more,” he says, bending down on one knee and clasping his hands together to make a foothold beneath the hole.

As the hole is only about sixteen feet from the floor of the cave—which has inclined roughly ten feet since the hole under Fruitmeir’s—Luka can just barely see over the edge of the hole when he has a foot in Félix’s hands and one foot on his shoulder. Félix stands, trembling the slightest bit, under him. 

“I don’t see anything in there,” Luka starts, pulling out his phone and lifting it above his head, “but maybe if I take a picture…”

There’s a click and a flash of his phone before Luka puts it back in his pocket. Then Luka is lowered to the ground once more, where, as soon as he’s standing on his own two feet, he checks his photos. 

“There’s nothing that I can see, except maybe some cash lying around on the floor,” he says after a moment of zooming in and moving around the photo.

“If this is a vault like I think it is,” Chloé says, crossing her arms, “the monster must have already cleaned out most of whatever was in there.”

“Not ‘monster,’” Alya corrects with a smile. “Person. What use would a monster have for cash?”

~*~

Luka, Chloé, Félix, and Alya then all head back to where they left Marinette, Adrien, and Nino, but the rest of the gang isn’t there. Instead, they hear a loud roar and the sound of the nasty Fruitmeir goop slapping against all sorts of surfaces. They chase after the sounds some distance and find Marinette gooped up to the floor to her knees, her jeans positively ruined and soaked through. She struggles against its hold, trying to walk out of it, but ultimately doesn’t win. She then bends down, a disgusted look on her face, and starts to pull the nasty goop from her body in handfuls. 

Once Marinette sees them, she waves them on, sending them off to help out Adrien and Nino, who they find running circles around the monster in semi-successful efforts to escape the goopy blasts. Luka, Chloé, and Alya join in, but Félix hangs back, going back to examine the more complicated additions to Marinette’s convoluted trap with a frown. He then jogs back to Marinette, who’s since managed to escape her goopy mess and is now adjusting her pulley system with a grimace from where it connects to the expandable cage. Félix watches what happens next with raised brows, even as behind him, he can hear grunts and the sound of heavy footfalls echoing through the cave.

In attempts to detach her expanding cage, Marinette makes a mistake and presses the button slightly to the left of the one that detaches it. She instead presses the one that expands it around whatever is beneath it, and, with a loud, overlapping click ing sound, Marinette’s cage expands around her and goes hurtling to the ground with her in it.

Luckily—or perhaps unfortunately—Marinette has had this happen to her before. She’s quick to grab the already expanded bars at the top and kick her legs out to either side of the still-expanding metal cage before she hits the ground with a loud clang that jars even Félix’s teeth.

Félix doesn’t have the chance to see what Marinette does to fix things, though, before she’s yelling at him to run. 

And Félix, well—he learned early on to run when he’s told. So he breaks off at a near sprint, increasing his speed with the more distance he covers, and halfway past his second go around a large, steepled rock structure from the floor of the cave, he realizes what he’s running from exactly: the monster. (Or, well. Person.) He realizes it at that moment because not only is said monster growling up a storm at him, it’s also lobbing that disgusting green goop at him.

So Félix decreases his speed some and focuses more on dodging the monster’s flying goop while using the skills he’s been developing in the few years since his father left. He jumps from steepled rock to steepled rock and even up against walls and other footholds, twisting and turning in the air and avoiding, just barely, getting clobbered with the monster’s nasty green goop. He makes his way through the gangs’ scattered forms as they’re frantically tearing goop from their clothes and bodies until, finally, Félix and the monster are back where everything in this blasted cave all started—the hole in Fruitmeir’s supply closet. 

As Félix formulates the beginnings of a plan in his mind, he weaves in and out and around and around in a circle around the rope still dangling from the supply closet, dodging the goopy monster’s blasts all the way with a now practiced efficiency.

Marinette’s trap won’t work anymore, Félix knows, and he also knows it would be supremely difficult to try and get back to her to have her make a new trap. And on top of these two things, all the other members of this gang of hooligans are preoccupied with trying to escape their own slimey, goopy traps. Félix is on his own, now.

But the thing about Félix is this—he’s been alone a lot, for a long time. For much of his childhood, the only person he could rely on was himself. He knows he’s on his own, but he’s okay with that, now—he’s used to it; he knows it; he’s familiar with it in the same way he’s familiar with everything else in this cursed town: with a middle finger lifted elegantly up from a fist and his back turned with confidence, walking his own path through the brambles and thorns.

And with this realization, Félix decides on the last part of his plan. He uses the momentum he’s built up from weaving in between the large steepled rocks and jumps off of the tallest one near to him, headed for the rope dangling from the hole under Fruitmeir’s. He reaches it with a heavy breath of relief and grabs on to it, already climbing quickly up the remainder of the rope and into the supply closet. When he reaches the top of the rope, he glances back down the hole, but the monster is no longer there, ready to shoot him silly with goop.

But Félix knows that the monster can travel quickly from the cave to Fruitmeir’s—he just doesn’t know how or where. He’s not about to get locked in the supply closet again, though, he decides, stepping quickly over the boxes, buckets, fallen mops, and awful green goop and into the main room of Fruitmeir’s establishment.

Félix is quick to move on to the next phase of his plan, which requires his presence in the back room with the machinery and sprayers full of Fruitmeir’s goop. Surely whatever that nasty goop is that’s rendered the rest of this gang of hooligans unable to move is sticky and strong enough to hold the monster, he thinks. With this in mind, Félix jogs around the tables, chairs, and stools of Fruitmeir’s front room and quickly unlocks the back room again. 

He opens the door with little trouble and looks over his shoulder, making sure nothing has changed. And, really, nothing has—except Félix knows, he just knows, that the painting roughly twelve feet from him has shifted in its place. And with this realization, he latches onto something Alya and Chloé had been talking about, about moving walls and a device that the monster likely had that could move the walls on command, and Félix frowns.

He slips into the back room while facing the front room, his eyes on the walls and the paintings and anything—anything—that could alert him to danger. But nothing else changes, and so he’s then closing the door behind him most of the way, half-watching and waiting for the monster to show up again and half-focused on his current task.

When Félix and Luka had been in the back room before, Félix had taken note of the sprayers of various sizes that were connected to the machines that stood tall along two walls and hung on small hooks above the counter on the far wall. Now, he takes as many of those sprayers as he can manage, even as slow, heavy footsteps come towards the door of the back room. Fear and adrenaline makes goosebumps rise over his skin and his hands shake, but he doesn’t waver in his task as he turns and maneuvers seven sprayers into his hands.

Félix doesn’t waver, even as the sprayers drip goop down his trembling fingers after a bit of fear shoots through him and even as the door creeps open before him. He doesn’t waver, even as the door opens even wider and wider and reveals that awful green, goopy monster. He doesn’t waver, even as the monster roars at him so loudly that he can’t even hear the pounding of his heart. 

Félix just presses down hard on the handles of the sprayers, shooting the monster with its own goopy mess, and sending them crashing into the door with the force of the seven large sprayers letting loose. After several seconds of spraying, the monster is stuck to the door of the backroom, growling at Félix. Taking in some deep breaths, he watches, waiting for the monster to try to move. And it does—it tries very hard, but it doesn’t get anywhere with its efforts, positively stuck to the door.

So Félix sets the sprayers down behind him, still facing the monster as he does so (as he’s been given good reason to be afraid at every turn tonight). He then walks across the room, giving the monster a wide berth, and stops a few feet away from the door. Félix had made the mistake of sticking the monster to the door, which meant that, to get out of the back room and see if those maniac hooligans were okay, he’d have to step right up close with the monster. 

And really, despite it all, despite his fear and the concern for his very life, the decision is easy for Félix: Adrien is on the other side and, though he’d rather die before telling them so, he’s actually come to care a bit about the rest of the gang’s safety in the past week, and they’re on the other side somewhere, too. So Félix squares himself up and takes a big, deep breath. He then steps up real close to the monster, looking it right in the eyes, and he runs right by it out into the front room of Fruitmeir’s establishment.

Waiting for him is the rest of the gang, Sheriff Roger Raincomprix, Mayor Agreste, and a heavy wave of embarrassment. 

~*~

“Why is the town’s newest tourist attraction stuck to a door?” Gabriel Agreste asks thinly as Félix steps into view. The monster behind Félix and still stuck to the door, swings its big green head at him, slamming the door closed in the process with the force of it. Next to Gabriel stands Nathalie, his assistant, who doesn’t say a word and whose facial expression doesn’t change at all with what’s going on before her. “You all should know by now that the town needs money—these types of things bring that in.”

“You don’t understand,” Alya says politely, adjusting her glasses on her nose. “This isn’t a monster.”

“Then what is it?” Sheriff Raincomprix asks, cocking his head to the side.

“Franklin Fruitmeir,” Nino says, stepping up to stand next to Alya.

“He was trying to rob Crystal Cove Bank,” Luka supplies, his phone pulled out. He shows the Sheriff the pictures he took down in the cave.

“Photoshop!” Sheriff Raincomprix declares with a nod. “You kids these days—you don’t know a monster when you see one.”

Marinette, Luka, Nino, and Alya collectively roll their eyes and frown sharply in response.

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Gabriel says, crossing his arms. “Money is money, and you delinquents have lost us another potential stream of it.”

“Plus,” the sheriff says, stepping to the side, “Fruitmeir was the one who called this in! He can’t possibly be your monster.” Behind the sheriff, Fruitmeir walks in, twisting a few balloons into a circus balloon flower. Once it’s completed, Fruitmeir hands it to Nathalie with a wink, but Nathalie doesn’t make any move to show she’s seen him. Gabriel, beside her, frowns at the man with a raised brow.

“What?” Alya says, ducking her head to scroll frantically through her notes app. “But—”

“I was making a clipper ship out of circus balloons when the silent alarm I have at home went off!” Fruitmeir says, with an unbothered look on his face as he slips the balloon flower into his apron. As the monster behind them all comes into view, he exclaims, “Oh, goodness gracious! What is that?”

“But if the monster isn’t you,” Nino says, eyebrows knitting together across his forehead as he twists his hat around and around his skull, “then who is it?”

Marinette steps up to the writhing monster and reaches up, pulling at the top of the costume, which comes away as a mask. 

Who they find is not someone they expected in the least.

 “Ms. Mendeleiev?” they ask in unison and with varying degrees of surprise and confusion.

“That’s right!” the woman cries, struggling in her costume but frustrated with the gang nonetheless. “I was trying to scare people away from the sewers while I dug my way into the bank and got rich.”

“But you have a job as a teacher,” Chloé says, cocking her head to the side. “Why do you need more money?”

Ms. Mendeleiev stares blankly at them all, and slowly, realization dawns on the gang’s faces. “Oh,” they laugh nervously, “yes, yes, sorry! We get it.”

“I discovered that the Crystal Cove caves were connected to the sewers purely by accident,” Ms. Mendeleiev explains, frowning. “I’d been collecting mold spores for my Biology classes. Once I realized the cave led right to the bank, I put my plan into motion. Fruitmeir’s… restaurant or whatever you call it gave me secret access to the caves through the supply closet, so I decided to frame him for the crime by using his disgusting dessert in my costume. I staged my own disappearance to throw off anyone suspecting me or my involvement, and it was foolproof!” she cries. “Genius! That is, until you meddling kids ruined everything,” she finishes with a sneer.

By this point, Sheriff Raincomprix was arresting Ms. Mendeleiev and leading her out of Fruitmeir’s establishment. 

“Wait,” Adrien calls, stepping closer to Ms. Mendeleiev and the sheriff. From beneath his borrowed shirt, he pulls the locket from before. “Did—did you see my mom at all while you were down there? This necklace of hers was right by where you were digging, Ms. Mendeleiev.”

Beside him, Gabriel Agreste quickly masks the look of surprise and confusion that swims over him at the sight. 

“I didn’t see anyone but those construction workers down there,” Ms. Mendeleiev says with a frown, shaking her head.

Adrien’s expression falls and he tucks the locket away once more. “Thanks anyways, Ms. Mendeleiev.”

The sheriff pops back through Fruitmeir’s door once Ms. Mendeleiev is secured in his police car. “I… guess we should thank you kids. You did save the town’s bank.”

“While also losing the town another stream of revenue,” Gabriel Agreste says dryly, stepping to the door after the sheriff. Nathalie follows him, silent and stoic as before.

“Always happy to help,” Marinette says with a sigh, rocking back on her heels.

“Not too happy, I hope,” the sheriff says with narrowed eyes.

~*~

The gang convenes at Félix and Amelie’s house after the fiasco at Fruitmeir’s, recollecting themselves before they all head off their separate ways. Alya sits on one of the couches, sandwiched between Nino and Marinette and Luka and Chloé sit in chairs across from each other. Félix sits in the chair next to Luka and Adrien sits on the couch across from Alya, Nino, and Marinette. 

While they all sit, Alya types up her notes from the evening and schedules a post to go online the next night. Marinette organizes her toolbox again and makes notes on things to add or replenish to her stock. Luka and Chloé are pointedly ignoring each other, each doing homework—Luka, Economics, and Chloé, Chemistry again. Félix is finishing up some homework of his own, although he’s working ahead to try and surpass Kagami in the next week. With how the past week has gone, Félix isn’t sure if he’ll have all the allotted time he usually does now that he’s in a mystery-solving gang and trying to keep Adrien safe. Nino watches Adrien, his head cocked to the side as the other boy plays with his mother’s locket.

Adrien’s expression is one of dejection as he holds his mother’s locket out in front of him. The gold of the body of the locket glints in the hard yellow light of Amelie’s lamps, reflecting cold and uncaring, as it dangles in the air beneath the chain caught up in his fingers. Nino watches him for a long time before he ultimately stands and steps around the coffee table to sit beside Adrien on the couch. 

“You okay, Adrien?” he asks quietly, putting a hand on the other boy’s shoulder

“I just don’t get it,” Adrien says with a sigh. “Why would my mom’s locket be down in the sewers? It makes even less sense than before after tonight.”

Before Nino can answer, can give him something of a reassurance, Adrien’s phone rings loudly from on top of the coffee table in front of them. Scrambling to silence the ringing, Adrien answers without a glance towards the caller ID. His mother’s locket has fallen into one hand, momentarily forgotten. 

“Put me on speaker,” a woman’s voice says quietly in his ear. Adrien’s eyebrows knit together, but he shrugs and sets his phone on the coffee table again, clicking it over to speaker as he doesn’t see any reason not to comply.

“You’re on speaker, now,” he says, frowning. Around him, the whole gang pauses what they’re doing—Alya setting away her article, Marinette putting down her tools, and Félix, Luka, and Chloé closing their notebooks and setting down their pencils—and turns their attention to the coffee table.

“Hello, Mystery Incorporated,” the woman says. Her voice is like velvet through his speaker—soft, but something about it sounds odd and off-putting to Adrien. The sound of her voice is somewhat familiar, but there’s a height to it that he feels is almost artificial. “I see you’ve finally begun. You’re doomed, now, you know.” 

“Who is this?” Marinette asks, leaning forward. Her voice is hard and insistent, forceful and demanding.

“You can call me Lady E,” the woman says. Her voice shifts, tilts into something angrier. “You should have never brought that locket out of the cave. You don’t know what any of it means—nor will you, when you uncover it all and piece it together.”

“Uncover what?” Nino asks, shifting in his seat.

“A truth that should remain hidden,” she says, her voice at once growing softer and sadder. “A truth you won’t be able to see for what it is. But it’s a truth that lies on the path of you understanding the curse of Crystal Cove. That—the curse, the real mystery—has only just begun.”

There’s a click as the line then goes dead. After a moment, everyone releases a collective breath.

“Who was that?” Alya asks, sitting up straighter on the couch.

“I don’t know,” Adrien says, pulling his phone from the coffee table and navigating to his callers list. “Same area code, but it’s not a number I recognize.”

“She called herself ‘Lady E,’” Nino says, his mouth twisting into a frown. “That could mean anything. Lady Elusive, Lady Eat Shit, Lady Ever Heard of a Secret Identity—anything.”

Félix raises a single brow in Nino’s direction, something of a smile tugging at his lips. “Those are quite the names,” he says. “Which one do you think is on her ID?”

“I think we should focus on what she said, though,” Marinette says, interrupting their start of a back-and-forth. She scoots forward on the couch, her toolbox forgotten beside her as her expression slips into one of giddy anticipation. “She mentions your mother’s locket, Adrien, and says that we shouldn’t have taken it out of the cave. She then goes on about what the locket means, saying it’s something we won’t even understand when it’s all pieced together. She also says that whatever the locket means or is connected to is also connected to the curse of Crystal Cove.”

“And that the mystery has only just begun,” Alya says with a grin, matching Marinette’s excitement. Across from them, Nino looks around at Félix, Chloé, and Adrien with concern in his gaze. Luka does the same and leans forward, reaching out a hand for Marinette and Alya as if to calm them down.

“Maybe we should slow down a little,” he says. “Ask if these guys even want to continue after tonight.”

“Yeah,” Nino agrees, twisting his hat around on his head and clutching at his head for a moment through it with a frown. “Do Adrien and Chloé even want to continue looking for Adrien’s mom with us? Or at all?”

“And whether they do or not, does Félix want to keep tagging along, too?” Luka asks, leaning back in his chair with a matching frown.

Marinette and Alya hesitate, but both ultimately nod and sit back, composing themselves a little better in the face of this different perspective.

Adrien stares at the floor for a long time. All eyes rest on him, although some drift away for a while to give him some measure of space. When he looks up, both Chloé and Félix nod at him.

Adrien meets no one else’s eyes and instead stares at the coffee table before him as he speaks. “I think that tonight was scary. It was really, really scary. But all of it, all of this, even tonight, has been really, really fun, too, to… hang out with all of you. I do also like getting to know more people, and especially you guys. 

“I really do think that we can all find my mom, and even if I wasn’t tagging along, I think you guys would find her, so I—I believe in you guys. And I think the possibility of us really finding her is incredibly high, considering everything… so I think… I think I’d like to continue with you guys. I think it would even be fun to try and, you know, maybe help with the other mysteries, like we did tonight, if that’s… okay?” As he finishes, he looks up, meeting Nino, Luka, Alya, and finally, Marinette’s eyes, asking, asking, asking—hoping. Hoping they say yes. 

And they do, with wide smiles and giddy looks and a sense of welcoming he hasn’t felt outside of being around Chloé. And something within Adrien—it opens. It blooms.

It’s warm, light, and soft, and yellow.

Notes:

teehee >:D

how do you guys feel about this chapter? it marks the end of the scooby doo mystery incorporated episode one, meaning that chapter six starts episode TWO. (is it just me that’s crazy excited or WHAT!!) also!! what did you think of how félix escaped the monster? how did you feel about the strange call adrien got at the end? who do you think lady e is? are you happy that the gang is FOR REAL together no matter what until they find adrien’s mom? do you miss kagami? do you want me to keep including these questions at the end?

anyways, i’m off to write some stuff for my other fics now, and hopefully this writing motivation and inspiration keeps coming 😌🫶 catch you guys when chapter six is done!! 👀

Chapter 6: chapter six

Summary:

We see what Gabriel Agreste has been up to, and the gang gets a package from the mysterious Lady E…

Notes:

major oops, everyone 🫣 my apologies for the almost nine month and unwarned haitus 😳 but i was Not pregnant 🫡 not that that clears anything up 🥲🧍‍♂️anyways, enjoy the new chapter <3 hoping to update (actually) soon 🫶

Gabriel Agreste sits alone at his desk in his locked office, absorbed completely in the books Emelie had had in the library before she disappeared. A bright white lamp shines over him, cold and unfeeling, and some strands of his greying hair escape his typical gelled look, falling just into view in front of his glasses. Despite the minor distraction of his hair, he’s completely lost in the book, dead to the world.

Even as his phone buzzes beside him with a good morning text from Adrien, he doesn’t move.

Even as his phone buzzes with calendar reminders from Nathalie, he doesn’t move.

Even as the sun casts slowly moving shadows through his window, spinning him through minute degrees of exposure from before dawn to far past dusk, he doesn’t move, except to turn the pages of the book he’s on or move onto the next.

He ignores everything, researching and going down the same path that Emelie had been heading down since the last separation of the disk.

~*~

The gang comes together at Amelie’s the Thursday after the Fruitmeir case has been solved. They’re lounging around in the living room when Amelie comes in with a small package. Marinette sits curled up at one end of the couch, tying and untying some knots and timing herself; Nino sits cross-legged on the other end of the same couch with Alya beside him, the both of them working quietly on their Chemistry homework. Felix sits in one chair beside Marinette, reading a book for English, and Chloé sits in another chair, closer to Nino, painting her nails a dark shade of green. Luka and Adrien sit on the other couch across from Marinette, Nino, and Alya, working on their History essays. Everyone is quiet and focused on their respective tasks when Amelie comes in, dressed in her gardening clothes. Her cheeks are rosy as she smiles, and she steps over to the coffee table in the center of the group, setting the package down. 

“It was on the porch when I came in,” she says, still smiling. “It’s addressed to a, uh… Mystery Incorporated?” She winks and steps away. 

Félix rolls his eyes at her, though his expression is amused. “Thanks.”

Amelie nods to him, still smiling, and steps away, heading for her room upstairs.

Curiously, Marinette sets aside her timer and knotted rope. She moves over to the coffee table and pulls the package closer, even as the others are also coming around the table, watching.

Her brows draw together and she frowns. “It’s from Lady E,” she murmurs.

Luka reaches over and pulls a note from an opening in the package. “Saved this for a rainy day, it reads. Enjoy.”

Marinette opens the package carefully, still frowning.

“A bomb, maybe?” Adrien asks quietly.

Nino shakes his head. “I don’t know—she seems like she wants us to… well, figure things out. We’d have to be alive for that, right?

Luka huffs a laugh. “Unless this is a test to see if we’re good enough for that.”

Marinette manages to get the brown wrapping paper from around the package, and she opens the box within with a box cutter she supplies from her cargo pants.

“Are you even allowed to have that?” Chloé asks incredulously.

Félix grimaces. “I might instate pat downs with each entry to the house if you’re just going to pull knives out at random, Dupain-Cheng.”

“Oh, shut up, Félix,” Marinette mutters, opening the box fully. She puts her knife away. 

Félix rolls his eyes.

“What is that?” Alya asks, looking over the lip of the box.

Chloé stands up and grins, seeing the contents of the box. “Only a cute purse, Césaire.” She reaches over and grabs the purse, inspecting it as she holds it by the ropey handles. “Supposedly, 100% gator, made in Gatorsburg.”

“Gatorsburg?” Félix asks incredulously, leaning back in his chair and frowning. He crosses his arms over his chest and he shakes his head. “Isn’t it a ghost town?”

Alya looks at the purse in disbelief. “Gatorsburg hasn’t manufactured gator products in years—that looks new, right, Chloé?”

Chloé shakes her head and turns the purse around. “Maybe it’s been well-preserved?”

Luka frowns. “Gatorsburg hasn’t been in the business since the gator mines dried up, which has been about… oh, sixty years, at least.”

“Gator mines?” Adrien asks, leaning forward to brush his fingers along the fabric of the purse. He recoils back at the sensation, and he sinks back into his seat. “What are those?”

Alya nods. “Gatorsburg was founded back in the 1800s, when a group of prospectors searching for gold struck something else that was still, well… somewhat valuable—alligators. Gatorsburg had more alligators than anywhere else in the world, and they were multiplying like crazy. Almost overnight, Gatorsburg became famous for its alligator products. The places where the most alligators congregated were called gator mines. At the start of the 1960s, the gator mines dried up, making Gatorsburg a ghost town, like Félix said.”

“But it says it was made in Gatorsburg?” Nino asks, leaning back against the couch where he sits. He tosses an arm along the back of the couch. “Does it have a date of manufacture, by any chance?”

Chloé hums, setting the purse on the table and inspecting the inside of it. “Ah, it says it was made a year ago.”

Marinette looks at Alya, the start of a smile teasing her lips. “Which doesn't make sense with the timeline of the town and the absence of alligators.”

Alya shakes her head, smiling as well. She glances around the group. “I think we have a mystery on our hands, guys.”

“Or at least a false advertising lawsuit,” Chloé says with a grimace, still inspecting the inside of the purse.

Félix sighs and shrugs. “I suppose they’d better lawyer up, or Mystery Incorporated: Law Firm is going to be winning their first case of the year.”

“Sixth, actually,” Alya says offhandedly, returning to her phone. 

Félixs raises a brow. “Of course, of course, my apologies,” he says dryly. “I wasn't aware of that record, forgive me.”

Nino shrugs. “Not many are, so don't worry.”

Luka grins and leans back against the couch where he sits. “Alright, so when do we leave for Gatorsburg?”

Marinette frowns and shakes her head, stuffing the discarded wrapping paper into the now-empty box. She pockets Lady E’s note. “Tomorrow after school, at the earliest. We have a Chem test tomorrow, and I, for one, cannot afford the make-up homework that comes along with a different day and time to take the test.” She shakes her head and yawns, covering it with one hand. “Plus, if we need to stay the night, we should get as much sleep as we can tonight.”

Félix rolls his eyes and asks, “So you weren't planning on sleeping so much for just the test? Good to know where your priorities lie, Dupain-Cheng.”

“Physical safety over a stupid grade? Yeah, my priorities are off,” Marinette retorts with little bite, returning to her knot-tying as she relaxes back against her end of the couch.

“Is there anything else we should do to prepare for the trip?” Chloé cuts in, ignoring their barbs.

Alya nods, navigating to a list on her phone. “I’ll send a list to everyone's phones, but you’ll basically need enough necessities for two, maybe three days stay away. We’ll each need a tight cover story for the stricter parents—maybe that's something Amelie can help with?” She plows on, not waiting for a response. “Marinette and I can cover most of the food, but if anyone can pitch in with some extra food and help Nino with the cost gas, that would be great. We’ll probably sleep in the van, so bring a few blankets and pillows and keep your attitudes in check. We'll stop at a working gas station outside of town if needed for cleaning up and bathroom breaks in the mornings and evenings, but I hope you're comfortable with going in the woods, too, otherwise you'll be holding it for a bit.

“Marinette and Luka are covering clothes, so just wear something you're willing to sleep in on Friday—make sure it's old or cheap if you can, just in case things get… well, you know. Messy, at night.” She shrugs. “I’ll text a more specific and targeted list to everyone tonight, though. Any questions?”

Félix raises a brow. “What sort of alibi can my mother help with for these… stricter parents?”

Luka looks to Félix and answers. “Adrien’s dad will probably be up in arms if he knew what we’re doing this weekend. It’d probably be better if he thought Adrien were… well, here. Chloé can be—”

“My parents won't be an issue,” Chloé cuts in.

Luka purses his lips, but keeps his gaze off of her. “Alright, then.”

Nino frowns a little. “My parents will wonder—it might help if your mom could say I’m with you and Adrien and that I’m here.”

Félix nods noncommittally. 

Alya looks to Félix and shrugs. “My parents will riot, but I can say I’m camping with Marinette like usual.”

“My parents… won't say anything that I don't tell them,” Marinette says with a shrug, keeping her gaze on the rope in her hands.

Félix sighs a little. “Alright. I’ll talk with my mother and text you all tonight with word on what she says.”

~*~

Anarka Couffaine has only been an alcoholic for twenty years. Her only time sober was the nine month period she carried Luka and Juleka seventeen years ago, hoping against all hope that that would keep Jagged around.

It didn't.

When he was younger, Luka was surprised—wasn't alcohol supposed to affect the liver, the major organs? It was supposed to kill you over time, yes, but wasn’t twenty plus something years… too long? 

Luka hadn't known how long it could take. For many years, he tried to prepare himself for losing his mother at her own hand, by her own glass. He stopped trying to prepare about six years ago, and instead he tried to get through each day without thinking about it—his mother’s smell, the look of her skin, the color of her hair in the cold yellow light amidst the darkness of the cabin. The prospect of her death.

Thursday night, Nino drops him off just down the street from where the houseboat bobs uneasily in the water. Luka cautiously makes his way onboard. He's just getting onto the main deck when he sees a tall, thin shadow dart across to where he stands. He knows it's Juleka before she knows he's Luka, so she’s startled and almost tripping backwards onto the deck when she first sees him. He rushes out to help her before she hits the deck. 

Waking their mother has been known to have her coming out to them in a dazed stupor, her .38 already firing off shots before she can see them. 

“Jules, hey,” he whispers, “it's just me! Calm down, calm down—where’re you headed?”

Juleka laughs quietly, though it's a half-nervous and half-relieved sound. “The band is playing tonight, Luka.”

Luka frowns and nods. “Please be more careful,” he says, helping her up. “And try to be back before one AM, alright?”

Juleka shakes her head and brushes herself off. “Sure, sure, Lu. Mom’s inside, by the way.”

It's unspoken the state she's in. Luka nods.

“You have your phone on you?” he asks.

Juleka smiles a bit and waves it at him. “I’ll text when I’m headed back, and again when I get here.”

Luka puts his hands on his hips and stares at her. 

“And when I get to the venue,” she adds on, pushing past him. Quieter, and behind him as she gets off the boat, she murmurs, “Thanks for caring.”

Luka doesn't say anything, but he nods, looking down at his feet. 

It's several long minutes before he works up the desire to go inside. He doesn't want to sneak past his mother, not at all, still, but his bed is warm and comfy and he's cold and tired, so he makes his way quietly across the rest of the deck in the darkness. When he gets to the front door, in the same way he has a million times before, he turns the knob as slowly as possible and pushes it quietly open, slipping into the cabin. He walks past his mother and down into his room without making a sound. Once in his room, he finally sighs, closing the door behind him. 

Luka falls easily to sleep that night, exhausted.

~*~

Friday afternoon finally arrives. Félix, Chloé, Adrien, Luka, and Marinette all come from their different classes to where Nino and Alya sit in the van in the parking lot, finishing up some homework during the last bit of their open period. Marinette and Chloé are the first to arrive—Marinette slides into the remaining seat in the front, and Chloé situates herself in one of the reclining captain seats Nino set up in the back that morning. Adrien comes next, sitting on the regularly attached side bench beside Chloé. Luka then sits on the other bench across from Adrien, and Félix takes the other captain’s chair, complaining about the side benches and their being uncomfortable.

“Well,” Nino says, pulling out of Crystal Cove High’s parking lot, “if they're that much of a pain in your ass, I’ll keep the captains up. I just brought them along this time because they clear up some space, allowing six people to sleep back there instead of maybe five.”

Félix buckles and heaves a relieved sigh. “Please keep them—I was ready to fight Alya for her seat if I had to sit on that bench for an hour.”

Alya turns around sharply. “Me?!”

“Marinette has a knife.”

Marinette laughs sharply.

“Well, you don't have to fight anyone, Félix,” Nino says, rolling his eyes. “We’ll keep the captains up, no big deal.”

Chloé glances at her bags at her feet. “Any word on how long we’ll actually have to stay in Gatorsburg?”

“Nope,” Alya says, shaking her head. “It depends on how long the case takes.”

“Mostly it depends on how long we need to investigate,” Luka says, stretching out. His beat-up boots hit Adrien’s bench with his legs still half-bent. “If we have any suspects, we’ll decide whether it would be better to leave and research them or if it would be better to watch them instead. If we get there and we somehow already have suspects, then we just have to make a plan on how to get a confession or when to trap them with evidence confirming their actions.” He shrugs. “Either way, though, the case could take a day, a few days, or a few weeks.”

“We won't stay a week there, will we?” asks Adrien, fiddling with his hands in his lap.

Marinette glances back. “No, we won't—no matter what, we'll leave Sunday or before then. If we need more time, we’ll come back another weekend.”

“If the absolute worst comes to worse,” Luka says, looking at Adrien reassuringly, “either Marinette or I will stay behind to keep watch and make sure no one runs.”

“Or we’ll leave both of them to keep watch,” Nino pitches in. “We rarely ever leave only one person behind, and there's hardly any need for it, now, when we have you, Chloé, and Félix to help.”

Félix frowns. “So you guys have left them behind on cases before, then? How many?”

“We try not to let it be for too long,” Alya says quietly.

Marinette crosses her arms over her chest and restlessly crosses and uncrosses her legs. “Luka and I are most capable of being left behind like that, though. And the least likely to be missed.”

Adrien looks at Marinette with a frown, his gaze heavy. “Your parents would miss you, though, Marinette… right?”

Marinette laughs humorlessly. “Maybe, but they know better than to send a search party after me. Luka’s mom… she doesn't even know,” Marinette says, her voice dropping to a whisper. “So, really… no one's going to miss us if we miss a few days or a week of school.” She shrugs and frowns out the window.

“Except us,” Nino says, a little more loudly than appropriate as he shifts in his seat, sitting up straighter. “Which is why we've always come back, why we always check in as often as we can. None of that changes.”

Félix, still frowning, glances back to Marinette, who nods absently.

“Well,” Chloé says with a small sigh. “I packed just like you all wanted. Could someone tell me why I couldn't bring any of my clothes? Last time I was fine to wear my own tank top and sweater.”

Félix clears his throat and glances to the others, making note that only Marinette and Luka, again, wear ratty, older clothes. “I, too, was wondering about that, though I brought along some of my gardening clothes anyways since that seemed to fit the requirements of the clothes you told us to wear today, and it was fine when we unmasked Mendeleiv.”

Nino smiles a bit as he continues driving. “Well, even if it wasn’t as noticeable with the Fruitmeir case, our clothes tend to get a bit dirty and gross and they rip sometimes. Marinette and Luka have the most flexibility in the realm of wearing what they want, buying the clothes they want, or otherwise… altering the clothes they have.”

Alya looks up from her phone, where she's reading up on the history of Gatorsburg again as a refresher. “Luka gets some clothes in Nino’s size for Nino to wear, and Marinette makes anything else they might need that Luka can't get. Marinette wears a lot of baggy clothes, and so we share a lot of our wardrobe when necessary, and any repairs are made by Marinette.”

“Luka and I also clean any strange substances out of the clothes,” Marinette says with a shrug. “We have the least surveillance when it comes to that kind of stuff.”

“The point is,” Nino says, “we asked you guys not to pack anything because Marinette got your guys’ rough measurements and has some clothes for the trip—outfits for each of you that can get dirty or ripped and torn if necessary, without anyone's parents going apeshit over a ruined pair of nice pants. We figured it’s especially important that none of you be wearing your own clothes for this sort of trip, when half of us are supposed to be at Amelie’s or safe at home.”

“Alright,” Chloé says, a little surprised. “Will we change before getting to Gatorsburg, then?”

Marinette nods. “I’ll give you all your different outfits when we stop outside of Gatorsburg, yeah.”

“Well, Chloé and I can pay for food if you guys want to stop outside of Gatorsburg. Dinner, anything at a gas station or convenience store, that kind of thing,” Adrien says.

Félix nods. “I can cover most of the gas costs, too.” 

Luka nods his thanks to them and smiles. 

“Thanks,” Nino says, grinning in the rearview mirror. “That helps a lot. We brought some stuff, just in case, but that helps a ton.”

“Of course,” Adrien says happily. “Anything we can do to help.”

~*~

The gang reaches Gatorsburg about an hour and a half after leaving school, and though it isn't too late in the year, yet, it's already dark when they get there, a thick fog over the ghost town. 

They’ve all changed into different clothes, except for Marinette and Luka, who were already dressed for the occasion in old jeans, boots, and a sleeveless turtleneck for Marinette and a form-fitting black tee for Luka. Chloé now wears a pair of jeans as well, a pair of sneakers, and a long-sleeved form-fitting dark tee of Marinette’s. Félix wears a black tee from Luka, a pair of his own jeans, and a pair of boots. Nino is clothed similarly, though his pants are a bit baggier and he wears sneakers instead. Alya wears sneakers, too, a pair of dark pants, and a dark hoodie. 

Nino slows down considerably entering the town limits, and everyone quiets in the van. In preparation, his heartbeat already picking up, Luka pushes the grocery bags of food under Félix and Chloé’s seats, much to the latter’s chagrin, and he puts the gang's assorted backpacks and duffels in front of it. In the front seat, Marinette pulls her main toolbox into her lap and pulls out her travel toolbelt. She unbuckles and straps it around her hips. She doesn't buckle up again. Alya pulls one of her bags from the floor and pulls out seven walkie talkies and flashlights, tuning the walkie talkies all to the same station. As she hands them out in the back, Nino drives through the town, getting a rough idea of the layout.

“Remember the map we went over?” Nino asks Luka.

Luka nods. “Is everything in the same place?”

Nino bites his lip and squints through the fog. “As far as I can tell. Can you go over it with the others in the back while I finish going through town? I’m going to try and see if there's any signs of life. Alya, try your phone and check for service, and Marinette, keep an eye out with me, alright?”

Marinette and Alya nod. Alya checks the service on her phone—“The signal is small, but it's enough to make a call. So far, it's steady throughout town,”—and Marinette looks out her window for signs of life. In the back, Luka quietly goes over the Gatorsburg map with Adrien, Félix, and Chloé.

Finally, after about another thirty minutes, they arrive at the only seeming sign of life in town—a single gas station—all ready and prepared for stepping out into foggy darkness around them. Everyone has walkie talkies and flashlights, and Félix and Luka offer to stay by the car. Chloé and Marinette and Adrien go inside the gas station to investigate, and Nino and Alya investigate the outside of the station where the pumps are and around back. The original four Mystery Incorporated members are noticeably relaxed with the increase in numbers, but Chloé and Adrien can't help but jump at every noise, and Félix stares uneasily into the foggy darkness outside as he leans against the van.

“Nothing in here,” Marinette says, voice crackling through everyone's walkie talkies after about fifteen minutes of radio silence.

“Nothing at all?” Luka replies. 

“Nothing,” Marinette says. “Seems it was abandoned for good at least a few years ago—hardly anything is within its date, and it reeks of mold in here.”

“Good thing we stopped outside of town, then, eh?” Nino says.

Félix nods. “Do you and Alya have anything?”

“Nothing but some weird slime out back and from one of the pumps to the bushes,” says Alya. “I’m taking samples as we speak in case we head back into town before the case is over.”

“Good idea,” Luka says into his walkie talkie, and he turns to Félix. “How’re you feeling?”

Félix raises a brow. 

Luka rolls his eyes. “About here—Gatorsburg. I noticed you looking a bit uneasy since we got here.”

Félix huffs a sigh. “I don't like it out here. I can't see a thing, and I keep thinking I hear these noises, but then I turn and—well, I can never be sure, because I can't see a thing.”

“Noted,” Luka says with a small laugh, but he quickly sobers up, looking around as well. “Want to call back the others? We can—you should trust your instincts.”

Félix frowns. “If they’ve found nothing, I think they should come back. I… have a feeling we'll get stuck here longer than we’d like if we're separated much longer.”

Luka quickly radioes everyone back to the van. Within two minutes, everyone is back with Félix and Luka, and they're all getting into the van, each of them a bit more keyed up than before.

Nino is the last to get inside, and, hearing a noise in the foggy distance, he glances out along the expanse of road. After a moment of hesitation, he gets inside the van, slamming the door with a bit more force than necessary out of fear. He fumbles noticeably with the keys, dropping them first to his lap, then the seat, then the floor, before Alya finally reaches out and steadies his hand, guiding it towards the ignition. Marinette bounces her leg a bit, looking off into the fog with narrowed eyes. She won't say it aloud, but she's terribly glad to be back inside the safe fortress of the van, and she's tempted to ask Nino to drive them out of town to find a well-lit parking lot to park the van and sleep in. 

In the back, Chloé and Adrien have long since passed that reservation, and are checking their private bank accounts quietly, discussing how much hotel rooms in the next well-populated city over might cost. Félix fiddles with his radio and debates asking Amelie to convince the gang to go back to Crystal Cove for the night. Luka texts Juleka, who's asking about the case. He tells her it's nothing to worry about, but he has a bit of a sinking feeling growing in his stomach as Nino tries and tries again to stick the keys into the ignition. 

Nino finally succeeds. 

The car won't start—won't even putter, won't even gasp. There's nothing. 

Nino tries again, and again, and again, almost frantic. “Why won't this—shit won't start—damn van, come on—”

“What's the issue?” Marinette asks in the dead silence, already cracking open her door despite the dread filling her stomach. She's outside and closing the passenger side door, scanning her surroundings, when Nino finally curses loudly.

“Damn thing won't start!” he calls, slamming the palm of his hand on the top of the steering wheel.

Alya calls out to Marinette, watching her through the windshield—“Be careful, Mari.”

Marinette doesn't look back at her. She nods to Félix, who's peering out over the back of the front seat bench. “Can you and Luka come out here? I might need one of you to hold a flashlight while the other keeps watch.”

Félix nods, and he relays the message to Luka. They both get out and come around to the front of the van after shutting the back doors securely behind them. Luka stands to one side and Félix stands to the other side of the front of the van as Marinette pops the hood. She turns on a flashlight, sticking the handle’s end in her mouth, and she peers into the suspicious cavity she's revealed. She groans.

“What is it?” Félix asks, crossing his arms and shifting on his feet nervously. “What's the issue?”

Marinette pulls the flashlight from her mouth with one hand. “Come see, Félix,” she says with a sigh.

He glances over his shoulder. “I’ve never seen the contents beneath the hood of a car, let alone a van, but is there something missing there…?”

Marinette rolls her eyes. “The entire engine is gone, genius.”

Luka doesn't look back, still keeping watch. Félix returns to his job doing the same, though both are considerably more on edge. “What can you do?” Luka asks.

Marinette scoffs. “Well, unless I can find the bastard who took our engine, all I can do is call up the nearest mechanic and see if they have an engine for a van this old and in this make.”

“But someone definitely took it,” Félix repeats quietly.

Marinette nods, frowning. “Yeah,” she says. “Someone clearly wants us here. I doubt we were called in and had our engine stolen because someone has this exact model and make of a van that just happens to be missing an engine, too.”

Luka swallows thickly. “Should we get back inside the van? Tell the others, see what can be done?”

Marinette purses her lips and drops the hood back down. “Nothing else to do, I guess.”

They all half- run back into the van, closing the doors with the same unnecessary force Nino did before.

“What’s the issue?” Nino asks hesitantly, shoulders already drooping.

Marinette speaks a bit quietly, staring into the darkness in front of them. “Basically, the van won't start because someone took your engine, Nino. It definitely couldn't have happened by accident or on its own, but, coupled with Lady E’s cryptic note, I don't think we're here by accident—someone wants us here, and now they want to keep us here, for who knows how long, but someone or many someones are out there and trying to keep us in Gatorsburg. Also, I can't do anything about your engine til at least eight or nine AM tomorrow when I can check with nearby mechanics to see if they have a spare engine for this make and model. But, mind you, that would have been difficult even with a popular type of car, since no one really takes the whole engine out of a car when they’re trying to keep you someplace. Usually, they just slash your tires, sever your brake line…” She shrugs. “So… that’s the issue. Someone took your engine.”

There's a thick silence following her words for several minutes before, finally, Alya speaks up.

“We should call Amelie.”

Chloé lets out a huge sigh. “I was hoping someone would suggest that.”

“We’ll call Tom and Sabine as a last resort,” Alya adds on, turning in her seat to look at Félix. “Would you call your mom?”

Félix nods, already dialing.

Amelie picks up on the first ring. “Hello?”

Félix nods. “It's me. Are you busy?”

“I’m at a conference, so yes,” Amelie says with a small groan. “Late notice, but you were going to be away for the evening, so I accepted the offer. I speak in about ten minutes, darling. I’m—I’m very sorry. Do you need something? I can drop this if you really need or want me, Félix.”

Félix shakes his head slowly and he picks at his jeans a little. “No, no—don't beat yourself up about it. Enjoy the conference, Mum,” he says, quieter. “We’ll be fine. You… believe in us, yes?”

Amelie smiles wide on the other side of the phone. “I do, yes. I think you can do anything—all of you. You're all very strong, very resilient. I trust you all will be careful and make the right decisions.”

Félix frowns and nods again. “Alright, thanks. I suppose… I suppose I just needed to hear that. Enjoy the conference. Tell me about it when I get home, yes?”

Amelie wipes at her eyes. “I will,” she says, voice trembling the slightest. “Thank you. Be careful, please. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Félix hangs up.

“Let me guess,” Chloé says sharply. “Busy?”

Félix looks up at Chloé, gaze empty. “Yes, actually. What of it?” Hearing that his mother was doing something she wanted to, Félix couldn't help but tell her to enjoy herself instead. We’ll figure something else out, he tells himself.

Alya turns to Marinette, eyes pleading. Marinette calls her parents, but it rings and it rings and it rings until she gets the voicemail. She hangs up. 

“No answer,” she says, turning her phone over in her hands. “They're probably asleep.”

The gang sits in silence for several long minutes. It’s unspoken that they can’t call and blow their covers with Nino, Alya, Chloé, or Adrien’s parents. 

“Think we could push it out of town, maybe? At least get out of this creepfest?” Nino asks after a bit.

Before anyone can answer, a large truck rolls up beside them. The driver's side door opens, and rock music pours out with a tall and thin shadowed figure. Alya turns on her flashlight, shining it at the figure, who's walking closer. Everyone in the van is silent and rigid in anticipation.

The figure knocks on the hood of the van, and a rough voice says, “What are you all doing here in Gatorsburg?”

Marinette is the only one to attempt to speak, projecting her voice just loud enough to be heard outside the van. “Our van broke down. We were only headed through here as a shortcut to our camping site, but…”

The figure pops the hood without asking for permission. Nino and Marinette both grimace.

“Engine is missing,” says the figure gruffly. “I can see about ordering a new one—”

“Already planned on doing that,” Marinette says sharply.

The hood is slammed down, and the figure turns to stare Marinette dead-on. 

“Watch it,” Marinette says firmly, though her hands tremble a bit. “Or we’ll have more than one issue with you.”

The figure doesn't respond to that. “Either way, you folks are stuck here overnight.”

“That's fine,” Marinette says, sitting up taller. “We were going camping anyways—what's one night’s stay elsewhere in the wilderness along the way?”

The figure stays still, staring at Marinette. Gruffly, it says, “It's not safe outside. Creatures, you know. My wife runs a hotel just on the edge of town, and we have a few rooms open. You all can stay there.”

Nino speaks up, his voice a bit wobbly. “We didn't see any lights or anything on when we drove around—”

The figure’s voice is sharp. “We weren't exactly expecting visitors, you see. It's a ghost town.”

“Then explain your presence, creep,” Chloé mutters under her breath. Alya shushes her.

“We’ll sleep in our van, then,” Marinette says.

“It's not safe,” the figure repeats.

“A hotel would be nice,” Adrien whispers. “Might be warmer, too?”

“I don't trust these people,” Marinette mutters back.

“I don't think anyone does,” Chloé replies. “But we'll all probably investigate much better after a good night's rest in a bed.”

Marinette grimaces. “Fine,” she answers the figure. “Do you have a tow hitch?”

The figure nods.

“We’d rather stay in here on the drive, if that's fine,” Marinette says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Fine by me,” the figure says gruffly.

Marinette nods. The figure returns to their truck and adjusts their position before hitching the van to the back of the truck. 

“I’ll pay for the hotel rooms,” Chloé says, relieved.

“I’ll sleep in the van,” Marinette says, staring at the truck in front of them as it starts to slowly drive them back towards the hotel.

“Aw, come on, Mari,” Nino groans. “It's one night.”

“And I’ll feel much safer sleeping out here, thank you,” Marinette says firmly.

“Me, too,” Félix says after a beat. “I think it's weird that the only hotel in a ghost town wouldn't keep their lights on for passerby, especially given the need for revenue with a business.”

“Plus, they insisted we sleep in the hotel for safety’s sake, but they have no problem letting us stay in here while we're being towed,” Marinette says offhandedly.

“Is this not safe?” Nino asks incredulously, turning to stare at Marinette wide eyes. “You—”

She rolls her eyes. “At first it was merely a test, but then I didn't want to worry anyone, so I didn't comment on it.”

“Except for just now,” Félix says dryly.

“Shut up,” Marinette mutters.

“You first,” Félix replies calmly.

“Ugh.”

Félix rolls his eyes.

“Either way,” Marinette says, “it's only unsafe if we come unhitched and they're taking a sharp turn quickly.”

Nino sighs, leaning forward and putting his face onto the backs of his hands on the steering wheel. “Mari, you gotta tell us this stuff earlier. Please.”

Marinette quiets, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “Sorry, Nino.

Nino only sighs. “Let’s just all hope we don’t die before getting to the hotel,” he grumbles.

Notes:

soooooo, what’d you think?

Chapter 7: chapter seven

Summary:

The gang arrives at the Drowsy Gator, and they meet the owners… and the gator people.

Notes:

muahahahahahahah 😈 i’m so excited about this chapter, you guys… tehehehe…

When the gang reaches the hotel, the lights are on. Nino shakes his head.

“We passed by this twice, and there weren't any lights,” he says with a heavy sigh.

“I’m still staying out here,” Marinette says firmly, arms crossed over her chest.

Félix nods. “Me, too.”

Alya looks out at the hotel, and she bites her lip. “Maybe it won't be so bad,” she says, but her voice wavers as if she doesn't believe that herself.

Chloé and Adrien are already heading for the back of the van with their phones and wallets.

While Nino, Alya, Chloé, and Adrien get out, Luka lingers in the van, frowning.

“What is it?” Marinette asks, glancing back.

Luka bites his lip and shakes his head. “I can't be sure, since that person hasn't gotten out of their truck and into the light where I can see them, but I think I know that person. I just can't quite place it.”

Marinette frowns, too. “Well, radio if you need anything or if there's any trouble, alright? Félix and I will keep an ear out.”

Luka nods, and after another moment’s hesitation, he follows the others inside.

Félix and Marinette settle into the rear of the van, each in the more comfortable captains seats, and they curl up with their blankets, pillows, phones, and radios for the evening.

In the hotel, Luka, Chloé, Adrien, Alya, and Nino approach the front desk, where a purple-haired woman stands, filing her nails. She doesn't look up upon hearing the gang enter the hotel. A black-haired teen is across the room, playing the piano.

“Welcome to the Drowsy Gator,” the woman says dryly, still filing her nails. “We have no vacancies.”

The door opens behind Nino, Alya, Adrien, Chloé, and Luka, and the figure from the truck enters the room. They all turn, and Luka freezes. 

“I told these folks to come here, Penny,” the figure says. “We have a few rooms for some passerby, don't we?”

Penny sighs, looking up from her nails. “Jagged, you know what I say about strays.”

Jagged Stone looks back at the group between them, his mouth in a thin, straight line. He hasn’t changed much from the dilapidated rockstar poster Anarka used to throw darts at—his hair has maybe greyed some, and he’s acquired some wrinkles. There’s a roughness to his voice that Luka recognizes from the CDs that were contraband in the houseboat, but that he still listened to as a kid in his always-hidden Walkman.

Luka can't seem to move, as much as he terribly, terribly wants to. There's no recognition in his father's expression as his gaze flits over him. “Something tells me these ones won't cause any trouble, Pen.”

Penny sighs, and she comes around the counter. The black-haired boy at the piano stops playing, and he walks across the room to stand beside Penny. Jagged moves to stand on the other side of the boy, and Luka starts to feel sick to his stomach as the pieces fall into place.

“Welcome to the Drowsy Gator,” Penny repeats. “I’m Penny Rolling, and you’ve met Jagged. This is our son, Fang,” Penny says, gesturing at last to the boy beside her.

Nino and Alya nod. Luka blinks slowly, things starting to unfocus around him. He’s gotta be right around my age, he thinks. That's impossible, right?

“We have two—” Penny starts to say, but Luka holds up a shaking hand. 

“How old is Fang?” he asks, voice a bit hoarse. Chloé shoots him a look that says shut up, and Nino looks at him, confused. He doesn't take the question back.

Fang smiles. “I’m nineteen.”

Luka’s skin turns ashen, but he still manages to glare at Jagged as he mutters, “I’m going outside.” He stumbles out of the hotel, waving off Nino, Alya, and Adrien and their concern.

Penny looks to Jagged sharply as the door slams behind Luka. Luka stumbles along one side of the hotel, one hand on the worn and aging wood of the building keeping him up. Jagged comes out a moment later, door slamming again, and he follows Luka outside at his wife's order, frowning sharply. Luka stops several yards down the side of the hotel, and he bends over at the hips, dry heaving into the thick darkness.

Behind him, Jagged slows down, but he doesn't stop until he's about a foot away from Luka and to the side.

Once he can breathe, Luka says hoarsely, “Go away.”

Jagged stuffs his hands into his jean pockets. “You can throw up inside, you know,” he says roughly. “We have a bathroom downstairs. You just had to ask.”

“Well, I didn't, okay?” Luka shouts, leaning against the side of the hotel. He lowers his voice, dizzy with its volume. “So you can leave me the hell alone—I’ll sleep in the van.”

“It isn't safe.”

“Like you fucking care,” Luka mutters darkly.

Jagged glares at Luka. “What’s your problem, kid?” 

Luka quiets, and after a few tense moments, he turns and looks right at Jagged. “You don't even know who I am, do you?” he asks.

“Should I?” Jagged’s brows draw together. It takes several minutes for the realization to dawn on him, but even then, he still frowns. “Anarka.”

“I turned eighteen two months ago,” Luka says. He smiles wide, though it appears more sickened than anything.

Jagged nods, but he doesn't move and his expression doesn't change.

Luka sighs and turns away from his father. “So you’ve been here the whole time, then,” he says quietly. It isn’t a question, and his voice sounds more like a child’s than it has in about eleven years.

Jagged nods again.

Luka closes his eyes. “Why didn't you stay with us?”

“Anarka and I hadn't been right for years when she had you two,” Jagged says quietly. “You guys were her last ditch effort to make her and I work, and even with that, I had to fight to keep her from drinking those nine months.” He sighs. “It was hell, but she came out of it with two healthy kids. She went right back to drinking, and I decided it was time to get out.”

Behind his closed lids, Luks has tears in his eyes. His voice wavers, but he says, “You didn't answer my question. What about me and… my sister?” He doesn't want to tell Jagged Juleka’s name, he doesn't want to give him even that one detail. In only this, half of him hopes Jagged doesn't remember much about the life he left behind. It feels easier that way—just the slightest bit. “Why didn't you stay with us? Why did you come here,” he says, voice growing angrier, even as it wobbles, even as a few tears escape his grasp and slip down over his cheeks, “to some other life, to some other woman, to some other kid?”

Jagged is quiet for a long time before he turns and starts slowly walking away. A few yards from him, with Luka still turned away, Jagged calls back—“Things happen, kid. Some of those things last. Others don't.”

~*~

Inside the hotel, as Luka breaks down crying and falls to his knees, shaking uncontrollably outside, Nino, Alya, Adrien, and Chloé are led to two separate rooms. On the stairs, they stop and stare at the walls that Penny Rolling walks past without a sideways glance to. There are long, jagged marks torn through the wallpaper and through the wood paneling beneath, exposing the pink and yellowing insulation deep within.

“What are these marks?” Chloé asks nervously. 

Alya surreptitiously takes a few photos of the damage. 

“I don't see any marks,” Penny says, her voice filled with finality. Chloé glowers at her back, and Adrien puts an arm at Chloé’s elbow, as if to pacify her.

Nino’s phone pings with a notification. Marinette has responded to his text asking after Luka—he's fine, she texts. With us. Says he’ll stay in the van with me and Félix tonight. Nino texts back a simple thumbs up emoji.

“Boys and girls sleep separately,” Penny says, leading them to the end of a hall. She gestures to one room, saying, “boys,” and to the other, “girls.” 

Alya frowns, but she nods, moving to the girls’ room.

“Word of advice,” Penny says, looking at Alya flatly. “Don't leave your rooms.”

~*~

In the van outside, Marinette and Félix now sit with Luka as he cries. They both heard everything, having been parked so close, but they silently agreed not to talk about it. After all, what more can you say when your friend’s dad tells him that he just happened, but he just didn't last?

They're comforting Luka when their radios crackle to life.

“Nino and Adrien to the rest of the gang?” Nino asks.

“Alya and Chloé to the rest of the gang,” Alya replies shortly after.

Marinette picks up her radio, and she says, “Marinette, Félix, and Luka to the rest of the gang. Are you guys safe inside?”

A chorus of affirmatives crackles back.

“We’re safe out here, too,” Félix says, rubbing gently at Luka’s back.

“Is Luka okay?” Adrien asks.

Félix and Marinette both hesitate.

“He… will be,” Marinette says after a moment.

“Okay,” Adrien says, sounding helpless.

“Try and get some sleep, everyone,” Félix says reassuringly. “In the morning, we can continue with things.”

Marinette nods to him. The others go radio silent, assumedly out of agreement, and Marinette and Félix both turn their attentions to Luka.

It's an hour before he can calm down, and another hour and a half before he moves from staring catatonically into the distance to staring at his feet, expression agonized. Another half hour passes before he decides to call it a night and try to sleep.

Neither Félix or Marinette trust Gatorsburg enough to sleep without someone keeping watch, so they decide to take turns sleeping for a few hours until daybreak hits. Félix has the first shift asleep.

Marinette kicks back in her captains chair, turning her radio over and over in her hands as she listens for signs of danger. Crickets and frogs and owls all make noise around them, but nothing else really does. There's the sound of what's most likely the river as it splits around and through Gatorsburg, but nothing is out of the ordinary.

During this time, Marinette turns over Luka's life in her head, unsure of how things could get any shittier for her friend and ex. Marinette met him several years back, just before they both transitioned to middle school. Even then, he had a terrible deal of cards. His dad had never been in the picture, and he pretty much only had his sister—his mother drank at night, sleeping in til almost noon, at least on the days when Luka and Juleka were home enough to notice. Their grandparents took care of them until they were about seven, and Anarka was admitted to rehab. After rehab, she was supposedly sober, so Luka and Juleka went back to live with her on the houseboat. Their grandparents died before finding out that Anarka wasn't, in fact, as sober as she looked. Luka and Juleka stayed with Anarka since.

And, to top it all off, Jagged, the still-absentee-but-somehow-more-absent-than-before father, was somehow just as bad—only in a different way—as Anarka. “Things happen, kid. Some of those things last. Others don't.” Or, sometimes you have kids, and some of those kids get to stay in your life. Others don't. Also known as the campaign quote for the guy vying for the shittiest dad award.

Marinette sighs and pulls her knees up to her chest, looking at Luka, who's curled up in a sleeping bag with a handsewn, Marinette-original, designed-just-for-him pillow under his head. She tilts her head to the side, watching him sleep for a bit, and hoping nothing else happens to make his life any worse. They’re just kids, anyways.

Soon enough, it's almost eleven p.m., with nothing to report on except that Luka doesn't sleep so well after having cried so much, and Félix drools a bit in his sleep. Marinette glances at her phone, counting down the minutes to 11:30, where she can wake Félix up and try to get some shut-eye herself. 

At 11:17, as she's checking her phone again, there comes a rustling noise behind the van and some yards away. At first, Marinette thinks it's just an animal, but then she hears voices—quiet ones—from the same place. Her heartbeat picks up. She reaches over to shake Félix awake, slapping him on the face a few times and quietly hissing his name.

“Mmpfh,” he groans, crossing his arms and leaning away from her with a closed-eyed grimace.

“Félix,” Marinette hisses, ripping his blanket off of him and his pillow out from beneath his head, tossing them to the bags between them and up against the back of the front bench. “You’d better fricking wake up, or I’ll haunt you after I’m killed tonight by whatever the fuck is outside right now—”

Félix’s eyes fly open, and he rubs at his face roughly, whispering, “What happened—”

Marinette shushes him, gesturing for him to listen. The voices are coming closer, as is the now almost wet-sounding rustling sound.

Félix sits up straighter. He points to Luka, brows raised. Marinette nods, and Félix moves quietly to wake up Luka, whispering at his ear so as to make as little sound as possible. Marinette stares at the back doors of the van, and she stands, slipping her radio into her back pocket. She quickly texts Nino and Alya—911, unlock your doors. Alya responds shortly after, being a light sleeper. It's another minute before Nino does, but both are unlocking their doors. Marinette slips her phone into her other back pocket, trying not to panic.

The voices have quieted, and so has the rustling. In the moment that Félix has finally gotten Luka awake and Marinette is wondering why she let all of their important stuff be kept in the van, the atmosphere shifts.

After a long, tense minute, there's a loud crashing noise as something big falls onto the roof of the van. Marinette can't help her shriek, though she slaps a hand over her mouth a second later.

The van shakes with the force of the fall, and Marinette, Luka, and Félix rush to move the blankets, pillows, and sleeping bags from the others and Luka to the side, and then Félix is pushing open the back doors of the van, tripping out of it. Luka and Marinette are quick to follow, and Marinette only glances back to slam the doors closed behind them. In the mere second before she’s turning back, propelled forward by Luka yanking at her arm and pulling her forward, Marinette sees a pair of bright, glowing eyes staring back at her, and the creature’s mouth snaps shut with a thin crack. At the ground, crawling towards them on stunted legs, two larger alligator-like creatures snarl. They snap their teeth at Marinette, too, glowing eyes burning in the darkness, and then Marinette is turning around and sprinting towards the hotel with Luka and Félix right by her side.

Nino, Alya, Adrien, and Chloé meet them in the lobby of the hotel, and the sleepiness in their expressions is quickly dispelled with the slamming of the front doors behind Marinette, Luka, and Félix.

“Up to your rooms,” Félix gasps, chest heaving with each breath he takes. Marinette and Luka are in similar states, but they all follow Nino and Adrien up to the boys’ room, running up the stairs. 

Once everyone is in the boys’ room, they slam the door shut. Marinette tries to lock it with fumbling fingers before Félix is pushing her away from the door, still breathing heavily from their sprint. 

“We may need to escape quickly,” he whispers, closing his eyes and shaking his head. Marinette leans against the wall beside him, exhausted. Luka drops into a tired crouch beside them.

“What happened?” Adrien asks, voice a bit high. “We got the 911 text, and next thing we know, you’re screaming, and—”

Marinette looks up at them all, incredulous. “You didn’t see?” she cries breathlessly. “You didn’t see the—the m-monsters—?”

Alya frowns. “Marinette, you know there’s been no such thing proven—”

“Well, Alya,” Marinette interrupts, “these creatures certainly made a case for it.”

“What did they look like?” Adrien asks, wringing his hands out in front of him.

“I didn’t see,” Luka says, running a hand through his hair. His breathing is slowly returning to normal. “I just heard.”

“Same here,” Félix says, calming down as well.

Marinette hasn’t calmed down at all. “They had big, glowing eyes—and the bodies of alligators, but they had wild, unruly hair, and huge tongues and very sharp teeth, and they were massive,” she says, shaking her head quickly. “The one on top of the van even seemed to grin at me.”

Nino twists his hat around his head, biting his lip. “Maybe they’re why no alligators have been around, you know? Like they were better predators than the alligators… maybe even ate them…” He swallows loudly, and he shifts on his feet.

“How many of them were there?” Alya asks, a disbelieving note in her voice.

“Three,” Marinette says, a hand on her heart, as if that will calm her racing pulse. 

Chloé frowns. “I’m with Alya on this one—what if they’re the owners of the hotel? There were three of them, you know.”

Luka’s voice is sharp when he says, “They can’t be.”

Chloé scoffs. “Oh, shut up—”

“Chloé may be on the right track, though,” Alya says quietly, scrolling on her phone. “We haven’t seen anyone else in town, and—”

“It has to be someone else,” Luka says loudly, scowling at the floor. His shoulders are shaking the slightest bit again. “It isn’t them.”

Alya purses her lips, but she still scrolls on her phone. On it, she sees that there’s reports of attacks in Gatorsburg from three similar creatures going back five years. Attacks prior to that go back about eleven more years, with just two creatures involved. All of the attacks center around Gatorsburg, with victims who survived telling police and reporters that the creatures never crossed out of Gatorsburg town lines. Seven of about fifty-nine victims were killed. 

Alya shifts on her feet, about to press the matter more, when there comes a loud thump at the door to the boys’ room. Everyone freezes. There's a cracking sound, and Marinette reaches out and pulls Félix and Luka out of the way just as the door snaps in two. Two creatures slither into the room, hissing and stalking into the room. Nino and Alya and Adrien scramble for the bed, and Chloé and Marinette shriek. Marinette pushes Félix and Luka back towards the bed, trying to crawl backwards herself, and one of the creatures reaches forward and snatches her leg up. Chloé darts across the room towards the bathroom, still screaming, but a third creature slams that door open, snarling and jumping at her. While Félix tries to stand and pull Marinette from the creature's grasp, Luka scrambles to his knees and pulls Chloé back by her shirt, causing them both to fall back towards the bed, where Alya, Nino, and Adrien are pulling the sheets and comforters free.

The other two creatures grab at Marinette’s legs, yanking her back, and Félix grunts, slipping on the floor with them. “Kick, Marinette!” he shouts, and she tries, but it's a little difficult when you have a gator person holding onto each leg. Her efforts only lead to sharp claws digging into her legs and dragging bloody trails down her flesh as she tries to break free, but she doesn’t stop trying as they attempt to drag her and Félix out of the room

Adrien, Nino, and Alya grab the fitted sheet and run for the creature after Chloé, tackling it and wrapping the sheet around it. They then push the writhing creature back into the bathroom and heave it into the tub. Alya tears the shower curtains from the rod above the tub, tucking them around it with Adrien’s help, and Nino sprays it with ice cold water, causing the creature to shriek.

Back in the room, Chloé and Luka have scrambled up from the floor and they each grab at Félix and Marinette, pulling them fully back into the room. The creatures follow, growling and snapping their teeth at the four. Alya and Adrien and finally Nino come back out into the room after leaving the shower turned ice cold on the trapped creature in the tub, and the three run for the comforter and other sheet from the bed, gathering them up. They then go and tackle the remaining two creatures, elbowing and kneeing them as they go. Soon, Marinette’s legs are freed, but she doesn't have time to assess the situation and her physical state before Luka and Chloé are yanking both her and Félix to their feet.

Alya, Adrien, and Nino stumble up from the writhing, screeching creatures they wrapped up in the sheet and comforter, and everyone tumbles out of the room and down the stairs, racing out to the van. Nino jumps into the driver’s seat, and everyone else pushes at the van, heaving and rolling it out of the parking lot as Nino steers, and then they catch a small hill. Now that they have some momentum, Luka opens the back doors of the van, helping Alya, Chloé, and Marinette in. Him, Adrien, and Félix continue pushing at the van, rolling it faster and faster down the hill, before finally, they, too, jump in, leaving the doors open in case they need to jump out and push some more. 

The creatures chase the van on all fours as it coasts down the hill, until, finally, the van crosses over a bridge and out of Gatorsburg town lines. There the creatures stop, hissing and fuming, one of them dripping wet, until they turn and slink back towards the town.

~*~

“We should go back there,” Alya says, after several minutes of silence in which everyone tried to calm down. Chloé has set up a flashlight on the floor, so they all can see better, and Nino has twisted around to rest his arms on the back of the front bench so he can see the others.

“Now, I know you all are a bit insane,” Félix starts, resting a hand over his heart, “but even that has to deter you, right?”

“It scared the crap out of me,” Nino says with a sigh. “But… why do you think we should go back there, babe?”

Alya shakes her head. “I won’t admit it wasn’t scary, but… I was reading up on some reports and articles about Gatorsburg before those creatures came into the room, and… well, I just think that there’s something more to this town and the most likely fake alligator products. And, as much as Luka might not want to hear for some reason… there’s something off about the hotel owners, too.”

Luka shakes his head quickly. “Please, can we investigate anyone but them—”

Chloé frowns, but she for once doesn’t press at the matter. 

Marinette looks to Alya, who’s closest to the bags pushed up against the back of the front bench. “Could you pass me the first aid kit, Als?”

“What happened?” Félix asks. He reaches past her and grabs the flashlight from the floor, and he shines it over her. His hiss echoes throughout the van. “Marinette—”

Alya hands Marinette the first aid kit, and she takes the flashlight roughly from him. “Don’t get all worried over me now, Félix. Chloé, would you come help me?” She starts scooting to the back end of the van.

Chloé grimaces. “Why me?” 

“You’re not likely to get all mushy,” Marinette says dryly. The others wince.

Chloé purses her lips, but she follows Marinette out of the van. 

Alya is silent in their wake, and Félix pulls his knees up, crossing his arms over them. Adrien looks at his hands, turning the radio over in them.

Luka is the first to speak up. “What are your thoughts, Alya?” he asks quietly, curled up against the edge of the van. “On what’s going on in Gatorsburg, that is.”

Alya looks at him carefully. “Are you sure?”

Luka nods quickly, looking out into the darkness across the bridge to Gatorsburg. 

Alya’s uncertain. “Maybe we should talk about why you don’t think the hotel owners aren’t off, first?”

Luka closes his eyes and sighs. “It’s nothing concrete, Alya. Just… emotional. Hopes, you know.”

“That can be important, you know,” she says quietly. “Want to talk about it? Why you feel like that?”

Luka shakes his head. 

Alya waits a few moments, and then she quietly starts. “Well, I’ve been reading up on some reports surrounding Gatorsburg. Fifty-nine people were attacked. Seven died. For about sixteen years, these reports have been pretty frequent—every time someone comes into Gatorsburg, two large, alligator-like mutants chase people out of town. Only in the past five years has there been a third.

“The alligator products have been going on for about fifteen years, Luka. This hotel has been around for twenty, and no other people have been in witness reports or the reports on the attacks except Jagged, Penny, and Fang. No one else has been able to live here except for them.”

Luka gazes, unseeing, into Gatorsburg.

Outside the van, there's a hiss, a curse, and Chloé mutters, “Dupain-Cheng, I’ll make someone else come out here if you fall on me again.”

“You think they might have killed seven people, Alya?” Luka asks tiredly.

“It's possible,” is the quiet answer.

“He’s my dad,” Luka says hoarsely. “And I turned eighteen two months ago.”

There’s a beat of silence. “Fang’s nineteen,” Nino says softly.

“I know.”

“Did you confront him about it?” Adrien asks.

Luka only nods, closing his eyes shut tight.

There's a long moment of silence.

“What did he say?” Nino whispers.

“He said things happen,” Luka replies, voice wavering. “Some of those things last, he said. Others don't. Fang is the one that lasted. Me and Jules are the ones that didn't.”

Outside, Marinette and Chloé have stilled. Marinette has her calves and part of her thighs bandaged, but she hesitates with another bandage in hand, closing her eyes as she hears everyone quiet with Luka’s admission. 

Chloé holds Marinette up on one side, an arm around her back, but she falters. “His dad?” she breathes.

Marinette nods slowly. 

“But you think they could have killed seven people?” Luka says emotionlessly.

“Yes,” Alya whispers. “Especially with how easily they…” She trails off, unwilling to say it.

“Hurt Marinette,” he finishes. He nods and turns back towards the others with a sigh. “Alright, let's see what we have.”

Outside, Marinette and Chloé relax some, and Marinette finishes bandaging her legs. She then pulls on her tattered, bloody jeans again, leaning heavily on Chloé to do so.

“If they did do it,” Félix starts, “can you tell us when your dad first started leaving for longer periods of time?”

Luka nods. “My mom said about that twenty years ago my dad started leaving for weeks at a time. When it got to be months, she got pregnant one of the few times he was back—hoping it might be enough. He supposedly was around a lot more in those nine months, but he left for good and we didn't see him at all after that.”

Alya nods. “That checks out with the timeline here.”

“And they’ve had two creatures for sixteen years. Only in the last five have they had three,” Félix says. “Fang could have easily turned fourteen and hit a growth spurt, at which point he was finally able to join his parents.”

Luka nods. “That could have been it.”

Chloé and Marinette come back around the side of the van, and Marinette is walking a bit oddly. Chloé climbs back into her earlier spot, and Marinette crawls to sit back between Félix and Alya, across from Adrien.

Adrien nods to her, expression a bit pained. “You alright, Marinette?”

She frowns, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her legs around the bloodied and torn jeans, but she nods.

“You want to change your clothes?” Nino asks.

Marinette shakes her head. “I only brought enough to get everyone by for three days—no spares. I still have to finish sewing and patching up some more clothes, and girl clothes took the backburner because there's less of us.” She shrugs. “I’ll be fine in these, though, for now. Might cut them off mid-thigh when I’m standing again, but I hadn't thought of it while I was bandaging myself up.”

Alya puts a hand on her shoulder and looks to Chloé. “Did you guys catch everything that was said while you were out?”

Chloé nods, frowning. “We did. It makes sense for the hotel owners to be… well, the creatures. Only thing is how easily they move on all fours.”

Nino shrugs. “Years of practice probably make it easier.”

Chloé nods again, and pauses to think. “Why start, though?”

“Money,” Luka answers. “My dad used to be a rockstar—twenty-five years ago. He had a great first few albums the first couple of years, but he burned out after a bit. His later albums started getting worse and worse, and the money stopped coming in. My mom always said that had been the start of their problems—they’d both started drinking heavily about that time. If he ran out of money about four, five years after he was forced to throw in the towel, and if they found the perfect story…” He bites his lip.

“100% pure Gator products,” Nino says. “Made in the famous ghost-town or used-to-be Gatorsburg. The old fame of the town coupled with supposedly real alligator skin products… that’s bound to rake in some considerable revenue.”

Luka nods. “Money,” he scoffs. “Why’s that so often the motivator?”

No one answers him, unsure of how to respond. 

After several minutes, Alya glances down at her phone, biting her lower lip. “I suppose all we need now is to tie them to the costumes for their creatures and to determine whether the alligator products are authentic or not.”

“Can we do both at once?” Adrien asks, looking at Marinette carefully.

Luka glances back towards Gatorsburg. “I think we should sneak back into Gatorsburg with all we’d need for trapping them and gathering evidence, and we should watch them quietly. We can get ties to either the creatures or the alligator products with videos and pictures while we figure out the best way to trap them. Then, we can tackle the other part of the case—the part we didn't get evidence for at first—and we can trap them with that and call the sheriff to make a county arrest, as it’ll be in his jurisdiction. If they're trapped with the second part of our evidence and we have the first already, we can take them down for false advertising, seven counts of murder, up to fifty-nine counts of assault, all at once.”

Everyone nods.

“Could we not split up this time, though?” Adrien asks. “Marinette’s hurt already, and we don't need anyone else getting hurt, or, worse yet, killed. We’ll be much more able to defend each other and keep safe if we're together—seven against three.”

Nino nods. “That's a good idea, Adrien.”

Marinette stretches out a leg to bump her foot against Adrien’s hip. “Sure, we can do that. We’ll bring the pepper spray, too, though I’m not sure how effective it'll be with their masks.”

“What do we need to be ready and leave, then?” Félix asks, bouncing his leg outside of the van a bit restlessly. “Pepper spray, Dupain-Cheng’s toolboxes…?”

Marinette smiles somewhat. “Well, I’ll need some of my ropes, which I always have plenty of in here, but we'll need some boxes…” She pauses to think a moment, closing her eyes. 

“Maybe one of your fancy metal cages?” Nino asks. “Do you have three of them? Will they be big enough?”

“Hm,” she says, and she opens her eyes. “Or, in a similar vein to what you all did with the blankets… ah, I do have about six pulleys… but we can't confirm the surroundings, so…” She bites her lip. “I’d better bring my toolbox, my travel kit, and my backpack of other trapping tools,” she says with a sigh. “I can't be sure on what all awaits us in the rest of Gatorsburg, so I can't give any real idea of what we might need.”

“Aside from that, though,” Luka says, “We’ll need our phones, as they're stealthier than the walkie talkies if we do need to separate, and we'll need our flashlights and some snacks.”

“We shouldn't risk bringing the van back into town, either,” Nino says. “Just so they don't catch wind of our plans, or catch us when we can't exactly speed away.”

Alya nods. “Definitely.”

“Do you have something that can help you walk?” Adrien asks Marinette. “Like a stick or a cane?”

She shakes her head.

Luka glances back at her. “We can probably find something in the woods around Gatorsburg that'll work, but in the meantime, you should probably lean on someone.”

She nods. “I can do that.”

Luka takes a deep breath and looks back at Gatorsburg. “I suppose that’s it, then.”

Notes:

so what did you think? 🫣😏🤭

also, we have one to two more chapters left for the gatorsburg episode, and then we are on to the next, which is a Very Special Episode 🤭😏 but i am Mostly done with chapter eight, so it should be out in a little less than a week!! anyways tehehe 😈 let me know what you guys thought of the info you learned this chapter… 🤭

Chapter 8: chapter eight

Summary:

The gang ventures back into Gatorsburg to close the case.

Notes:

just an fyi ahaha but i did write in the tags that the adults are basically all corrupted because of the disk 😅🫶

About thirty minutes later, when the gang is all stocked up on snacks, several pairs of binoculars, Marinette’s tools, their flashlights, their phones, and other assorted items,  they lock up the van and head back into Gatorsburg through the shelter of the woods bordering the ghost town. Marinette has cut her pants off mid-thigh and Chloé, Félix, Adrien, and Luka have all donned hoodies, but otherwise, their attire remains unchanged for the trek into the foggy darkness.

They head quietly for the hotel, working from Nino and Luka’s memory of the layout of the town based off of the bridge they crossed to escape the gator people, but occasionally Chloé trips and curses, or Alya walks into a tree, busy writing an account of the experience thus far for her personal records and the court if needed, or Marinette catches her stick-cane in a hole or at the root of a tree and falls forward. 

“Can I please turn on my phone’s flashlight?” Chloé whines after about a quarter-mile. “It’s brighter and I’m sure both Marinette and I would trip a lot less with it—”

“We can’t risk them seeing us,” Marinette says firmly, even as her eyes strain in the dim light of the flashlight Adrien holds up as he walks beside her, a nervous hand hovering at her back, always ready to catch her.

“We’re not even in town limits,” Chloé grumbles. “You all decided we should walk around the whole of town first, though I can’t fathom why.”

“Safety,” Félix answers simply.

Nino looks to Luka. “What do you think? Would it be safe outside of town limits to use brighter lights?”

Luka shrugs in the darkness, the motion only visible because he walks in front of Félix and his light. 

Nino frowns. “I suppose you could turn on your flashlight, Chlo, though we’ll need to turn it off when we cross town limits or if we hear them coming closer.”

She doesn’t even answer, already fumbling to turn her phone’s flashlight on. In seconds, the ground beneath them is lit up in a white glow. She steps over to Marinette’s other side, between her and Félix, and they both start walking easier and faster. 

“Careful about the battery,” Marinette says quietly, though she’s grateful for the extra light. “Alya’s already almost down to 29%, and she won’t be leaving anyone’s sight til it’s charged.”

“I know,” Chloé says with a grimace. “Safety, safety, safety.”

Marinette nods.

The gang walks quietly around the town’s limits for a bit before they catch sight of the Drowsy Gator. It’s then that they turn off Chloé’s light and pick up their pace, heading for the hotel.

When they get within sight of the hotel, they drop down behind some bushes and lean against the back of some trees, training their binoculars on the owners entering the building. After several minutes of nothing, Félix shifts in his position. 

“Maybe they're keeping their operations inside the hotel?” he asks.

Alya bites her lip. “It's possible.”

“Should we get closer, then?” Adrien asks, sitting cross-legged on the ground.

“I didn't see any cameras,” Alya says, adjusting the magnification of her binoculars. “And I don't now, but…”

Luka glances over. “Think you could hack it remotely?”

Alya shrugs. “I can try,” she says, “but I just have my portable with me, like always—so I can't do anything too advanced, but with this being a ghost town… maybe it won't matter.”

Luka nods. “Well, you should try and see if there's any local networks either way—they’ll be helpful to know about, at the very least.”

Alya pulls out her portable computer—one she made at the start of high school, developed to be portable but still give her a wide range of ability in the online world—and she starts searching for local networks. After a few minutes, she looks around at the others. 

“There's only one local network,” she says. “It has a few cameras within the hotel, but nothing too advanced, and there's a simple checking in and checking out system for the hotel that hasn't been used in years except to check us in tonight, and to check in someone named ‘Grete Le Staime’ two years ago.”

Chloé frowns, brows drawing together. “Odd name.”

“Can you hack into the camera feeds?” Luka asks.

Alya smiles. “Several steps ahead of you. I’m scanning past feeds for the creatures and the hotel owners being in two places at once already, starting with last night's attack.”

Luka nods. “We can try Grete’s feeds next if we don't—”

Alya shushes him. “Marinette, what time did you hear the creatures outside?”

Marinette turns from watching the hotel. “About 11:17 p.m.,” she says. “That's when I started hearing their voices and the rustling noises, and they got on the van just a few minutes later.”

Alya nods, grinning, and she scans the camera feeds from 10:00 to 11:16, eyes moving quickly over her screen. At the 10:32 mark, she sees Jagged, Penny, and Fang enter a small room, and at 10:39, they exit, dressed in the costumes of the creatures except for the heads. They're then caught on camera, pulling the masks on, and then they head out of a side door of the hotel, disappearing from sight. “Caught them on camera with the suits on, pulling the masks over their heads at 10:40,” she says excitedly. 

“Can we use that in court, though?” Félix asks, watching the hotel through his pair of binoculars. “Given you hacked their network and we aren't authorized by the state or county with a warrant for such… activities?”

Alya shakes her head. “It won't be admissible in court, no—we’ll have to get video of our own, but even that’ll be iffy, so we should be sure to get a confession or trap them in their costumes.”

Marinette nods. “We can do that,” she says, “though I may need more help than usual on the trap—I’m feeling a bit tired and lightheaded.”

Adrien looks to her, frowning. “How much blood have you lost?”

Marinette rolls her eyes. “I didn't measure, but I lost a bit, I guess.”

“We’ll check her in at a clinic on the way back to town,” Nino says.

“Or you could have me look at your wounds,” Félix says.

Nino nods. “He did say he had basic skills with that, Mari.”

Marinette grimaces. “Yeah, and so do I—I’ve been patching you all up, haven't I? No one’s gotten infected or had issues, and everything heals up fine.”

Félix gives an annoyed huff. “Could it hurt to have someone else take a look at it, Dupain-Cheng?”

Marinette glowers. “Yes, if that person is a jerk who just so happens to get all mushy on me at the worst times.”

Adrien frowns. “Please, Marinette?”

“Come on, Mari,” Alya pushes. 

Marinette groans. “Fine.” She stands and walks off with her phone, flashlight, and walking stick, leaving her backpack, toolbox, and binoculars with the others. “Thought they were on my side,” she grumbles to herself as she walks away.

Félix raises a brow, turning to watch her walk away, but he doesn't move from his post against the tree. Nino shakes his head at him and sits beside Alya, watching the camera feeds with her as they relay the present. Chloé, Luka, and Adrien continue watching the hotel, Adrien with Marinette’s discarded binoculars, and Félix sets his own binoculars beside Adrien before relaxing back against the tree, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Are you coming or not, Captain Mushy?” Marinette hisses back at him. “If I’m going to do this, I’d like some measure of privacy.”

He laughs, but he heads after her, looking for her flashlight’s dim luminescence.

While Félix checks over a grumbling Marinette’s wounds, the rest of the gang debates going closer to the hotel.

“I don't have the patience out here in the woods to go through all their feed and see where they're going to manufacture their products, but it wouldn't be anywhere in town where people could stumble across it by accident before encountering the owners or gator people first. My guess is,” Alya says, “given the lack of security they have set up around town limits, they likely have their main base of operations somewhere close to the hotel but not accessible by the main roads.”

“It's probably mainly accessed by the waterways,” Nino says, looking at Luka. “The river winds and splits all through town, and it dips down out of this county and into the next, which would be an easy way to quietly move their products.”

“From your research, were you able to see how many products they put out on a regular basis?” Chloé asks Alya. 

Alya pauses to think. “It's not many—no more than 70 products per year.”

“They probably use that as part of their marketing strategy,” Chloé says with a nod. “Fewer products from a famed place means higher prices for their products, because they can claim them as special, unique pieces of history that it would be terrible to pass up on because of their rarity.”

“Like I said earlier,” Nino says with a smile. “Thanks for confirming, Queen of All Things Shopping.”

Chloé rolls her eyes.

“Lower production rates likely means a smaller base of operations,” Adrien says before Chloé can bite back. “Unless they make larger products—did you see what all they produce, Alya?”

Alya nods. “Belts, bags, purses, jackets, pants, hats, small boxes.”

“That would mean a smaller production facility,” Chloé says. “Nothing much larger than your standard barn.”

Alya grins. “I did see something last night,” she says, “outside—it was hard to see, since the windows had weird blackout films on them, but there was definitely a large shape out behind the hotel and some distance away, shrouded by some trees.”

“Like a barn?” Luka says.

Alya grins. “Like a barn.”

“How far do you think it was from the hotel?” Nino asks. He closes his eyes, thinking a moment. “It might butt right up against a fork of the river,” he says. “If I’m remembering the map correctly.”

Alya shrugs. “It was maybe forty, fifty yards out.”

Nino nods. “I think it does, then.”

Marinette storms back into view, expression angry. Félix follows just behind her, and he walks back over to his tree. She sits furthest from him, sandwiched between Luka and Nino.

“What happened?” Alya asks, looking between them.

“Félix,” Adrien cautions disapprovingly, frowning.

Félix shrugs, looking unbothered. “Guess I got too mushy.” 

Marinette grumbles unintelligibly. 

Alya sighs. “Fine, well, Marinette, Félix, we think that Jagged, Penny, and Fang might be making the gator products in a building some distance away behind the hotel and sending them off to the next county via boat down the river.”

Félix nods slowly and looks out towards the hotel. “Are we wanting to head over to that building, then?”

Alya shrugs. “We can—if we do it early, we might even be able to wrap up the case by daybreak.”

“The forest wraps around and should give us cover to the building behind the hotel,” Nino says, twisting his hat around his head with one hand. 

Adrien nods, and he looks to Marinette. “What’s the consensus on your wounds?” he asks.

Marinette rolls her eyes and nods to Félix. “Ask boy wonder who knows all.”

Félix doesn’t bite back, expression calm and a bit understanding, though he stares flatly back at her. “She’s lost enough blood to make her light-headed, dizzy, and tired, so she might need a hospital when we get back to town, but she cleaned the wounds well when we were back at the van and she stitched the biggest two. I’d recommend stitching a few more, just to be on the safe side, but I doubt she’d let me near with the sewing kit I know she has in her toolbelt.” He shrugs. “She’s mostly irritated because of the pain, I think—”

“Couldn’t be at all because I thought you’d be level-headed about things instead of all mushy when it counts,” Marinette scoffs.

Félix rolls his eyes. “And likely the lost blood. Anyways, she might need some light medical attention when we return, but her wounds are taken care of as well as they can be right now, excepting my suggestions.”

Adrien nods, looking at Marinette. “Good to know. Thanks, Félix.”

Félix shrugs. 

Alya looks to Marinette as well. “Will you be able to come with us to scout out the building behind the hotel, or should someone stay behind with you?”

Marinette shakes her head vehemently. “I can come with whenever you guys are ready.”

Adrien frowns. “I’ll carry your backpack again, then.”

“I’ll get your toolbox,” Luka says, nodding. Then, to the group, “Think we could leave now? I’d like to get this over with as quickly as possible.”

~*~

The gang heads around the hotel through the cover of the forest, and soon, they’re approaching the building behind the hotel. Upon closer inspection, they find it really is a barn, and just behind it, towards the river, is a wide dock. A boat bobs in the water, tied securely to the dock, and there are a few crates already inside it, marked with stickers saying 100% PURE GATOR PRODUCTS FROM GATORSBURG. 

Luka and Nino are about to break free from the view of the trees when they hear a thud and a shout from inside the barn, followed by voices. Luka and Nino both jump back from view, and the gang settles back behind assorted bushes and foliage.

For a while, they watch. No longer is there need for the binoculars, though they each have to strain to see Jagged, Penny, and Fang moving crates from the barn to the boat because of how dark it is. Alya takes several photos of the three, as they’ve taken their masks off for the labor of moving the crates around.

It's nearing three a.m. when Jagged, Penny, and Fang call it a night. The gang, huddled together because of the cold, strains to hear them talk.

“I think we can turn in for the night,” Jagged says, running a hand over his face.

“Can we sleep in tomorrow?” Fang asks, yawning.

“Til nine,” Penny says sternly. “Then we have to take this shipment over county lines to tomorrow's buyers.”

Fang groans, but he starts back towards the hotel, yawning along the way. Penny and Jagged hang back.

“You really think those kids left town?” Penny asks.

Jagged nods and sighs. “Yeah, they won't be coming back anytime soon. The latest they'll be even close to being in our hair is tomorrow morning when they get a new engine, but they'll be gone before we're back from delivering this shipment.”

“How can you be sure?” Penny asks, glancing at the boat behind Jagged.

He sighs again and pulls at his hair. “I just am, Pen. Come on, you trust me, right?”

Penny purses her lips and turns away, heading back towards the hotel wordlessly.

Jagged stares after her, shoulders slumping. The gang watches as he stays there for several more minutes before following Fang and Penny back towards the hotel. 

When Jagged is out of sight, they begin to stir. Nino slowly stands and stretches out, and Chloé leans up against a tree, her eyes falling closed. Alya boots up her portable and checks the hotel’s cameras, making sure Jagged, Penny, and Fang enter and stay there. Luka looks over to the boat, assessing its size, and Félix looks over the barn, trying to imagine the production setup inside. Marinette slumps against her discarded backpack, bandages varying amounts soaked through with her blood, and Adrien watches her, wondering how the evening will go.

“It's three thirty a.m. now,” Alya says quietly. “We have until nine to set up a trap for them and call the sheriff from Crystal Cove.”

“Probably should have things ready by eight, and call the sheriff then,” Marinette mumbles, eyes closed.

“Think you're up to trap?” Luka asks, glancing over at her.

Marinette grunts softly, the sound a noncommittal noise.

“Did you have any ideas while we watched them down here?” Adrien asks, reaching a hand over hesitantly to rest on her head between her high space buns. She doesn't move with the contact.

“Just that the main portion will have to be just before the docks to be hidden from them but make sure they cross there,” she mumbles, shrugging.

Nino raises a brow, surprised. “Doesn't sound very convoluted like your usual plans.”

Marinette grumbles incoherently, and them she says, “Too tired to think much.”

“We should probably take over the trapping, then,” Luka says, pursing his lips. “Can you help us put things together, Mari?”

Marinette grunts a vaguely affirmative sound.

Adrien looks over to Chloé, and he frowns. “Chlo and Marinette both need sleep after this—is there a way you or Nino can go back to the van with me to get some sleeping bags and a pair of fresh clothes for Marinette?” Adrien asks Luka.

Marinette starts to protest, starts to lift her head, but Adrien murmurs for her to rest. Marinette drops her head and simply grumbles, too tired to argue with her words.

Nino nods. “I can go with you, Adrien. I won't be much help with the trapping stuff, to be honest.”

Luka looks to Félix. “Will you help me with the trap, then, Félix?”

Félix nods.

“I’ll keep watch on the hotel cameras to make sure they don't get up and head back here,” Alya volunteers, scooting over with her portable to pull Marinette sitting up. She then lies Marinette’s head in her lap, rubbing at her shoulder, and she nods to Luka and Félix. “Now you can get to her trapping bag.”

Luka thanks her and moves to the bag, pulling the toolbox over as well. “I have a basic knowledge of how her stuff works,” he says to Félix, “but I don't think like she does, so our trap won't be as convoluted. It will work, though.”

Félix nods and kneels beside Luka. “So, what's your plan?”

Luka hands Félix three bundles of rope and he takes three pulleys in one arm while grabbing the toolbox with his other. He stands and looks to Félix. “Walk with me and I’ll talk you through it,” he says, and then, to Alya, “Message if they come out of the hotel, alright?”

Alya nods at him.

Luka heads off out of the trees where the gang was posted and moves across the small clearing to the other bit of forest on the other side of the barn. Félix follows, and they settle down in the trees. Luka points to two shady trees bent over either side of the dock.

“Do you see those?” he asks. “The trees right there will make for the best spot to fasten the pulleys. One end of the rope with each pully I brought over will have two people pulling on it when the time comes, and the other ends of the rope will be fastened into a sort of tightening noose knot that will be big and loose on the ground but can grow tight when tugged on.

“We’ll keep each rope covered with debris and such and painted dark to keep them hidden, and when they come down to the dock to check over their shipment and head out, we'll pull the ropes quickly and their feet will be taken out from under them as they’ll ultimately be lifted in the air, where we'll lock the pulley and get them down one at a time in a secure manner for their confessions and the sheriff's arrival. Does that all make sense?” Luka asks, turning to look at Félix head-on.

Félix nods. “You guys put a lot of thought into these kinds of things,” he says, turning the ropes over in his hands. “Why’d you all even start doing this in the first place?”

Luka smiles a bit. “It started with Marinette and Nino—they’d been hanging out one evening the summer before high school, past curfew, when they saw one of the local monsters taking off a mask. It was just a regular person underneath, albeit a criminal. They told the police, who didn’t believe them, so they brought Alya and I in on things. We trapped the guy by sheer luck and Marinette’s creativitiy, and Alya videotaped a confession while Nino contacted the police and I made sure the guy didn't get away.

“After, there was word about another monster. We only felt confident trapping and unmasking them after weeks of surveillance, as opposed to the spur-of-the-moment with the first monster. Since then, we’ve refined our skills and methods to be able to close a care within a few days of actual work.” He shrugs. “Much to our parents’ dismay.”

Félix nods. “Is Marinette the leader?”

“We all take on leadership duties and the mantle in different ways, but Marinette does do it the most, so… I guess so.” Luka shrugs again. “Nino does the driving, and he's most often our voice of reason. Alya leads us in the online world, writing her blog and giving us new cases, and I do a lot of the hands-on comforting and talking with people, suspects, and witnesses. Marinette leads us in the trapping process, and she's also the front person when it comes to authority—she's the most willing to sacrifice what she has for us, and the rest of us can't sacrifice much anyways. If not for Juleka, Mari and I would be tied for being willing to risk it all.”

“What about her parents…? I thought they were…” Félix trails off, suddenly unsure if he has the right to say anything on the matter.

“The good ones?” Luka laughs and takes one of the ropes from Félix’s arms, sitting cross-legged beside him. He starts tying the appropriate knot in one end of the rope, and he speaks while he works. “She loves them, just as Alya and Nino love their parents. Just as I might love my mom. But like our parents,” he says, quieting, “Tom and Sabine have a slew of problems. Tom is in debt and always has shady figures coming around. Him and Sabine fight, enough so that Sabine often goes away to a friends’ place. It was bad, when Marinette was younger—she stayed a lot with Nino and Alya. She also ran away a few times, going camping in the woods until she inevitably was drawn back to her own bed. She worked on the side, sewing things for people, until she could buy a mattress and outfit a treehouse she built in the woods with our help. She stays there when her parents fight.” He reaches for another rope, and begins tying the same type of knot in one end of it. “That happens a lot.”

Félix frowns. “It seems hardly anyone has it… good.”

Luka shrugs. “Except you, now.” He pauses and glances up, smiling a bit. “But we're all… used to it, by now. The shittiness.”

Félix nods.

“Feed this end of the rope through the pulley?” Luka asks, handing Félix a pulley and the opposite end of the first rope. 

Félix takes the rope and attempts it. “Like this?”

Luka nods. “Just like that—thread it through a bunch and we'll adjust it when we get the pulleys attached to the trees.”

Félix and Luka work quietly a little bit to get the ropes through the pulleys. In the time that they do so, Adrien and Nino get back to Alya, Chloé, and Marinette with a few sleeping bags and a change of clothes for Marinette. They wake Marinette, have her change into some sweatpants and a hoodie, and then they lie out two sleeping bags for her and Chloé. 

“You should sleep, too, babe,” Nino says. “Adrien can watch the cams, and I can go check with Luka and Félix on the plan, and we'll wake you if anything changes.”

Alya yawns. “Maybe we should sleep in shifts? If there's another bag you guys brought, when you come back, you or Adrien could sleep, too. It's only about 4:10 a.m., and if we're getting up at eight…”

“Two hour nap,” Nino says, laughing and unimpressed. “Yeah. I think when the case is over, I should just drive us to the next town over and have Chloé get us all a room or something.”

Alya smiles a bit. “That sounds good.”

Adrien smiles warmly. “I’ll tell Chloé when she wakes, but I agree with Alya, Nino—two hour naps and then trapping them together sounds like a good idea. That way, we have better chances of actually catching them.”

Nino hesitates, but he ultimately nods. “Alright—I’ll go check in with Félix and Luka, and then we'll flip a coin for who gets first watch, okay?”

Adrien nods, smiling. “Sounds good.”

Alya lays out the third sleeping bag as Nino leaves. “You seem happier,” she says to Adrien.

“Lately?” Adrien asks, looking over at her. “Or today, or in general?”

“Lately,” she says, getting into the sleeping bag.

Adrien nods after a moment, glancing at the portable before him and the camera feeds displayed. “I… have been.”

Alya nods, turning on her side to face him. She takes off her glasses and sets them, her phone, and her flashlight aside. She doesn't push, though she’s curious enough to have made the first comment.

Adrien is silent for several minutes before he speaks. “It's… nice. Being included in something special, and with you all.” He laughs humorlessly. “You guys are so incredibly cool—and you don't even know it. You guys solve crimes, you go to court to put away bad guys, you stand up for what's right and what you believe in, and you're just teenagers. Plus, you do it all with little help from the police or my dad, and you all have crappy parents to boot—you're incredible. Of course I’m happy to be around and hanging with you guys; who wouldn't be?”

“A lot of people,” Alya says softly, though she smiles at Adrien. “But I’m glad we at least make you happy.”

~*~

At about 8:30 a.m., the gang gathers beneath the trees Luka pointed out earlier that morning, ready to trap Jagged, Penny, and Fang in their criminal activities. Everything is set up, though a little differently from planned—the ropes are arranged in front of the dock, with wide circles big enough for the gator costumes’ feet, and they’re threaded through pulleys that hang almost directly overhead, attached to the trees hanging over the dock. Little disguises them from sight. There are three pulleys, one for each of the owners of the hotel, and two people stand at the unknotted ends of the ropes for each one: Luka and Marinette, Chloé and Nino, Alya and Adrien. Félix stands just beside Alya and Adrien, staring at Alya’s portable on the ground before them. With it, he watches Jagged, Penny, and Fang get ready for the day and prepare for their shipment. 

At 8:37 a.m., Nino calls Sheriff Raincomprix, telling him there will be an arrest required down in Gatorsburg for seven accounts of murder and fifty-nine counts of assault, at the very least.

At 8:52, Jagged, Penny, and Fang head out of the hotel, all dressed in their costumes but with their masks off. While they’re still unable to see the dock and the boat from the angle they’re at, Félix runs over and across the dock and onto the boat, untying it quickly from the dock. When they’re in sight, he fires up the engine, and his phone pings with a message. He doesn’t check it, already knowing what it means.

At 8:55, Jagged, Penny, and Fang are headed at a run for the dock, eyes focused only on the boat and Félix driving slowly from the dock. Jagged is shouting at him, though no one can tell what he says over the boat’s loud engine.

At 8:56, Jagged, Penny, and Fang each step into the gang’s trap, no more than two seconds apart, and at 8:56 a.m., Luka, Nino, Alya, and Marinette—all with a honed ability for this type of thing at this point—pull on the ropes. Chloé, and Adrien quickly assist, adding their weight to the mix, and Jagged, Penny, and Fang’s feet are pulled out from under them as they flip and tumble upside down into the air. Félix has already driven the boat back to the dock at this point, having not been far, and he quickly goes over and climbs the trees, locking the pulleys with their ropes at the lengths they’re at from the ground.

~*~

Shortly afterwards, Jagged, Penny, and Fang are all tied up, still in their costumes, and Sheriff Raincomprix is making his way down towards the dock where the gang holds them. 

Alya, Marinette, Nino, Chloé, and Adrien all sit in a small half-circle, sleepy and exhausted, leaning against each other. Félix stands watch over Jagged, Penny, and Fang, though his eyelids keep falling closed. Luka sits with his knees pulled up to his chest, a yard in front of Jagged. He stares unblinkingly at Jagged.

Sheriff Raincomprix comes over to the group grumbling. “You meddling children,” he says. “What's the meaning of all this?”

“They committed seven murders,” Félix says firmly.

The sheriff sobers quickly, though his mouth twists sourly. “You’ve joined them for good, then, Félix?”

Félix nods, expression calm.

Sheriff Raincomprix shakes his head. “Bad influences,” he mutters, before turning and looking Jagged, Penny, and Fang up and down. “These are the gator people, I assume?” There's a note of disbelief in his voice.

Penny rolls her eyes. “Yes, we are, Sheriff.”

He quickly glowers at her. “So you admit to committing seven murders and attacking fifty-nine people?”

Penny quiets.

“Only to protect our business,” Jagged says. He looks at Penny and Fang. “And our family.”

Luka flinches, but Jagged doesn't register it, looking at Fang and Penny still.

“What's your business?” the sheriff asks.

“We sell alligator products,” Jagged says, still focused on his family.

“But there haven't been alligators here in years,” says the sheriff. 

“No one can tell the difference,” Fang says indignantly.

“We did,” Luka says sharply.

Fang glares, but he doesn't say anything.

“So they're fake?” the sheriff asks, rocking back on his heels.

“Not that anyone cares,” Fang mutters. 

Penny shushes him.

Félix gestures to the boat behind them all, tied once more to the dock. “You can check their latest attempted shipment, Sheriff. See what they're labeled as.”

Sheriff Raincomprix narrows his eyes, but he heads off for the boat. Everyone is quiet as he looks. He comes slowly back over, and he sighs loudly.

“I gotta stop coming out like this for you kids and your adventures,” Sheriff Raincomprix says.

“So you'll let us go?” Fang asks, twisting around to look at him.

“No,” Raincomprix says. “You three are under arrest for seven murders, fifty-nine accounts of assault, and suspected fraud.”

Jagged finally looks to Luka, though his gaze is unreadable. Luka turns away.

~*~

The gang returns to the van, exhausted but with their things and happy for it all to be over. Marinette had forgotten to call the mechanic from the next town over, but she decides to do that once they're in the safety of the van.

The only thing is, when they get there, the hood is up. A thin sheet covers the contents, and there's a note on top of it. The gang crowds around the front of the van, Marinette at the forefront as she hesitantly takes the note. She unfolds it and reads it.

“It's from Lady E,” she breathes, eyes wide.

“Hope you had fun in Gatorsburg, but be warned. There are more mysteries to come—this is only one piece of the puzzle,” Nino reads off over her shoulder. “P.S., Sorry about your father, Luka. Lady E.”

Chloé scoffs. “So she's been watching us.”

“Or… she knows we came, and she knew about Luka's father before this,” Alya says.

Adrien nods. “That makes sense, though it is a bit eerie.”

Nino shudders. “What's she mean by piece of the puzzle, though?”

“Maybe it's connected to the curse?” Adrien asks. “The one she talked about in her phone call last week?”

Luka nods. “Maybe… though how is my dad connected to the curse of Crystal Cove?” His voice breaks on the word dad.

Alya shrugs and hesitates. “I don't know, yet.”

“Well, we know he's lived in Gatorsburg for twenty years, so… whatever it is, it's either also here or it affects people for a long time,” Nino says.

Adrien nods. “Well, just one piece won't tell us much.”

“What's under the sheet?” Chloé asks.

Marinette frowns. “Not sure.” Carefully, she pulls the sheet off of the inside of the van. She sighs. “Your engine,” she says. “It's back, Nino.”

“You're sure it's mine? It isn't one that could have been bought and put here?”

Marinette shakes her head. “No, it's yours—remember, I worked on your van three weeks ago before your smog check. I know what your engine looks like.”

Nino shrugs. “So what does that mean?”

Adrien tilts his head a little. “Maybe Lady E took it—how else would she have access to it?”

“It's a bit of a long shot, but if we're assuming that she's trying to help us, maybe she saw who did take the engine, and she's merely returning it,” Félix says.

“Can we assume that, though?” Alya asks, biting her lip. “Adrien could be right—she sent us here, why not make sure we stayed to finish the case?”

“But we didn't intend to really leave until it would have been too late to take it,” Marinette says.

“Precautionary measure,” Luka supplies with a shrug.

Nino twists his hat around his head some and he sighs. “I frankly don't care. We have an engine—let's get out of here before something else makes us stay.”

Marinette purses her lips, but she pulls off the sheet and bundles it in her arms, reaching up to pull down the hood and close it. Félix, Luka, Chloé, and Adrien all head to the back of the van quietly. Nino and Alya head around to the driver's side, and they get in. Marinette lingers by the front of the van, looking around at their surroundings.

Forest, empty road, a fork from the river, and a nearby cliff are all that surround them—nothing of any real interest, but Marinette lingers. After a few minutes, Nino starts the van and rolls down his window, popping his head out.

“Mari? Is something wrong?”

She doesn't answer for a moment, but then, she says, “No, I just…” She shakes her head and turns back to look at the others through the windshield, smiling thinly. “I’m fine. Just thinking.” She quickly turns and heads back into the van, movements hurried as she climbs in and shuts the door a little too loudly, the sheet still in her arms.

~*~

A few nights later, while Luka is in his bedroom doing his Chemistry homework, he gets a message from Alya. 

8:39 p.m.

Alya

hey, do you mind if i write an article on the

gatorsburg case?

Luka

are you asking because of my dad?

Alya

yeah.

Luka

his name will show up in the court case anyways.

and so will ours.

Alya

but they don’t have to be in an article on our

website.

you know that.

Luka

what’s it matter?

Alya

you’re my friend. i don’t want to hurt you or

make things worse for you than they already

are, luka. 

so what would be the best thing i could do 

for you?

Luka

write the article, alya.

just don’t connect me to him in that way.

that’s all.

Alya

alright. will do. love you. 

read 8:58 p.m.

10:47 p.m

Alya

https://crystalcovetruths.com/the-gatorsburg-case

read 10:47 p.m. 

Notes:

what did you guys think? 👀👀

next chapter we move on to the Very Special 😏 ghost rig episode

Chapter 9: chapter nine

Summary:

Félix and Kagami are working on a project when a certain… interruption comes by, and the gang takes note of some strange goings-on at Crystal Cove’s City Hall.

Notes:

a bit earlier of an update than the last few chapters but 🥲 trying to time writing and editing time while also keeping up motivation is harder than expected ahaha

Every so often, Félix and Kagami get partnered up for projects, much to their chagrin. The teachers do it because it makes things easier on them—they don’t have two to eight students exhausted by working for Félix and Kagami and their rivalry, and they don’t have to deal with the complaints from the two rivals that other students “just aren’t motivated enough”. The students all collectively sigh in relief when this happens, as do the teachers, but Félix and Kagami both grimace and glower at the other. 

In fact, their rivalry was so bad that the principal was brought in on things. He sat down with them both, Tomoe, and Amelie, and he brought the issue to their attention four months into their freshman year at Crystal Cove High.

“The teachers just don’t see the point in having them separate when they’re already fighting against each other for the top student spot every two weeks,” the principal said, gesturing placatingly with his hands, though the only one who might benefit from the placation was blind.

“So move the boy into my daughter’s classes,” Tomoe said sternly. “He can catch up, can’t he?”

Amelie bit back a smile, but she didn’t say anything. 

“But is that fair?” the principal floundered, at a loss.

“The gentleman’s move,” Tomoe said.

Amelie looked to Félix and put a hand at his arm. “Félix, what do you think?”

Félix had shrugged, slouched in the chair. “I’ll catch up. Mrs. Tsurugi is right—it’s what a gentleman would do.”

Tomoe nodded, pleased. “Exactly, Principal. So, go ahead. Move him.”

The principal had only sighed.

So here Félix and Kagami sit, three years later, across from each other at a table in the library and looking over four books a piece. Around them, their classmates work in groups of sixes. The teachers hadn’t even wanted to chance putting other students with the rivals, knowing their attitudes, but neither Félix nor Kagami minded. They merely saw it as a challenge.

Félix and Kagami work through the last period of the school day and then into the open library time after school ends, unmoving through the bustle of the other kids leaving. It’s fifteen minutes after the school day ends that Kagami’s mother calls her.

“Hello, Mother,” Kagami answers plainly, looking up from her book. Félix rolls his eyes across from her, slouched in his chair around the book on his knees, which rest on the edge of the table. Kagami doesn’t see his eyeroll.

Félix doesn’t hear Tomoe’s words, but he keeps an ear out for Kagami’s responses.

“He’s coming here? To the school?” Kagami asks, a hint of frustration in her voice. Félix can tell because he’s been on the receiving end of such masked frustrations for many years. “I’m in the middle of a project for school, Mother—”

Tomoe seems to interrupt Kagami on the other end. Félix flips the page of his book, having only skimmed it for the contents briefly. He can’t have Kagami thinking he’s listening in, of course.

“Mother—”

There’s another moment where Kagami is silent, though Félix can tell from a quick glance up that she’s pissed and trying not to let it affect her breathing. She does the same when he asks stupid questions on her independent presentations in class.

“Very well, Mother,” Kagami says, voice carefully filled with a submissive note. Otherwise, it’s empty and flat. He’s not as familiar with this tone from her—he’s only familiar with it because he and his mother both used the same technique on his father, Colt. Félix swallows past the uncomfortable rock that has risen in his throat.

Kagami sets her phone down after a moment, having hung up, and she returns to her books. Another minute goes by before she quietly says, “We may have an interruption soon, if you’d like to leave early. We can pick up again tomorrow, or tonight when we’re both home, if messaging seems an adequate means of discussing this project.” Her voice is devoid of emotion, but her body is tense across the table.

Félix glances up from his book at her, carefully nonchalant. He looks back down at his book. “I don’t mind the interruption. I’m to be here for another hour and forty minutes, anyways.”

Kagami clenches her jaw. “Are you sure? I can pick up whatever work might be missed.”

Félix rolls his eyes, the motion half habit and half an attempt at normalcy for her comfort. “So you can sabotage me, or do more work and try to get ahead for the next top student spot?” he asks, voice carefully absent of any bite. “I don’t think so. Plus, we need breaks—why not use the interruption to check an update on a comic I’m reading, or text my mum?”

Kagami sighs, long and heavy and thoroughly annoyed. “Fine.”

He hides his smile.

They both continue reading until someone else enters the library and walks up to their table about ten minutes later. Félix looks up first, and he smiles thinly at the man he sees.

“Hello,” Félix says pleasantly. “Are you perhaps the interruption?”

Kagami kicks Félix under the table, and he rolls his eyes, smiling, but he turns back to his book, pulling his phone in front of him.

“Comic, texting, distracted,” he says to Kagami. “Got it, Kagami, got it.” He turns on his phone and navigates to the comic he’s reading, though he half-listens to Kagami and the interruption.

“Rung Ladderton, heir to the Ladderton Ladder company,” the man introduces, voice sickly sweet. 

“Hi,” Kagami says, holding out a hand for greeting. She doesn’t say her name.

Rung takes Kagami’s hand in both of his, smiling wide. “You aren’t much of a talker, are you? Luckily, your mom spoke at length about you.”

Kagami frowns and pulls her hand away. In it, there’s a small golden pendent of a ladder with a diamond at the center of it. Félix raises a brow, glancing over, but he quickly returns to only half-reading his comic.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Kagami says, shoving the pendent back at him. 

Rung shrugs, taking it and pocketing it in his fancy green suit. “That’s just a promotional pendent, but it was special for you, Ms. Tsurugi.” He smiles wide and he leans into her space.

Félix clenches his jaw. Kagami doesn’t answer.

Rung looks at her a moment longer, and then he glances to his watch and turns slightly, waving a hand dismissively. “Anyways, give me a call, and we’ll plan a magical night on the town,” he says to her, passing her a business card. “The life of the seventh largest ladder manufacturer never stops, so, sorry, but I’ve gotta rung.” He puts a finger beneath Kagami’s chin and grins, winking, before he turns fully from her and walks quickly away.

Félix turns his phone off and sets it aside. He doesn’t look at her as she sits down, gaze centered on the book in his lap. “That was some ‘interruption,’” he says.

Kagami scoffs. “What happened to comic, texting, distracted?”

Félix smiles a bit and he glances up at her, tilting his head to the side slightly. “Oh, so you didn’t find him absolutely riveting as well?”

Kagami grimaces. “No.”

“Shame,” Félix says with a wide smile. “He seemed to find you that way.”

“Oh, shut up,” Kagami scoffs, returning to her book. 

Félix bites back a laugh, feeling just slightly relieved she’s so irritated about the ordeal. “Back to the project?” he can’t help but ask.

“Please,” Kagami drags out. Félix finally laughs.

~*~

“Sure, Nathalie, I can come by—do you mind if my friends come with?” Adrien asks, lounging in the far back of the van on the bench across from Luka. The others are quiet. Nino drives, the radio playing softly in the background, Alya reads an article on her phone, Félix reads a comic in one of the captain’s chairs, and Chloé, Marinette, and Luka all work on homework. 

“Alright,” Adrien says. “Thank you. We’ll be there soon.”

“Let me guess,” Nino calls back. “No pizza at the beach with homework and tunes?”

Adrien winces. “My dad wanted some help on some campaign stuff. He asked if we could come by.”

“You mean Nathalie asked if you could come by,” Félix says, not looking up from his comic. 

“What’s the difference?” Chloé asks, curling her legs up under her as she works on her math.

“And we’re all allowed to come with?” Nino asks, a note of disbelief in his voice. “Even after snooping around his house, and the shit with Mendeleiv and Fruitmeir?”

“Even after,” Adrien says, the same note in his voice. “Crazy, but why not? Plus, if he wants help, maybe that means he likes you guys.”

“Or he’s too busy and needs more minions,” Chloé grumbles.

Luka looks to her, rolling his eyes. “Hey, Mari, where’re you at on the math homework? I’m a bit confused on number ten.”

Marinette grimaces. “I’m still on number three.”

Félix looks over at Chloé’s homework and he returns to his comic. “Chloé’s on number eleven. She could help with—” Chloé and Luka both reach out and kick him, and Félix grunts. “Fuck, you two, jeez, sorry for suggesting you two be civil.”

“You’re one to talk,” Chloé hisses. “Everyone in school knows about you and Kagami.”

Félix rolls his eyes. “We’re different.”

“Sure, sure,” Luka says, clearly not believing him.

“Fine, fine, I’ll leave you two alone,” he says, returning fully to his comic. 

“Best to,” Marinette says knowingly, as if secretly saying I knew that would happen and you didn’t.

“Oh, shut it, Dupain-Cheng,” Félix mutters. Marinette smiles.

Nino pulls up to Crystal Cove’s City Hall a few minutes later. Adrien and Nino quickly get out, but the others are much slower, either putting their things away, wary, or both.

They finally all get out and Nino locks the van. 

“Thank you guys for coming with,” Adrien says. 

“Of course,” Chloé murmurs. The others nod in acknowledgement. 

“Lead the way?” Nino asks, gesturing for Adrien to be first.

Adrien leads them upstairs, and soon they’re in front of Gabriel’s office. Nathalie meets them in the hall and closes the door to the office behind her. It doesn’t quite click shut, but no one notices.

“Adrien,” she says quietly upon seeing him. “Thank you for coming.”

“What did Father need?” he asks, putting his hands into his multi-colored bomber jacket pockets. 

The rest of the gang stands behind him, waiting quietly.

Nathalie holds out a pamphlet for Adrien to take. “Your father needs about two hundred of these copied and arranged all over Crystal Cove.”

Félix and Chloé grimace, shooting each other a knowing look. 

“S-sure,” Adrien says, taking the pamphlet with one hand. He can’t hide the disappointment in his voice. “Two hundred?”

Nathalie nods. She lingers a moment longer, staring at Adrien, before she heads back into Gabriel’s office, shutting the door behind her. It wavers in place a little, something about it off.

The gang is silent for a long moment before Chloé speaks.

“So, just minions.” She takes the pamphlet from an unmoving Adrien, and she moves to the copy machine down the hall. She opens the top and lays the pamphlet out flat, and she presses the top down over it. She then presses the buttons to the side, programming the machine to copy 204 replicates. She then moves back over to the gang, who have come to encircle Adrien. “We’ll have to fold 204 pamphlets,” she says with a sigh. “That’s about 30 a piece, and then we can pass them out to businesses and such.”

Alya is on her phone, still reading, and Nino stands beside her, looking at Adrien. Marinette adjusts her tool belt at her hips, Félix reads his comic, and Luka looks around the hall. Adrien stares at the floor, frowning.

“Hello?” Chloé says sharply, cocking her hip and putting her hands at her hips. She raises a brow. “Did anyone hear me?”

“Heard you,” Félix says. “Didn’t find it worth it to respond.”

Chloé glares.

Adrien shakes his head. “Is there a way to make it faster?”

Alya looks up from her phone. “If we fold three pamphlets a piece at the same time, we can fold about ten rounds of three.”

“Wouldn’t take long,” Luka says, still looking around. “Maybe fifteen minutes.”

Adrien pushes a hand through his hair and he sighs. “For once, I don’t even want to do this,” he says quietly.

“I can see why,” Marinette says quietly. “It’s boring as all hell. Algebra II would be more exciting.”

“P.E., too,” Nino says, shuddering. 

Chloé’s shoulders droop, and she sighs. “What if we each took some home, then? I’ll bring some to the hotel, Marinette to the bakery, Nino to his parents’ bookstore, Alya to her mom’s restaurant and the University, and Luka to… someplace,” she ends with a grimace. “Your sister’s band probably won’t want to show any political affiliations, right?”

Luka frowns and crosses his arms over his chest as he turns to look at her. “No.”

Chloé rolls her eyes. “Fine, then. You and Félix can drop some off at the bank and the library.”

Luka sighs and turns away. “Are the pamphlets done?” he asks.

Chloé narrows her eyes. “Almost.”

“Calm down, kitties,” Alya says dryly. Chloé glowers. 

“So, do we still want to hit up pizza and tunes on the beach, then?” Nino asks hopefully. “If we’re folding quickly and then just dropping them off tonight?”

“That sounds good,” Adrien says, finally looking up from the floor. “I—”

There comes a tapping at the end of the hall with a thin, commanding voice. “Three hundred, Kagami,” Tomoe says. “Three hundred, because Gabriel is having two hundred.”

Adrien sighs, shoulders dropping, and Félix looks up sharply at the sound of Kagami’s name. He meets a tired Kagami’s gaze, but she’s quick to grimace and glare at him. He returns the expression half-heartedly.

The gang moves aside as Tomoe and Kagami come nearer, but Chloé quietly moves to the copy machine, emptying the basket full of pamphlets into one of the paper bags on the floor. She opens the copy machine and takes the original, and she moves quickly back over to the gang. Adrien quickly takes the bag, and the gang watches as Kagami brings Tomoe over to the copy machine.

“Three hundred,” Tomoe says firmly.

“And who will fold them all, Mother?” Kagami asks quietly, though the gang can hear her. 

“You, of course,” Tomoe says, a bit surprised.

Kagami doesn’t sound angry when she speaks—just tired. “And of my schoolwork?”

“It can wait a day, Kagami,” Tomoe says, turning her head away. 

No one but Félix sees the imperceptible drop of her shoulders: a sigh. 

Adrien frowns, grabbing his phone with one hand. He tries to unlock his phone with one hand, but after a second’s thought, he sets the bag of pamphlets on the ground, and he opens his messages.

Mystery Inc.

4:14 p.m.

Adrien

we should offer to help her, right?

three hundred is too many

especially for just one person

Chloé

will she accept our help?

Félix

I can ask if she’d like some assistance.

Adrien

🤯

how do you have her number??

Nino

exactly… 🤨

Félix

💀

We have to work on all of our projects together.

You guys should know that.

Nino

🤭 do we though? or do we think…

Alya

that maybe you guys are secretly

Luka

… friends?

Nino

👀🫣

Alya

🥲 i thought we were going to say secretly dating

Félix

💀 You all are worse than my mum.

Adrien

AMELIE KNOWS?

YOU TOLD YOUR MOM THAT YOU AND

KAGAMI ARE DATING, AND YOU DIDN’T

TELL ME? FÉLIX

🥲

Félix

Kagami and I are not friends, and we are not

dating. I’ll text her and ask if she wants help

with the pamphlets, but only if you hooligans

are going to be normal about her and I. 

Nino

what’s there to be normal about if there’s 

nothing happening? 😭🧍🏽‍♂️

Félix

Exactly. 🙂

Adrien

go on and text her, félix 😔

read 4:17 p.m. by [Mystery Inc.]

Félix grumbles about nosy mystery solvers, but he texts Kagami. He sends a screenshot to the Mystery Inc. group chat.

4:17 p.m.

Félix

Would you like help with the pamphlets, Kagami?

The others with me wanted to ask.

Kagami

Never you, hm?

Wanting to ask, that is.

Félix

I didn’t think you wanted me to, so no.

Kagami

I don’t.

Félix

I’ll not question your initial interest in the spirit of 

Adrien nagging me that I ask you. So, would you like help? 

Eight people surely will make three hundred pamphlets

 go by faster. Save your hands, too.

Kagami

I’ll do it myself. Thank Adrien and the others 

for me, though. 

read 4:19 p.m.

Félix sighs quietly. The rest of the gang is silent, but they file down the hallway away with their own pamphlets from Kagami and Tomoe. Only Félix looks back, and his gaze meets Kagami’s confused one.

The gang heads back to the van, and when they get outside, they’re met with an angry group of staff members congregating on their smoke break. While they are off to the side and not in the way, it is slightly odd to have a group of angry smokers who all work at the same place, and, as with anything odd, Marinette, Alya, Nino, and Luka are all drawn to it. Félix grimaces, and Chloé and Adrien hang back, but the others move closer, breathing slowly and carefully so as not to choke.

“It’s weird is what it is,” one of the staff says.

“And why isn’t the mayor doing anything? This was the only place to be hit, as far as I know, but—”

“Excuse me,” Marinette says, going up to the person speaking. 

The smokers draw back, frowning in various degrees.

“Yes?” one of them says expectantly.

“What’s the issue you all are talking about?” Alya asks, sounding almost excited.

Behind them, the front door to City Hall opens. Tomoe and Kagami come out, and Chloé and Adrien step back to give them room. Félix hesitates, watching Kagami.

“The door knobs are fucking missing,” one of the smokers says to Alya. “How did you miss it?”

“I suppose we didn’t really use any doors that weren’t already opened,” Marinette says, surprised.

Tomoe makes a curious noise and turns to Kagami with a thin smile. Kagami is looking at Félix, gaze unreadable. “Missing door knobs means angry voters,” Tomoe says.

Kagami nods absently. “I suppose. Shall we leave, now, Mother?”

Tomoe nods. “Yes. I have to discuss some things with investors in my office at home.” 

Kagami nods, and she starts leading Tomoe down the stairs. Félix steps aside quickly, still watching Kagami, and he bites his lower lip. Kagami ducks her head and she leads Tomoe to their car, avoiding Félix’s eyes. Adrien, Chloé, Marinette, Alya, Nino, and Luka all come back to circle around Félix, and his shoulders drop.

“Missing door knobs at city hall is strange,” Marinette says, distracted from Félix’s state. 

Nino nods, watching Félix. “It is, but I don't know if it's enough for a mystery.”

“Yet,” Luka says with a smile. “We don’t know if it’s a mystery yet.”

Félix turns from his reverie when Kagami’s car pulls away, and he’s frowning when he looks at Adrien. “We should finish those pamphlets.”

“And afterwards we can have pizza and tunes on the beach?” Nino asks hopefully.

Adrien nods, and he looks carefully at Félix, expression understanding. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

~*~

The next evening, after the pamphlets have been dropped to every place they could think of, the gang drives out to one of their local hang out spots. Félix drives, and Adrien sits beside him, with Marinette next to him, beside the window. Adrien is messing with the radio quietly, scrolling through his playlists on his phone, and Marinette is breaking down and rebuilding a small metal puzzle in her hands, head leaned up against the cold glass of the passenger side window. Behind these three sits Chloé in a captain’s chair, working on a project for her college class in Business I. Nino and Alya sit on the bench beside her, working quietly on an essay Nino has due the next morning. Luka lies across from them on the other bench, working on a dry Chemistry lab.

They’re winding around one of the first cliffsides when Alya looks up from Nino’s essay. “Hey, did any of you hear about the officer that was driven off the road up ahead a few days ago?”

“Didn’t he die?” Félix asks, watching the road carefully. 

Alya nods. “He did.”

“They have a memorial up at my father’s offices,” Adrien says, selecting a playlist. “They never found out what drove him off, right?”

“Right,” Alya says. 

“I’m being careful,” Félix says reassuringly.

“Wouldn’t let you drive if you weren’t,” Nino says jokingly. 

“You’d make me write your essay instead, probably,” Félix says.

Nino laughs. 

“And the door knobs,” Alya says.

“You think it’s connected?” Chloé asks, looking up from her project. “Isn’t that a bit of a stretch?”

Alya shrugs. “I’m just saying that more have gone missing—my mom’s restaurant, the university my dad works at, Nino’s family’s bookstore, the school.”

Chloé nods slowly, looking back at her project. “The ones at the hotel have gone missing, too.”

“Crystal door knobs right?”

Chloé laughs humorlessly. “You know those are the only ones sold in town—Crystal Cove didn’t get its name by chance. There’s an over-abundance here.”

Alya shrugs again. “Well, it is strange. I’ve looked at neighboring towns—no missing door knobs there, and certainly none of the crystal ones.”

They’re rounding another bend in the cliffside when Félix slows. Alya and Nino both half-stand from their seats on the bench, looking out of the windshield past Adrien, Félix, and Marinette’s shoulders.

“What is it?” Chloé and Luka both ask. They shoot each other a glance  but both look out the windshield as well.

A dense fog surrounds the van. Félix is leaned as close as he can be against the steering wheel, squinting into the dark fog. 

“Can’t see,” Félix mutters. “This fog—it came out of nowhere.”

“Maybe up from the water?” Adrien asks, squinting as well. 

And then, before any of them can comment on that, there’s a loud, thunderous booming behind them as the fog clears up some. The sound of a loud horn follows. Félix glances in the rearview mirror and he curses before stepping on the gas and sending the van forward. 

It's only through his knowledge of the town that he's able to speed the van down a smaller road closer to the waters pounding at the rocks below, but he drives away from the large bright lights in the rearview mirror at a speed far higher than allowed. The speed and suddenness of his movements sends Nino, Alya, and Luka tumbling back towards the rear doors, though they steady themselves on the netting hanging along the ceiling. Nino presses up against one of the back windows, careful to keep out of Félix’s main line of sight to the rear of the van, and his mouth drops open. Alya and Luka come up beside him, pressing similarly to the glass. 

In the front, Marinette unbuckles and turns in her seat, rolling her window down quickly. She sticks her head out the window, looking back at what follows them: an eighteen wheeler semi-truck that looks like a ghost from hell.

Félix glances back in the rearview mirror, hugging the cliffside with the van. He sees the rig pulling closer, and he shouts for everyone to hold on and for Marinette to sit down. Marinette doesn’t move, but the others in the back cling to the walls of the van. Adrien reaches out and pulls Marinette back into the van, holding her firmly despite her protests and wriggling in his arms.

“I just need to see!” she cries, pulling at Adrien's arms.

“It isn't safe,” he shouts over the thunder of what’s behind them, holding her tighter.

As he says this, the entire van is jostled and it jumps forward. Félix curses again, and he looks back just in time to see the rig rearing back to ram them again. All of his lessons on defensive driving can't help him here, where he's stuck between killing his friends by crashing against the cliffside or killing them by sending them down into the cove to drown. He freezes.

The rig rams them again.

Notes:

teheehehe… oops 🫣 but what did you guys think? 👀 are you glad to see feligami again? (i hope so 💀 this whooooooole episode is chock-full of feligami moments 🤪)

Chapter 10: chapter ten

Summary:

(No summary this chapter)

Notes:

was going to post this last night, but im on a new pill that’s been making me loopy and drowsy. it’s been a bit slow to write, so i decided to just post this morning when i have more time to get to a good spot in chapter eleven before posting

anyways tehehe hope you enjoy this chapter!!! i’m vv excited about it

The gang flies through the air for three long, weightless moments, and then the van plops down unceremoniously on another side road, only a few yards from the dark waters below. 

“Are we dead?” Chloé asks, voice high.

“No,” Félix says with a long, relieved sigh. “We’re not dead.”

Everyone in the van relaxes. 

“Is everyone alright?” Félix asks after a moment. “No injuries, concussions, broken limbs, missing persons?”

“Everyone accounted for and safe back here,” Nino says.

Alya adds, “Just rattled.”

“Same here,” Adrien says, and he finally lets Marinette go, though she doesn’t move for a long moment, genuinely reassessing her life’s choices. 

“Well—” Félix starts, but another thunderous boom rings out, followed by the sound of a semi-truck’s loud horn, interrupting him. Lights flash at one end of the small road they’re on, and Félix curses once more, reversing quickly and turning sharply around. He speeds away back up where they came, headed for the main road. He speeds through a tunnel, and the rig follows him through, lights blazing up the whole of the enclosed space. Félix takes a sharp turn and he spins out of the tunnel and onto the small bit of cliffside just outside the mouth of the tunnel, and the rig flies past the van and the gang, disappearing into the darkness with another sound of the horn followed by thunder.

~*~

The gang calls the sheriff up, and he meets them on the side of the road. The back doors of the van are open, and Chloé, Alya, and Nino all sit, cross-legged or with their knees pulled up to their chests, a bit inside the van. On the edge of the van sits Marinette and Adrien, and both Luka and Félix stand, leaning against the open doors of the van. 

Sheriff Raincomprix walks over, exhaling a lengthy sigh. “It’s been too soon, kids—not even a week has passed since I last saw you all.” He shakes his head. “It isn’t right when I see you… one, two, four, six—seven troublemakers more than I see my own wife.”

“That sounds like a you problem, Sheriff Raincomprix,” Marinette says limply. “We don’t control how little you see your wife.”

The corner of Félix’s mouth twitches, but he doesn’t say anything.

The sheriff puts his hands on his hips and grimaces. “What am I even out here for again?”

“We were run off the road,” Félix supplies.

“By what looked like a ghost truck,” Marinette says.

“But what probably wasn’t a ghost,” Alya adds quickly.

The sheriff purses his lips but he pulls out a notebook. “Describe it.”

“It was an eighteen wheeler semi-truck,” Nino starts. “And it looked really old—rusting, moldy, whatever happens to old trucks.”

Marinette rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t interrupt.

“It had wispy matter flying off of it into the wind,” Nino continues, “and it had bright, almost green-looking lights.”

Luka shifts on his feet. “First came fog, and then a sort of thunder, and then the sound of its horn. Afterwards, it appeared, coming at us at high speeds and recklessly.”

“And it didn’t have any driver, not that we could see,” Marinette says, shivering a bit.

“It also looked like it was on fire, at times,” Chloé says quietly. “And it disappeared and reappeared in completely different places, much too far apart to drive so quickly, in a matter of moments. It ran us off the road twice, kicking us down close to the cove, but every time, it followed or ended up appearing out of nowhere in less than a minute, ready to chase us down again.”

“Sort of like how a… ghost might, then?” the sheriff asks, raising a brow.

“I suppose,” Chloé says, shrugging and frowning.

The sheriff grins and puts his notebook away. “Sounds like you kids just stumbled onto the latest tourist attraction.”

Félix straightens up and he takes an angry step forward. “Tourist attraction?” He glares at Sheriff Raincomprix, who shrinks back. “It nearly dumped us into the cove, ran us into the cliffside, and almost crushed us in the tunnel back there. It’s dangerous is what it is.”

“Besides,” Alya says firmly. “We don’t even know if it is a ghost.”

The sheriff shrugs in a half-placating manner. “Sorry, but didn’t you guys say there wasn’t a driver? That sounds like a ghost truck—case closed.”

The gang stiffens in and beside the van as the sheriff turns away, walking happily back to his squad car. He whistles a jaunty tune as he goes. 

It’s a few minutes before the sheriff drives off and everyone can move again. Félix can’t seem to uncurl his hands from fists, but the others seem mostly unbothered by the sheriff’s lack of concern at this point. Marinette and Alya are already heading for the road, shining their phone flashlights back and forth along the asphalt. Chloé and Nino are already back in the van, resuming their homework. Luka sits on the cliffside, staring out at the cove. Adrien is looking around, unsure of what to do.

His gaze lands on Félix.

“Félix?” he asks quietly, reaching out a hesitant hand to Félix’s shoulder.

He flinches back. “Hm?”

“What’s wrong?” Adrien asks.

Félix doesn’t answer for a long moment, forcing himself to relax. “I just don’t understand how the sheriff can be so concerned with money and lack any concern for our lives.”

Adrien bites his lip. “I don’t understand it either, but… it seems a lot of people in town hold the same greed and lack of concern for us.”

“How can they be so used to it?” Félix asks suddenly, turning the full force of his desperate and confused gaze on Adrien. “The others—I couldn’t do anything. There were only two options there before we fell: drowning, or being crushed against the cliffside. And no one seems to care that I didn’t know what to do, or that we made it out alive, just barely, and that the sheriff wants to make what nearly killed us a new tourist attraction. How—how can they be so used to it, Adrien?”

Adrien’s shoulders droop and his expression softens, but no words leave his mouth.

Nino is the one who answers Félix, closing his laptop and scooting to the edge of the bench he sits on. “You can’t beat yourself up over that, Félix. Heck, if I’d been driving, I probably would have braked and gotten us flying at high speeds some distance into the cove. You made the right choice there to keep going, and it kept us alive. You can’t be angry at yourself for that. We certainly aren’t, and probably because we’ve had so many brushes with death in the past three years that it doesn’t matter as much to us anymore. 

“Even so, it is fucked up that the sheriff, the mayor—sorry, Adrien—and the townspeople don’t seem to care about our being alive if it means they can earn more money. We all know that. But it’s much easier to let it go like water off a duck’s back when you focus on who does care. Like us, or your mom. Kagami, even, as much as you guys have that whole enemies but secretly lovers thing going on—” Félix rolls his eyes and frowns. “But what I’m trying to say, Félix, is that it’s easier to not let it make you angry or afraid when you know that we and your mom have your back, and that we’re going to do anything to keep you alive, in the same way you’ve done the same for us so far.”

Adrien smiles as Nino finishes, and he tilts his head a little to the side, looking at Félix. “Does that help?”

Félix closes his eyes for a moment, sagging against the open back door of the van, and he takes a few slow, even breaths. He opens his eyes a minute later, gaze a bit less troubled. “Yeah. Thank you both.”

Nino and Adrien both smile softly at Félix. “Yeah, any time,” Nino says. 

“Hey!” Alya calls back. “Come here, you guys!”

Félix glances over, surprised, but Nino and Luka are already up and jogging out to Alya and Marinette. Chloé and Adrien are slower to follow behind, but Félix lingers back a moment longer than they do, watching the gang come together. He tries to memorize the way they move and talk, jostling one another and laughing a bit—he tries to memorize the way they are, alive. And then he follows.

“I was taking photos of the road,” Alya says, crouched to the ground. Marinette kneels beside her, grinning. “And I was messing with them, adjusting the contrast, the sharpness, the exposure, all of that…” She pulls up a photo on her phone, obviously adjusted to have high contrast, and she zooms in on it some, showing the group. 

“Are those tire tracks?” Chloé asks, glancing between the photo and the road. 

“Yup,” Alya says, pleased.

“And what kind of truck leaves behind tire tracks?” Marinette asks, rocking back on her heels and standing.

“One that isn’t a real ghost truck,” Nino says, grinning.

“Well, it did also ram us down the cove,” Félix adds, frowning.

“Which the sheriff could write off as ghost powers—it moving the air, or something,” Marinette says, shaking her head. “But it leaving tracks… that’s different. That’s something you can’t claim was the wind, or spectral activity.”

“So, between the crystal door knobs and the not-ghost ghost truck, that’s either two mysteries or one very strange one,” Chloé says, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering.

“Exactly,” Marinette and Alya say, very clearly excited by the prospect.

~*~

Kagami and Félix work one afternoon a few days later at Félix and Amelie’s place. The project is going well, and they’re almost finished with it, just needing to write up and edit the eight-page book report. They work at the dining table, although they sit at the opposite end to where Félix and Amelie typically eat, each on a laptop with books open and surrounding them. 

They’ve been working about an hour when Rung Ladderton calls, causing Kagami to sigh heavily. Félix looks over at her, raising a brow. “Trouble in paradise?” he asks. 

Kagami has taken to wearing the ladder pin at what Kagami claimed was her mother’s insistence, though Félix wonders if that’s really it, since the blind woman wouldn’t be able to even see it. Either way, the pendent had been dropped off at Kagami’s house, and Kagami’s been wearing it since, pinned to the collar of her shirt, the neckline of a vest, or the shoulder of her bag. Félix has even noted with some distaste that Rung even has his own ringtone, since he calls nearly every day. 

Kagami glares at him for the trouble in paradise comment, but he only smiles thinly, looking back at his laptop. She picks up the phone.

“Hello,” she says flatly.

Félix doesn’t hear the response, but it’s apparently enough to cause Kagami to imperceptibly sigh, leaning back in her chair and keeping quiet for a long minute.

“The Bloody Stake is fine,” Kagami says emotionlessly. “I’ll meet you there tomorrow at seven.” She hangs up shortly after that. 

Félix looks over at her with a raised brow. “The Bloody Stake, huh?”

She grumbles unintelligibly at him. 

He smiles. “That’s how paradise will be righted?” he asks, turning back to his laptop. “Funny way of doing that, since you hate The Bloody Stake.”

Kagami sighs. “Could you not?”

Félix tilts his head a bit. “That’s possible.” He smiles. “So, what are you going to wear to your least favorite restaurant in town?”

Kagami glares at him but doesn’t respond. Félix rolls his eyes, and they drop the subject, working in silence for about an hour. At that point, Kagami asks a question on the report, and Félix relaxes as he answers her. 

It’s a half hour after that when Kagami speaks again, though this time she pushes her laptop away, bumping it into his and jostling his workspace. His expression and eye twitches, but he quickly adjusts, pulling his laptop closer.

“Why did you even ask me?” Kagami says.

Félix narrows his eyes, body tensing and shoulders creeping upwards with her tone and suddenness.  “Ask you what?” he replies.

“If I needed help with the pamphlets.”

He hesitates, grimacing. That’s exactly what I wanted her to forget about, he thinks sourly. “The others wanted me to ask.”

“You could have easily said no,” Kagami says, relentless as she stares at him. He avoids her gaze. “You could have said no to give you an advantage in snagging the top student spot this fortnight.”

He doesn’t reply.

“But you asked anyway,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him. “Why?”

He doesn’t say anything for another long, long moment. “It was the gentleman’s move.”

“I thought all was fair in love and war,” Kagami says flatly.

Félix raises a brow and smiles carefully at her. “Not in being a gentleman.”

“As if you care about that.”

“You’d be surprised, Kagami.”

After a bit, she looks back up at him. “They couldn’t have told you it would save my hands,” she says quietly. “You wrote that text yourself, and no one else dictated it—I would have heard.”

“Could you have?” he asks, raising a brow. He turns his eyes back to his laptop. 

Kagami frowns sharply. “You wrote the text. Why do you care about my hands?”

“Maybe I want you to have a fair chance at beating me this fortnight,” he says nonchalantly.

“You don’t care about that—if you did, you wouldn’t leave notes in my locker, or flip me off every chance you get, or pester me endlessly to where I consider tearing my hair out, or—”

“Fine,” he says, voice devoid of emotion. “Maybe I didn’t want to do this project all by myself.”

“Like that would make you pretend to care—”

He interrupts her, meeting her gaze with his own guarded, almost poisoned one. “Doesn’t change the fact that this is a six-person project and I don’t want to be working enough to account for five people.”

“I’m fine,” she says, but her voice cracks. “The pamphlets didn’t affect my ability to work, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Good to know,” he says flatly, returning to his books. “Though I wouldn’t do things differently.”

“Why—” Kagami starts.

Félix sighs. “Could we focus on the project, please?”

Kagami quiets, though she glares at him.

Félix evens out his breathing slowly, and soon, he returns to actually being able to read the words on his laptop.

Another hour passes before Félix feels his normal self again. Amelie comes out from her sewing room, smiling wide and walking with a bit of a bounce in her step. Félix looks up and he smiles softly at her, nodding.

“Hey,” he says to her. “Done with your project?”

Kagami looks up from her laptop, relaxed again since the hour has passed. She’s a bit curious about Félix and his mother’s relationship. She was only recently allowed to start coming over after school for their projects—mostly, they worked late at her house, or at the library, but, in the past month, Félix started offering that they work at his place. Kagami never stayed long enough to see his mother, or, she muses, perhaps Amelie had been giving them space. Or hiding. Kagami isn’t sure. She only knows a few details about Félix’s home life: that his father left several months ago, and he’s been almost… happier since then, and that he loves his mother. Oh, and that he’s Adrien Agreste’s cousin.

Aside from that, though, Kagami doesn’t know much about Félix’s home life. She tilts her head, watching Félix and his mother closely.

“No, no,” Amelie says, smiling wide. Her cheeks are rosy with what looks to be joy. “I just figured it would be a good time to start dinner.” 

Félix frowns at his mother and sighs, but he looks back at his laptop. Kagami follows these movements with confusion, clearly missing something. “Just ask,” he says dryly. “I can’t stop you.”

Amelie grins at the small admission, and she looks to Kagami happily. “Kagami, dear, would you like to stay for dinner? I’m making cheese-filled raviolis in a homemade pesto sauce with parmesan, Italian sausage, and garlic bread, if you’d like. Though, if you’re vegetarian or vegan, I can—”

“She isn’t,” Félix says quietly, typing away at his laptop. “Vegetarian or vegan, that is. And she has no allergies as far as I’m aware, so the dinner shouldn’t pose a dietary issue, Mum.”

Kagami’s eyes widen in surprise, but she focuses on Amelie as much as she’d like to glare at Félix and kick him, asking him how he knows that information. Instead, she rests her head in one hand, making sure to shoot Félix a very pointed middle finger with it, turned away slightly as she looks at Amelie so that Amelie can’t see the vulgar gesture. “Thank you for the offer, Ms. Graham de Vanily. I’d actually love to stay for dinner. It sounds delicious.”

Félix looks up, and, catching sight of the middle finger raised up at him, he cracks a smile.

“Great!” Amelie says, walking into the kitchen, swinging her arms at her sides in excitement. “You kids finish up your work, and I’ll have dinner done in about forty minutes.”

Kagami turns to look at Félix, and she just barely catches the tail end of his open, softened expression.

~*~

Kagami and Félix pack up their schoolwork when Amelie finishes up dinner, and Félix holds out a hand, stood from his chair, to help Kagami from hers. Hesitantly, she takes it and stands. Félix doesn’t let go, however, as he guides her around the dining room table and into the kitchen. Kagami follows a bit behind, confused.

He leads her to some cabinets and he drops her hand, opening one. He grabs three plates from it and three glasses, and he sets them on the counter, pushing a glass towards Kagami with a raised brow. 

“There’s water from the tap,” he says, “and ice in the freezer, or there’s orange juice, fresh lemonade and strawberry lemonade, or there’s iced tea in the fridge. You can choose and get whichever for yourself while I set the table.”

Before Kagami can interrogate him on why he isn’t trying to sabotage her—like she’s always expected, since that’s what rivals do, it’s what she would do in his place and with his acting skills—he’s moving around her with the plates and the other two cups, walking back over to the other end of the dining table. Kagami stays there a moment, frozen with her lips parted in the start of a half-hearted question of why, and Amelie looks over to her.

“Kagami, dear?” she asks. “Is everything alright?”

It takes Kagami a second to manage to nod. She heads for the fridge, and she fills the glass in her trembling hands with strawberry lemonade. She doesn’t notice or realize Félix coming back from the table, or him moving the two glasses in his hands to one hand, and she certainly doesn’t see him reaching out to steady her glass with his hand at the bottom of it until it’s too late.

Her face flushes a deep red and she turns to glare at him, but his expression is calm and unbothered. She takes her glass and sets the jug of strawberry lemonade back in the fridge, and she steps sharply aside and away, towards an unoccupied spot in the kitchen where she can easily watch Félix and his mother while having her back to a safe spot that shouldn’t surprise or startle her. 

Félix watches this with a small sigh, and he steps closer to the fridge, grabbing the jug of strawberry lemonade. He fills one glass, and then the other, and then he puts the jug back and he closes the fridge. He moves back past Amelie, who stands at the stove, finishing the last of dinner, and he sets the glasses down at his and Amelie’s spots. The remaining one is left open, presumably Kagami’s. 

She doesn’t move to set her glass down, staying still in her spot across the kitchen from him.

Félix moves back into the kitchen and heads for a drawer, where he grabs three knives, three forks, and a spoon. He waves Kagami over with a raised brow, closing the drawer, and he takes a step back towards the dining room table. Kagami frowns, but she hesitantly moves closer, and he reaches out to gently hold her wrist in one hand. Her body tenses slightly, but as he leads her over to her seat, he raises her wrist above her head, twirling her carefully around so she faces her chair. Before she can move it herself, he’s letting go of her wrist and pulling her chair back, expression still infuriatingly calm and relaxed. 

Kagami sits slowly, feeling entirely off-kilter by the evening at this point. She doesn’t move in the chair as he scoots her in, and she hardly breathes when he moves to stand beside her, setting silverware on either side of her plate. She gets the only spoon.

Before she can look up at him, he’s moving away, quickly setting out the remaining silverware, and he’s turning and walking back into the kitchen. Kagami slowly evens out her breathing while he and his mother set out the large pan with the pesto and ravioli and the bowl of garlic bread, and then both of them sit, smiling.

Kagami glances at Amelie for lack of an easier person to look at, and she says, “Thank you, Ms. Graham de Vanily. It smells wonderful.” She means it.

Amelie smiles wider at her, expression somehow still soft, and she nods, reaching for her own glass of strawberry lemonade. She takes a drink and sets it down. “Of course—I hope you like it.”

Félix stands from his chair and he serves his mother some pasta and he passes her the bowl of garlic bread. He then looks to Kagami, raising a brow. “May I?” he asks, lifting the spoon with some pasta in it.

Kagami glances over at Amelie and then looks back at him, frowning slightly, but she lifts her plate and holds it out for him.

“Say when,” he says, spooning pasta onto her plate. She tells him when, and he stops, going to serve himself next.

Kagami lowers her plate back to the table. Amelie passes her the bowl of garlic bread, and Kagami hesitantly takes a large piece, setting it on the side of her plate. She moves her hands to her lap after setting the bowl closer to Félix, and she waits, body tense, for someone to start the meal.

Félix sits, and Amelie and him both start eating. Félix looks across the table to her and nods to her plate. Kagami begins to eat as well, choosing the spoon to eat her pasta with. She supposes he gave it to her for lack of knowing what she’d eat dinner with. Her hand trembles slightly as she raises some of the pasta to her mouth, and she takes a bite.

“So, Kagami—Félix tells me a lot about you,” Amelie says with a smile. Félix’s expression drops into one that looks almost mortified, and he looks at his mother, who’s looking at Kagami, who’s looking at Félix with narrowed eyes.

“Mum!” he whispers sharply. “You—”

Amelie ignores him, smiling, and looks to her plate as she gets another bite. Once she’s finished chewing, she says, “He tells me you’re incredibly smart and quite talented with a rapier, among many other things.”

“Many other things?” Kagami asks curiously, tilting her head at Félix. 

“Yes, yes,” Amelie says, biting back a laugh. “Though I shouldn’t say, in case I embarrass him.”

“Too late for that,” Félix mutters darkly, face ducked down towards his plate.

Amelie turns to him innocently. “What was that, Félix?”

Félix glowers. “You’re plenty aware, Mum.”

Amelie shrugs and turns back to Kagami. “You also gave him a run for his money with your Chemistry lab last week—he had to scramble to complete with even a 97%.”

Kagami smiles. She had gotten a 99%. 

Amelie grins at Kagami’s expression change. “You two are incredibly talented and driven—I’m sure whatever you two do with your lives will be world-changing.”

“Thank you, Ms. Graham de Vanily,” Kagami says, pride making her sit up a little straighter as she eats.

“Amelie, please, dear,” she corrects.

Kagami nods, smiling a bit back at her. “Félix unfortunately hasn’t told me much about you, but I can tell he loves you very, very much. Also, this is a wonderful meal. It tastes delicious.”

Amelie seems to almost glow at these words. “Thank you. And yes, yes—I’m very lucky to have Félix in my life.”

Félix rolls his eyes half-heartedly, but he relaxes some and lifts his head from being so low to his plate as he eats. 

“How is your project coming along, then?” Amelie asks. “It’s a report, yes?”

Kagami nods. “A report on a scientific study of our choice. Félix let me choose the study, and we’ve been gathering research for the past few days. Today we started on the report.”

“It’s due tomorrow, yes?” Amelie asks, sounding concerned. “How will—”

“Kagami and I type fast,” Félix interrupts, reaching out to put a hand on his mother’s comfortingly. “And we have five pages complete already—three more and we’ll be done. We can finish that and editing after dinner, and we should be asleep by midnight.”

Amelie purses her lips. “Sometimes I wish I’d said more—”

“Don’t worry, Mum,” Félix says firmly. “We’re fine. Plus, it’s almost Friday.”

Amelie doesn’t look convinced, but she doesn’t push. 

“You must be proud of Félix,” Kagami says helplessly after a moment, not wanting to make things worse by explaining their process, or the lengths they go to for their rivalry, or how competitive they are. “He and I have been tied for three years for the top student spot. Come the end of next year, it’ll be either him or I who have had the most spots in all of Crystal Cove High.”

Amelie frowns a bit. “I am proud of him—of you both, really, given how much he talks about you—but not because of that top student spot. Frankly, I don’t even know why—”

“Mum,” Félix cautions. He stands and takes his plate and silverware to the sink, finished with dinner. 

Amelie sighs and she smiles ruefully at Kagami. “Sorry, dear.” She shakes her head. “Well, I am still proud of you both—just not for that reason.”

Kagami nods, quite confused. That’s all Tomoe is proud of Kagami for—why isn’t Amelie proud of Félix for the same? Back when Tomoe was in high school, it was her, Gabriel Agreste, and Amelie Graham de Vanily who all fought for the most top student spots in a span of four years. 24 fortnight spots was the highest number achieved, and it was achieved by Amelie, which has been a point of contention for Tomoe, who, along with Gabriel, only got 23 spots. Emilie Agreste—then Emilie Graham de Vanily—achieved the remaining two.

Kagami and Félix are fighting for 36 spots, and, because of that one fortnight spot achieved while they were sick, whoever loses between them will only have achieved 35 spots. That’s the highest achievement rate for anyone in Crystal Cove High, and that fact will be displayed on achievement lists for what Tomoe says will be their entire lives. 

“There’s more to life than high school,” Amelie cautions with a sad smile, standing and taking her plate and silverware to the sink as well. Félix takes the large pan with the pasta and the bowl for the bread silently, and Kagami hesitantly stands with her dishes as well.

“I’ll do the dishes,” Félix says to Amelie. “You can go continue working on your sewing project, or read—just relax, is all.”

Amelie purses her lips, turning to look at him. “I don’t want you overworking—”

“I’ll help,” Kagami offers, walking over to them. “It’ll go faster that way, yes, Félix?”

His shoulders drop, but he nods, defeated. “It will. So go on, Mum. We’ll handle it.”

Amelie frowns, but she nods, and she heads out of the kitchen after squeezing Félix’s hand.

When she’s out of earshot, Félix turns to the sink, moving the dishes all to one side and stacking them. “You don’t have to help,” he tells Kagami, just loud enough for her to hear. “You can pack up your things and I’ll finish these up quickly and drive you home, alright?”

Kagami shakes her head and she unbuttons the cuffs of her red button up. She rolls her sleeves up and moves to stand beside Félix. “I’m not going to not help you after I just told your mother I’d help. I’ll pack up my things when we’re done here, and then you can drive me home.” She doesn’t want to admit it, but she’s grateful to not have to ask her mother’s driver to come pick her up while her car is in the shop for repairs.

He sighs heavily, shaking his head, but he says, “Fine. You can dry them, alright?”

Kagami rolls her eyes, relaxing. “You don’t have to be so difficult, you know.”

“You’re one to talk,” he says dryly, but he starts rinsing the plates, setting them to the side. 

Kagami ignores the barb and she reaches for a washcloth on the side of the sink. “You wash them with soap with this, yes?”

Félix grimaces. “If I don’t answer, are you going to beat me up?”

Kagami smiles. “Yes.”

He shakes his head. “Yes, and the soap is the tall blue bottle next to it.”

Kagami rinses out the washcloth quickly and she gets it soapy. While he rinses the rest of the dishes in one side of the sink, she soaps up the dishes already rinsed in the other side of the sink. When he finishes rinsing the food off, he washes his hands and starts rinsing her already soapy dishes. When she finishes with the soap, she rinses her hands and reaches for the towel by the sink, drying off the dishes he’s already rinsed again. When he’s done rinsing dishes, he wipes down the counters and stove, and she follows him with the dry towel. He then moves to the table, and she follows him there, too, until they move back to the sink, washing their hands again.

Working in tandem like this, they finish cleaning up in less than twelve silent minutes. 

Kagami dries her hands and hands the towel to Félix so he can dry his, and she moves for her things at the other side of the table, packing them up slowly and carefully. She most definitely won’t admit it, but she’s had fun this afternoon and evening, and she’s almost sad to leave for her quiet and unfeeling house.

Félix packs up his things as well, but he finishes before Kagami does, who’s moving slowly still. He leans against the back of his chair, and he watches her. “Thanks for not telling my mum that we stay up later anyways,” he says quietly.

“She worries about you,” Kagami replies, just as quiet. “I didn’t think it was the best idea.”

“She worries about us,” Félix corrects, and then he smiles a bit. “But I would have thought that you’d have told her anyways—any chance to get ahead of me, you know.”

Kagami stiffens.

Félix frowns. “Relax, Kagami. I’m just kidding.”

She finishes putting her things away, and she shakes her head, turning to him with her bag over one shoulder and a stack of books in her hand. “Your car?” she says, sighing a bit.

Félix nods, frowning. “Yeah.” 

He reaches for her free hand, and then he thinks better of it, stepping aside and waving her past. Kagami tries not to feel disappointed. She walks quickly past him, leading the way to the front door. He steps quickly past her only to open the door wide for her, grabbing his keys from the small dish by the door. Kagami steps through the door and heads off of the porch and down the driveway to his small, green, and, frankly, unidentifiable breed of a car. He follows closely behind her, and he opens the passenger side door for her, such the gentleman that it’s almost annoying. He holds out a hand for her books, and she frowns, but she hands them to him and gets in.

He only hands the books back to her once she’s buckled and settled, and he closes the passenger side door for her, moving to the other side of the car and getting in. He buckles and starts it up, turning the heater on in the almost cold air, and he glances over at her. “Let me know if you need the heat turned up or down,” he says, and he turns in his seat, looking back as he reverses out of his driveway. 

Kagami nods, pulling her books up against her body. 

They drive in silence for a bit before Félix glances over at her briefly before looking back at the road. “Do you know when your car will be fixed?” he asks.

Kagami shakes her head. “No,” she says, looking out the window. “There were lots of damages—people are unhappy with my mother.”

He frowns. “I want to know why they even thought your car was hers,” he says quietly.

Kagami shrugs. “I’m not sure, but Mother seems unbothered that they did.”

“Do you want me to come by and pick you up in the morning? For school, that is.”

“Why would you do that?”

He hesitates. “Because.”

She shakes her head. “You and I both know that isn’t an answer, Félix.”

“Do you want a ride in the mornings and afternoons when I can drive you?”

She’s quiet when she answers. She thinks about how much she hates being driven by her mother’s chauffeur. “If that wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning, then. I’ll text you when I’m on my way.”

Kagami nods, biting her lip. “Thank you.”

“Of course. Tomorrow afternoon, my… cousin and his friends and I will be working, but I can take you home before I leave with them, if you’d like.”

Kagami shakes her head. “Tomorrow I can stay at the school and walk to the library. Rung… is going to pick me up then.”

“I thought you said you would meet him at The Bloody Stake at seven?” Félix asks, frowning. 

Kagami shifts uncomfortably in her seat and she sighs. “Fine—if you could drop me off home before you meet with Adrien and his friends, that would be great.”

Félix nods. “And you’ll catch a ride to The Bloody Stake afterwards?”

Kagami frowns. “I’ll… catch a ride on the bus, yes.”

Félix sighs. “If I wasn’t going to be with them, I’d insist on driving you,” he says.

“And why’d you do that?” she asks, voice cracking a bit.

He hesitates again. “Because.”

“Why are you like this?” she asks sharply. 

“Why are you like that?” he shoots back. 

“Like what?” she asks, shoulders creeping up. 

Félix rolls his eyes. “You’re always on edge, thinking we’re supposed to hate each other and do everything to take the other down, but you get all weird when I ask you why you don’t do that every chance you have. Are you the only one who’s allowed to be nice despite our academic rivalry?”

Kagami freezes. “We’re—we—Félix, I—”

He sighs, shoulders dropping. He arrives at her house, but he passes it and starts looping around the block slowly. “I’m not saying you have to stop. I’m just saying that you can’t question me every time I’m nice and turn around and freeze up and get mean when I joke about you being nice and not doing what you expect of me all the time.”

“I just don’t understand how you spent all of our childhood being closed off and only recently started to care about being nice to me outside of just opening doors and being barely civil.”

Félix quiets. After a few minutes, he says “I’m sorry for not being nicer when we were younger.”

Kagami frowns. “I just had expectations for how you act—expectations that were confirmed by years of the same kinds of treatment. It’s weird that it’s changed, and I’m still getting used to it—to being invited over to your house, to having dinner with your mother, to getting a ride home, to having you care about my wellbeing, as much as you might try and hide it. It’s a lot to get used to, on top of having our usual insults and middle fingers and annoying notes and fights at the same time.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats quietly, driving around the block again. 

Kagami shakes her head. “It’s just a lot to get used to. But I’m being nice in return. Like by not telling your mother that you frequently stay up past one a.m. most nights.”

Félix laughs a bit and shakes his head. “Yeah, thanks for that, Kagami.”

“Are you going to actually pull into my driveway sometime tonight?”

He grimaces and pulls in once he comes around to her driveway again. “Sorry.”

Kagami raises a brow. “Three apologies in one night—that’s a record.”

Félix’s smile is a bit uneasy. “I’d apologize again, but that isn't like me, is it?”

Kagami shakes her head, watching him carefully. “Tomorrow,” she says after a beat, “we'll try and be how we usually are. The only difference will be that we won't… question it if one of us is nicer. Does that sound alright?”

Félix purses his lips, but then he nods a bit.

“It might be hard at first for me,” Kagami adds quietly, “but I’d like to… try accepting your kindness.”

Félix smiles a bit, relaxing. There's a hope kindling in his chest and growing.

Notes:

muahahaha. what’d you guys think? the chapter ended up being like 80% graphic depictions of feligami, which was Not the plan at all ahaha, but… it happened 🤪

also… for the math on the top student stuff, there’s about 180 days in a school year, give or take, which, divided by 10 (5 days times 2 to equal two weeks), there’s 18 fortnights per year. multiplied by 4 for 4 years in high school, that’s 72 possible fortnight spots. if the math is wrong, that’s totally my fault 💀✌️🥲 thought i’d supply the math in case anyone was curious on how the fortnight thing works

Chapter 11: chapter eleven

Summary:

Félix gets ready for the day and drives Kagami to school, and the gang decides that the case of the ghost truck has to end tonight…

Notes:

teehee, alright the first two scenes are for the amazing and wonderful fae, who gave me the idea/inspired me, and also who shared with me one of the songs that kept me on track while writing this chapter (“aswang” by alamat, a Literal fave). and uhm. as for the rest of the chapter… well, teheh 🙃

Félix spends longer than usual in picking out his outfit for the day, and if anyone were to ask him why, he’d blush and probably change the subject. He picks out a nice pair of jeans, a pair of clean tennis shoes, a white button-up, and a beige sweater vest. He spends far too long standing in front of the mirror, tucking and untucking his button-up into his jeans and brushing his hair, and he decides to leave one side of the front of his shirt tucked and the rest untucked, and that his hair can be in his normal style. 

He finally makes his way downstairs with his book bag over one shoulder and his backpack over his other, and he heads for the kitchen, distracted. He’s startled when he sees Amelie at the kitchen table. She’s widely at him with her chin in one hand. There’s a plastic container at her side, and a plate and a fork sit at the head of the table, covered with a paper towel.

“Hello,” he says warily. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, dear,” Amelie says, smiling. “Sit with me?”

“I have to—” he starts.

Amelie smiles wider. “I know. That’s why it won’t take more than two minutes.”

Félix purses his lips. “Punctuality is usually something you value, Mum.” He sits anyways, dropping his bags down to the ground beside the chair.

“It is,” Amelie says, pleased. She reaches out and takes the paper towel off of the plate, revealing two over-hard fried eggs and two slices of bacon. “But I value you getting breakfast more than that. Eat up, love.”

Félix quickly picks up his fork and begins to eat, genuinely hungry once he takes a moment to forget about his appearance, or Kagami, or the fact that he’s driving her to school, or the fact that they have plans to make that a routine. Between bites, though, he asks, “So what’s in the container?”

Amelie smiles wide. “Homemade danishes. Brown sugar and cinnamon ones, and some with homemade strawberry jam. I figured you and Kagami could share some for breakfast once you get to school, since I know it’s still a bit early. How does that sound?”

Félix can’t help the hope growing in his chest at the thought of doing something as simple and normal as that with Kagami—at really changing things up from their rivalry. He nods slowly, finishing his eggs. He starts eating the bacon. “That sounds really good. Thank you. But… when did you make these? The danishes, I mean.”

“Technically, I started them yesterday before you came home—when you texted that you and Kagami would finish an hour at the library and your last period before coming back here. I finished them early this morning while you were asleep,” Amelie says, checking the time. “And, speaking of time and when things occur, you should be getting off to pick Kagami up. Take the danishes?”

Félix nods, finishing his bacon. He stands and picks up his bags, and he grabs the container from beside his mother, leaning over to kiss her quickly on the temple before he’s turning, waving, and heading for the door.

“Goodbye!” he calls out. Keys jingle, and then a door opens. “I love you!” 

The door closes before she can say it back, but, at this point, they both know she returns the sentiment.

~*~

Félix arrives at Kagami’s house fifteen minutes later. She stands outside, having gotten the text just before he left his own driveway, and she walks over to his car. He’s already out and holding the door open for her when she arrives, and she rolls her eyes.

“That’s almost annoying,” she says, getting in and buckling. She sets her bags on the floor. 

Félix only smiles pleasantly and closes her door before he’s heading back to his own seat, where he buckles as well. He turns a bit once he’s settled and he opens the center console, grabbing the container of homemade danishes. He hands the box to her and he closes the console, turning forward in his seat again to start his car. He then carefully starts pulling out of Kagami’s driveway.

She examines the container in her hands. “What’s this?” she asks.

“What it looks like—” Félix supplies, glancing over. He then faces the road and he shrugs. “Danishes. My mum made them, if you’d like. There’s some that are brown sugar, and the others have homemade strawberry jam.” He starts heading for the school. “If you… would like anything else, like coffee, just let me know and we can stop on the way.”

Kagami warily opens the container over her lap, and she sets the lid on her legs, lifting the open container up to her face. She closes her eyes and she sniffs. Her shoulders drop, relaxed. “Mm, do these taste good with coffee? Do you know?”

Félix smiles a bit, still looking at the road. He changes course. “They do. Luckily, we have the time.”

Kagami nods noncommittally. “I have the report printed out in my bag, by the way.”

“Thank you,” Félix says. “Did it still look good this morning?”

Kagami nods. “May I have one of these danishes before some coffee?”

Félix looks over, surprised. “Of course—I brought them for you, eat them how you’d like.”

Kagami takes one of the strawberry jam ones, and she starts to eat it as Félix approaches one of the local cafés.

She finds she enjoys the danish immensely, and in its sweetness, she recalls Amelie’s words from the night before. “I am proud of him—of you both, really, given how much he talks about you—but not because of that top student spot.” There’s something to that, for Kagami—how Amelie, Félix’s mother—is proud of her, but not for her academic achievements. It has Kagami eating and finishing the danish quietly, absorbed fully in it and the feelings it evokes, and she’s not even aware that Félix isn’t in the car beside her or that they’re parked in front of a local café when she’s done. 

Kagami looks up through the windshield, wiping at her mouth and the few crumbs there, and she sees Félix waiting at the front counter. She decides to watch him, relaxing against the passenger side seat, as he orders them both coffee. Minutes later, he comes out with two cups, and he gets back inside the car, passing her one. 

She turns the cup around in her hands, looking at the order scrawled along the side of the cup. Her eyes narrow. “How did you know my order?” she asks him. 

Félix ducks his head, setting his own cup in one of the cupholders between them. He buckles slowly, and then he turns the car on and pulls out of the parking spot in front of the café. 

Kagami watches him the entire time, frowning. “And how did you know I don’t have any allergies, and that I’m not vegetarian or vegan? Frankly, last night I was tempted to tell your mother that I recently did become vegan, if only because it was annoying how you know so much about me.”

“What can I say?” he asks lightly. “I pay attention.”

Kagami glares, but she sips at her coffee. “Really,” she replies, voice flat.

“I do,” he says quietly. “When we eat together, as rare as it is, I pay attention to what you like and don’t like. I also pay attention when you tell me that no, you don’t want to go to The Bloody Stake to eat and study, because you got sick one time you went with your father. I pay attention to your life, too—always have, under the guise of rivalry, but, really, I just care about you. Your father left your mother at a young age, but through and after the divorce for a few years, he would take you to restaurants for dinner. Those were the only times you got to see him. I know he died the summer before our freshman year, because my mum and I went to the funeral, but we stayed in the back. She was a friend of his. That was the only time I’d seen you cry, but you were quiet about it. 

“You’ve cried only twice in our time together aside from that—when I shot forward with my rapier and accidentally cut your calf back in middle school, and we had to go to the nurse’s office; and when you were staying up late one night with me before a test and you were very tired, enough to cry in front of me, loudly, in the town library. I pay attention, Kagami, because I do care. I’ve cared for a long time, because I consider you to be someone important in my life.” He shrugs. “So that’s how I know your coffee order, that you don’t like The Bloody Stake, and that you aren’t vegan or vegetarian, and that, as far as I know, you don’t have any allergies.”

Kagami is quiet a long moment as she sips at her coffee, staring out the windshield. She picks up a brown sugar danish and she takes a bite, chewing slowly. After she swallows, she says quietly, “I’m allergic to sulfates,” she says. “It’s an allergy I picked up from my dad, and it can get deadly with the more exposure I have to it. It’s used as a preservative, a pesticide, and it’s in random things like condiments and sauces and even wood chips for smokers.” She shrugs. “But the only people who know I have the allergy are the school, my mother, my doctor, and the Chem teacher.”

“That’s why you have an N95 with the goggles and gloves when we do the wet labs, right?” Félix asks. “And why you ask me to handle the chemicals—I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized.”

Kagami rolls her eyes. “It’s not something I tell everyone, just like how I don’t tell anyone that I don’t like The Bloody Stake or that I’m not vegan—it’s not important.”

Félix frowns. “Agree to disagree.”

Kagami shrugs. She takes another bite of her danish. “But I did lie, about The Bloody Stake. I hate going there because that’s the only place my dad and I would eat at. We loved the fries and the milkshakes, and I adored their pancakes, their burgers, their grilled cheese, their chicken tenders.” She closes her eyes. “I haven’t gone back because I’ve always considered that place his and mine, and… without him, it isn’t the same. I want it to stay special, you know?”

“So why did you tell Rung that… well, you know. Why’d you tell him The Bloody Stake would work?” He parks them in Kagami’s favorite spot and he turns the car off. 

Kagami bites her lower lip, and she opens her eyes, staring at the cup in her hands. “Mother said not to argue, and Rung isn’t the most willing to compromise or listen to what I want.”

Félix’s hands fall from the wheel, and he turns to look at her, frowning. “I’m sorry.”

Kagami raises her brows half-heartedly. “Are you trying to break your record already, Félix?”

He turns to her fully, shifting in his seat, and he reaches a hesitant hand out across the space between them. With one finger, he brushes her hair back behind one ear. Surprised, she looks at him, and he draws his hand back from her, folding his hands in his lap. “Is there anything I can do?”

“For what?” she asks, voice already sad and defeated.

“For you,” he says quietly. 

Kagami turns back to her coffee and she frowns, shoulders drooping. “I suppose the only thing you can do is to just continue being yourself. The kindness, as strange as it is, is also… nice. Comforting, I guess.”

Félix unbuckles, and he reaches over, taking the coffee gently from her hands. She glances up, confused, but he’s leaning over the console between them, on his knees to reach her best, and he’s wrapping her up in a hug. His arms come around her back, and he leans his head over her shoulder, closing his eyes. He whispers, “Then I’ll keep being kind to you, Kagami. You deserve it much more than the treatment you’ve received from others and I in the past.”

Kagami is silent, shocked, and still. It’s only after another small moment, when Félix starts pulling away, that she slips her arms around his back and she leans into the hug. With her face against his shoulder, she closes her eyes. “Thank you, Félix,” she whispers.

~*~

When the gang gets together that evening, Félix is relaxed and even, he might say, happy. Everything seems to be going right, even as he sits in his living room amidst the meddling friends Adrien has made, and even as he argues back and forth over text with Kagami about the grade they received on their presentation of their book report. That's why, when Alya says what she does fifteen minutes into the visit, his stomach drops.

“I just think that her comment was too convenient,” Alya says, sitting on the floor but leaned against the couch Nino lies on, “Mrs. Tsurugi said “missing door knobs means angry voters,” and she's running against Mr. Agreste, whose reputation stands to be tarnished by this. Plus, if we're working with the theory that the door knobs and the ghost rig are connected, she benefits from the tourist attraction the rig has been labeled as. I’m just saying… it's worth considering.”

“You're right on those points, Alya,” Chloé says, curled up in the chair across from Félix, “but all the town’s rich and powerful benefit from tourist attractions—Mrs. Tsurugi, my dad, Gabriel Agreste…”

“Frankly,” Nino says, stretched out on the couch above Alya, “everyone benefits from the extra business—my parents, Marinette’s parents, Alya's mom. Local businesses and establishments all rake in profits from tourists, so any of them could be culprits for the ghost rig.”

“But who has the means, time, and strong enough motivation?” Alya asks. She pulls her portable from a pocket of her baggy green cargo pants, and she opens it up with a frown. “I looked up the tire tracks pattern on that photo we took, and I figured out who sells those types of tires. I narrowed the search down and those types of tires were only sold to four people in this county: an Amanda Lerkin, Tomoe Tsurugi, a G. Nurno Treddal, and a Jack Corbin. I did background checks on those three, and I found nothing on Treddal, evidence that Corbin was trying to upgrade his car, and evidence that Lerkin was helping her brother on the East Coast where the tires were sent. I don’t see why the tires would be billed directly to Tomoe, so she was my main suspect. Her transactions surrounding the ghost rig were a bit harder to track, but while it is mostly business related, these things could also be helpful to creating the ghost rig.”

“I think you guys are missing a key element here,” Félix says quietly, turning off his phone and pulling his knees up into the chair with him. “Tomoe is blind.”

Chloé shrugs. “So she hired a driver, and she had her employees set the rig up—that would cast suspicion off of her and keep her hands relatively clean, right?”

Félix’s shoulders drop in defeat. “I suppose.”

“So, she benefits from the tourism aspect of the rig, and she benefits from the angry voters over the missing knobs,” Luka says, lying on the floor in front of the other couch. “What next?”

Adrien pauses to think a moment, sat on the couch above Luka. “Should we see if local semi-trucks have gone missing?”

Alya purses her lips. “We could, but it’s unlikely we’d find anything if she’s using one of her own rigs.”

“Let’s check, just to be sure,” Félix says, voice strained.  

Adrien nods, unaware of Félix’s dilemma. “Félix is right.”

Alya sighs, but she turns to her portable and she does some searching for about a minute or two before she shrugs. “None missing in this county or surrounding ones.”

“Maybe whoever it is is smarter than that,” Félix says thinly.

Alya shakes her head. “Unlikely.”

“But still possible.”

“Why are you even fighting this?” Alya asks, looking over with her brows drawn together. “Is it because—”

“It’s nothing,” he says sharply. “Won’t happen again, sorry.”

Adrien glances over, frowning. “Félix, if something is bothering you—”

Félix forces himself to quickly relax and smile at Adrien warmly. “Nothing, like I said. I just like to be sure. Don’t worry about it.”

Adrien doesn’t quite believe him, but he doesn’t push.

“What should we do, though?” Chloé asks. “To get the evidence that she’s who we’re looking for.”

Marinette, sat in the chair beside Félix and with her legs curled up beneath her, shrugs. “Tonight I think we should definitely make the progress of at least trying to find the semi-truck by following its tracks or just driving back and forth out there til we find it. While we do that, I did manage to put a GPS tracker and listening device on Tomoe, so we’ll know where she is and what she says to anyone. Alya and I have been taking turns listening for the past two days, and we sleep when she does, so nothing has escaped our ears.”

Félix tenses. “How did you manage to get those on her?”

Marinette gives him a coy smile. “You’re not the only pickpocket, Félix.”

Luka raises a brow, looking at Alya. “Have you found anything from Tomoe, yet?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing but morally ambiguous things about her parenting and business styles.”

Félix works hard to keep the horrified and ashamed look off of his face at the thought of listening in to Tomoe’s every word and action. He feels even worse when he thinks about what Kagami might say about any of this, and there’s a sickening feeling knotting in his stomach.

Luka nods. 

“Well, we can keep listening while we go looking tonight,” Nino says. He looks to Félix. “Would you be okay to drive again tonight, Félix? I don’t know if I could get us out alive if push came to shove tonight.”

Félix forces himself to nod. 

Adrien smiles a bit. “Should we leave, then? Before it gets too dark, that is.”

Nino shrugs and he sits up on the couch, smiling. “Yeah—I’m ready to be done with this case. I’m not a fan of almost getting run off the road. It’s a bit scarier than gator people or or crazed coal miners or criminals in old scuba or astronaut suits.”

Marinette sighs, nodding. “Agreed.”

~*~

It doesn’t take very long driving back and forth along the cliffside before they happen upon the ghost truck. The only thing, though, is that they happen upon it while it’s not in use—completely by accident. 

Félix brakes hard, completely distracted from his storm of thoughts about Kagami, and his mouth drops open as he faces the front of the semi-truck, Nino’s headlights illuminating the ghostly rig. With the momentum, Adrien and Marinette, beside him on the front bench, rock forward in their seats and against their seatbelts, and, in the back, Nino, Alya, Chloé, and Luka scramble for purchase as they slip forward.

The truck doesn’t move, though they’re nearly surrounded by fog like last time, and there are no frightening sounds of thunder or horns. Everyone stays incredibly still for several long moments.

Marinette is the first out of the van, stepping hesitantly onto the road and moving for the ghost rig. Adrien frantically whispers for her to be careful, scooting along the bench after her. Behind Félix, Alya and Nino open the back doors of the van, and they get out with Luka. 

“I’m content to stay in here,” Chloé says, loud enough that most of them hear. Félix is trying to slow and even his breathing, mind short-circuited and hands impossibly tight around Nino’s steering wheel at the sight of the rig. Even with it stationary and silent, he can’t help his quickened heart beat and the feeling that he’ll be crushed with a heavy weight. He feels exactly like he had in that impossible moment before, when he couldn’t decide the gang’s fate as the rig prepped to ram them into the dark waters of the cove. 

Despite Félix’s fears, Marinette moves towards the rig cautiously. Adrien, Alya, Nino, and Luka follow her. Soon, she disappears behind a cloud of fog. Félix’s breath hitches, and he can’t seem to breathe as the others disappear, too. A moment later, both his and Chloé’s phones ding with a message.

Chloé looks over at Félix, biting her lip. Seeing the state he’s in, she reads off the text to him, and then the others as more come in. “Alya says Marinette found fog machines on a timer along the underside of the semi-truck. Luka apparently found the truck is only painted to look old, and Alya identified the tires as new. Marinette is looking at some buttons inside the truck that are connected to different effects—the horn, the thunder, the lights, and a button for a door. They’re heading back now to try and get us to come with to investigate some more,” she reads. Alya, Marinette, Adrien, Nino, and Luka reappear from the fog as she finishes. Marinette and Alya are considerably excited, and Nino and Adrien appear disappointed. Luka looks to be thinking. 

They all make it back to the van, and Marinette sighs, looking at Félix and Chloé. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, guys—it’s empty right now, and—”

Before she can finish, there’s a thunderous clap, and the headlights of the truck turn on. The semi’s engine starts up. Everyone is in the van before Félix can open his mouth and find the words to tell them to get inside, and he turns the van’s ignition over before reversing sharply, hardly even glancing in the rearview mirror as he does so. He only turns out of habit, though he glances back as he speeds up. It doesn’t take long for the rig to shoot off its horn sound and follow. 

Adrien shouts over the loud noises from the semi that he’ll watch the front, and Félix turns his full attentions to reversing to safety or a spot to quickly turn around in. They speed around one turn, one of Félix’s hands in a death grip on the back of the front bench and his other hand loosely holding the steering wheel, gliding over it and back as he maneuvers them around the cliffside safely. 

At a warning shout from Adrien, Félix presses his foot harder on the gas pedal. They speed up, reaching almost deadly speeds as they glide over the road around another curve, and Adrien says, in a bit more of a normal volume, that the semi has disappeared. Félix slows, and he pulls off of the road to one side, almost dizzy with an emotion he can’t name. He turns back in his seat slowly, breathing unsteady. 

Almost as soon as he feels calmer, the sound of thunder erupts through the air. He struggles to breathe, hands fumbling as he maneuvers out of reverse, catching the glint of headlights behind him, and he presses hard on the gas once he’s in drive. He hardly breathes at all as he spins the van back around one bend and around another. His mind scrambles for purchase on an idea that might work, and just as his body is shuddering in a gasp, his hand on the gear shift clenches. Félix spins them around in place and reverses them into a darkened spot cut out from the cliffside before the ghost truck can fully come around the last bend after them. Félix shuts off the headlights and he ducks down, gesturing frantically, wordlessly, for everyone to get down. He closes his eyes shut tight and he tries to breathe.

(He wants to tell himself that his current state is only because of his fear concerning things with Kagami, but, frankly, if he’s honest with himself, it makes more sense that his state is about the ghost truck. All of the lessons on defensive driving don’t prepare you for going up against a murderous someone in a semi. All those lessons certainly don’t account for being on a cliffside, either, or being in the dark on top of that all.)

(If he’s honest with himself, he’s genuinely scared when it comes to the ghost truck—ghost or not. It’s terrifying, being taught all that you can about how to defend yourself, only to have someone bring a bazooka to a knife fight. It makes you terrified beyond all reason. It makes you do stupid, not-thought-out things. It makes you lose most of your reason and try to find one of the few people that makes you still feel sane and normal and safe.)

The ghost truck passes them, screeching into the night moments later. No one moves for another few minutes after that, and then, finally, Félix sits up, utterly and completely defeated. He’s holding a knife against the bazooka of life. There’s little he can do, in this moment. 

Still, he shifts the van into drive again, and he can’t help but drive a bit over the speed limit as he heads back towards the edge of Crystal Cove.

After several minutes, Nino leans forward over the back of the front bench. “Félix?”

Félix’s mouth is in a thin line, and his hands hold the steering wheel in a death grip, but he glances back at Nino through the rearview mirror. “Hm?”

“Where are we going…?”

Félix shrugs. “To get food. I’m sure you all are hungry. I’ll pay, of course.”

“I’m not hungry,” Marinette, Luka, Chloé, and Alya chorus. Nino and Adrien nod in agreement.

Félix doesn’t budge. “Well, I… am.”

Nino raises a brow. “Alright… do we have to go out of town to get food, though?”

Félix shakes his head. “We aren’t going out of town—just along the edge.”

Nino nods slowly, and he hesitantly pulls back. “Alright… if you say so, Félix.”

It isn’t much longer before they’re in sight of their destination, and Félix relaxes despite the nagging feeling that he shouldn’t be, that something is wrong. He parks in front of the restaurant, and he quickly turns the van off and gets out, heading inside. The rest of the gang warily follows him moments later, all confused and slightly concerned. 

“Welcome to The Bloody Stake,” a waitress boredly says. Félix passes by her quickly, hardly waving her off. The rest of the gang follows limply behind, and Marinette and Alya discuss with Luka what they’re hearing in their earpieces hooked up to Tomoe. Adrien, Chloé, and Nino follow Félix between them, watching as he scans the restaurant.

It’s only a moment before he’s walking quickly for Kagami, who sits alone in a booth, picking dejectedly at a basket of fries. A few damp napkins sit crumpled at her side, and she looks as though she’s been crying. Félix has a dazed look in his eye. 

Nino glances at the time on his phone—7:47 p.m.—and he walks a bit faster, reaching out to catch Félix by the arm.

“Hey, Félix, I think she’s waiting for someone—maybe we shouldn’t interrupt—”

Félix waves Nino off as Kagami looks up, surprised to hear his name. Félix crouches beside the end of her booth seat, a torn look on his face, and he looks at her.

“Félix?” Kagami asks, brows drawing together. “What—”

“Did you get here safely?” he asks. “Are you alright?”

Nino frowns, and he, Chloé, and Adrien step back warily. Marinette, Alya, and Luka come up behind them, talking loudly enough that Félix leans closer to talk to Kagami, trying to focus on just her.

“Did you get here safely?” he repeats after she doesn’t say anything. “And are you okay?”

“I just think Mrs. Tsurugi has something to hide,” Marinette says behind him. “With what she just said, it makes it seem like…” she quiets as she continues, and Félix can’t hear her.

“I made it here safely,” Kagami says, raising her brows. “Why are you so concerned? And why are your—Adrien’s friends talking about my mother?”

Alya pushes between Nino and Chloé, staring at Kagami eagerly. “Do you know about the ghost truck that’s been terrorizing people on the cliffside?”

Félix shakes his head, expression getting desperate. “Forget about that and them, Kagami—did he not show?”

Kagami frowns, looking at Alya. She glances down at Félix, tears welling up quickly in her already red-rimmed eyes. “Explain why they’re asking me this, Félix.”

“Did he not show?” Félix repeats, breathing becoming uneven. 

Kagami ignores Félix and she looks back at Alya. “I’ve heard, yes. Now, explain why you were talking about my mother.”

Alya bites her bottom lip. “We’re… investigating her as part of the disappearance of the door knobs and as the owner of the ghost truck. Do you know if she’s been suspicious at all, or disappearing for long periods of time, or talking in excess about—”

Kagami’s expression turns almost angry as she looks back down at Félix, a few tears slipping over her cheeks. “Félix? What—why are they investigating my mother? Félix—explain, please.”

Félix looks almost hurt. He hesitantly reaches up to wipe the tears from her face, but she pushes his hand sharply away. His shoulders drop, echoing how defeated he feels. The gang quiets behind him, shrinking back some at seeing a glimpse of her rage.

“Do you not have any other suspects? You have to investigate my mother, first, and right now? Don’t you know how much this would—how much she would—how this could—how you could mess things up for her?” Kagami pushes Félix from the edge of the booth, and she quickly steps out of it, walking a bit aways from him, her hands shaking. Tears fall quickly over her cheeks, and she wipes at them frustratedly. Félix falls back on his butt and hands, though he quickly moves to stand, reaching out for her.

“Kagami, it’s—it’s not like that—it’s just, she—she fits—”

Kagami jerks from his grasp, expression spasming. “You would accuse my mother because she fits? I suppose you have a considerable amount of court-admissible evidence to support this?”

Félix flounders. “She has the money and the means to get a semi-truck and make it look like a ghost truck,” he says quietly. “And she has the motive to make Gabriel look bad for the election and to increase tourism.”

“So do half the rich in this town!” Kagami shouts, whole body shaking now. “You would accuse my mother amidst any other person that fits that criteria, Félix? You’re just like everyone else, then—the people who destroyed my car, the people who egg her corporation, the people who ignore me at school, the news reporters who nag us, the people who send us hate mail and threats, and the colleges who deny me because of my name. You’re attacking, just like them, and you don’t even care to look past your blinding anger or take the time to. And to think that I was being nice to you! That you were being nice to me!” she cries, reaching shaking hands up to hold her face. Tears are quickly spilling over her face, but she glares at a hollowing Félix all the while. “I was right to be suspicious of you, Félix. I was right to be cautious and to fight you at every time, wasn’t I? It was all a joke, all a ploy, wasn’t it? It wasn’t real.” At his silence, she works to make her expression a cold, impassive slate, even as she continues to cry and tremble. “I was right to hate you, then.”

With that, Kagami walks quickly out of the other end of the restaurant, leaving a paper-thin and breathless Félix behind.

~*~

It takes getting kicked out of The Bloody Stake to get Félix to move.

The rest of the gang follows along beside him—Nino and Adrien on either side of him, Chloé in front, and Luka and Marinette following a bit behind. Alya hangs between the lattermost two and Félix, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry, Félix, I didn’t—I didn’t know. I’m so sorry…”

Félix shakes his head slowly. Adrien pulls Félix around to the passenger side door, and Nino gets in on the driver’s side, taking the keys from an immobile Félix, who Adrien buckles into the middle seat. Everyone else moves to sit quietly in the back, all of them apologetic except for Chloé.

Nino goes to start the van and reverse it, and then he sees something under the windshield wiper. He rolls down the driver’s side window and he scrambles to get the envelope under the wiper. As he does so, Alya leans over to put a hesitant hand on Félix’s shoulder. 

“I’m really, really sorry, Félix. If I had known, I…”

Félix shakes his head. “She apparently hated me anyways,” he says quietly. “That just broke the facade. It’s for the best that I know now, as opposed to finding out later.”

Alya quiets, frowning. Her shoulders drop and she pulls her knees up to her chest in the captain’s chair she sits in beside Chloé. 

“I don’t know if she hated you,” Adrien replies, just as quiet. 

Nino pulls the letter into the van, but he looks to Félix, whose eyes are a bit glazed over.

“You all heard her,” he murmurs. ““I was right to hate you.” And I don’t think she thinks of me any more fondly than that, after what happened in there.”

“What did happen?” Chloé asks, her voice not quite soft enough to be comforting. “I thought you guys hated each other.”

Félix looks down at his hands in his lap. “Like I said, we’re different. We… had something else. Not quite friends, not just rivals. Not really anything definable, but it…” He drags in a ragged breath. “I didn’t hate her. I suppose that’s what made it feel different to me, and her hatred of me made everyone else think we hated each other.”

Adrien squeezes one of Félix’s hands. “What can we do for you?”

Félix closes his eyes. “I came back here because I was scared. I’m terrified to drive with that truck going around, always forcing my hands into putting us into near-death situations. I came here because things with Kagami feel… solid. Firm. Unmoving, and not scary. But I messed that up.” He looks up, taking a breath. “I want to find whoever is operating this rig, and I want them off of the road. I can at least do that.”

Nino holds up the envelope in his hand. On the front of it is Lady E written in calligraphy, and on the back is a red wax rose seal. “Well, this could help us to do that.”

Alya glances up. “Where was that, Nino?”

“Under the windshield wiper.”

Félix takes another breath. “Let’s open it, then. I want to get this case over with.”

Nino nods and he twists his hat around so it sits backwards on his head. He then carefully opens the envelope, picking the wax rose off of the paper, and he pulls a plain CD from the envelope. He turns it over, brows drawing together. 

“Put it in the CD player?” Alya asks, nervous. She picks at the hem of the bottom of her pants leg. 

Nino slips the CD into the player and he turns the van’s ignition over. He presses play on the CD player, and there’s a moment of silence before Lady E’s velvety voice rolls through the van’s speakers. 

“Greetings, Mystery Incorporated,” she says softly. There’s a bit of amusement in her voice. Nino shivers. “If you want to solve the mystery, follow the fog. Remember, crystal can’t open doors like a diamond. Talk soon.”

The audio falls silent. Nino pulls the CD out, as there was only the one track on it, and he slips it back into the envelope, passing it back to Alya. “Well, that was unhelpful.”

“It was a clue,” Marinette says.

Nino sighs. “If she knows, why doesn’t she just tell us?”

“Her creepy CDs won’t be admissible in court,” Luka says. “Nor will her word of mouth.”

“Luka’s right, babe,” Alya says. “We need to find the evidence ourselves for this to work. Come on, let’s break it down. Follow the fog to solve the mystery.”

“So we should go back to where the ghost truck is, and follow it into the fog somehow,” Adrien says. “How do we do that if it’s chasing us?”

“I suppose we find a way to get around it and follow it instead,” Nino says. He purses his lips and he twists his hat around and around again on his head. “Félix, do you…” He trails off and sighs, looking out the windshield at The Bloody Stake. 

Félix glances over at him, expression one of acceptance. “You would like me to do the driving?”

Nino bites at his lower lip. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble… I just—I’m good to drive most of the time, but I get worried with those cliffs—”

“Understandable,” Félix says quietly. “I’ll handle the driving, then. Do you want to switch spots?”

Nino looks over at him, frowning a bit. “That’s why you came here, isn’t it? She’s the only thing in your life not… touched by all this. You asked if she was okay, but you looked more like you just needed to see and be near her.”

Félix frowns and unbuckles, rolling his eyes half-heartedly. “You’re more perceptive than most give you credit for, Nino.”

“We brought her into it,” Alya whispers. “We forced her into things by accusing her mom, and it hurt you both.”

Félix doesn’t say anything to this.

“We’re sorry,” Marinette says quietly from the back of the van. “We’re really, really sorry.”

Félix closes his eyes and breathes slowly through his nose. “I… know. I just would like you guys to be more cautious about accusing people—maybe let people who can be calmer and more emotionally appropriate do the questioning in the future, like Nino, Adrien, or I.”

“I can be calm and emotionally appropriate,” Chloé says, a bit offended.

“You really can’t be,” half of the van choruses. 

“You get angry quickly,” Félix says.

“And you don’t do well with seeing other people’s perspectives,” Luka says, raising a brow.

“And you can be very forceful,” Adrien says.

Chloé rolls her eyes. “Fine. Leave the emotional bits to Nino, Adrien, Félix, and Luka. Luka can act, when it counts.”

Luka purses his lips, unsure whether to take the comment as a compliment or an insult.

Félix shakes his head. “Can we get on with the case, now? I just want this all over with by tonight, and I want to go home and crawl into my bed and not think about anything for the rest of the weekend,” he says with a sigh.

“I second that,” Nino says, getting out and holding the door open for Félix, who gets out after him. They switch spots, and Félix closes the driver’s side door behind him. They each buckle, and Félix glances in the rearview mirror with a raised brow. “Are we done being vulnerable? I can only take so much in one night.”

Marinette nods, crossing her arms over her chest. “Yeah, we’re ready. Just be glad I didn’t get all mushy on you with my apology, Félix.”

He rolls his eyes and turns the key in the ignition, starting the van. “I’m thrilled, Dupain-Cheng.”

Marinette’s mouth twitches in a bit of a smile, and then she goes quiet with the rest of the van as Félix drives out of The Bloody Stake’s parking lot and heads for the not-technically-haunted cliffside.

~*~

It doesn’t take long til they find the fog, though they’re surprised—and on edge the entire time they drive through it—when the terrifying thunder and horn doesn’t follow them in or come at them head-on again. Soon, they turn off onto the side of the road and park the van in a spot where it (hopefully) won’t get crushed by the ghost truck, but is still accessible to them in case they need to escape quickly. Once they park, Alya digs through one of the bags at her feet, and she passes out flashlights and a few disposable cameras. Félix, Nino, and Adrien get out of the front seats, and out of the back comes Chloé and Luka. Alya situates her portable, a better camera, some tracking devices, and some walkie talkies in a bag she swings over her side. Marinette pulls on her large trapping backpack, her toolbox strapped to the top of it, and, as always, she wears her toolbelt at her hips.

The gang came prepared in dark outfits once more for what they hope is a quick investigation and trapping evening. Marinette wears a pair of dark skinny jeans, some beat-up hiking boots, and a fitted black tee with a dark sweater half-zipped up. Her hair is done up in two neat space buns. Beside her, Alya wears some dark baggy cargo pants and a black turtleneck with a dark orange zip-up of Nino’s, and she wears some beat-up Converse. Her hair is in a high ponytail. Félix wears a pair of dark pants, a plain black fitted tee, and some dirty sneakers with a baggy hoodie of Marinette’s. Adrien is dressed similarly, though he wears a pair of hiking boots borrowed from Luka. Nino wears a dark hoodie and some black cargo pants with a pair of his old sneakers. Chloé wears a black fitted tee, some black leggings, and a pair of black winter boots. She also wears a black jean jacket and her hair is up in a simple bun. 

Once everyone is accounted for and with their flashlights, with strict orders not to separate from the group, the gang heads around the car and over to the road to investigate.

It isn’t long before they find the tire tracks again. They follow them for a bit, watching as the tracks veer off of the road and straight into the cliffside. The gang groups around the tracks, and Félix, Marinette, Luka, and Alya crouch to the ground, examining the marks.

“They run right up to the rocks,” Marinette says. “Like they went right through.”

Alya looks at the face of the rocks. “Can you tell what kind these are, Luka?”

“Think maybe they’re fake?” Félix asks.

Luka turns to the face of the rocks, and he leans close, smelling them. He turns his flashlight on and he scans the face of them carefully. “They are,” he says, frowning.

“That means there’s a secret passage, and this is the door,” Marinette says. “I bet the ghost truck uses this to get around so fast—the cliffs here are full of caverns, and it wouldn’t be too much work to get some fake rocks and conceal the entrances with the fog like they’ve done here. I’d even bet the fog is only present due to more fog machines posted up around the entrance, but we’ll have to see.”

“We should split up, then, yes?” Luka asks, turning from the rocks. “So we can cover more ground faster?”

Alya sighs. “I didn't want to, but I did bring some walkies with me just in case.”

Marinette nods, frowning. “Alright, we should just split up into three groups—Alya and Chloé should stay here to make see if the passage opens, and Nino, Félix, and Adrien can search one side of the passage, looking for evidence and taking pictures of things like fog machines or a spot to open the passage, and Luka and I will do the same on the other side of the passage. That sound okay?”

Everyone nods, and the gang splits up. 

Notes:

🧍‍♂️ so uhm. that happened l-o-l 😝😬😭

worry not, though!! feligami shall be repaired. eventually . and boy will it be repaired in an… 🤭 exciting manner. (im so excited about episode nine yall. we’re only on episode three but . ohmgh. augh. thinking about more episodes has me with my head in my hands, since this chapter, not even being the end of episode three, sends us just past 60K… 😨😨 crazy to do the math of like. how far we’ll be word count and chapter count -wise by ep 9… anyways l-o-l just wait on the feligami, it’ll be righted 😉)

Chapter 12: chapter twelve

Summary:

The gang searches for an entrance to the caverns the ghost rig has been protecting, and Félix grapples with what happened at The Bloody Stake.

Notes:

two and a half months is much better than last time’s nine month gap right 🤡 anyhow, hope you enjoy this chapter after… well… 🤡 chapter eleven 😇

Marinette and Luka work on one side of the passageway, scanning the cliffside for suspicious, could-be-a-trigger-for-a-secret-door rocks or anything that looks like it could be a button. Alya and Chloé stay close to the passage’s door, but they keep hidden behind some conspicuously-placed rocks on either side of the entrance. Félix, Nino, and Adrien work along the other side of the passageway, though Félix mostly walks around aimlessly, processing the past two days’ events. Nino and Adrien keep quiet and search around him, feeling his lack of presentness but giving him space.

Just the day before, he’d been holding Kagami’s hand—being vulnerable with her, twirling her around in the dining room, doing the dishes with her, driving her home, and offering to drive her in the mornings and evenings after school. And, well, today… today he drove her to school, had coffee and danishes with her, hugged her, and he ruined it all by bringing the gang of mystery solvers to her with their theories and suspicions, where she could be affected by it. 

Well, technically, he hadn’t asked them to come in, but he hadn’t told them to stay back, either. He’d actually offered them dinner and wordlessly walked inside. He hadn’t been thinking, and he had ruined everything because of it.

His shoulders droop, and he sags against the cliffside, sighing and closing his eyes. There’s a click as he leans against the rocks, but he ignores it, turning and leaning his face against the rocks, as if that will make him feel more… well, grounded, he supposes. Grounded in his idiocy, in his stupidity, in his regret—

His radio crackles to life, and his body tenses against the rock. 

“Whatever you guys did, the passage opened!” Alya radioes to the group. 

Félix pulls back from the rock he was leaning on, brows drawn together, and he leans back against it. It clicks again.

“Aaaand now it’s closed. That’s definitely the button,” she says.

Nino and Adrien come over, surprised. “Did you find it, Félix?”

“Must be you three,” Marinette radioes.

“We haven’t found anything but bugs, rocks, and more bugs,” Luka says.

Nino clicks the button to speak on their walkie talkie. “I think Félix found it—it was just on the cliffside, and he bumped into it,” he says. 

Félix’s expression softens at Nino’s white lie. Thanks, he mouths. Nino nods, smiling softly a bit.

“Well, mark it or memorize where it is and open the passage again!” Marinette says through the radio, her excitement evident even through the crackly device. “We’ll meet you back at the door with Alya and Chloé.”

Félix nods and he presses against the wall again, waiting for the click to sound before he steps back. Nino and Adrien both smile at him, and Adrien puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey,” he says softly. “We’ll help you make things right with Kagami, Félix. Don’t worry.”

Félix’s expression drops some, but he shrugs. “I don’t know if it’s possible for things to be right with her, Adrien, but… thank you. I appreciate the sentiment, at least.”

Nino shakes his head. “Things will be okay, I know it. You guys didn’t hate each other—that much has been obvious the past few days at least.”

Adrien nods. “Nino and I saw you guys come in to homeroom today, and you both looked so much lighter and, well… happier. We even had someone next to us asking if you guys started dating or something, to which Nino had said—”

Nino cuts Adrien off, gently punching him in the arm and shaking his head. 

Félix rolls his eyes. “He probably said we were close to that, didn’t he? Or that we secretly have been this whole time?” He asks lightly, as if the idea doesn’t make his regrets feel even more suffocating. He shakes his head, but he manages to smile half-heartedly at Nino and Adrien. “Well, I’m sure they’ll all be disappointed come Monday.”

Nino shakes his head, frowning. “Ignore everyone else, Félix.” He throws an arm around both Félix and Adrien’s shoulders, pulling them closer. “All that matters is we’re all friends, and we’ll protect each other, and we’ll get Kagami back to liking you, again. ‘Cause that’s what friends do, and Kagami really did like you, Félix.”

“And how would you know?” Félix asks dryly as they come back into sight of everyone else. 

“Because I have a gift for seeing romance,” Nino says, grinning. “Like how I saw me and Alya getting together, Luka and Mari back in sophomore year, Mari and Adrien soon, Luka and Chloé as soon as they pull their heads out of their asses, and, well, you and Kagami. I can see it,” he says. “And I can see quadruple dates in our futures.”

Adrien laughs, blushing some, but he rolls his eyes. “If you say so, Nino.”

Félix raises a brow, but he’s smiling a bit, infected by Nino’s faith. “Sure, sure.”

Nino grins. “Trust me, guys. It’s all gonna happen.”

The three boys come near to the rest of the group, and Nino drops his arms from around them, quickly moving to twist his hat nervously around his head. The passageway is open, but only darkness greets them, almost tangible as it seeps out towards them. Nino shivers, glad they all have flashlights.

“Ready?” Marinette asks, clicking on her flashlight and grinning. She peers into the darkness behind her with her flashlight, and she turns back to grin at the rest of the gang. “I have a good feeling about tonight.”

“I hope you’re right,” Nino says with a sigh. “I don’t particularly like going into cavernous dark spaces where bugs and bats and murderous people driving semis frequent.”

Alya reaches out, smiling a bit, and she grabs Nino’s hand, pulling him closer. She squeezes his hand and she leans up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. “I’ll be right by your side, and we won’t let anything happen to you, babe.”

Nino nods. “Yeah, I know, I just… what if’s, and all.”

Alya nods, and she squeezes his hand again. She looks to the rest of the group. “No splitting up again now, alright? We should stick together, since we don’t know what’s going to happen in there or how easily we could get lost. That being said, we should also lead a trail back here in case we need a quick escape.”

Marinette nods, and she steps just inside the passage, turning on her flashlight. The rest of the gang follows quietly, keeping close behind.

~*~

The tire tracks from outside continue into the cavern, and it doesn’t take long before they find something that has them all frozen, flashlights held out in front of them. The rope, their trail back to the entrance of the passageway, even drops from Marinette’s hand, but she hardly notices it as she and the rest of the gang take in their surroundings.

Around them are piles and piles of glittering crystal door knobs, and tire tracks from outside continue around and under the piles, veering off into the darkness in many spots, but the main attraction is the door knobs. 

Marinette realizes she’s dropped her rope, and she shakily crouches and picks up the remaining rope before she stands again, walking quickly over to the nearest pile. The rest of the gang follows, and though they had vowed not to split up again, they each head for different piles, examining them for clues and just generally taking everything in as they catalog the evidence on their disposables and their phones. 

It’s a few minutes before Alya calls out for the rest of them, walking towards the middle point between a few piles. In her hands, she holds a journal. She holds her flashlight up over the pages, and as the gang converges around her, she starts speaking.

“Remember that diamond thief about twenty years back? The one that was never found, and the only suspect disappeared?”

Nino shrugs. “My mom talks about it sometimes, yeah. She has an article on it framed in her bookstore. Is this…?”

Alya nods. “Supposedly, this is the journal of that one suspect. He confesses here that he and his partner stole the diamond, but before his partner could do anything, he switched the diamond out with a crystal in a door knob. The only thing is, he doesn’t reveal in here which door knob he switched the diamond with. He was afraid his partner would find the journal.”

“So that’s why nearly all of the door knobs in Crystal Cove are missing,” Chloé says. 

Alya nods. “It seems so.”

Marinette shifts on her feet, frowning. “I suppose just about anyone who could have found the journal would have been interested enough to try and find it.”

Luka nods and glances around the cavern. “Should we trap the culprit now, or lure them out someplace?”

“I don’t think we could set a good trap for whatever comes in here—we can’t say whether it will be a person or the truck that comes back, and, as much as I hate to admit it, I don’t have much to trap a semi-truck,” Marinette says, crossing her arms over her chest. “I think the best thing to do would be to try and lure it out, and I can throw down a tire spike strip, but we have to be careful to have the truck following us at a certain distance. When I throw out the strip, we need to keep very clear of the truck. We should lure them out to a clearing where there’s no risk of anyone getting hurt.”

The rest of the gang nod in unison, and Nino looks to Félix, biting his lip. “Ah—”

Félix gives him a carefully soft smile that just barely reaches his eyes. “I can do the driving.”

Nino relaxes quickly. “Thanks, man.”

“We should probably get out of here before there's a chance the ghost rig returns,” Adrien says, shifting nervously on his feet. Chloé and Nino both nod. Alya snaps the journal in her hands shut and slips it into her bag, and Marinette starts going back the way they came, her steps quick, even as she bundles up the rope in her arms. The rest of the gang quickly follows, each of them growing antsy.

Félix idly turns over the idea of driving until they find the ghost rig—the idea of seeking the death trap out. He’s really just trying his best not to focus on anything Kagami-related until the case is over, and he's home, in his bed, and ready to fall apart. 

So, in efforts to keep his mind off of things: the idea of seeking out the source of what is quickly becoming a core fear of his is an intriguing notion, to say the least. It makes him almost wish he had more fears, to see if there is a point for each of them where he has to be braver for a mere moment, if only to seek out the source of said fear. Does one afraid of drowning ever have to seek out the lake they nearly drowned in as a kid? Does one afraid of heights ever have to seek out the place where that fear developed? Does one afraid of small, enclosed spaces—he knows that one. Nevermind. Does one afraid of spiders—

He thinks this is a stupid train of thought. He thinks it means nothing—it’s inconsequential, simply stupid and useless—in the face of anything that has occurred the past two days. He wants to be out of this cave. He wants to be home. He wants to be able to go back in time and to stop himself from inviting the gang of mystery solvers into the restaurant after him. He wants to go back in time and right things so he can ask Kagami again why she was crying—to ask her again, but to have much higher chances of receiving a response. He wants to know why she was crying. (He wonders if it was because of Rung. The thought makes him want to punch a hole through the pompous man’s face. He wants to cave in Rung’s skull for hurting Kagami by not showing up. Mostly, though, Félix wants to somehow quell the feeling of his own body caving in on itself for having hurt her in other, somehow more deep-cutting, violently emotional ways. He doesn't think that punching Rung would help that feeling, but, then again, he recalls how the man doesn't care for Kagami’s wants, and the urge to punch Rung returns. It doesn't stop the feeling that Félix has done so terribly wrong by Kagami by making her think none of his care for her was real. It doesn't stop the feeling. It doesn't stop the feeling. It doesn't stop—the feeling. Will anything, he wonders?) 

Despite Félix’s inner turmoil, the gang is soon out of the cave and headed back for the van. They file back into the same seats as before, though Marinette and Luka sit on the floor in the back, setting up the tire spike strip so that they're ready for the trap. 

Félix starts up the van and adjusts the rearview mirror slightly. “Everyone secure?”

A chorus of yeses and close variations answers him, and he takes a deep breath, pulling out onto the road. He knows where he wants to head, but he calls back to the rear of the van to make sure: “Were there any openings to the caves near that one clearing with the big oak?”

Marinette nods, though Félix can't quite see it despite the flashlight Alya holds out over the floor of the van and the moonlight filtering dimly through the back windows of the van. “There's two, both of which the ghost rig probably covered.”

“That area is sometimes used by teens and young adults looking for somewhere secluded,” Alya chimes in, “and the oddly-shaped rocks create a bit of a wall between the middle of the clearing and the edge of the cliffside, giving them the privacy they want from the road.”

Félix nods. “A good spot for the semi to crash, then, yeah? A wide area, clear of civilians for the most part, and any civilians who are there are safe behind the big rocks?”

Marinette shrugs.

“It could work, yeah,” Luka says, before hissing as he pinches his fingers by accident in the contraption on the floor.

“I doubt the rig would follow us very far from the caves,” Félix notes almost absentmindedly, driving just above the speed limit. His hands are rigid on the steering wheel, but he flexes and stretches them out carefully, loosening his hold. His eyes scan the road behind and in front of him constantly, his ears just as aware of his surroundings.

When Chloé speaks up quietly, in the captain’s chair behind him, Félix jumps slightly. “That makes sense. Whoever is driving has a lot of territory to protect, and they wouldn't waste time chasing us super far from that territory.”

Adrien nods, but he quickly sighs and shakes out his hands in front of him. While Nino nervously fidgets with his hat in his hands—thankfully not on his head, Félix might have unbuckled him and chucked him further back into the van otherwise—Adrien rolls his passenger-side window down, and then after a minute, he rolls it up again. He's about to roll it down after another moment, fingers tapping speedily away along his thigh, when Félix hisses, “Adrien.”

Adrien stops. “Sorry,” he breathes.

Félix shakes his head. “Just try not to worry, you'll freak me out even more.”

“You're freaked out?” Chloé asks dryly. “Couldn't tell.”

He mumbles some unintelligible curses. 

“Hm?” Chloé asks sweetly.

Before Félix can mouth off a more intelligible reply, there's a booming clap of thunder behind them. Instantly, Félix’s hands tighten on the wheel. He forcibly relaxes them, even as he speeds up and glances in the rear-view mirror. 

“Four miles to the clearing,” he calls back to Marinette and Luka. 

“Got it,” Marinette calls back.

“The semi is gaining on us, Félix,” Alya calls back, her voice going up a few pitches.

Félix doesn't respond, only presses harder on the gas as he slips around one bend, and then another, and he clenches his jaw. Three and a half miles. Three and a half miles. I just have to get us another three and a half miles, he thinks.

Behind them, the ghost rig roars.

Nino and Adrien look back at Marinette and Luka. “Is there anything we can do?” Adrien asks. Nino bites his lip so hard it bleeds.

Luka looks over quickly. “Ask Félix how much further.”

“Three and a half miles,” Félix calls out. His hands ache to tighten over the steering wheel, but he keeps them loose as he swerves around another bend, missing hitting another car by a hair. He keeps one eye on the road and one on the ghost rig in his mirrors, watching to make sure the semi doesn't change course. 

As terrifying as it is, he's relieved it continues tailing him. Félix wouldn't want another person in danger, and he’d be stuck between a metaphorical rock, two metaphorical hard places, and the very real, very cold drop off of a cliff if he had to figure out how to protect someone in another car from a semi-truck clearly ready to risk it all, murder charges included, for a diamond in a door knob. Even so, he speeds up a bit more.

“Two and a half miles,” he calls out, interrupting whatever Nino had been saying.

“Well,” Luka says, “we could use some extra hands back here if Félix doesn't need them up there.” 

Félix shakes his head slightly, and Adrien and Nino are tumbling over the bench and into the back of the van in the next moment, having unbuckled unbeknownst to Félix. He glances back at the rig quickly, just as it blares its horn, inching closer. Félix assesses the estimated distance left, and shouts for everyone to get back from the door. 

Only a few seconds pass, but it’s enough for the rest of the gang to slip back up against the captains chairs.

Félix slows the van.

The semi rams into them, sending them rocking forward several feet down the road they’re on, and as soon as he feels steady traction beneath the tires once more, Félix puts the gas pedal almost to the floor. “Get ready!” he calls. “One and a half miles!”

The gang scrambles back for the doors, and Félix increases the speed slightly, drawing the distance between him and the rig to a yard, and then four feet, and then five. As they near the half-mile mark, he stretches it to two yards, even as the rig thunders behind them. As they reach the start of the last bend, veering close to the designated clearing, the back of the van’s doors swing open. With Chloé and Alya holding Adrien and Nino, who hold Marinette and Luka inside, the lattermost two toss out the tire spike strip onto the road in front of the rig. Everyone is pulled inside and the doors are quickly shut, and this signals Félix to swing the van around and begin reversing, so Félix and everyone can watch to make sure everything is falling into place.

The ghost rig drives into the tire spikes after attempting to brake sharply, but its momentum around the bend sends the rig continuing forward, until the back end turns to be almost ninety degrees with the front part of the semi, the back end skidding into the grassy clearing. The momentum slows to a stop, and the rig threatens to tip over. It stays upright.

There's a long minute of silence.

Marinette is the first to exit the van, something that Félix almost expects at this point. Luka, Alya, and Nino follow. Adrien and Chloé are slower, having only recently become accustomed to venturing out into dangers like these. Félix, dangers aside, has just bravely faced a recently discovered fear of his. He is the last to exit the van, but he leaves it running. Just in case.

The gang slowly approaches the ghost rig in three small groups. It is a quiet affair, their approach. They each move a bit robotically—still wary, still afraid, still winding down from the adrenaline rush.

Marinette is the first to reach the ghost rig. She climbs up to reach the door, Luka, Nino, and Alya just behind her. Just behind them are Adrien and Chloé, and Félix is still nearing them. 

As Marinette grabs the handle of the door, pulling it, said door flies open, flinging her already mostly-airborne form back into the air. Félix is already jogging closer when she's inevitably caught by her friends, but he doesn't slow, rounding the rest of the gang to stand in front of Alya—who hasn't backed away from the rig’s open door, except to take a single step towards where the others help Marinette up.

It's just Félix’s luck that the person who steps from the ghost rig, shaking out their limbs and cursing the mystery solvers out, is Rung Ladderton, because he's been wanting to punch that smug, pompous asshole for at least two days now. Maybe more like three… or four… or, well, he doesn't care to count. Ladderton’s treatment of Kagami had already hammered in a few nails for the man’s much-needed coffin. Ladderton putting Adrien and Adrien’s friends in insurmountable danger the past few days sorts out the many other nails needed to make his coffin, and the way Ladderton pushed Marinette out of the way is merely the last one necessary.

Félix pulls Ladderton down from the steps up to the rig by his stupid ascot, and he winds up a fist to punch that smug look off of his smug face. Félix hits him square in the temple, and it feels good to have just that one good crack resounding through the air. It feels even better to have Ladderton look shocked for a moment.

He’s restricted from punching Ladderton again—he has two slights to account for, of course: Kagami, and Adrien’s gang of mystery solvers—by a firm but gentle hand at his elbow, holding him back. He glances over to see Adrien at his side, shaking his head. 

“Not like this,” Adrien says quietly. 

“I could kick him if that’d be better,” Félix mutters, glaring back at Ladderton, who doesn't even have the decency to hold back a grin, now that he’s collected himself from his prior shock. “I could kick him. Hard and fast, and no one else would have to know,” he hisses. “Just—”

“No,” Adrien says, again. “Not like this, Félix.”

“But—”

“I know,” he soothes. And he’s always been good at that—so much better than Félix ever was. Ever could be.  

“Please?” Félix whispers, and it comes out a little broken.

“Come on,” Adrien says, tugging at Félix’s arm. “Alya called the Sheriff, and he’ll be here soon. Until then, Nino and Luka can make sure he doesn't get away. Marinette is alright, and so are the rest of us.”

“Kagami,” Félix says helplessly. There’s still Kagami to account for. There’s still someone else I messed up with. 

“Oh, that reminds me,” Ladderton says, sounding calm and like he isn't at risk for any more violence, “I think I had somewhere to be with that Kagami girl earlier tonight. Really, if she were more interesting, I might have remembered, but—”

Adrien doesn't stop the second punch that flies through the air. Félix will thank him for it, later.

~*~

In the end, the gang deciphers that the unknown “G. Nurno Treddal” was actually Rung Ladderton spelling his name backwards. Alya again apologizes for not looking further into the dead end that was Treddal’s purchase of the ghost rig’s tires, for jumping to the easier conclusion instead of properly digging into why she couldn't find a reason for said purchase. 

Félix waves off the apology, but they all understand the need to do better in the future.

While they had waited for the Sheriff to arrive, and Adrien had bandaged Félix’s hand, Ladderton had spilled why he had done all of the ghost rig and door knob stealing business. Apparently, because ladders are built to be sturdy and durable, no one ever replaces them, which makes for a quite useless business. Félix thinks it's a sad, sorry excuse for all that happened. He wants to punch Ladderton again, but alas, the man is now detained and awaiting trial for many charges.

Adrien tells him that's better for everyone, but Félix still feels like he needs to hit something. He still feels like his body is caving in.

~*~

The next day, the gang is gathered at Félix and Amelie’s place to celebrate the closing of the ghost rig case. Or—well, not really celebrate. Moreso just… relax. It's exhausting, being chased around the cliffsides by a semi truck that doesn't care whether or not it kills you. It’s also exhausting trying to solve a mystery, and to have both of those factors at play while also trying to handle school, well… the gang needed a break. 

It’s only fitting that Amelie, the designated ‘cool’ parent of the group, offered the night before to host them all. She'd done so after Ladderton had been arrested, coming out to meet Félix as Nino dropped him off.

“Mum,” Félix had greeted, kissing her on the cheek. He had carefully hid his bandaged hand from view, at least until he got inside.

“Félix,” she had replied with an easy smile. “I actually wanted to ask your friends if they—”

Félix had nodded. “You can ask them, just make it for later in the day. Afternoon, maybe.”

Amelie had rolled her eyes at his predictions. “Very well.” She had turned to Nino, glancing in at the otherwise empty van. Disappointed, she had asked, “Is everyone else gone away?”

“Dropped them all at home already, Ms—”

“Amelie,” she had corrected with a gentle smile.

“Amelie,” Nino had said a bit awkwardly. “Félix is the last stop before I’m headed home.”

She had nodded, pursing her lips. “Well, you all have a group chat, yes?”

Nino had nodded as well, loosening his grip on the wheel. “Yup.”

“Could you ask if your group would like to… celebrate the end of another case? Together, here, at our place. I’ll provide dinner, dessert, drinks, and snacks, if that's alright with everyone?”

Nino had raised his brows, and he had brought a hand up to fidget with the brim of his hat. “That's not too much, M—Amelie? Seven kids, seven hungry teenagers? You sure?”

She had only smiled and nodded.

Félix had rolled his eyes and looked to Nino. “I’ll message everyone tonight and ask, but she's being genuine, yes.”

Nino had blew out a sigh. “Well, if you say so, man… I’m in, if the others are.”

The others had been, especially at the mention of free food and the opportunity to be out of their own houses.

So here everyone is: splayed all along the wide back porch that opens into a large yard with a pool that glitters pink, yellow, and orange hues under the setting sun. Marinette and Nino lay out on the porch floor, finishing their Chemistry homework while Nino’s music plays in the earbuds they currently share. Chloé has convinced Alya to sprawl out on the lawn chairs for some sort of tan moment that Félix doesn't really understand, but they're talking quietly back and forth as they… tan, he thinks the term is. Luka sits on the thick wooden porch railing, phone propped up on one thigh, learning via YouTube video how to sew a few patches into his dark denim jacket. Adrien reads a book for English class while lying upside down on the stairs to the inside of the house, his legs folded against one of the French doors criss-cross applesauce-like. And Félix, he sits normally, in a normal deck chair, in a normal position on the porch, and he's curled normally around his phone, frowning, as one normally might in a situation like the one he's in.

5:24 p.m.

Félix

Can we please talk?

5:29 p.m.

Félix 

Kagami?

Please.

Kagami

What is there to talk about?

I feel like we talked enough yesterday.

Félix

It wasn't fake.

It was all real.

All of it, Kagami.

Please.

5:37 p.m.

Félix

Please, I mean it.

Kagami

If it was all real, then why accuse my

mother? Why accuse her first, of all

people? Especially when you know what's been 

going on—with me, with her, with everything 

surrounding my name.

Why accuse her first?

Félix

I tried to stop them, Kagami. 

I really did.

Kagami

Evidently not enough, if my mother was

still the first choice. Why not try harder?

Félix

I’m sorry. 

I’m so sorry, Kagami.

Please. I’m sorry, but you have to understand that 

it doesn't render everything else null. Please.

Kagami

I don't have to do anything, Félix.

In fact, I think I’ll block you.

Make things easier for us both.

Félix

No—Kagami

 Kagami?

Kagami, please

6:09 p.m.

Félix

Please?

delivered 6:09 p.m.                

~*~

The rest of the celebration is fine. Félix still feels like his body is caving in on itself. The rest of the gang relaxes, unaware of his turmoils.

He doesn’t say anything, though—and how are they supposed to know, when he doesn’t say? Doesn’t explain? Doesn’t ask for help? They hardly know him. (Well. Adrien and Amelie know him. But they’re busy. One can’t fault them for that, right?)

(He certainly doesn’t.)

It doesn’t stop the feeling, though. Nothing does. 

(It doesn’t stop—the feeling.) 

Notes:

😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇

sorry not sorry 🤪 if it’s any consolation, we’re now done with episode 3 !! 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇

NEXT IT’S TIME FOR MAN CRAB 👹👹👹 i’ll probably post chapter thirteen in a few days, but you can also subscribe to this fic to get notified when i post chapters, or if you comment, i reply to you after posting another chapter!! <3 <3 <3

anyhow, hope you enjoyed, and let me know what you think!! 🫣

Chapter 13: chapter thirteen

Summary:

The gang is relaxing about a week later during a volleyball tournament in Crystal Cove when a certain… *creature* interrupts their break. Looks like another mystery is on their hands… 👀

//

Check the tags for important warnings! Check the notes at the start of the chapter for more detailed specifics.

Notes:

whew only. two months? well ! better than nine 😭 anyways! enjoy the new episode :)

//
warnings for this chapter (skip if you’d like):

in atitl (all there is to lose), interactions with the police/CCPD are… Really Not Great. this is due to several factors, one of which is the (plot-relevant) one that makes many adults in crystal cove Really Not Great, and others of which are more tangible to real life. this may be triggering to some, so i’d like to warn for this, as it’s something also discussed briefly (brief in my opinion) but that comes up again and again later in this fic. you’ve technically already seen the negligence and lack of care the sheriff and other adults have for the kids, but in this chapter it takes a more obvious and even violent shape.

The following weekend, the gang relaxes from a tiring week back at school by sitting in the bleachers with most of the rest of the town on one of the last hot weekends of the season. Everyone has settled in for a playful three-day volleyball scrimmage that will span much of the gang’s four-day weekend. Marinette, Adrien, Nino, Luka, and Félix all laze about on two bottom rows of one section of the bleachers the first morning, waiting as the volleyball courts are set up in the sand. Alya and Chloé are getting ready to play, dressing with the rest of the players in a tent across the way. Once they’re done, if there’s still time before the games, the gang plans to head over to Andre’s Ice Cream and Treats Shoppe for something cold and sweet to eat under the warm sun. 

Everyone is dressed in cooler clothes for the weather. Alya and Chloé wear their volleyball uniforms, of course, which are shorts and fitted tees with tennis shoes or sneakers. Luka wears a pair of worn cargo shorts with tennis shoes and a tank top with the sides cut out. His hair has been recently dyed pink. Marinette is dressed similarly, though she wears a sports bra beneath her tank and a pair of ballooning striped shorts with her hair done up in high pigtails. Nino wears a pair of black sunglasses, some jean shorts, and a loose green t-shirt with some sneakers. His favorite hat has been traded out for one with a wider brim to cover his face and give him some more protection from the sun. Félix wears a white t-shirt, a pair of ratty, ripped, and loose jeans, and some tennis shoes. Adrien, sticking out like a sore thumb among the group, wears what is quite possibly the most gaudy, sparkling, neon pink shirt that could possibly be found on this earth, which has the word ‘GORG’ painfully spelled out in neon yellow sequins along the chest. The gang has all been told this ‘GORG’ is short for ‘gorgeous,’ although there have been many doubts voiced. Adrien also wears a pair of jean shorts, with each leg a grossly different shade of denim, a pair of sparkling red heart-shaped sunglasses, and some pale pink sequined Doc Martens. To top it all off, along the back pockets of Adrien’s jean shorts there are neon yellow sequins spelling out 2HOT 4YOU. It’s a wonder he made it out of the house, though it’s likely his knitted pea green and Hot Cheeto orange cardigan (made himself, he’ll proudly tell you) tied around the waist helped.

While Luka, Nino, and Félix discuss the latest Chemistry lesson, Adrien plays a puzzle game on his phone, and Marinette watches the volleyball courts get set up. After a bit, she sighs.

Adrien glances over, brows raised behind his sparkly heart-shaped sunglasses. “You okay?” he asks, lolling his head back so he can look up at her. 

Marinette sighs again. “They’re just beautiful, is all,” she says.

Adrien looks back at the courts and the players coming into view. “The players?” he asks, a bit surprised. He didn’t think she’d be… well, to put it plainly, so forward about it.

“I suppose they are, too, but I was talking about the nets,” she says, voice getting a little dreamy. Adrien rolls his eyes, though he relaxes and settles in to listen to her inevitable ramble with a smile. “I wonder what their tensile strength is,” she says longingly. “They’re nylon, though—perfect for traps…”

It’s about another four minutes before Marinette is interrupted by Alya and Chloé coming over from the makeshift volleyball courts. Adrien hasn’t switched topics, only nodded and encouraged her on, replying to her questions and agreeing with her at key points as he plays his game. The others look up from their work as Marinette stops speaking, having become accustomed to her background chatter, and everyone waves and smiles a bit at Alya and Chloé.

“Ready for ice cream?” Nino asks, twisting his hat some around his head. One of Félix’s hands twitches in Nino’s direction, but he holds himself back from pausing Nino’s nervous habit.

At Chloé and Alya’s nod, the rest of the gang stands, and everyone heads down the beach for Andre’s, discussing all of the things they hope to do that weekend around the volleyball tournament.

When they approach Andre’s, there’s only two other customers. The gang is quick to have their order taken and to pay, though they're served by a grumbling Andre.

“What’s up, man?” Nino asks, leaning casually against the counter separating the shoppe from the outside. “Last of the heat getting to you?”

Andre shakes his head, passing Alya her chocolate truffle and raspberry swirl ice cream cone. “No, no, dear Nino, it’s just—”

A loud voice crackles over the intercom posted up just outside the shoppe, the deafeningly cheerful but aggressive tone clearly that of an advertisement. “Hey, folks, just a reminder that this weekend’s event is sponsored by Orangis Technologies’ newest watches! These watches track everything for you, so you never have to: your heart rate, your steps, your location, the location of your family members, calendar events, credit and debit card transactions, and so much more! All for your continued ease and comfort, so you can focus on what’s really important. Buy one today at any of the many Orangis kiosks along the beach, or buy multiple at crazy deals, so every one of your family and friends can experience the same comfort and relaxation that you can! For more information…,” the voice in the advertisement quiets as it explains where to call for complaints and questions, and Andre’s face grows a few shades redder.

“And these advertisements!” Andre mutters darkly, passing Chloé her vanilla and strawberry mint chip ice cream cone. “They make me want to kill a man, to kill many men, to, to, to—”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Luka soothes, reaching out to put a hand on Andre’s shoulder, “Come on, Andre, we can’t have the best ice cream and sweet treat shoppe owner in town getting arrested for murder.”

Andre’s expression slowly softens into a smile at the comment about his shoppe, and his face edges back to its normal shade. “Oh, you kids are too sweet, really.”

Marinette rolls her eyes, grinning, as she’s handed a chocolate-dipped brownie and chocolate cookie dough ice cream cone. “Not even close, Andre—we’re just telling you the truth.”

Andre shakes his head, frowning some more as he starts in on Nino’s order. “If it’s the truth, then much of Crystal Cove is blind, dears.”

“What do you mean?” Alya asks as she works at quickly eating her ice cream cone. “Everyone knows you’re the best around, Andre.”

Andre smiles sadly, handing Nino his pistachio and banana creme ice cream cone. “Ah, maybe they did, but they certainly don’t act like it anymore. For a few years now, this town has relocated me again and again for their silly beach events, insisting they require the space and the specific views of the spot I had and—well, frankly, I hate it.” He waves a hand vaguely at the intercom, working on finishing Luka’s order. “It doesn’t help that those awful advertisements are spouted off every five minutes or less. It’s enough to drive a man to shoot someone.”

Luka glances over at Marinette, who’s already looking at him and nodding. “Andre,” she says, passing her cone to Luka, “I think I can help you out, here. That intercom isn’t attached to anything important, is it?”

Andre pauses, looking a bit confused, before realization and then relief overtakes his expression. “Marinette, you angel, it’s not—go right ahead, and these orders are on me, my dear!”

Marinette shakes her head and grins as she jogs around to where the intercom is posted up. “It’s the least we could do, Andre! And if you don’t take our money, it’s going in the tip jar!”

While Marinette works on the intercom, Luka makes sure her ice cream doesn't drip everywhere, and he's soon handed his triple banana split, decorated with peanuts, coconut, cherries, chocolates, caramel and chocolate sauce, bits of strawberries, copious amounts of sprinkles, and M&Ms and bits of Kit-Kat, with two scoops of mint chip ice cream and a scoop of vanilla peanut butter ice cream. The rest of the gang waits patiently as Andre finishes up the last two of their orders.

“They keep moving you down the beach, though, Andre?” Alya asks, finished with half of her ice cream by now.

Andre nods, frowning. “Nearly every event held here gets me moved down, yes.” He passes Adrien his chocolate peanut butter swirl ice cream, decorated with peanut butter and espresso M&Ms and caramel sauce and in a bowl.

“Have you talked with the city about it?” Luka asks, leaning against the counter as he multitasks, deftly handling both his and Marinette’s ice creams. “Asked why they can’t hold things elsewhere?”

“The city is the one who moves me, dear,” Andre replies, moving around in the small area of his workspace. “I have little choice in the matter, unless I decide to move downtown, but I don't exactly have the money for that. Most of my customers are you four—well, seven, now—and the volleyball teams that practice here, as well as any couples out for a stroll on the beach. They don’t care for the wants of one man, you know.”

“You’d probably have more customers in town, what with the schools so close, and downtown is where most of the tourism happens, but… money,” Nino says, a bit defeated.

“What if you did a little strolling cart through town, Andre?” Chloé asks as Andre passes Félix his vanilla berry ice cream sundae and bag of cookies and M&Ms. “Maybe on the weekends, when tourism and locals’ foot traffic are at their peak?”

Andre smiles a bit at Chloé. “Mm, that is a good idea, dear. Perhaps in the spring, when it's warmer, and more people want ice cream…”

“You could probably even do it for your cookies, brownies, and hot chocolate,” Nino says, now finished with half of his ice cream. “Those are all bomb, and are sure to be bestsellers, especially as it’s getting colder.”

Andre nods slowly, thinking it over. As he does, Marinette comes over, her hair a bit mussed. 

“Here you go, Andre,” Marinette says, smiling. She passes over a simple keypad that looks like one you would have for a car. “Press lock to shut it up and unlock to turn it back on—that way, if the people from the city or Orangis Tech come over, you can turn it on while they're here and turn it back off when they leave.”

She takes her ice cream from Luka, stepping back from the counter as she eats some more.

“Oh, you are truly an angel, Marinette,” Andre says, taking the keypad. He clicks the buttons a few times, cutting off and turning on the tail end of the advertisement currently playing. He sighs, relieved, and turns it off again, leaving it that way. “Are you sure I can't insist your treats be on the house? You really deserve it—”

Marinette waves a hand, interrupting him. “Weren't you just talking about money being too tight to move downtown?”

Andre frowns, shaking his head. “Money is never too tight to repay a friend.” 

Marinette rolls her eyes, smiling, and she starts walking away. “Keep it!” she calls back, and the rest of the gang follows her, treats in hand.

The gang returns to the bleachers for the remainder of the time before the game starts, and they sit in much the same fashion, though Chloé sits beside Adrien and Alya sits beside Marinette, and they finish their ice creams and treats, chatting a bit here and there as they do.

Soon, Chloé and Alya have to leave for the tournament, but the rest of the gang stays where they are, settled in to watch.

~*~

Two rounds of the volleyball game have passed when there’s a deep rumbling beneath the bleachers and, it seems, the entire beach itself.

“Earthquake?” Adrien asks, dropping his phone to clutch the seat beneath him. All around, others do similarly, though the volleyball players out on the makeshift courts can do little but try not to fall over as the rumbling—the noise and the movement—grows louder and more violent.

Then, bursting out from the sand amidst the volleyball players on one side of a net, an outlandishly large crab hand reaches up into the air. The pincers snap together with a deafening crack, and Félix feels the start of another round of heartburn climb up his throat. It’s only been a week since the last mystery, he thinks tiredly.

It’s been a whole week since the last mystery! Marinette is thinking beside him, already climbing excitedly over Adrien and Nino, who are clutching the seat of the bleachers in hopes of not falling off from the still-present quaking of the earth. No one really stops her from swinging over the edge of the bleachers to get a closer look at the next mystery, too busy trying not to fall. 

Alya and Chloé, still out on the courts, glance to each other before nodding and moving to get the other volleyball players out of harm’s way. As they do this and as Marinette stumbles closer over a still-shaking ground, the crab arm slams back down into the sand, giving leverage to the rest of its body to come into view from the sand. 

The entirety of the creature, which, in full view, vaguely resembles a man crab amalgamation, is about nine feet tall, and it’s a blistering red color. Its bright green eyes stare down at the few volleyball players around it who were too shocked to move. As Alya and Chloé run closer, trying to get to the few volleyball players closest to it, and as the rest of the gang on the bleachers now run after Marinette to catch up with her and the crab creature, said creature opens its mouth to let out an ear-splitting shriek. The sound sends everyone close to it flying back into the sand and clutching at their ears. 

Marinette and Alya are the first to stand up, and Alya starts dragging back two of the volleyball players closest to the creature, while Marinette grabs a volleyball. She winds her arm up with the volleyball in hand and hits the creature from behind. 

It turns around, crying loudly, and four long, pointed legs sprout from its back, piercing the sand sharply beside it. Marinette’s eyes widen, but she grabs another ball as Alya and Chloé work to pull the rest of the volleyball players close to the creature further away.

As the boys come up behind her, grabbing volleyballs as well and spreading out in a half-circle, Marinette chucks the volleyball in her hands at the creature, making it scream again. When it  inevitably gets angrier at the sudden onslaught, Marinette, Adrien, Luka, Nino, and Félix slowly start backing up, though they continue throwing volleyballs at the creature. 

Once the other volleyball players are a safe distance from the creature, Alya and Chloé return and start hitting the creature with volleyballs from the other side, opposite the rest of the gang.

The creature lets out a screeching howl. The onslaught of volleyballs doesn’t stop, with the attacks slightly staggered so there’s no breaks while various volleyballs are retrieved to be thrown again. Just before the cry drops off, the creature drops quickly and burrows deep into the sand, disappearing from view. Only the echo of its howl hanging in the air reminds anyone that it was even present before there’s another loud rumbling beneath everyone’s feet. Suddenly, a ridged mound of sand appears, and then it’s growing, elongating like a snake, towards the volleyball players huddling together across the sand. Marinette, Alya, Luka, and Nino are the first to start running in this direction, and Adrien, Chloé, and Félix are quick to follow.

They aren’t quite fast enough to stop the creature, or delay it in any way, when it again pops up from the sand, though this time in front of the group of now-screaming volleyball players. Said group hardly scatters, which Marinette is actively shouting for them to do, and everyone watches on in horror as the scene unfolds.

The creature reaches out two oversized claws and picks up two of the nearest volleyball players, blistering red pincers closing around their waists. The creature cries out one more time before disappearing with said girls beneath the sand.

What is left on the beach are the dulling echoes of screams and the held-in gasp from Crystal Covians scattered along the beach.

~*~

The beach stays open despite this attack, much to the gang’s chagrin and the volleyball players’ efforts. Even so, the gang—with Alya and Chloé, since Orangis Tech was no match for Alya’s mother’s nerves or Chloé’s last name, and had conceded to an hour and a half break for everyone to collect themselves—scours the beach for clues. They took a small break themselves to eat some lunch (sandwiches courtesy of the Dupain-Cheng bakery) and grab their travel kits from the van for collecting evidence, but otherwise have dedicated much of the break to investigating.

“Did you guys see how big it was?” Nino asks, sifting through the sand at the spot the creature initially popped up from. Luka is beside him, inspecting the sand for any differences. He slips some samples into little baggies, labeling them appropriately. 

“I’d say about nine feet tall,” Marinette says, photographing the ridges of the sand mound the creature made when traveling. She has a few bags of sand already in her pocket, labeled appropriately, and a few more extra bags just in case. 

Chloé sits beside Alya, who’s hacked into the camera feeds around the Orangis event and is currently saving photos and videos of the creature to her portable. Adrien and Félix are taking notes on the event as it passed, adding in commentary from some of the volleyball players they brought closer to the site of the initial sighting. 

“Did it sound mechanical to you, Marinette?” Chloé asks, not looking up from Alya’s portable’s screen. “When it moved, I mean.”

Marinette pauses to think a moment, pulling back from the disposable camera in her hands. She stares a bit into the distance, brows drawing together as she thinks back. “Somewhat, yeah. Later, I’ll look back at the footage Alya’s getting and make a more definitive assessment.” She turns back to her camera and the mound she was taking pictures of, and she resumes her task. 

“I don’t think it looked organic,” Luka says, labeling another bag of sample sand. “I want to look at the footage as well, but from what I saw, it didn’t look like a living, breathing creature.”

“So are we going to operate with two theories?” Alya asks, still working on her portable. “One for a mechanical, man-operated device, and another for an organic mutation, just in case?”

“That’d probably be best, though I think we know where we’re all hedging our bets,” Nino says, sitting back on his heels. He sighs, twists his hat around his head once, and he adjusts his glasses. “But if the Sheriff decides to take on this case, we’ll probably get his usual bullcrap about tourism and the supernatural being out of his jurisdiction, which means no help from him and he’ll be going on and on about things science can’t explain.”

“As expected,” Alya says lightly, though her shoulders are unusually tense. The attack did a little more than simply spook her, if she’s being honest, and the thought of being told these things by the sheriff is loads more unpleasant than usual. Still, she won’t voice her still-racing heartbeat or the way her fingers hesitate on the keys of her portable.

Soon after Adrien and Félix are done interviewing the volleyball players, Alya finishes up on her portable. Nino, Luka, and Marinette have already finished with cataloging what they can find in the sand by this point, so the gang moves to searching the bleachers. Nothing much can be determined from there, but they don’t find any remote controllers or other devices to suggest someone controlled the creature from the bleachers, though they can’t rule out the possibility just yet. 

The gang then heads past the glowing advertisements posted in the sand to the judges stand. There they find a frazzled Nadja Chamack and news crew, who sit combing through spare footage of the end of the second round of volleyball matches to get a good shot of the crab creature for Nadja’s next story. The gang moves around the crew and Nadja quietly, none of them masking their irritated expressions at the blatant lack of concern for the volleyball players who had been threatened or even the ones who’d been taken. Félix, being the newest addition to the group, has the most trouble not telling anyone off right there in the judges stand, but Adrien keeps giving him knowing looks that tell him to be careful.

Thankfully, Marinette soon quietly waves the gang out of the judges stand and towards the tent of lockers. They each seem to breathe a sigh of relief at escaping, though Félix is quickly grumbling.

“I can’t believe this town—the nerve of these people, the lack of respect!” he cries

Nino laughs lightly. “You never really seemed to care before, Félix,” he says, lacking any bite.

Félix frowns, but he sighs, shoulders drooping. “I didn’t know the full extent of it, and I wasn’t really exposed to it much, but I suppose I didn’t.”

“You get used to it,” Alya says, in a tired way that really says, it’s just less surprising the more it happens.

Félix’s shoulders droop more, but he nods slowly.

When the gang gets to the tent with the lockers, they’re a bit surprised to see the Sheriff already there.

“Funny seeing you here, Sheriff,” Marinette says warily. 

Sheriff Raincomprix merely rolls his eyes, leaning lazily against one of the lockers. “Well, I’m not incompetent—something did happen at this event, and we have two kids who are at the very least missing.”

Marinette raises her brows. “Oh, really? We didn’t notice,” she says dryly.

“Are you just standing there waiting for something else to happen?” Chloé says, crossing her arms over her chest. 

The sheriff’s face twitches. “Why, no, Miss Bourgeois, I’m—well—okay, yes, I’m waiting for a call from someone, but it’s none of your business.”

“Is it your dearly beloved wife, who you see less than you see us?” Marinette asks in a patronizing tone, sticking her lower lip out in a pout. “Or is it perhaps the mayor, who must have you on such a tight leash that you can’t do your job and investigate the actual scene of the attack?”

The sheriff’s face grows a shade redder, and his hand twitches towards his side. Everyone’s eyes narrow at the gun and pair of handcuffs placed on the side where the sheriff’s hand has strayed to now rest. 

Marinette shakes her head, relaxing her expression into one of neutrality. “Do you mind if we take a look around, Sheriff? We like to be thorough, and we finished looking everywhere else for clues.”

“Be my guest,” he says thinly, hand still at his hip, though placed on neither his gun nor his handcuffs, and instead placed just between the two. 

Marinette smiles, though it feels a bit venomous as it stretches across her lips. 

Only Marinette moves to the most ostentatious locker of them all. The locker is spilling sand, just barely closed. The others stay stock still, watching the Sheriff.

One might liken them to a pack of animals on the defensive with the way their eyes are wide and their hackles are raised, with the way they stand incredibly still, as if any movements could set them off. The sheriff would certainly make this comparison, and it only makes him nudge his hand just slightly back towards his gun. The gang—minus Marinette, who seems quite oblivious to this exchange—only tenses further.

Beside them, Marinette curses, having just opened a locker full of sand onto her feet. After digging through the sand for a few minutes and quickly slipping something from it into her pocket, she finds a stray newspaper clipping detailing Andre’s mandated moves down the beach due to the city’s demands. She holds onto it and puts some of the sand into an extra baggie she has from collecting evidence outside. Once she’s got the bag in her pocket as well, she turns to the sheriff with the newspaper clipping in hand, finally bringing everyone’s gazes to her.

“Did you see this?” Marinette asks calmly, though there’s a tightness in the muscles of her back, and she keeps her gaze on the sheriff’s hand at his side—not having been as oblivious as the gang thought.

Sheriff Raincomprix steps closer, hand still at his side. 

Marinette steps back. 

He swallows thickly, glancing to the gang at Marinette’s side, and he lets his hand fall from his own side. 

Marinette stays still.

Sheriff Raincomprix leans forward hesitantly, and Marinette keeps her hand steady but her grip firm as she continues to hold out the newspaper clipping. He moves to take it, but Marinette hardens her gaze and pulls it back slightly.

“Look. Don’t take,” she says quietly. Her voice is sharp. “I found this, so it’s mine and the gang’s. Any fighting from you, and I’ll take your negligence—previous and any found with this case—straight to court. And, trust me, there’s a lot of it. Don’t test me.”

Sheriff Raincomprix clenches his jaw, but he nods once, and he scans the newspaper clipping quickly. “Didn’t find it earlier, but it’s from about a year ago, so it’s somewhat familiar,” he says quietly.

“Good to know,” Marinette says pleasantly. “Thanks.” She takes the clipping and hands it to Luka, who has one of the travel kits for evidence collection. He slips the clipping into a sleeve designed to protect paper evidence, and he puts said sleeve back in the kit. 

“Anything else?” the sheriff asks thinly, leaning back some. His hand stays limp, away from his police belt.

Marinette shakes her head, expression falling into one of boredom. “Nope. We’re done here, though we might be back some other time. Don’t worry, we’ll do most of the work for this case, too.” She puts a hand on Alya and Nino’s shoulders, as they’re closest to her, and she gently nudges them towards the entrance of the tent. The rest of the gang picks up on this, and everyone files out, with Marinette at the rear.

Before she slips back out into the pale sunlight, she glances back at the Sheriff. Her gaze says test me, I dare you.      

~*~

The gang heads back to Nino’s van to lock up the evidence they’ve collected. They’re quiet until they get to the parking lot, which is a quarter-empty of cars due to the scare from the creature, or, more likely, some people getting lunch elsewhere.

“Marinette,” someone starts as they head towards the van.

Marinette is at the head of the group, now, face carefully pointed away from her friends’ gazes. Even so, her shoulders rise a bit towards her ears. “Yes?”

“Why did you egg the sheriff on like that today?” Alya asks. She fidgets with the portable she holds in her hands for lack of a proper pocket on her volleyball uniform.

“I always talk to the sheriff like that,” she says carefully. No, I don’t, she thinks.

“No, you don’t,” Nino says quietly.

“Maybe I was tired,” she says weakly.

Alya hums. “We all are.”

“Understandably so,” is her soft reply.

“He had his hand on his gun,” Chloé says. Her voice leaves no room for argument.

Even so, Marinette tries. “Well, it was just close for most of the time there—”

“So you were paying attention,” Chloé says. “Great, well, now we know that you know you put everyone in danger and you still tried pissing him off.” Chloé rolls her eyes.

Marinette’s mouth stretches out into a thin line, and the muscles in her back tighten again. They reach the van, and she waits silently for Nino to unlock it.

He doesn’t.

“Marinette,” Alya says, softer. “Why’d you do it?”

“I wouldn’t have let him hurt any of you,” she says.

Nino leans against one side of the van.

“Why’d you do it?” Alya repeats.

Félix leads against the other side of the van, the two boys on either side of Marinette, now.

“I wouldn’t have let him hurt any of you.”

“Sure had a fancy way of showing that, digging through the sand and being so nonchalant,” Chloé says matter-of-factly. In Marinette’s peripheral, Chloé has crossed her arms and has her hip cocked to one side. She watches Marinette with a raised brow.

Marinette closes her eyes, and then that’s too much, so she opens them. Her hands feel like there’s too much energy in them, but not even clenching them into fists would help, she knows. Her body feels like it’s going to implode if she stays still for any longer, but she feels if she moves, she may tumble to the ground and break the very asphalt they stand on with the energy crackling through her.

“I was watching him the whole time,” she says. “I knew the exact moment his hand slid further back. I knew the exact moment—”

“Then why keep trying to provoke him?” Félix asks quietly, curiously.

Marinette looks to him blankly. “He was there.”

Chloé is quick to frown. “Him simply existing was enough? He had a gun, Marinette. Choose a better person to annoy.”

Marinette keeps looking at Félix, who meets her gaze calmly. She feels a bit crazed with the energy inside her. She could have died, and her only response had been to make things worse, but what else could she do? There had been a voice inside her, telling her to keep pushing, to see if he’d do it, to see if he’d pull the gun on them. Some sick sort of wanting… wanting him to do something, anything, even if it was that, she supposes. (She’s always been told that she should be careful when she’s angry. She’s always been told that she’s dangerous when she wants something to happen—someone to prove her right or wrong, someone to do something, someone to say something. She’s always been told she’s dangerous, in that manner.) 

(She supposes that she is.) 

“He was there,” she whispers. As she goes on, her voice grows louder. “And he wasn’t at all at the actual root of things. Not once did we see him approach the courts. Instead, he stayed in that tent, with those lockers, waiting on what was probably the mayor about to tell him to try and find a good picture for the town blog to draw in more tourism.” Her voice is slow and firm, poisonous. She continues, body trembling the barest amount with the energy inside her. It’s building, slightly. “He did all that, and he didn’t even try to appear like he cared about the missing kids—the potentially dead kids—or the attack in general by even being near where things had happened. He was there, and he had the nerve to put his hand near his gun over me, an unarmed teenage girl, so, yeah, I wanted to push him. I wanted to see if he would do something, because he hadn’t done shit by that point. It would have been insane for him to pull a gun on us and to have not even approached the scene of a crime, but I wanted to see if he would do even that. It was dangerous, and I’m sorry, and I’d probably do it again because of how angry it makes me, but I would never have let him hurt you guys. Never. I would have sooner killed him.”

The poison in her voice and the calm admission of her last words makes goosebumps appear on some of their arms.

It’s a few moments before anyone speaks, and Marinette looks away from Félix and back down at the ground.

“He wasn’t at the site of the attack, but we can’t do anything about that, Mari,” Alya says. “The only thing we can do is try and solve the case ourselves.”

“I thought—and still think—that if I piss him off, just enough, he might actually do his job,” Marinette says quietly, kicking the toe of one of her shoes with the heel of her other.

Félix rolls his eyes, but he relaxes. Nino unlocks the van, and Alya places a hand on Marinette’s shoulder. The comforting touch says I’m angry, too.

“Next time, try not to do that with someone carrying a gun,” Chloé says, but there’s no bite behind her words—just a soft admonition. 

Marinette shrugs, kicking the toe of her own shoe again. Some of the energy from before subsides, and she clenches her hands into fists a few times. “All I’m hearing is I should just disarm them first, yeah?” 

Chloé rolls her eyes and frowns.

Marinette hugs herself around the stomach. “Everyone still mad?” she asks quietly.

“Not really,” Nino says, shrugging. 

Adrien merely shakes his head and makes a soft noise suggesting no. 

Luka shrugs and says, “Nope.”

Félix appears to think a long, exaggerated moment before he shakes his head. 

“Not anymore,” Alya says, leaning against Marinette some. Marinette leans into her as well, resting her head against Alya’s.

Chloé grimaces. “Well, I still think it was a stupid play, but no, I’m not mad anymore.”

Marinette relaxes some. After a moment, she moves to open the back doors of the van, and Nino and Félix step away to let her do so. “Oh, but I did grab something else from that locker.”

“Other than the newspaper clipping?” Luka asks, stepping forward to slide between Marinette and one door of the van. She watches him carefully for any traces of discomfort. She doesn’t find any. He sits down inside, sliding a locked box from beneath the front bench seats. He unlocks it with a key around his neck that had been hidden beneath his shirt, and he starts putting the evidence from his travel kit into the compartments in the box. Alya steps forward and passes Luka her portable, and Marinette hands over her disposable camera and the bags of sand from the locker and the site of the attack. Nino passes over his travel kit, and Adrien and Félix pass over the notes they took from interviewing the volleyball players. While Luka puts these things carefully away, Marinette pulls out the other item she found in the sand of the locker.

“Well?” Luka asks again, glancing at her briefly before turning his attentions back to the box before him. The rest of the gang settles around the opening of the back of the van, waiting as well.

She nods, finally answering Luka. “Yeah—it seemed like something we should keep to ourselves for now.”

Everyone looks over, curious. “What all did you see?”

Marinette smiles a little bit, feeling more of her previous energy ease. “Plans for the making of this creature—which, by the way, is mechanical.”

Alya, Luka, Félix, and Chloé raise their brows. The others merely crowd closer to Marinette as she unfolds the paper from the locker, bending over to lay it out over the floor of the van. It opens up to be a large diagram of different parts of the creature—measurements and small notes as well as complicated, abstract drawings of different pieces of the creature. Many things have been blacked out with a thick, chunky black pen.

Marinette frowns, seeing just how little hasn’t been blacked out. “I’ll probably have to spend some more time studying this to figure out how the creature works, but… this is something, yeah?”

Alya and Luka nod. “Definitely,” Luka says. 

“Think it was left by accident or planted there by whoever is controlling the creature?” Adrien asks.

Marinette hums a moment, looking over the plans for the creature. “With Lady E, anything is possible, though I will admit there wasn’t her usual calling card with it. I’m 90% sure that these plans were made by whoever created the creature, but…”

“The information blacked out could be deliberate, to only give us a few small clues but not enough to tie the creature to anyone?” Félix supplies, leaning against the open van door.

Marinette nods slowly, still looking over the plans with eyebrows drawn together.

“Think you could still figure out some important information from these blueprints, though?” Nino asks, twisting his hat around his head some. 

Marinette nods again. “I could, I think.”

“So, what’s the plan, then? For today, and what I assume is our newest case,” Chloé says, holding back a sigh.

“You and Alya should keep playing and try to win the tournament,” Marinette says, somewhat distracted as she reads a portion of the notes not blacked out. “I may need you two as bait for a trap, and Adrien and Nino can’t play volleyball well enough to get through that much of the tournament.”

“How do you know I don’t have some secret crazy mad volleyball skills?” Adrien asks, smiling a bit as he looks over at her.

Marinette rolls her eyes. “After today’s matches,” she says, ignoring him aside from a carefully raised brow tossed in his direction, “we can head to the library to do some research. Early early tomorrow morning, I should be able to set a trap that should catch the creature before tomorrow’s matches start. If we’re lucky, it’ll be wrapped up before Sunday, and we can have two days’ rest before we have to go back to school.”

Félix purses his lips. “And everyone will be on the lookout for a new case probably… Sunday night, at the latest?” He rolls his eyes. 

“Obviously,” Marinette says, not picking up on Félix’s displeasure with this. She frowns and attempts folding up the blueprints again.

He grimaces, wondering why, again, he joined this group.

Notes:

hoping hoping hoping (since i have more chapters drafted in backlog) that i can resume putting chapters out more regularly! we’ll see though since i started some new medication and things might start going better so i can be more regular with posting ! insomnia’s a bitch. anyways, lots of stuff happening in these next chapters, so mind the additional tags!

also to be clear i love adrien’s outfits but something i love more than his outfits is playfully making fun of them. (i do also understand the gravity of Why he made the decision to wear these clothes, but i think it’s a very teenager thing of him to do the Complete Opposite of his parents and wear what most would consider the Ugliest outfits known to man. but he pulls them off, and this is funny to me.) i would wear these outfits to be clear. proudly. love and peace don’t hate me lol

Chapter 14: chapter fourteen

Summary:

The gang sets up a trap for the crab creature and attempts to trap it.

Notes:

okay so trying for a regular posting each thursday or friday (depending on how busy i am, it might be one or the other) and maybe another chapter posted between those on tuesdays or wednesdays if i’ve been getting more done in that week for atitl!

anyways. if you get concerned at Any point for certain characters’ wellbeings, please check the tags :) unless you’re fae because i have to get back at you somehow for the hwayugi destruction youve dealt me (past and present and future) :(

Later that night, at about 3:40 a.m., the gang pulls into the parking lot in front of the beach. They’re dressed in warmer, dark clothes for the colder temperatures of the night and the chilly breezes coming in from the ocean. 

Marinette wears a pair of dark blue leggings with some black shorts over top, and a black hoodie with Doc Martens and her hair up in a high ponytail. Chloé and Alya both wear dark cargo pants and black turtlenecks with their hair in matching buns. Alya wears a black windbreaker and tennis shoes, and Chloé wears a fleece-lined dark denim jacket and sneakers. Luka wears black ripped jeans and a long-sleeve black t-shirt with a black jacket and boots. Nino wears a black hoodie, dark pants, and a pair of beat-up Converse with a black hat. Félix wears a dark windbreaker, a black long-sleeved tee, and some dark blue jeans with a pair of Luka’s boots. Adrien wears some of Nino’s old boots, a long-sleeved dark tee from Luka, and an oversized black hoodie of Marinette’s with a pair of Félix’s jeans. 

In the van, they each have another set of less-conspicuous clothes to change into for the volleyball tournament’s second day.

It’s just before 4 a.m. when the gang heads out onto the beach with their various equipment for trapping and surveillance, all huddled together in a dark mass as they move through the dark past Andre’s closed shoppe and towards an outcropping of rocks near the edge of the shore.

While at the library the previous afternoon, they poured over the evidence from the volleyball event, finding a few helpful clues. From the blueprints, Marinette pieced together that the creature was operated from within by someone sat inside the creature’s main body. Luka, beside her at the time, had discovered that the creature was built to be able to roll into a ball to move quickly under the sand, the ridges on its body giving it some traction while momentum from the speed at which it propelled itself into the ground drove it some distances. Little else of any importance was discovered from the blueprints, but while Marinette, Luka, Félix, and Chloé looked over said blueprints, Alya, Adrien, and Nino looked into the article clipping on Andre from the locker, and discovered the shoppe owner had protested on many public occasions the city moving his business. Some of his protests had even grown violent, and he’d had a few overnight stays in one of the cells down at the Sheriff’s department. 

Alya noted this down as motive in her notebook.

After this, Luka, Chloé, and Félix had gone down to Crystal Cove High. Félix helped Luka and Chloé break into the Science wing, where Luka studied the sand from the beach and the locker. Chloé begrudgingly helped, and Félix helped, though a lot less begrudgingly so. They discovered there were some elements in the sand from the beach—particularly the sand the creature had stirred up—and the sand from the locker that weren’t present in the control sand. Luka studied these some more, analyzing its properties against the control sand in a sifter, a makeshift wind tunnel, and even against different materials like metals, dried paint, tile, and chunks of asphalt. What he found was that the foreign particles moved far easier than regular sand in wind, against metals, against paint, and against asphalt. He then attempted binding many of the foreign particles together and moving them through the control sand, but he wasn’t able to bind the foreign particles effectively. Even so, he hypothesized that the foreign particles came from the creature or were secreted in some manner (similarly to the way some organisms can secrete a substance that covers their body and allows them certain abilities, such as greater speed or safety than without) to allow it to move faster through or along certain materials. Even as a mechanical being, Luka imagined it was possible. 

While Luka, Chloé, and Félix did this, Nino, Adrien, Alya, and Marinette did more research into possible suspects who could want to harm Orangis Tech, the volleyball team, or the city’s event. What they found was a surprisingly long list of suspects, which they narrowed down to people who had access to buying or commissioning such technology and people with the knowledge to make such technology. 

This eliminated Andre from the list, despite his motives, but it didn’t make anyone feel any better.

This process of elimination also highlighted the town’s resident genius, Max, and Tomoe Tsurugi, who owned a rival company to Orangis Tech, among a handful of other suspects from the list.

Everyone had avoided suspecting anyone in particular, still sore emotionally from the consequences of their last case, but Marinette, after talking with Luka about the foreign particles in the sand, at least had an idea for a trap. 

They had all gone their separate ways after meeting up at the library again, and everyone had gotten a few hours’ sleep before their 2:30 a.m. alarms the next morning.

It’s now, at about 4 a.m., that they reach the outcropping of rocks where Marinette believes her trap will be best-suited. 

While Marinette drops to her knees in the sand, pulling off her trapping backpack and setting it before her, Adrien sets down her toolbox beside her and the others spread out in a circle inside the jagged rocks, shovels in hand. Marinette nods to them, and they start to dig. Adrien takes his own shovel and starts digging beside Marinette, so that there’s now six evenly-spaced holes in the shape of a circle. She scoots back and sits down, pulling her latest invention—AKA, started a week ago and feverishly finished before she went to sleep the night before—from her bag. 

It appears small at first, looking much like a mechanical peeled orange that’s about a foot in diameter. There are six sections to it, each section divided into three collapsed pieces, and it has an open top with an expandable metal bottom. The plan is to set it into the center of the circle the gang stands in—as deep as the rocky outcropping allows, so the creature can’t bury itself beneath it—and to stretch out each of the six metal sections out in the sand, so it sits like a makeshift web for the creature to roll into and trigger the metal sections to trap them into a rounded cage. Much like an orange, she thinks, if the process of unraveling and pulling it apart were to be so quickly undone.

At 4:39 a.m., the gang has finished digging a hole in the center of their circle, with six trenches reaching out to six holes where they once stood. Marinette, finished double-checking the weight pad trigger in the center of the trap, recently dubbed The Orange, carefully steps into the hollowed-out center of the circle the gang has dug. She calls everyone to the center as she kneels, and they leave their shovels to the side as they come forward to help. She starts pulling apart the different sections of The Orange, and each member of the gang reaches out to help, with Adrien, Chloé, Félix, Nino, Alya, and Luka each grabbing a section. Marinette quietly and carefully shows them how to stretch and expand each section out several feet, and she has them do so one at a time as she steps on the weight pad trigger, it expanding slowly beneath her as each arm is expanded. 

The night before, she set the weight pad to be triggered with 260 lbs or more being on it for at least a second. Given no one in the gang meets that marker, but a pile of metal and a person inside it definitely will, Marinette has made sure none of them are at risk of setting it off in either setting it up or being crab creature bait. 

As she stands on the weight pad, keeping it in place, each section of The Orange is slowly expanded and set out one at a time. When a click resounds, she nods to whoever set that arm, and they quickly grab their shovel and start covering the area up with sand again. The next arm is then expanded and set with a click, and covered with sand. This repeats for all six sections, and once every arm is set and covered, Marinette steps off of the weight pad trigger, helping the others to cover the trigger with sand as well. With each arm extended, the trap spans eighteen feet, or six yards, in diameter.

At 5:57 a.m., everything is in place.

While Félix, Luka, and Adrien settle into hiding spots around the trap, Marinette and Nino head back to the van to lock away Marinette’s tools and grab a pre-prepared breakfast for those staying by the trap. Alya and Chloé head back with them to take a few hours’ nap in the van before the first volleyball matches of the day. 

~*~

For a few hours, Adrien, Nino, and Marinette wait up around the trap for any signs of the creature. While they do this, snacking and talking quietly back and forth, Alya and Chloé nap, and Luka and Félix walk the length of the beach a few times, searching for how the creature gets across the sand—more specifically, if there are tunnels and visible openings to them. 

They haven’t found much when Orangis Tech event managers, extra food vendors, news people, and volleyball players start to arrive. With this additional foot traffic, they retreat back to the laid trap, trying not to look suspicious in what’s quite possibly the most suspicious apparel for two teens to wear on a warming day on the beach. No one has changed into the day’s designated beach outfits, yet, wanting to see if they can catch the crab creature before the second day of the tournament starts.

The group soon gets a text from Alya that her and Chloé are awake and changing at the van for the volleyball tournament. Nino gives a simple thumbs up emoji as Luka and Félix arrive back by the others, and they all settle in to wait for their plans to come to fruition. 

Back at the van, a sleepy Alya and Chloé finish up a quick breakfast of bagels and cream cheese with warm coffee. Alya then changes quickly into her volleyball uniform, waiting under her warm blankets after she finishes for Chloé to slowly change as well. 

“You don’t seem like much of a morning person,” Alya notes with a yawn, leaning into the captain’s chair she sits in.

Chloé’s expression hardly changes from her tired grimace, but she grumbles unintelligibly. She’s finally changed into her volleyball shirt, which is her very first step completed.

Alya smiles a bit, still trying to wake up herself. She takes another sip of her coffee. “‘S’pose we didn’t really get to see what anyone is like in the morning with the last three cases, though.” She yawns again, closing her eyes for a few moments. “Gatorsburg doesn’t count, even if we did technically spend a whole night and day together in the end.”

Chloé grumbles again, though it sounds less irritated than before. She’s currently trying to wiggle out of her cargo pants from the night before, and it looks to be a struggle, so Alya assumes the not-super-irritated grumble is a response to her.

Alya’s voice is softer and fonder as she continues talking. “Well, soon you’ll probably find you’re in good company with us when it comes to not being a morning person. I think the only sort of morning people in the gang are me and Luka, and only because Marinette and Nino are such cranky people after waking that somebody has to pretend like they don’t hate being alive at such an hour.” She laughs a little, and takes another sip of her coffee. “If we had much choice, though, me and Luka wouldn’t be morning people, either. Frankly, I think the only actual morning person in the gang now would be Félix. He seems the type to be annoyingly awake in the early morning hours, though we’ll have to study him some more to see.”

Chloé finally gets her volleyball shorts on, and she curls up into a ball on the floor, huddled in some of the sleeping bags and her biggest, thickest, and fluffiest blankets. Her eyes are closed, and she almost looks asleep, until she says, “Adrien’s a bit of a morning person, in that sense, then. With how you described Félix, I mean.”

Alya nods, smiling behind her coffee. “Mm, that’ll be nice to have around. Maybe Luka and I will be able to be ourselves and be morning grouches.”

Chloé’s face scrunches up. “He’s always a grouch.”

Alya rolls her eyes. “I think you two like to just say rude things about each other at this point, even if they aren’t true.”

Chloé sighs, long and heavy. “He started it.”

“Wow, look at the time,” Alya says dryly, pushing her blanket away, even as she shivers at the cold air hitting her skin. She caps her thermos of coffee and sets it aside, grimacing. She really hates trying to be a morning person, especially as the weather gets colder. Goosebumps rise along her skin, but she pushes past the cold and steps over to the back of the van, where she quickly slips into her tennis shoes. “C’mon, Chlo, let’s get out and start stretching, and then we can—” she pauses to yawn, tears coming to her eyes with the force of it, “—jog over to the courts to wake up.”

“Sounds like hell,” Chloé says flatly, burrowing deeper into her makeshift cocoon. “I’ll pass.”

Alya rolls her eyes and, as cheerfully as she can, she opens the van’s back doors. She attempts to smile wide, though it comes out more like a grimace, if she’s honest with herself. The slightly chilly air makes her want to immediately crawl back towards her much warmer blankets and her coffee, but she steps out of the van and starts stretching.

“Come on, Chloé!” she calls out behind her, bending down towards her toes until she feels a stretch. She bites back a groan and curse as she moves—sleeping in the van, even in the slightly more comfortable captain’s chairs, always makes her really consider violence. “We’ve got tournaments and trapping today, and we have to start soon.”

Chloé merely tells her to fuck off.

Alya sighs, standing upright and stretching up to the sky. There’s a soft pop in her back, and she wants to punch someone with how relieving it feels, because it’s opened up another spot for her to feel just how sore she is in other places. “Chloé,” she calls again, closing her eyes as she leans slowly to one side on her hips. “It’s time to get up.” 

Alya hates being the nearest semi-morning person sometimes.

There’s some sounds of movements, and some clicking, so Alya assumes Chloé is cracking open her coffee and moving to sit up. She sighs, relieved, and she leans to her other side.

“If you take much longer, you’re going to cramp up later, because we’ll have to skip your stretching to make it on time,” Alya says, dropping into a lunge with another sigh. She really hates mornings.

Chloé only grumbles, but there’s more clicking, so Alya assumes she’s setting aside the coffee. There’s then a gentle groaning sound and the van shifts backwards a little, which she assumes is Chloé crawling towards her. 

Alya stands and drops into a lunge on her other side, feeling slightly more awake as she moves. 

“C’mon, Chlo,” Alya gently pushes, looking back over her shoulder. What she sees makes her pause—Chloé hasn’t moved from her bundle of blankets and sleeping bags. “Chloé?” she asks hesitantly, and then there’s something moving above her that draws her gaze up, up, and up.

Her heartbeat stutters.

It hadn’t been Chloé moving towards the back of the van as Alya stretched—no, it had been the crab creature, perched atop the van, clicking its way forward until it loomed over Alya, blistering red skin shining under the chilly sun’s gaze.

Alya gulps, moving quickly out of her lunge to take a few steps back from the back of the van. Her gaze falls to Chloé, and years of practice kicks in: she knows she has to protect those around her, and she has to draw the creature after her for the truth. Only the second is half-habit, but it’s enough to calm her so she can complete the first adequately.

She surges forward to slam the van’s doors shut, even as the creature reaches out a large red claw after her, and she looks it in the eye, recalling what Marinette had said the night before.

“It’s just a person inside it—it isn’t an animal. This means we can piss it off like usual.”

Alya’s gaze turns steely as she stares it down. “Come and get me, you crustacean bitch,” she hisses. 

She turns and starts to run for the beach and the laid-out trap.

~*~

Mystery Inc.

9:26 a.m.

Chloé

alya and man crab coming

for trap!

Marinette

ty

ready

          read 9:26 a.m.

Marinette pockets her phone and nods to Félix, Luka, Nino, and Adrien beside her. There’s little for them to do but wait for Alya to come around Andre’s shoppe, and even once that happens, they can’t do anything other than wait or help draw the crab creature into the trap. Anxiety, anticipation, and even a little bit of fear keeps them quite still amidst the chilly breeze coming in from the water.

A minute passes before Alya is spotted around Andre’s, coming at a full sprint towards the rocks with the crab creature close behind her. Behind them by a few yards is Chloé, who, to the surprise of half of the group, is also running. 

As the creature gains on Alya, the gang knows they can do little to change how things are playing out. Even so, Marinette and Nino both stand and begin to run for Alya and the creature, Luka and then Adrien and Félix close behind them. A dozen and a half yards separates them from Alya and the creature, but no one stops running.

It’s a sick, twisted thing to watch the creature reach out and grab Alya around the waist before their very eyes. No one is close enough to even attempt to stop the creature as it turns and burrows deep into the sand, taking a screaming Alya with it. 

~*~

When the gang finally reaches the small dip in the sand where the creature and Alya disappeared, Marinette, Nino, and Luka waste no time falling to their knees and digging down with their hands. All that comes up is sand, sand, and even more sand. Chloé and Adrien are bent over, huffing, with their hands on their knees, and Félix stands about a foot away, unsure of what to do with himself. 

On the one hand, he doesn’t know Alya especially well. He knows she means a lot to Marinette, Nino, and Luka, and by extension, to Adrien, too, but he doesn’t have much of a personal connection to her. With this lack of connection, he can understand that, unless there was a tunnel or a big enough pocket of oxygen for Alya to catch her breath in, she’s likely suffocating—or already suffocated—in the sand without a mask to protect her or breathe with. On the other hand, he can understand that this is bad—very bad. He can also understand that Marinette, Nino, and Luka’s efforts are very much likely in vain. He and Luka had searched the shore for access points to sand tunnels and dips and grooves marking air pockets and found only the barest hints of something that was quickly disproven by them both, after all.

But he knows desperation, so he lets them continue on in vain.

9:33 a.m.

Félix

How to deal with the possible death of one of 

Adrien’s friends?

Amelie

Who’s missing?

Félix

Alya.

Amelie

Bring them home. I’ll message the VB coach.

Félix

How do I contact her parents? Do we notify them?

Amelie

Try their work phones, but I might be able to

get you their cells from a phone tree made a 

few years back for emergencies. Notify them,

but just that she’s missing. I assume 

something went wrong with a trap or getting 

evidence?

Félix

Yeah.

Amelie

Keep things as close to the truth as possible,

but leave out your group’s involvement in

trying to solve the mystery if you can.

Félix

Might be hard, from what I’ve heard of her

parents. I’ll do my best, though.

I’ll let you know when we’re on our way home.

Thanks, Mum.

read 9:41 a.m.            

Félix pockets his phone, feeling slightly overwhelmed at the scene before him. Marinette, Nino, and Luka are still digging, though Luka has slowed considerably. He soon sits back on his heels, expression blank. His hands rest loosely in his lap. Marinette’s expression is a bit crazed as she continues digging, and Nino is crying. He has to pause every few seconds to wipe at his face and eyes, and he has sand stuck there via snot and tears. His hat has fallen to the side, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Adrien and Chloé watch on—Adrien, crying a bit, and Chloé with her expression blank like Luka’s.

Félix determines he’s the most present and logical this morning, and he steps over to Adrien first. He pulls him aside with hands on his shoulders.

“Adrien,” he murmurs softly, ducking his head to properly look Adrien in the eyes. 

Adrien meets his gaze, lower lip trembling. “The sand,” he whispers. 

So he knows about the possibility of her suffocation, Félix deduces. He decides it’s time to lie, because he doesn’t know how else to get everyone through this, and he’s good at lying.

“I found evidence of some tunnel-like structures on the way back,” he says quietly. “I hadn’t mentioned them, trying to map things out in my head based off the creature’s movements as we knew—know—them so far, and I wanted to see if there was a way I could predict what the routes would look like. Thought experiment, yeah?”

Adrien nods, and Félix continues, almost believing himself.

He softens his voice, as if to seem guilty. It isn’t hard, since he’s already guilty, but it’s difficult to keep it light. He manages anyway, though, because this is what he’s good at. “And you know how secretive I am—I just wanted to be right, you know, before anyone else was. Habit, Adrien. But I know there’s tunnels, alright? We just have to keep working at this mystery to find them, okay?”

Adrien glances back over at Marinette and Nino, who’ve by now dug a considerable hole. He sniffles. “How come they haven’t found it, yet?”

Félix purses his lips. “Well, you know how big the creature is. The tunnels are at least a few feet down, but it moves quickly enough that the sand swallows up the empty space before it enters the tunnels. Its speed, though, is on Alya’s side—it means it wasn’t long before she had oxygen again.” Félix knows Adrien will hate him, later, for lying. But he smiles a bit, even so, to make things seem more realistic. He moves a hand to ruffle Adrien’s hair. “Come on, listen to logic,” he says, pulling Adrien into a forcibly loose hug.

Adrien hesitates, but he ultimately wraps his arms around Félix in return. “Alright,” he says quietly. And then, again, a bit louder, a bit more confidently, “Alright, logic, yeah. She’s gotta be okay. She’s gonna be okay—we’re gonna find her.”

Félix pulls back from the hug with a smile that he forces to reach his eyes, because this has to be believable, and he’s spent too damn long acting to not know how to make things look real. 

Adrien smiles back at him and wipes at his eyes, sighing, and he relaxes some.

“Think you can get Chloé back to the van? We’re taking everyone back to my house, and we can regroup with my mother’s help, alright?”

Adrien nods, looking over at Chloé. He frowns. “Shouldn’t be too hard, yeah, though… something’s off with Chlo.”

Félix nods, holding back his resigned sigh. 

(It’s hard being the only one not devastated by what is most certainly a tragic loss. Does he care? he wonders. About Alya, that is. He doesn’t think it matters, if it means he would also be rendered incapable like the others of taking logical steps forward. It’s important that he doesn’t care. Or—because he wants to believe he cares at least some—it’s important that he doesn’t care as much as the rest of the gang does.) 

“I’ll talk with her later, and see what’s troubling her. Just keep her going until then, okay?” Félix asks Adrien, nodding to him gently.

Adrien nods back, and he steps away towards Chloé, causing Félix’s hand to drop limply between them. It isn’t long before Adrien is leading Chloé back towards the van, quietly talking to her as he puts an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close.

Two down, three to go, he thinks to himself.

Félix next kneels beside Luka, eyes moving over him carefully, scanning for clues to help him figure out how best to help the other boy resume going forward.

What he finds is a hollowness that reminds him much of the one that’s sat inside him for a long, long time. Instead of confronting the mirror of himself just yet, he looks to Nino and Marinette, feeling a bit hopeless as he tries to figure out how to best improve the situation.

Again, the only thing he can think of is to lie. He knows he’ll be hated if the worst has already happened, and he can’t do anything about that, but he knows he has to keep Mystery Incorporated moving forward, past that realization, past the grief, and into the future. Plus, if they hate him and kick him out, he can still always follow them everywhere. He won’t stop protecting Adrien that easily, even if it would unexpectedly hurt, hurt, hurt to be hated by these people and cast out from the camaraderie he’s found himself terribly unwilling to lose.

Despite his unwillingness to lose everything he’s gained, Adrien’s safety—as always—trumps this. And Adrien’s safety, he’s long since deduced, requires the Mystery Incorporated group.

So he reaches out and he grabs Nino’s wrists, taking them from the sand gently. Nino strains against him briefly, before leaning into the touch with his upper half. A sob shudders through him.

Félix grits his teeth. He closes his eyes briefly before opening them, softening his expression mechanically, even as he repeats to himself, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.

“Nino,” he says, softly but gently. “We’re going to find her.”

Nino only continues crying, loud sobs rocking him closer to the ground. Félix’s hands, steady and firm on Nino’s wrists, keep him from trying to burrow into the sand after Alya. 

Félix supposes this is what heartbreak over a lover’s death looks like from the outside—trying to crawl into the grave beside them, trying to escape everything just to have them in your arms again. He clenches his jaw against any shred of empathy. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, he repeats.

“Nino,” he says, a little sharper, adjusting his hands on Nino’s wrists. With the briefest glance, he notes that Nino’s hands are covered in tiny scratches, many of them bleeding. He ignores this for the present moment, only acknowledging its need to be addressed later. “We need you in order to find her. Can you help us find her? She’s alive, I promise you. It was mean of me, but I kept secret the evidence I found of there being tunnels beneath the sand. I kept it secret because I wanted to be the one to reveal a fully-laid out map of the tunnels, Nino, but she’s alive, I promise you.”

Nino only cries harder.

“Nino,” Félix says, louder. His voice is sharp along Nino’s skin, sharp enough to draw blood. Sharp enough to shock him and draw his attention from his emotions for just a moment. “I know that she’s alive, Nino,” he says firmly. “But I need you to help me, alright?”

“But I—I wasn’t—I couldn’t help before—” Nino hiccups, straining against Félix’s hands towards the sand.

Félix frowns, holding him back from burrowing in after her. “You’re imperative to helping us find her, Nino. I don’t care that you couldn’t help before—you can help now, and you can help us in the future. Is that what you want? To help? To help us find her?”

Nino stops straining as much. “Yes,” he whispers. “I have to help find her.”

Félix tugs some at Nino’s hands. “Alright, then I need you to stand up for me. Can you do that?”

When Nino sits up some, Félix loosens his grip on his wrists, letting his own hands fall beside him. Nino wipes at his face again, continuing to get sand stuck all over his face, but he stands shakily. 

“Pass me the van keys?” Félix asks, looking up at a bleary-eyed Nino. “You’ll need to rest.”

He digs around in three pockets before he finds the van keys, and he passes them to Félix, who nods his thanks. 

“If you want to head back to the van,” Félix says, “Adrien and Chloé are already there. I’m driving you all to my house, and we can regroup there and figure out a new plan.”

Nino nods absently, looking at the ground. He’s still crying, though his sobs have subsided and his tears have slowed some. He still trembles as he makes his way slowly back to the van. 

Félix turns to Marinette, who is still digging furiously through the sand. Her hands are streaked with blood. He takes them gently but firmly in his own, tightening his grip slightly as she digs her nails into his skin in attempts to break free. Her expression morphs into something animalistic, desperate.

“Marinette,” he says sharply. “Am I going to have to carry you back to the car?”

Her face twitches, and he thinks she’s about to growl at him. But her expression contorts, and suddenly, there’s tears in her eyes and she’s leaning into his touch, much like Nino had been. Félix sighs.

He pulls her into a hug, tucking her head beneath his chin as he frowns, and he pulls Luka into the hug on his other side, though the boy hasn’t moved or changed in any way from the blank look and hollow void from before. 

“And why can’t you get up and move forward?” Félix asks Marinette, and, despite his words, his tone is soft.

It’s a long minute before Marinette responds. In this time, Félix’s windbreaker grows wet and his shirt beneath gets a bit damp. “I should have considered how much faster the creature is than any of us running,” she sniffles. “I should have adjusted my calculations, and made it so no matter where the creature initially appeared from, it—it—they wouldn’t have had to run for long before the creature was trapped.”

Félix rubs at her shoulder with one hand, repeating his mantra to himself in his head. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. “And were you supposed to magically know it would have gone after Alya at the van?” he asks gently, calmly.

Marinette sobs. “I—I—I should have—”

Félix holds back a sigh. “Marinette, you’re not omniscient.”

She punches his thigh, but it’s weak by her standard. “I should have placed the trap somewhere more central to everything—between the parking lot and the courts, or between the courts themselves, or—”

“And risk having the creature not come out this morning? And risk having someone heavier than us step on the trap and reveal our plans? Marinette, you couldn’t have done anything differently without putting just as much or more at risk. But instead of mourning that, we’re going to go back to the van, I’ll get you all buckled and safe, and I’ll grab your Pumpkin or Lemon or whatever it was called—”

“The Orange,” Marinette supplies with a sniffle.

“Oh, so you can correct me, now? Shut up while I explain things, please.”

She sighs heavily. “Fine. Get things right, then.”

Félix bites back the many things he wants to call her, narrowing his eyes. 

She relaxes against his chest in the moment of silence. “Go on,” she prods.

Félix clenches his jaw. “I’ll grab your Orange,” he says, working carefully to keep his tone even and calm and not at all sounding like he would much rather be petty and a bit of a bitch, “and then I’m taking you all back to my house. You’ll all take at least a six-hour nap, and when you wake, we’ll brainstorm a plan.”

“Two hours,” Marinette says firmly. “I’ll only sleep two hours.”

“If you want to argue,” Félix says, one of his eyes beginning to twitch, “I’ll hit you all with enough tranquilizer to knock you out for twelve. Don’t test me.”

“Fine,” Marinette says quietly. 

“Good,” he says. “So, can you stand up? Or will I need to carry both you and Luka back to the van?”

“Is Luka okay?” Marinette asks, turning her head sharply against the underside of Félix’s jaw to see him under Félix’s other arm.

“Not sure,” Félix says thinly, leaning uncomfortably against the top of her head. “He went catatonic, as far as I can tell. I have to try and rouse him and Chloé from their similar states when we get back to my house.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. So can you stand and walk?”

She shrugs against him. “I can try.” She weasels out from beneath his arm and slowly, carefully stands. He holds out an arm to steady her, which she waves away, grimacing.

“Ack. Félix, you got all mushy on me again—”

Félix doesn’t even bother hiding his expression. “Well, if you hadn’t gotten all weird on me first, Dupain-Cheng, we—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard enough!” she cries, slapping her hands over her ears. Unsteadily, she starts walking away. “You do that again, and I’ll pull my knife on you!”

“I’ll gut you with your own weapon!” he shouts back. 

“Do your worst!”

“Gladly! Pull your knife already, coward!”

Her reply is lost in a gust of wind. 

Félix scoffs and rolls his eyes, only watching her long enough to see her disappear, safe, behind Andre’s, before he turns back to the still-catatonic Luka under his arm. 

He sighs, and he reaches over to pick up Nino’s previously discarded hat. He slips it into one of the pockets on his windbreaker, deciding to dust it off later, and he turns to Luka.

“We’re going to talk later, you and I,” he says, quickly moving to take Luka’s hands and arms over his shoulders. Félix rocks forward slightly, getting to one knee as he pulls Luka with him over his back. “But for now, could you please hold on?”

Luka’s arms tighten only slightly around Félix’s neck, though it’s still a considerably loose hold. 

Félix grumbles, but he leans forward even more, reaching his hands back to grab Luka’s legs and pull them up to Félix’s hips, where he grabs Luka under each knee.

With Luka now in a semi-stable piggy-back position, Félix stands carefully. When there’s no protest from Luka, he starts making his way back to the van. Halfway there, Luka’s head drops down beside Félix’s.

He only sighs again in response.

Soon, he makes it back to the van. Everyone has foregone the front bench seats and is huddled together in the back, amidst the blankets and sleeping bags. Shoes are discarded in a pile by the very back of the van, and Félix sits down on the edge beside them, carefully unwrapping Luka’s arms from around his neck. Marinette and Adrien pull Luka further back into the van, pulling off his shoes and wrapping him in a warm blanket. 

Félix looks at the sad state of the gang of mystery solvers—absent, of course, of, well… Félix fears that if he names her, even in his head, that his facade might crack, but… you know who. He frowns at them, but he closes the back doors of the van and heads for the driver’s seat, where he turns the key in the ignition. He fires up the heater on full blast, as they’ve all been shivering from the cold ocean breeze and the morning’s events despite the day’s warmer temperatures, and he leaves the key in the ignition. He hooks his phone up to the car’s bluetooth, and he sets up the gang’s shared playlist, queuing up several songs that he knows A—weren’t added by the person currently absent from the group. He spends a few minutes doing this, making sure the queue is long enough to last clear past the time they’ll arrive at his house.

He then glances back at Marinette and Adrien, who have thankfully come about a third of the way to being as calm as he is. “Don’t let anyone drive you guys away—I’ll be back in about ten minutes with Dupain-Cheng’s trap, and then we can go home, alright?”

Adrien nods at him, which is enough for Félix to keep moving. 

He leaves the warmth of the van, closing the door gently behind him, and he heads back towards the laid-out trap. Along the way, he grabs a middle schooler who wouldn’t dare ask questions of him for ten dollars but who is light enough to not set off the trap.

Félix then spends about eight minutes carefully but quickly resetting Marinette’s trap, having been probably the only person actually listening—and being awake enough to—early that morning as she explained the emergency measures in place for the day. Once he’s finished, he pays the middle schooler and heads back for the van, where he gets in to much the same quiet, unsettled atmosphere as before. After texting Amelie to let her know they’re on their way, he nods to Adrien in the rearview mirror and starts the van. He keeps his hands loose on the steering wheel, just trying to keep calm and keep moving forward.

Notes:

so :) that was fun, huh? :)

anyways insomnia Is a total bitch But it allowed me to write so much this week i decided to screw it and post early lol. probs for the best so yall also have chapter fifteen coming soon 🤡

🤪 sooooo 🤭 let me know what u guys think !! 🤭🤩🥰

Chapter 15: chapter fifteen

Summary:

Félix takes the gang back to his place, where he and his mother make sure everyone is okay. Once he’s satisfied everyone will be alright for now, Félix makes a phone call that spurs him after Alya.

Notes:

any incorrect science is my fault 🫡

again, if u get at all concerned for a character’s wellbeing and you are NOT fae. feel free to read through the tags again :) if you are fae… well. this is what i’ve been warning you about 🥰 i told u i’d get back at u <3 🥰

When the gang—minus Alya—gets to Amelie’s, everything is quiet and unsettled, despite the music Félix still has playing. He pulls into the driveway slowly, leaving the van running for the time being.

“Everyone still cold?” he asks quietly.

There’s a few grunts in response, which he takes as an affirmative.

“Alright,” he says. “I’ll bring Luka and the blankets, sleeping bags, food, and extra clothes in. You all can come inside as you’re ready, and afterwards I’ll come turn the van off and lock up, alright?”

A few more grunts answer him. 

He holds back a sigh and gets out, closing the driver’s side door gently behind him. He heads for the back of the van, opening only one door. Most of the gang shrinks back from the chillier air, but Luka slowly crawls closer, which Félix appreciates as he sits on the edge. After a moment, Luka’s arms come around his neck, and Luka’s legs line up on either side of his. Félix situates his hands beneath Luka’s knees and he stands carefully, stepping from the van and turning slightly to close the van’s door most of the way. 

With Luka on his back, Félix makes his way to his front door, which Amelie opens as he comes up the porch stairs. He nods a tired thanks to her, and she leads him to the living room, where the chairs and couches have all been pushed back. In the middle, where the coffee table would normally be, Amelie has set up some fluffy comforters and a few blow-up mattresses as a padding from the floor. Atop them are more blankets and several pillows, with more set up on the two loveseats on either side of the large makeshift bed. 

“Got the first-aid kits out?” Félix asks quietly.

Amelie nods and gestures to one of the side tables along one wall of the living room. She moves to grab them and she walks over with them in hand as Félix sits Luka down in one of the usual chairs.

“Can you tend to his hands real quick? Then he can head to that bed to get some sleep. Nino and Marinette’s hands are also pretty beat up, too, but they’re coming in in a bit, and I can help with their wounds.”

Amelie nods and shoos him away. He heads back for the front door with a roll of his eyes. On the way to the door, Félix passes Adrien and Chloé, the latter of whom has begun to shake a bit. He instructs them both to try and get some sleep on the bed Amelie made up, promising to wake them if anything important happens. (He won’t.)

When he gets back to the van, Nino is half asleep, with sand, snot, and tears still caked to his face. Félix sighs again, cursing himself, and he has Marinette help him get Nino into a position to be carried inside like Luka had been. 

Once Nino is on his back, Félix steps to one side. Marinette follows him out of the van, and they go inside together. 

Luka, his hands now bandaged, has been laid out on the bed in this time, in a pair of new pants, likely thanks to Adrien’s help. Adrien and Chloé are already halfway to sleeping beside him. Amelie is covering the three up in some blankets when Félix sits Nino in the same spot Luka had sat in. Marinette sits in the chair beside Nino, and Amelie moves to clean and bandage Marinette’s hands as Nino begins to softly snore.

Félix decides to take everything else in from the van before helping with Nino’s hands and face, and he murmurs this plan quietly to his mother before leaving to do so. In one trip, he brings in the dirty sleeping bags and blankets—that is, the ones covered with sand from Marinette, Nino, and Luka’s efforts at the beach—and the remaining food and thermoses. When he goes back out, he turns off the van, locking the doors, and he grabs the clean blankets and extra clothes. Once inside, he locks the front door and takes the clean clothes and blankets back to where everyone is, and he sets the blankets on the remaining space on the bed and the clothes in the other two chairs across from Marinette and Nino.

He then moves around a sleeping Adrien, Chloé, and Luka to kneel in front of Nino, where he takes the other first-aid kit and opens it up. While his mother does similarly beside him to Marinette, he first gently cleans Nino’s hands, discarding any remaining sand and mostly torn off skin into a paper towel beside him. He then uses some hydrogen peroxide to further clean the wounds, though he quickens his pace when Nino’s face scrunches in his sleep. After wiping his hands down with some water and another paper towel, he gently applies some topical antibiotic to the wounds and puts some small bandages on anything still bleeding. 

By this point, Marinette’s hands have been bandaged and she’s gotten up to change into cleaner clothes. Félix gets up as well, though only to grab a few more paper towels and to wet some with some water. He soon returns to Nino, kneeling before him once more with the extra paper towels. He begins by taking off Nino’s glasses, deciding to clean them afterwards, and then he starts to wipe down Nino’s face of the sand, snot, and tears stuck to his skin, being careful to be gentle. It’s a few minutes before Nino’s face is clean, and then Félix starts tending to the few wounds along his cheeks and the rawness of his skin around his eyes and on his nose and forehead. 

In this time, Marinette comes back in her new clothes, and she lies down with the others. Amelie goes over with her soft, soothing voice, asking if Marinette would like to be covered up and tucked in, and Félix hears Marinette’s quiet reply as he pours a small amount of hydrogen peroxide over some wounds along Nino’s cheeks. Behind them, Amelie tucks Marinette in under some blankets, and a moment later, the lights are dimmed. Amelie drags over a bendable lamp to Félix, turning it on a low setting and pointing it so Félix can see what he’s doing better.

Félix nods his thanks and rinses the wounds on Nino’s face again before gently applying some topical antibiotic to the wounds and the rawness around his eyes and on his nose and forehead. Once this is done, since none of the wounds on Nino’s face were big enough or still bleeding enough to warrant bandages, he turns off the lamp and drags it back to its original position. When he returns to Nino, he picks up the trash and takes it away, discarding it, before putting up the first-aid kit as well. He then cleans Nino’s glasses, though he keeps them set aside from the sleeping boy. Finally, he goes to carefully pick up Nino, carrying him to one of the loveseats, where he lies him out.

He goes over to the chair with the clothes, and he digs through them for a pair of shorts and a baggy t-shirt, and he returns to Nino’s sleeping form, carefully changing him out of his sandy clothes and into the clean items. He bundles up the sandy clothes and takes them to the washer, where there’s a few piles of dirty items to be washed from the van. He leaves the clothes there and returns to Nino, at which point he carefully lifts the boy, moving him to the last open spot on the makeshift bed. 

Félix covers and tucks Nino in before he stands, looking at the array of sleeping teens before him. He sighs, glancing at his phone, which reads 10:40 a.m. He resigns himself to not sleeping again for at least another 14 hours. He doesn’t want to think about having been awake already since 2:30 a.m. that morning, but he does turn the thought over in his head, quite briefly, as he turns away from the sleeping teens.

Instead of dwelling on it for long, though, Félix moves to take Luka’s discarded sandy pants to the washer, where he starts the first load of laundry—the gang’s clothes, and the fluffiest blanket that was dirtied. Once the clothes are in the wash, he separates the remaining items into four more piles, at which point he wonders if he should ask his mother to take the excess loads to one of the local laundromats.

Félix makes a mental note to ask her later, but he moves on, remembering the clean blankets from before. He heads back upstairs to cover the gang with the remaining clean blankets and sleeping bags, not wanting them to catch cold but also not really sure what else to do with them. (He wonders if he’s overcompensating, in taking care of them like this. Logic would have had him waking Nino to have him walk inside, would have had him stirring Luka from his hollow state to change his own clothes. Logic would have had him showing Nino and Luka, and Adrien and Chloé, even, how to bandage their own wounds for future reference. Logic would have had him folding the extra blankets and sleeping bags up and taking them back to the van. He wonders if he feels truly, monumentally guilty about Alya. He can think her name, now, at least, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel guilty. His actions speak louder, after all. They say, I’m caring for you all more than I should, because I feel bad that I didn’t care enough to do more to save her before she could even be taken. He tries to keep the crushing guilt of that statement from truly sinking in, because he really couldn’t have done anything more. Still, he doesn’t stop himself from carefully smoothing out with gentle hands the varying discomforts from the teens’ sleeping expressions.) He turns the lights off completely in the living room and closes the blinds. 

Amelie finds him as he’s leaving the living room, and she asks him if he’s hungry. He shrugs, then hesitates, and then he nods. He follows her into the kitchen and dining room conglomerate, feeling a bit off-kilter. It’s there that she makes him a grilled cheese with some leftover tomato soup, and they eat in silence for a few minutes before she looks at him softly.

“So, what happened?” she asks, her voice quiet. She sips at her ice water and takes another bite of her grilled cheese.

Félix bites his lip, wondering how much to say, but then he stops debating, because it’s his mother, of all people, and he wants at least someone to know what he did and why he did it. Who better than her?

“Well, you know I left at about 3:20 this morning,” he starts quietly. He brings a spoonful of soup up to his lips, and he sips at it and swallows before continuing. “We got to the beach after picking everyone up, and we set up Marinette’s trap. After that, Alya and Chloé went back to the van to take a nap before their volleyball matches, and Adrien, Nino, and Marinette stayed by the trap. Luka and I walked up and down the beach looking for evidence of tunnels that the machine could be using to travel with, but we didn’t find much. We ended up heading back to sit with Adrien, Nino, and Marinette while waiting for the machine to show up, and after a bit, Chloé and Alya woke up for their matches. I guess they ate, since there were missing bagels and half the coffee we set aside for them was gone, but they changed and somehow, Alya ended up being chased by the machine, though she led it towards us and the trap, with Chloé following her.” He pauses, taking a few bites of his grilled cheese and eating more of his soup. He feels something heavy start to weigh on his chest. He wants to call it anticipation, but he supposes it could also be called guilt. 

Or helplessness.

Amelie waits patiently, finishing up her own grilled cheese and tomato soup. 

After a few minutes, he continues. “She wasn’t able to make it to the trap, though. Not Marinette’s fault, really, or even Alya’s—just a series of miscalculations on everyone’s part and a lot of misfortune that Alya got swallowed up into the sand,” he says, voice growing quieter and quieter towards the end. 

Amelie reaches out a warm hand to rest on his arm, but she keeps quiet.

It’s several minutes before Félix says anything else, gaze steady on his soup as he finishes it. “I told them that she had to be alive,” he murmurs, wiping at his mouth with a napkin. As he does this, a small, unrelated realization hits him, and he freezes. “Oh, they—they’ll be hungry, when they wake.” He finally looks to his mother, eyes the slightest bit unfocused.

Amelie merely smiles at him gently. “I know,” she says. “I’ve already got it covered—you said a six hour nap, yes?”

Félix nods absently, pushing aside his dishes to rest his elbows on the table.

“I’ll make a big early dinner for when they wake up, and you all can eat and get a plan together then.”

Félix has a delayed reaction to this news, but he eventually relaxes. “Thanks, Mum.”

“Of course,” she says softly. After another moment, she moves her hand on Félix’s arm up to cup his cheek. “You told them she had to be alive. Did you not believe this yourself?”

Félix doesn’t move except to lean slightly into her hand. He stares at a spot some distance down the table, eyes still unfocused. “I did the math, and by ‘math,’ I mean I took the fact that Luka and I ruled out the existence of tunnels and the fact that Alya didn’t have an oxygen mask or some other way of keeping the sand from her airways, and I added things up from there. She likely suffocated in sand. Plain and simple, Mum,” he says sharply, though his voice is still quiet. “But I had to keep them going, so I lied to them. I told them that I’d actually found some evidence of tunnels, but that I’d wanted to be the one to reveal a map of them when I’d finally figured it all out. They seemed to believe me,” he says, scoffing lightly. “They believed me, and they let me take them here. And she’s probably got buckets of sand in her airways and lungs, with the way it swallowed her up.” The buckets is an exaggeration, he thinks, but it feels easier than what he wants to say.

Amelie doesn’t say anything for a bit, moving her hand to brush the hair back from his face gently. She doesn’t ask him the deeper reason behind why he lied. 

He doesn’t say.

He’s still with his gaze unfocused on the table, but a bitter expression turns his lips downward and has his brows low over his eyes. 

“What exactly did you rule out with the tunnels?” Amelie asks softly.

Félix’s shoulders sag some, and his eyes fall halfway closed. “Some air pockets here and there, some moving sand. The caverns beneath Crystal Cove.”

Amelie’s hand brushes gently through his hair. “Why rule those things out?” she asks, watching him carefully.

Félix holds in a sigh. “We ruled out the air pockets because it didn’t make sense for there to be a literal air pocket in sand—we figured it was sand semi-hardened into a pocket-like shape from the tide, which made sense, I guess, in a weird way, given the pockets had holes along the top where we could see them. It didn’t make sense for them to be access points to tunnels, since there weren’t any other holes present. We ruled out the moving sand because it was very likely just actual organisms moving beneath the sand, and it didn’t make sense for such tiny spaces of moving sand to be evidence for a tunnel. We did find a few instances of a crab or other sea creature moving beneath the sand, anyway, and other times, it confused us so much to find literally nothing under the movement that Luka figured they were some form of mini-earthquake. I’m not sure,” he says, grumbling unintelligibly a moment. “And the caverns—well, we don’t know where they would even be accessed along the beach where they wouldn’t also be flooded by the incoming tides, and it’s not like anyone has a map of these caverns. As far as we know, they’re only found by random chance, so we ruled it out, because we also don’t even know how they would work as tunnels or access points in the sand without creating makeshift-sinkholes.”

Amelie hums. “Well, how are solution caves made, dear?”

Félix frowns, moving to drag a hand roughly over his face. “Why’s it matter?”

Amelie shrugs. “Would you mind following my train of thought and answering my questions?”

Félix sighs, but he drops his hand gently back to the table. “Solution caves are formed by carbonic acid spilling into faults and joints, where the acid wears away at rock, making large water-filled spaces, which continuously wear away at more and more rock, opening up the space into an air-filled cave.”

“And how does water from the surface typically get into these caves after the fact?” 

“Water from rainfall and other ground sources seeps in through joints, which connect the cave to the surface.”

“And when many joints are in one spot…?”

“They can form a sinkhole on the surface, able to funnel water into the cave at a faster rate.”

Amelie smiles some. “And sinkholes can also be big enough for people to enter.”

Félix nods, frowning. “But we don’t have any sinkholes on the beach.”

“That you know of, Félix. Did you search the entire beach along Crystal Cove?”

“Of course not, Mum, but—”

“Then there’s the possibility of sinkholes somewhere on the beach, or in other places. But back to my point—where else can caves be connected to the surface?”

Félix sighs. “Surface streams. We’d have to dig for those, though, Mum—metaphorically and physically, since you first have to find a stream where water is flowing down, down, down, before it just disappears.”

“You can also look for springs and aquifers, and points where water can flow in and out of a cave or cavern most or all of the time,” she says. “If you start from inside the caverns, it should be much easier to find them.”

“Fine—so, are you saying we should go into the caverns and look for access points by the beach from inside?”

Amelie shrugs. “It’s certainly a start, yes? What if there are trap doors or spots in the rock where there’s air pockets? Or you find a sinkhole that the machine has been using as an access point?”

Félix sighs again, dragging his hands over his face. “I’ll have to think on that a bit more, but… you think there’s a possibility she’s alive?”

Amelie nods. “I do—and I think your initial lies might hold up in the end, though I don’t recommend relying on lying this much in the future.”

Félix finally looks over to her, past her hand at the side of his face, and his expression softens as he relaxes. “Thanks. I…” He shakes his head, and he hides his face behind his hands. “I don’t know,” he murmurs. His shoulders droop. “I don’t know. I just—I had to get them out of there, Mum. I had to keep them moving.”

Amelie nods, understanding. “I know,” she says. She moves her hand back down to his arm, patting it a few times, before she draws it away. She stands and takes their plates and bowls, taking them to the sink, and she goes to sit down beside him again. “Now, is there anything we need to do before they wake?”

Félix nods, pulling his hands from his face. He spots a pad of paper and a pen a bit further down the table, probably from when they made a grocery list a few days before. “Yeah,” he says, grabbing the pen and paper and bringing them closer. As he speaks, he writes. “Before they wake, I have to contact Alya’s parents. Then I need to move the load currently in the washer to the dryer, and—speaking of, there’s four more loads with their things. Should I take those to the laundromat?”

“I can do that,” Amelie says. “There’s a bit of time before I can start making dinner, and it shouldn’t take more than, oh, two and a half hours at the laundromat.”

Félix bites his lip, debating it silently in his head. “Mm, if you would, that would be great. Then they have some warmer clothes to change into—Marinette, Luka, Chloé, and Nino, that is. Adrien is still in his warmer clothes, though I may give him one of my darker hoodies to change into after he wakes.” He returns to his list. “I also have to get them through the night, but we may end up investigating or going out to see if we can trap the creature again, and if that happens, I might need you to call Nino’s parents and Uncle Gabriel and tell them they’ll be here for the night.”

Amelie nods. “After dinner, though.”

Félix nods back, and he thinks for another moment, but he doesn’t add anything else to the list. In his head, though, he adds on, find Alya. Before the rest of the gang does, though—just in case. He can’t say he fully believes in the possibility himself, of her being alive still, and because of this doubt, he wants to be extra sure of what they’ll find. He can’t have them finding her dead, after all, and he supposes he’s the best suited of them to handle the sight—and what would come after it—and still be able to move forward. It would be difficult, of course, but he could get through it, like most things. 

It would be a necessity, and the only option would be that he handle it well. He’s lucky that he works best in circumstances like these.

“Did you ever find their cell numbers?” he asks. “Alya’s parents’ cells, that is.”

Amelie nods, and she takes the pad and pen from him, writing out four phone numbers. “This first one is her father’s work number and extension, the second, her mother’s restaurant, and the third is the father’s cell, and the fourth the mother’s.” She passes back the paper, which he takes. 

“Alright, then,” he says, steeling himself. “Would you like help with getting the laundry together?” He looks up at her, something unreadable but akin to desperation in his eyes.

Her expression softens. “Would you like me to call her parents, and you can get the laundry into bags and in my car?”

Félix hesitates, but he clenches his jaw against the desire to say yes. He deems the desire selfish. “No, I think I should be the one to do it.” Masochist, a voice in his mind hisses. Repentant, another voice says, gentler.

Her voice is soft with her next words. “You don’t always have to be strong, you know.” 

He gets up from his seat at the table, expression carefully masked, and he takes the list in hand. He leans over and kisses her forehead. “I’m not always strong, Mum,” he murmurs, the words feeling like a guilty confession. “Don’t worry.”

“It’s my job to worry about you, Félix.”

His answering laugh is light, though it sounds hollow even to her.                                                                                                                                                   

~*~

Félix decides to step out to the van to call Alya’s parents. He first tries their cellphones, leaning up against the driver’s side door.

Alya’s mother doesn’t pick up. Félix starts to frown.

Alya’s father does pick up, though he’s clearly distracted and already angry before Félix can even speak. “I swear, if this is another spam caller, I—”

With this response, Félix’s resolve shatters a bit. Of course Alya’s parents wouldn’t be expecting this call, he thinks, feeling a bit lightheaded already. He works to make his voice steady, but it’s hard when the world is starting to spin. “Is this Alya Césaire’s father?”

There’s a pause. “Yes—is… is she okay?”

Félix swallows past the lump in his throat, recalling what his mother told him to do. “Have you heard anything about the… missing volleyball players on the beach?”

“I heard five went missing today, yeah—wait—Alya?”

Félix’s mind snags on the number five. He makes a mental note to check on the number once the call is over. “Alya was one of them, yes.”

There’s a rustling on the phone, a choked sound, and then a long pause. “Who is this, again?”

Félix grips his phone tighter. “I’m one of her friends,” he says, his tongue feeling heavy in saying the word friends. (Would friends watch and let you die?) “I saw her get taken.”

Mr. Césaire laughs, though it’s a bitter thing. “You’re one of those mystery solvers, aren’t you? Alya doesn’t have any other friends, so you have to be. You’re one of the new ones, I’d bet. I’ve seen you driving around with my daughter, I think. Is this… Adrien? Or Félix?”

Félix’s mouth goes dry at Adrien’s name on the man’s tongue, in his condescending tone. There’s something akin to rage beginning to fester beneath Félix’s skin, but he still says, “My name is Félix, sir.”

Mr. Césaire quiets. “I’m assuming she got taken when you all were with her.” Félix stays silent, not bothering to try and lie. “You can’t even protect those you claim as your own, can you? I’d say leave things up to the police, but you and I both know by this point what little they can do. Instead—just stay out. You lot are just incompetent, stumbling onto things out of sheer dumb luck, but it puts all of you at risk. If the police, armed officers, can’t do anything, none of you should try. Stop chasing monsters, because it’ll only get more of you hurt.” Mr. Césaire’s voice is thick with emotion, with grief, already, but he still manages to admonish Félix and make him feel small and defensive.

Still, he knows when he’s arguing with someone who has their head in the sand. He knows when to pretend to wave his white flag. 

“Very well,” Félix says quietly. “I just wanted to let you know that she’s missing.”

Mr. Césaire makes a broken noise. “Well, stay out of it, now. I’ll tell my wife tonight, and we’ll wait and see what happens. You kids stay home and stay away—we don’t want anymore trouble.”

Mr. Césaire hangs up on a trembling Félix.

It’s several minutes before he can take the phone from his ear, and he exits the call screen quickly before turning his phone off and slipping it back into his pocket. He’s forgotten about the supposed five missing volleyball players, feeling that rage just beneath his skin sour and fizzle out, hardening into something that makes him feel like he could vomit. 

Félix moves robotically as he tears off the bit of paper with Alya’s parents’ numbers, and he crumples this scrap up, slipping it into the pocket of his jeans. Right now, he wants to go straight to the only entrance to the caverns below Crystal Cove that he knows of, and he wants to spend as long as it takes getting to the beach—or wherever the caverns end closest, since he’s still not sure the caverns go under there anyway. He just wants to see—for Alya’s sake, because if her parents don’t care to have her found, he certainly does. For her sake, but also for Adrien and Adrien’s friends’ sakes.

The only setback is he’d be leaving the gang alone for at least a few hours—unattended, and possibly unable to reach him, depending on how little service he’d be able to get in the caverns, if any.

Right then, Amelie steps outside, a few bags of laundry in her arms. Félix heads over, expression unreadable but definitely, his mother thinks, him on the edge of a breakdown. She lets him take two of the four bags in hand, but she stops him from walking away with a look, gently pushing the front door behind her closed with a foot.

“How did the call go?” she asks, voice soft.

Félix goes completely still and closes his eyes. 

He’s silent for a long moment before he swallows and speaks. “A lot of people in this town would prefer to bury their head in the sand rather than open their eyes to the corrupt system they’ve left in place,” he whispers. He opens his eyes to look tiredly at his mother. “They would rather let their children die alone and without hope than to support or encourage any chance of their survival.”

Amelie sets her bags down on the porch, and she carefully pulls Félix’s bags from his hands. Staring at him sadly, she pulls him into a firm hug, closing her eyes as she holds him close. If only he knew, she thinks. Instead, she says, “What can I do for you, darling?”

Félix hugs his mother back, eyes shut tightly as he tucks his face against her shoulder. “I want to go down to the caverns,” he says, voice a bit broken as he speaks. Tears well up behind his closed eyes. “I feel like I should be looking for her while they sleep,” he whispers, tears slipping from his eyes and staining her soft sweater. “No one else cares to, and—and I need to do something.”

Amelie raises a hand to pat his head on her shoulder some, and she slowly rocks them from side to side. “Shall I stay home and finish the laundry here, then? It’ll only take longer for the loads to be done, but then you can go out looking for her. Try to be back before 4 o’clock? That should give you 30 minutes to get home before I wake them. If you aren’t home by 4:30, I may have to send them after you,” she says quietly.

“Yeah,” Félix says bitterly, his tears slowing. “I doubt Raincomprix would come searching for me down there, no matter how much you offered to pay him extra to do his—his damn job.”

Amelie nods absently, continuing to soothe him as she was.

After a moment, Félix softens into the hug. “But that would be nice, Mum.” After a moment, he asks hesitantly, “Are—are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” she says, voice soft and pleasant. “I just need you to come home, alright? They can’t lose anyone else, and I can’t lose you.”

“I know,” he whispers. “I promise to come back.”

“Good,” she says firmly, and then, softer, “I love you, you know. I’m always here for you, too, even when the rest of the world may not be.”

“I know,” he whispers again, tears spilling a bit quicker past his closed eyes. “I know.”

Amelie smiles a bit, knowing he loves her, too. “Now, what is it you need to start searching for Alya down there? You’ve got a little over four hours before we’ll need you back—food, water, flashlights, your phone…?”

Félix pulls back from the hug. He wipes at his face, drying his tears with rough movements. “I’ll probably take a backpack with Marinette’s toolbox, some rope, food and water and flashlights, yes, but I’ll also take a change of clothes for in case I do find Alya, because it’s chillier down there, and…,” he trails off, thinking to himself. “That should be good, I think.”

Amelie nods. “A compass and map will be helpful, too.”

Félix nods, pulling his mother into another quick hug. “Thanks, Mum.” He pulls back from the hug, stepping down off of the porch, but he turns back to her and says, “Let me just grab the rope, toolbox, and flashlights, and I’ll help you take the laundry back in, alright?”

Amelie nods, smiling some, and she watches her son head to the van with a renewed energy and determination. When he returns with the items he needed in hand, she picks up two of the bags of laundry, and is attempting to reach for a third, when he swoops in and takes the third and fourth bags before her. She stands upright, rolling her eyes, but she smiles as she opens the door for him. 

Félix rolls his eyes back at her, but he steps back inside their home, only waiting to hear her follow him. He stops in the kitchen briefly to set down the toolbox, rope, and flashlights, but he’s soon off towards the laundry room, where he sets the bags down and checks on the washer’s timer. 

Amelie, having followed him in, glances over when he sighs. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

Félix frowns. “I was going to have Alya’s other clothes with me, but they aren’t even close to being clean, yet. Do you think she’d fit in a pair of my sweatpants and one of my hoodies?”

Amelie nods, setting her bags down beside his. “That should work, yes.”

Félix hums, and he kisses her quickly on the cheek before jogging past her and out of the room. “Meet you back in the kitchen?” he calls out quietly, though he doesn’t wait for an answer. 

Amelie huffs a laugh, but she heads back to the kitchen, only stopping to check on the still-sleeping teens in the living room. When she reaches the kitchen, she starts going through the pantry for some snacks to pack for Félix and a potential Alya. She seals the snacks into a few pouches so they aren’t floating around at random in Félix’s backpack, and when she finishes, Félix enters the kitchen beside her.

In his arms, he carries a backpack, a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie, a compass, a map, his phone, and a handful of batteries. He sets these things on the table, and while Amelie grabs a few plastic water bottles and brings them over, he packs the clothes, food, rope, toolbox, extra flashlights, and the bottles of water. He leaves out one flashlight, his phone, the batteries, and the compass and map, storing them in a more accessible side pocket.

When he finishes, Amelie smiles and reaches out a hand to rest on his shoulder. “Ready?”

Félix nods, finally looking to her again. “I’ll leave the van keys with you by the door, but if they wake before 4:30, you should hide them, saying I took them with me. They might want to go searching for her themselves, too. Oh, that does—if they wake before I’m back, unless you’re sending them after me at that point, please don’t tell them I’m out looking for her. Maybe say I’m out running errands for you? Going to the store, maybe, to take my mind off things. I’ll explain the truth when I’m back if needbe, don’t worry, but… I don’t want them to try coming after me unless it’s necessary, Mum, and they’ll definitely try.”

Amelie nods, and she takes her hand off of his arm, patting his backpack. “Take a jacket with you, will you? It’s colder down there, you said, and I don’t want you coming home sick. In fact, maybe change into a pair of fleece-lined pants, too, please—”

Félix stops her with another kiss on her cheek. “Alright, alright, I’ll change into warmer clothes real quick, and then I’ll leave. I’m taking my car, by the way, in case they end up needing the van.”

Amelie nods and waves him off. “Warmer clothes,” she admonishes.

He rolls his eyes, smiling a bit for what she’s sure is the first time since Alya was taken, but he heads back upstairs quickly. Only a few minutes pass before he’s back downstairs again, swinging the backpack onto his shoulders, tossing her the van keys instead of his earlier plan, and telling her he loves her and will be back soon.

She replies, telling him she loves him, and that he’d better come back.

He doesn’t respond, already out the door, and Amelie sits down in the nearest chair as quickly as she can, feeling slightly faint.

She wonders if maybe she’s sent her own son to die, and her lower lip starts to tremble. How I wish you were here beside me, Emilie, she thinks.

~*~

Félix drives alone in his car towards the spot where he followed the gang into the sewers—and, consequently, the caverns beneath Crystal Cove—with the Fruitmeir and Mendeleiv case. He parks and gets out with his backpack, pulling out his phone to message his mother and let her know he’s going into the caverns, now, and that he’ll message her again when he gets out. He then puts his phone back and grabs the map of Crystal Cove, his compass, and the flashlight from the side pocket. 

With the backpack on his back and the flashlight and compass in one hand, he spreads the map out on the hood of his car, where he quickly pinpoints his location and his destination. He slips his flashlight into one of the pockets of his jacket, and he locks his car behind him with a click, slipping the keys into one of the small zippable pockets on the side of his backpack. 

Félix then turns to the sewer cap that will lead him down into the caverns, and he makes a quick note of the direction the beach where Alya disappeared is in, and he folds up the map, stuffing it in his jacket pocket with his compass. He zips up both pockets, and he kneels to the ground, gingerly taking the sewer cap off. He rolls it carefully to one side, setting it down gently, and he takes one last look around.

Félix then slips down into the sewer, disappearing from view.

Notes:

:) :) :)

so anyways. i’ll probably have another chapter posted on tuesday or wednesday of next week depending on how much writing i get done between now and then ahaha but if not tuesday or wednesday, then definitely thursday or friday!!

let me know what you thought of today’s chapter? félix has become one of my favorite characters in atitl, so i’m really excited for you guys to see what happens next 🤭

Chapter 16: chapter sixteen

Summary:

Félix searches the caverns below Crystal Cove for Alya, and, later, the gang wakes up from their nap.

Notes:

again, if you have any concern for a character’s wellbeing during this chapter, check the tags!! unless ure fae <3

Félix spends the first ten minutes in the sewer finding the entrance to the caverns. The next ten minutes are spent orienting himself, and then he starts walking—in the direction of the beach, in the direction of where he had last seen Alya, and in the direction where he hopes she still is. By this point, he has a little less than four hours to look for her, so he starts off walking quickly.

He knows that, above-ground, it would take about a half hour to get from Fruitmeir’s (which he's nearly under, now, if the familiar terrain shows for anything, thirty minutes into his trip) to one part of the beach, and then he has a ways to go to the left from where he's positioned before he’ll be under the Orangis Tech event set-up. With the time, he'll probably even hear the event overhead, he muses. 

Along the way, though, he makes little divots and marks in clear areas to make sure he goes back the same way—just in case he gets lost or turned around. He gave himself about four hours to search, but it doesn't mean he wants to be down here and lost for most of it. Though, with the luck the gang has been having of late, he's considerate enough to try and memorize the surroundings as they change, and to make obvious markers for himself. 

After a while, though, the stalactites, stalagmites, and columns of rock begin to all look the same. It's not especially surprising, then, although it is frustrating, when he manages to walk himself into a circle, only noticing after about what he estimates to be his third time around. He ends up pulling out his compass at that point, cursing when he discovers he's in the opposite direction he was trying for.

With two and a half hours left at this point, he decides to jog back to where he knew for certain he was on a straight path. He does this, flashlight in hand flickering and stomach growling, and he decides to take his first break once he finally gets to a marker he knows is a straight shot back to the sewer entrance. 

Ater a bit, he finds a marker he’s fairly certain gives him a straight shot back, and he sits down criss-cross applesauce style on the ground by his marker. He sets his compass down in front of the marker, making sure its hook to hang on belts and necklaces is pointed in his proper direction, and he breaks out a couple of snacks and one of the water bottles. While he eats, he takes a few batteries from the side pocket of his backpack and he switches them out with the old ones in his flashlight. He takes the old batteries and hides them in a different pocket, checks the time on his phone, and he quickly finishes his snack and drinks another sip of water. He puts the snacks and water away, stands, and puts his backpack on, and then he grabs his compass, keeping it out of his pocket. He’s resolved to not trust his gut that he's still going in the right direction this time.

Now, with a little less than two hours left, Félix carefully and slowly heads for the beach, compass in hand as he moves around cavern walls and through different areas separated by dips into murky darkness, across streams and even sometimes rivers, and around and around and around different stalactites, stalagmites, and columns of rock. His only wish is that he’d had more sleep the night before, because he does happen to get turned around on many occasions (usually because he forgets which direction he's supposed to be going, and he ends up following that deceptive red triangle North) and getting mixed up with markers from his first attempt that he really should have reset when he first went back. 

When he finally does end up hearing the faintest echoes of the ocean against one wall of the cavern, signaling it’s time for him to check his map to double check which way to turn to find the Orangis Tech event, he checks the time and his heart begins to sink.

3:17 p.m. Not even forty-five minutes before he has to be home—not even an hour and fifteen minutes before the gang is woken up and alerted to his easily-foiled plans and sent after him. Not nearly enough time to somehow go further along enough to figure out if the caverns really do offer a way of travel for the machine that took Alya. Not enough time to see if she's survived. In fact, Félix wonders if it's even enough time to make it back to his mother before she sends the gang after him, what with how much time was eaten up by his egregious mistakes just in getting to this point.

Félix badly, badly wants to find Alya, to even see if there's a possibility she's alive. But once again, there's the worry—the thought, the concern—that overrides even his deepest desires to know if he's truly ruined everything he had good for him by lying to the gang, and it's Adrien's safety. 

Félix doesn't want Adrien—a tired, afraid, worried Adrien—down here looking for him. He doesn't want Adrien doing everything he knows Adrien would do to find Félix (a list of actions they both know is quite similar to the list Félix has for what he would do to find Adrien, if their places were switched). Félix knows that by staying down in the caverns longer, he puts Adrien’s safety at risk. Granted, he can't control what Adrien does for him, but he feels that if he knows what Adrien would do, Félix has a duty to try and gently push for safer options.

‘Safer options’ currently entails getting out of the caverns quickly so Adrien and his friends aren't sent after Félix. ‘Safer options’ means Alya will have to wait to be found until Félix has a solid six to eight hour window to devote to traversing these caverns, which, as much as he hates to admit it, and as selfish as it feels to say, he knows have to be after he has some adequate sleep.

So Félix heads back to the surface, going against every desire to right the world above in finding Alya Césaire.

~*~

It takes him an hour and seven minutes to reach the surface, and he still ends up breathing heavily from having to run the last straight shot towards the sewers, sprint through the sewers back to the ladder up to the sewer cap, and hurriedly climb back up to where he’s parked. When he finally does make it to the surface, the first thing he does is pull off his backpack to access his phone.

4:09 p.m.

Félix

I’m out.

Headed home.

Amelie

Are you hurt at all?

He notes that she doesn’t ask about Alya.

Félix

Just a few scrapes, nothing major.

Are they still asleep?

Amelie

Soundly.

Come home in one piece, please.

Dinner will be ready at 5–I’ll let you wake

them up, alright?

Félix

Thanks, Mum.

I’ll be home soon.

In one piece, too.

read 4:12 p.m.          

Félix stands after a moment, sighing, and he puts the sewer cap back in place despite how much he wants to go back down and keep searching.

The thought of his mother sending Adrien after him is what propels him, however sluggishly, towards the car with his backpack. It’s the same thought he replays as he shoves his key into the ignition, eyes wanting so terribly to close and be done, because he feels horribly, awfully, monumentally guilty now, if he hadn’t before. She could be down there, he thinks, he hopes, he admits regretfully.

But he keeps moving—because he has to, for Adrien, for his mother, for the gang. He keeps moving, because he has to, and he’s always been good at what he has to do.

It doesn’t mean it’s easy.

~*~

Félix finally makes it home at about 4:32 p.m., and he exits the car to see his mother in the doorway of their home, expression concerned. He waves her off with a tired nod, grabbing his backpack from inside the car. He steps towards her, closing the car door and locking it, and he swings his backpack over one shoulder, a few emotional walls falling.

“I’m glad you made it back,” Amelie murmurs as he comes near.

He nods a bit absently, kissing her on the cheek, and he follows her inside, closing the door behind them.

“They should still be asleep in the living room once you’ve unpacked,” she says, and she heads back to the kitchen with only a single glance back towards him. Félix nods, again, tiredly. When she disappears, he turns to lean his cheek against the door, closing his eyes. 

He takes a few moments to himself before taking his backpack off and crouching beside the door. He only unpacks Marinette’s toolbox and the ropes, leaving the rest as he zips the backpack back up, propping it up against one wall. He tucks it under the jackets by the door, dropping his own jacket over it, and then he goes back outside, putting the gang’s tools back.

When he returns, he heads for the living room, checking the time again. 4:41 p.m. He decides to start by opening the blinds and turning on the couple of lamps in the corners. It isn’t long before there’s small noises of complaints from the makeshift bed, and some sounds of people rolling over. It isn’t much longer after that that there’s some grunts and grumbles as Luka and Chloé find themselves in much closer proximity (aka, on either side of Adrien) than they’d have ever liked. Soon enough, Adrien is sitting up between the two with a yawn, and Nino and Marinette are crawling towards different edges of the makeshift bed to sit up. Luka is the first to move from his stalemate with Chloé, rolling off of the bed and down onto the floor while she stays defiantly curled up against where Adrien had lain.

Félix does everything he can to keep from being kinder and overcompensating again from the guilt of not finding Alya—especially since he knows they don’t know what he’s done, in lying, in covering up his lies, in going to see if he could salvage anything from the situation. He stands still across the room from them, pulls a careful frown across his lips, and he puts his hands on his hips.

Adrien is the first to look at him, smiling a bit sheepishly. “How long did we sleep?”

Félix opens his mouth to respond, but Marinette cuts him off, her voice low and tired, almost defeated. 

“And don’t lie,” she says.

He sighs. “The last of you got to bed at about 10:30 a.m., and it’s just after 4:45 p.m., so about six hours.”

Marinette reaches for her phone, and she double checks the time. She nods.

Félix raises a brow. “Anyhow,” he says, voice a bit quiet. “My mother is making some dinner, if you’re all hungry. We cleaned your clothes when we got home if you’d like to change, and if you need anything warmer to wear, I might be able to pitch in with my own clothes, or you can use the blankets here.”

Adrien nods. Behind him, Marinette finds Nino’s glasses, sitting down beside the latter again and handing them over. 

Félix’s eyes scan over the rest of the group in concern, and his expression falls some. “Hey, Luka—in a little bit, you and I are going to talk.”

Luka merely looks over at him, nodding slightly. His eyes are unfocused and his hands tremble some, now that he’s had a few minutes in his head, but he’s sitting up, arms folded over his pulled up knees. Félix nods, trusting him to be okay for a bit longer, and he looks to Chloé, who has now sat up criss-cross applesauce behind Adrien, looking down at clenched hands in her lap. 

“Chloé,” Félix says. “Let’s step outside, yeah? Bring a blanket if you’re likely to get cold.”

Chloé looks up at him from under her lashes. “Why?”

Adrien glances back at Chloé, understanding in his gaze. He sets a hand on her knee. “C’mon, Chlo.”

Chloé closes her eyes for a long moment. When she opens her eyes, she carefully crawls across the bed, only bumping lightly into Marinette and Nino along the way. Marinette is unbothered, rubbing sleep from her eyes, and Nino is too busy examining the wounds on his hands to care. 

Félix nods to Adrien as Chloé stands. She takes a big, fluffy blanket from the bed, walking over, and he turns, setting a hand on her shoulder as he gently nudges her in the direction of the front of the home. He only glances back at Adrien to say, “Could you get them to the kitchen? My mother’s in there already.”

At Adrien’s answering smile, Félix turns fully and follows Chloé out to the front of the house.

When he and Chloé get outside, Félix closes the door behind them, gesturing for her to sit on one of the chairs on the porch. She curls up in one of the round ones, and he leans against one of the pillars, settling his hands in his pants pockets. He looks at her carefully a moment, and then he decides to not look at her in some semblance of respect.

“Why’d you call me out into the cold?” she asks after a few silent minutes. “Am I your least favorite, then, that you want me to die of hypothermia?”

Félix’s lips twitch a bit into a half-smile. “I did tell you to take a blanket if you were likely to get cold,” he says, glancing at her only briefly before looking away again. 

Chloé rolls her eyes. “Yeah, but it’s nearing winter.”

Félix bites back the full smile that threatens to spill along his expression. “We’re in the last stretch of heat in the year, Chloé, you really should be sweating under that blanket.”

Chloé rolls her eyes. “Why’d you call me out here?” she repeats.

The urge to smile fades. “Are you feeling okay?”

She glares at him. “Why do you care?”

“It’s affecting Adrien.”

“Aren’t you the loyal dog, looking after your master’s every unspoken thought?” Chloé asks bitterly.

Félix raises a brow, looking over at her. “You’re certainly one to talk.”

Chloé scoffs, and then she sighs, closing her eyes, before she rubs a hand over her face. “Fine, fine.”

He only gives her a moment’s reprieve. “So, are you? Be honest.”

“Or what?” she asks, voice sharp and defensive, and then she shrugs, tone softening. “I’m… not. Okay, that is.”

“Why not?” he asks simply.

“Stuff with Alya,” she mutters.

“What stuff with Alya?”

“How she went missing.”

“You don’t seem the type to harbor guilt about people you claim not to care about.”

“I don’t care about them,” she grumbles.

“And, yet,” is his only soft reply. He would say much the same, if asked—if cornered. If held at gunpoint, probably. But actions speak louder than words, and his actions… they’re questionable, at best. Still, he believes he only cares because of Adrien—that's what makes the most sense.

Chloé sighs, curling further in on herself and further from his prying words and gaze. “I don’t care about them, Félix. Just Adrien. You should know.”

“I do,” he says, because he does—he did—he’s not sure. But it’s what she wants to hear.

“But… if I had done something differently, this morning,” she whispers, leaning her head against the lip of the round chair. “Alya might still be here…”

“She’s alive, though,” Félix says, almost desperate. “We know—”

“We don’t know anything, Félix,” she interrupts softly. “But I saw enough in Luka, who knows the most about science of us all, to doubt you, so… I don’t think you know for certain if she’s alive.”

He’s gone completely still, chilled to the bone. “You didn’t say anything, did you?”

Chloé sighs again. “Adrien,” she says simply. “Adrien.”

What’s unspoken: I wouldn’t say anything to make Adrien doubt that she’s alive. I care about him, too, you know. You aren’t the only one orbiting around him, trying to protect him from any debris that could cause him pain. There’s miles of unspoken understanding between them in just this—in just his name—in just the voicing of the one thing that matters most to them both. 

Still, Félix shuts his eyes tightly. Sometimes, though they orbit Adrien protectively, they miss things. They don’t catch the brunt of something first. They don’t save something from cracking him open.

“Do you think he… do you think he’ll see the same in Luka?”

“He’s perceptive,” Chloé says quietly. “But when he wants to believe something… it doesn’t take much for him to ignore anything else.”

Félix nods, knowing this, but, still, he worries his lip between his teeth. 

“Are you done interrogating me?” Chloé asks tiredly. Their relationship has never been soft—always sharp comments and sharper looks, admonishment of the other and pride and shame in the self they saw reflected back at them. Though they understand what makes the other them, they easily—quickly—fall back into their usual snark. “I’m cold, and your questions are making me sick to my stomach.”

Félix glances over to her trembling, tightly-balled form in the chair. He doesn’t fall so easily back into their usual petulance, still feeling off-kilter with his own doubts and regret. “Sorry. Yeah—just... It’s not your fault, what happened. You can’t change what’s been done.”

“Will you carry me inside, too, like the sap you are?” Chloé asks, ignoring most of what he’s said. 

He knows she heard him, though—it’s evident in the faint bite of her words. He doesn’t mind the resulting teeth marks; they only sharpen his feelings about himself.

“Come on,” she grumbles. “Come here, you old man. Carry me inside, and make me think you care.”

Félix is moving to pick her up before he actively wonders if he even should, and he tiredly swallows back the unfamiliar feeling of being predictable. It sticks uncomfortably to the guilty lump already lodged in his throat, but he pushes past the feeling as he folds her close to his chest, where he can properly see her grumpy expression.

“Thanks,” she mumbles, eyes closed. 

He doesn’t comment on the way she leans closer, relaxing slightly. He’s tempted to drop her, now, in return for her snark, but he’s busy being kind and guilty, so he doesn’t. Instead, he steps over to the front door, which he opens gingerly with one hand. He walks inside, closing it gently behind them, and he leans against the door slightly.

“Shall I drop you, now?” he asks, voice quiet and soft despite his words.

“That’s not what you did for Luka and Nino,” she sniffs, still softened against him.

“I’m not taking you back to bed,” he mutters. “You have to be awake, now, like the rest of us.”

“Oh, did someone not get his nappy-nap?” Chloé coos sarcastically, rolling her eyes. 

He terribly wants to drop her. It takes everything in him to instead bend over and set her gently on the ground, but he’s grimacing all the while. 

Chloé still grumbles.

Félix ignores her, stepping around her after he’s locked the door, and he heads off towards the kitchen. Some distance down the hall, he can almost hear the quiet conversation in the kitchen over one of his mother’s records. Chloé catches up to him at the entrance to the kitchen, now standing and with her blanket around her shoulders, and she follows him in. 

At the kitchen table stand Luka and Nino, setting the table with plates and silverware. Adrien is getting drinks at the fridge for everyone, and Marinette and Amelie stand at the stove, finishing up the last of dinner. Félix gestures for Chloé to join in with Luka and Nino, the latter of whom instructs her to sit at one of the spots with a place setting, and he goes over to his mother, leaning against the counter a bit from her.

“Darling,” Amelie greets with a smile. “Your friends are very kind.”

Félix rolls his eyes, not bothering to correct her and say Adrien’s friends, not mine. “They are. How much longer on dinner, do you think?”

Amelie shrugs. “About five minutes. I can keep things warm an extra ten minutes, though, if you need.”

“Mm,” he hums, “can I steal Luka for a little bit?”

Amelie nods. “Just bring him back—he looks like he needs a home-cooked meal more often. Frankly—you know,” she turns to look at him with the full force of her I have an idea face, “why haven’t we offered to feed everyone more often, anyways? It’s just you and I, Félix, and we have the means—what do you think?”

Félix holds back a heavy, drawn out sigh. “You can ask them at dinner, once I’ve brought Luka back.”

Amelie’s eyes seem to twinkle as she smiles. “Hurry back, then.”

Félix can’t help the twitch of an answering smile, but he turns, patting her shoulder goodbye, before he walks over to Luka. 

“Hey, think we could talk real quick?”

Luka turns his unfocused gaze on Félix, and he nods slowly. 

Félix guides Luka upstairs, where they sit on the top steps, knees pulled up to their chests and arms  folded over their knees. Félix allots him the same semblance of respect he had for Chloé and doesn’t look at him, giving him a few moments of silence.

“So,” Félix starts. “You kind of went catatonic tody. Want to talk about it?”

Luka merely shrugs, dropping his chin to rest on his arms. 

Félix bites his lower lip, thinking. “How do you… feel?”

Luka stills.

“She’s alive,” Félix says softly, noticing.

“I’m not so sure,” Luka whispers.

“I am,” he says, as confidently as he possibly can.

“Good for you,” Luka says sharply, almost defensively.

He’s not much for conversation right now, Félix thinks, frowning. “Alright,” he says with a small sigh. He turns his head and lays it on his arms, looking at Luka. “What color is your shirt?”

Luka frowns. “Did you go blind in the past five minutes?”

“What color is your shirt?” Félix repeats.

Luka scoffs. “Black. Same as it’s been all day.”

“Hm,” Félix says. “Where are we in the house?”

“Are you stupid?” Luka asks, angrier than Félix has ever seen him. 

“Answer the question,” Félix says calmly.

“Or I could not.”

“Then I suppose I’ll have to take you out back and we can fight hand-to-hand until you look a bit more present.”

Luka scowls. Losing to Félix doesn’t sound all that great right now. “We’re at the top of the stairs.”

“Can you get 1% more comfortable right now?”

Luka shifts on the stairs, shrugging his shoulders. “Done.”

Félix nods. “Alright. What parts of your body are touching the stairs?”

“Butt. Feet.”

“What’s the first color you notice when you look around?”

“Blue.”

“What else has the color blue around us?”

“My pants. Your shirt. The painting above the stairs. The doorway to the kitchen, the doorway to the living room.” Luka picks up his head, and he turns to look around them. “The doors, and… in your room, there’s a jacket hanging off of the bookcase. You have a pair of blue shoes on the floor.” Luka then turns to glance at Félix, gaze a bit more focused, but he looks away quickly, frowning. “Are we done with the questions?”

“How do you feel?”

“Oh, seriously?”

“Then no, we’re not done yet with the questions.”

Luka drops his chin back onto his arms, disappointed.

“Are you hungry?” Félix asks.

“Yeah,” Luka says.

 “Are you cold?”

“Just a little.”

“Can you hear anything?”

“Other than you?” Luka asks sarcastically. “Everyone downstairs.”

“Who’s talking?”

Luka frowns, thinking. “Amelie, Nino, and Adrien.”

“What else can you hear?” Félix prods, gentle.

“A… fan. In one of the rooms to the left. And my pulse.”

“Do you have a headache?”

“I… yeah, I do.” 

Félix nods. “Do you usually take any medicine for headaches?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’ll get you some when we go downstairs.”

“Thanks,” Luka says quietly.

Félix nods again. “What are three things you can feel right now?”

“Annoyed, angry, wanting to leave this conversation.”

“Physical things, Couffaine.”

Luka closes his eyes, frowning. “My pants. My shirt.” He reaches out a hand, putting his palm to Félix’s shoulder. “You.”

“Good,” Félix says. “Do you feel sleepy?”

Luka shakes his head. “Not very, no.”

“Thirsty?”

Luka purses his lips. “A bit. Your mom made us all drink a whole glass of water once we got in the kitchen, but I’m a bit thirsty now, too.”

“How do your hands feel?”

He sits up a bit, pulling back and looking at his bandaged hands. “Mm… okay, I think.” He stretches his legs out some on the stairs, and he slouches a little to one side, leaning against the wall.

“Good. Let me know if they itch at all, yeah?”

Luka nods. “… Thanks.”

Félix raises a brow. “Not being mean to me anymore?”

Luka rolls his eyes. “Just got angry.”

“Yeah, and from what I know, you don’t really do that. What’s up?”

Luka frowns, looking at his hands in his lap. “I just… I don’t know how I felt. How I feel.”

“Is your response to that to shut down?” Félix asks gently. 

Luka gives him a dry look from the side. “Maybe.”

“Okay,” he says. “Well, did the questions help? To bring you out of that some?”

Luka’s look turns a bit sheepish. “Maybe.”

Félix nods. “So if it happens again, we can try this?”

Luka rolls his eyes. “Maybe.”

Félix raises a brow. “Got anything else to say other than maybe?”

Luka cracks the barest smile—the first, Félix thinks, since Alya was taken. It looks a bit off-kilter, a bit uncomfortable, like he has to get used to it, first, but he’s smiling. And then he says, “Maybe.”

Félix lightly thwacks Luka’s shoulder. “Alright, come on—let’s go eat.” With a barely restrained sigh, Félix stands.

“Thanks,” Luka says, standing and following him. “For… today.”

Félix shrugs off the thanks. “Yeah, yeah.” 

Félix still can’t manage to swallow his guilt, but he supposes he does a good job of hiding it. Chloé and his mother have been the only ones to notice it, which gives him some semblance of relief.

~*~ 

Downstairs, the gang and Amelie eat together. The early dinner consists of biscuits and gravy, sausage patties, scrambled eggs with cheese, fried potatoes, and fresh, sliced peaches. Everyone eats a bit in silence after thanking Amelie profusely, and everything feels soft and warm and light, eating together after a bit of sleep, but no one quite forgets what happened that morning, though there are some who are considerably more optimistic than others. Those more optimistic eat a bit faster, smile a little wider, and look a lot more hopeful. 

After asking for seconds, to which Amelie smiles, saying of course, Nino speaks.

“Hey, M—Amelie, how’d you have so much prepared for us being here? With the bed and the food and stuff, you know?”

Amelie glances at Félix briefly. He shrugs back at her. 

“Well, since Félix found out you all were helping Adrien,” Amelie says, eating a slice of peach. 

“That long?” Nino asks incredulously. Marinette’s mouth has dropped open, and Luka’s brows have risen high along his forehead. Chloé looks unsurprised, but Adrien is rolling his eyes and turning to glare at Félix.

“Stalking is frowned upon, Félix,” Adrien admonishes. “You know that.”

“Nothing will change ‘til you can stop me,” Félix says, unbothered.

Adrien scoffs. “You’re so annoying.”

Félix grins, brows raised. “Ah, but what is annoyance but love persevering?”

Chloé rolls her eyes. “It’s what is grief but love persevering.”

“Grief, annoyance.” Félix shrugs, unbothered. 

“Thanks for taking us all in,” Marinette cuts in, looking to Amelie. “You didn’t have to, but you did, and we really appreciate it.”

Amelie smiles wide. “Of course, of course. You know, if any of you would like, you can come by for dinner or meals more often. Félix and I have the means to support you in that way, and we’d love to help. All we’d need is just some notification of when you’ll be around, so I can make sure to have enough food ready or prepped, if that’s alright?”

Marinette’s eyes widen and she looks to Félix. “You’re sure?”

Félix shrugs, tilting his head towards Amelie. He doesn’t bother trying to say that she had the idea. He doesn’t bother trying to say that he, too, wants them to be fed and taken care of, either, because he doesn’t know if that really is what he wants or if it’s just the guilt speaking. 

“If you really want,” Marinette says hesitantly, looking back to Amelie, “we’d be open to that.”

Amelie nods happily.  

The rest of dinner goes by with soft, quiet conversation, intermittent laughter, and a warm, though subdued, light. When they all finish, Félix waves Amelie away to rest some in her hobbies, and he and the gang pick up the kitchen in her wake, quieting a bit in her absence. The softness from before stiffens and shifts to one side with the memory of that morning. 

In silence, Marinette wipes down the stove and counters. Félix washes the dishes at the sink, and Luka dries them. Chloé and Adrien put the excess food into containers and store them in the fridge, and Nino wipes down the table and takes Félix the dishes from there.

When the gang finishes, they head back for the living room, though they bump into Amelie in the hall, who now wears a pair of fluffy pajamas. She smiles at them, waving them past. 

“Go on ahead,” she says. “I was just notified of a package at the door, but once I’ve grabbed it, I’ll put the kettle on for some hot chocolate to keep you all warm.”

Félix shrugs, and so do Marinette, Nino, and Luka. They file into the living room, where they fold up the blankets and stack the pillows on the bed. 

While they do this, Amelie goes to the front door and retrieves the package she was notified about. She heads back into a nearly-silent living room, where the gang has arranged themselves on the bed in the center, huddled up loosely around a few stacks of blankets and pillows. They look almost directionless—lost, Amelie thinks, heading over for the group.

She holds out an envelope to Marinette, gaze gentle. “It’s addressed to you all.”

Marinette blinks a few times before she takes the envelope in her hands, examining it. Around her, the rest of the group crowds, peering over her shoulders. 

“Who’s it from?” Adrien asks quietly.

“Take a wild guess,” Marinette replies, voice devoid of emotion.

“Lady E,” Chloé says. “What’s she want this time? We’re a bit busy right now.”

Amelie quietly sits in one of the nearby chairs, curling her legs up under her.

“Busy with what?” Marinette asks flatly. “We’re not really doing a whole lot at the moment. Haven’t even got a plan.” She hasn’t opened the envelope, yet.

Félix holds back a sigh. “Who’s to say we weren’t about to make one?”

There’s a long, long moment of silence as no one replies to him.

“Has anyone told her parents, yet?” Nino asks after a bit, gaze still on the envelope. Everyone knows who he’s talking about, who’s parents he’s asking after.

“I did while you were all asleep,” Félix says, turning to his phone. It’s here that he remembers what Mr. Césaire had said—five people went missing today. Félix decides to search the news a moment while the gang considers the envelope in Marinette’s hands.

It doesn’t take more than two minutes for him to find the list of names from those taken today. Alya Césaire, Chloé Bourgeois, Belle Perry, Katharine Sanchez, Lucy White. 

Félix supposes it makes sense the town would think Chloé was taken, too, since she never managed to show up to her volleyball matches today, but he hadn’t heard about the other three volleyball players. Chances were low that they, too, simply skipped out on the day’s events.

When he looks back to Marinette and the others, they’re already looking to him expectantly. He raises a brow. “Yes?”

“We asked what they said,” Nino repeats, twisting his hat on his head some.

“Oh,” Félix says, glancing back at his phone. Five people went missing prior to or during today’s section of the event, Nadja Chamack had wrote. It is unclear whether they or those taken yesterday are still alive. “Her parents,” he reminds himself. “Well, her mother didn’t pick up, but her father did. In short, he told us to stay out of things. He said he’d tell his wife the news.”

Luka frowns, turning to pick at the hem of his shirt sleeve. Marinette and Nino both frown as well, but they’re not nearly as bothered or upset as Chloé and Adrien are.

“Well, we’re not going to just let the crab thing keep her,” Adrien says angrily. “We’re going to find her and bring her back.”

“Her and the other, oh, five people missing now,” Félix adds quietly. 

“Five?” Marinette asks. “I thought just two others were missing?”

Félix shrugs. “Three more went missing in today’s games. They also think Chloé got taken today, too, but they assume Chloé and Alya were taken before the matches.”

“Should we call anyone for you, dear?” Amelie asks, looking at Chloé gently.

Chloé frowns. “No one is worrying about me. Trust me.”

Amelie’s expression falls. “Very… very well, then.”

Chloé turns to Marinette, clearly trying to change the subject and move the focus from herself as quickly as possible. “Well? Are you going to open the envelope?”

Marinette looks back to the envelope in her hands, still turning it over. Her hands still after a moment, thumbs at the edge of the opening. “I suppose I should. Whatever’s in here… we can put it off for later, if it’s not going to be helpful to finding Alya. Agreed?”

The rest of the gang nods in agreement.

Marinette takes a slow, even breath, holding on tight to that empty feeling in her chest. We’ll find you, she thinks. We’re going to find you, Alya. I promise.

Notes:

ah i love félix sm this is one of my favorite chapters for him so far 🥰

anyways, let me know what you think!!! next update should be thursday or friday of this week :)

Chapter 17: chapter seventeen

Summary:

Marinette opens the envelope from Lady E and the gang makes a new plan to find Alya.

Notes:

hi i hope u like this chapter 🥰

Marinette opens the envelope slowly, wedging her thumb under the section of the wax seal that sits on the envelope’s top flap. The red wax seal comes off, stuck to the flap, and Marinette tucks her feet beneath her as she slips a searching hand into the envelope. 

Inside, there’s a single article clipping and a folded over piece of stationary with Lady E’s signature on it.

Marinette sets the stationary down in her lap, and she unfolds the article clipping, eyes scanning quickly over its contents before she starts to read it off to everyone. “‘Word has been spread of the missing group of mystery solvers, otherwise known as Mystery Incorporated. Members…’ this part is blacked out, so I’ll skip ahead,” Marinette says, frowning, “‘reportedly went down into the Crystal Cove caverns four days ago, as told by friends and family members of the teens. It was only last night that they were found, dusty and with clothes torn, to the surface. They’ve been detained for police questioning and an overnight stay as punishment and determent from future investigations, though it is uncertain whether this will deter them at all. It’s unclear as of yet why the group was in the caverns, but Sheriff Fu and Mayor Grassette will release a statement in a few days’ time.’ It was written twenty-three years ago, and there’s a picture of the group, though some of it’s been torn off.” She holds up the picture in front of her so the rest of the gang behind her can see.

In the photo stands eight teenagers—some of them vaguely familiar—with one of them torn out of the picture above the feet. Some in the group are laughing, others smiling, and one looks stoically at the camera. They hold a picture frame in their hands, with what looks to be a faded award. Adrien frowns.

“I think that’s my mother,” he says quietly, reaching over Marinette’s head to point at a figure two spots in from the right side. She’s laughing, in the photo, leaned against a boy in glasses with tousled, pale blond hair. Her other arm is thrown around the shoulders of the shorter girl beside her. Émilie has her hair up in a bouncy ponytail and she wears a denim skirt with colorful patches sewn into the fabric, a pink turtleneck, and a blue jacket. In a terrible fit of irony, she’s got on garishly multi-colored striped knee-high socks and beat-up tennis shoes. 

Adrien feels a bit sick.

The boy next to Émilie, the one she leans on, has a pair of round, gold-rimmed glasses. His hair is messy and unkempt, and he has a smile on his face as he holds the award in his hands. He wears a plain white button-up shirt and a pair of dark jeans with some nondescript boots. The girl on Émilie’s other side, the one looking stoically at the camera, has on a pair of dark glasses. Her dark hair has been pulled into a tight bun at the top of her head, and she wears a long-sleeved shirt tucked into a pair of ironed jeans, with a looser, pale, knitted vest thrown over her top half. She carries a shinai. 

On the blond boy’s other side stands another boy, tall and slightly pudgy. His hair is a light brown, messy and curly, though there’s evidence of the start of a receding hairline. He wears a purple-and-gold bomber jacket over a t-shirt reading Crystal Cove Fighting Urchins and a pair of jeans with boots. He has an arm thrown over a tall girl’s shoulders, and he’s smiling widely at the camera, as if he’s won a trophy. The girl under his arm is laughing, though it looks a bit measured. Her hair is a honey blonde, curled into a ponytail. She wears a short skirt, reminiscent of a cheerleading uniform, with capri-type leggings in Crystal Cove High’s trademark gold and purple colors. She also wears a gold and black knitted sweater and purple tennis shoes with gold legwarmers. The remaining two people visible in the photo stand beside this girl. The first, nearest to her, is a short girl with a black braid over one shoulder. She wears a denim skirt and a white button-up with a blue cardigan. The boy next to her, much taller, wears another purple-and-gold bomber jacket, though he wears his over a black hoodie and with some grey sweatpants and sneakers.

The last person, the one on the far right, beside the stoic girl and Émilie, can’t be seen aside from a pair of nondescript black boots.

As the gang crowds closer for a better look, Amelie stands and comes closer, peering at the image as well.

“They’re really familiar,” Marinette mutters, frowning. “I just can’t place it…”

Amelie worries her lower lip. “That is Émilie, yes, Adrien,” she says. “I remember when this happened, too, actually, but some things are a bit fuzzy with time, you know.”

Félix glances over at her. “Can you identify anyone else in the photo, then?”

Amelié shifts on her feet, frowning. “I can try. May I have a closer look, Marinette?”

Marinette nods and turns, handing Amelie back the photo. 

“In fact,” Amelie says, taking the photo in her hands, “why don’t we all go back to the kitchen? I can look this over while I set some water to boil for hot chocolate, and you all can continue your plans?”

The gang nods and stands, moving to follow Amelie into the kitchen. When they get there, they sit in much the same fashion they had for dinner. Amelie sits at the head, bent down over the photo in concentration, a soft frown marring her features.

The gang decides to sit in silence, though Félix pushes a pad of paper and a pen to Marinette. Along the top of the page, he’s written, what are the usual steps involved in making one of your plans?

While Amelie looks over the photo, Marinette writes, depends on what we’ve already done or seen. She pushes the paper and pen back to him.

When Félix starts to write, his mother lays the photo on the table, pushing it towards the others. Félix sets his pen down and he settles in to listen to his mother.

“I don’t remember many of Émilie’s friends, but I know that her boyfriend, Gabi, at the time, was this boy,” Amelie says, pointing to the boy Émilie leans against and the one holding the award.

Marinette frowns, shoulders drooping in defeat. “No one else?” she asks.

Amelie shakes her head, frowning, too. “No, I’m sorry, dear.”

Félix is quick to put a reassuring hand on Amelie’s shoulder, shaking his head. “No worries, Mum, it’s alright, really.”

Amelie looks to Félix and she seems even sadder. “I wish I could help more, darling.”

Félix shrugs, smiling at her some. “Really, Mum, it’s no big deal. We’ll find out who’s in the photo eventually. Why don’t you go back upstairs and finish what you were doing before?”

Amelie is slow to smile back. “After hot chocolate—sure.”

He nods and looks to Marinette, who’s still frowning. “We’ll figure it out eventually, but it probably isn’t terribly important to finding Alya, yeah?”

Adrien nods. “My mom can wait—Alya’s more important, right now. She’s more at risk. We’ll find this other gang after we find Alya.”

Luka puts an arm on Marinette’s shoulder, expression carefully gentle. “What did the note say?”

Marinette sighs, but she puts the article clipping back in the envelope from Lady E and she unfolds the note in her hand. Her eyes skim it first, and then she reads. “‘Hello, Mystery Incorporated. If you’ve read the article, you know this isn’t the first time kids have gone missing in Crystal Cove. If they could escape alive, so can your friend. Worth researching how the previous group known as Mystery Incorporated survived, don’t you think?’”

“Oh, so she isn’t going to just tell us how they did?” Chloé asks, grimacing. “How kind.”

“That does mean, though,” Luka says, examining the note, “that there’s something—in the library, probably, or in the Morgue where all the old newspapers are kept—that will lead us in the right direction. While we’re there, we can go over our list of suspects again, too.”

“Ah, I should probably mention…,” Félix trails off, biting his lip. Beside him, his mother stands to pull a whistling kettle from the stove. 

Suddenly, there’s three pairs of narrowed eyes on him.

“Mention what?” Marinette asks, voice icy.

He grimaces. “Calm down, it’s not that bad,” he says, waving off the suspicious gazes.

“Then what is it?” Marinette asks, propping her chin in one hand. She keeps her eyes steady on him.

Félix’s expression turns sour. “I may have already gone looking for Alya in the caverns today.”

Everyone’s faces fall. 

“She—was she?” Nino asks, gone completely still.

Félix’s expression softens in response. “No, no, I didn’t get very far—I got lost. I was only down there for a few hours, but I was tired and I… I didn’t get deep enough in the caverns to even reach the Orangis Tech event.”

Marinette stills, too. “So…”

“So if we go down there, I know what to look for and what works and what doesn’t, but don’t be surprised when you see my footprints in some sand or my markers all over the place.”

“Should we still check the library to see how the previous gang got out?” Nino asks, twisting his hat on his head as he leans back in his chair. He’s relaxed, with Félix’s reassurances and the returning glimmer of hope.

Amelie comes around to the table again, several mugs of hot chocolate on a tray along with a heaping bowl of marshmallows, a bowl of chocolate chips, some bits of peppermint, several spoons, and containers of caramel and chocolate sauce. She sets the tray down on the table and she waves to Félix before disappearing upstairs.

In her wake, several of them surge forward and start putting together their own mugs.

“I think we should still go to the library before going into the caverns,” Marinette says, nodding as she sprinkles in chocolate chips, stirring her hot chocolate with a spoon. “Just to be sure—plus, we may find more exits and entrances by finding out how they entered and escaped. We should be as careful as possible so nothing else goes wrong.”

Félix nods. “Can I write out a timeline for us?”

Marinette stares at him blankly, pausing with a bunch of marshmallows pinched between her fingers over her mug. “A timeline?”

He stares back, confused. “So we… know what we’re doing and when?”

Luka draws his brows together, looking at Félix, too. In his hands, he holds a plain hot chocolate. “Why do we need one of those?”

Félix glowers at them all. “Alright, well, clearly, I’m the only one of us still sleep deprived. Sorry for doubting everyone’s memory.”

Beside Félix, Chloé bites back a grin. Adrien nudges her with his elbow and a terribly hidden smile of his own. They both are decorating their own hot chocolates, having the tray pushed closer to them by Luka.

Nino, quick to soothe, reaches over and pushes the pad of paper and pen to Félix. “By all means, if that’s your jam, write a timeline. We just don’t normally do that, is all.” He leans back and shrugs, returning to his task of pouring copious amounts of caramel into his mug of hot chocolate.

Félix rolls his eyes, but he takes the paper and pen, getting to a new page. “Go on,” he tells them. “I’ll write as you speak.”

Marinette sighs, but she leans back in her chair, sipping at her mug. “I think the first thing we should do is pack our things up again and notify whoever we have to that we’ll be here with M—Amelie. After that, we should load up on snacks and stuff again, and we should head to the library.”

“It’s a library, you can’t eat snacks in there,” Félix grumbles.

“At that library, we can,” Marinette informs him, kicking him not-so-kindly under the table. “No interrupting me, Félix. We have a special pass from the librarians. You didn’t find out last time since you left before snack time.”

Félix mutters some curses under his breath, but Marinette pretends not to notice. Adrien and Chloé, however, have to stifle giggles over their hot chocolates, bumping shoulders and trying not to spill their drinks. Luka shoots them a glance, rolling his eyes, but he smiles a bit, too. Nino shakes his head, tamping down a smile himself.

“After that, I think we seriously need a nap,” Marinette continues.

“All of us,” Nino specifies, giving Félix a pointed look. 

“Yeah, what was it you said, Félix?” Marinette asks. “Six hours minimum, or we’d get shot with tranquilizer darts?”

Félix sighs. “I get it, I get it. You can stop, now.”

Marinette kicks him again under the table. “I told you, no interrupting me.”

“Ugh,” Félix groans. He grimaces, scooting back from the table some. “You’re just as bad as Kaga—ah.” There’s a pause. “Mm, continue, Marinette?”

No one comments on the name half-said, or the way Félix’s demeanor immediately shifts into something much less genuine with the slip-up. 

Marinette does her best to continue quickly. “Well, as I was saying,” she says, overcompensating a bit in her sass, “before you so rudely interrupted me, again, was that we all need a nap, you included. So, after packing, after getting snacks, and after a trip to the library, we’ll come back here for a nap.” She leans over the table, peering at his timeline so far. “Now, unless you want to be kicked again, just shake or nod your head. Did you get all that in your timeline?”

Félix’s middle finger, strangely enough, itches with an urge he’s very familiar with. He grits his teeth, holding back a sigh, and he nods instead.

Marinette grins sweetly. She reaches over to the tray Amelie set down earlier, and she grabs some marshmallows before leaning back in her chair. Between bites of marshmallow, she continues. “Alright, so, after a nap, we’ll get up super early—while it’s still dark—write that down, Félix—and we’ll go back down to the caverns with, say it with me, more snacks.”

“I kinda feel bad about our snack intake,” Nino says with a sheepish smile, twisting his hat on his head some. “Like, isn’t it a bit much?

“We’re growing teenagers,” Félix supplies matter-of-factly, scooting sharply from beneath the table to avoid a possible attack from Marinette. “It’s normal and expected, and you all do a bit more than the average teen, so you require a bit more in the nutrients department.”

Marinette, across from him, grumbles. “Interruptions,” she huffs.

Beside Félix, Adrien and Chloé collapse into a fit of barely-restrained giggles, likely exaggerated by each others’ response to Félix and Marinette’s shenanigans and the strange hours they’ve all been keeping. 

Nino and Luka both shake their heads, though they’re laughing some, too.

Félix has the barest hint of a smile tugging at his lips as he looks to Chloé and Adrien. “Oh, calm down, you two.”

Marinette finishes off her hot chocolate and pushes her mug a bit onto the table. “Does that make sense, though, guys? The plan?”

“Pack, research, nap, and search the caverns for Alya?” Nino repeats, taking another drink of his hot chocolate.

Marinette nods. “Yup.”

“Makes sense,” Luka says, smiling a bit.

Félix only nods, but he prods Chloé and Adrien beside him. “Hey, come on—did you guys get that, too?”

Between their giggles, they nod, too.

Félix sighs, turning to look at Marinette. “Suppose that’s an affirmative on your plan. Should we start?”

She raises her brows, looking to Adrien and Chloé, who are trying to tame their laughter. “Think they’re ready?”

Félix nudges Chloé. “Are you two ready?”

Adrien, between small laughs, while grinning, says, “Yes—yes, we’re—ready to—start when—you are—”

Félix rolls his eyes, but he glances at his timeline briefly before standing. “Alright, what all do you need packed?”

Marinette, Nino, and Luka stand as well, the latter two finishing their hot chocolates as they do. “Our clothes, blankets, pillows, and the food and thermoses that were in the van this morning. Luka should probably change his shirt, too, while we’re at it,” Marinette says before taking another handful of marshmallows. She eats them, looking to Luka, who rolls his eyes and shrugs.

“Sure, sure,” he says. “Got an extra black tee?” he asks Félix.

Félix nods. “Yeah, I can show you upstairs.”

Luka nods back.

By this time, thankfully, Adrien and Chloé have stopped finding Marinette and Félix’s shenanigans the funniest thing on the planet, and they’ve calmed down. While Félix takes Luka upstairs to change, Marinette and Nino wave Chloé and Adrien into the living room with them to pack up their things.

Their clothes have been moved into the living room by Amelie, all folded and in various piles as she attempted to figure out who owned what, and the gang’s blankets and pillows still rest, folded and stacked as well, on the bed.

While Luka changes his shirt and after Félix returns to the gang downstairs, the gang takes their clothes and most of their blankets and pillows back to the van. They leave some of their pillows and blankets with the things Amelie had prepared for them, at Nino and Chloé’s request, for their nap after the library. 

When Luka comes downstairs, he and Adrien help bring out the food and thermoses from before, and everyone but Félix gets inside the van and settled. While Félix goes back inside to tell his mother goodbye and goodnight and lock up after them, Marinette, Nino, Luka, Adrien, and Chloé debate where they should go for snacks.

By the time Félix returns to the van, sliding onto the bench seat on the passenger side, Marinette, Luka, Adrien, and Chloé have convinced Nino, who’s taken back the van keys for the evening, to drive them to a gas station on the edge of town for snacks. Nino is only convinced when Chloé says she’ll pay for a full tank of gas in addition to paying for snacks. (Honestly, he would have just been fine if she’d offered to pay for some gas—that is his favorite gas station, too—but she made the offer and he’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.)

Once Félix is settled in the van like the rest of them, Nino heads across town towards the gas station.

In the back, Marinette, Luka, Chloé, and Adrien debate the best snacks. Félix and Nino pitch in here and there, but the latter two largely focus on the road.

“I can’t believe you think Snickers are good,” Chloé tells Marinette, grimacing. “My opinion of you has never been lower.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Marinette laughs.

“The real question is,” Adrien cuts in, holding up a finger, “Twizzlers versus Red Vines?”

“When looking for a proper Red Vine, Twizzlers don’t hold a candle to the OG,” Luka says, kicking back along one of the benches in the back. “But I think both have their own merits—enough that I don’t see the point in comparing them.”

“As they say,” Marinette grins, “why you gotta pit two bad bitches against each other?”

Chloe rolls her eyes.

Adrien laughs. “Alright, alright—left or right Twix?”

“Left!” Marinette, Félix, and Nino say loudly. 

At the same time, both Chloé and Luka reply, “Right!” 

The latter two instinctively grimace, though there’s a bit of grudging respect, there.

Adrien laughs some more, holding his stomach in the captain’s chair. 

“Fine: best Skittle?”

“Red,” Marinette says confidently.

Nino shakes his head in the driver’s seat. “No, green is the best.”

Chloé scoffs. “Green is gross—yellow clearly tops them all.” She tips her nose into the air, rolling her eyes.

Luka laughs. “As if—purple for the win.”

Chloé gives him a pitying look. “You probably like anything grape-flavored, don’t you?”

Luka smiles proudly. “I love grape-flavored things.”

Chloé’s look only becomes more and more pitying. 

Adrien shakes his head, nudging Chloé’s shoulder. “Come on, come on. Alright, guys, how about… Nerds? Best flavor?”

Everyone pauses to think.

“I was actually craving some gummy clusters and Nerd ropes today,” Chloé muses after a moment. “Only reason I fought so hard for this gas station—the 76 by Exit 49 has loads of them every time.”

“Probably due to sales from you and Nino,” Marinette says, laughing a bit. 

“Like they’re overcompensating because they know we’re coming by?” Nino asks, smiling in the rearview mirror.

“Hm,” Chloé says, laughing a bit, too, “who all likes them? Just so I know how much to get while we’re there.”

“I think they’re fine,” Luka says with a shrug, his demeanor having dulled and shifted again, “but I probably won’t eat any tonight.”

“Same here,” Adrien adds. “I’m mostly just looking to get one of those huge double chocolate chip muffins, a RedBull, and a row of the powdered mini donuts.”

“Oh, yeah,” Chloé says, pulling out her phone. “You guys should give me your orders and I’ll go in with one of you to get it all and pay. How’s that sound?”

Marinette nods. “Sounds good. Got Adrien’s down, yet?”

Chloé shakes her head, types a moment, and then nods. “Yeah.” She looks up to meet Marinette’s gaze, biting her lip. “Go on, now.”

“Mm, could I get a yellow or a silver Rockstar, a bag of Flaming Hots—”

“The Cheetos?” Chloé clarifies. 

“Yeah,” Marinette nods, “the Cheetos. Oh, and one of the turkey club sandwiches, if they have them?”

Chloé nods along. “Nino?” she calls over her shoulder.

He smiles. “Some gummy clusters and a thing of Nerds ropes, a lemon and mint water, uh, hm… oh, a hotdog, if they’ve got them on the hot thing? Plus one of the cinnamon swirl muffins—the jumbo ones, you know—and a pastrami sandwich, if that’s not too much?” 

“Do you want anything else?” She asks, raising a brow. “Genuinely,” she adds.

He’s sheepish when he says, “Maybe a couple mandarins? If they’ve got them.”

Chloé nods, adding this all to her list. “Félix?” she asks after a moment. 

“Mm, does this gas station have the mini donuts with the crumbs on them?”

Nino nods. “They do—along with powdereds, chocolate-covereds, glazeds, and the strawberry ones.”

Félix nods back his thanks. “Alright, I’ll have a roll of the crumb ones, a pastrami sandwich, one of the black and pink Rockstars, and a bag of plain Lays chips?”

“Ruffles or the randomly shaped chips?” Chloé asks, typing away.

“The ones without ruffles, thanks.”

“Yup,” she replies. She then glances over to Luka, who’s slouched deeply on the bench where he sits. “Luka?”

He glances over. “Mm, I’ll pass.”

Chloé narrows her eyes at him. “Nothing to drink?”

Luka shrugs. “I’ll pass. Not too thirsty.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’ll get you a water, then. No complaining—you’ll take it.”

He heaves a sigh. 

Chloé closes down her list and navigates to her text messages, where she opens up a new conversation.

7:03 p.m.

Chloé

hey, dupain-cheng

Marinette

🤨

why the dms, chloe

Chloé

it’s chloé

what does luka eat for snacks usually?

not because i care

i just don’t want him stealing anyone else’s food

Marinette

🫵🤡

he wouldn’t steal anyone’s food.

chloé.

Chloé

just answer the question, dupain-cheng

A few feet away from her, Marinette makes a face. She continues typing, though Chloé doesn’t see the typing… animation pop up in their direct messages. Chloé glares at her, suspicious.

Mystery Inc.

7:05 p.m.

Marinette

[sent a screenshot]

i can’t take this shit

Adrien

😭 chlo just

chlo just ask him urself

Félix

I thought she hated him. 🤨

Chloé

stfu

Luka

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Chloé

I ASKED YOU IN THE DMS FOR A 

REASON, DUPAIN-CHENG.

                  read 7:07 p.m.

Nino grumbles from the front seat. “Can you all just talk instead of blowing up my phone?”

“Too late,” Marinette says, distracted. “You’re just going to have to read it when we park.”

Nino doesn’t throw his phone out the window, as much as he entertains the idea.

Mystery Inc.

7:07 p.m.

Luka

why do u even care 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Chloé

don’t ask me questions

Luka

u started it 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Chloé

i asked dupain-cheng a question 🔪

Luka

u started this by asking us each what we

wanted to eat at the gas station though

so.

again.

u started it.

Chloé

i could kill you

right now

with my bare hands

just strangle you right here

Luka

u could! 😍

try me. 🥰

literally try me. 🤡

Félix

Alright, you two can stop flirting now. 

Adrien

fr. 🤮🤮

kinda gross tbh

Marinette

he likes milky ways & paydays & laffy taffys

Chloé

i hate all of you

Marinette

but he’ll probably be in the mood for a maple 

long donut with lots of sprinkles

Adrien

even me? 😭

Chloé

        [replied to Adrien: kinda gross tbh ]

🥰 especially you 😍🔪

oh, ty dupain-cheng

ure on thin ice though

Marinette

with aaaa cold brew

(i can pick it out)

and he’ll probably want a turkey club, too

oh and get him some blue ranch doritos

Luka

they’re cool ranch doritos 💀

and i said ill pass on food

Félix

Just take the food and stop fighting, please 💀

Luka

they started it???? 

😭

Nino

wow yall fr literally be flirting back there wtf

Chloé

youre all clowns. i hate all of you.

i’m going to get food and pay for gas. 

dupain-cheng, come on.

Marinette

yes, boss! 😍

Chloé

fuck you

       read 7:13 p.m.

Notes:

hi i love writing the texting scenes can you tell

anyways heehee let me know what you think? 👀 next chapter on tuesday or wednesday of next week !! 🥰

oh also lol. émilie am i right. 🤡 #atitl.émilie.hater & little game !!! see if you can guess who the members of the old gang were? 🫣🫣🫣

Chapter 18: chapter eighteen

Summary:

The gang visits the library’s Morgue, where they find some helpful tools.

Notes:

🥰

When the gang gets to the library, they split up into two groups. Félix, Chloé, and Nino head down to the Morgue, the place in the basement where the librarians keep all of their old newspapers, and Marinette, Luka, and Adrien set to going over their suspect theories again. All of them have their phones on to alert them of anything from the other group or a text from Alya. They’re all saddled with their snacks and drinks, too—Luka, begrudgingly so. Félix notes with some concern that Luka still seems a bit… distanced from himself—enough to not care about eating or drinking, at least. He tries not to worry too much, believing that Luka has made it this far somehow and will survive for a few hours on his own before Félix can try helping him again.

Downstairs, in the basement, Nino leads Félix and Chloé through the Morgue’s aisles. In Nino’s hand, he holds the article clipping from Lady E. When they get to an aisle labeled 1996, Nino nods and leads the pair between the creaky metal shelves stacked with boxes and boxes.

“The Morgue is where all the old newspapers are kept, from different places in town. We should have the Crystal Gazette in here, the Cove News, the Union, the Crystal Times, the Crystal Cove Journal, CCHS Newspaper, and even the later-discontinued Capeline. I think the Morgue even keeps the old editions of things like The New York Times and Washington Post. I’m not sure who’ll have written stories on the previous gang while they were around, but we can at least look through all the options for that month and file it down to the week this story was printed, yeah?”

Félix nods, looking over the aisle they stand in with a bit of awe. There’s a part of him that feels oddly excited about all of this material available for research, and his hand twitches at his side to reach for his phone, to text Kagami. “This place is amazing—have you guys been down here a lot, or…?”

Nino shrugs, smiling some. “Ah, here and there, yeah. Not a whole lot of the cases we get go back this far or have evidence this old. We use it a lot for Alya’s blog, though—we’ll come down here and just sit and read for hours when we don’t have a case or a bunch of homework. She does articles recapping old cases, when she has the time. She’d probably know more about this old gang than we currently do—she’d know how long they operated, what kinds of cases they solved, maybe even who they are, I bet,” Nino says, grinning. He pulls down a few boxes for the months of July and August. Chloé and Félix both go over to help him, pulling things out and arranging them on the floor until they have eleven boxes out for the two-month period. 

“I don’t know why you guys do this for fun,” Chloé says with a sigh, sitting down beside one box and dusting it off, “especially when you already do so much. Why not just catch up on sleep?”

Nino laughs. “Well, think of it like this—mystery solving is to us what shopping is to you. Some parts of the process interest us more than others, and are so fun that we do them in our free time, too, even when sleep would be easier.”

Chloé makes a face. “I do not choose shopping over sleeping.”

Félix shakes his head, sitting down next to another box. He stacks a few boxes and then takes one closer, dusting it off. “You do, sometimes. Remember when that shoe store in San Diego opened, and you dragged Adrien out with you the night before opening so you could sit outside the entrance all night?”

Chloé purses her lips, pausing her skimming of one newspaper. “Alright, so maybe I do. Only sometimes, though.”

Félix rolls his eyes.

Nino laughs again, sitting down next to them. He pulls a box close and pulls out the first newspaper of August 1996, skimming it quickly. “Well, for Alya, that’s the research and article-writing part of our mystery solving. That’s her favorite part, and it’s also something she happens to love doing outside of solving mysteries with us. For Marinette, it’s making traps and sewing. Luka and I are a bit more… complicated,” he says, frowning. “Luka loves science and geology—anything Earth-related, really—but he’s in a weird position where he can’t exactly… focus on that, on making it into any semblance of a life or hobby, because he’s got Jules to worry about, and his mom and shitty dad only make it worse.”

Chloé frowns. “Juleka is in a band—and isn’t she old enough to take care of herself?”

Nino shoots Chloé a tired look. “It’s more complicated than that.”

Chloé purses her lips, but she doesn’t respond. She puts her first newspaper away and gets another, beginning to skim it. 

Nino sighs a little. “He worries about her. He’s always had to, and it’s hard not to—even now, when she’s growing up just like he is. He devotes any money they get to her and feeding their mom, and he spends all his time outside of solving mysteries to keeping Juleka in school and keeping her and their mom alive. He helps her with her homework, makes sure she has clothes for school and her concerts, makes sure she’s kept warm in the colder months… Luka does everything he can for Juleka. He doesn’t have the time or money to do anything else. We help him whenever we can—Marinette making Jules outfits for school, me driving Jules when I can and us all carpooling when she doesn’t have a ride, especially when it’s colder, and us having Jules with us when we’re doing research or not-so-dangerous stuff so we can make sure she’s warm and fed, but…”

“It’s no less difficult,” Félix says quietly, skimming his own newspaper.

“Yeah,” Nino says.

They work in silence a moment before Chloé asks Nino, “What about you? Why’s it… complicated for you, too?”

Nino shrugs, frowning. “My parents own a bookstore, and my pa is a reclusive writer. I raised my little brother—still do, practically, except he gets a bit pissy about it, since he’s a genius and can do things by himself now.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Chloé says hesitantly. Her and Adrien grew up similarly, without parents—she always took care of him, because he was Adrien and he was her best friend, and no one else would take care of him. But she stopped being so hands-on with it years ago. “Do you… not enjoy a specific part of mystery solving?”

He shrugs again, getting a bit tense. “There’s not a whole lot that interests me, besides music and hanging out with my friends. I’m smart enough, in a lot of areas, though I need help in some places, but I just like jamming to my tunes and hanging out. That’s not super helpful in solving mysteries, and it’s not exactly something my parents want—or expect of me, really. They have Chris—my little brother—working to be an environmental scientist of some sort, some big hot shot who’s already in college and writing papers for journals and rallying against the mayor and Tsurugi for allowing Crystal Cove to continue contributing to global warming. And he’s only ten, for crying out loud. And then they’ve got me, a lazy kid who skates by with low Bs in all his classes who’s always out solving mysteries—and at seventeen, nearly eighteen. They’ve got me, someone who doesn’t have a plan for anything beyond high school and solving mysteries, and someone who doesn’t give a shit about carrying on their bookstore dreams beyond selling the place when they die. They’ve got me, someone they can’t brag about to all their hotshot friends after ignoring me and Chris all day, week, month, year, and our lives.

“None of my interest are too great for career or college prospects, or for having a kid you can brag on,” Nino says softly. “Not real important to mystery solving, either.”

Félix and Chloé are very quiet. Only the silence of newspapers being quickly opened, flipped through, and closed fills the space for several minutes.

After a while, Félix says, “I’m sorry, Nino.”

“Me, too,” Chloé says quietly.

Nino shrugs, pulling his knees up to his chest. “’S’not all bad,” he says, grabbing a different newspaper. “I got the best little brother I could ask for. Since I was about eight and a half, I’ve been parenting the little guy while my papa hid away up in the attic or while both my parents screwed around with their store. Walking him to daycare or a babysitter, being late for elementary school to get him in,” he says with a laugh, “and as soon as I could, I learned how to drive. Made going to the store for us both loads easier.”

“Your parents didn’t even do that?” Félix asks, getting a different newspaper. His brows are drawn together in confusion, in frustration over Nino’s situation.

“Nope,” Nino says, shrugging. “They handed off the money for groceries to me, but they were either busy with their store or busy getting high at home after work to go themselves. ‘Course, that was at least when I was ten. At nine, it was just we’re too tired. Soon as I could drive, things got easier, though.”

“Still,” Félix says. “It’s… it’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Nino says, shrugging. “All I can do is try and make it as fair as possible for Chris.”

Chloé looks at him carefully. I understand, she wants to say.

Félix beats her to it. “I understand,” he says, reaching over to put a hand on Nino’s shoulder. “Even so… let me know if there’s anything we can do to help.”

“Let me know, too,” Chloé makes sure to say, still looking at Nino. She hopes he knows that she understands, too, about life not being fair, but the desire to do everything to make it fair for someone like Chris, someone like Adrien. “Anything, Nino—just let us know.”

Nino finally looks up from his newspaper to both Félix and Chloé. He looks a bit surprised, but there’s a bit of relief—a bit of camaraderie, a bit of understanding—in his gaze. “Thanks, guys… really. I appreciate it.”

“Of course,” Félix says, smiling a little. Like the sap he is, Chloé thinks. “But… you should know, you are important to them. And, well—us, too. The whole gang. You are important, even if you think what you find enjoyable about mystery solving might not be.”

Nino nods after a moment, though he frowns a little. “I… guess.”

“You are,” Félix repeats, softly, firmly. He sets his newspaper down in his lap, looking carefully at him. “They—we—we need you. Need you, Nino. Genuinely. What you do here is important, and it’s made all the more worthwhile with your presence and the efforts you make. Trust me.”

Nino hesitates, but then he looks up, meeting Félix’s gaze. “Y-yeah, I… thanks.”

Félix nods, picking up the newspaper in his hands again. “If you ever forget, I’ll remind you, alright?”

Nino smiles a bit. “Thanks, man.”

Chloé turns from Nino and back to her newspaper, nodding in agreement. 

They soon settle into the quiet that swaddles them close between the Morgue’s shelves. 

Chloé tries not to feel too warm and understanding of Nino, though she certainly feels different, now. Félix would call her a softie, if he knew. 

~*~

It’s a little over an hour and a half that passes before Chloé, Félix, and Nino have found six articles on the missing teens’ initial disappearance, six more on their return, and, amidst all of the dusty newspapers, a map. With all of this in hand, once they’ve put the boxes back, they head upstairs to find Marinette, Luka, and Adrien at one of the tables with several computers arrayed down it. 

While Luka has been reading through articles on one computer about Orangis Tech, Marinette has been scanning on another computer through articles on protests and complaints against City Hall. Between them, Adrien has been sat, a notebook and pen in hand as he’s written down suspects and motives from Luka and Marinette’s findings.

When the gang comes all together again, they decide to sit at one of the computerless tables for ease of sharing their information. The two groups that had separated sit across from each other and lay out their findings and snacks along the table.

“What did you guys find, first?” Nino asks, smiling a bit. He’s giddy, almost, from his findings. He feels close to finding Alya, and he can’t help but be excited.

He’d eaten his hotdog and pastrami sandwich on the way to the library, but now he opens up his cinnamon swirl muffin. His mandarins, gummy clusters, and Nerds ropes are on the table in front of him between the map and a stack of articles from the Morgue.

Beside him, Chloé has opened a bag of M&Ms and is sorting them by color into neat rows. Félix, on his other side, opens his roll of mini donuts.

Luka reaches across the table and he pulls Nino’s mandarins close. He takes a page from the notebook on his, Adrien’s, and Marinette’s side of the table, and he starts peeling Nino’s mandarins over it. “We—”

“Why didn’t you say you wanted mandarins?” Chloé interrupts, glaring across the table. “I would have gotten you some—”

Luka frowns. “I’m just—”

Nino puts a hand on Chloé’s shoulder. “It’s fine, Chloé—”

She shakes Nino’s hand off. “No, it’s not, it’s the principle—”

“I’m just peeling them, Chloé,” Luka hisses. “Calm the hell down—he doesn’t like getting the stuff all over his skin, so Alya peels them for him. Seeing as how she isn’t here right now, I’m peeling them for him. Get off your high horse, already, will you?”

Chloé freezes, but she looks to Nino, her whole body tense. Don’t tell me he’s—

He nods at her and shrugs, frowning. That’s right, he seems to say.

“I didn’t—” mean to bring her up, she doesn’t say. “I’m—I’m—”

“It’s alright,” Nino says quietly, picking at his muffin now. “Just apologize and we’ll move on.”

The way he says it—and the thought of Alya, of not doing enough to keep her safe, of, of, of—it makes her look across the table to the mandarins in Luka’s hand. The words feel sluggish on her tongue as she watches him peel one mandarin’s skin away in a single slow, steady swirl, but she quietly says, “I’m… sorry.”

Luka doesn’t respond—only sets the peel on the paper in front of him, and it curls lazily around a flattened memory of what it once held. In his hands, he separates the mandarin into halves, and he takes one slice at a time in his hand, carefully peeling off the papery white excess. He sets aside the peeled slices in a slowly growing pile as he speaks. 

Chloé carefully averts her gaze to the M&Ms she paused sorting, and she tries to swallow back her guilt. Alya, Alya, Alya. She forces herself to return to sorting. 

“We didn’t find a whole lot initially, in going back over the long list of suspects from… yesterday, I guess was when we did this the first time,” Luka says, peeling away, “but we eventually just started narrowing things down to who might want to hurt Orangis Tech or the city.”

“Did you rule out anyone who might be after Andre or trying to protect something on the beach, like what happened in Gatorsburg?” Félix asks, and then, looking up at Luka from his mini donuts, he adds, “Sorry.”

Luka shrugs, still peeling the mandarins. Beside his work, there’s a pile of untouched food—a Milky Way, a Payday, a maple donut decorated with sprinkles, a cold brew, a turkey club sandwich, and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. “We ruled that out, since there’s no record of attacks on Andre or any of the other events on the beach. Marinette called Andre anyway to double check, and he said he hadn’t seen anything before the Orangis Tech event. Still, we wanted to check over City Hall complaints and protests, too, just in case someone wanted to throw us off the trail.”

Félix, Nino, and Chloé nod. Nino is eating his muffin a bit more normally, Félix has set aside his mini donuts for his chips, and Chloé has temporarily turned from her now-sorted M&Ms to sip at her lemon and honey water and pick at her gummy clusters. Across the table, Adrien is sipping at his RedBull between bites of his powdered mini donuts. Beside him sits an untouched double chocolate chip muffin. Marinette is alternating between the last of her silver Rockstar and her bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos, having eaten her turkey club sandwich in the van. 

“Did you guys find anything from there?” Nino asks, finished with about half of his muffin at this point. Luka has peeled one and a half mandarins, but he keeps piling the peeled slices to one side of the paper.

Marinette answers. “Well, there wasn’t a whole lot from the complaints and protests against City Hall that made sense, to be honest, but we wrote the most logical ones down. What’s most promising, though, is something Luka had heard about but that was also in the articles he read about Orangis Tech, which makes us think our main suspect is Max.”

“Markov Max? Tech genius Max?” Nino asks, body tensing beside Chloé. “He and Chris—they’ve been hanging out.”

Something strange seems to curdle in Chloé’s stomach.

Marinette frowns, but she nods, looking in her bag of Cheetos. “Yeah… that Max.”

Chloé looks across the table at Adrien, and she starts eating her row of red M&Ms, methodically, one at a time, as the world around her grows fuzzy at the edges. She’s sick with understanding, she thinks. She hates it. 

Beside her, Nino’s breaths come out a bit shuddering-like. “I—Max. Chris’s friend, Marinette?”

Marinette looks up from her Cheetos, realization slowly dawning across her face. Still, she says, “Yeah, Chris’s friend. Our classmate.”

Chloé feels like they’re all repeating history. Luka, Kagami, Nino. Haven’t they done this before? 

Everyone is too close to everything, she thinks. Except steady Marinette, a strong rock against crashing waves. Félix and I are just like her, except—except—except we know how not to hurt, and we choose who to protect. She protects, but she doesn’t know how not to hurt.

She should apologize. (I should apologize for more.) We are reflections and we are completely different and none of this matters, but she’s hurting someone I now understand. 

Apologize, Marinette, she doesn’t say.

Nino watches Marinette, and soon his breaths even out. “Alright,” he says after a few minutes. “Alright.”

The whole table around them is silent.

Quietly, Marinette says, in a fit of brief understanding, “I’m sorry.”

Nino nods. “I know,” he whispers.

They eat silently a long moment.

“Go on, then,” Nino says, a bit louder, a bit more tired. “Why Max?”

Luka sits up. Finished peeling the mandarins for Nino, he tears the paper with the separated parts in two. He slides the piece with the pile of peeled slices over to Nino, and he starts speaking softly. 

Nino gratefully accepts the mandarins, beginning to eat them, one carefully-peeled slice at a time.

“A while back, Orangis did a collaboration with CCHS. You might have seen the fliers about it around school—internships that would look great on college applications, opportunities to work with technology to improve people’s lives.”

Nino nods. His voice is low and trembling between slices of mandarin. “Chris wanted to join, but they rejected him for his age. He was depressed for weeks—wouldn’t even go to the movies with me.”

Luka opens up his Payday candy bar, picking at it. Chloé’s eyes stray to it as she methodically works through eating her orange row of M&Ms. Something about his action makes her mind wander to the bag of Skittles beside her, the one she’d grabbed to sort before having Adrien eat them, since she doesn’t really like Skittles, anyways. She wonders—debates, argues with herself.

“Well, Max joined,” Luka says, still picking at his candy bar. He takes a single bite, chewing it for a long, long time. It looks uncomfortable, she thinks. He swallows thickly and puts the candy bar away, moving to pick at the peels from the mandarins. “He thought Markov would be a great way to help improve people’s lives—AI, you know. Future of the world.”

Chloé, sick of watching him, moves and grabs her bag of Skittles. She sets the bag not-so-gently down in front of him, glaring. “Sort them.”

It’s a bit telling how Luka doesn’t tell her to screw off—just clears a space in front of him.

As he opens the bag, slowly dumping out the Skittles, he continues. She keeps watching him, though she wishes she would stop. (Is it understanding, she wonders? Do I feel like I understand him, too, now? She doesn’t want to.)

“I guess he got selected,” he says. “There’s a picture, in the paper—or, there was, about eight months ago. He was selected and he had his picture taken with the CEO, along with, oh, three other kids.

“They made four products,” Luka says quietly, beginning to sort the Skittles into color groups, first. “Four products meant to improve people’s lives using technology. Max talked about it while we were lab partners in Chemistry, and I guess it was great, at first. He was listened to, he was working with people on his level who understood all the words he used, and he felt like he was going to make a difference. 

“Only, they didn’t release his product. They told him they were facing unexpected budget cuts and dropped him and one of the other interns.” Luka starts sorting the colors into columns, and Chloé makes a face, but she doesn’t comment on it, busy eating her yellow M&Ms one at a time. He continues speaking, some life returning to his voice. “He hacked into their databases, of course. You guys know him,” he laughs. “Not about to take shit like that that doesn’t make sense. He’s a genius, right? He had good ideas. Anyways, he found out that they didn’t have any budget cuts, they just wanted to use what he brought to the table with Markov and what another intern brought in designs, but they wanted to use those things for other products.

“Max got real quiet after that,” Luka says, voice growing a bit sad. Everyone at the table seems to shift as Luka’s tone does—Marinette puts away her Cheetos, Adrien pulls up a knee to his chest, expression falling, and Félix, Nino, and Chloé slow their eating until they stop, leaning closer slightly. “He stopped showing up to school,” Luka says, still sorting quietly with his head down as if no one around him has grown quieter, “and he stopped turning in assignments, responding to messages, and even just leaving his house, from what I hear.”

“He still turns up to visit Chris,” Nino whispers. Worry is like a toothache in his voice—a pulsing undercurrent, difficult to bear when acknowledged. Chloé’s gaze is drawn back to Adrien like a magnet. “They have sleepovers, too, at Max’s—I drive Chris over when he doesn’t want to walk or has too much to carry.”

Luka looks up, finally, to watch Nino. “It might not be Max, Nino,” he says. Chloé looks back at him. “But even if it is, chances are really low that Chris has been involved at all—Max wouldn’t do that. He knows Chris is just a kid, too.”

Nino nods slowly. “Yeah, yeah. You’re right.”

Luka turns back to his Skittle sorting. “Well, that’s all we found. I cross-checked it with the Orangis Tech articles and the information on their watches, and found out the watches have what’s basically Markov as their AI, but cloned and named Oran. No wonder Max was pissed.” 

“It sounds like a solid suspect,” Félix says quietly. 

Everyone nods, and Adrien, Chloé, Nino, and Félix return to eating. Luka looks up to Chloé, Skittles all sorted. 

“Do you want to eat them?” he asks, unsure. 

Chloé grimaces. “No—Skittles are gross. If you don’t want to eat them, hand them off to Adrien.”

Luka nods in a strangely complacent manner, looking to Adrien. “Want any of these?”

Adrien shakes his head, eating his muffin. “You can have them—I’m good.”

Luka nods, starting to eat his column of purple Skittles. “So, what’d you guys find in the Morgue?”

Nino shrugs. “A lot of articles I checked out for later about the old gang. All of them have their names blacked out and photos cut from the newspaper, though, which sucks, but there’s some timeframes in there, commentary on the old gang, and some explanations of what they’ve done. Alya’ll probably be able to pinpoint who some of them were, because I recognized some of the old cases she reviewed, but we did find something really helpful.” Finishing with his mandarins, Nino smiles and pushes the map they found towards the center of the table.

“What is it?” Adrien asks, leaning forward. 

Marinette picks up the folded paper and she stands, grinning as she starts unfolding it. “Is it a…?”

“Map,” Nino says, pleased. “It’s a map of the caverns beneath Crystal Cove. It looks a bit unfinished, but… it’s something, right?”

“Something is an understatement,” Marinette breathes, moving so she holds out the map against her body for everyone to see the complexity of it. “They must have been down there for a month at least to get this kind of accuracy.”

Félix shrugs. “Well, there are some parts that are definitely missing, or parts that have been broken down and added in the past twenty years, just from what I saw today, and there’s gaps where there wouldn’t be, based on the geography.”

Marinette deflates a little. “Alright, well, maybe it’s not done, but this is certainly more of a start than we had before.”

Nino nods. “For sure—a lot more than what we had before. Think it’ll help tonight?”

“Some, possibly,” Félix says. “I don’t think we should rely on it as though it’s present fact, though.”

“Alright, so we won’t,” Marinette says, nodding. Her brows are drawn together as she folds up the map, saying, “It’d be something to start our own map off of, though, I think. That will be helpful, if we keep having cases that venture into the caverns.”

“Certainly,” Félix says with a shrug, finishing his chips. “Or just… don’t venture into the caverns after we find Alya. There’s that, too.”

Marinette rolls her eyes and sets the map back on the table, though she stays standing. “Think we’re ready, then?”

Everyone nods, though Félix sighs at being ignored.

“Time for a few hours’ nap, then going to find Alya,” Marinette says with a grin.

Chloé and Félix glance at each other, something knowing in their gaze, though neither voices it.

~*~

The gang heads back to Amelie’s for a short nap at about 10:40 p.m., a renewed hope in many of their expressions. 

When they wake again at about 2:30 a.m., it is with much groaning and little memory of this renewed hope. Growing teens need lots of sleep, after all, and they’ve been running on low for a few days, now. Normally, this wouldn’t phase them so much, but coupled with the adrenaline, anxiety, and panic over Alya’s disappearance… the lack of sleep hits hard, even for Félix and Adrien.

Luka, though he normally fills the role of a person ready to be alive in the early morning hours, merely rolls over onto his alarm. The five other alarms in the room still going off only make him bury his head under his pillow. 

Beside him, Adrien lies on his back, his vibrating phone on his chest. He’s blinking blearily up at the dark ceiling above them, trying to come to terms with the unfamiliar feeling of wanting to hurt someone over being awake so early.

On Adrien’s other side, Chloé is letting out a long, drawn out groan, her vibrating phone clutched in one hand as she builds up the effort against turning it off and going back to sleep. It is a difficult thing to build up.

Next to Chloé, Marinette is curled into a tight ball, her loud, blaring phone having been tossed far from her reach the night before in a cruel thought of motivating her to get up to turn it off. She only curls tighter into a ball beneath her blankets as it continues playing the classic alarm sound. 

Nino has rolled off of the makeshift bed and onto the floor in his groanings beside her, reaching for his own phone. His glasses not on and, frankly, his eyes not even open, his hand just flops around, hitting the floor in his vain search. 

Félix, who had slept up on one of the couches, just pulls his phone and its alarm closer to his face, hoping the discomfort will wake him.

In short, it takes about ten minutes for them to even get up, and even then, it’s only Félix and Adrien who stumble over to the light switch by the living room entrance. They turn on the light and Félix calls quietly to the group still fighting the act of being awake that he’s going to put on a pot of coffee.

Adrien follows him into the kitchen, still bleary-eyed.

There’s no further talking for a half hour—just grunts as everyone gets up and gets ready for being in the caverns, suiting up in warm clothes and warmer jackets that Félix forced them to pick up from Luka and Marinette’s places in the dead of night a few hours before. 

When they finally make it out to the car, it’s 3:15 a.m., and they still need to stop by a gas station by the sewer entrance to the caverns for energy drinks, extra coffee, and breakfast and snacks for the cavern traversing. 

They finally make it to the sewer entrance just before 4 a.m., an hour after they had intended to be there, but they’ve made it nonetheless. Félix goes down the sewer hole first, shining a light up the ladder for the following Adrien, Marinette, Nino, Chloé, and Luka, the last of whom drags the sewer cap back over the hole. They then head down the sewer some to the entrance of the caverns, at which point Félix makes them pause so he and Luka can pull out their maps of Crystal Cove and their compasses, keeping them on the right path. Nino holds the map from the previous gang, and Marinette, Chloé, and Adrien are on flashlight duty.

From there, they start to walk towards the beach, where they’ll turn left under the Orangis Tech event and, further down, find the spot where Alya was taken. 

By this point, they’ve mostly set aside their transgressions with being alive at such an early hour, dedicated largely, now, to simply finding Alya. In many of their minds, however, they make plans to crash for a much needed, much longer nap once their friend is safe.

~*~

The gang ventures as far into the caverns as Félix did in only two hours, as opposed to his three. They break and stop for breakfast and a small rest at the turning point, hungry and tired, but they soon forge ahead at 6:40 a.m., turning in the direction of the Orangis Tech event. The caverns wind a bit for about two miles along the beach before they get to the point where Nino says a few openings pop up before a large cavern beneath the Orangis Tech event, and in this time, they snack some quietly and try not to fall into any of the streams, rivers, or ominously dark gaps into nothingness along the way. 

Sometimes, Chloé will take a picture of a particular stalactite or stalagmite, thinking it looks cool, or Nino will make everyone pause while he makes a note on the map from the previous gang, drawing in another cavern or crossing out a wall space that has since become absent. Félix and Luka don’t have to do much adjusting from their maps with the path everyone is taking, leading the group with Marinette between them. Nino is behind her, stumbling along over the varying terrain and textures, and Chloé and Adrien walk on either side of him, keeping their flashlights out and warning anyone of any danger. 

All in all, Félix would say their time is quite efficient as compared to his own. The only thing on his mind—aside from the obvious, of trying not to die in the caverns—is how to convince everyone to stay back while he goes ahead and looks for Alya—after all, he still doesn’t fully believe she’s alive. It’d be a miracle, and wonderful if she were, of course, but he’s not as hopeful as any of the others.

Chloé is the only one he can think of who could go with him and not be as impacted by it, but there is the issue of the guilt that nearly crushed her the day before. He debates asking her to fake a sprained ankle or something, or to create some distraction that will have everyone else too distracted to notice he’s gone missing. 

Alas, it’s a difficult thing to ask when everyone is around them and the faintest whisper could easily be heard by the others in the echo-heavy space. 

Thankfully, they take a break when Adrien and Nino both need to use the bathroom and can’t wait any longer. While they both head to a different area with Adrien’s flashlight and a couple of wipes for their hands from the ones bought with breakfast, Nino’s map of the caverns handed off to Marinette, a plan forms in Félix’s mind.

Marinette and Luka kneel to the ground, lying Nino’s map over Luka’s to check a theory of theirs, and Félix folds his own map under one arm. He pulls out his phone, typing quickly in his notes app, before he hands over his phone to Chloé.

Do your talents include creating a big enough fiasco to keep them all distracted while I slip away to see if Alya’s actually alive?

Chloé reads the question quickly, pursing her lips. She shrugs lightly. “It might be in my skill set, yes.”

Will you? he mouths, gaze pleading. 

She looks at him carefully a moment. She nods.

When Adrien and Nino come back, they gather their things once more and everyone prepares to continue towards the opening of the cavern beneath the Orangis Tech event several yards before them.

They make it a few steps before Chloé stops abruptly, looking down at herself. “Shit!” she whispers, sounding panicked.

Everyone turns to her, eyes wide and scanning for danger. Only Félix wonders if this is his signal, and he starts folding his map quickly, tucking it in one of his jacket pockets with his compass.

“What is it?” Adrien asks, reaching out a hand to her shoulder. “What’s wrong, Chloé?”

Chloé looks up at him, biting her lip. “I—I think I lost my necklace. I—I got it from—from my—I—my grandma—I—”

Nino, surprisingly, is the one who nods in understanding, folding up his map, too. “How far back did you lose it, you think?”

Chloé frowns. “Not—not too far, I’m pretty sure. I know I felt it a while back, but—” Tears start to well up in her eyes, and her lower lip trembles. She pulls her arms around her stomach, hugging herself tightly.

Félix would applaud her, if he could. Instead, he takes a few hesitant steps back from the group.

Marinette glances back at the entrance to the cavern beneath the Orangis Tech event, biting her lip. She doesn’t notice that Félix is a little further from everyone than he should be. “Are—”

Nino looks back at Marinette, and he smiles a bit. “Come on, Marinette, it’ll just take a little bit. Not too long.”

Marinette frowns. 

“I—” Chloé starts, covering her mouth with one hand. A choked sound comes from her, and then Adrien is surging forward to wrap her into a hug, holding her close.

At this, Marinette’s resolve softens. “Fine—just a few minutes, Chloé. Twenty, tops.” She looks head-on at Chloé, squaring her shoulders. “What’s it look like?”

Already, Luka is folding up his own map, and he and Nino are moving back the way they came, scanning the ground carefully with the flashlights from their phones. 

Félix takes this time to take a few more steps back towards the entrance of the cavern beneath the Orangis Tech event, and when Chloé, Marinette, and Adrien turn away from him, he slips away towards the cavern, paying mind to be stealthy but speedy. 

~*~

Félix slips into the cavern, keeping to one side and moving between stalagmites, hiding behind them for moments at a time. Before him, deeper in the cavern, he’s found what he was looking for. At one of the stalagmites closer to where he’s headed, he silences his phone and opens his messages.

Mystery Incorporated

7:51 a.m.

Félix

I split off from you all to see if I could find Alya.

Tear me a new one for it later if you must, but I’ve

found her—and the other captives—and Max, with

the crab machine. Don’t come this way. Instead, exit

through one of the nearby entrances up to the surface.

Marinette, set the trap you laid previously—I’ll slow

Max down and distract him before leading him to

it. I’ll message when I set Alya and the captives

free, and let you know where they’ll be. Got it?

Nino

is alya hurt?

Félix

Not that I can tell. I’ll let you know when I’m

closer, though. Don’t worry.

Nino

thanks

Marinette

how do you plan on drawing max up to the

surface?

Félix

There’s a stairwell in here that leads up to a network

of rafters. I assume he gets up through them with the

machine, but I’ll have to see. I’ll let you know what I

find, but so far I think the rafters run directly under

Andre’s shoppe and the event.

Marinette

got it. 

well.

keep checking in 

Adrien

be careful, please

Félix

Of course. You all, too.

read 7:53 a.m.                

Notes:

debated not posting this chapter today because i’ve had to slow my writing this week (got a job !!!!!) but im also in the middle of writing chapter 38 (as opposed to. chapter 42 🤡) which is. twenty chapters ahead so 😭 i figured it was fine and not going to set me back too much

anyways hi and i LOVED writing this chapter if you couldnt tell 🥰 i hope you like the details about nino’s family and also chris (hes important later) 🥰 and i hope you enjoyed the chloé pov 🥰 and everyone waking up 🤡 (<- aka the Many ways i wake every day unless the insomnia got me up at 1-3am 🙏😭 it is brutal and im not a morning person)

but let me know what you think !!!! 🤩 🤩 🤩 🤩 🤩 🤩 going to try and keep on top of writing this week and get into a proper schedule, but even if i don’t, thankfully there’s a lot of chapters already drafted to keep things up for like ten weeks til i can get back to my usual writing pace 😭 either way, this time i Really made sure i had a backlog of chapter drafts for emergencies or things coming up 🤡 so dw

Chapter 19: chapter nineteen

Summary:

Félix frees Alya and the other captives.

Notes:

there Will be a death in this chapter but if you aren’t fae, you’re free to check the tags again to reassure yourself of anything <3

Félix puts his phone away. He moves quietly and carefully to one side of the cavern, just behind where Alya and the five other captives are being kept, tied around a stalagmite.

One of the captives from two days before is the first to see him. She meets his gaze with pleading eyes. He nods and motions for her to be quiet, and he takes out his pocket knife from the pocket of his jeans, moving closer in his crouch to sit behind the stalagmite so Max can’t see him. From there, he starts sawing away at the rope tying the six together. By now, every one of the six knows he’s there, but they keep quiet, not wanting their chance at rescue getting caught.

Quietly, Félix explains his plan. “I’m here with the rest of the Mystery Incorporated gang. You know of them, yes? The kids always meddling,” he says with a small smile. To one side, Alya rolls her eyes. Félix smiles a bit wider, though it still doesn’t reach his eyes, but he continues. “Anyways, we’re going to help you all escape, and we’re going to trap Max, so he won’t be able to take anyone again. All we need is your help—think you guys can do that?”

There’s a few small, quiet noises that he takes as affirmation. Some distance across the cavern, Max sighs and pushes back from the table where he sits in front of a computer. A few stacks of books and a couple bags are also on the table, and behind Max sits the mechanical crab, though the top of its head has been opened to reveal a place for a person to sit and control the crab.

Félix curls up against the back of a stalagmite to one side, breaths stilling as he waits.

On the other side, Max gets up from his table, slinging a bag over one shoulder. He moves for the staircase in the center of the cavern, and he heads up the wooden stairs, disappearing into the rafters. A couple of minutes go by, and Félix’s phone lights up with a text from Marinette—max just came up under the sand beneath the bleachers. She then texts, we’re on stand-by. 

Félix quickly tells her to let him know of Max’s whereabouts, and he asks after the progress of setting her trap. She tells him they’re working quickly and only burying it lightly to speed up the process. 

Félix quickly returns to cutting through the ropes tying up the captives to the stalagmite. 

“Do any of you know if he’s currently following a routine?” he asks.

“He left for about an hour yesterday morning, but we’ve only been here two days,” one of the first day’s captives says. 

Félix nods. “Best to work quickly, then,” he says, cutting through one strand of rope. Three more to go.

The captives keep quiet, Alya included, though she watches him work with some degree of curiosity and concern. 

As he cuts through the remaining three strands of rope, she wonders why he’s there—and no one else. She supposes it was likely trickery, that had Félix in Nino or Marinette, or even Luka’s, place. She’s slightly grateful for it, to be honest, though she misses her friends dearly. She stamps down the seed of doubt that only Félix wanted her saved. 

She’s had a lot of time to think, in the past day. Time to think on Nino, Marinette, Luka, and even the newest additions to their mystery solving group. Amidst hearing about Max’s journey—who has wronged him, and in what ways, as well as how he came to this conclusion above all others as the best way to do things—she’s trusted in her friends’ abilities to find and save her and mostly trusted in their desire to actually save her. Among the sleepless hours and the few she managed to fall into a restless sleep against another captive’s shoulder, though, she wondered if this was them leaving her behind. She’d never been gone so long—never been without even a sliver of contact. She’s never had so long to wonder.  

Despite this, in the hours where her and the other captives grew terribly hungry and longed for just a bit of water, calling out to Max or rescue in the emptiness of the caverns until their voices became hoarse, she reassured the others that her friends would find them.

She supposes that, if nothing else, she’d been finally found. That had to mean something, yeah?

Still, her doubts have hollowed out her chest and leeched all the warmth of hope from her bones, leaving her feeling terribly cold. 

“You’ll get us out of here?” she asks him quietly, with the smallest try at a smile. Her voice is a bit crackly and rough from several hours of unuse after shouting until she became hoarse. Still, she asks the question—not for her sake, of course, as she’d doubt anything crossing his lips right now, but for the others with her.

Félix looks over to her, nearing the last part of the last strand of rope. His eyes are filled with something she can’t decipher, but there’s a kindness and a warmth to it. “I will,” he says. She nearly believes him.

It’s only a moment longer before Félix cuts through the last of the rope, and she hears the others breathe a small sigh of relief. He’s quick to take the ropes off of her and the other captives, texting Marinette as soon as he’s done to ask about Max’s whereabouts. When he finds out that Max has taken the bus back into town, he does some quick calculating and makes a face, standing.

“What is it?” Alya asks, pulling her knees up to her chest. 

Félix frowns. “Are any of you injured? Can you walk? Run, even?”

Some of the captives move to stand and Alya moves with them, wincing. They’re slow moving, but they’re moving. Except—

One,  two, three, four, five—

“Where—were—ah,” Félix breathes, brows drawn together, “ha-have any of you—are… are all of you—”

Alya brows rise above the frame of her glasses. “Félix? Are you… okay?” Don’t say you have to leave me down here, she thinks.

He takes a moment, clenching his jaw and closing his eyes, before he says evenly, “It’s only been you five down here with Max, right?”

“Aside from you, yeah,” one of the captives says. 

“Are there—are there more?” another captive asks, looking around. 

Another wraps their arms around their torso. “Did you see anyone else here, or…?”

Félix bites his tongue, shaking his head. He pulls a smile across his lips. “No, no, just wanted to check and see. Don’t worry.”

There’s a sigh of relief, and a few lean against the stalagmite or each other, and Félix’s shoulders droop.

“Do any of you have any injuries?” he asks again, letting the concern seep through his voice. In his head, he tells himself that someone must have skipped out of the day’s matches like Chloé did. 

“None,” Alya says, shrugging. “Just… none of us have moved much.”

Félix feels like Alya seems off, but he doesn’t want to ask now, not when they’re around everyone else.

“We’re a bit slow,” one of the other captives says.

Félix nods, feeling more like himself again. Quickly, he texts the group chat. 

Mystery Inc.

8:12 a.m.

Félix

Alya and the others are unharmed.

Though there’s five in total—not six. Someone else

must have skipped out like Chloé.

When will the bus be back around this area?

Nino

thank fuck

is alya

does she look okay?

Adrien

i’ll look up the bus schedule

Marinette

trap is going okay, btw

halfway done w digging

Félix

She’s fine, Nino.

She misses you.

Nino

i miss her too

Adrien

next bus should be here in about an hour and

15 mins

Félix

Alright. Think we can get them all up there in

that time?

Nino

just say when and where

Marinette

nino can go over and help them out while the

rest of us finish with the trap

Félix

Think it’ll be enough time?

To set up, I mean.

Marinette

we’ll make it work

              read 8:17

Félix pockets his phone, looking to Alya and the captives. “Think you guys can make it up those stairs?”

Some of them look a bit wary, leaning against the stalagmite or each other.

Alya looks at Félix carefully—knowingly. “How long do we have?”

He frowns. “About forty-five minutes.”

“So, more like twenty?”

He shakes his head. “No, I already subtracted some time from an hour and fifteen. I just have to destroy enough of his machine to slow him down and get him to Marinette’s trap.”

Alya nods, frowning, now, too. “Is that enough time for them to set up a trap?”

Félix doesn’t say, only looks to the other captives. “Any of you don’t think you can walk up those stairs?”

Three of them nod. 

He supposes it’s a good thing he hasn’t worked out in a couple of days. He’ll be getting more than enough exercise today to make up for it.

Alya crosses her arms over her chest, stepping in front of him unsteadily. “Will they have enough time to set up a trap? Answer me, Félix.” She stares at him, her lips pursed. Don’t leave me down here, she thinks.

“Marinette says they’ll make do,” Félix says, meeting her gaze unwaveringly. “And if it isn’t ready in time, I’m making sure none of you are here to deal with it. Got it?”

Alya’s shoulders drop some in relief. “I…”

He doesn’t soften his gaze or sugarcoat his words. “You want to see Nino, right? You miss him. He misses you. So does everyone else. Let me take a couple risks, now, alright? Think of it like payback.”

“You don’t have to pay me back for anything, Félix,” she says quietly. Still, she feels a little warmer with hope.

He smiles. “We’re wasting time talking about this, Césaire. Come on.” He turns to the other captives behind her, and his smile grows a bit gentler. “I can only carry one of you at a time—two at most. I hate to leave any of you here alone, but can we go up in groups of two or three?”

“You shouldn’t carry two people at once up those stairs,” Alya butts in, taking off her glasses and wiping the lenses and frames clean. As she does so, she squares her shoulders, trying to gather up the courage to say what she says next. “I’ll stay back until you’re taking the last person up, and I’ll come with you then—that way, no one is left down here alone.”

Félix doesn’t mind losing this fight, so he nods. “Very well. Who should go first?”

Two of the captives who raised a hand point to the third. “Them,” they say.

Félix nods, stepping around them to her. He crouches in front of the one pointed out, lowering his voice some in a murmur. “Piggy-back ride, or shall I carry you in my arms? Which would be more comfortable for you?”

The captive frowns. “Arms might be better—I don’t have much strength in my legs. I fell the first day,” they explain. “He dropped me—by accident, but still.”

Félix nods again, and he moves to gently pick them up and stand. “Would you like to come with as well?” he asks the captive who hadn’t raised a hand.

She shrugs, but she follows him unsteadily over to the stairs, and together, the three of them make the slow trek upstairs. They disappear into the rafters after several minutes, and after several more minutes, Félix comes back down the stairs in a slow jog.

Below, Alya keeps still with the other two captives.

It takes about thirty minutes for two captives to be carried up with one walking behind him the first trip, but then Alya is helping Félix get the last captive—who’s since fallen asleep—onto his back. 

“How does Nino look?” Alya asks quietly, trailing behind him as they walk over to the stairs. He slows his pace so he’s walking more beside her, despite the time crunch that they’re on.

“Tired,” Félix admits. “It took a lot out of them all, seeing you disappear like that.” He doesn’t admit to everyone thinking at first that she had likely died. 

Alya nods slowly. The doubt in her chest doesn’t subside much.

When she stumbles a moment later, he’s quick to shift the weight of the sleeping captive on his back to one side, catching Alya with the arm on his other side. She thanks him with a frown, but they soon get to the stairs. 

He makes her walk in front of him, so if she falls or trips, he has a chance of catching her or at least preventing her from taking a long tumble down the staircase. He did the same with the first walking captive, but he feels a little stranger doing it with Alya. It reeks of guilt, somehow.

He tries not to think on it.

“And my… parents? Do… do they know?” she asks a few minutes later, halfway up the stairs.

Félix is quiet a moment, taking the time to adjust the weight of the person on his back before he says, “They know. They were… worried.”

Alya sounds like she’s smiling, though her voice is bitter. “I bet they thought it was all your guys’ fault.”

Félix doesn’t comment.

They make it up the stairs without incident, and they get through the rafters to the exit point, where Félix instructs Alya to knock on the wooden hatch three times—hard—to alert Nino on the other side. She does so quickly before stepping back and pushing Félix and the sleeping captive under it.

Félix and Nino manage to get the last captive up through the hatch, and then Félix is bending down on one knee to help Alya up. She steps on his knee, putting a hand in his, and she reaches up, up, up towards Nino, who’s crying, now, at finally seeing her.

Alya is pulled up through the hatch successfully, though by the time she’s up on the surface, she’s crying, too. Félix stands and reaches up for the hatch, closing it over his head gently, and then he’s off back across the rafters and headed down the stairs.

~*~

Up on the surface, Alya and Nino haven’t noticed Félix’s absence, clutching one another close and sobbing. Nino has a hand at the back of Alya’s head, tangled in the braids of her ponytail—let down from the bun from the day she disappeared—and his other arm is wrapped around her waist. Her head is tucked against his neck, and she has one arm around his shoulders and another around his back. 

Beside them, the other captives are being helped away from the opening to the cavern by Luka and Adrien, who Marinette and Chloé sent over while they finished setting out a couple of the arms of The Orange.

Nino and Alya are left alone, even as they slowly stop crying. After several minutes, Nino is pulling back from Alya with a huge smile, though he still has tears in his eyes.

“I’m so happy you’re okay,” he whispers. “I’m so, so happy—”

“Me, too,” Alya says, smiling back. “I love you, Nino.” Her earlier doubts lie forgotten in the cave, now—all her thoughts are focused on the warmth of being in Nino’s arms and being under the sun once more. 

Nino tilts his face closer, smile softening. He kisses both of her cheeks beneath her glasses, each of her dimples as her smile grows, and, finally, her forehead, and he says, “I love you.” Then, he presses a soft kiss to her lips, moving his hand at the back of her head to the back of her neck.

She kisses him back slowly, and when he pulls away, she whispers, “I really missed you guys.”

“We missed you, too,” Nino murmurs, pressing another kiss to her forehead. “How’re you feeling? Are you cold? Are you hurt? Tired? Thirsty? Hungry?”

She laughs a little, curling up against him and closing her eyes. She leans her head against his chest. “I could really use a nap after this, but I think for now I’m just hungry and thirsty.”

Nino nods, adjusting his arms so he can hold her better. “We have some snacks and water for you, if you want. Can you walk?”

“I can walk,” she says quietly, “but do you mind if we just stay here for a little bit?”

Nino nods again, closing his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, and he turns his face some so he can rest his cheek atop her head. “Yeah, we can stay like this for a bit.”

~*~

In the cavern beneath them, Félix is frozen still beside the crab machine. A bit behind the machine, hidden from view until reaching this spot, is a crumpled form. The form is clearly a person, though Félix recognizes the strangeness of what he’s seeing. It seems the body should just open their eyes and look at him, or that they should simply move, but— 

When Félix steps closer, the sight becoming clearer, his stomach drops out from under him.

This was the missing sixth person, curled up with knees to the chest, arms splayed to the ground as they leaned their torso forward. This was the sixth missing person, with eyes closed shut and ankles neatly crossed, palms lifted up to the sky. This—the body with blood and hair caked to one side of the head, with the bottom of the thighs, ankles, forearms, and wrists purple from the settling of blood at the bottom of the body in ligor mortis—this was the sixth missing person.

Félix considers throwing up. He really, really does. 

But he doesn’t throw up. He swallows back the thought and the urge and the bile with a resolve he didn’t think he had for the force of the desire.

He steps unsteadily towards the body—towards the person he vaguely recognizes—and other details start to neatly fall into place. As he comes closer, he notices the path of the blood is cut off at the eyebrow, cleaned beneath it for a clean area around the eye. As he reaches the body, kneeling beside it shakily, he notes the careful positioning of the body, the crossing of the ankles, and the gentle positioning of the hands. As he reaches out to touch the point of the neck where a fluttering pulse should be, and as he meets the cold, hardening skin that hardly moves beneath his touch, he notices the way the hair has been brushed from the face and is only matted to the point of injury.

Finally, he notices the slight caving in along one side of the head—the bloody side, of course—and his breath finally stills in his chest.

It was an accident, Félix thinks slowly.

Still, it doesn’t make a pulse begin to flutter under his fingertips.

Félix pulls away from the corpse when his phone buzzes in his pocket.

It’s only an unimportant notification he sees when he checks it, rocking back on his heels, but it’s enough to get him to his feet unsteadily. 

He opens his messages.

9:06 a.m.

Félix

dead body

in cave

Amelie

How long has it been dead?

Félix

recently dead

what do i do mum

i dont know what to do

im stuck

i cant think i cant breathe and im afraid

really really afraid mum

please help

Amelie

What’s the current situation?

Félix

max is on his way back here

 his machine is also here.

with me. im supposed to be dismantling it now.

but i found

well. dead body.

Amelie

Are you to be trapping him soon?

Félix

yeah

Amelie

Focus on dismantling his machine. Trap him.

Are the others at risk of finding the body, too?

Félix

not unless they come down here and to his

workstation

Amelie

Then keep them away from it as much as you

can. After you trap him, we’ll figure out what

next with the body.

But for now, just focus on small steps.

Dismantle the machine.

Trap him.

Call me.

Félix

got it

read 9:12 a.m.         

Félix puts away his phone with shaking hands, turning from the body fully. 

He takes unsteady steps back towards the machine, pulling his pocket knife from his pocket, and he tries hard to concentrate.

When he gets to the machine, he crouches down beside it and starts unscrewing as many legs from the crab machine as he can. He tries to breathe evenly through his nose. 

Unscrewing the legs turns out to be surprisingly difficult work, given he has to unscrew the legs by each extendable piece from the part that hits the ground to the final plating where they come out from the rest of the machine. It takes a little over twenty minutes, in addition to the time it took to get back down the stairs and in addition to the time he spent spiraling about the dead body, but in the time spent unscrewing the legs, Marinette tells him the trap is set and ready directly in between the judges’ stand and the bleachers to the left of it. Félix is working on deconstructing one more leg—having already finished two of the legs on the other side—when he gets another text from Marinette. Max is on his way, she writes. 

Félix is quick to put away his pocket knife and take the deconstructed leg parts in his arms, carting them in two loads to a spot hidden behind some of the stalagmites on one side of the cave. He is very careful not to look in the direction of the dead body, even as he passes by it five times.

On the other side of the cave, near the steps, Félix sits and waits quietly for Max to come down the stairwell and notice the machine. It takes several minutes for Max to get to the table and his machine, but when Max notices the missing legs, he drops his bag to the ground and surges towards it. 

In those several minutes before Max notices his machine, Félix wonders after the course of events surrounding the dead body. Did Max kill the person by accident and decide to stop taking people hostage? Or did Max kill the person by accident and decide it was still worth it to continue? What could possibly make him think it was still worth it? Was it even an accident, or did he only have remorse after—

This train of thought makes him feel sick, so he quickly tries to stop thinking.

When Max does notice his machine’s missing legs, Félix is quick to move out from his hiding spot and run for the stairs. He elects to forget about the dead body in the spirit of trying not to die like they did. Félix doesn’t bother being quiet in his running to the stairs, knowing he only has a little time. Soon, he reaches the stairwell.

As he’s trying not to trip on the stairs he’s running up, he hears a cry, and then a loud metal clang, and before long, Félix is glancing back briefly to see the crab machine racing across the cavern on four lopsided legs and two large claws. 

Félix increases his run to a sprint, and though he trips a few times, he’s quick to climb to his feet and keep going. 

Every time he blinks, he sees two closed eyes and blood-matted hair and a caved-in skull and purpling skin. Still, he goes on.

Soon, he’s at the top of the stairs. He heads for the hatch he sent the captives through, and when he gets there, he wastes a few precious seconds jumping up through the opening and swinging his body up and through it. Behind him, the sound of the crab machine grows louder, but he persists, crawling out on the sand and scrambling through the tangle of supports for the bleachers. He just barely manages to escape the bleachers when the crab creature—and Max, inside it, he can’t seem to forget—bursts up through the sand behind him, breaking some of the bleachers’ supports.

Félix doesn’t pause to see if Max manages to escape unscathed, he only turns and sprints for the bit of sand between the judges’ stand and the bleachers to the left of them. Like a mantra—closed eyes, blood-matted hair, caved-in skull, purpling skin. He keeps going.

As he gets to the start of the makeshift courts, the bleachers behind him give a metallic yawn and collapse. He doesn’t stop running towards where the trap sits. 

Halfway past the volleyball net, Félix hears the machine racing to catch up to him. He just keeps running and running and running, trying not to get caught. The machine follows, gaining on him. Closed eyes. Blood-matted hair. Caved-in skull. Purpling skin. He keeps going.

Félix flies past the volleyball courts, through the area between the courts and the surrounding bleachers and stands, and he stumbles into the space between the judges’ stand and the bleachers to the left of them, tumbling into a ball and rolling, rolling, rolling forward until he trips up to his feet. He’s about to keep running when there’s a loud metal thump and then a great snapping sound that makes his ears ring. There’s a bang and a crash, and he glances over his shoulder, breaths uneven, to see the crab machine fallen the base of Marinette’s round metal cage. Closed eyes. Blood-matted hair. Caved-in skull. Purpling—

As he lets himself fall to the ground, gasping, Félix supposes the trap really does look like an unpeeled orange. I can’t tell Marinette that, he thinks absently. 

He turns from the sight, closing his eyes, and he only sees that dead body in the cave. 

~*~

When Max is pulled from the trap and his machine, it doesn’t quite go like their other cases. There’s not as much underlying anger at the danger he put people in, not as much triumph in finally saving Alya or capturing Max, and, for Max’s part, there’s no grudging acceptance that he did wrong. 

Félix and Alya are the odd ones out, with Alya’s doubt and Félix’s numbness even following the answer of his single whispered question.

“Did you kill Belle Perry?” Félix had whispered, finally remembering the name for the face for the body in the cave. Closed eyes, blood-matted hair, caved-in—

Max had told Félix to pull out his phone to record the conversation. Max had said, “I won’t say this again, so you’d better get this now.”

Félix had frowned, but he’d complied, pulling out his phone and beginning to record, and he had repeated his question.

“It was an accident,” Max had finally said, looking at Félix carefully. “But yes, I did kill her.”

After that, Max had gone to sit in the sand some distance away.

Instead of feeling the same anger, triumph, and acceptance as the others, Alya now sits in front of Max, writing in one of the notebooks from Marinette’s backpack everything Max tells her about what he found from Orangis Tech and why he did what he did. She’s calm and gentle with him, though she doesn’t spare the effects of his actions. Just behind and beside her sits Nino, who’s braiding her smaller braids into a thicker French braid. He listens carefully to what Max says, only asking a few questions here and there about Chris’s involvement.

Chloé, Adrien, and Luka help Marinette break her trap back down, moving the crab machine to one side together.

Félix, having called his mother to ask her to pick him up and take him to the sewer entrance to the caverns, tells everyone he’s retrieving the van.

“You didn’t have Chris with you in any of this, did you?” Nino asks Max, tying off Alya’s French braid. “Like for any of your sleepovers or the times where you guys would hang out?”

Max looks at Nino, something unreadable in his gaze. “I don’t want him to face consequences for something like this.”

Nino goes quiet. That’s a bit vague, he thinks. Not real… definitive.

“Why not go to court?” Alya asks, gently steering the conversation back away from Chris.

Max frowns, but he leans back on his hands, a little relaxed. “I couldn’t afford to lose.”

“Still,” Alya starts.

Before she can continue, Max is shaking his head. “No—I know what you guys have to deal with. It’s bad enough, even in the murder cases, when big or influential names are involved. The corruption here isn’t on your side, and it certainly wouldn’t be on my side. I’m just a poor kid from Mali who has a little too much time on his hands in the eyes of the city and Orangis Tech. They’d rather find a way to keep me quiet than admit to their own greed and wrongs. There’s no shiny word like murder to make anyone look at my case with any sympathy.”

Alya frowns, shaking her head, but she slowly, after a moment, nods. “Yeah, I… I get that.”

Max nods, and he sits up, leaning closer to Alya slightly. “I am… sorry, though. That… that you got caught up in things. I just… I just needed a chance. I needed time to do something about what they did to me, what they did to Markov.”

Alya bites her lip. “Did… did you get to do anything like that?”

Max’s jaw twitches and he purses his lips. “No, I didn’t. I just needed two more days, I think, and then… then it would have worked. Couple more hostages, a bit more coverage… it would have worked. They would have paid for what they did.”

Alya nods, looking away. So it was for nothing, she wants to say. What happened was bad, and still, it wasn’t bad enough. She doesn’t say this. Instead, she says, “I’ll do my best to make them face consequences, Max. For Markov. For the kid you were at the start of the year.”

“Not the me I am?” Max asks, a bitterness tinging his voice.

Alya is quiet when she responds, holding her notebook tightly in her hands. Beside her, Nino has scooted closer, pulling her a little from Max. She looks down at her lap, avoiding his gaze. “The kid you were at the start of the year, Max, wouldn’t have hurt me or the other kids on the volleyball team. That kid wouldn’t have risked hurting others to get back at Orangis Tech. The person you are now—I don’t know him. He scares me.”

Max’s hands clench into fists. “Maybe you didn’t know me at all, then.”

Alya looks up from her lap, meeting his gaze now. “Maybe I didn’t,” she whispers. “I’m still going to do everything to get justice for the kid I thought I knew, though.”

Max doesn’t respond.

~*~

It isn’t long before the sheriff arrives. 

After a confession, Raincomprix arrests Max, reading him his rights, and he leads him away to his police car. 

Amelie arrives shortly thereafter with the van. She explains that Félix had some errands to run, not to worry, and that he’ll be back in a few hours. Everyone loads up into the van. Nino offers to drive, and Alya sits beside him, with Amelie moving to sit at the window. In the back, Marinette is tweaking The Orange, Luka is texting back and forth with Juleka, and Adrien and Chloé debate quietly whether the volleyball team will continue after at least five members were traumatized by the weekend’s events.

Nino drives them to Amelie’s in silence. When they arrive, Amelie resumes cooking a large breakfast. In the living room, another mattress has been added to the makeshift bed. The gang brings in their things, dumping their backpacks and tools around the bed area, and Amelie directs Alya to be the first to shower in a line-up she insists upon.

Adrien leads Alya upstairs and shows her how to use the shower and where the towels are. At Amelie’s instruction, he leaves her a warm change of clothes and a thick blanket for after her shower.

Back downstairs, Marinette helps Amelie with breakfast. Luka, Adrien, Chloé, and Nino get together their own changes of clothes before deciding to work on some of their homework for the weekend while they wait their turn in the shower. 

When Alya finishes, Nino goes next. Amelie takes a break from helping with breakfast to instruct Nino on how to clean his wounds with hydrogen peroxide and how to dab them with topical antibiotic before lightly bandaging them. She soon returns to the kitchen, and Alya messages her parents, Nora, and her younger sisters, letting them know she’s alive and will be home Monday morning for the last day of the four-day weekend. Her parents don’t reply, and neither does Nora. Her younger sisters are glad, though, and call her, crying. Alya steps out into the living room to talk with them.

After Nino showers, Luka does. Amelie shows Luka what she showed Nino about the wounds before returning to the kitchen. After Luka, Marinette showers. When she’s finished, breakfast is ready, and Alya comes back in from the living room to help Chloé and Adrien set the table.

Soon, they’re eating and chatting lightly about the unimportant. Félix is still gone.

After breakfast, they wait on doing the dishes so Chloé and Adrien can quickly shower. While they shower, the others put away the food from breakfast and unpack the extra snacks from the morning. After this, while Adrien is showering, Chloé, Luka, Marinette, Alya, and Nino finish up some more homework in the living room. 

When Adrien and is finished showering, Amelie comes into the living room with a warm smile. 

“You guys have had a long weekend. Why not get some rest, and I’ll wake you for dinner?”

There’s no protest.

Luka lies down first, with Adrien beside him. Then lies Chloé, Marinette, Alya, and Nino in that order beside Adrien. They each cover up with thick blankets upon thick blankets, buried into the warmth like they’ll otherwise die. Amelie, despite the actual warmth of the day, turns up the heat in the house to help.

For a few hours, everyone but Félix has settled in to sleep.

~*~

Félix, rather than go back with the others to his home, has ventured back into the caverns.

He made the executive decision with his mother’s help to venture into the caverns alone for the dead body and to carry it back to the surface. It certainly wasn’t one of his best plans—and definitely wasn’t appealing at all, to trek miles through the dark alone with a corpse—but he thought it was the best solution, all things considered.

First, he didn’t want the gang to know about the dead body. (At least until they didn’t have to see it, or wouldn’t be able to.) Second, he wasn’t about to unleash however many people might have to trek down here to grab said dead body from the caverns beneath Crystal Cove. That could mean the sheriff, the coroner, however many people they would insist were required for transport, and probably, just because he—in Félix’s opinion—was stupid enough to want to travel down here and see what sort of tourism opportunities might be available, the mayor. It was bad enough the gang new about the caverns—Félix couldn’t account for the safety of anyone arrogant and greedy being down here, and, frankly, he didn’t want to have to guide those people through the caverns. It was sure to have many, many consequences if he did. Thirdly, the most accessible point back into the cavern with the dead body that he knew of was now beneath the collapsed rubble of some bleachers, and it would draw far too much attention to him and the ensuing dead body if he were to climb under it now.

All of that considered, the best possible option Félix (and his mother) could think of was for Félix to go back down into the caverns alone and carry the dead body back out via the sewer entrance. 

(Leaving it down in the caverns was an automatic no, considering how Marinette and the others were still hoping to come back down in the caverns for exploration and mapping purposes. Otherwise, Félix might have given his mother’s suggestion of leaving the body more consideration.)

So it’s here and now that he is making the journey back down into the caverns for the dead body. All he’s armed with are two tarps, some latex gloves, and a sled, thanks to his mother, a headlamp, some rope, and a flashlight from the gang’s van, leftover snacks and waters stuffed into his earlier cavern backpack from two days before, and his compass and map. 

It takes him three hours to get to the body. He puts on his gloves and sets his backpack to one side. He then loads the body onto a tarp, drags the tarp onto the sled, and, using the rope, ties the tarped body to the sled. Peeling off his gloves, he sticks them in one of his pockets before putting his backpack back on. He then takes up the thick, roping handle of the sled and starts to pull. 

It takes him four and a half hours to get back to the surface, between breaks and the extended journey time from simply pulling a heavy sled instead of just walking.

The whole time, he slowly realizes that this—finding a dead body, seeing a dead body, pulling a dead body through a cold, dark cave for hours and miles—really will be sticking with him for far longer than he’d considered. When he told himself, or, rather, believed, that Alya was dead, he thought he would handle her death and seeing her much better than any of the other gang members might. He knows he’s handling this death and all that he’s had to do surrounding it much better than the rest of the gang would, but still, there’s a certain weight to it all that he’d disregarded when thinking about how he might have to find, dispose of, and tell everyone about Alya’s potential dead body.

This weight—even with a mostly-stranger’s death—is heavy. It hurts. It weighs right all over him: over his lungs, making it hard to breathe, over his heart, slowing and drawing out each uncertain beat, over his blood, slowing his circulation down, down, down, and over his very muscles and bones, making each movement feel like he’s decomposing right alongside the body who he’s identified as Belle Perry. Of course, he can still actually breathe, his heart isn’t slowed and uncertain in its beats, and his circulation and muscle movements are fine, but it’s the feel of it and the emotional weight that every slight action feels crushed under.

When he finally, impossibly gets to the surface world once more, he drags Belle Perry’s body into the nearby alley where he parked hours before. There he collapses beside her, lying flat on his back on the ground with only an arm propping his head up from the dirty asphalt.

It takes him several minutes to reach for his phone and call the police.

He’s transferred to the sheriff shortly after that, and soon after that, the sheriff pulls into the alleyway where Félix, the dead body, and his car all sit to decompose.

Félix shows the sheriff the recording Max insisted upon. He points the sheriff to the dead body beside his own, and Félix turns his head away as the sheriff examines the body briefly. Félix explains to the sheriff that it would have been a largely unsafe venture if he had dragged the sheriff down into the caverns. The sheriff has little protest to what Félix has done in bringing Belle Perry to the surface to rot.

Félix is grateful for it, slightly, in the very back of his mind.

Even after the body is taken away an hour later, Félix lies on the ground, feeling impossibly undone. When he closes his eyes, he can still see her: two closed eyes, blood-matted hair, a caved-in skull, and purpling skin. He thinks he just might decompose right here in the dirty alleyway, feet from his car. He hopes his mother and Adrien understand. 

Notes:

i love this chapter 🥰

so uhmmm how do we feel 🫣 the episode is over and the gang is all safe and max has been apprehended but ! at what cost…….. 🫣 haha jk. jk. obviously. this chapter wont have Any consequences for any of the rest of the story. obviously. right. right. yeah

anyways Next chapter is the start of a new episode and a FUN one 🤡 i love u guys sm 🥰

but !! let me know what you think of the chapter? 🫣🫣🫣

Chapter 20: chapter twenty

Summary:

As much as Félix would like otherwise, after a short break, Marinette’s hopes and prayers for a new case have been answered.

Notes:

heehee :) time for one of my favorite episodes now :)

Alya texts Félix Monday night, after he’s told the group chat that he’s awake again. 

They only asked to be notified as he’d been dead asleep when they finally woke Sunday evening at 7 p.m., and he’d still been asleep by the time the gang left Amelie’s at 10 a.m. the next morning. Amelie had told them that Félix must have been especially spent and tired with this case. They had believed it, knowing how much extra work he had done in initially searching the caverns while the slept, in helping the captives out of the caverns, and in being bait for Max, although Marinette and Nino had been a bit begrudging in their belief, not having uninterrupted naps themselves.

(None of them knew what he’d been doing while they slept the day before, on Sunday, just after Max’s arrest, but they imagined it couldn’t have been especially important for Amelie to have shrugged it off with them.)

8:07 p.m.

Alya

i heard you called my parents

Félix

I did.

Alya

you didnt say anything yesterday when i said they 

probably thought it was all your guys’ fault.

so.

how’d they react?

Félix

I feel like you already know how they 

reacted, Alya.

Alya

idek tbh

theyre acting weird

Félix

Weirder than usual?

Alya

yeah

weirder than usual

Félix

I told them about how you went missing. They

told me (and, I suppose, the rest of the gang) to

stay out of it. Your father said he’d tell your

mother the news. 

Said they’d wait and see what happened.

             read 8:14 p.m.

A bit later, while Alya is trying to distract herself from what her parents had told Félix, she gets a notification from the gang’s group chat.

Mystery Inc.

8:47 p.m.

Félix

Just a heads up, so you don’t hear about it

from someone else—Max killed someone 

down in the caverns. It was an accident, 

but I still think it’s worth knowing. 

Authorities have already been notified.

[sent a voice recording]

             read 8:48 p.m.

Alya listens to the short recording, noticing the slight tremble to Félix’s voice with a frown.

“Did you kill Belle Perry, Max Kanté?” he asks.

Alya closes her eyes when Max speaks. 

“It was an accident.” There’s a pause. As Alya opens her eyes to see if the recording is over, Max continues. “But yes, I did kill her.”

Alya feels something dislodge in her chest as the recording ends. A strange, empty silence envelopes her.

Mystery Inc.

8:50 p.m.

Marinette

did they recover the body?

was it in the caverns still?

Félix

Everything’s been taken care of. 

Don’t worry.

             read 8:56 p.m.

Alya’s mind soon shuts down. 

She sits in the dark silence of her room for a long time, unmoving.

9:57 p.m.

Félix

       [replied to Félix: Said they’d wait and 

       see what happened.]

I’m sorry.

Alya

they’d wait and see what happened, huh?

Félix

Yeah.

Alya

kinda shitty thing to say, lowkey

Félix

Yeah.

It is.

Alya

at least my little sisters cared

Félix

We do, too.

And we did.

         read 10:02 p.m.

Alya takes a breath, feeling it fill up her lungs. For a long moment, she doesn’t reply. After a little bit, her phone turns off from inactivity. She closes her eyes.

Then, finally, she turns her phone back on.

10:05 p.m.

Alya

i know

i just

ig i thought

idek

i guess i just thought more of my family would

care

yknow?

I thought I’d feel better on the other side, now, she types out. I thought I’d stop feeling so empty.

She deletes the draft before she can even think about sending it.

Félix

Yeah. I know.

          read 10:09 p.m.

Alya lets out a long, shaky sigh. She covers her mouth with one hand, closing her eyes against the tears welled up in her eyes, and she cries for a while, curled up under her blankets on her bed, trying to hold back her sobs.

11:13 p.m.

Félix

If you…

If you ever need, you can talk to me.

About this stuff, I mean.

With your parents.

With your family.

Alya

thanks, félix

Félix

Of course.

          read 11:22 p.m.

~*~

Monday night, after Félix tells everyone that Max had killed someone in the caverns, Nino decides it’s time to corner Chris and actually talk.

He sits Chris down in Nino’s room, on his bed. Nino sits in his desk chair, elbows on his knees as he leans over a bit. Chris is a bit begrudging, sitting there on the bed, but he’s there, which is more than Nino’s been able to ask in a while. He hates that it’s about this that he and Chris are having the first full conversation that they’ve had in a week and a half. He wonders how long it’ll be after this til they talk again.

“I’m not real sure how to say this,” Nino starts off in a whisper. He shakes his head, clears his throat, and looks down at the floor. “You… know about jail, yeah?”

Chris sounds bored. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Neenee.”

Nino frowns. “Do you… know how it works? How someone gets arrested, goes to court, gets sentenced, and goes to jail?”

Chris sighs loudly. He flops back onto Nino’s bed. “Yes, I know how it works. I did my research when you first went to court with the gang.”

Nino nods. He swallows thickly and takes a hesitant, shaky breath. “Well, you… know that sometimes… people, they, uh—they go to jail. What they did to get there might have been wrong, but sometimes… sometimes it seems justified.”

“Are you going somewhere with this?” Chris asks, annoyed. “I’ve got a paper to write on how—”

“Yeah,” Nino murmurs. “Yeah. I’m almost finished.”

Chris grumbles, but he quiets. 

Nino takes another breath, the muscles in his shoulders and back growing more and more taut with tension. “Max—he… he got dealt a bad hand. He did some—some bad things, Chris. He hurt people. He—he killed someone. And he… he’s going to jail, for it. So you guys can’t exactly hang out, anymore.”

Chris has gone still and completely quiet on the bed. 

Nino looks up, his hands trembling. “Chris?” he breathes.

“Why are you telling me this?” Chris whispers.

Nino hesitates. “So you—you know about Max.”

Chris doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “Orangis Tech—did they…?”

“Alya’s working on making them face consequences,” Nino supplies, voice coming out raspy. He doesn’t tell Chris about how Max took Alya hostage, (how much Nino feared for Alya’s life,) even though he badly, badly wants to tell someone. Someone who didn’t know—someone who didn’t go through the same thing—someone who can be shocked and angry and hurt about it and someone who Nino can be shocked and angry and hurt with. But he doesn’t tell Max about Alya being taken, because Chris is still just a kid, and Nino is still his protective older brother. “She’s doing an article on them—a few, actually, I think—and we might even go to court about it on Max’s behalf, if we can swing it.”

Chris nods absently. “Killed someone,” he says after a moment. There’s a slight tremble to Chris’s voice. It makes Nino’s eyes well up with tears. “My friend did that?” 

“I know,” Nino says, his voice cracking with his helpless tone. “I know, Chris.”

“Do you?” Chris asks hollowly. “Do you, though?”

Nino can’t respond, but something surely breaks inside him as he watches his little brother start to cry.

“I don’t understand,” Chris whispers into the silence. “I don’t…”

Nino rolls his desk chair closer and he reaches out a hand to his brother’s, splayed out on the bed still. He doesn’t say anything, not sure what to say, but he and his brother cry beside each other in the quiet.

Nino imagines, sitting there together in the half-dark, that even geniuses can’t understand some things. He wishes he could make it easier. He wishes Max didn’t do the things he did.

He wishes he was stronger—strong enough to help Chris.

~*~

Thursday of that week, the gang has their first dinner at Amelie’s. Together, at Nino and Luka’s request, they’re making personal pizzas. Amelie has a speaker set up in the kitchen, playing the gang’s playlist, which is queued up from Nino’s phone, and the sun is setting quietly outside the large kitchen windows, casting everything in an orange-red glow. Laughter fills the kitchen, along with singing, joking, and a light warmth glowing in their chests.

Even those haunted by the previous case are nearly forgetting the ghosts that seem to cling to their very skin.

That is, until Marinette turns to Alya with excitement, something dangerous on her tongue. 

“That reminds me,” she says, pausing the decoration of pepperonis on her pizza, “we forgot to tell you about the possible breakthrough in Adrien’s case.”

Félix shudders to a stop where he stands at the table over his own pizza, and so do Nino and Adrien where they stand, too. With the acknowledgement of the case—and everything that had come with this breakthrough, with what had followed it—the warm golden light dims and grows a little colder. 

“What was the breakthrough?” Alya asks, focused on her pizza. Félix doubts she or Marinette, and, frankly, Luka or Chloé, who still work on their pizzas in peace, have noticed the shift. He tries to move forward, to keep working, to act like he’s fine, but—closed eyes, blood-matted hair, caved-in skull, purpling—

“Well,” Marinette interrupts, “we got a note from Lady E with an article clipping about a previous Mystery Incorporated gang. The article had a picture on it, luckily, since all the names were blacked out, and Adrien recognized his mom in the photo of the previous gang.”

Alya looks to Adrien, eyes wide. “No way—”

“Yeah!” Marinette says, grinning. “Crazy, right?”

“For real,” Alya breathes, beginning to almost vibrate in her excitement. “Ah, this is so exciting! I—mm, I remember reading about the previous gang when I reviewed some of their old cases for my blog.”

Marinette leans across the table. “Do you remember any of their names? I thought some of them were familiar, but I haven’t been able to remember anything.”

Alya grins. “Maybe, maybe. I’ll have to see if I’ve got their names in the reviews, but I could take a look at the photo and see. Y’know, that’s where I got the name for the gang—they had eight members, and we just had four, but we were doing stuff just like them, so it made sense. I can’t believe—Émilie Agreste. Part of the old gang. It rings a bell, actually—not the same last name, though, as twenty-four years ago, but still.”

Adrien shrugs. “It’s… definitely crazy,” he says, voice sounding thin. “She’s been so different from how she looked in the photo for as long as I can remember…”

Félix glances over. “Maybe it’s your father. You saw her with that Gabi guy my mother pointed out—maybe she broke up with him and got with Uncle Gabriel and everything changed.”

Adrien nods, frowning. “Maybe, yeah.”

Marinette looks to Adrien, biting her lip. “Well, when we find her, we can ask her all about it.”

Adrien nods again, though he doesn’t look like he believes it.

They work in a somewhat strained silence for a bit.

When the gang is about finished with their pizzas, Amelie comes down from her sewing room, smiling wide.

“Are you all finished?” she asks, glancing over Félix’s shoulder.

There’s a chorus of nods and affirmations, some of them smiling back at her. Amelie shows them how to get most of their pizzas in the oven, and two go in the toaster oven on the counter due to space constraints. After a timer is set, she goes back up to her sewing room, and the gang washes their hands before migrating to the living room, where they sprawl out in one corner on a series of funky chairs and bean bags.

“Thanks again to your mom for getting these,” Nino says with a sheepish smile, sinking into a large bean bag. Beside him, in the same bean bag, Alya curls up, wrapped in a fluffy blanket. Félix nods, smiling some back. He sits in a sort of egg-like chair backed close to one wall, rocking slightly back and forth. In a different egg chair, across from Félix, Adrien sits, rolling his egg onto one side by leaning over. In his arms is a huge, fluffy pillow, and he has one leg curled to the side, his other stretching out to rest on a fuzzy green ottoman. With legs reclined on the same ottoman, Luka lies in a sort of bean-shaped chair, rocking forward and back, parallel to the ground. Between Adrien and Alya sits Marinette, curled up in another bean bag chair with a few pillows and a thick blanket. Between Nino and Félix is Chloé, curled upside down in a hanging sort of basket chair, wrapped in a few blankets herself. 

Around them, thanks to Amelie’s generous spending and overzealous excitement about making a space for Félix, Adrien, and Adrien’s friends to exist, are a few more hanging chairs, some more bean bags, a few ottomans, and some more weird chairs. Corralling the space from the rest of the living room are thin curtains pulled back in one area to make an oval entrance. Funkily shaped lamps of all colors and sizes light up the area, and there’s a few floating shelves here and there, as well as a weird bookcase, a large basket of pillows and blankets, and a mini fridge.

“She really didn’t have to do all this,” Marinette says, but she’s biting back a smile. “It’s—it’s too much, really.”

Félix rolls his eyes. “She’s been itching to do something like this, believe me. She’s had a whole moodboard online for stuff she wants to do for you guys.”

Adrien looks at him with a raised brow. “And you, too, Félix. She used to complain to me about how you were no fun, not even letting her make something like a reading nook for you.”

Félix reaches over to the basket of pillows and blankets, and he snags a medium-sized throw pillow. Chucking it at Adrien, he bites back a smile. “Alright, fine. She’s had all these ideas for us.”

Adrien catches the pillow to the face with a grin, laughing. 

“So, can I see that article photo?” Alya asks, shaking her head at Adrien and Félix with a small smile. 

Luka reaches behind him to his backpack, digging through it a moment, before he gets an evidence bag. He then passes the bag to Adrien, who passes it to Marinette, who passes it to Alya. 

Alya looks at it a few moments before looking to her phone and doing a few searches.

When she finally looks up from the article and her phone, she’s frowning.

“Well, first thing’s first—I think someone hacked into my blog.”

Marinette sits up, going still. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I know I wrote their names in a few of these articles, but all of the ones I know had their names have been rewritten to omit that information.”

Marinette grits her teeth. “Just like the article and the map—identifying information being redacted or getting blacked out.”

Nino frowns, twisting his hat around his head idly. “All the articles in the Morgue that we found had their names blacked out and any pictures cut out, too.”

Luka sighs. “Lady E.”

Marinette fumes in the bean bag chair between Alya and Adrien. “She’s doing a lot of work to make sure we only have certain information.”

Alya nods absently, looking at the article picture in her hands. “Well, she can’t quite control my memory. I don’t remember all of these people, but about twenty-three years ago, there was a case involving the Crystal Cove High’s Fighting Urchins and the cheerleaders. I remember having to cross-check the case file with the CCHS yearbook from that year and the old Urchins’ team rosters, because in the gang, there were surprisingly one of the soccer players and one of the cheerleaders from that year among the members. The soccer player was Andre Bourgeois, and the cheerleader was Audrey Queen.”

Chloé stares at Alya, unmoving. “My parents.”

Alya glances over at Chloé, biting her lip. She nods. “Yeah.”

Chloé closes her eyes, her form shrinking in her chair.

Alya looks back to the article picture, shoulders drooping. “There’s… one other person I recognize. About, oh, twenty-four years ago, back when the previous gang was just starting out, there was an award gifted to them for solving a case involving money laundering and fraud. Tomoe Tsurugi was highlighted in the award as the primary investigator.”

Félix smiles humorlessly, recalling the ghost rig case and Tomoe’s suspected involvement.  “Ah, Tomoe Tsurugi.”

“Yeah,” Alya breathes, wincing. 

“Wait,” Luka says, folding his hands over his stomach as he rocks forward and back. “Going back to how this relates to Adrien’s case, does the previous gang have something to do with Émilie’s disappearance, her note, and/or the disk?”

Alya purses her lips. “It could, but I can’t be sure. In the cases that I’ve reviewed from the old gang, there wasn’t any mention of a disk.”

“Well, we know my mom wants me to destroy the disk,” Adrien says with a sigh. “And that it’s in pieces—maybe the others knew about it, and that’s why she ran away?”

“Neither of my parents have been or were acting weird since or before she disappeared,” Chloé says quietly. “I doubt they know anything, and if they do, they’ve got their heads too far up their asses to care.”

“We stopped bugging Tomoe after Ladderton was caught,” Marinette adds, “but Tomoe didn’t say anything about the disk while we were listening in.”

Alya frowns. “Well, there’s still four other members from the past gang to account for, if the disk is even related to them.”

Luka nods. “Do we think the disk and the note—and, I guess, Émilie’s disappearance—have anything to do with Lady E, since she knows about the previous gang?”

Félix sighs, rocking back in his egg chair. “I don’t think we have enough information for that—first we have to figure out if the previous gang knew or knows about the disk, and then see if Lady E even knows about it, too. If she does, she might be part of why Adrien’s mother disappeared.”

“Or maybe they’re connected in some other way,” Adrien says. “Maybe she, like Amelie, just knew that my mom was in the old gang.”

Alya lets out a long exhale, looking to Félix. “What if—”

Félix’s voice is icy. “Don’t even suggest it, Alya. She wouldn’t do that—she wouldn’t send us to Gatorsburg, take our engine, send us after a murderous Ladderton, and throw us into the caverns to die. She’s my mother, for fuck’s sake, and she’s done so much to keep all of you safe—she wouldn’t do that.”

Alya quickly quiets, nodding. “Okay, okay—sorry. Just a thought.”

Félix bites his tongue against what he wants to say, and he forces himself to be quiet.

“Well,” Marinette says after a quiet moment. “I think that about sums it up. We made a bit of progress on Adrien’s case with figuring out Chloé’s parents and Émilie and Tomoe were part of the old gang, and we now know that we need to know more about the old gang and Lady E’s knowledge of the disk to make a definitive connection between Lady E, the old gang, the disk, and Émilie’s disappearance.”

“Sounds like a good amount of progress,” Adrien says quietly, staring across the small area where they all sit to Félix, who’s pulled his knees to his chest. 

“Yup,” Nino says, popping the ‘p’ sound. He leans back in the bean bag chair with a sigh. “Guess we can just relax until then, seeing as we don’t have another case, right?”

Marinette makes a small, displeased noise. “Yeah, we don’t have another one.”

“Thank God,” Félix says with a sigh, rolling his eyes.

~*~

A few days later, Alya is babysitting one of her mother’s friends’ kids. She’s sat at the kitchen table, by the window outlooking the street, texting back and forth with the gang. Beside her sits her backpack, packed with her things and ready for her to leave with. She’s just put the children to bed a few minutes before, and she has an hour longer before the parents arrive home.

As she’s considering putting on one of her mother’s favorite cooking shows for background noise while she does some extra housecleaning, there comes an eerie, lilting tune from the street.

Alya glances over her shoulder, expecting to see a car, but she only sees a short figure half-shrouded in the shadows of the street. A pan flute is raised to the figure’s lips.

The figure steps out of the half-shadows and walks nearer to Alya at the window.

Alya continues staring, almost hypnotized, before her attention is drawn from the window by a crash resounding from upstairs. Alya only glances back at the figure as she pockets her phone. She grabs her backpack from the floor, slinging it over her shoulder as she stands. 

Alya turns from the figure still walking towards her, even as it approaches the yard of the house she’s in, and she runs across the kitchen and through the house to get to the children upstairs.

When she reaches the door to the kids’ room, a lamp has been knocked to the floor from a bedside table. Looking up from the lamp, Alya sees two figures crouched on the bed, hissing and growling. 

The figures only vaguely resemble the children she’s babysat all evening. Their hair has been mussed and tangled, sticks up in nearly every direction, and they’re in dark, raggedy, and torn clothing. The skin of their faces have become a strange whitish-green, and their gazes are crazed. All around them, the noise of the pan flute from outside plays eerily on.

They leap at Alya, screeching. 

Babysitting, CPR training, living with two younger twin sisters, and even being on a volleyball team half of her life—none of it has prepared her for this. Mystery solving with the gang, however? That’s prepared her unimaginably for scenarios just like this.

So she runs, sprinting back down the stairs to the first floor. Behind her growl the not-not-children, tumbling after her down the stairs.

Alya makes it to the front door in seven seconds flat, unlocking it in one, and opening it and flying out to the front yard in another. 

Behind her, as she tumbles to the grass, crawling quickly to the driveway, the kids screech one final time and slam the door shut behind her. 

Alya glances over her shoulder just in time to hear the door lock and the not-not-children tumble distantly back up to the second floor. Around them, the eerie tune of the pan flute drops off abruptly. Alya turns to look to the sidewalk, towards the figure that had been approaching her, but the figure has disappeared.

Alya lets her head fall to her arm in defeat, gasping for air. She lies there for a long moment.

~*~

It takes the gang ten minutes to reach Alya after she texts them 911.

Alya ends up sitting in her usual spot between Nino and Marinette on the front bench seat, with Félix and Chloé behind her in the captain’s chairs. Behind them, Adrien and Luka sit on the side benches. 

“So,” Félix starts, spinning in his captain’s chair some. “What was that about?”

Alya frowns and squirms in the front bench seat. “Mind if we stop somewhere before I talk about it? I’ve gotta sort out my thoughts, first.”

Félix shrugs. “Sure.”

“Where you wanna stop, babe?” Nino asks, just driving aimlessly through some neighborhoods.

Alya purses her lips, thinking a moment. “Mm, how about the library? We can sit in the teen section and I’ll tell you guys about it there?”

“Ugh,” Chloé grumbles. “We were just there—how about one of the cafés in town, or a restaurant? I promise I’ll pay,” she pleads.

Nino looks to Alya, brows raised high. Food? the look pleads.

Alya holds in a small laugh. “Sure, sure, we can go wherever you want to eat.”

Chloé sighs in relief. “Great—thanks. Any requests?” When no one answers her, she reaches out a leg to nudge Luka at the knee. “Hey, foodie. What do you want to eat?”

Luka rolls his eyes. “Why do you care what I want?”

Chloé purses her lips. “Just answer me, jerk.”

Luka, pointedly, does not answer.

Adrien, seeing this, sighs a bit before looking to Chloé hopefully. “How about La Belle? You said the other day that that place was pretty nice.”

At the name Belle, Félix’s hands clench and his body tenses up all over. Quickly, though not too quick to draw attention to himself, he puts his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. He carefully slouches some in his chair so as not to appear too tense, and he bites his tongue to keep himself secretly grounded. Despite this, the smell of the alleyway where Belle Perry’s body was retrieved by the coroner assaults him, and his heartbeat picks up. He keeps his breaths even and slow, even as his ears begin to ring and the world around him falls away. 

When Chloé looks at him expectantly, he shrugs, keeping his expression mostly neutral but slightly affirming. He feels like he’s drowning.

As the smell of garbage, sewage, and a corpse beginning to smell overwhelm him, Félix bites down harder on his tongue. Like a mantra, his thoughts run: Belle Perry, Belle Perry, Belle Perry. He recalls now that he’d seen her obituary in the paper the morning before. He’d been eating toast with strawberry jam when he saw it—he’d choked on the toast, had to swallow it back with some orange juice. His mother had looked at him knowingly. He had escaped to school soon after that, with shaking hands at the wheel of his car and a gaze that was surely a bit too unfocused to be safe. He was drowning, then—he’s drowning again here.

Now, he does everything he can to keep his cool. He does everything to keep from starting to rot. He does everything to keep the façade that he’s okay. (He wants to say it—to say what he’s been biting his tongue back from saying the whole past week and a half. He wants to say it: I found the dead body of Belle Perry, and I was in the caverns for almost eight hours just to bring her back to the surface. He wants to say it: I found her and I carried her dead body through the cold, wet dark of those caverns for four and a half hours. He wants to say it. He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t say anything.)

Alya is tapping his shoulder. She’s calling his name, half-turned in her seat to look at him, and she’s looking at him all funny. I forgot, Félix thinks. I forgot to pretend. I’ve got to pretend.

“Hey,” Alya says to him. Félix realizes he doesn’t feel so much like he’s drowning, when he focuses on the sound of her voice. “Wendy’s or Jack in the Box?”

Félix feels his face contort in a grimace, feels his teeth release his tongue. His mouth tastes of blood. He focuses on the sound of his voice. “Jack in the Box. Far superior.”

“As if,” Marinette says, scoffing over one shoulder at him. “Frosties.”

“Milkshakes,” he hears himself say in the same tone. 

“Alright, alright,” Alya says, turning back in her seat, though she still looks over her shoulder at him. “Well, we’re going to Wendy’s and Jack’s instead of a café.”

Félix feels himself nod. His hands relax slightly in his hoodie pocket. “Do we want to go back to my place to eat? It’s warm and we can hang out and talk in the living room.”

Alya nods. “That’d be good. I was just gonna ask that next, actually,” she says with a smile.

Félix feels himself smile back slightly. He focuses on the sound of the voices around him, trying to keep from rotting.

~*~

When they’re settled back at Félix’s with their food, in the living room set-up Amelie made for them, they start to eat. 

After a while, Alya pauses eating and wipes at her face. “So,” she starts. “Tonight.”

“Tonight,” Félix repeatss before taking a large bite of his burger. 

Alya nods, taking a sip of her drink. “Well, I’d just put the kids to bed and gotten downstairs to the kitchen when some weird stuff started happening. I was texting you guys and then, all of a sudden, I heard this really creepy music start playing in the street. It definitely sounded like it was from a pan flute, but when I went to look outside to the noise, there was… a figure. In the street, in the dark. They had on this detailed shawl, this old Mayan-looking mask or headpiece, bandaged arms and legs, red eyes, and long, white hair.”

“Huh,” Nino says, eating his fries. “Weird.”

“It gets weirder,” Alya says, swinging in one of the egg chairs with the toe of one shoe. “Right after that, I heard a crash from upstairs, and the figure starts walking towards me.”

“Don’t tell me you were outside, Alya,” Marinette says, her hands stilling with her burger an inch from her face. “Rule number one of solo investigations!”

Alya rolls her eyes. “I was inside, and I didn’t even know it was an investigation, yet. I was just sitting at the window in the kitchen, and the figure was walking towards the window from the street, still playing the pan flute. Anyways, I grabbed my backpack, just in case, and I went upstairs to check on the kids.” She takes a long sip of her drink. “They were crazy freaky. They had insane bedhead, were wearing torn and dirty clothes, and their skin was super pale and kind of green. Oh, and they were hissing and growling at me.”

Everyone has looked up from their food to stare at Alya. 

“No way,” Marinette says giddily. “My prayers have been answered.”

“You’re not even religious,” Luka says, laughing. 

“Religion or not, I was praying for another case,” Marinette says, pleased. “And look whose prayers were answered.”

Félix gives her a dry look from the egg chair he sits in again. “How many times did you pray? Just so I can get a ballpark for how much I have to pray for us not to get a case.”

Marinette only grins.

“Anyways,” Alya says, “a new case. In the morning before school, we can swing by the house of the family I was babysitting for and see what’s up, yeah?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Nino says, shrugging. “What time should I come around for you guys?”

“Maybe about six-thirty?” Alya asks. 

“Ugh,” Marinette groans. 

Luka, Félix, Alya, and Adrien roll their eyes, but Chloé and Nino grimace along with Marinette.

“It’s a case,” Alya points out. “Early in the morning, but a case.”

Marinette sighs after a moment, accepting this.

“I wish it weren’t,” Félix mutters, picking at his fries. 

Notes:

ahhhhh. 🥰 this episode and the chapters for it are going to be Exciting :) (chapter twenty-four made me bawl my frigging eyes out while writing and editing it, so… hope you are 🥰 Excited 🥰 for that chapter)

anyways what did you guys think !! 🫣 alya is Going through it, félix is Going through it, chris is Going through it, and everyone else (to varying lesser degrees) is also Going through it :) everyone needs Mad therapy :) are you, too, going through it? 🫣

next chapter will be posted on friday heehee!!! i hope u enjoyed this chapter!! 🥰 much love <3 <3 <3

Chapter 21: chapter twenty-one

Summary:

The gang visits the house Alya babysat the night before. Things have gotten… much worse, but, as usual, the Crystal Cove Police Department and Mayor Agreste are none too sympathetic or helpful.

Notes:

heehee

The next day, the gang drives to the house where Alya babysat the night before. They’re quiet on the drive, just listening to their playlist queued up from Nino’s phone, and in the back, Chloé, Marinette, Félix, Luka, and Adrien do some homework. In the front, Nino and Alya sit, keeping an eye out for anything similar to what the latter faced the night before.  

When they get to the neighborhood Alya babysat in, they find it’s blocked off with traffic cones and an array of police vehicles. Nino parks the van, but Alya’s already getting out. Everyone trails behind her to the barricade, where the sheriff and Adrien’s father, the mayor, stand on the other side. 

“Kids,” Sheriff Raincomprix says, rolling his eyes as he turns to them fully. Mayor Agreste, at his side, turns as well.

“Sheriff, Mayor,” Alya greets dryly. “What happened here?”

Cars stacked with peoples’ belongings begin to pull from the driveways. Tired parents drive each car.

“Well, not that it’s any of your business,” the sheriff starts, “but what’s happened is a new tourist attraction. A crazy one that gets creepy at night, but a tourist attraction regardless.” The sheriff smiles wide at Alya and the mayor, the latter of whom is looking stoically at Adrien. 

“What do you mean?” Marinette asks, stepping just behind Alya. “What’s the tourist attraction?”

The mayor, still looking at Adrien, answers her. “Last night a masked figure turned everyone’s children into goblins just by playing a flute from the street.”

“A pan flute,” Alya corrects. “They played a pan flute.”

Mayor Agreste turns and looks at Alya. The full-force of his indifference makes her tense on the other side of the barricade.

“Anyhow,” the sheriff says with a sigh, “we’re cordoning off the area day and night and only letting the tour buses through.”

“Are my parents running them?” Nino asks, frowning. “The buses, I mean.”

Sheriff Raincomprix sighs. “The Lahiffes are running them, yes.”

Nino nods, twisting his hat around his head. 

“But we don’t need any of your kids’ meddling for this one,” the sheriff says sharply, turning his nose up. “This will bring in more tourism, make the town richer, and—”

“What about the adults who’ve left the neighborhood?” Luka asks.

“We’ll build new neighborhoods for them to live in!” Sheriff Raincomprix answers, grinning. “More money means we can expand the town, if you would’ve let me finish.”

“And the kids?” Alya asks, putting her hands on her hips. “What about them?”

The sheriff looks to Mayor Agreste, who’s back to looking at Adrien, and then he looks back at Alya, pursing his lips. “Well,” Sheriff Raincomprix says, “maybe we’ll airdrop some camp food for them. Just ‘cause they’re spookified doesn’t mean they can’t cook.”

“They’re kids,” Nino butts in, leaning forward over one of the police cars. “You can’t just—maybe? Maybe you’ll give them food? What are you, nuts?! They’re kids!”

“If you’d seen them, you’d know they really aren’t kids anymore,” the sheriff says, shaking his head as if he were merely discussing the weather.

“Most of them can’t even reach the stove, let alone turn it on,” Alya spits. “You seriously expect them to be able to cook for themselves when they can’t even—when they’re—when—”

“Did you see them?” Sheriff Raincomprix asks suspiciously, leaning forward. “How do you know what they look like? We’ve had this area blocked off since 10 p.m. last night—”

“Yes, I saw them,” Alya hisses, “I was babysitting a six-year-old and a five-year-old, neither of whom, news flash, know how to cook, even when not turned into gremlins.”

“So they’ll Lord of the Flies it and work together, who knows?” the sheriff says, still looking indifferent. “They’ll survive, and if they don’t, say hello to the museum. Tourists love skeletons—they’ll love creepy little goblin skeletons even more.”

“Did you even read the Lord of the Flies?” Alya screams. She’s able to take two steps towards the barricade and put a hand and a foot on the back of one of the police cars before she, and Nino and Luka, who are close behind her, are being pulled back by Marinette, Félix, Adrien, and Chloé. Still, Alya shouts. “And what gives you the right to say that about children? They’re still—they’re still in there, damn it! They’re still worth saving!”

Alya, Luka, and Nino are pulled back from the barricade and into the back of the van, where Marinette, Adrien, and Chloé sit with them to make sure they’re not going to try and escape.

Félix elects himself to driving, having pocketed the van keys in the scuffle. He goes around to the front of the van, staring at the sheriff and the mayor. He lingers, a moment, with the driver’s side door open as he stares.

“They’re right, and you know it, Uncle Gabriel,” Félix says. “They’re just kids, and they’re still worth saving.”

Gabriel Agreste turns away, but he glances over his shoulder to say, “Keep Adrien safe.”

Félix narrows his eyes. I am, but not for your sake. 

He gets in the van as the sheriff, too, turns away.

A police cruiser follows them all the way to school. 

~*~

“I just don’t get it,” Alya says, fuming in the back of the van on the way to school. She has her knees pulled to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. “Are you guys not angry, too? What they were saying—it was awful. You guys agree, right?”

“We do, and we are angry,” Félix says, driving them away from the neighborhood. “We’re just also in a position where we understand that kind of action will do everything but help us right now. We can’t fight the sheriff and the mayor about their negligence and disregard for what's likely still human life—what we can do, however, is solve this case as fast as we can and save those kids ourselves.”

“He’s so stupid,” Alya says, her voice breaking. She starts to cry, sniffling and hiccuping. “They’re just kids.”

“I doubt he can even cook like he expects those kids to,” Marinette says, wrapping an arm around Alya’s shoulders.

“He did say some pretty stupid stuff,” Luka says, sitting across from Alya with his knees pulled up, too, and his arms around them. “‘Lord of the Flies it’? Did he even read the book?”

“Didn't they kill one of the kids in that book?” Nino asks, his hat tossed to one side. He leans against the back of the front bench, eyes closed. “I feel like that was a pretty big part of the story.”

“Maybe he got it confused with something else,” Chloé says, leaning back on her hands near the van’s back doors.

“Or he can't read,” Adrien shrugs.

“Or that,” Chloé sighs.

“We’ll save them,” Félix says resolutely. After a moment, he starts to say, “You know, I wonder…,” but he trails off as he pulls into the school’s parking lot.

“You wonder what?” Marinette asks curiously.

Félix shuts the van off and turns in his seat, throwing an arm over the back of the front bench seat. He smiles at the gang in the back of the van, though it’s an almost giddy, secretive smile. “Do you guys think our classmates would feel similarly about those kids going without food?”

A wide smile stretches across Adrien’s lips as he connects the dots on Félix’s idea. “That—that just might work, actually.”

Everyone else takes a moment to understand. 

“Do you—you think—are you saying we break past the sheriff’s barricade with our classmates and pass food out to the kids?” Alya asks, sniffling and adjusting her glasses on her nose. 

Félix nods slowly, still smiling. “I’ll call my mother and see if she has any ideas for food that would work well, but yeah.”

“Bread might be good,” Marinette says. “Easy to make in high quantities, a bit filling, and we can wrap them in foil, saran wrap, or plastic to keep them fresh for a while.”

“Mm, what about those meat sticks that we get at the gas station, too?” Adrien asks.

“Those would be good,” Nino says, “and maybe some fruits, like oranges, mandarins, and apples? Stuff that doesn’t have to be cold.”

“Vegetables, too, even,” Luka adds. “Maybe some fresh broccoli, carrots, some lettuce?”

“Chris randomly eats plain lettuce,” Nino says, smiling a bit. “That’s one of his favorite snacks—other kids might be just as willing.”

Félix nods. “Alright, well, how about we gather as many of our classmates as we can to help us later, and we’ll hit a couple of gas stations and the store before rendezvousing near the neighborhood with everyone? Then we can sneak in past the barricade to deliver the food?”

“I’ll text my parents and ask for any of the day’s leftover breads,” Marinette says, pulling out her phone.

“I’ll ask my mother if she can pitch in with the breads, too—homemade will taste better than whatever we can get at the grocery store,” Félix adds.

Alya finally smiles, wiping at her eyes. Nino and Luka, too, have finally relaxed some from their previous anger. 

“Alright,” Chloé says, grabbing her bag for school. “Adrien, Félix, and I can cover the cost of the food, but you guys, being more social, would be better suited for rallying people up.”

Everyone nods, not even bothering to argue. There’s a lightness and a hope to their movements, now, as they exit the van with their things, ready for the school day.

~*~

Later that day, during lunch time, the gang works on their homework together. Already, seven trusted students have been recruited to their cause for after the school day, and Amelie has made two loaves of bread and a few dozen rolls, and Tom and Sabine are donating donuts, pastries, croissant sandwiches, and extra rolls and loaves of bread to the cause. 

Hope fills the air, but even so, the gang still needs to maintain being in high school, so they’ve exiled themselves to the library for their lunch like they normally do every other day. 

Félix, like he does every day of this self-imposed exile since that night at The Bloody Stake, does his best to not stare longingly over at Kagami’s table. Kagami, having always exiled herself to the library for lunches, though usually with Félix, does her best to ignore him as she reads the latest assigned reading with her boxed lunch. 

Today, Chloé works on her Business I college homework. She sits across from Luka, who works on Chemistry with Alya and Marinette. Félix, working on English, is intermittently helping Adrien with an English essay, and Nino is working on the last of his presentation for his History class.

About two-thirds of the way through the lunch period, Nino’s phone quietly vibrates on the table. He’s quick to check it. Reading the text notification, he lets out a soft sigh, his brows drawing together over his eyes and a frown marring his expression.

“What’s up?” Marinette asks, looking up from rewriting her Chemistry notes.

Nino doesn’t glance up from his phone, shooting off a quick text of a reply first. “Just Chris,” he says, frustration lacing his voice. “He’s being weird as hell lately—well, weirder than he was since I told him about Max.” He sighs, pulling his glasses off of his face and pressing his hands against his face.

Alya leans over a little to put a comforting hand on Nino’s shoulder, frowning.

Everyone else at the table puts their homework aside, watching Nino with matching concerned frowns.

Nino pulls his hands from his face and he stares at the lip of the table. Exhaustion, frustration, and confusion shift through his expression. “I just… I told him about Max. I cut out all the stuff I wanted to say and could have said, and I… I tried to just talk about how Max was his friend, but he made some decisions that got him put in jail. And maybe I shouldn’t have told him that Max killed someone, but… I didn’t want him to find out some other way, y’know? But Chris, he—he didn’t understand it, that Max could have killed someone. Max is his friend, and Chris, he—he’s just a kid,” Nino breaks off, sniffling and wiping at his eyes. “He’s just a kid.”

Alya scoots closer, putting an arm around Nino’s shoulders and leaning her head against his. Everyone else is quiet and still, not quite sure what to say.

Nino continues. “But—but Chris, he’s been really moody with me. He hasn’t been sleeping well, I can tell, and he keeps… he keeps sneaking out at night, and… and he—he’s skipping school, now, which has Pa and Mom after me, ‘cause the school keeps calling, but… Chris doesn’t care. Not anymore, at least.”

“You’re in contact with him?” Félix finally asks.

Nino shrugs, wiping at his eyes again. “Not doing me any good, but yeah.”

Félix nods. “You’ve… probably already asked if he wants to talk about stuff with Max, then.”

Nino nods slowly, his eyes looking a bit glazed-over as he looks up from the table. “Yeah, but he… he said I wouldn’t understand. Said it wasn’t worth it if I wouldn’t get it.”

Luka huffs in frustration. “You’d try your best, though, Nino—that’s what counts.”

Nino deflates in defeat. “Not to him. Not to my little brother.”

Luka shakes his head, his shoulders drooping. “I’m sorry, Nino.”

Nino nods, his gaze dropping back to the table. His phone buzzes in front of him, a notification from Chris. Nino opens it with a sigh, only half-reading it before he shuts his phone off.

Everyone is stopped from comforting Nino further by the sound of the bell for the end of the lunch period.

~*~

That afternoon, after the gang has stopped by two gas stations, a grocery store, Félix’s house, and Marinette’s house, they rendevouz with the total of eight students they managed to convince to help them deliver food that afternoon. The students—Juleka Couffaine, Rose Lavillant, Ivan Bruel, Alix Kubdel, Lê Chiến Kim Ature, Mylène Haprèl, Sabrina Raincomprix, and Chloé’s cousin, Zoé Lee—are huddled in front of Zoé’s house. The plan is to use Zoé’s backyard to cut through to the blocked-off neighborhood, delivering food in pairs from this access point.

Marinette and Félix have the back of the van open, handing out bags to pairs of teens. Juleka and Rose get two bags; Alix and Lê Chiến Kim get two bags; Ivan and Mylène get two bags; and Sabrina and Zoé get two bags. Marinette and Adrien get two bags each and are paired up; Nino and Chloé get two bags each; Luka and Alya get two bags each; and, finally, Félix gets one bag, as he’s the designated the getaway driver and one-man rescue team in case anyone gets trapped or caught by the affected children or the police. In each bag, there’s two donuts, a pastry, a loaf of bread, three oranges, two mandarins, two apples, four meat sticks, a ziplock bag of fresh, washed broccoli, another ziplock bag of fresh, washed baby carrots, and a couple of sweet rolls with cinnamon sugar and raisins, as well as three bottles of water. One bag is for each child living in the neighborhood—twenty-one in all. 

In addition to their bags, each pair of teens has a single walkie talkie, a flashlight, and their phones. Once they’re all ready, Félix goes and parks the van near the barricade, on the other side of the house beside Zoé’s. After Félix has walked back to the group, Zoé leads everyone to her backyard. They each hop her fence, though some require help, and then they split up, moving to different houses in the affected neighborhood.

Félix knocks on the nearest house’s back door, his bag of food in hand. There’s a crash and a thundering from inside the house, and then a hissing and growling a few moments later from on the other side of the door. He pinpoints only one person being inside. 

“I’ve got food,” he calls gently, calmly through the door, and then, strangely enough, the growling stops. There’s a few clicks as the locking mechanism on the inside of the door shifts and tumbles, and then whoever was on the other side runs off. 

Hesitantly, Félix tests the knob of the door. 

It’s been unlocked for him—just like Alya hypothesized would happen that afternoon in the store. Her theory was that the children were somewhat lucid, given the affected children she babysat knew how to lock their own door to protect themselves after chasing her from their house. If they were hungry—which they likely were, being a day without food at this point—they would hopefully be receptive to receiving food.

Félix opens the back door of this house only enough to set the bag of food gently on the floor inside, and then he’s closing the door and heading back to the fence he hopped over for this house. When he’s over the fence, he radios to the group.

“Finished with the red paneled one just behind Zoé’s. It worked just like you thought, Alya,” Félix says, heading back for the van.

When Félix reaches the van, Alix and Mylène radio back for their groups.

“Got two kids food in the blue house next to Félix,” Alix says. “Heading back to the van now with Kim.”

Myléne is smiling a bit as she says, “They’re surprisingly docile with the mention of food. Ivan and I just finished the brown house next to Alix and Kim, and we’re heading directly across the street for the red house with our last bag.”

“At the van and ready, by the way,” Félix radios back. “Let me know if anyone has any issues.”

Alix and Kim arrive at the van shortly thereafter, giddy and joking with one another quietly in the back. They put their radio and flashlight in the bag Marinette designated for everyone, and they salute Félix before heading off to walk to a nearby skate park for a race.

Marinette and Adrien are next to radio back. “Not all of them are docile, it looks like. Adrien and I just barely got out of there—but the two kids in the yellow house at the end of the street next to Félix’s house have food.”

“What, did they scratch you?” Chloé asks. “We got scratched up a bit, but nothing too bad. Red house next to the brown one is done. Heading straight across the street for the blue one.”

“Adrien almost got bit,” Marinette says, and Adrien can be heard laughing a little in the background, “but we’re heading across to the white one.”

Félix shakes his head in the van, sighing. 

“Mylène and Ivan heading back from the red house across from the brown one,” Ivan radios a moment later. “They need two more bags, though.”

“Got it,” Alya says. “Luka and I finished with the one furthest from Zoé’s house on the first side.”

“Jules and I just got food to the two kids in the white house next to Nino and Chloé’s red one. No trouble!” Rose radios. “Heading back now.”

“No kids in the blue house next to Juleka and Rose,” Zoé sheepishly says. “Heading to the red house across from the brown one Luka and Alya were in at the end.”

“White one across from the yellow at the end has no kids,” Adrien says. “Heading to the blue house next door.”

Mylène and Ivan arrive at the van and dispose of their walkie talkie and flashlight. They sit in the back to wait for their friends, quietly chatting. 

“Biters in the red house Ivan and Mylène hit,” Luka grumbles after a bit, “but the kids there have food. Heading next door to the yellow house.”

“The one kid in the red house at the end of the street has food,” Sabrina says. “Zoé and I are heading next door to the brown house with our last bag.”

Rose and Juleka arrive back at the van shortly after, dropping their walkie talkie and flashlight in the designated bag. Ivan waves to Mylène, and he, Rose, and Juleka head back to Zoé’s, where Ivan’s truck is parked, to leave for a band rehearsal. 

“Blue one across from the red one was rough,” Nino radios. “Biters, scratchers, and kickers—but both kids there have food, now. Chloé and I are headed to the yellow house next door with our last bag.”

After a little bit, Zoé says, “Our last bag has been dropped off at the brown house next to Chloé and Nino. Headed back to the van now!”

“Blue house next to the white one at the end has food for the two kids there,” Marinette says, “but, damn, some of these kids are like wild animals.”

“Yellow house by Adrien and Mari’s last house is accounted for,” Alya says. “Headed back to the van with Luka, Marinette, and Adrien.”

Shortly after Alya radios, Zoé, Sabrina, Marinette, Adrien, and Luka, and Alya make it to the van. Mylène heads back to Zoé’s house with Zoé and Sabrina after the latter two hand the gang back their walkie talkie and flashlight, and the rest of the gang waits in the semi-silence for Nino and Chloé to send word. 

After another five minutes, everyone has grown reasonably antsy. 

Adrien and Alya reach for a walkie talkie at the same time, but Adrien nods for Alya to use it first. 

“Nino? Chloé?” Alya radios. 

Félix forces his hands to stay relaxed on the steering wheel of the van, but he turns the ignition over as another minute passes.

“Fuck,” Nino breathes into the radio. “What’s with these biters? I hope none of this is gonna turn me into a werewolf,” he says, and there’s a thump in the background. “You good, Chlo?” he asks, voice quieter as he turns his head from the walkie talkie.

Distantly through the radio, she says, “Yeah, yeah, just a couple scratches. Tell them we’re on our way.”

“Oh, right,” Nino says, and his voice grows louder as he moves closer to the walkie talkie. “We’re heading back now, though—oh, shit! Chloé—” The radio cuts off.

“Nino? Nino?” Alya radios, her hands shaking the slightest bit. Her voice grows louder. “Nino? Nino!”

A minute later, the radio clicks on, but it’s just the sound of running, heavy gasps, and the distant yelling of Sheriff Raincomprix as he presumably chases them down. The radio clicks off, the noises presumably an accident.

Everyone waits with bated breath.

A few moments later, the radio clicks back on.

“Blue house next to red house!” Nino cries. Sheriff Raincomprix’s shouting is closer than before.

“Back up to the house behind Zoé’s from here,” Luka says, but Félix is already reversing quickly from his parking space three houses down, spinning the van around before driving quickly down the street. 

In the back, as Félix drives, Marinette and Adrien open the back doors, holding onto the netting along the ceiling of the van. Alya and Luka crawl to the rear of the van, preparing to help Nino and Chloé to safety.

Félix drives past the house on the other side of Zoé’s, the one behind the house Nino pointed out, and Nino and Chloé, having just reached the road, run after them. They’re quickly pulled inside, and Félix speeds up as soon as the doors of the van close. 

When he looks in the rearview mirror, Félix spies the sheriff fuming in the street behind them.

~*~

The sheriff recognizes Zoé Lee’s house on his way back to the affected neighborhood and he makes a small, angry detour. Reaching Zoé’s front door, Sheriff Raincomprix knocks sharply three times. He starts to interrogate his daughter, Sabrina, as soon as she has the door open.

“Tell me exactly what you know of that gang!” he cries, face still red from exertion and embarrassment. “I know they were here, and I know you must have helped them!”

Sabrina merely waves Zoé and Mylène back to Zoé’s room before she looks flatly at the sheriff. “Dad, you know I don’t endorse criminal behavior. Why do you think I’d involve myself in it by joining Marinette’s group?”

The sheriff angrily tries to speak, but Sabrina shakes her head, putting a hand on one hip. “Honestly, Dad. I’ve just been here with Zoé and Mylène. We’ve been reviewing our Chemistry notes—we’ve got a test on Monday. Chill out.”

Sheriff Raincomprix purses his lips, eyes still wild and angry, but he shakes his head. “You know criminal behavior is wrong,” he says, pointing at her with one finger. “I’ll trust you’re telling the truth, but know that if I find out you were involved with them, I’ll lock you up for the first week of winter break so you know what’s waiting for you down a path started from criminal activity.”

Sabrina knows the sheriff—her father, she supposes, though she hates calling this angry, embarrassed man her father—would do this. She also knows, though, that her mother would sooner call Child Protective Services on her husband than actually let her daughter be locked up in jail for a week as punishment, so she nods, frowning, and promises she had nothing to do with it.

But when her father leaves for the barricade at the edge of the affected neighborhood, Sabrina is the one who sends a text to the gang from her, Zoé, and Mylène that if they need help delivering food tomorrow, they’re available and willing to help. 

After all, despite the fact that Sheriff Raincomprix is her father, Sabrina has no respect for his actions. She loves her father—he’s her father, after all—but she won’t let his behaviors go unchecked. 

~*~

That night, after everyone in the gang is home again—after another session in the library preparing for an Economics test in two days—Marinette messages the group chat.

Mystery Inc.

8:23 p.m.

Marinette

id say today was a success

u guys want to do it again tomorrow?

Félix

We could probably forgo a loaf of bread 

for a couple days, but sure, I’m down to 

do that again tomorrow.

Nino

same stuff otherwise?

Félix

Yeah, I think doing more of the other

food makes sense.

Chloé

sounds like a plan

Marinette

cool

u guys get the text from sabrina? 👀

little ironic lmao given her dad but

kinda makes sense

Luka

oh

jules told me the band said theyd be

down to do this again

forgot to say

Alya

ohhh alix n kim said the same, though 

they’ve got a game in a few days they

have to be free for

Marinette

yeah, we can work w that

ugh this is so cool

feels important, yk?

Alya

yeah

and like we’re doing smth that 

really matters

i mean usually we are anyways

but yk what i mean? 

Nino

seconding that lol

Luka

definitely

though i do still wanna punch 

raincomprix

Félix

I think we all do 😂

Nino

thats so weird felix

NEVER would have expected

ure a 😂 emoji user

Luka

lmao

Adrien

lol ure right though

Félix

Okay, everyone can shut up now. 💀

Chloé

🫵🤡

           read 8:32 p.m.

8:47 p.m.

Félix

You guys just hear about Cypress Street?

Alya

legit just got the notif

reading abt it now

Marinette

what happened up on cypress

Nino

yeah what happened 🫣

Luka

👁️👁️ 

that’s near the boat

one sec

Chloé

just looked it up, wth???

a FIRE?

this idk what u wanna call them but

theyre fr setting things on fire now??

insane 💀

Luka

[sent a photo]

u can see the smoke from here 💀

it’s pretty big ig

must be a whole house

Chloé

omg

found an article on it

https://covenews.com/local/2019/10/21/cy-

press-st-fire-updates

Marinette

has anyone said how it happened???

was anyone inside?????

Chloé

ik that house

ik who lives there

Nino

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Luka

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Marinette

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Alya

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Adrien

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

wait

is that

no

your old

your old babysitter???

armand????

Chloé

just saw that update

           [replied to: Adrien: armand???? ]

yeah.

he retired when he and his wife had their

first kid—they’ve had three since.

that’s their house on fire

            read 8:56 p.m.

9:49 p.m.

Marinette

i’m so sorry chloe

Félix

Let us know if you need anything.

Adrien

anything at all

                read 9:52 p.m.

Chloé doesn’t respond the rest of the night, but another neighborhood’s children have become affected by the masked figure that approached Alya the night before. Armand, Chloé’s childhood babysitter, Armand’s wife, and their three children die in a fire started amidst the children becoming… other at the sound of the pan flute.

Notes:

heehee . 🤡

what’d you think? sheriff and mayor… 🤡 clowns am i right. also some of u asked if zoé was chloé’s sister here but alas i made them cousins bcos. well. atitl is already so big and we’re literally only like 1.5/17ths of the way rn at ch 21 🤡 and i Would have made some major sibling conflicts btwn or w them if they were siblings bcos im a clown 🤡

anyways beyond that did you like all the kids coming together to help the not-not-children <3 teamwork makes the dream work <3

oh and uh. armand…. 🤡 sorry guys,,,

well heehee next chapter will be posted either next tuesday or wednesday !! 🥰🥰🥰 im slowly adjusting to fitting work and writing into my daily schedule and am slowly but surely cracking away at the rest of atitl! drafting ch 40 this week heehee :3

Chapter 22: chapter twenty-two

Summary:

The gang has some study time at the library before doing some research on a lead Alya has.

Notes:

heehee it’s a bit of a more relaxed chapter today, but there’s some clues sprinkled in for this case 😉

The day after the fire, the gang and the same students from the first night deliver food to the now two affected neighborhoods. They require a bit more help from Amelie to cover the breads and supplement the pastries, donuts, and sandwiches for the latest affected neighborhood, but they deliver similar bags to each house with a child, adding a bag for each additional child living in the same house like they did the first night. 

It takes everyone about two and a half hours to finish delivering food to each house, and when they finish, Félix and Marinette have to patch up some wounds from the teens being attacked by the children or going into areas with unexpected broken glass, but they eventually finish their task in time for those unrelated to the gang to start to need to leave for dinner.

The gang, though, grabs a few leftover sandwiches from Marinette’s parents’ bakery and they head to the Crystal Cove library. They study for their Economics test for an hour and a half, work on other homework for another hour and a half, and then they take a break to walk to a nearby café for snacks and coffee. 

“Hey,” Nino starts, stretching in the dark under the stars on the library steps. Behind him, the others are bundling up in their jackets, and Marinette is locking up the library behind them. The key to the library—gifted to them from the head librarian about a year ago—is like their snack privileges: allowed with stipulations. “You guys think they’ll have those cream cheese danishes at Marque’s tonight?”

“They always do,” Chloé says with a yawn, rolling her eyes. “The real question is, will they allow me my seven shots of espresso? They almost denied me yesterday morning, so I’m worrying.”

“Seven shots?” Félix asks incredulously. “Isn’t that a bit excessive?”

“Not really, in this line of work,” Marinette says, shrugging. She leads the group down the library steps, jumping in place on the sidewalk a moment to try and wake herself up and also shake off the chill of the proper fall air. 

“Sometimes I’ll go for nine or ten,” Luka says, biting back a yawn. “Depends on the day.”

“Marque better not deny me, then,” Chloé grumbles. “I won’t stand for it if Luka can have more than me and I still get denied.”

“Why are we even so tired?” Adrien whines, trying not to stumble down the sidewalk as the group moves down the street from the library. “It’s only, what, 9:50 p.m.? This is” —yawn— “outrageous. We usually get to bed at 1 or 2 a.m., not 10 p.m.”

Alya moves through the group to walk beside Nino, and she accepts the hand he holds out for her to take. Adrien and Félix end up at the back of the group, with Marinette and Chloé in front of them, and ahead of Alya and Nino walks Luka.

“Well, it’s been dark since about 6:20 p.m.,” Félix answers, stuffing his hands in his pockets, “and we’re all exhausted from doing so much work lately, so it’s really no surprise—”

Marinette groans. “Shut up, Félix—you’re making me more tired.”

“I think that’s just your brain trying to comprehend what I said,” Félix mutters.

“Do I need to hit you?”

Félix rolls his eyes. “Get a new line, Dupain-Cheng.”

“Fine—shall I push you into oncoming traffic and resuscitate you only to insult you to the point that you crawl back into traffic to escape me?”

“Push me into oncoming traffic so I can escape this,” Nino groans. “You guys fight just like Luka and Chloé—the only difference is they make me want to end it all in a slightly different way.”

“Nino,” Marinette pouts, “I would never throw you into traffic.”

“I’ll get begging on my hands and knees if you don’t stop bickering,” he retorts. 

“Fine,” Marinette grumbles. 

Félix hides his pleased smile. Adrien elbows him in the side, rolling his eyes. 

“How much further?” Adrien asks as they cross a few streets.

“Cold?” Alya asks, glancing back at him. She’s bundled just as warmly as he is, them both being the most sensitive to the cold in the group now.

Adrien shrugs. “A bit, yeah, but mostly just about to fall asleep on my feet.”

“Should I pinch you real hard?” Félix asks hopefully.

“Why is it I tell you I’m tired and your only responses are to throw logic at me or offer me pain?” 

“That’s just how he is,” Chloé says. “You’d think you’d know by now.”

Adrien grimaces. “Forgive me for hoping, Chlo.”

“She’ll have to forgive a lot more than that,” Félix says, smiling.

“Are you so chipper because you enjoy being mean?” Luka asks, yawning again.

Félix laughs a bit. 

“Just two and a half more blocks,” Alya tells Adrien. 

He nods, thankful. 

“Oh, do you think if we all fail the Econ test, she might grade on a curve using Chloé’s definitely high score on it?” Nino asks after a moment.

“Kagami and I should help bring the curve up some, too,” Félix says, shrugging. “I’m sure Adrien and Alya will do well, too, based off of the mini quiz we all did earlier.”

“Actually,” Nino replies, glancing back at Félix, “that’s not what I asked, but now I want to ask if you could all fail it with me, Mari, and Luka. Just so we aren’t alone.”

“No can do, babe,” Alya says, squeezing his hand. “My parents are gonna revoke my internet access or block my blog’s website on the internet if I fail this test.”

“My dad would kill me if I failed,” Adrien explains simply with a yawn. 

“I’ve got too much at stake,” Félix shrugs. “Sorry.”

“Oh, yeah, that fortnight stuff,” Nino says. “What do you guys even win in the end, anyways?”

“An award and a line on college applications,” Félix says. 

“Just that,for working your ass off all four years?” Luka asks, incredulous.

“Yeah,” Félix says indifferently. “Just that.”

Nino is quiet when he says, “Sounds exhausting.”

Félix shrugs. “I don’t mind it too much.” 

Finally, the gang arrives at Marque’s. Nino lets go of Alya’s hand to open the door to the café and hold it for her and the others, who file into the space. Nino follows, letting the door swing closed behind him, and they all let out a sigh of relief at the warmth of the café swelling around them.

While Nino and Alya take off their glasses to clean them of the fog, everyone lingers just inside the doorway, debating sitting inside for a little bit or just taking their food and drink to go. Glasses back on, Alya and Nino both join the conversation, and soon they decide to order and eat some inside before going back out towards the library with their coffees and other snacks.

Adrien orders a tall cappuccino with three shots of espresso, a slice of vanilla cake, a breakfast sandwich, and two oatmeal raisin cookies. While the others order, he eats his cookies. Marinette orders a vanilla bean cream coffee concoction of her own making with seven shots of espresso and whipped cream. She also orders a warmed cream cheese danish and a hot slice of coffee cake. Alya orders a caramel macchiato with a few extra shots of espresso and extra whipped cream, a warm, buttered cinnamon raisin bagel, and a hot slice of lemon pound cake. Nino orders a latte with a couple extra shots of espresso and a few shots of caramel and chocolate syrup, as well as two hot cream cheese danishes, a hot double chocolate muffin, a large orange, and a warm breakfast sandwich. Chloé orders a dead eye coffee (a red eye with three shots of espresso) and adds four extra shots of espresso with lots of whipped cream, and she also orders a slice of chocolate cake, a hot breakfast sandwich, and a hot cream cheese danish. Luka orders a Vienna coffee, a slice of vanilla cake, a hot cream cheese danish, a hot breakfast sandwich, and a large orange. And, lastly, Félix orders a dark chocolate mocha with two extra shots of espresso, a slice of chocolate cake, a hot blueberry muffin with butter, and a hot breakfast sandwich. 

The gang waits a bit for their food, chatting and even reviewing some of their homework together from memory, and then they keep their hot foods hot in the pockets of their jackets while they sip at their drinks and eat their warm and room-temperature foods. 

When they finish, they head back to the library with food still warming their pockets and drinks still warming their hands, having gotten a round of hot chocolate for the road at Adrien’s request after everyone finished their coffees.

Back at the library and a bit revived, the gang does a bit of research on old Mayan legends for a few hours. When Alya had first seen the figure, she noticed the pan flute and the older, Mayan-looking mask. Tonight, the soonest they could start their case research with the homework for the week and the studying needed for the Economics test they have the next day, they’re staying up to look into ancient Mayan legends in hopes that the figure—what and whoever they are—took inspiration from something older like Alya thinks. 

They work until nearly 2 a.m., at which point they decide to call it quits for the night and to pick up the research that evening after studying for the Chemistry test scheduled that next Monday. They clean and lock up the library behind themselves, and then Nino drives Félix, Luka, Chloé, and Adrien home before dropping Marinette and Alya at Marinette’s house, since Alya is still feeling uncertain about being home after… well, being presumed quite possibly dead and having her parents care so little about it. Then Nino drives home, and the gang heads off for a few hours of sleep before another day similar to this.

Unbeknownst to them all, the masked figure with the pan flute struck again that night while they were at the library. 

~*~

The next morning, Nino picks everyone up like usual, but they have to stop by Alya’s house before heading to school so she can grab her Chemistry textbook. They drive over to her neighborhood at about 7:40 a.m., but they find it blocked off with police tape. A few officers, one of which is Sheriff Raincomprix, are there to oversee the evacuation of adults and to keep people from entering the neighborhood.

Alya is the first out of the van, going at a run towards her house as she evades the officers and tape. Nino is quick to park the van, following everyone else as they jog after Alya. The officers behind them shout and yell for them to stop, but they only continue forward into the blocked-off area.

Alya’s parents have loaded up their car with their belongings and have just locked the door to their house when Alya comes to a full stop in the yard.

“Mama? Papi?” Alya calls, completely still. Her worst thoughts, despite her stillness, run rampant. “Where are you going?” 

Her father turns and looks at her, surprised. “You didn’t hear about what happened?”

Her mother rolls her eyes. “Clearly, Otis, she didn’t.”

“Where are you guys going?” Alya repeats, swallowing thickly. Tears well up in her eyes, and she starts to shake where she stands. I don’t want to be right. “What happened?”

“That—that thing turned your sisters into animals,” her mother says, her voice trembling slightly. She turns from the front door and quickly walks to the passenger seat of her car, avoiding looking at Alya. “We’re going to stay with Nora until we can figure something else out.”

The tears in her eyes spill over her cheeks as her mother’s words sink in. “What—what about—Mama, no—” Alya cries, taking a single step towards her. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” her father says quietly, looking to Alya. “It’s dangerous.”

“We can’t just leave them alone, Papi!” Alya shouts, tears blurring her vision. She thinks she sees her father step closer to her, but when she wipes at her eyes under her glasses, she realizes he’s still standing in the same spot a few yards from her, unmoving. “They’re just kids—that’s just Ella and Etta, Papi, Mama!”

“They’re gone,” her father says firmly, but his voice breaks slightly as he says it.

“Otis,” her mother says in admonishment, but she’s certainly crying, Alya knows, even if she’s turned away from her. Her mother is crying, but she won’t look at Alya. Her mother is crying, but she doesn’t waver at the door of the car. “Otis, we need to leave.”

“What about your jobs?” Alya asks, voice thin as she tries to keep her voice even. “Mama, your restaurant—your job at the university, Papi, you both work here! Nora’s three counties over, how—”

“We can’t stay here,” her mother says, trying to sound firm. It sounds warbled and uncertain around her tears. “They’re not Ella and Etta anymore.”

Alya can’t stop crying either. “Th-then what about me? Won’t you stay for me?”

“You’re welcome to come with us,” her father says quietly. He doesn’t step any closer to her.

“I can’t!” she shouts, and then she’s sobbing. “I can’t—I can’t leave them! They’re my sisters!” She falls to her knees, wiping frantically at her face. “You shouldn’t be able to leave them either—I—I—Papi—” 

Her glasses fall to the ground in front of her, but still, no matter how fast she rubs at her face, the tears and the sobs keep coming. 

She can’t see—she can’t see—she can’t stop crying—but a few moments later, she hears the familiar sound of her family’s car starting. 

She can’t stop the sobs from shuddering through her. 

It isn’t long before comforting, reassuring arms are wrapped around her. Nino, Marinette, and Luka’s presences mix with the smell of exhaust and damp grass. They hold her as she cries, and when she’s finished and sitting up, Marinette is wiping her face with the sleeves of her shirt and Luka is passing her her cleaned glasses. Nino helps her stand, and she leans on him tiredly, no sound of protest in her as he leads her back to the van.

Félix drives, with Adrien and Chloé beside him up front, and the rest of the gang sits with Alya in the back.

“We have to make some major progress on this case,” Alya says tiredly after a bit. “Who do we know who might have more knowledge about Mayan legends?”

“We could ask Mrs. Johnson,” Adrien suggests, turning in the front bench seat to look back at Alya. “As far as we know, she just knows about U.S. and the general world history stuff, but she might know about Mayan legends.”

“Wasn’t there a professor transferred here from Mexico over the summer?” Chloé asks, scrolling on her phone. “I was looking at courses for the spring with the university, and my advisor suggested him—let me see if I can find the list of classes she suggested taking with him for my Gen Eds. I think there was something on Mayan history in the list.”

Nino nods. “That’d be good—we’ll probably need someone with specialty, ‘cause we didn’t find anything last night at the library.”

“Well, we also didn’t have a whole lot of time,” Félix says, shrugging. 

After a moment, Chloé harumphs triumphantly. “Dr. Luis de Potrillo. Teaching… yeah—Ancient Mayan History, Mayan Mythology, South American Indigenous Mythologies, and a Spanish Lit class next semester.”

“Potrillo?” Nino asks. “Chris has had a few classes with him for his Gen Eds—he’s really cool, from what I hear. I’d bet we could talk with him, yeah?”

Chloé nods. “I’ve got a free period in seventh, but I’ve just got Home Ec in eighth, and I can fake sick for that.”

“Nino and I have eighth open,” Alya says.

“I’ve got AP Bio in eighth, but it’s just a study period today,” Luka says with a shrug.

“Me, too, with AP Bio,” Félix says. “We can probably skip, too.”

Adrien and Marinette frown. 

“Me and Adrien have U.S. History today,” Marinette says. “I don’t know if we can skip that period.”

“Probably not,” Félix tosses back to them. “Today you guys start the third to last unit.”

“How do you know that?” Adrien asks, shooting Félix an indignant look. 

“Because I asked Johnson after class yesterday,” Félix says, rolling his eyes. “Either way, not a good idea for you guys to skip, unless you’re going to endure the history lesson Alya and I have to give you tonight, but we won’t have enough time for that after delivering food and following up on the case at hand.”

“What about lunch?” Marinette asks, frowning. “You guys have history in second, right? Just teach us at lunch.”

“We’re already meeting today to study for the Econ tests in fifth and sixth,” Alya says. “Today was a lunch room day, but we decided last night at the café that we needed the extra time studying for the Econ test so you, Luka, and Nino didn’t fail.”

“You guys can attend eighth,” Félix says, “and we’ll recap you when we follow up with the case tonight or while we’re at the store getting food. No big deal.”

“Or,” Marinette argues, “you guys can recap us on the history lesson while we’re at the store.”

Alya sighs. “We won’t have our notes, then. Come on—you won’t be missing much, and we’ll tell you all about it right after. Just go to eighth, guys.”

Marinette frowns, crossing her arms, but she says, “Alright, we’ll go to eighth. I hate missing out on case stuff, though,” she says, shoulders slumping.

Alya smiles sympathetically. “We’ll tell you guys everything, don’t worry.” Then, to everyone, “So the rest of us will rendezvous at the van after seventh?”

Félix nods, pulling into the school parking lot and parking. “Sounds like a plan.” 

“We can go to Potrillo’s office hours under the guise of me wanting to take a class with him next semester,” Chloé says, “interrogate him about the masked figure, come back to school to pick up Adrien and Dupain-Cheng, go to the store to restock for the creepy kids, and deliver food to three neighborhoods.”

“Right,” Alya agrees, grabbing her bag. “Anyone willing to let me borrow their Chem textbook for first period?”

“Sure,” Félix says. “I’ll drop it off at your homeroom. Mr. Bishop, right?”

Alya nods, and the gang gets out of the van, ready to make progress.

~*~

The gang—minus Marinette and Adrien, who are begrudgingly attending their eighth period history class—drives over to Darrow University after meeting up at the van. 

Chloé leads the way through the campus, having been the only one actually on the campus before for some in-person classes she took over the summer and at night in the spring. Félix and Luka, despite also having taken some classes at Darrow University with the early college program DU has with Crystal Cove High, don’t know the layout of the campus themselves, given they’ve only taken online classes. 

When they get to Potrillo’s office, they knock at the door. Said door opens, being unlocked and not even closed, and Chloé peeks in. An empty room greets her.

Chloé steps inside despite protests from Félix, Nino, and Luka. Alya pushes past the three boys and follows Chloé in, and both girls look around eagerly.

Behind them, the boys wait outside. Nino looks worriedly down each end of the hall for someone to find them and send them to somewhere like, who knows, jail. (He imagines there’s a punishment he doesn’t want to suffer that comes from being in a professor’s office when one shouldn’t be. The closest thing he can imagine is jail.) Luka nervously debates following Chloé and Alya inside, if only so everyone isn’t seen loitering around the empty, open professor’s office. Félix debates shutting the door on Chloé and Alya and calling it a day. Tomorrow, if Chloé and Alya have managed to escape the professor’s office, Félix will sit everyone down for a lesson on the times and places where breaking and entering is acceptable.

Alya, unaware of the boys’ inner turmoils, examines the awards on the professor’s walls and moves closer to the bookcases housing dozens of artifacts and relics. Chloé sits behind the professor’s desk, looking through his papers and drawers. It’s only when Nino hisses back that someone is coming that Alya and Chloé move quickly back out into the hall, just in time for Félix to shut the door behind them. 

Doctor Luis de Potrillo walks down the hall, quietly talking to himself as he frantically stuffs papers into a bag at his side. He doesn’t look up and see any of the gang until he’s nearly at his office door and tripping over them. It’s then that he shouts, afraid, and leaps back with a hand over his heart.

“Sorry, Doctor,” Luka placates, holding out a hand in the air between them. 

“We didn’t mean to scare you,” Félix adds.

Alya smiles, moving to the front of the group. “No, we just wanted to ask you a few questions. You know a lot about Mayan legends and mythology, right?”

Once Dr. Potrillo calms down, removing his hand from his heart, he nods. “Yes, yes, I actually teach on those topics. In fact, in a few weeks, if you students are interested, enrollment for spring semester opens! I’ll be teaching five classes next semester, three of which will go over Mayan legends and mythology.”

“Actually,” Chloé says, “we wanted to ask you a few questions. Targeted questions, that is—we’re working on an… assignment, for one of our history classes at the high school, and we thought you might be a good person to interview.”

“Oh!” Dr. Potrillo says, surprised. “You all are some of the early college students, yes? Lovely to finally meet some of you—yes, of course, of course, come in to my office!”

Chloé nods, and the group moves around Dr. Potrillo, allowing him to access and open his office door. Everyone files in after the professor, who resumes mumbling to himself until he reaches his desk, where he sits. The rest of the gang, Félix having closed the door behind everyone, stands in front of the professor’s desk. 

“So, so! What is this project on, children?” the professor asks excitedly, leaning his elbows on his desk as he leans forward. He folds his hands under his chin, looking openly up at the gang.

Alya frowns, holding out her phone to the professor. On it is an article talking about the masked figure that’s terrorized Crystal Cove for the past three nights. “Sorry, Doctor, but it’s not a project for school. We’re investigating this person, and we thought you might be able to help us. Are you familiar with what’s been happening? Do you think this mask looks like something from Mayan legends?”

The professor pales before them, and suddenly, he’s pushing his chair back from his desk, eyes wide. “Why are you accusing me of being Que Horrifico?! What evidence do you children have? Nothing!” he cries. “Nothing!”

The gang shrinks back from the shouting, confused. 

“We… never accused you, Doc,” Nino says, stepping slightly in front of Alya. 

Dr. Potrillo stills. “You… didn’t?”

Alya shakes her head, frowning. “No, we just asked if you knew anything about the… wait, what did you call them?”

Dr. Potrillo takes a handkerchief from his worn green blazer, wiping his forehead with it. “Que Horrifico—he’s from Mayan mythology, yes, come to life.”

Excited, Alya leans forward. “Can you tell us anything more on Que Horrifico? Please?”

Dr. Potrillo frowns, but he nods warily. “Que Horrifico—I did a lesson with him in it about a month ago. I can pull up the slides, if you’d like?”

“That’d be very helpful,” Luka says, nodding.

Nino, Chloé, and Félix keep quiet, slightly wary after the professor’s outburst. Félix in particular wonders why the professor thought they’d been accusing him—a confession of guilt, maybe? 

Dr. Potrillo nods, swallowing thickly, and he grabs his laptop, sitting back in his chair. After a few minutes, he turns his laptop around so the gang can see.

“The peoples have long told the tale of Que Horrifico,” the professor begins solemnly. “He’s a normal man by day, but every night at sundown, he changes into Que Horrifico. He roams through the villages, playing his song of mystery on a pan flute, and he turns the children into terriblados. Once turned, the children become his servants of evil. Eventually, he takes them to a spooky town or cave—there’s much debate on it, and who can say for sure?”

When he finishes, he closes his laptop. The gang nods, thinking.

“Your pictures in the slides,” Alya says, pursing her lips. “The Que Horrifico terrorizing Crystal Cove looks almost exactly like them. Were these generally agreed-on depictions, or was there some ambiguity in the mythology?”

Dr. Potrillo nods. “It was agreed upon that Que Horrifico was the size of a young boy, but his skin looked a pale-ish blue, bandaged beneath his decorated poncho. His hair was long, white, and wild, and his eyes glowed red. His mask was gold and blue, and he even had long, black, claw-like nails. I have a poncho and a mask looking quite similar to the agreed upon depictions in my office at home, actually. The… images I’ve seen of Crystal Cove’s Que Horrifico match the most commonly accepted descriptions as well, except for the eyes, skin color, and nails.”

“Do you think, then, that the Que Horrifico haunting Crystal Cove could be someone trying to imitate the myths?” Félix asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

“That’s possible,” Dr. Potrillo muses, “or the agreed upon depictions were simply false. No one knows if the transformation from normal man to Que Horrifico actually changed things like skin tone, eye color and brightness, or nail length and color so drastically—just like they don’t know if the normal man knew he was also Que Horrifico.”

“Are you saying that, for all we know, this could be the real Que Horrifico?” Alya asks doubtfully.

Dr. Potrillo nods, putting his laptop away. “Correct.”

Alya frowns. “Alright, well—do we have any knowledge of how young or old children have to be to be affected?”

Dr. Potrillo purses his lips in thought. “Well, from my research, the youngest children affected were two or three years old, with the oldest children being about ten years old. In fact, some scholars have theorized that the chemical changes and processes started with puberty made those who were older immune to Que Horrifico’s powers.”

Alya nods, trying to mask her disbelief. “Well, speaking of powers, are there any others Que Horrifico might have?”

Dr. Potrillo leans back in his chair, folding his hands across his stomach. “No one is certain if he had more powers,” he says with a shrug. “Some legends said he had super speed and could see through walls, allowing him to see which parts of the villages had the most children. Others said he was merely a husk absent of the normal man’s soul, and the absence of the soul shrunk his form down into a pale blue young boy. Some say even the sound of his voice would turn the children into terriblados, others said he lacked a voice because he lacked a soul, and others, still, said he had the voice of a god and that hearing it would set the terriblados free, which is why he never spoke. Because there’s so much debate on what he was like, there’s a lot of debate on if he had any other powers.”

Alya nods, pursing her lips. She glances at the time on her phone, and she looks over to Nino before looking back at Dr. Potrillo. “Alright, well, we have to go, but thank you so much, Doctor. We really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us about this.”

Doctor Potrillo nods back, smiling slightly. “Of course. Let me know how your case goes, children—I hope for everyone’s sake that this isn’t the actual Que Horrifico. I think I’ll take a nap before my next class, actually—could you all close the door behind you?”

Félix nods. “Sleep well, then.” He leads everyone back to the door.

“I’ll try,” the professor says, smiling sadly, “but sleep has evaded me at every turn these past few days. Good day, children.”

Everyone waves, and then they file out of the professor’s office, closing the door behind them.

~*~

When Nino, Alya, Luka, Félix, and Chloé pick up Adrien and Marinette from school after eighth period has ended, they recount the meeting with Dr. Portillo to them on the way to the grocery store for the day’s deliveries. 

In the store, while they stock up on enough loaves of bread to feed two neighborhoods of children, and enough cookies, pastries, oranges, mandarins, apples, meat sticks, broccoli and baby carrots, sweet rolls, and bottles of water for the three neighborhoods in total, they discuss the meeting with Potrillo and their next steps. 

“So, he genuinely won’t say if this is the Que Horrifico or not?” Marinette asks, passing Chloé loaves of bread. 

Chloé checks the math on her phone as she passes the loaves to Adrien, who loads them in the cart. 

“Nope,” Nino says, popping the ‘p’ of the word. He dumps several bags of oranges into one side of the cart, and Alya, beside him, hands him several bags of mandarins.

“Sounds like Raincomprix and the Mayor, if I’m being honest,” she says, turning from the loaves when Chloé holds up a hand for her to stop handing them over. “Don’t they know none of this is real?”

“Oh, that we’re all in a simulation?” Chloé asks, nose in her phone. “Are Félix and Luka back with the apples?”

“Right here,” Félix says, walking over to the cart from the other side of the aisle. In his and Luka’s hands are several bags of apples in assorted colors. “We nearly cleared them out of their selection—if we have to do this again, we should split it between two stores.”

“Like facetime in groups and do the counting that way?” Nino asks, stretching. “Might cut the time down, too, honestly.”

Félix nods, and him and Luka drop their bags of apples gently into the cart. 

“What next?” Alya asks. 

“Cookies, pastries, sweet rolls, and broccoli and baby carrots,” Chloé says, looking at her phone. She heads in the direction of the baked goods, and everyone follows, with Félix pushing the cart. 

“You guys said he had the poncho and mask in his office at home?” Adrien asks, yawning. “Is he a suspect, then? He’s got all the materials.” 

Alya grimaces. “The thought did cross my mind, but he’s not the right height. And no one better bring up the soul and body shrinking bullshit—I won’t have it.”

Félix bites back a smile. “I’ll admit, I don’t believe it either, but it does open up our suspect pool to literally anyone over four foot eight.”

Alya scoffs. “It’s crazy! First, you have to make the soul thing make sense, and then you have to make it make sense to have a soul sucked out of you—not to mention, have someone or something able to suck out a soul—and then, to make matters even worse, having a soul sucked out from a body is supposed to make it blue and tiny? What kind of world would we live in—”

“Alright, alright,” Chloé says. “Alya, Nino, can you get the sweet rolls? Remember, we’re getting seventy, not forty-five. If they’re in boxes and grouped together, break out a calculator or something. Adrien and Marinette, we need thirty bags of baby carrots and twenty heads of broccoli. Félix, Luka, twelve boxes of cookies and twenty boxes of pastries. Stop arguing theology, we’ve got a job to do.”

Everyone disperses with their separate tasks, and Chloé double-checks the number of apples, mandarins, and oranges already in the cart. Félix and Luka are the first to return, but they end up needing to get a new cart halfway through putting their collected boxes in the first. 

When they come back with another cart loaded with their remaining boxes, Alya and Nino are back with a couple dozen boxes of sweet rolls. Marinette and Adrien soon return with the carrots and broccoli, and after loading everything up in the second cart, the gang is moving through the store towards the sandwich bags and meat sticks.

“Well, even if you’re the biggest skeptic around, babe, I still think Adrien has a point,” Nino says, holding Alya’s hand as they walk. “I mean, Dr. Potrillo is the professor on this stuff, he’s got the mask and the poncho, and we all heard him say he hasn’t been sleeping well. Checks out, if I’m being honest.”

“Should we stake out his house?” Marinette asks, looking at the array of meat stick options. “Also, were we going with original flavors and not the spicy or seasoned ones?”

“I think we should definitely stake out his house,” Adrien says.

“You’re just saying that since you’ve never been on a stakeout,” Félix says, rolling his eyes.

“We’re getting the original flavors,” Chloé says, making a quick calculation on her phone. “For the three packs, get seventy, and if those run out, supplement with doubles of the singles.”

“Lies!” Adrien says, shaking his head at Félix. “Did we or did we not do a stakeout in Gatorsburg?”

“That was a stakeout,” Marinette says, carting meat sticks to the second cart in handfuls. Luka pushes the second cart closer, Félix pushes the first cart out of the way, and Alya and Nino help with the meat sticks.

“Either way,” Félix says, rolling his eyes. “You just want more stakeouts.”

“Is it a bad thing to want?” Adrien asks, raising a brow. “Snacks, hanging out with friends, solving crime. What more could we ask for?”

“Doing research in a heated room, out of the cold,” Chloé says dryly, watching the meat sticks be put in the cart. She counts them as she goes. “You’d think that’s what you’d want, given how sensitive you are to the cold.”

Adrien’s shoulders slump. “Alright, well, you have a point. Maybe the weather isn’t currently best suited for stakeouts, but still! They’re fun!”

“Speaking of which,” Félix says, “are we going to need snacks for that?”

“How about just dinner, and if we need snacks, we can send you and someone else with orders?” Marinette suggests, finishing with the meat sticks. She looks to Chloé, who nods, and she waves off Alya and Nino, too.

“You just want an excuse to order me around, Dupain-Cheng,” Félix says. “Sandwich bags, Chloé?”

Chloé nods. “Sandwich bags and then a few things of water.”

Marinette scowls at Félix, but she and the others follow as he, Luka, and Chloé lead the way.

“Well, we’ll save a bit more doing just dinner and snacks if needed,” Chloé says. “With the way we’re spending, I might have to cut back on my shopping.”

“You haven’t already?” Adrien asks, glancing over. 

Chloé shrugs. “I did slightly because of time constraints, but I haven’t seriously cut back, yet.”

“First world problems if I’ve ever heard them,” Marinette says offhandedly. 

“Dupain-Cheng, I’d be careful with what you say around the person paying for all of this,” Chloé says, though it lacks any bite.

Nino and Alya laugh a little, and Luka cracks a smile. 

They arrive at the ziplock bags, and Chloé tosses a few boxes into Luka’s cart before she moves on to the section of the store with the water bottles. Everyone else follows her. 

“Alright, so what do we want for dinner?” Nino asks on the way. “Last night was sandwiches and café food—do we want to change it up tonight?”

“Night before was Wendy’s and Jack’s,” Félix adds. “Do we want to get pizza tonight?”

“Can we get the meats pizza? The one with the sausage, bacon, hamburger, ham, and pepperoni?” Adrien asks.

They find the waters, and Chloé instructs them to get nine cases. While Marinette and Alya help Félix and Luka finagle three cases onto each of the carts, Adrien and Nino carry the remaining three.

“I vote Hawaiian,” Luka says, pushing one cart.

“That’s because you’re gross,” Chloé replies, leading them to the checkout line. 

“You just have little taste, Chloé,” Nino says with a shrug. “No shame in admitting it.”

“Or,” Félix says, steering his cart to a short line, “you and Luka are just weird.”

“How about a meats and half a Hawaiian with half a cheese?” Marinette suggests, falling into line behind Félix with Alya and Nino. Luka pulls up behind them with Adrien and Chloé at the rear.

Chloé grimaces. “Aren’t one of you lactose intolerant?”

“That’s what lactaid is for, Chloé,” Nino says with a smile.

“It’s you?” Chloé asks, brows drawing together. “You eat the most cheese and dairy-related—”

Nino shrugs. “Both me and Marinette are lactose intolerant. But that’s what we do for the things we love: suffer.”

“A philosophy we all know well,” Luka says, nodding solemnly. “The foods that cause us pain—it’s a testament to how much we love that we’ve made it this far.”

“Sounds dramatic,” Félix says, rolling his cart forward as the person in front of him finishes paying. He scoots around the shopping cart to the front of it, and he, Marinette, Alya, and Nino start putting their things on the conveyor belt. 

“Well, we can’t all eat things painlessly,” Nino says with a shrug. “If I had to go without milkshakes, or pizza, or, God forbid, ice cream, I’d die. Honestly, you should hear about Luka’s potato allergy, or Alya’s allergy to citrus fruits, which isn’t even getting into all that Alya can’t eat without a reaction. They don’t have the luxury of lactaid like me and Marinette do.”

Félix glances over incredulously to Alya, pausing as he unloads the cart. “Citrus? Didn’t you have a slice of lemon pound cake yesterday?”

Alya shrugs. “Yeah, I did—I woke up with sores in my mouth and my lips cracking like crazy today. I’ve been wearing chapstick I borrowed from Marinette all day, and the pizza is gonna burn later, but… that lemon pound cake was really good.”

Félix shakes his head. “I don’t think I’d survive if I was allergic to things I enjoyed eating.”

Alya, Nino, Marinette, and Luka collectively grimace.

Félix looks over, wincing at the sight. “Sorry. Should we get sandwiches again tonight, though?”

Alya hesitates, putting the last thing from the cart onto the conveyor belt. “That’d be nice, at least for me. I could also have a salad, if it doesn’t have any tomatoes.”

Félix pulls his cart down the checkout aisle, making room for Luka, Adrien, and Chloé to pull forward. He moves to start bagging food, and Nino and Marinette move to help him. “You’re allergic to tomatoes, too?” Félix asks.

Alya, Adrien, and Luka help unload the second cart as Chloé talks quietly with the cashier.

“Yeah,” Alya says a bit sheepishly. “Thankfully not potatoes, yet, like Luka, because that sounds awful, but yeah.”

Félix sighs. “All of this would have been helpful to know a while ago, guys.” He moves one filled bag to the cart.

“What do you mean?” Alya asks. 

Félix’s lips flatten into a thin line as he moves back to the bags and the food. “It’s important information.”

Nino laughs, filling a bag and taking it to the cart. “Come on, dude, do you really expect to get to know all of that? We’ve only been hanging out with you a little while”

Félix rolls his eyes. “Aren’t we supposed to be a group that works together? Frankly, I spend more time with you all than I spend alone—isn’t that the kind of information that I should know?”

“Information that you should know?” Marinette asks, elbowing Félix as she moves around him with a full bag. “Friendship is a two-way street, Félix.”

“You call this friendship?” he asks, following her with another full bag.

They move back to the bags and food with Nino, unfolding bags together.

“Well, I’m not hurting you every chance I get,” Marinette says, shrugging as she starts to put food in a bag.

Félix’s eyes widen. “You literally just elbowed me not even a minute ago. Plus, you threaten me at least thirty times a day.”

Nino shakes his head, laughing. At the conveyor belt, Adrien, Luka, and Alya are trying to hold back laughter as they finish with their cart. 

“Okay,” Marinette drags out, “sure, I did just elbow you—but there’s plenty more opportunities that I don’t hit you, or stab you, or kick you, or elbow you, or punch you, or push you into—”

“Alright, alright, I’ve got it,” Félix says, taking a bag back to the cart. “You’re so kind and generous to me by not murdering me whenever possible, Dupain-Cheng, so I guess that means we’re friends. Yeah, that makes sense.”

Marinette smiles proudly, following him with another full bag. “Thank you—I’m always looking for your approval.”

“As if,” Nino says, following them.

Félix scoffs.

They move back towards the food and bags, and banter a bit more as they bag the groceries.

A bit more conversation follows, and soon Chloé pays for their food. Alya, Adrien, and Luka join the bagging, and before long, they make it back to the van with their goods. Shortly after, the gang heads over to their first rendezvous point with the same students who’ve helped them the past few days with the food deliveries.

Notes:

ouhhhh yeah. so what do u guys thiiiink 🫣🫣🫣

a lot more conversation this chapter w just the gang, but i thought it’d be nice to see more of how they interact and what their lives are like in this au and ouuhhghh shoot me but i think it’s sooooo fun to write their banter and back and forth 🤡 anyways lol there was a bit of plot here too w. alyas fam……. potrillo………….. clues dropped here and there……………… etc…………… anyways after this chapter we have three more left for this case/episode 🥰 the last two of which will be posted on the same day bcos the last chapter for this case/episode is short as hell bcos the other chapters have been Long . ouigh. anyways

work and life have been hectic and Man i do not have as much time as before to write and it makes me so sad but i am currently writing chapter 41 ! and for anyone curious. by chapter 41 there has been a lot more lukloé and the feligami is picking up :) which is so exciting 🥰 and ik some of u have been Curious as to when those ships will be getting more time 🥰 still ! next chapter should be posted friday heehee 🥰

but lmk if u liked this chapter and what u think ? i am so so so so curious to know if u guys like the banter and conversation stuff as much as i do ahaha 🫣 and also lmk if u have any Theories as to who que horrifico might be 😏

Chapter 23: chapter twenty-three

Summary:

The gang delivers food to the now-affected three neighborhoods before they stake out Dr. Potrillo’s house.

Notes:

hope you enjoy this chapter!! 🥰🙃

At the first rendezvous point at Zoé’s house, the gang and the teens helping them spend a bit of time sorting the food into individual bags for the children. Zoé runs the broccoli and carrots inside with Sabrina, Mylène, and Rose, where they cut and sort the vegetables into smaller baggies after washing them. Outside at the van, the gang and Juleka, Ivan, Alix, and Kim sort the oranges, mandarins, apples, loaves of bread, sweet rolls, cookies, pastries, meat sticks, and water bottles, taking care to make sure there’s enough for each child for a day. 

When they’re finished, they again hand out twenty-one bags to everyone in pairs: Juleka and Rose get two bags; Alix and Kim get two bags; Ivan and Mylène get two bags; and Sabrina and Zoé get two bags. Marinette and Adrien then get two bags a piece; Nino and Chloé get two bags a piece; Luka and Alya get two bags a piece; and, finally, Félix gets one bag, once again the designated getaway driver and one-man rescue team in case anyone gets trapped or caught by the police or affected children. In addition to their bags, each pair of teens has a single walkie talkie, a flashlight, and their phones, charged and ready in case anything goes wrong.

Once everyone is ready, Félix again parks the van some distance away and Zoé leads everyone through her backyard. Hopping the fence goes much smoother this time, thanks to this being the third day they’ve all done this. Everyone carries out the same tasks as the past two days in a smooth fashion, evading police notice carefully and quietly as they move. The children bite and scratch them less in this first neighborhood, and the doors are mostly already unlocked by the time each pair of teens gets to the back doors, with the children having noticed them at the fence or having been waiting already. 

In about thirty minutes, everyone in the first neighborhood has been delivered food. 

The gang rides in the van with the remaining forty-five bags to the second neighborhood. In Ivan’s truck ride Ivan, Juleka, and Rose, with Alix, Kim, Mylène, and Sabrina catching a ride with Zoé in her mother’s minivan. They drive to the neighborhood just behind the second affected neighborhood, where the fire occurred that killed Armand and his family. 

This time, twenty-two bags are passed out, with Alya and Luka taking on the extra bag as they’re the pair most experienced in the group with anything involving highly unusual dangers. The initial four gang members are still being cautious with Adrien, Chloé, and Félix being out in the thick of things or taking on as much as the original members usually do, so only the pair with original members only gets an extra bag this time. The initial four gang members are even more cautious when it comes to those recruited for helping with the food deliveries, so the recruited teens still only get two bags for each pair.

Once everyone is ready with their bags, flashlight, walkie talkie, and phones, Félix parks the van some distance away and they move between houses to get into the affected neighborhood, where they split up. Going through these houses and delivering food here takes about an hour, since the children aren’t as accustomed to the deliveries, yet.

Chloé struggles around Armand’s house, but, just like the day before, everyone silently works to have her and Nino deliver to the houses furthest from the blackened, burnt husk of a home. Still, the smell of smoke tinges the air and makes it hard to breathe near the burnt house.

None of the police at the barricades at each end of the street notice the gang and the teens in this neighborhood, either, thankfully.

Soon enough, everyone is back at the van, Ivan’s truck, and Zoé’s mother’s minivan. They drive to the third and last neighborhood—the one affected just the night before, the one where Alya lives. 

At this neighborhood, they pass out twenty-three bags. Alya and Luka go back to two bags a piece, but Marinette and Adrien take on five bags together, with Nino and Chloé doing the same to even out the load. Nino and Chloé offer to deliver to Ella and Etta, and Alya doesn’t argue. 

(Alya is curious, of course, to see if they’ll recognize her—to see if they’ll know her and snap out of it—but she knows she won’t be able to take it if they don’t, if they hurt her, if they—)

Everyone is especially cautious with this neighborhood, knowing it’s the most recently affected and thus the most dangerous, given none of the children are expecting food deliveries. Alya and Luka, like with Chloé in Armand’s neighborhood, are silently moved to take the houses furthest from Alya’s as everyone else takes the other options. 

This neighborhood takes an hour and thirty minutes to deliver food to, and there’s a minor scare where the police nearly catch Marinette and Adrien, who manage to escape into a house with children who leap at the windows for the police, terrifying the adults away. Marinette and Adrien escape that house only barely, requiring help over the fence from the nearby Ivan and Mylène as the children chase them into the backyard.

Everyone finishes a bit late, far past the time where the sun has set, but the teens recruited for the cause soon drive home, offering to get more teens involved to make things go faster, especially as Alix and Kim won’t be able to help the next day.  

Once all of this has been said and done, the gang heads off to Marinette’s to pick up some sandwiches, a few sleeping bags, and their stakeout equipment and breaking and entering equipment, the latter just in case it becomes necessary. They then go pick up a pizza for Adrien, Luka, Chloé, and Nino, and then the gang heads to Dr. Potrillo’s for the evening. 

~*~

After a brief scouting of the area, the gang parks the van around the corner of the street Dr. Potrillo lives on. They split into pairs according to the food they’ve eaten and have left to eat, and they station themselves around Dr. Potrillo’s with walkie talkies, flashlights, their phones, disposable cameras, and a backpack, each with a sleeping bag and some other equipment.

They changed out of their normal day clothes and into dark clothes for the evening’s tasks. With the colder weather, Marinette has started allowing them to wear some more colorful shirts beneath their darker outer layers. Luka wears a pair of black sweatpants, one of his dark red hoodies, and a black t-shirt from Félix as well as a pair of Nino’s boots. Nino wears a hoodie from Alya, a black puffer jacket from Félix, a light green t-shirt, dark cargo pants, and his black sneakers. Adrien, sensitive to the cold, wears a couple different layered shirts under a black hoodie of Félix’s and a jacket from Chloé. With it, he wears some thick socks, a beanie from Luka that was made by Marinette, some chunky dark purple boots of his own, and a pair of his pink-and-black striped leggings under a pair of dark sweatpants from Nino. Chloé wears a pair of fleece-lined black leggings, a denim skirt, some knee high black boots, a green long-sleeved shirt under one of Luka’s black hoodies, and a cropped, lined denim jacket of her own. Her hair is in a high ponytail and she wears a thick scarf around her neck, the ends tucked into the hoodie she wears. Marinette wears a pair of leggings under a pair of jeans, a pair of her favorite sneakers, a long-sleeved t-shirt of Nino’s, and one of Luka’s dark hoodies. Her hair is in low pigtails. Alya wears a pair of Nino’s cargo pants over some thick leggings and jeans and a pair of Chloé’s boots with some thick socks. She also wears a long-sleeved t-shirt of Marinette’s, a knit vest, and a hoodie she stole from Nino with a thick scarf from Chloé. Over this all, she wears a beanie from Marinette with her hair in a braid, and one of Félix’s thick jackets. Félix wears a dark pair of fleece-lined jeans, a pair of boots, a long-sleeved shirt from Luka, a blue t-shirt from Adrien, a dark hoodie of his own, and a scarf from his mother. 

As Adrien and Chloé ate the pizza they wanted while in the van, and Luka had been busy helping Marinette, Alya, and Félix sort and pack the backpacks in the back while Nino drove, Nino and Luka get paired up. Together, stationed across the street from Potrillo’s in the branches of a tree, they watch the street and the front of Potrillo’s house while eating the rest of the pizza the gang bought. 

Adrien and Chloé are stationed at one end of the street, nearest the van, to watch for Potrillo’s arrival. When he comes down the street, they’ll wait for a signal and start walking back to Potrillo’s house, where they’ll help spy on the side of the house. 

Marinette is on the other end of the street from Adrien and Chloé, eating her sandwich as she climbs up into various trees to scout for children and see if the neighborhood might be another one Que Horrifico might hit. Mostly, she’s just confirming the children counts she got from Nino, Ivan Bruel, and Alix Kubdel while she waits for Potrillo to come home. 

On the other end of the street, for lack of better snooping skills, Adrien and Chloé just keep to their hiding spot by some parked cars. 

Félix and Alya get paired up and are stationed behind Potrillo’s house, in the tree to one side of his yard. There, while they wait for Potrillo to come home, they eat their sandwiches and quietly chat.

After a while, everyone does a quick check-in via the radios to make sure they’re all accounted for still. 

When this is done, Félix leans back on a thick branch of the tree they sit in. “So,” he says, looking at Alya. “How have you been… feeling, since the stuff with Max?”

Alya raises a brow, sat criss-cross applesauce on another branch. “How do you mean?”

Félix holds back a sigh. “Well, you were kidnapped and taken hostage for almost an entire 24 hours, where you were without food and water and you didn’t sleep much at all, and when you got out, your parents were being weird as hell after thinking you were likely dead for half of that time.”

Alya nods slowly, looking back at the rest of her sandwich in her lap. She shrugs, after a moment. “Sometimes I think my parents believe it’d be easier if I’d actually died down there.” She glances over, smiling bitterly. “I think that sums it up pretty well.”

Félix is quiet for a little bit, just thinking. After a while, he says, “And how about with what happened this morning? How do you… feel?”

She pauses, her brows drawing together as she looks at him. Her smile falls. “Why do you care?” she asks quietly. “Genuinely. And—actually, why do you care how I feel, and why did you care so much earlier about the allergies? Just asking because we aren’t too close, in my opinion.” 

In the silence that follows her question, she turns and peers up at the stars through the leaves around them, tucking her hands into the pockets of the jacket she wears.

It’s a bit before Félix finally answers. “Well, you’re Adrien’s friends. You’re… important to him.”

Her voice, Félix thinks, sounds just like Kagami’s when she knows what he’s saying but thinks that what he’s saying is stupid. “So you only care about us as extensions of Adrien.”

Félix nods simply, finding he believes it wholly, now. It’s been a while since he wondered if he genuinely cared for the gang, so he figures he’s been cured. It was just a fluke, surely. The actions, the words—it was all for Adrien, as most things happen to be. “Essentially.”

Alya looks back over at him, expression carefully blank. “Well, then I don’t want to tell you how I feel.” She turns away again, back towards the stars. “You can forget about all I said about my parents, too.”

“Why do you say that?” he asks curiously. 

She sighs. “Well, would you want to have someone know some of your most intimate thoughts and feelings without knowing even a simple thing about them?”

Félix thinks this over a moment. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Alya glances over at him, brows raised. “Can you see why I wouldn’t want that, either, then?”

He purses his lips, moving so he can put his hands behind his head as he looks back at her. “Yes, I suppose, but—it’s different.”

“How is it different?” she asks incredulously. “I literally just explained this exact situation.”

Félix frowns. “Well—I don’t know. I just—I—it’s different, Alya. It just is.” It’s different because it’s me, he thinks, terribly certain.

Alya grimaces. “Well, I don’t think it is, so I’m not going to tell you all about me or my feelings.”

He feels impossibly frustrated, and he finds himself speaking before he’s carefully thought his words over. “What’s so wrong with talking about it? Isn’t that what you should want—someone to confide in?”

Alya glares at him, tired. “Look, Félix, I said no. I don’t have to want anything, least of all whatever you think I should want.”

He closes his eyes and forces himself to relax, and once he feels the frustration being fully set aside for a later time, when he’s alone and not at risk of ruining anything, he opens his eyes.

It’s a while before he speaks, but when he does, his voice is soft and gentle. “I’m… sorry for wording what I said like I did. I… didn’t mean for it to come out that way, but I know that it did anyways and it was upsetting. I’m sorry for that. I’d like to understand where you’re coming from, though, if you’d be willing to explain.” He hesitates. “Most people I’ve met enjoy having someone to talk to about their feelings, no matter if that person talks about their own.”

Alya takes a long breath before looking at him with a frown. “Well, none of us are like that. We want the back and forth and the exchange—stuff like how things are with Kagami, stuff about your mum, stuff about your life outside of us. We want to know how you feel about things, too—more than just whatever’s pertinent to a case.”

Félix hesitates. “You… want a friend.”

“We want you to be our friend,” Alya corrects.

He frowns, looking away, up at the stars. “I don’t really do that.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “Well, don’t expect me to hand out information I only give to my friends, then.”

It’s another while before he responds. “I care about you all, though.”

“As an extension of Adrien,” Alya says. “We’re our own people, who should be cared about on their own or for their own value.”

“You’re valuable to Adrien, and that’s valuable to me.”

She sighs. “Look at it this way. You value Adrien—why?”

Félix’s expression shifts into one of confusion. “He’s my—he’s family.”

“Aside from that. You don’t seem to value your Uncle Gabriel.”

He frowns and doesn’t respond.

“Fine,” she says bitterly. “Why do you value your mum and not your uncle?”

“My mother is kind. She’s patient, thoughtful, creative, and she’s the person I feel safest and my most comfortable around.”

“Try again with Adrien, now.”

He frowns. “He’s sweet, kind, and thoughtful—he’s always cared about me, even if he’s often a bit too sweet with it. He’s incredibly smart and perceptive, and I feel safe and comfortable around him.”

Alya nods, but before she can respond, the radio between them crackles to life.

“Potrillo coming down the street,” Adrien says.

Alya reaches for the backpack propped up on a branch just below her and Félix, and she digs through it for a pair of binoculars and one of the disposable cameras. She passes the camera to Félix, handling the binoculars herself as she peers into Potrillo’s house.

“Move in, Adrien and Chloé,” Nino says after a few minutes. “He’s inside.”

Alya gives Félix a quick thumbs up, and he radios to the group, saying, “Potrillo spotted inside.”

Out in the neighborhood, Marinette, Nino, Luka, Adrien, and Chloé converge on the house, moving to station themselves on either side of the house and in the front. Alya and Félix stay stationed in the rear, watching the back of the house still.

After a little bit, Alya speaks, her voice low as she still looks through the binoculars. “The way you value Adrien and your mum is different from the way you value us. Can you understand that difference? Can you understand that we might like to be valued as our own persons, valued separately from Adrien, in the same way he and your mum are valued as their own persons, separate from each other?”

Félix purses his lips, watching the house through the lens of the disposable camera in his hands. “I… suppose.”

“Can you understand how one of those relationships is more important to you? That, if push came to shove, you would do more for Adrien or your mum than you would for us?”

His brows knit together. “Not… really, no. I would do—I have done—the same for you all that I would for Adrien and my mother, and vice versa.”

She huffs a sigh. “Well, you haven’t killed someone for us and you haven’t buried a body for us, or, I don’t know, committed huge crimes. There’s a line, I’m sure, that you wouldn’t cross for us that you would cross for them.”

Félix swallows thickly. The memory, the ghost he had just barely forgotten at his side—it burns brightly to life, bringing bile and memories and inescapable desires to tell someone with it. “You’d be surprised,” he says, voice cracking. Closed eyes, blood-matted hair, caved-in skull, purpling skin. Closed eyes, blood-matted—

Alya shakes her head, bringing him back to the conversation at hand. Félix blinks slowly.

“Fine, well, maybe that line isn’t something physical or a task—maybe it’s just opening up to us,” she says. “Do you open up to your mum? Tell her how you feel? Share parts of your life outside of her with her?”

Félix thinks back to the long, long list of things he’s never told his mother—honest answers on how he’s felt, authentic depictions of his thoughts, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. “Sometimes,” he admits quietly.

“More than you’ve ever shared with us,” Alya says, just as quiet.

“Yes.” 

“Well, that exchange is something that needs to happen for me to feel comfortable sharing those same things about myself. Does that make sense? It’s not enough for you to simply care about me—you have to care about me as my own person, and I want to be able to care about you for who you are, too.”

Félix doesn’t respond, turning this over in his head.

He still hasn’t responded when the radio crackles to life between them.

“Is everything dark in the house for you guys?” Luka asks.

Chloé answers first. “All dark over here, and no signs of movement.”

“Dark with no movements over here, too,” Marinette says.

“Here, too,” Félix radios quietly. “Think he’s gone to sleep?”

“Likely,” Marinette says. “I vote we break in and get to his office so Alya can confirm if it’s the same poncho and mask.”

“Somehow, I knew you were going to suggest something illegal,” Félix replies, but his annoyed tone is subdued. “How soon?”

 “How about fifteen minutes? Think you guys can get down from the tree in that time?”

“We’re not that slow,” Félix shoots back.

“Sure had me fooled, old man,” Marinette replies, grinning through the radio.

“Why does everyone call me an old man?” Félix mutters to himself. He sits up from where he lay on the branch, and he stuffs the radio and disposable camera into the backpack.

“Must be your ancient disposition,” Alya says, though her tone falls a little flat. She passes him the binoculars and starts moving to climb down the tree.

Félix feels the tone must be because of their previous conversation. He can’t explain or put into words the feeling this thought elicits, but the hollowness opening up in his chest certainly feels undesirable. 

He puts the binoculars away and he zips up the backpack. “Ancient?” he asks, trying to sound properly offended. He slings the backpack over his back.

“Yup,” Alya says, maneuvering carefully down a branch. “Absolutely prehistoric.” There’s still an emptiness to her voice, a loss of life, but Félix tries to ignore it.

“You’re outrageous,” he says, and he swings down from branch to branch smoothly, falling to the ground in two, three seconds, tops. He moves to stand under where Alya is slowly climbing, looking up at her carefully. He pays special attention to how she moves, warily moving beneath her with each branch she passes.

“You’re outrageous,” she says. “Stop watching me climb.”

He purses his lips. “I’m not going to let you fall.”

Alya finally looks at him again. “Now I want to fall, just to spite you.”

“Are you angry with me?” he asks quietly.

“Only when you act like this,” she replies. “It’s unsettling when you act like this and I know that you don’t really care.”

“I care,” he repeats, though he feels stupid saying it.

She pauses on the branches, breathing heavily. “I need a break from climbing if we’re going to continue arguing.”

He doesn’t say anything, only continues looking up at her. 

“I may not be the best person to say this to you, given how much I stumble with my words and actions and how much I seem to not care about the consequences when it comes to our cases,” she says, closing her eyes as she stands on two branches, holding herself up by another, “but it’s confusing and it hurts, honestly, to have you try so hard to get know me, only to find out it’s because I’m just an extension of Adrien to you. That I’m not even someone you care about as a person. So, yeah, I’m a bit angry with you, now. I want to be your friend, Félix, not just—not just someone you have to keep an eye on because they could affect Adrien.”

He swallows. 

(He wants to make things better.)

His hands curl tightly around the straps of the backpack over his shoulders.

(He doesn’t know how to make it better.)

He glances away from her, biting the tip of his tongue, as if this will make an idea pop into his head. It doesn’t.

(He wishes he could go back in time and answer her questions differently, if only so this wouldn’t happen.)

He looks back up at her, forcing his hands to relax at the shoulder straps of his backpack. “How do I fix it?” he asks, voice wavering.

Alya opens her eyes to look back at him. “Open up some. Try caring about me like you care about me, and not just about whatever could affect Adrien.”

When he doesn’t respond, she sighs. She resumes climbing down the tree, dropping to the ground a minute later. He’s still trying to come back down to earth—to understand where she’s coming from, to see the solution laid out right in front of him, to have a step-by-step list of actions that will bring him to the place he wants to be. 

She’s the one who eventually drags him from his reverie, walking past him towards Potrillo’s house and where the rest of the gang is meeting up. He follows dumbly, trying vainly to situate himself.

When Alya and Félix meet the rest of the gang at the front of Potrillo’s house, Marinette gestures between Félix and the door. He stares at her, not comprehending.

“Can you break in for us?” she asks. “We’d do it, but our ways are a bit messier.”

Félix blinks slowly, but then he nods, stepping away from Alya and towards the door. He slips off his backpack and digs through it a moment to find his more in-depth lockpick kit. Once he has the kit, he kneels at the door and carefully starts picking the lock.

In less than thirty seconds, the door is open. He knows he would have been faster had he not been so distracted, but he tries not to beat himself up over it. Thankfully, no one else notices his slowness.

He stands, closing his lockpick kit, and he puts it back in his backpack before slinging that over his shoulders once more. He pushes the door open gently, slowly, and he leads the gang quietly inside. No one’s footsteps make a sound, and Luka, at the back of the group, closes the door silently.

Everyone turns their radios on silent, and Félix leads the way down the entry hall, with Marinette, Adrien, Alya, Chloé, Nino, and Luka following close behind in the darkness.

They manage to make it to the stairs leading up to the second floor when a light is turned on in the living room opening up beside them. They all freeze, shrinking back.

“You all must be here because you think I’m Que Horrifico,” Dr. Potrillo quietly says from the living room. He sits in a worn armchair by a lamp, a hand on the switch under the lampshade.

No one answers him, simply staring and waiting—very much akin to deer in the headlights of an oncoming car.

Dr. Potrillo sighs, letting his hand fall from the lamp to the arm of his chair. “Well, I had my own suspicions, so I suppose I can’t blame you for reaching the same conclusion.”

“Why do you think you’re Que Horrifico?” Alya asks, the first of the gang to speak or even move. Her voice is quiet, barely above a whisper.

“I haven’t been sleeping well since Que Horrifico first struck,” the professor explains, “but I also have many of the materials available to me to pull off such a feat. In addition to my general beliefs in Que Horrifico’s existence, it… makes sense, really.”

Alya bites her lower lip, deciding to not ask the professor how he goes from 5 foot 9 inches to 4 foot and some change. Instead, she asks, “What do you plan to do about it, if anything?”

Dr. Potrillo’s shoulders slump. “I don’t want to be Que Horrifico—I’d like to stop the terrors in their steps, but… frankly, I’m not sure how.”

Marinette speaks up. “What if we kept an eye on you and tied you up so you couldn’t escape?”

Félix and Adrien look at her, appalled. Nino, Luka, and Alya are used to ideas such as these, and Chloé simply doesn’t care enough to be surprised.

“Oh, that might work,” Dr. Potrillo says, leaning forward slightly as he sits up. “Do you children have the materials needed to tie me up?”

Marinette nods, smiling. Félix and Adrien are shocked that she has so little concern in telling Dr. Potrillo that they were prepared to tie him up.

“We do, in our van,” Marinette tells Dr. Potrillo. She turns to Nino and Luka, hopeful. “Would you guys grab some of the chains from the van? We’ll keep an eye on Potrillo here.”

They both nod and head back outside to grab the chains. 

The rest of the gang enters the living room at Potrillo’s encouragement, and they array themselves along the floor and a couch, settling in to wait. 

After about fifteen minutes, Nino and Luka come back, loaded down with two chains a piece and a couple of locks and keys. Marinette and Alya get up to help them, and together, they tie Potrillo to his armchair, locking him in. Marinette keeps the keys for the locks, and the gang sits back down in the living room. 

Then they wait.

An awkward hour passes where the gang quickly escapes to their phones when it’s clear nothing is happening just yet. Luka kindly turns the television on for Potrillo, so he has something to focus on, but they wait together without conversation. 

At about 11:50 p.m., the sound of a pan flute eerily lilts through the neighborhood. 

Everyone turns and looks at Potrillo, who’s looking right back at them with wide eyes. Since no one knows if this happens every night, where the pan flute precedes also the transformation, the gang stays still, though their bodies tense at the dreadful tune.

Within a few minutes of the pan flute’s tune beginning to play, there’s sounds of growling, crashes, and screams from the rest of the neighborhood. Marinette, Alya, and Félix are the first to stand. Marinette meets Luka’s gaze, and he nods, putting a hand on Nino’s arm. Nino nods and tells Adrien and Chloé to stay where they are, that they’ll all keep an eye on Potrillo. 

Marinette, Alya, and Félix are already out Potrillo’s front door by the time he finishes speaking. 

Out in the street, Que Horrifico plays his pan flute, staring at the stars. Around him is a ring of fire. Down either end of the street, parents are being kicked out of their own homes by growling, screeching children. Still, Marinette, Alya, and Félix slowly approach Que Horrifico, their eyes on him. 

After a few moments, Que Horrifico turns, still playing his tune, and he meets their gaze. 

The music stops, suddenly, after a minute. Que Horrifico reaches beneath his poncho, and he throws something to the ground with a sharp cracking sound. Smoke explodes from the street, swirling up in a thick fog to overtake Que Horrifico’s form.

When the smoke finally clears, the ring of fire is dying down and Que Horrifico has disappeared.

~*~

The gang is quick to untie a grateful Dr. Potrillo once they’re back inside, but they quickly head back to their van around the street corner, rushing to avoid the inevitable coming swarm of police.

No one speaks about what happened until they’re on the other side of town, sat in the last café open at this hour with some snacks and tea and hot chocolate. 

“So,” Nino starts after a bit. “Que Horrifico was not Dr. Potrillo.”

“Nope,” Marinette says, staring intently down at her hot chocolate. 

“I guess that means we need a new suspect,” Nino says, frowning. 

“Yeah,” Alya answers. “At least one.”

After a moment, Chloé asks, “Where should we start?” 

She sips at her tea as she waits for a response. 

Marinette closes her eyes. “I feel like we don’t have enough time for our usual next steps,” she says. “This is the fourth neighborhood in as many days, and we’d need lots of time in the library to get together a proper suspect list—time we don’t have on top of the food deliveries, school, and getting even a little sleep.”

“Should we skip school tomorrow, then?” Luka asks, frowning. He rubs at the sleep clinging to his slow-blinking eyes, and then he takes a long drink of his tea. 

“We probably shouldn’t,” Marinette says quietly. “We’ve got half of the Chem review tomorrow and the other half on Friday. In History, we’re continuing with the unit we started today, and tomorrow there’ll be a quiz, with a group assignment on Friday. Oh, and in Econ, we’re starting a new unit.” She sighs. “None of us can really afford the consequences of missing either day.”

“We can’t skip on the deliveries, either,” Alya says. “Especially with this latest neighborhood.”

Marinette pushes her cup further onto the table, and she crosses her arms on the table, dropping her head to them with a groan. “Is there a way we can ask a lot of people at once to help us with the neighborhoods?” she asks. “Not email, because the teachers or the principal might see it and sic the police on us.”

Alya purses her lips, thinking a bit. “I can reach out and text Aurore, Mireille, Socqueline, Wayhem, and a couple of others,” she says. “They probably wouldn’t tell the police, and they’d be willing, I think, to help us with this. Oh, and Alix asked Nathaniel and Marc to help, and they said yes. Kim asked Ondine, too, and she said yes as well.”

Nino nods. “Yeah, I think Wayhem might have a few friends, too, who might be able to help. If we do the counts right, we could split it up a few ways and attack two or even all four neighborhoods at once.”

Félix tilts his head some. “With your van, Zoé’s mother’s minivan, Ivan’s truck, maybe, if we utilize the truck bed, and maybe someone else’s car?”

Nino nods again. “Yeah—we can split us all up, too, to make sure no group is without experienced pairs. We could have Chloé and I and Marinette and Adrien with the last neighborhood, since it’s the most recent and likely most dangerous. Alya and Luka can tackle Armand’s neighborhood, and you and Ivan and Mylène can cover Alya’s. Zoé and Sabrina can handle the first, I think, and we can have Juleka and Rose with the other groups depending on who we can bring in. We should be able to finish in two and a half hours, tops, including the shopping, especially if we split up the shopping like you suggested today, Félix.”

Luka frowns. “Even with extra people, we likely won’t have seven groups to each neighborhood, and I don’t think we should double the bags up on anyone doing this for their first time.”

“So we have them go out with a first round, go back to the car, and go back out for a second round,” Nino says. 

Luka’s frown doesn’t fade. “I wish we could duplicate ourselves to do this all ourselves—I don’t feel comfortable asking so many people to risk so much for this. You saw how we ended up those first two days—bitten, bleeding, bruised.”

Félix nods. “Still, it’s their decision. All we can do is present them with the reality of the situation—that these kids could starve and that they’re putting their own lives and well beings at risk by helping—and let them decide for themselves.”

Marinette sighs, her head still on her arms on the table. “What I’m hearing is that we really need that extra help.”

“We do need the extra help,” Nino says quietly. “We finished at what, about 9 p.m. tonight? We can’t add another neighborhood ourselves and still have time enough to solve the case like we usually do on top of sleeping and going to school. It’s bad enough without even adding on the homework we’ll have come tomorrow night.”

Alya shakes her head. “It’s not looking good when we factor in how much time all of that takes.”

Marinette sighs again, but she sits up, bringing her hot chocolate closer. “Alright, well, I won’t get my hopes too high on the help, but tomorrow, I think we should set a trap.”

“Early morning or evening?” Nino asks.

“Morning we can set up—forty-five minutes should be enough time—and in our open periods, if they line up with your or Félix’s opens, we can ride out and work more on the trap,” Marinette explains. “Then, when we’re done with the deliveries, we can go back to the trap and hopefully catch Que Horrifico tonight.”

“What’s your trap idea?” Félix asks, finishing off his tea. He starts picking at a muffin he bought.

Marinette frowns. “I have doubts that it’ll work, but I think we should go back to one of the neighborhoods already hit. Que Horrifico won’t hit those neighborhoods again, unless, maybe, a new family with kids moves in. He should want to turn them in order to keep control, yeah?”

“What makes you think he won’t hit a different neighborhood instead? If it’s just one family, he might not be drawn to the trap,” Chloé says. 

Marinette shrugs. “Nothing makes me think he won’t hit a different neighborhood instead. We just can’t figure out with any certainty what neighborhood he will hit next, and I don’t want to put any more kids at risk by setting the trap in an unaffected neighborhood. Plus, a huge part of my trap is getting Que Horrifico to actually try and turn the new kids—if something goes wrong, I don’t want other children getting turned, too.”

Luka’s brows are drawn together. “Okay, but who will be the family with kids in your trap? We’re all too big to play at being eight, nine years old, and none of us have siblings that age, except Nino.”

“Yeah,” Nino says with a frown, “and I still haven’t been able to really get in contact with Chris lately. I doubt he’d want to help us, either, after what happened with Max.”

Marinette shakes her head. “No, no—two of us will play as parents, two or three as grandparents, and two or three of us will play as children. We’ll stay inside, of course, with the curtains closed and stuff, but we’ll play kids shows on the television—loudly—and we’ll have those acting as kids play and talk loudly like children. Eventually, come midnight, Que Horrifico should come around and try to spookify the kids. That’s when I’ll trap him.”

Everyone else nods warily, unsure, either, if it will work.

Marinette, noticing this, purses her lips. “It’s all I’ve got, short of taking another day to analyze Que Horrifico’s attacks for a pattern to see who he’ll strike next, and by then it might be too late, with five or six, if not more, neighborhoods to deliver food to on top of trapping him, sleeping, and going to school.”

Luka frowns, shoulders drooping. “Well, then I suppose it’s worth a shot. Early morning, you said? Do you have a house in mind?”

Marinette smiles a bit. “If you want to pick us all up by 7 a.m., Nino, that should work. There’s a house in Potrillo’s neighborhood that I saw while I was double checking the estimates for children in the area—it’s been for rent for over a year, and it’s fully furnished. Three bedrooms, two baths, and expensive as hell, but it should work for a base to trap Que Horrifico from.”

Everyone nods, and they quietly work out the other details of their plans in the quiet of the café. 

Notes:

what’d you think? the gang is exhausted and overworked, and now there’s even More tension, what with alya and félix :( (but can you blame her? she wants a friend :( though can you blame him either? he’s never even really had to do this before :( ough… 🥰)

anyways heehee im sooo curious how u feel about the chapter 😩 what do you think will happen next? 😈 have any theories of yours changed? 🤭 are you excited for next chapter? 👹

anyways next week chapters twenty-four and twenty-five will be posted (chapter twenty-five is really short after the really long chapter twenty-four lol), and then next friday chapter twenty-six (the start of the next case/episode!) will be posted 🥰 love u guys and love your comments, they give me much needed life 🙏🥰

Chapter 24: chapter twenty-four

Summary:

The gang sets a trap.

Notes:

enjoy 🙃

Alya stays with Marinette that night, out in her treehouse in the woods. Marinette cooks them up some pancakes over a fire, and they eat in the cozy space within the treehouse before they both set alarms for the morning. They change into some spare pajamas Marinette keeps around the treehouse and then they lie down for bed, turning the lights out in the treehouse. 

After a while in the silence of the night, Alya turns on her side.

“Marinette?” she whispers.

There’s a soft sound—presumably Marinette in the process of drifting off to sleep.

“Are you awake?” Alya asks, voice a bit louder.

“Mm—what’d’ya need?” Marinette mumbles, turning on her side to face Alya, too.

Her voice wavers with unshed tears. “What if my parents don’t come back?” And, after a moment of silence, “What if Ella and Etta never go back to normal?”

Marinette slowly blinks her eyes open, looking over at Alya carefully. “If Ella and Etta never turn back, we—well, we’ll cross that bridge if we ever have to. I thought you didn’t believe in monsters?”

Alya’s lower lip trembles. “I… I don’t know, anymore.”

Marinette scoots closer, holding her arms open for Alya to curl into. 

Alya scoots close into the offered space, sniffling as she puts her face to Marinette’s shoulder. Marinette wraps her arms around her and closes her eyes, tired. 

“Well, if your parents never come back, you can always live with me. Either that, or we can have Chloé reserve you a long-term room or something at the hotel, or we can ask Amelie for help.” Marinette holds in a yawn, and tears prick at the corners of her eyes with the exhaustion. “No matter what, though, we’re going to take care of you. That’s what we do, Als.”

Alya nods. Marinette’s shoulder feels especially damp, now, but she doesn’t push Alya away—only holds her closer, relaxing.

“Any more questions?” Marinette asks quietly after a bit.

“Not right now,” Alya answers, her voice thin and warbly. 

Marinette nods. “Alright, well, wake me if you have any more, but try and get some sleep, now, okay?”

Alya nods slightly against Marinette’s shoulder, and she closes her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispers.

~*~

The next morning, after everyone has been picked up from their homes, the gang heads back to Potrillo’s neighborhood with Marinette’s trapping gear and some disguises. Félix drives behind the van in his small, green, unidentifiable breed of a car, already in his grandfatherly disguise.

Due to the police presence already in the first neighborhood to be hit and Armand’s and Alya’s neighborhoods, there’s extremely little police presence in Potrillo’s neighborhood. At most, a police cruiser drives will slowly down the street a few times throughout the day, but, while the Sheriff waits on official-looking gates with locks to arrive to gate off the first three communities from anything but tourist buses, he doesn’t stretch the police force out to Potrillo’s neighborhood.

Marinette finds this out early the same morning they’re going to said neighborhood to set up a trap. She tries to hide her surprise and relief at the knowledge, tries to calm the increasing beat of her heart. She hadn’t exactly thought of it, the night before: of what might hinder the plan, of who might pose a risk to their operation, if they could even get into the neighborhood. She blames the little amount of sleep they’ve all had, knowing she works much better when she’s not deprived. Still, she has some trouble calming down over how close things had been to being terribly, terribly messed up.

Nino and Félix both pull their separate vehicles into the garage for the house for rent, and the last of the gang members get their disguises together before everyone exits and heads into the house through the door connecting the garage and kitchen. Only Marinette, with her disguise as a mother already on, exits the house to go out into the yard, in full view of the rest of the neighborhood. She pulls the sign saying FOR RENT from the grass and she takes it inside. When she gets back inside the house, the rest of the gang has closed the curtains in all of the windows. They lock the front and back doors. 

Marinette and Luka, pretending to be the parents, loudly tell the children—who Nino, Adrien, and Chloé are acting as—to get ready for the school day. The grandparents, Alya and Félix, sigh and complain loudly, talking about how, in their day, various things had been much different than they were today.

Only Marinette, Luka, Alya, and Félix are dressed up. Marinette wears a pair of black slacks, a white shirt, and a blue cardigan, with blue pumps and her hair up in a neat bun. Adding to the look, she carries a big purse, wears a pair of reading glasses, and her makeup is done minimally to add age to her skin. Luka wears a pair of beat-up work boots, messy, paint-stained pants, and a worn light blue button-up. His still-pink hair is hidden beneath a short salt-and-pepper wig. Alya wears an orange knitted cardigan over a soft yellow shirt with an orange skirt and black flats. Her hair has been hidden beneath a grey mass of curls, and she wears a pair of reading glasses to complete her look as a grandmother. Félix has a grey wig on as well, but he wears a blue button-up beneath one of his knitted sweater vests along with a pair of grey slacks and white tennis shoes. Nino, Adrien, and Chloé wear clothes appropriate for a normal school day, though their outfits are an amalgamation of the rest of the gang’s closets in case any mishaps occur.

Most of their costumes for the day came from Marinette’s stash for disguises, minus, much to the gang’s amusement, the entirety of Félix’s outfit, which came right from his own closet.

The gang sets up their equipment for later in an office upstairs before they head into the living room and kitchen. They set some kids cartoons on the television, turning the volume up high, and they arrange themselves at the kitchen table and in the living room with some homework. Occasionally, Chloé, Nino, or Adrien will make a comment in their kid’s voice on the television show, or Félix or Alya will grumble in old, grumpy tones about what television shows used to be like.

When it’s time for the gang to get to school, everyone loads back up into the van and Félix’s car, still in their disguises, and they leave the house locked up behind them for the school day.

~*~

In their open period, Félix and Marinette head back to the house for rent to do some homework and explore the area for the best place to put her trap. Félix helps Marinette set up some parts of her trap, and she instructs him on how to set up some more things in his later open period with Alya. 

~*~

In Félix’s open period with Alya, he and her go back to the house to set up some more of Marinette’s trap. Little conversation happens here, thanks, he thinks, to their conversation in Potrillo’s yard the night before, but she ends up taking the keys to Félix’s car and Félix’s credit card with her to the open period she has with Nino, where he’ll drive the small car to the house instead of the van. She passes along Nino’s keys for the van while she’s with Félix as well, in case he needs to drive the rest of the gang anywhere after eighth period ends.

~*~

During Nino and Alya’s open eighth period, they go shopping in Félix’s car with Félix’s credit card for some of the food deliveries the gang and the now twenty-six recruited teens—including Juleka, Rose, Ivan, Mylène, Sabrina, and Zoé from the first few deliveries—will carry out today. They make careful note of the numbers of each item they get, sending them back into the gang’s group chat where Chloé’s list of how much of what is needed for the four neighborhoods already is.

By the time eighth period has ended, they’ve gotten enough food for the first affected neighborhood. Nino and Alya drive back to school, and they, along with Zoé, Sabrina, and six other recruits sort out most of the food into twenty-one bags. They leave the broccoli and carrots out, and Zoé and Sabrina drive the six recruits out to Zoé’s house in her mother’s minivan, where they’ll wash and divide the broccoli and carrots amongst the bags before starting their deliveries. The gang gives Zoé, Sabrina, and the six recruits four walkie talkies and four flashlights, one a piece to give to each pair for the deliveries.

~*~

After Zoé, Sabrina, and their recruits have left for their deliveries, the gang splits up into two groups: Nino, Alya, Adrien, and Marinette in the van, and Félix, Luka, and Chloé in Félix’s car. They go to two separate stores, with Chloé facetiming Adrien and Luka facetiming Alya for the duration of each trip so they keep connected on how much to buy of what from which store. Together, they grab the materials for the deliveries to the three other neighborhoods. The gang finishes shopping in forty-five minutes, and then they return to the school, where Juleka, Rose, Ivan, Mylène, and the other twenty recruits have been staying to study in the library. 

The gang has Ivan and one of the recruits with a van pull their vehicles close to Nino’s van and Félix’s car, and then they start dividing up the food into sixty-five bags for the three neighborhoods. Juleka, Rose, Mylène, and four recruits go to the girls’ bathroom to wash and divide the broccoli and carrots for these neighborhoods into bags while the others sort the other items outside.

In about twenty minutes, the bags have all been sorted and Zoé and Sabrina are stopping by the school to drop off the walkie talkies and flashlights from their deliveries to the first neighborhood. They leave to drop the six recruits with them all at home, and the gang divides everyone else up with walkie talkies, flashlights, and bags of food.

One of the recruits drives five other recruits, Alya, Luka, and twenty-two bags, four walkie talkies, and four flashlights to Armand’s neighborhood. They all deliver the bags in four pairs in about an hour and ten minutes.

In Ivan’s truck, he, Mylène, Félix, and six recruits are handed twenty-three bags, five walkie talkies, and five flashlights. They head out to Alya’s neighborhood, which they tackle in four pairs with Félix solo-ing. They finish in about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Nino drives he, Chloé, Marinette, Adrien, Juleka, Rose, and two recruits to Potrillo’s neighborhood. They deliver twenty bags in four pairs, using four walkie talkies and four flashlights as they work. They finish in about an hour and forty-five minutes.

When the groups tackling Armand’s neighborhood finish, the recruit driving takes Alya, Luka, and the walkie talkies and flashlights back to the school. They then drop the other recruits with them back at home. When the groups delivering to Alya’s neighborhood finish, Ivan drives Félix and the walkie talkies and flashlights back to the school before he drops everyone else with him off at their own homes. He then goes over to wait by Potrillo’s neighborhood for Juleka and Rose, as they have rehearsal that evening for some upcoming shows. When the groups delivering food to Potrillo’s neighborhood finish, Juleka and Rose leave with Ivan. Nino drives the remaining two recruits off at home, and then he, Chloé, Marinette, and Adrien go back to the school where Alya, Luka, and Félix wait.

Once the gang has been reunited in full, they put their disguises back on for their trap and head to Wendy’s and Jack in the Box to grab dinner. When they’re done, they head back to Potrillo’s neighborhood, which still lacks police presence for the most part. They pull into the garage at 8:39 p.m., and they file inside with some homework and their dinner, which they eat with the lights on in the kitchen and the curtains closed. 

After dinner, Marinette and Luka loudly ‘put’ Adrien, Nino, and Chloé to bed. Alya and Félix go out onto the porch after this with Marinette and Luka to loudly talk about their fictional day and the children. Inside, Adrien, Nino, and Chloé finish up some homework on the floor of the still-lit up kitchen.

When Alya, Félix, Marinette, and Luka go back inside, they turn on the television, making sure it’s something older to keep with the ruse. Alya and Félix, while they lock up the house using things from Marinette’s trusty trapping supply to make sure no one can get in, frequently comment loudly on the happenings of their television show. While they do this, Nino guides Adrien and Chloé in locking up the second floor of the house like Alya and Félix are doing. Luka and Marinette work discreetly outside on the final section of Marinette’s trap before going inside to finish on the inside components.

By 9:43 p.m., the gang is all ready for Que Horrifico. 

For a few hours, then, while they wait for Que Horrifico to come around, most of the gang works on homework or studies quietly in the light of a room without windows. In shifts of thirty minutes, one person takes a walkie talkie and binoculars and keeps watch from out of sight in a window facing the street. Someone else studies or does homework in similar shifts by the main trigger for Marinette’s trap, a walkie talkie beside them as they idly wait for a signal. The rest of the gang has another walkie talkie, waiting for a sign of danger.

~*~

Close to midnight, Que Horrifico is spotted down the street from the house, playing his lilting tune.

The gang lets out a collective sigh of relief that he’s headed for their trap, and they send two members from the homework group to put their school things back in the van. Everyone else grabs a separate walkie talkie and a flashlight, moving to a point of access for the house, where they hide and wait.

A moment after everyone is in place, Chloé, by the window as lookout for Que Horrifico, radios to the group.

“I think we have a bit of a problem on our hands.”

“What is it?” Marinette radios from her position at the trigger for her trap, a position she relieved Nino from.

“Que Horrifico never drew all the kids down the street in the other neighborhoods, did he?” Chloé asks. “Because he is now—they’re all headed straight for us.”

No one answers for a long, tense moment. 

“Guys?” Chloé asks. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Heard you loud and clear,” Nino radios, his voice strained. He sits in the living room on the first floor, crouched under the window sill that faces the street. His eyes peek out from under the bottom of the curtain. “This neighborhood—you guys should know it was full of biters and kickers. Don’t let the fact that there’s only twenty of them let you get cocky.”

“Got it,” Félix says. He’s stationed at the window in the kitchen on the first floor, his expression stony as he runs through possibilities of what’s about to go down.

Marinette is the next to speak, her voice strained. “My trap will only work on Que Horrifico alone,” she says. “If he has control over the kids and gets them to help him out of it, we’re done for.”

“So what do we do?” Adrien asks, stationed at the back of the house on the second floor. “Should we split up and try to draw the kids away from the house and the trap?”

“It won’t be of any use if they’re under some sort of mind control or are really well-trained,” Nino radios. He can hear the pan flute much louder now, as if it’s right outside the window. He tells himself, looking down the street at Que Horrifico three houses down, that it’s not true, but still, his heart beats uncontrollably fast in his chest. A sheen of sweat coats his forehead, and he feels like he’s shaking. 

It doesn’t help that he can’t see anyone else in the house—it doesn’t help that walls and rooms and an entire floor block his view of anyone else. It doesn’t help that all he’s to focus on is the figure coming closer to him from down the street.

“I don’t know what we should do,” Marinette whispers through the radio.

No one says anything or another long, long moment.

Then, steeling himself, Nino radios back, “Then we should just wait and see what happens.”

A room over, Marinette tightens her grip on her radio, clenching her jaw. Encouraged by his words, she nods. “Well, then—keep your positions, everyone.”

~*~

In hindsight, waiting for twenty gremlin not-not-children and a masked figure with unknown abilities to come at your locked-down base isn’t the smartest thing. 

They worked with what information they had at the time, of course, but even so, their courage kind of all goes to shit as soon as they notice the affected children are approaching them with rocks, crowbars, and knives.

The first window to break is Luka’s, where he’s stationed at the rear of the house in the downstairs bathroom. The gang hears the crash and the breaking of glass through the house, but it also echoes accidentally through their radios with the tumble of Luka scrambling back out of the way. 

There’s the screech of an affected child, and Luka shouting, “Fuck!”, and then Félix’s window in the kitchen breaks, affected kids climbing through there, too.

Luka’s radio transmission shuts off, but the gang can still hear him as he escapes the bathroom with an affected child on his heels who, from his curses, has a knife. Félix, in the kitchen, dodges a crowbar from one affected child and the teeth of another. 

In other areas of the house, the gang is similarly attacked by varying numbers of affected children to varying degrees. Chloé gets rocks thrown through her second-floor window, Alya has the same, Adrien has a brick thrown through his, and Marinette’s first-floor window gets broken with a rock before affected children are tumbling into the room she’s in. Nino scrambles back from his window just in time to miss a crowbar coming down through the glass.

All the while, the pan flute plays on from just outside the house, its eerie, lilting tune a strange undercurrent to the violence occuring. 

It isn’t long before the gang collectively decides to corner themselves in the single room without a window—the upstairs office, where Chloé, Alya, and Adrien scramble to, closing the door behind them and huddling on the other side. Soon, Félix and Luka are racing up the stairs, trying as gently as they can to toss the affected children following them into the empty rooms Chloé, Alya, and Adrien have vacated. Félix and Luka escape to the upstairs office with a quick knock and word that it’s them, and then they wait together in the silence of the room, trying to be quiet so as not to alert the sources of the crashing and screeching throughout the rest of the house.

Downstairs, Nino and Marinette have come together, back to back, and are slowly working their way upstairs between fighting off the affected children as carefully as they can and dodging the crowbars, rocks, and knives swinging at them, as well as the teeth that snap at them. 

When they get to the stairs, affected children from chasing Félix and Luka upstairs tumble down at Nino and Marinette. Nino pushes Marinette to one wall as he jumps back in the opposite direction, saving them both from being sliced open from the large knife in one affected child’s hand on the stairs. As the affected children turn towards him, hissing and growling, he spares a single glance to Marinette. 

The look says run.

Marinette listens, as they’ve all trained themselves to do.

Nino holds the affected children’s attention, putting his arms up high in the air as he does his best to growl back at them. Angered by this attempt at authority, they charge at him and ignore Marinette, who races up the stairs and out of sight.

The other affected children in the house rage on, turning, when they find no one to swing their rocks, crowbars, and knives at, to the furniture and walls. The pan flute outside continues on as well, still lilting strangely beneath the violence.

Nino dodges the slice of a knife through the air, but as another affected child latches onto his leg, biting his calf through his pants, he gets a crowbar to his back. Admittedly, while it’s not enough to, say, crack a rib, he thinks, given the force is only from a small child, it knocks the breath from his lungs. The attack is sure to leave a bruise as the night wears on. The affected child with the knife swipes at him again, and Nino reaches out to try and stop the blade swinging at his thigh, but he only catches it with the back of his arm. His skin splits open as he scrambles to try and wrest the knife from the child.

When he hisses, drawing back, the affected child’s eyes go wide. Blood spills in the space between them, painting the floor, the tips of Nino’s shoes, and the affected child’s hand beneath the wound. The affected child stumbles back, shrinking away from Nino and the blood.

Before Nino can try and put words to the revelation this reaction gives him, the affected child gnawing at his calf is pulled from him and tossed aside. Luka grabs at Nino’s unbleeding arm, pulling him towards the stairs. Félix, on Nino’s other side, has the affected child with the crowbar in his arms, yanking said weapon free from them.

Nino follows Luka up the stairs at a run. 

Félix drops the affected child where Nino had just stood, and they scream, alerting the other affected children in the house to what has happened. Before the other affected children can react, though, Félix is turning and running after Nino and Luka, pushing them towards the upstairs office, where Alya and Adrien hold the door just barely open for them.

Nino, Luka, and Félix tumble inside and the office door is slammed shut behind them. A moment later, the sound of the affected children’s bodies hitting hard against the door has Luka joining Alya, Adrien, Marinette, and Chloé’s efforts at keeping the door closed. 

While the affected children growl and scream on the other side and the pan flute outside continues on, Félix pulls Nino to one side. He takes his pocket knife from a pocket of his disguise and he pulls his button-up from beneath his sweater vest, quickly cutting off four long sections. When he has these strips of fabric in his hand, he puts his knife away and pulls Nino’s bleeding arm close to him.

As he wraps Nino’s wound, Félix says, “We have to keep pressure on this until I can stitch and redress it, alright? Hold still so I can tie this right.”

Nino keeps still, but he looks at Félix’s shoes and the carpet of the office, both of which his blood has already stained. “The kid—I think they’re really kids under there, still,” Nino says quietly, staring at the blood. “I think we can save them.”

Félix’s brows draw together, but he doesn’t slow his work, tying the fabric tightly around Nino’s arm to slow and hopefully stop the bleeding. “Well, we can figure that out later, when no one is trying to kill us, alright?”

Nino frowns as Félix finishes tying off the wound. “He didn’t mean to hurt me, I think—none of them are trying to really hurt us—”

Nino is cut off by a shout as the door is opened marginally. The affected children’s hands worm through the crack between the door and the door jamb, and Alya shouts again that they can’t close the door like this, that they’ll hurt the affected kids.

Still, Félix and Nino quickly move to join the rest of the gang’s efforts, trying in vain to gently move the affected children’s hands back out without getting squished themselves. It’s a futile effort—as they move one hand back, even more hands reach through the door, clawing at them. Soon, Félix pulls back, moving to one side of the door. He shouts over the growling and screaming of the affected children.

“Quick—over here!”

Nino and the rest of the gang glance over, unsure, but they still move to one side of the door and quickly let go of it. As the door suddenly flies open, the affected children tumble through, falling over each other to get into the room. While they’re still distracted with trying to get upright and inside, a bit of space opens up in the doorway. Félix and the rest of the gang surge forward, slipping past the affected children and leaping over them to get back into the hall of the second floor. They waste no time in sprinting back down the stairs and racing for the window of the living room, which they’re quick to tumble through, ignoring the broken glass present on the floor and the sill and the jagged edges still in the window. 

When they collapse to the ground in a pile outside the window, growling, screaming, affected children hot on their tails across the living room, the pan flute from just in front of the house comes to a sudden stop. With the absence of the sound that played as an undercurrent before and through the entire attack, it feels like a vacuum has sucked up all the oxygen from around them.  

There’s a beat of complete silence before the children race for the window the gang escaped from, resuming their growling and screeching.

“STOP!” a voice shouts.

The gang’s eyes dart between one other, searching for the source of the shout. Once they get to their feet, they find the actual source of the voice: Que Horrifico. 

The small figure stands only feet from them. Que Horrifico’s voice has brought a stop to the noise behind the gang, but all they can do is stare at the shaking of his shoulders.

Nino is the first to take that hesitant first step towards Que Horrifico, some confusing ache of familiarity thrumming through his body as he attempts to register the voice. His brows draw together and he reaches out a hesitant hand, but the figure is already turning and running for the street.

A car screeches to a stop in front of Que Horrifico, freezing him in his tracks.

The sheriff gets out of the car from the driver’s side, ignition still running. “What’s the meaning of all this?” he asks indignantly.

The gang hesitantly walks closer, watching as Que Horrifico starts to tremble over his whole body. He stares right at Sheriff Raincomprix, though his mask displays no emotion. The pan flute hangs limply at his side—forgotten, perhaps.

When no one answers, the sheriff repeats himself. “I said,” he says, putting his hands on his hips as he approaches the gang, who approach Que Horrifico, “what’s the meaning of all this? Why are you kids once again disrupting a perfectly good tourist attraction?”

None of the gang responds, though Félix and Marinette glance over at him before looking to Nino, following the rest of the gang’s gaze. 

Nino has stepped closer to Que Horrifico and is now almost within arm’s reach. 

Que Horrifico shrinks back, face turning quickly to look between Nino, the sheriff, and back again.

The sheriff curses under his breath, and he sets a heavy hand on Marinette’s shoulder, jerking her back some to look at him. “Hello—”

Félix has the sheriff’s wrist in both hands in less than a second, lifting it firmly from Marinette’s shoulder. He glares at Sheriff Raincomprix, leaning closer slightly as he steps between Marinette and the man. “How about I explain what’s happening?” Félix asks lowly. His voice is thin and sharp, poisonous and volatile. “Let’s move closer to your car, why don’t we? It’s a little crowded right here.”

The sheriff’s lips flatten out into a thin line, but he steps back, jerking his wrist from Félix’s hand. He steps over to his car, Félix following, and the sheriff turns the key and yanks it from the ignition, shutting the car off.

In this time, the gang has moved a step or two closer to Nino, who has moved to crouch in front of a fallen, shaking Que Horrifico.

Nino’s hands tremble slightly as he carefully lifts Que Horrifico’s mask from his face. Tears have already welled up in his own eyes, and he has to hold back the choked sob threatening to break free from his chest—all of this even before he’s seen Que Horrifico’s face, because that ache of familiarity thrumming through him has swelled up into a full-body sinking sensation of dread.

Only the chin and soft round jaw get revealed before Nino is whispering, “Oh, Chris,” and breaking into a sob. The Que Horrifico mask falls back into place as Nino’s hands drop to Chris’s small shoulders.

Beneath the mask, Chris silently cries, gasping breaths whistling through the mask. His vision blurs until he can no longer see his brother. In frustration, he tosses his mask and the wig connected to it from his head, and he surges forward to wrap Nino in his arms. With his face tucked against Nino’s neck, he lets himself sob freely.

It’s several moments before either of them move, thanks to Félix and Luka having pulled the sheriff and the rest of the gang into the house to give Sheriff Raincomprix a detailed explanation of what happened. Also inside, the affected children become ‘unmasked,’ having their minimal makeup washed carefully away by the gang’s gentle hands. The sheriff watches this unmasking with a frown, writing in his notebook carefully.

Outside, Nino pulls back from Chris’s grasp, wiping at his brother’s face carefully with the bottom of his shirt. “Why did you do all this?” he asks, voice shaking some.

Chris pulls his glasses off, sniffling, and with a trembling lower lip, he cleans them with a cloth he pulls out from beneath his poncho. “You can probably figure out why, Neenee.”

Nino knows from years of experience that this is his brother saying I know you’re smart. Saying—I may be a genius, but I know you’re smart, too. Smarter than you think, smarter than Mom and Pa think. Still, Nino closes his eyes, taking a careful breath in and out. “I want you to tell me why you did it, Chris,” he whispers.

There’s a moment’s pause, which Chris fills by putting his glasses back on and reaching for Nino’s injured arm. Chris frowns, looking down at the quickly, crudely-made bandage wrapped and tied off. A few tears slip down over his round cheeks. “I didn’t think it was you guys in there. I didn’t see your van parked in the garage, didn’t see you out in the yard setting a trap. I didn’t see your friends under the disguises from across and down the street.”

Nino’s voice is but a thin, trembling breath as he closes his eyes. “Why’d you do all this, Chris?”

He doesn’t respond to that. He takes a shaking hand and he wipes at the still-wet blood coating Nino’s arm, and he flinches. 

Nino opens his eyes slowly.

“I didn’t think it was you guys in there,” Chris says, voice shaking. “I thought it was adults—I thought maybe the police were too—were too scared to wear their badges as they set a trap for me. I brought all the kids down here thinking I was just—thinking I was—thinking I’d be getting back at the system trying to fight me. I thought the town didn’t like what I was doing, so they sent some undercover police to trap me and get rid of me. I didn’t—I—I didn’t—Neenee, you have to understand, I wouldn’t—” Chris breaks off in a sob, his fingers fluttering along Nino’s bloodied skin. His fingers come away stained red, like he’s just back home, like he’s just two years old again and learning to paint with clumsy fingers, like they aren’t out here in the street, in the dark, him holding Nino’s bloody arm and Nino holding his watery gaze.

“You wouldn’t hurt us,” Nino whispers, watching Chris.

Chris’s shoulders shake. “I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t, Nino, I promise—”

“I know,” he whispers. “I know.” He puts a hand reassuringly over Chris’s bloodied fingers. “But it doesn’t change that you did all this, bud—all these kids, all this destruction, the—the…” Nino bites his tongue, remembering Chris’s reaction to hearing Max had killed even one person. He doesn’t mention Armand and his family. “Why’d you do it, buddy?”

Chris drops his head low, his chin to his chest. His hair, sweaty and wild from being beneath the wig, bounces with the movement. His fingers drift over Nino’s bandage again. “I… you know about my plans with the city. Making things safer for the environment—making it so we contribute less to global warming.”

Nino nods, sniffling.

Chris’s voice drops, going a bit quieter. “Well, they don’t listen to me. Not the mayor, the sheriff, the stupid companies. They tell me I’m just a kid—that I should just listen to the adults, and wait til I’m all grown up to disagree. They say I don’t understand why any of that has to happen. They say I should go home, that I should stick to playing video games, to filling in coloring books, to playing at recess.” Chris’s voice breaks. “They weren’t listening, so I—I decided to throw them all out. They could go somewhere else—wherever they wanted—and I’d run Crystal Cove without people telling me I’m too young, or that I can’t make any real change at ten years old, or that I’m just a stupid kid who needs to go home.”

Nino tilts Chris’s head up with a hand at his cheek. The baby fat there and the smallness of his brother’s face in his hand reminds him again—he’s just a kid. His voice is gentle when he speaks. “Did you consider that the children you got in on this would go hungry without their parents?”

Chris blinks slowly, meeting Nino’s gaze. Dread and realization slowly dawns on him, slowly sinks in. He jerks his face from Nino’s hand, turning away from his gentle gaze. 

Still, Nino sees the fresh tears rolling over his cheeks. He continues gently. “You’re incredibly smart, Chris, and your thoughts have meaning and value, they’re important, but in some ways, those people are right. You’re still just a kid, but that’s not a bad thing, bud. You’re just a kid—you don’t have to take responsibility for a whole town, for a gazillion other kids, and especially not the whole world. You can get other people to support your ideas—people who have power to make a little more change than you, and you can share the burden of saving all those people together.”

Chris turns back to him, though he keeps his head ducked low again. After a moment, he takes a shaky breath. “People only seem to treat me like I’m a kid when it benefits them,” he whispers. “Or when they want me out of the way.”

Nino’s expression crumples and guilt swells up in his chest. “Chris—”

He shakes his head, hard, still crying. “No—not you. Never you, Neenee, I just…” Chris looks up at him, looking like he’s six years old again, running to Nino outside the pre-school, running into Nino’s arms after a rough day with difficult teachers. “I meant everyone else—they treat me like that. Not you. Never you.”

Nino closes his eyes, taking a long, shaky breath. “I—I’m so sorry,” he whispers, voice breaking. “I should have been there for you more, I should have taken better care of you,” he cries, reaching up to cup Chris’s face with one hand again. “Maybe then—maybe then you wouldn’t—”

Chris sniffles, shaking his head but leaning into the touch. “No—no, Neenee, you—you’re just a kid, too,” he cries. “You shouldn’t have had to take care of me at all—”

Nino clenches his jaw, but he reaches his other hand to cup Chris’s other cheek. “I should have taken better care of you because I’m your big brother. You’re my responsibility, Chris. Of course I’m going to take care of you, kid or not. That’s what big brothers do.”

“We are Mom and Pa’s responsibility,” Chris corrects firmly, though the look is softened by the tears in his eyes. “And you’re my responsibility, too.”

“You aren’t responsible for taking care of me,” Nino whispers, running his thumb under Chris’s eyes to wipe away a few tears. “Not ever.”

He closes his eyes. “Then I’m responsible for not hurting you. I have to not worry you—I have to not fight you when you reach out. That’s what I’m responsible for, then.”

Nino laughs, and the sound is wet and fragile. “Chris, brothers hurt each other all the time—they make each other worry, and they fight like it’s nobody’s business. That’s normal.”

Chris looks down to Nino’s still-bleeding arm. “Not like this,” he says, voice quivering.

Nino shakes his head, sniffing. “No, no—like this, too, sometimes.” His voice drops to a whisper again, and he tries to smile. “I’ll heal.”

Chris’s lower lip trembles. After a long moment, he whimpers, “I want to go home.”

Nino nods, holding back tears of his own. He pulls Chris in for a hug, pulls him into his lap like he’s four years old again, holds his head to his neck like he’s an infant once more. “I know, buddy,” he whispers. Tears well up in his eyes and spill over, and something shudders inside him with a deep, grieving echo. “I know.”

“I have to go to jail,” Chris says, gasping, choking on the words. “I can’t go home, Neenee.”

“Well, I want to take you home,” Nino argues pitifully, as if by saying that’s what he wants, it’ll change anything. He hugs Chris tighter. He’s my brother, he thinks. He’s my brother—I can’t let them take him away. I can’t go home and not have my brother not come home, too. “I want to take you home right now and—and—”

“You can’t,” Chris says, sounding stronger, sounding older. He pulls back from the hug to look at Nino. “They’ll know I’m with you, and they’ll take me away from you or hurt you to find me.” He puts a small hand to Nino’s cheek, leans in to kiss Nino’s forehead like he’s seven years old and they’ve switched places, and he says, just like a grown-up, Nino thinks, “I’ve got a responsibility to you, Neenee. I’ve got to go.”

“How am I going to be responsible for you when you’re in jail?” Nino says, unable to hold back his shaking. “Who’s going to keep you safe? Who’s going to make you your lunch how you like, or—or comfort you after a nightmare? Who’s going to go to the store with me when it’s not you?” His vision is so blurred at this point that he can’t even see Chris in front of him. He wipes furiously at his eyes, but he just sees colorful, distorted shapes. He can’t hold back the sobs shuddering through him, can’t help the broken noises rattling from his chest. “Who’s going to hug me when I get home? Who’s going to steal all my pjs, make fun of me, make me read his articles? Who’s—who’s gonna—Chris, Chris, I—I—”

Chris properly cups Nino’s face in his hands and tries to laugh, though it comes out a bitter sound. “I’m sorry, Neenee. I wish—I wish I—I wish I could turn back—turn back time,” he manages, “I want to—I can’t—I… Nino, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—I’m really, really sorry—”

Nino feels like he can’t breathe with the way his chest is cracking open right there in the street. Something terrible shifts and shatters inside him, and he feels like he’ll never recover, if not from the breaking, then surely from the shrapnel left behind. He sits there, gasping, snot and tears running over his face, and he hates—he hates how he can’t even see Chris. Somehow, even the knowledge that he won’t be seeing him that night—for days, for weeks, maybe—not even that stops the tears. It only increases them, as if he’s not wanting, craving, yearning for only one thing in the whole wide world right now. He needs to see Chris and to hold his face in his hands, to tell him he loves him, but he can’t quell the tears. 

He does what he can. He finds Chris’s face, holds his small face in his big hands, and he leans close to put his forehead to his brother’s, where he closes his eyes. “No matter what,” he whispers, voice quavering, “I need you to know that I’ll always—I’ll always love you. I’ll always be on your side and I’ll always be here to protect you when I can, and as soon as you get out—as soon as you get out, I—” his voice cracks, and his shoulders slump. He doesn’t know what he’ll do. He wants to say: as soon as you get out, I’ll give you the biggest hug. I’ll make you lunch again. Take you to the movies. Hold you after a nightmare. Carry you around like you’re five years old. Bring you treats from the gas station. Take you on a long ride with the windows down and our music way too loud. 

He doesn’t say any of that, though, because it doesn’t feel like enough. These are small things—tiny moments. None of it encapsulates the I’ll find you and I’ll never let you go again he aches to put into proper words, words that say what he means and don’t sound stuffy and controlling.

The small things are too small to offer as hope or even something to look forward to in the years Chris will spend in jail for his crimes. The small things are too small and just replay the past ten years again on loop. The small things show Nino’s love, yes—but in small ways. Small ways that feel too small for what’s about to happen and what’s about to be lost and what won’t be found for a long, long time.

“When I get out, you’ll give me the biggest hug?” Chris asks, voice wobbling. 

Nino thinks Chris makes it sound like that’s all that will keep him going. He wishes he could do more—make it better, make it more… exciting. Hopeful. (Later, he’ll wonder if it’s really the small things—and not the big extravagances—that truly give hope. Later, he’ll still want to be able to answer with a big extravagance, if only because his love feels so small and insignificant sometimes.) 

A sob slips through Nino’s lips when he means a laugh. “Yeah,” he whispers, “I’ll give you the biggest hug.”

“Promise me you’ll—promise me you—” Chris swallows back the rest of his words with shame, squirms in Nino’s hands with guilt. “Will you visit me, Nino?” he finally chokes out.

Nino holds Chris’s face firmly in his hands, as if he could forever keep him from having to go. “Nothing could keep me from visiting you, Chris,” Nino says. His voice, for once since he left the house behind them, is even and strong.

Chris nods, lips trembling. “Thank you,” he whispers.

“I love you,” Nino says. He thinks it sounds like he’s saying goodbye. He never ever wants to say it like this again. “I love you, I love you, I—I love you. Don’t forget it. Don’t you dare forget it.”

“I love you, Nino,” Chris says, and he’s finally smiling, though it’s sad. 

Nino will regret for a long time that he can’t see it all that well.

“I love you,” Chris repeats, quieter, and then, after a small breath, he says, “I have to go, now.”

“What if I don’t want you to go?” Nino asks, voice trembling. “What if I stole you away, instead? Just like when we were kids, hiding under my bed when there was a thunderstorm, y’know?”

Later, Nino will feel impossibly guilty for saying this. Later, he will know how hard it was for Chris to say what he says next. (But now—now, Nino wants to take his brother and fold him up in his arms and run away. He wants to take him away from all this. He wants to go back in time.)

“I have to go,” Chris says, making his voice cheery to keep it from shaking, too. “I have to go, but I—I’m—I’m going to see you soon, Nino. I’ll see you soon.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Nino whimpers. “I don’t want you to go.”

“You have to let me go, now,” Chris says, and he takes his small hands and he grasps Nino’s big hands in his and he pulls them from his face, folding them together. He leans in and he kisses Nino’s forehead again, clumsily so through his tears. “You have to let me go,” he says, and he gets up from Nino’s lap, letting Nino’s hands go.

Nino reaches for him, whole body shaking. “Chris—” 

“You have to let me go,” Chris says, smiling as his tears continue rolling down his cheeks. 

Nino doesn’t notice the sheriff slowly walking towards Chris. 

He only sees his little brother, impossibly small, impossibly ten years old, impossibly unfocused through his tears. He only sees his little brother, tiny with his arms behind his back as the large sheriff cuffs him from behind and as the vast darkness surrounding them threatens to swallow his brother whole. He only sees the smallest, most impossible glimpse of his little brother walking in front of the sheriff to the police car. He only sees his little brother disappearing from view, so impossibly small, and Nino wonders if he’ll ever catch his breath. 

He feels impossibly small, too—knelt to the asphalt as if in aching prayer.

~*~

Later, everyone will remind him of Chris’s words.

You’re just a kid, too, Nino.

It doesn’t change that when he goes home, everything feels so much emptier without his little brother.

Notes:

so 🙃🙃🙃

yeah this chapter made me cry both As I Wrote It, As I Edited It (All Four Times, rather than just twice like usual bcos i kept crying lol), And! As I Posted It . did you cry too or am i just a wimp lol 😭

anyways next chapter is really short but chapter twenty-six will be posted on friiiiday . anyways. lol. writing has Not been happening much unfortunately 🤡 been so busy and stressed ahaha but… we persist lol 🤪

Chapter 25: chapter twenty-five

Summary:

The gang wraps up the case.

Notes:

short chapter :)

After Chris is arrested, the gang spends an hour consoling Nino and bandaging up their wounds.

~*~

The night Chris is arrested, Alya goes home and gently coaxes her sisters into dropping the act. She manages to do this with minimal biting, and soon, she’s wiping the makeup gently from their tired faces. She makes them mac and cheese with sausages, the only thing left in the house that she has the energy for and their first warm meal in close to four days. Afterwards, she puts them into bed, collapsing beside them and falling to sleep in her disguise, sans wig, from that evening.

She decides to wait to call her parents until the next evening.

~*~

Very early the morning after Chris is arrested, the sheriff drives to Marinette’s house and has her parents wake her. The sheriff then insists she call the other members of the gang and rouse them to help the sheriff coax the children from the first three neighborhoods back to sanity and reason.

Marinette lets Alya and Nino sleep, but she calls Luka, Félix, Adrien, and Chloé. Félix says he can squeeze everyone in his car (the small, green car of an unidentifiable breed), and the others inwardly grimace but agree, knowing options are limited and it’s not just the sheriff who needs their help, but the kids who Chris had employed.

It takes the gang four and a half hours to bring all of the employed children back to normal, coaxing them to belief, gently washing their faces, and calling and trying to convince the parents that their children are fine. 

Some parents end the calls with shouting, saying that they’ll never come back to Crystal Cove. (Never coming back, including for their children—which kills the gang to have to explain.)

While bringing the children back to normal, the gang also coordinates with the sheriff and the mayor where clean-up is necessary. The sheriff and mayor only comply with this—paying for and coordinating clean-up—because they would otherwise need to admit to freely and willingly allowing a big enough portion of Crystal Cove’s children starve, to hindering the efforts of anyone trying to keep said children fed, and to also encouraging the continued starvation and the destruction by blocking off the neighborhoods as tourist attractions and funding souveniers and such based off of Que Horrifico and the affected children. It’s a wonder the mayor and sheriff don’t face further consequences than coughing up the barest minimum of their dues, but one might say this is simply an example of how the adults in Crystal Cove are. A select few might even say it’s a prime example of the curse of Crystal Cove at work.

Still, Marinette, Luka, Félix, Adrien, and Chloé get to skip out their homeroom, first period, and half of their second period of the day, so some might say the morning had a silver lining, even if it was quite a dim one.

~*~

The next night after Chris is arrested, Nino finally corners his parents. He tells them of the arrest and Chris’s crimes, standing between them and the glowing light of the television playing their evening show.

They ask him to handle the local court with their permission, since they’re busy with tourism, their bookstore, and his father’s latest book. The judges will accept it, his mom tells him—she knows them all, she says. She’s friends with most of the adults in town anyways, criminal kid or not.

Nino agrees to handle the court case because he has little other choice, but he finds himself relieved that Chris at least won’t have to deal with his parents screwing up his case in their favor.

~*~

A week and a half after Chris is arrested, a funeral is held for Armand and his family. 

The entire gang attends, huddled in support behind Chloé.

~*~

Two weeks after Chris is arrested, he goes on trial.

He’s sentenced unfairly.

Notes:

next chapter will be posted friday :) and it’s another episode/new case 🥰

Chapter 26: chapter twenty-six

Summary:

The gang does some cavern exploration and works a bit on Émilie Agreste’s case.

Notes:

🥰 a bit of a faster but longer chapter today :)

Four days after Chris is arrested, a Monday afternoon, the gang takes the time after school to finish a few productive hours of schoolwork. They do this partly to make up for the previous week where they slacked in order to finish what is now Chris’s case, and partly also to try to catch up for the week ahead. It helps that they finished the Chemistry test that morning and are without homework for that class for the day, only carrying the burden of a possibly poor grade. 

After a late dinner at Amelie’s, the gang heads across town to get to work on exploring the caverns beneath Crystal Cove. 

They first decide to explore a small portion near to the sewers that were initially accessed in the Fruitmeir case. (To be clear, the portion they’re exploring is only considered ‘small’ when thinking also of the breadth of the caverns as a whole.) As they document their findings, they talk quietly in the echoing space.

Marinette, Luka, and Félix got them started in the caverns by cordoning off an area to one side of the entrance from the sewer, setting up extendable, portable fences outlining the corners of the area they work in. Just inside this area, they’ve also set up some industrial-style work lights on the ground. Within this lit-up space, the gang has split up, with each person carrying a clipboard, flashlight, pen and paper, GPS system, and a compass. They each walk around smaller areas within the lit-up area, taking note of coordinates and where there are things like ravines, streams, and entrances to other caverns. They also document any other information that would be good to know when moving across uneven terrain in the dark.

Since they’re presumably alone in the caverns at 8 p.m. in the evening, they talk freely across the half-lit space, forgoing the use of radios.

“Do we want to go to the Halloween dance on Friday?” Marinette calls out, checking with her GPS the coordinates on the starting point of a ravine she stands at. As she walks to the other end of it, careful to walk a foot from the edge, she waits for an answer.

“I think it’d be fun,” Alya calls back across the space.

“My sister’s band is playing,” Luka says.

Adrien frowns across the space. “What’s the theme again?”

“I think the theme for a Halloween dance would be something related to Halloween,” Félix calls back, raising his brows at his own clipboard. He notes a stream’s general coordinates and walks to another part of his area. 

The whole evening, he’s been working especially hard to avoid thinking about the last time he was down here. The horrible, awful process he’d gone through loops again and again through his mind: dragging a corpse through the cold, wet darkness for miles; pulling it into the sewers after him; shoving it up a ladder through to the street; dragging it into an alleyway; lying there beside it on dirty asphalt to decompose; and waiting until it was eventually hauled off to the coroner. 

It takes everything in him to carefully avert his eyes to only the lit-up area of the caverns, but even so, he catches the slightest glimpse of the ghost from his memory tugging at his shoulder or trying to catch his attention in the darkness just beyond the lit-up barrier he walks beside. He still has to grit his teeth against the sluggishness to his body at being down here, he still has to blink his eyes wide open and bite the side of his cheek against the urge to crumble to the ground, he still has to pay special attention to his lungs expanding and contracting to make sure they continue this, and he still has to work especially hard to appear normal to the rest of the gang.

After all, they still don’t know what he’s done. They don’t know what he did that day that they arrested Max Kanté, or that he made himself do it alone for their sake. They don’t know, and Félix wants them never to know. 

Still, it’s hard, when his body is reacting this way to just being down here in the caverns.

Nino laughs a little at what Félix has said, drawing the latter from his reverie. “Yeah, the theme is just Halloween costumes and stuff—they’re encouraging everyone to dress up, though no masks or weapons, like usual.”

Adrien nods. “Well, I think it’ll be cool to go if we don’t have a case then,” he calls out with a shrug. “Are we going together?”

“We usually do,” Marinette replies. “Easier that way, and it makes the tickets cheaper.”

“What are you guys going as?” Chloé calls back, voice light. “I should decide if it’s worth it to even be seen with you nerds.”

“Says literally the only person doing the most academically aside from Félix,” Adrien replies. “You’re such a huge nerd when it comes to anything political or money-related—so huge a nerd that it made me realize nerdiness wasn’t restricted to science and math.”

“Shut up,” Chloé shoots back, but her lips twist to hide the smile threatened there.

The others shake their heads, half of them hiding smiles of their own and the others not bothering to hold in a laugh. 

“Well, I think I could rock the grandma disguise again,” Alya calls out, noting down the coordinates for an entrance to another cavern.

“Aw,” Félix calls back dryly, “I wanted to wear that one.”

Alya shrugs, holding back a smile. “Fine, you can have it.”

Marinette nods, pursing her lips. “Great—Félix is down to be a grandma. Do we all want to be old people?”

“I was just kidding, guys,” Félix calls, grimacing. “I won’t—”

“Too late,” Nino laughs, “you’re locked in!”

Félix rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t argue further. Something softens somewhere inside his chest at Nino’s laughter. 

(Everyone has noticed how off Nino’s seemed since Chris’s arrest—how subdued he’s been. It’s a special kind of feeling to hear him open up and laugh, however briefly.) 

“I kind of liked the disguise I had on the other day, too,” Luka muses.

Alya raises a brow. “Should we switch it up, though, like Félix? Go as gender-bent old people for Halloween?”

Adrien sighs. “Will it involve wearing a bra? Those are really uncomfortable after a bit.”

“If we have to wear bras every day, so can you,” Chloé calls, laughing. 

He groans, though the sound is light and without any feeling behind it. “Fine, well, can I be one of those old ladies with a cane?”

“Got it,” Marinette calls back with a smile. “Anyone else?”

“I can wear your disguise from the other day,” Luka answers. “We can throw in some extra grey hairs, too, and change the outfit a bit to appear older.”

Marinette nods. “I could wear yours, but I think I want to go a bit more decrepit and go with something from Félix’s wardrobe.”

Félix splutters in indignation and surprise. “Dupain-Cheng—”

Marinette grins, though she doesn’t look up from her GPS. “Chloé could totally wear your disguise, though, Luka. That’d be a good fit, I think, with the contrast in style.”

Alya nods, smiling, too. “Hm, I think I’ll go with something from Félix’s wardrobe, too. He’s really got a knack for looking ancient.” She glances over at him automatically, watching for his reaction, before she remembers their conversation a few days ago in Potrillo’s yard. With it back on her mind again, she turns away, frowning, and goes back to her task with the caverns.

“Again,” Félix breathes, brows drawn together, “what is with you people calling me an old man?” 

After some time, the gang takes a break to crack into the snacks they brought with them. They only eat some of the snacks now, saving the rest for later breaks, but they come together to sit near the middle of the area they’re working in. 

Leaning back against one of the backpacks Marinette, Félix, Luka, and Nino brought down into the caverns, Alya peels an orange for Nino. She puts the peel and white bits from around the orange on a napkin on one knee, and she puts finished slices on another napkin on her other knee. “You guys meet the new girl, Lila?” she asks.

Across from her, Marinette grimaces. “Yeah. She gives me a weird vibe, though.”

Nino, next to Alya, shrugs. “She seems nice enough.”

“You know I’m never meeting anyone ever,” Chloé says, bent over her clipboard between Adrien and Marinette, where she’s sorting out a bag of M&Ms. 

Félix shrugs next to Nino. “I haven’t met her either,” he says, eating a roll of mini crumb donuts. “What’s she look like?”

Luka, between Marinette and Félix, finishes half of a Milky Way. “She’s got long brown hair, green eyes, and she’s about Marinette’s height,” he tells Félix.

“I met her,” Adrien says with a frown. “She asked me to help her catch up in Chem, but I turned her down because I knew we’d probably be busy.”

Félix rolls his eyes. “If she needs to catch up that bad, she’d ask someone better than you at the subject, you’d think.”

Luka laughs a bit, finishing off his Milky Way. “You’d think.”

Adrien shrugs. “She probably only asked because of my dad—she clarified on who I was, first, made a comment about how she moved, and then she asked for help on Chemistry.”

“Does she expect you to know a good tutor because of who your dad is?” Chloé asks, rolling her eyes.

Adrien shakes his head in disbelief. “I don’t know, but she followed me around for the three classes we had together after that.”

Marinette grimaces again, but she doesn’t say anything, instead taking a swig of her silver Rockstar. 

“Oh,” Alya says after a bit, handing Nino the slices of his peeled orange, “by the way, I won’t be able to work on any cases Halloween night—I’m taking Ella and Etta trick-or-treating, and my parents will be out of town for a party with my papi’s friends.”

Marinette nods. “Makes sense. No worries—we can probably all take the night off, anyways.”

“Want some company?” Nino asks quietly, starting to eat his orange.

“Yeah, we can come along if you want,” Luka says, leaning back on his hands.

Alya shrugs. “If you all want to, it’d be nice.” She tries to hide how badly she doesn’t want to be left alone with her sisters—not because of her sisters themselves, but because Alya feels unable to keep them safe anymore.

It doesn’t help that her parents have hardly interacted with the twins since Alya called her parents home. (Sometimes she thinks about how they only agreed to come back after Alya threatened to call Child Protective Services on them. It’s a thought that often sends her from her own bed to the queen-sized bed that Ella and Etta share, where she curls between them and drifts off to an easier sleep.) Out of anger, Alya has hardly interacted with her parents either. It helps that they don’t look her in the eye, anymore—that they only speak to her when they want something from her, now. 

Nino puts a hand to hers, slipping long fingers around her wrist to pull the back of her hand gently up to his lips. He presses a sweet kiss to her skin, drawing her mind back to the present. She blinks at him, suddenly feeling like she’s missed something.

“Should we dress up then, too?” Marinette is asking her, looking across the group at her with brows drawn together.

Nino sets Alya’s hand back down, and she turns to Marinette fully. She assumes Marinette has had to repeat herself. “For trick-or-treating?”

Marinette nods.

Alya shrugs to the question. “We could—the twins would probably get a kick out of it.”

Marinette grins. “Then I guess we’re dressing up both Thursday and Friday,” she says. “Exciting—getting to live Félix’s life for two days instead of one? Oh, but I bet my back will hurt when we’re done,” she says with a sigh.

Alya smiles a bit at Marinette’s joking, trying not to share how relieved she feels that she won’t be alone much this week.

“If you guys want, after trick or treating, we can go back to my house and watch a movie or two,” Félix says, finishing off his mini donuts as he ignores Marinette’s comments. She rolls her eyes, sighing again.

“Mm, think we could do that Friday, too?” Luka asks. “A 2-day Halloween movie marathon sounds fun.”

“You guys just have to pick the movies,” Félix replies, shrugging. 

“Fine by us,” Nino grins, finishing his orange slices. “Oh, I’ve got so many ideas…”

“Drop them in the group chat,” Marinette says, moving to stand up. “We’ve got more work to do tonight, but we can decide on the movies over the next few days.”

Everyone nods, and soon they each follow her in standing up as well. Nino and Adrien help put all the extra snacks away while Marinette, Félix, and Luka carefully move the portable fence corners and lights so that the gang works in a new, wider area.

Everyone gets back to work shortly thereafter, talking across to each other in the half-dark as they record coordinates and details on their clipboards. 

“Any word on when Chris’s trial will be?” Luka asks Nino across the area the gang works in. “Have they processed him, yet?”

Nino frowns, shrugging. “The sheriff’s told me they still have to figure out the clean-up before they can set up the trial. He was processed today, though—I had to go down to the station in my open period with a note from my parents and sign some forms.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Marinette asks, looking over to Nino, who shrugs again.

“It—I… I don’t know.”

“You usually tell us that sort of stuff,” Luka says gently. “Is there something different about this?”

Nino’s quiet for a long moment. “He… hurt you guys in a couple different ways,” he says slowly. “I… didn’t think it’d be a good thing to bring up, especially since… well, Armand and his family, and Alya’s parents… and we’re still healing from the cut marks, scratches, bites, and bruises. It… my brother hurt you guys, and while he’s my brother and my responsibility, I didn’t think you guys should have to hear about how his case is going.” Nino shrugs, though his shoulders stay a bit closer to his ears, as if he’s trying to protect himself or better shoulder what he’s insisted on carrying himself.

Everyone is quiet for a few minutes.

“Can we not decide for ourselves?” Chloé asks. “I may be grieving the loss of someone I considered a parent, but it doesn’t mean that your relationship with your brother isn’t important, or that none of us care to hear how he’s doing or about his case.”

Luka, Adrien, Marinette, and Alya are all confused that she’s the first to speak. Nino and Félix understand to a degree why she’s said what she has, but only Félix really understands why she spoke at all, let alone was first to say anything.

Nino knew, since the time in the library’s Morgue, that Chloé was willing to help him if he or Chris needed anything, though he had had some considerable doubts about Armand’s death not changing this. Félix understands Chloé a bit more, having become accustomed to seeing himself as a reflection of her and vice versa. In the library’s Morgue, she had likely heard Nino saying he would do what he could to make things easier for Chris even if his own life wasn’t fair, and she, just like Félix, had likely felt a sort of kinship in that. They would do the very same—and, in fact, they had been doing the very same for most of their lives—for Adrien. 

(This wasn’t so much a testament to Adrien, though both Félix and Chloé would insist upon it; it was more a testament to who they were at their cores: protectors. Granted, Félix was more methodical and less violent about it, but at their basest levels, Félix and Chloé reflected each other like mirrors.)

In this, it didn’t surprise Félix that Chloé was the first to say—or that she even said it at all—that Nino’s relationship with his brother was important to the gang, regardless of the hurt Chris had caused, inadvertently or otherwise. It still surprised Nino, slightly, though, and, less slightly, Adrien, Marinette, and Alya, and, to a much larger degree, it surprised Luka. Adrien, Marinette, and Alya hadn’t seen how Chloé empathized with Nino, nor had they heard her offer to Nino about being willing to help if he needed it. Luka, for his part, didn’t think Chloé could be kind to anyone but Adrien and possibly Amelie. 

Despite what Chloé has said, Nino shrugs again, biting his lip. “I suppose I should have let you guys decide for yourselves, but still—he—he hurt you guys. It feels like I’m saying that’s not as important or that it doesn’t matter when I talk about Chris. So I—I didn’t say anything about it.”

“What if we asked to hear about it?” Alya asks. She’s since paused her work to turn and watch Nino with a gentle gaze. “Would you tell us then?” 

Nino hesitates. “Why would that be a good thing? Wouldn’t it hurt you guys worse?” 

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a good thing—it would hurt us worse to not know if or when you were struggling with something related to Chris,” Marinette says carefully. 

“We can care about you and grieve what we’ve lost or heal from being hurt,” Alya adds. “Those things can happen at the same time, Nino.”

Nino shrugs again, making a noncommittal sound. He continues his task of mapping the section he’s in, avoiding the gazes of everyone else on him. 

“Nino,” Luka says after a bit.

Still turned away, still avoiding the gangs’ gazes, he hums, “Mm?”

“Will you tell us? If there’s any more updates with Chris?” Luka asks.

When Nino doesn’t respond, Alya adds, “We’d like to know.”

Nino hesitates, but he slowly nods. “I… Sure, alright.”

They nod, semi-satisfied, and for the most part they all return to mapping the caverns.

After a few moments, Félix asks, “Has anything happened with your parents, Nino? With Chris being taken in and being processed, I mean.”

Nino shrugs, kicking the cavern floor dejectedly with one foot. “They’re the same as always—pushing all the important stuff onto me, only coming home to smoke and lie on the couch, gossiping about everyone who came through the store. They avoid, at all costs, talking to or looking at me.” 

“I’m sorry,” Félix says, voice quiet across the cavern. 

“I don’t even want to go back home half the time, with the way they don’t even care about me or Chris or what happened,” Nino adds, voice only barely carrying across the cavern. “It’s—I—I just—I don’t know. They’re the same as always, somehow.” 

“Do you want to move out?” Luka asks, looking over. “I’d offer you live with me, but…”

Nino nods. “Yeah, I get it. Your mom would probably freak.”

Félix pulls out his phone and opens his messages with his mother.

“Do you want to move out, though?” Luka repeats, insistent.

Nino bites his lip, pulls his glasses off, and he drags a hand over his face. It’s another minute before he says anything. “Yeah. Yeah, I want to leave.”

Marinette offers first. “There’s always the treehouse, if you want. It’s pink, but it has all the necessities.” 

“I could get you a room at the hotel,” Chloé suggests, frowning. 

“I could help with the hotel room fees,” Adrien adds. “It’d be no big deal, Nino.”

“Or,” Félix starts, closing the conversation with his mother and turning off his phone, “if you’d like, you can come live with my mother and I. There’s two spare rooms that we have, and you know my mother loves you all.”

Nino hesitates, glancing over to Félix. “She can like us and still not want us living with her—I wouldn’t want to say yes to anything like that unless—” 

Félix raises a careful brow. “She already said she’d be more than happy to have you stay with us.”

“You asked her?” Nino bites his lip again, face morphing into a grimace. “Just now?”

“Just now, yes—don’t worry, she’s made the offer before for all of you, but I asked just now if she still felt the same.” 

Nino glances away, appearing to think it over. After a silent moment, he looks back to Félix with some echoes of uncertainty. “Would you be okay with it?”

He holds back a heavy exhale, knowing the sigh would be seen as contradictory to his words. “I wouldn’t oppose your presence and company,” he says carefully. “So, no, I wouldn’t mind it if you stayed with my mother and I.”

Nino nods slowly. “Alright, then. I… I’ll take you up on the offer, if that’s okay?”

Félix holds back the urge to say, of course it’s okay, I just said it was, and he instead nods. “Very well. After we drop everyone off, we can stop by your place and quickly pack your things, if that works?”

“We can help, if you want it,” Luka says with a gentle look towards Nino. “It might go faster that way, and we can field questions from your parents if they’re home.”

Nino turns some, gaze still on Félix. “Help would be nice. Thank you guys.”

“Of course,” the gang replies.

After a moment’s hesitation, they return to their work, with Nino having relaxed some.

It’s another while before anymore conversation occurs, and in this time, Félix, Marinette, and Luka move the outside corners of the area the gang works in, moving everyone to another space.

Alya is the first to bring up other conversation. 

“Did you guys hear about that ghost girl with the phantom limousine?” she asks while halfway through her new area. 

“The one the next town over?” Chloé asks. 

Alya nods. “Yeah—the one stealing away ‘attractive young men’ in the dead of night. From what I’ve read, the reports go back to 1903.”

Marinette frowns. “Weird.”

Alya nods again, a bit excited, now. “Exactly—well, with the dance this Friday, the sheriff and the mayor are, quote, ‘advising all students NOT to get into phantom limousines the night of the dance if at all possible.’” She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “It’s laughable, but that’s all they have. Not—hey, let’s postpone or cancel the dance, or, hey, let’s use the school buses for transport, or, hey, let’s actually investigate this potential threat to students.”

Félix raises his brows, working through his section carefully. “Did you expect anything else? They care about tourism and money, not people’s lives—unless, of course, it’s their own lives or the lives of tourists.”

Adrien shakes his head, disappointed in his father. “I wish he’d listen to reason.”

Luka smiles thinly. “Wish any adult in this town would listen to reason.”

Marinette sighs, long and heavy. “It’s hard being the only sane people willing to do something, isn’t it?”

There’s a round of collective nods as the gang thinks over the cases so far solved despite the negligence and even active hindrance to investigation that the sheriff and the mayor have exhibited.

“It’s a new mystery, though, right?” Alya asks, sounding almost a little hopeful.

“Are you not… needing more time?” Adrien asks, pausing the work in his section of the cavern. “To recover from the last case, I mean.”

“Or the one before it,” Chloé says, beating Félix to the question. 

Alya’s face scrunches up in distaste. “The only thing I’d need to recover from that you guys aren’t also actively dealing with are my parents, but they’re—they’re just… They’re the only ones who can do anything about that.”

Félix carefully holds himself back from saying anything, reminding himself of their conversation in Potrillo’s backyard.

“Still,” Adrien says. “That can require recovery time, too.”

Alya shakes her head, insistent. She crouches low to the ground to take a measurement. “They just—they’re just—they—I…”

Nino, already watching her, nods reassuringly. “Take your time.”

Alya hesitates before ultimately closing her eyes. “It’s just, sometimes I think they’d rather I’d stayed down here when Max got me. That way, when Ella and Etta were affected—or, well, I guess, when Ella and Etta—I don’t know, when they—when they—you know what I mean. When Ella and Etta… happened, my parents, if I—if I were gone—then… then they could have easily just left and never came back, just like some of those other parents, y’know?”

At the memory of having to explain to some of the once-were-affected children that some parents had decided to never come back, even for them, the gang quickly quiets. 

After a moment, Nino asks, “Do Ells and Etts know? Do they understand why your parents have been acting like that?”

Alya opens her eyes, shaking her head. “They don’t. Sometimes they go to sleep crying, though, asking why Mama and Papi are being strange.”

Nino nods, frowning. “That’s probably for the best, but, still… I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Adrien says softly. “That really, really sucks.”

Marinette and Luka nod in agreement, and then, after a moment, so does Chloé.

“Anyways,” Alya says, voice artificially cheery, “a mystery would be really nice—something to take the mind off of all that.”

Marinette nods. “A new mystery would be nice, yeah.”

“Do you need more time before another mystery?” Nino asks, looking to Chloé. “What with Armand and his family.”

Chloé frowns. “I’ll let you guys know if I need more time for anything, but I think that for now, I’m… fine to help with another mystery.”

“Will you tell us if there’s anything we can do?” Alya asks, glancing over.

Chloé purses her lips, hesitating, but she nods. “I will.”

“Good,” Alya says firmly. 

The gang works for a bit longer with another break for snacks before they pause their progress in the caverns for the evening.

~*~

After they get out of the cavern, they head to Nino’s house, where his parents are asleep on the couch. 

The gang doesn’t comment on how he pauses in the living room to cover his parents each with blankets, nor how he turns the television off, nor how he turns off most of the lights in the room. The gang only follows him to his room with several bags and boxes, where they work quietly and quickly to gather Nino’s essentials. 

Félix and Luka quickly fold and pack Nino’s clothes in a single box, folding things so everything is tight, compact, and as small as it can be. Chloé and Alya pack up Nino’s desk, and Adrien packs up Nino’s bookcase. Marinette packs up the things on Nino’s floor after she finishes folding up his blankets and pillows on the bed. 

While the gang does these things, Nino goes into Chris’s room to collect Chris’s valuables and important things. It’s a slow-going process given he keeps crying, but soon he comes back to the gang with a box of Chris’s electronics, stuffed animals, his shoes, and a few books. 

Seeing the state he’s in with his return, Félix and Luka finish with Nino’s clothes quickly and offer to go pack up Chris’s clothes, too. Nino nods, trying to stop his tears, and they leave to pack up Chris’s clothes. Chloé and Marinette hesitantly follow Félix and Luka, set on getting together the rest of Chris’s books and school things instead of trying to comfort Nino when Alya and Adrien would do better. Alya and Adrien hang back with Nino as the others get to work in Chris’s room.

Once Adrien has Nino in a hug with Nino’s hat set on top of one of the open and full boxes, Alya heads for the bathroom to get a warm, wet washcloth and a towel. When she returns, her and Adrien quietly talk with Nino, consoling him as Alya wipes his face gently. 

When the rest of the gang has finished in Chris’s room, Alya and Adrien are still comforting Nino quietly, so the others start carefully and silently moving Chris and Nino’s things into the van outside. 

After about half the boxes have been taken to the van, Nino is feeling a bit better and has stopped crying. Alya and Adrien help the others with the remainder of the boxes while Nino writes a note for his parents, explaining that he’s left with his and Chris’s things, but that he’ll continue to handle Chris’s care in their place. 

When the gang has finished moving Nino and Chris’s boxes, they get into the van. Nino leaves his note on the cold weed pipes sat between his parents on the couch and he follows the gang outside.

Félix offers to drive, and he takes everyone but Nino home before he and Nino head back to Félix’s home. They take only the most essential boxes inside before Félix insists Nino shower and change into new clothes to sleep in.

Tired, Nino complies. 

While Nino showers, Félix quickly makes the bed in Nino’s new room with Nino’s pillows and stuffed animals, and he layers Nino’s regular blankets atop the guest bed’s blankets. While Nino finishes his shower and gets dressed, Félix brings in the rest of Nino’s boxes, setting the ones with Chris’s things to one side of the closet. 

When Nino gets out of the bathroom in his faded Spiderman pajamas, Félix shows him where Chris’s things are and he bids him goodnight.

The gang gets to bed late that night, and they rest well, tired from the day’s conversations and the past week’s events. 

~*~

Tuesday evening, the gang is at the school’s to find out what they can about the missing previous group. They have the records from 1993 to 1997 dug out from the archives at the school, as Amelie gave those as the years that she and Émilie were in high school.

In the library with Marinette, Chloé, and Luka, Alya and Adrien go through old copies of the CCHS Newspaper for all four years (including the July and August issues that Nino, Félix, and Chloé went through during Max’s case) in search of mention of, pictures of, or even something written by the old gang. They know Tomoe Tsurugi, Andre Bourgeois, Audrey Queen, and Émilie Agreste—the then Émilie Graham de Vanily—were part of this old mystery solving group, so they look for these names and the name of the old group. In addition to these four named members, they look for mentions and pictures of Gabi, who had been in the gang and who had been Émilie’s boyfriend at around the same time as the initial article clipping from Lady E.

While Alya and Adrien look through these newspapers, Marinette and Chloé look through the old yearbooks and Luka looks through the posters, flyers, photos, and awards that had been posted in the school’s award cabinets and around the school from 1993 through 1997. 

Félix and Nino, having split off from the others, have broken into the school’s records room to see if they can find any of the old gang’s information.

After a while of searching, Alya and Adrien find that all of the articles written by known members of the old gang or written about or including photos of the old gang have been ruined. What hasn’t been altogether cut from the school’s copies that’s about or relating to the old gang has been blacked out, just like names of the old members in the clipping from Lady E. Alya and Adrien go over to the others to talk with Chloé briefly about this, confirming that the same had been true of the articles in the Crystal Cove city library, and then Adrien messages the group chat so Nino and Félix will be on the same page with knowing that the articles are a dead end. Still, after the message has been sent, Alya and Adrien return to the articles to collect those blacked out. They start reading through them all again, looking for any possible clues about the remaining members of the old gang or other important information related to them.

Before and while Alya and Adrien do this, Marinette and Chloé go through the four yearbooks for the years the gang—or, at the very least, Émilie—had been attending Crystal Cove High. They carefully examine each page for mention of the gang or the names of the other members on the newspaper clipping Lady E gave them with the Max case, but beneath any pictures of each of the seven visible members from Lady E’s clipping, the names have been blacked out. Beneath group photos where individual members are found in groups without the rest of the old gang, the list of names have been cut out. In every single photo depicting the old Mystery Incorporated, the missing eighth figure from before has been cut out and so have everyone’s names. On random other pages, figures have been cut out—presumably, Marinette and Chloé think, photos of the missing eighth member.

Despite this, Marinette and Chloé are able to learn a few things. From the clipping from Lady E, there had been eight members from left to right: an unidentified tall boy in sweatpants and a purple-and-gold bomber jacket; an unidentified short girl with a black braid and a blue cardigan; a tall girl in a cheerleader outfit, who had been identified as Audrey Queen; a tall, pudgy boy in a purple-and-gold bomber jacket with curly brown hair who had been identified as Andre Bourgeois; a boy with round, gold-rimmed glasses and blond hair, identified as Émilie’s old boyfriend, Gabi; Émilie herself; a short girl with dark glasses and a shinai, identified as Tomoe Tsurugi; and the missing eighth member in nondescript black boots. 

In their search through the yearbooks, Marinette and Chloé learn that the boy on the far left in the bomber jacket quit the soccer team twenty-two years ago, while Andre Bourgeois played all four years. Alya had talked about a case happening twenty-three years ago involving Andre Bourgeois and Audrey Queen, and the case had happened during the old gang’s junior year. The boy on the far left of Lady E’s clipping had quit just the year before this case, in Émilie’s sophomore year. 

Marinette and Chloé also learn that there had been three students vying for the top student spot—in the same strange fortnight competition Félix and Kagami are always engaged in, Chloé explains with an eyeroll. The students had been Amelie Graham de Vanily, Tomoe Tsurugi, and Gabi Grassette: Amelie winning with twenty-four spots, Tomoe and Gabi tying at second place with twenty-three, and Émilie having achieved the remaining two spots. They also learn that—who they assume is the missing eighth member, since they’re cut out entirely along with their and Tomoe’s names, had competed with Tomoe Tsurugi in fencing competitions with other towns. The girl who had been between Audrey and the ex-soccer player, the one with the black braid in a blue cardigan, had won many science competitions and had participated in bake sales raising money for the school and charities. Gabi had won a scholarship to Darrow University but had ultimately turned it down to pursue a business degree at a more prestigious university. Audrey had participated in a talent show using her history as a gymnast and cheerleader to achieve feats that had her winning top scores from all of the judges. On career day, Gabi had taken a picture with his father, the mayor of Crystal Cove at the time. The other members of the old gang didn’t have pictures with their parents, though a few pictures were definitely cut out. 

Luka’s discoveries align with much of Marinette and Chloé’s, though he also finds that the two soccer players of the group had been declared MVPs of the team. The girl in the blue cardigan, Émilie, and the mystery eighth person had been on the event planning committee for the school, organizing the posters, flyers, and being in the photos the committee took.

Back at the newspapers, Alya and Adrien make the connection that the ex-soccer player had gotten in a career-ending car accident in his sophomore year that had had him in the hospital and physical therapy for months. 

In the records room, Nino and Félix mainly document what they can of the known members’ information. They collect Gabi’s identifying information, making note of his father, Mayor Grassette, and his mother, whose name and contact information have merely been crossed out (not, say, cut out or blacked out, as they’ve become accustomed to with anything mentioning the old gang). Nino sends a text message to Alya to dig into Gabi’s mother at some point, and then they proceed with finding Émilie’s information, documenting that as well. Then they go through the rest of the class of 1997’s records, documenting each student’s name and most important information, but they notice that Tomoe, Audrey, and Andre’s information is missing. Unable to search for the other members’ information without their names, Nino and Félix come to a dead end. 

Nino lets the rest of the gang know this over text, and Marinette tells them to come back to the library, where they’ll all reconvene to try and piece together what they have in one place.

When Nino and Félix come back, Alya and Adrien head over to Marinette, Chloé, and Luka’s table with the newspapers they deemed important to figuring out the old gang. 

Once everyone has sat, Marinette pulls out a large sheet of paper. On it are eight figures that she drew herself over the weekend. The figures are presented in the same order and wear the same outfits as they did in the clipping Lady E shared with them. 

Marinette pulls out a pencil, leaning over the table. “We’re going to write down everything we know about these kids, then the gang, and then we’ll figure out from there what we need to know next,” she says. “First, let’s start with information on the ex-soccer player.”

“Should we name them?” Adrien asks, putting his chin in one hand. 

Marinette purses her lips, thinking on it briefly. “Sure, alright. Any name suggestions for the ex-soccer player?”

“Mm, Todd,” Chloé says, pulling out a roll of chocolate-covered mini donuts. She opens the package and says, “He seems like his name starts with a T.”

“How about Leo?” Nino asks, grabbing a bag of chips from the bag at his feet.

“Maybe Tony?” Luka asks.

“I’ll put down Tony,” Marinette says, writing the name above the ex-soccer player. “So, what do we know about Tony?”

“He played soccer here for two years before he got in a car accident,” Alya says, picking at a muffin in front of her. “The injuries from it had him in the hospital and physical therapy for months, and afterwards, he quit soccer.”

Marinette quietly writes this down.

“He and Andre both were MVPs on the team,” Luka adds.

Marinette nods, though she says, “Let’s just focus on one person at a time—it might go smoother that way.”

Luka nods, leaning back in his chair with a Payday candy bar. 

“Anything else?” Marinette asks.

There’s a chorus of ‘no’s and variations of it, and they move onto the girl in the cardigan with the braid beside the boy they’ve dubbed Tony.

“Name suggestions for braid girl?” Marinette asks.

Alya hums. “Mei, maybe?”

Chloé nods after swallowing one of her mini donuts. “I like that one.”

Félix makes a noise of agreement. 

None of the others object, so Marinette writes the name down. “What do we know about her?”

“She won a bunch of science competitions and participated in a lot of bake sales,” Chloé says, eating another donut.

“She was also on the event planning committee with the school,” Luka adds. 

“She seemed to be dating Tony,” Alya says, “from what I saw of the pictures with them. Oh—do we know if the gang went to prom?”

Marinette nods, grinning. “Yeah—Gabi and Émilie won, just ahead of Audrey and Andre.”

Chloé rolls her eyes. “Mayor’s kid.”

Adrien frowns. “I probably wouldn’t win, Chlo.”

Chloé shrugs. “Who knows what’ll happen in the next two years?”

“Anything else for Mei?” Marinette asks, drawing the conversation back to the paper on the table.

Another chorus of ‘no’s and variations answers her, and she moves on to Audrey. 

“How about Audrey?”

“She won the 1996 talent show using her skills from gymnastics and cheerleading,” Chloé says, sounding almost bored. 

Marinette writes this down and waits through a beat of silence. “Nothing else?”

Everyone shakes their heads, and she moves on to Andre.

“How about Andre?” she asks.

“Named MVP of the soccer team,” Luka says, finishing off his candy bar.

“Played all four years, dated Audrey,” Alya adds. 

“Nothing from us,” Félix says with a shrug.

Marinette nods, and she moves on to Gabi. “How about for Gabi?”

“His dad was Mayor Grassette,” Nino says, eating his chips. “Oh, and his mom’s name—his mom’s name was crossed out, but not blacked or cut out.”

Marinette nods, writing this down.

“He got 23 spots in that dumb fortnight thing for the class of 1997,” Chloé says, finishing off her donuts. “Oh, and he turned down scholarship to Darrow University to go for Business at a different uni.”

“Nothing new in the newspapers,” Alya says, shrugging.

Marinette nods and moves on to Émilie. “How about Émilie, then? What do we know about her?”

“She was on the event planning committee with Mei,” Luka answers.

“She won two of those fortnight spots for the class of 1997,” Chloé adds.

Félix nods. “She and my mother didn’t live with their parents—they lived with a cousin of theirs while their parents traveled around the world.”

“Nothing in the newspapers on her,” Adrien says, frowning. 

Marinette adds this information to the spot above her drawing of the then-Émilie Graham de Vanily. She moves on to Tomoe. “How about Tomoe?”

“She traveled for fencing competitions with other towns,” Chloé answers, “and she won twenty-three spots in that fortnight competition, tying with Gabi.”

“Nothing from the newspapers,” Alya says.

Luka nods. “Same with the yearbooks.”

Marinette nods and moves onto the mystery person. “What should we name the eighth person?”

“How about Anon, for anonymous?” Félix suggests. 

Nobody objects to this, so Marinette writes the name down below the eighth person’s boots, which are the only thing drawn for them. “Any information on them, yet?”

“We couldn’t find anything concrete in the articles,” Alya says, “but I’ve been wondering if they could be Lady E, and she cut the information on this person’s identity to keep us from finding her?”

“Maybe she knows someone would recognize Anon,” Luka suggests, frowning, “and that’s why they were cut out? Everyone else is left behind, and while we know five of the eight members, Lady E couldn’t have known we would have remembered who they were or that Amelie would recognize Gabi.”

“Or Anon could be someone that my mother would definitely recognize, or someone we would know for certain,” Félix muses. 

Nino shrugs. “Or maybe they’re like Kagami, and their clothes identify them?”

Félix nods. “Kagami does wear a good deal with her name on it, even in just the hems.”

Chloé raises a very pointed brow at Félix. “You’d have to be awfully close to see a name on a hem.”

He shoots her a dry look. “Not very close. Get your mind off of her and I—our relationship doesn’t relate to the case.”

Chloé averts her gaze innocently. “I didn’t bring it up—I was merely curious on why you worded it like that.” She doesn’t mention her growing curiosity with him quickly shooting her thought down or how he did so.

Félix glares at her, crossing his arms, but he’s kept from responding by Marinette returning things to the task at hand.

“Okay, going back to what we’re doing,” Marinettte says, “do we have anything else on the mystery eighth person? Theories can wait til we’re in the car or something.”

Chloé shrugs. “Anon probably was the one who went to those fencing competitions with Tomoe.”

“We couldn’t find much in the records room to clue us in to their identity,” Nino says. “It was hard, not knowing who to look for or what could be missing.”

Marinette nods.

“All I could find that could be linked to the mystery person was that they might have been on the event planning committee,” Luka says, stretching out in his chair. “Someone or many someones kept getting cut out of photos with the committee.” 

Marinette writes this down, and she stands upright again, setting her hands on her hips. “Well, that’s that for the individuals—should we try and piece together what we can of their cases from Alya’s blog?”

Before anyone can answer her, the power in the library—and the school around them—shuts off, swallowing them up in darkness.

Notes:

heehee :) sooooooo . couple of different Important Conversations, some Moving Out and Moving In, and Lots and Lots of hints dropped about the old gang’s members :) have any theories changed on who the old gang’s members were? do you have any more theories on who lady e is, or do you feel the same as before? how do you feel about the “progress”/progress on the émilie case?

anyways heehee 🤭 it was so exciting reading your guys’ reactions to chapter twenty-four and twenty-five 🤭🥰 i hope you guys liked this chapter and are excited for chapter twenty-seven!!! 🥰🥰

Chapter 27: chapter twenty-seven

Summary:

The gang realizes this might not be a normal power outage or tripping of the breakers, and they investigate.

Notes:

trigger warning for (sort of passive) suicidal ideations and Very low self-esteem (these things for this character will be addressed dw but moreso in a few chapters)

i’ll put a ⚠️ emoji at the start of the sections (only two) where these warnings apply and then another ⚠️ emoji at the ends if you’d like to skip!! i’ll put a brief summary of what occurs in the scene in the notes at the end of the chapter (summary marked with a ⚠️ emoji)

After the darkness swallows them up, there’s a beat of heavy silence before anyone moves. 

Félix, Alya, and Luka turn on their flashlights, with Alya and Félix scanning the library around them and Luka holding his light over Marinette. Marinette quickly folds up the paper on the information about the old gang, her shoulders tense as she quickly assesses the situation. 

Nino is at the backpacks at his feet, zipping them up quickly. He slings one over his shoulders and stands, pulling the other two onto the table.

Adrien and Chloé are confused and surprised with the sudden darkness, but sensing the others’ apprehension, they stand. Chloé hesitantly turns her flashlight on.

“Just a power outage, right?” Adrien asks, voice in a hesitant whisper. 

“Could be,” Alya answers softly. “But it could also be something else. Last few times we were in a library and the power shut off unexpectedly, someone attacked us or stole what we’d had against them.”

“Plus,” Félix adds, “if you look out the window, other buildings also on the school’s power grid still have power. The school’s systems are pretty well up to date, too, so faulty wiring is unlikely.”

“Why do you know what power grid we’re on?” Chloé asks, shining her flashlight over at Félix with a raised brow.

Félix waves her light away. “I once tried to find out how many buildings I’d have to shut down to get out of going to school.” 

Nino turns to Félix, bewildered at the answer. 

Marinette shakes her head and she reaches across the table for one of the backpacks, zipping the now-folded paper into one of the side pockets. “We’ll talk about that information later. We’ve got two more backpacks, though, and we should split up and investigate.”

Luka turns off his flashlight, nodding, and he and Adrien grab the remaining two backpacks from the table. Marinette takes four walkie talkies and four flashlights from the backpack Adrien wears, and she offers to be the one going alone when they split up.

No one objects, and Félix and Adrien get partnered up, Alya and Chloé get partnered up, and Nino and Luka get partnered up. Each pairing and Marinette have a single flashlight and walkie talkie, and they split up to canvas the library for intruders. If they don’t find anything, they’ll proceed to the library entrance and work down to the basement, where the others will look for clues while Marinette, Alya, and Félix will check on the wiring and attempt to turn the power back on. 

For now, though, they search the library.

Adrien and Félix search the back end, where the front desk and several tables are arrayed between the bookcases that line either side of the library. Being without much to investigate, they keep watch after making sure no one is behind the front desk or under any of the other tables. In their line of sight is Marinette, moving between the bookcases either side of the library’s entrance before she searches the ones on either side of the library as a whole. Upstairs, Alya and Chloé search one balcony filled with bookcases and tables, and Luka and Nino search the balcony across the way. 

Fifteen minutes into the search, Marinette sighs, tucked behind the bookcases and walking down each aisle from the side facing the wall, as she figures that’s the most likely place for an attacker to hide in her area. She’s finished with the right side of the library (right side from the front desk, facing the entrance, that is) and the right side of the entrance, and she now works on the left side of the entrance, quite bored with the work. The last check-in with the others was only a few moments before, with nothing having been found out of the ordinary from any of the groups. 

As she walks down and back up another aisle, she purses her lips, thinking back over the situation. 

Félix had said it was odd for the school to be the only one in the power grid to be without power, and, while he had been right, maybe a mouse or a rat had chewed through the wires at only the school. That being said, it was also likely—given their history with mysteries and getting attacked in libraries—that someone was angry at them for digging into a case. Still, the only case the gang had been working on tonight was that of the old gang, and only Lady E seemed to know anything about it, but she had given them some helpful information to begin with.

It seemed unimportant to Marinette that, while Lady E had given them some information, the gang had deliberately sought out any information Lady E hadn’t told them. They were mystery solvers—that’s what they did. Plus, they didn’t quite trust Lady E. Not fully, anyways. Still, perhaps Lady E was (unrightfully, in Marinette’s opinion) angry. 

Marinette finishes with the bookcases on the left side of the entrance, looks through the small alcove in the corner where another table and some chairs sit, and she heads for the next and last portion of her section, which is the left side of the library from the front desk facing the entrance. 

She heads down the first aisle, scanning the floor and shelves with her flashlight carefully. She comes to the end of the aisle, waves to Adrien and Félix, and she turns back down the same aisle with another sigh. Halfway down the aisle, there’s a small noise on the other side of the bookcase bordering the alcove, and Marinette turns, brows drawn together. 

There’s a sudden shifting and groaning as the bookcase and the books in it lean towards her. 

Marinette’s eyes widen and she backs up quickly, just in time for the bookcase to come crashing down above her. As it hits the bookcase on her other side, beginning to topple that one over, she crouches low to the ground. She puts her arms over and around her head and she scrunches her eyes shut tight.

Amidst the crashing of books onto and around her, there’s shouting as Félix and Adrien rush over and the others in the balconies run for the stairs to the main floor where Marinette is trapped. 

All Marinette can do between the rapid pounding of her heart and the sudden gasping breaths ripping from her lungs is press closer and closer to the ground as the second bookcase topples, dropping the first lower as the second moves to topple a third. She keeps her arms rigid over her head and she squeezes her eyes shut as the last of the books from the first bookcase drop down and around her. 

It’s a few more minutes before the sound of books falling stops, and in its place there’s some grunting before the three bookcases are righted, though books still cover Marinette and the next aisle over almost entirely. Félix, Luka, and Chloé separate from the rest of the gang digging a rigid Marinette from beneath the books, and they scan for clues nearby and check the still-locked doors of the library’s entrance to make sure nothing is amiss. When they return, Alya has a trembling Marinette in her arms and Nino and Adrien are trying to put some of the books back on the righted shelves.

While Luka and Chloé go to help Nino and Adrien, Félix crouches down beside Alya and Marinette, biting his lip in uncertainty. He reaches out a hand hesitantly towards Marinette, as if to comfort her, but he draws it back after a moment. 

“The doors were still locked and we didn’t find any sign of someone near the first bookcase,” he says quietly, watching Marinette’s shoulders shake. His brows draw together over his eyes. Marinette had always—aside from when Alya had been taken in the case with Max—seemed invincible. She seemed unafraid of anything but losing other people. The thought that she—the firm stare, the smart, calculating, violent, and teasing Marinette—was losing her cool now, it… it made Félix soften slightly.

Alya looks over at him carefully, breaking him from his thoughts. “Someone else could have a key.”

Félix nods slowly. “That’s true.” He glances to Alya and back at Marinette again. “Is she… in shock?”

Alya shrugs. “She’s really afraid of being trapped in small, dark spaces.”

“What about her trap in the caverns with Fruitmeir?” Félix asks softly. 

“Trapped by other people.”

Félix bites his lip. “Some extracurricular she’s in, then?” he attempts to joke. He knows it’ll fall flat before he’s even finished saying it, but he can’t take it back. Still, he wants to explain that he understands.

Alya shrugs again, looking away now. 

Félix gets the sense that she’s done with the conversation. Even so, he says, “I suppose the same could be said for me—I’m claustrophobic to a degree myself, but… it must be a testament to her bravery that she still does stuff like this despite the risks, you know.”

His explanation of his understanding of the situation and Marinette feels flat and unusual even to him.

Alya nods absently, turning to press a kiss the top of Marinette’s head. 

After a moment, Félix stands unsteadily. He moves to help the others with the books, lips and insides twisting with anxiety. He feels—and has felt—off-kilter around Alya since their conversation in Potrillo’s yard, since she told him that she wouldn’t share her life with someone who won’t share his with hers and who only cares about her for someone else’s sake. (When he says it like that, he feels the argument is irrefutable. Still, there’s an ache in him to remain unperceived and uncared for, to remain fully separated to a large enough degree from the others that he is never actually known. That ache doesn’t allow him to be shaken by a seemingly irrefutable argument.) He wants to make things right, but it feels impossible to do so while remaining fully aloof and separate from the others. (Alya would say that’s the point.)

When Marinette has calmed down for the most part from being trapped, she and Alya stand to go help, too, and for a while longer, the gang puts back the books from the first and second shelves. They’ve started on the third shelf when there’s a crash out in the hall outside the library.

The gang runs for the library doors with their flashlights and walkie talkies, and they stumble to a stop at the unlocked, open doors to the hall.

Marinette is the first to speak, staring at the three branches of the hall. She knows vaguely what time it is. It’s far too late to stick together when they need someone keeping watch at the library and three groups searching the rest of the school. “We should split up.” 

Her voice is thin and it warbles slightly. Each of her breaths starts to come out shaking. If she gets trapped—if she gets caught in someone’s web that isn’t hers—who’s to say what could happen? While she’s always been ready to sacrifice herself if she feels it’s for the best of everyone and she doesn’t have a more important job, the second she knows she’s trapped and unable to escape to help her friends, the fear closes up her throat. Being the sacrificial lamb is fine, but on her terms, when she knows what she’s walking into. When she knows who could die. (When it’s only her or whoever has trapped her.)

This train of thought has her slipping one hand towards one of her knives as she clenches her jaw.

“Four groups,” Marinette continues. “One staying at the library, three others searching the rest of the school.” 

“Three groups,” Luka says firmly, glancing over at Marinette. “We’ll all search the school and lock the library behind us.”

“And no one goes alone this time,” Alya adds softly, staring, as the others are, out into the chilly darkness of the hallway. 

Marinette swallows thickly, but she nods. The rest of the school seems dangerous in the eerie silence that comes with the lack of power in the building.

“Adrien and Chloé with Luka, then,” Nino says, twisting his hat on his head as he takes a hesitant step towards the open doors. “Alya with me, and Marinette with Félix?”

“Sounds good,” Alya and Luka both reply.

Marinette only looks at Félix, steeling herself.

The groups file out into the three directions that the hallway separates into: Nino and Alya head to the left, towards the offices and the main freshman and sophomore classes; Marinette and Félix go straight ahead, to the gym, the locker rooms, and the main junior classes, and Luka, Adrien, and Chloé go to the right, to the main senior classes, the extracurriculars, and the specialized classes.

Marinette and Félix go to the gym first, exploring the first floor and the balcony wrapping around the inside of the building where another running track resides. In this time, Marinette slowly relaxes from her fears and she grows more confident, letting her hand stray from where she has her knife tonight to swing lightly by her side. Félix notices this, but he doesn’t say anything, still on high alert himself.

Neither of them find anything in any of the offices adjacent to the gym, behind the bleachers, or even in the large rolling baskets of gym equipment. They then head for the locker rooms, where Félix insists that they should go through each together.

Marinette huffs, seemingly as confident as she was at the start of the evening. She glares at Félix. “I can handle myself for a single room, I think.”

Félix frowns, shifting on his feet. “But—”

Marinette reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut. “I’ve been doing this stuff for years—I think I can handle myself.” She opens her eyes and shakes her head. With the way he’s looking at her, it’s like he doubts her. In efforts to stomp down the doubt that swells up her own throat in seeing this, she grits her teeth. “I’d even go so far as to say I could handle myself better than even you could handle yourself,” she says, giving the words a bit of venom.

Félix, undeterred, only purses his lips. “Fine, then you should keep an eye on me to make sure I can handle myself.”

Marinette groans. “Ugh.” She puts her hands on her hips, lips forming a snarl. She hates doubting herself about the few things she can do—it brings back thoughts of her of her parents and how much they doubt her. Why does he have to be so difficult! “Just let me go in alone! I’m not going to—”

“Why can’t you just let me keep an eye on you?” he interrupts, voice growing louder as his brows draw together. 

“Because I don’t need it!” she shouts, hands flying from her hips into the air.

Félix takes a breath, quieting and calming down. “Can you understand why I’d want to? Why it might not be necessity, but it would…”

She grimaces when he doesn’t finish his sentence. “It would what? Make you feel better?”

Félix stares at her, gaze unreadable. “Yes. It would.”

Marinette stares back at him flatly. “All the more reason not to. Like I’ve said before—I don’t like it when you get all mushy with me.”

“Why?” Félix asks. He shoves down his own questions for himself about why he’s doing this and why he’s so insistent, why he does care. He focuses his gaze on her and keeps it steady. “Why can’t I be ‘mushy’?”

“Because everyone else is,” Marinette answers, quieting. She still frowns. “I don’t need you to act like Alya or Nino or Luka, trying to keep me from harm, and I don’t need you to act like my parents, handling me like I’m glass and will break at any moment because apparently I’m not capable of doing the same stuff I’ve been doing for years.”

“I’m not acting like them,” Félix says. His voice feels hollow even to him. (He doesn’t know if what he’s said is the truth.)

Marinette’s lips flatten out into a thin line. “Adrien is too… gentle to treat me like how I want you to treat me. Chloé… well, I don’t think she even cares about me. I know you care to some degree, but you can’t let it get mushy, because I need you to also respect me and trust that I can handle myself, like you made me think you did when you first joined. Remember back at Fruitmeir’s, dropping me down into the cave? That wasn’t mushy—that felt like respect and trust.”

Félix’s posture draws upright, and he takes half a step back, as if to distance himself. 

⚠️ (start)

Marinette ignores this. “I just—if push comes to shove, Alya, Nino, Luka, and Adrien won’t leave me behind for the better of everyone else. They won’t let me stay behind in the midst of danger if that’s what needs to happen—they won’t let me split off and be the diversion so they can get to safety. Chloé—she doesn’t care enough, I think. Or she does, and too much, and she’ll do whatever Adrien asks. I—you, Félix, you’re supposed to be smarter. I need you to trust me and respect me and know that if anything has to happen, I’m the one who gets sacrificed. I have nothing to lose, I have nothing I have to keep alive for—the others do.”

When she takes a deep breath, preparing to continue, Félix closes his eyes. As he shifts on his feet, he thinks he can feel his bones scraping and groaning against one another within him. “What about them?” he asks. “Don’t you stand to lose them? Aren’t they enough to keep alive for?”

He ignores that she says he’s supposed to be smarter and not care too much about her. (He agrees, in a way, anyhow—he was never supposed to care about them at all. Still, it’s too much for him to say anything about it.)

“I meant,” Marinette says softly, “that they have Ella, Etta, Chris, Juleka, Émilie, and you and Chloé to live for. You and Chloé have Adrien and your mom, too. You have all that to lose—all that to keep alive for. I don’t.”

He doesn’t think she’s getting it. “No—you have all of us to lose. All of us to keep alive for.”

Marinette shakes her head, laughing thinly. “Yeah—yeah, I do, but—but if anyone has to be sacrificed, it should be me. I’m the most equipped to survive, the one with the least to lose, the one who has the least waiting for them on the other side of things. I have to be sacrificed, and you’re the only one I can trust out of all of them to know that and to help me despite what Adrien and the others want.” She pauses, looking at him pleadingly. “You—you—I thought you’d be smart enough to use your head before your heart.”

Félix feels something inside him cracking wide open. It yawns, gaping at her from his chest. Its eyes are tired. Félix’s eyes are tired. “The others are smart to know what they’re unwilling to sacrifice,” he says softly. “I’m smart enough to know what shouldn’t be sacrificed.”

Marinette shakes her head, expression torn. “No—you’re wrong. Not about being smart or them being smart, but—I’m the one to sacrifice. I should be the only one to be at risk. No one else.”

⚠️ (end)

Félix frowns. “Well, I’m sorry.”

Hope has her voice trembling. Does he understand? “For?”

He looks down at his feet, closes his eyes, opens them again. His fingers twitch at his sides. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to sacrifice you. I’m not going to not be ‘mushy’ and pretend you don’t matter. I’m not going to not fight to find another option that has you not at risk of being hurt, or being killed, and I’m sorry if any of my past actions or words have implied I could or would sacrifice you.”

That yawning, gaping part of him shudders and starts to close. He’s admitted it—to some degree—that he cares. Or, well—that he won’t… not care, if that means the same. He wants to tell himself it doesn’t, that there’s a difference and a distinction to be made. (Perhaps—he cares, there is certainty, there is the presence already that he cares. He won’t not care—he won’t be apathetic, and he won’t… hate, but… Forget it—perhaps there was no difference besides him refusing to outright say it.) 

Marinette’s shoulders slump and her gaze falls to the floor. “I’m going into the locker room alone. I’ve done it for years, and tonight isn’t any different. You can follow me or not. Just—well. I don’t know.” 

She turns away quickly from Félix, head down, and she pushes into the girl’s locker room. 

As the door swings shut behind her, Félix doesn’t move from his spot in the hall. His eyes flutter closed and he lets himself take a few steps to the wall between the locker room doors, where he leans against it tiredly. He lets his shoulders slump and he lets out a shaky sigh.

I said I didn’t care, he thinks to himself. I’ve got to get my priorities in order. The last part is half-hearted, an admittance he doesn’t think he’ll follow through on in the sense his past self might have wanted. 

Instead of waiting there a moment to reevaluate his priorities, he lets himself give Marinette the space of going through the girl’s locker room herself. Stepping back from the wall with a sigh, he decides to give himself the time to get his emotional walls back in place in searching the boy’s locker room. 

In the girl’s locker room, Marinette searches the few aisles of lockers first, looking for open or suspicious ones. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, she turns to the sinks, setting aside her phone with its flashlight to put her hands on the edge of the sink’s counter. Looking down into the sink, she lets her body slump forward.

⚠️ (start)

I have to be the one to be sacrificed, she thinks heavily. It’s not a matter of suicidal behavior, she thinks—just an acknowledgement of the stakes and how she makes the most sense as the one to risk it all. That’s why she confronts the sheriff herself, why she’s fine getting cut and burned and shot by the criminals they go after, why she’s alright being the first to volunteer to stay behind in the cases where they need to keep an eye on the criminals. 

Luka stays behind with her in the thought that they shouldn’t be alone with criminals or monsters, whichever the culprit may be, but Marinette has never liked this system. She believes—always has and always will—that Luka has to stay alive and stay safe for Juleka, because, while Nino and Alya would care for her in Luka’s absence, Juleka needed her brother.

Marinette isn’t needed by anyone but the gang, but she believes that they could move on and go forward without her. After all, she isn’t the most necessary part of the team: she can’t drive, like Nino, to help them escape or to keep them dry in wet environments, and she can’t hack into systems or research cases and suspects like Alya, and Luka can do anything she does with traps and sewing in addition to being a science and Chemistry whiz, right, so surely, she’s the one who can be sacrificed? She’s the one who won’t matter beyond a case, but even then, she thinks, she doesn’t matter so much as to sacrifice someone else. With the additions of Adrien, Chloé, and Félix, the gang has extra resources, with the three newer members’ financial resources, their smarts, Félix’s lock-picking and defensive driving, Chloé’s savviness with anything business- and politics-related, and Adrien’s empathy and perceptiveness. Marinette doesn’t have any of that, and she certainly doesn’t have anything to contribute that no one else could do just as well.

Really, Marinette sees no real value to her that warrants she not be sacrificed over anyone else. She might master a few trades, but the rest of the gang can often do better traps, put themselves in less danger, and have more resources anyways without her. 

It makes sense that she be sacrificed—so why can’t anyone else see it?

Marinette lets out a shaky breath, letting go of the sink’s counter, and she reaches over to turn the cold water on. Leaning closer to the sink, she lets her hands tremble under the cold water for a few moments. She closes her eyes.

She’s not suicidal, she thinks. She’s practical. Ruthless, if you must: seeing the bright, almost burning, clear line between where things are and where things must be, and she knows what has to be done. She does what has to be done. She sacrifices herself for the betterment of the team when it’s necessary, and she goes at things alone when they’re dangerous and risky, and she doesn’t care for if the others love her and don’t want to sacrifice her. She loves them, and that is what drives her to those sacrifices, and that is what sends her down that burning line between what is and what must be to keep them safe. 

This is how Marinette Dupain-Cheng loves: in sacrifices, and in doing everything to keep those around her safe. It doesn’t matter to her if she’s seen as ruthless, callous, careless—if she keeps her friends safe by cutting the sheriff or another to the core to get information, if she keeps her friends safe by interrogating people about their loved ones’ potential criminal behavior, if she keeps her friends safe in sacrificing herself—none of it matters to her if it keeps them safe.

None of it matters, you see? Nothing—not even herself—matters in the face of that perfect ache to keep her friends safe.

Steeling herself in this, Marinette cups her hands and brings the cold water to her face, bathing her features in icy clarity, and she pulls her hands from her face with a shaky breath, taking more water in her cupped palms to repeat the process. She does this until her breaths no longer come out wavering and her hands no longer tremble. 

⚠️ (end)

When she finally pulls back from the sink, she grabs a few paper towels from the dispenser and she pats her face until it’s only damp, at which point she lets it air dry. She then turns to throw the paper towels in the trash can by the sinks, but a shadowed figure greets her a few feet away. 

Marinette freezes, and she blinks, and the figure is gone. She picks up her phone with its flashlight and she turns back, swinging the light over the span of the floor of the bathroom, and she takes a few steps towards the small room of stalls for the toilets and showers. She gets inside the small room and she starts on one length of the room, knocking on each door and checking beneath and through the cracks of each stall for the shadowed figure.

She pushes down the strange feeling that she’s invading someone’s privacy with the fact that no one should be in here this late, and she finishes a few stalls, confirming them empty.

As she gets to the end of one wall, there’s a screech and a rush of shiny plastic being pushed to one side behind Marinette. She turns sharply, hand going to her waist, where she’s keeping a knife tonight.

A person steps from the shadows of one of the showers, wrapped in a dark towel with a lighter towel wrapped around their hair on their head. A damp, limp curl of hair that hadn’t been caught up in the towel on their head dangles before the person’s eyes. They push the curl behind one ear with a dainty hand sporting long acrylic nails that remind Marinette of Chloé’s nails and the ones Alya sometimes gets when she has the money.

When the person speaks, Marinette tilts her flashlight up so she can see their face. Lila Rossi. “Oh, hi, Marinette,” Lila says, smiling pleasantly. Something about it makes Marinette frown.

“What are you doing here?” Marinette asks, shifting on her feet. “It’s long after dark.”

Lila only smiles wider, tilting her head. “I’m just using the showers—they haven’t turned the water on in my house, yet.”

Marinette doesn’t move to nod like she feels she should. For anyone else, she might actually nod—giving them the benefit of the doubt, believing them. “How’d you get a key?”

Lila shrugs, frowning sweetly. “I just asked the janitor. He understood my situation and he was very kind to lend me the key so long as I give it back in the morning and lock up after myself, you know. Why are you here?”

Marinette grits her teeth. “My friends and I were given a copy of the keys two years ago so we could use the library after school hours.”

“For your mystery solving?” Lila asks, tilting her head to the other side. She nods solemnly, though Marinette feels the action hides something far less neutral. “How understanding of them—so kind of them to help your efforts!” 

“Yeah,” Marinette says flatly. 

“Well,” Lila says, smiling pleasantly once more, “I’m sorry to have scared you, but I really should be on my way. So nice to see you!”

Marinette shrinks a little and frowns. “It was silly to be scared,” she says, shaking her head. She tries to be graceful, like the others have encouraged her to be with Lila. After all—she’s apologized, said it was nice to see Marinette. The Alya, Nino, and Luka in her head tell her this is promising. “Get home safe. We were looking for an intruder—someone unlocked the library doors and attacked us, so you should be careful.”

Lila pouts, and Marinette wants to take back her words. “Aww, thank you, Marinette. So kind of you! Well, I’ll be careful, if you really want me to be. Thank you!”

Marinette grimaces, but she turns aside, watching Lila leave through her peripherals. 

After searching the rest of the locker room and finding nothing, she exits, waiting only a short while before Félix comes out of the boy’s locker room.

“Find anything?” she asks, scrolling on her phone.

Félix shakes his head. “Nope. You?”

Marinette shrugs. “Just Lila, who apparently got a key from George, the janitor, and permission to use the locker room to clean up. I guess they don’t have water in her house, yet.”

Félix nods. “Alright, well, that’s good to know. Think she…?”

Marinette purses her lips. “Only thing I’m sure of is that we should meet up with the rest of the gang soon.”

“Want to check in with them and see about how much longer we’ll be?” he asks.

She shrugs but takes the offered walkie talkie, asking the others how much longer they have before finishing up.

“About fifteen minutes,” Luka says. “We’re nearly done with the classrooms.” 

“Same here,” Alya replies. “We’ve just got the offices left and then we’ll head back.”

Marinette nods and radioes, “Alright, well, we’ve got about twenty minutes on our end. Keep an eye out, guys, and be careful.”

She hands the radio back to Félix, who raises a brow. 

“Why not tell them about Lila?” he asks.

Marinette purses her lips. They start walking towards the classrooms, and they briefly check three of them before she answers. “If they do end up seeing her, I’m curious what she’ll tell them.” 

“You suspect her of lying?” Félix asks in the next classroom.

She shrugs. “I suspect her of something. Not sure, yet, if it includes lying.”

Félix nods, turning this over in his head. 

Marinette’s shoulders slump. “Please don’t tell me to give her the benefit of the doubt—I already don’t plan on telling anyone else about my suspicions until I have more evidence, and Alya, Nino, and Luka already told me that and to give her a chance.”

Félix shakes his head. “No, no, I think your suspicions are valid. I’ve been keeping an eye on her since you said something yesterday, anyways.”

Marinette looks over, surprised. “Really?”

He rolls his eyes. “You know, in telling me I’m not that smart earlier—”

“Sorry,” she quietly interrupts. “You’re smart, I just—I didn’t understand.”

Félix raises a brow. “Notice how I’m not being violent towards you when you interrupt me.”

She bites her lower lip to hold back a laugh. “Oh, go on—punch me. I know you’re capable. I know you want to—I’ve been so annoying, haven’t I? You really gave Ladderton a good one; why not me?”

He narrows his eyes, biting back a smile of his own. “You couldn’t take it.”

“Uh huh,” she says sarcastically. “Sure—yeah. Totally not you being a sissy.”

Félix huffs a laugh. “Come on, let’s finish up already.”

Marinette shakes her head, jogging to catch up to him as he heads down one hall. When she reaches him, slowing to walk beside him, he punches her in the upper arm, catching her off guard.

“Oomph—Félix!”

Félix holds back his laughter. “So, anyways, as I was saying,” he starts, and then, when Marinette can’t stop laughing, he reaches out to push her away, biting back a smile, “when you told me that I wasn’t too smart, you made an egregious error. Beyond that, Chloé and I are quite similar, and you’d be surprised what I’d do if Adrien only asked. Granted,” he says, sobering up, “I do have a line that Chloé might place a bit differently, but if he asked—which I know he would, in the event you were to attempt to sacrifice yourself—I would save you. We’ll always find a way to make things work without sacrificing someone, Marinette.”

Marinette sobered up shortly after he did, and she now looks away to the ground, frowning. She doesn’t voice her only answering thought: sometimes sacrifice is the only option.

~*~

The next evening, Marinette has a single lead for the gang: a home address for a suspect. The rest of the gang is reasonably suspicious of why Marinette isn’t telling them who the suspect is, but they go along with it. They’re, for the most part, curious and trying to accept that they might not be ready for the name until further evidence is collected.

Still, the address given leads them to the Crystal Cove Cemetery. Not a house, like Marinette told the gang. Everyone is reasonably confused.

In the driver’s seat of the van, Félix straightens up, hands clenching around the steering wheel. Next to him sits Adrien and Marinette, with Chloé and Alya in the captain’s chairs behind the front bench. Nino and Luka sit on the back benches in the rear of the van.

“The cemetery?” Félix asks hollowly. “Are you sure this is the right address?”

Marinette hesitantly steps out of the van. “I’m sure. That just means this person was dishonest, but we still might find clues here.”

“Think we’ll need a getaway driver?” Félix asks, voice wavering only slightly. “Should I stay back here?”

Marinette purses her lips, thinking a moment as she looks over the cemetery’s entrance. “No, we might need you, actually.”

“Will we need your trapping equipment?” Alya asks over the bench, directing the question through the van’s open passenger side door. 

Marinette thinks for another moment before shaking her head. “No, I don’t think so—just the walkies, flashlights, and the evidence kits.”

Alya nods, and from the back of the van file out her, Nino, Luka, and Chloé. Adrien follows from the front bench seat, and, after another long moment, Félix shuts off the van and gets out, locking up after everyone. 

The gang moves over to the chained and locked entrance to the cemetery, and they wait patiently as Félix, fingers fumbling through the motions, unlocks the large padlock. Marinette and Luka loosen the thick iron chain enough for them to file through the gates one at a time, and they lock up behind them.

They then split up into the same three groups as the night before, with Marinette paired with Félix, Nino with Alya, and Luka with Adrien and Chloé. Each group gets enough flashlights for everyone in the group, and they have a walkie talkie and evidence kit per group, which Marinette, Alya, and Luka carry. They split up into three different paths, spreading out along the cemetery, and they start searching for clues under Marinette’s guidance on what to look for. 

As they walk, some conversation occurs among the distinct groups. 

“So,” Alya starts, evidence kit over one shoulder and across her body, with the walkie talkie in one hand and her flashlight in another. Her voice is quiet and gentle, unprovoking. “Any word or progress on Chris’s case?”

Nino frowns, shoulders slumping. “Not much. He’s awaiting trial in one of the cells in the department.”

Alya nods, and she moves the walkie talkie to the pocket of her hoodie. With a hand now free, she reaches out for his shoulder, comforting him. “I’m sorry. Any… anything from his lawyer?”

Nino shrugs. “He doesn’t have one, yet. Sheriff says there’ll be one come Friday, but… yeah.”

Alya nods again, and she reaches her hand out for his, squeezing it briefly. She changes the subject. “Are you… liking living with Félix and Amelie?”

“They’re really nice,” Nino says softly. “Really, really nice. I like it a lot, living with them, but I… I wish Chris were there.” He looks over at her, suddenly smiling a bit. “They eat dinner—together. Every night, babe. Every night. It’s crazy, coming from, well, you know how my parents were,” he says, smile fading, “but I—I wish I could show this to Chris. Share it with him, right?”

Alya smiles a bit and she rubs her thumb over the back of Nino’s hand in hers. “Yeah. I’m glad you’re liking it there, though.”

Nino nods, smiling back. “Yeah—they both have been making it feel like I… like I’m home, I guess. Like I’m welcome, you know?”

Alya nods, still smiling, but inwardly she wonders after the honesty in Félix’s actions, or, as she suspects, the lack thereof. Still, she wants Nino to have a bit of peace and to feel welcome somewhere, and there really isn’t any other option for where else he can go, so she doesn’t say anything more on it.

Instead, she changes the subject to the day’s homework, and Nino goes along with the change, unsuspecting. 

Luka, Adrien, and Chloé talk lightly about Chemistry, with Adrien carefully steering conversation away from insults or arguing. Luka and Chloé both work to keep Adrien from tripping over his osentaciously large, almost clown-like shoes. They don’t collect a lot of evidence, though, not finding much, but Chloé keeps frowning at Luka and walking ahead of he and Adrien with her arms crossed.

Marinette and Félix, much like the others, don’t find any evidence in their search, but they keep a strained silence. Marinette doesn’t want to talk with Félix, having thought again over her reasonings for sacrifice she’d reestablished when bent over the bathroom sink in the girl’s locker room the evening before. Her and Félix had had that moment, laughing in the junior classes’ hall, but it had quickly been ruined. A day later, the thought that no one else understood that she was right—that sometimes, sacrifice was necessary and the only solution—and the thought that every one of her friends would keep her from that necessity, that last effort at keeping them safe… well, frankly, it didn’t have her in much of a talking mood. 

Félix, for his part, doesn’t know what to say.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to think about this silence for especially long, because there’s a noise behind him and Marinette. They turn towards it, hearts starting to race and flashlights spinning in the dark cemetery to where the noise came from.

Nothing is there under the soft glow of their flashlights.

After calming down and looking to each other, as if to say, hey, you saw that, too, right? they continue moving forward. 

It’s about ten more minutes before there’s another noise, this time to their left. Marinette and Félix both tense up and they swing their flashlights towards the noise.

Again, nothing is there. 

This time, Marinette and Félix move to investigate the noise. They step cautiously closer to the large tree to their left, from where the noise came, and they each pull a knife free from unexpected places. As they near the tree, their breaths and movements fall into tandem, quiet and hardly making a sound as they move side by side.

They’re only a foot and a half from the tree when a creature jumps out from behind it at them, screeching. Félix and Marinette push each other back, stumbling over their own feet, and they fall to their bums in the dirt. The creature has a distorted shape to its face, some of the features looking almost misplaced as an eye and the nose both sink to one side as if melted. Its eyes glow a bright yellow in the half-dark, and its skin is a bone-white, almost glowing in the moonlight. It wears a raggedy dress that Marinette can tell was once fancy. On its feet are pumps discolored with age, and its nails are sharp and done up sparkly, though they’re worn and aged as well.

The creature leaps at Marinette and Félix, who just barely manage to roll quickly to either side. Félix meets Marinette’s gaze over the creature, and they both nod, scrambling to their feet. They take off at a run away from the creature, leaping over small gated areas and headstones like their lives depend on it. They only realize, after several close calls with a literal axe the creature pulls from behind their body, that their lives do depend on it.

Marinette is quick to turn on her walkie talkie to radio to the others, though it takes her a moment or two to actually say anything of any use. 

“Hey—fuck,” she cries, just barely dodging the blade of the creature’s axe as she leaps over a headstone. She runs for a long moment, gasping, before she says, “Guys,” —gasp— “meet us at the mausoleum” —gasp— “at the top of the” —huff— “hill, will ya?”

Marinette clicks off the radio as she yanks Félix by the front of his shirt from the path of the screeching creature’s axe. 

“Thanks,” he manages, only glancing back briefly before he takes her hand and increases his speed. 

Marinette nods, holding on tight to his hand so they don’t get separated, and they head up the hill in a winding, exhaustive manner in efforts to keep the creature off of the rest of the gang’s trail.

After a few minutes, at which point both Marinette and Félix are tiring, the others radio back that they’re in the mausoleum with the door shut. 

Félix takes the radio at Marinette’s wordless request and he radios that they’ll be up soon and for the others to be ready to open the door quickly.

Marinette and Félix then make their way up the hill, trying not to trip, but they fail a miraculous nine times, thankfully only managing to get three cuts among the two of them. Soon, they get to the mausoleum, pounding on the door and shouting through it.

The door is abruptly opened, and Marinette and Félix tumble through. They get pulled further inside by Chloé and Adrien, with Nino, Alya, and Luka still at the door.

The creature attempts to follow after Marinette and Félix, but the others slam the door shut on it.

The heavy, aching thrum of axe on stone resounds seconds later.

Notes:

to say this was an exhausting chapter is an understatement lol

⚠️ (first) after mari is like “hey félix remember when you dropped me into a cave lol that wasnt mushy it felt like u respected and trusted me,” marinette basically says hey none of the others would leave her behind if push came to shove but félix is supposed to be Smarter and sacrifice her bcos shes the One who has nothing to lose and nothing to keep alive for. anyways they argue on the last part and mari concedes that she knows the gang is something to keep alive for, but in the grand scheme of things, she’s still the one who has to be sacrificed. he says “uh ure wrong though the others are smart enough to know what theyre unwilling to sacrifice and im smart enough to know what shouldnt be sacrificed” and then mari is like No Ure Wrong i should be the only one at risk no one else !!

⚠️ (second) mari tells herself she’s not suicidal shes just practical and she tells herself she’s not needed by anyone but the gang, and even for them, it’d “just be better” if she were gone bcos thats more resources for them and they get hurt less without her always chasing after the next case and the next danger. anyways then she’s like Why Cant Anyone Else See My Infallible Logic 😭 and she reassures herself that she’s not suicidal she’s just Practical and Ruthless and Does What Has To Be Done and that she doesn’t matter—nothing does—“in the face of that perfect ache to keep her friends safe”

anyways. if you’re suicidal or have suicidal thoughts/ideations or self-harm, please please please reach out for help. call or text a hotline/helpline, talk to an adult, see if you can go to therapy, but don’t try and do this alone if at all possible. if you feel like marinette does here, trust me (i used to feel this way, too, and in some ways i still do), her feelings about herself are *wrong*. she matters because she exists, her suicidality (it is her being suicidal, contrary to what she says) is not practical or necessary, people aren’t smart for sacrificing you or putting you in danger or pain, she *and* you are needed and wanted, putting yourself in danger isn’t “doing what has to be done,” and, as much as you’d like to keep your friends, loved ones, or others safe, *you still matter, even in the face of that.* please be safe. marinette will be getting help soon, and i want you to try and get help, too, if you feel like this or feel similarly in the sense of thinking you don’t matter or need to die or need to be in pain. you matter and you are impossibly loved (not like it’s impossible to love u, but like i am loving u a Very Huge Amount. impossible to measure, just for being here) and you are so, so, so incredibly needed. please seek out help if you can.

that all being said, i hope you enjoyed félix Caring and telling marinette that he and the gang are smart enough to know they’re unwilling to sacrifice her and that they’re smart enough to know what shouldn’t be sacrificed. yay félix i love u u are my beautiful emotionally constipated but trying son. keep trying babysir. u’ll get there one day <3 also i hope u liked the bits of lore dropped here and there lol like w félix trying to get out of school and seriously debating just shutting down an entire power grid 😭 anyways félix Carried this chapter .

lol but yeah writing hath been Difficult between work and health stuff but 💪🥲 im hoping to catch up a little and get back to a better schedule for writing before i finish posting the next fourteen chapters 🤡 seven weeks lol (ish) to get back on top of things ahahah but i am So Terribly Excited for u guys to read the next few episodes 🤭

ill post the next chapter on friday if everything goes well, but if not friday, then saturday!! im a bit extra busy this week lol but trying my best ahahaha

hope you guys enjoyed, and ilu, and i adore all of your comments!!! 🤩🤩🤩🥰🥰🥰

Chapter 28: chapter twenty-eight

Summary:

The gang has to figure out their next steps now that they’re trapped in the mausoleum.

Notes:

some brief mentions of marinette’s feelings and beliefs about herself from the last chapter 🫡

Nino, Alya, and Luka stay at the door, holding it shut, while Chloé and Adrien help Félix and Marinette to their feet. Another bang sounds from the axe hitting the door.

“You’re bleeding,” Nino says with a grimace, scanning them. “Both of you. Pretty badly, yeah?”

Félix looks over both he and Marinette, wincing. “Tell me you’ve had all your shots—and recently,” Félix says.

Marinette nods, looking over the slice on her bicep and the one on her calf. Félix has a cut on the back of his shoulder. “I got my shots this year, so, yeah.”

There’s another bang of the axe on the mausoleum door.

Félix nods. “Did we bring a first-aid kit with us by any chance?”

Nino frowns and he shakes his head. “Wasn’t on the list.”

Alya purses her lips as another bang resounds. “We have one in the van.”

Marinette shakes her head. “So we’ll tourniquet—no one is going out there without everyone else. It’s too dangerous.”

Félix glances over at Marinette, their conversation from before echoing in his head. I’m the one to sacrifice. I should be the only one to be at risk. No one else. He’s about to speak when Alya does.

“And if the creature stays out there all night? Waiting?”

Marinette is quieter. “Then no one leaves tonight.”

Another bang resounds, this time on the side of the mausoleum.

“Then you both die,” Chloé says, crossing her arms and looking angrily to Marinette. “That’s not okay. We’ll have the fastest two people go get the first-aid kit—me and Alya. Adrien, Nino, and Luka will hold the door closed til we’re back, and you two can tourniquet each other in the meantime and make sure we don’t need an ambulance.” 

“Chloé’s right,” Alya says.

Another bang echoes through the room, at the corner of the same side of the mausoleum.

Félix nods, looking to Marinette. “They’ll be safe. We’ll give them our knives, they’ll have two flashlights, and they can each have a walkie talkie in case they get separated. They’re faster than us, too, so their chances are higher of coming back unscathed.”

Marinette clenches her jaw, looking to Alya and Chloé. “Come back, or I’ll drag myself out there, and I’ll find you, and I’ll kill you, and I’ll bring you back to life before never letting you go solo again.” She tosses her knife to Alya. 

“We aren’t going solo,” Chloé says, taking the knife and van keys Félix extends to her. “We’re going together, and we’re coming back.”

Another bang resounds, this time at the back of the mausoleum.

“The good news is,” Luka says, “the creature’s on the other side of the mausoleum right now. You guys should have a bit of a head start.”

Nino and Adrien hand over two walkie talkies and flashlights, and Alya and Chloé nod, moving to the door. As another bang resounds at the back of the mausoleum, Nino, Adrien, and Luka open the door. 

Alya and Chloé take off at a jog down and out of the cemetery, and, quickly, Nino, Adrien, and Luka close the door to the mausoleum behind them.

~*~

Back in the mausoleum, Marinette and Félix are shredding Marinette’s second layer of clothing beneath her baggy hoodie (a tank top with the sides cut out) using a pair of scissors from one of the evidence kits. Félix gets a few strips tied around each other at the worst of his shoulder wound, and Marinette gets two strips to each of her wounds. Covering each wound are sections of Félix’s button-up from under his sweater and hoodie, folded over to soak up more blood.

As the blood quickly spreads across these tourniquets and continues spilling—albeit slower—from their bodies, the banging from the creature with the axe stops. It takes up screeching, following Chloé and Alya down the hill.

It’s several tense minutes before the gang gets a message from Alya and Chloé over the radioes.

“We both made it to the van,” Alya says, breaths uneven. “Grabbing the first-aid kit. Do we need anything else?”

Marinette frowns. She grabs a radio. “Can you bring up my trapping backpack? Or just my toolbox? Or both, if you clip the box to the top of the bag?”

Alya radioes back, “Maybe? It might slow us down.”

Marinette shakes her head. “Just the first-aid kit, then. Some snacks and waters if you can, but no pressure.”

“Got it. On our way back soon.”

Marinette sets aside the radio, leaning her head back against the stone coffin’s edge. She closes her eyes.

“Marinette?” Luka asks after a minute, leaning against the mausoleum door with Nino and Adrien. “Hey, come on, you aren’t going to sleep, are you?”

Félix nudges her until she opens her eyes. 

“No,” she says, “I’m just thinking about a trap.” 

Luka nods. “You want to trap it tonight?”

Marinette closes her eyes again. “Not sure. It seems like it’d be best, but we don’t really know its capabilities. All we really know is it’s dangerous and it doesn’t look to be disappearing soon.”

The others nod. 

“Do you feel up to trapping with your leg and arm?” Adrien asks.

“I could probably handle a trap,” Luka says, “if you need me too.”

Marinette’s thoughts get drawn back to why she’s the one to sacrifice, and she’s once more glad she was the one being chased with an axe. She nods slowly, lightheaded. “That’d be nice, Luka. Thanks.” 

Luka nods.

The gang sits in silence for a few more minutes before there’s a knock at the mausoleum door, with Alya radioing through that they’re at the door. It gets opened quickly and closed behind them with a loud bang. 

Alya and Chloé bring the first-aid kit and some food and water over to Marinette and Félix while Nino, Luka, and Adrien stay at the door, keeping it closed despite the resumed banging of an axe on the other side. 

Félix opens the first-aid kit quickly with the hand of his uninjured arm, and he looks to Marinette. “If you stitch, clean, and bandage my wound first, I can help you with yours?”

Marinette shrugs. “I can do them all myself—I’ve done it before.”

Félix purses his lips. He doesn’t tell her, not yet, that she doesn’t have to do it all herself anymore. He doesn’t want to argue right now, not when they’re both still losing blood. Instead, he turns to Chloé, raising a brow. “Help me with my sweater and hoodie?”

Chloé nods and helps him pull off his hoodie and the sweater he wears beneath it. Alya, beside her, helps Marinette cut off the bottom of her pant leg just below the knee and helps her take off her hoodie and long-sleeved tee. Marinette will later sew on new fabric to the torn clothes, making them still usable, but for now, the clothes have to be cut away so the wounds are reachable. 

When Marinette and Félix’s clothes have been torn aside sufficiently, Alya and Chloé bring water and food to Nino, Luka, and Adrien at the door. Marinette sterilizes a needle, ties off some thread, and sets to cleaning Félix’s wound on the back of his shoulder with him lying on his stomach. 

Once the blood has been cleaned away as much as possible with the remains of her tank top and his discarded sweater, Marinette starts sewing up the wound. She’s very thankful the axe didn’t slice through muscle, but still, the skin is jagged and uneven—the mark of a worn, likely dirty axe. She’s glad she cleaned the wound thoroughly, but they’ll likely have to visit the hospital or a surgeon in town to make sure everything is okay.

It takes her about fifteen minutes to stitch up Félix’s wound and bandage it. She gives him back his hoodie, helping him into it, though she grimaces at the unusual look of the missing back shoulder and a missing arm. 

In this time, Alya, Chloé, Nino, Luka, and Adrien eat some food and drink some water, debating how to trap the creature and if it would even be safe to do so. The most agreeable option would be somehow managing to push the creature into the crypt they can open at the end of the mausoleum, but they’re working out the details of how to do this safely when Marinette and Félix’s latest argument grows louder.

“Just let me help you, Marinette!” Félix says, experimentally moving the arm of his injured shoulder.

“Not if it’s going to tear the stitches I just gave you,” Marinette growls, pulling the first-aid kit closer to her as she scoots away from Félix. “I can do this myself—I’ve always done it that way, so chill the flip out and let me do it!”

Félix glares at her. “Just let me help you, Marinette. It’s not that hard.”

“It is when I’ll have to re-do your stitches because you insisted on being a whiny ass sissy bitch,” she spits. 

Félix raises both brows.

Marinette doesn’t usually curse—not really, anyways, especially in comparison to Nino or Chloé, even Luka—but… if he looks closer, pays attention to the details, here, Marinette looks almost scared. He thinks of this song Chloé made him and Adrien listen to one time—I get mean when I’m nervous, like a bad dog. Mitski, he thinks it was. Cop Car. This is how Marinette sounds now, how she sounded back by the locker rooms the night before: mean when she’s nervous, mean when she’s made to doubt herself. 

Still, Félix wants her to know that she doesn’t have to do things on her own anymore.

“Fine,” he says, quieter. “Will you let someone else help you?”

Marinette smiles, though it’s not even close to being happy. Instead, it looks venomous. “No one else knows how,” she says, just as quiet. “No one else knows how. I do, though. I can do it by myself.” 

“I never said you couldn’t,” Félix says, frowning. “Just that you don’t have to do it that way.” 

Marinette’s smile grows wider and more venomous. “I do this time, though. You can barely move your arm and no one else has experience with sewing skin to help me.”

Félix’s uninjured shoulder drops. “Would you at least come closer so I can make sure you’ve gotten everything clean from what’s difficult to see?”

Marinette purses her lips. “Will you stop fighting me, then?” 

“I will,” he says. Next time, though, things will be different. 

Marinette nods and comes closer, moving so her wound on her bicep faces Félix. She sets to cleaning it as best she can, and Félix gives gentle input when needed on what she misses. Then, with Félix holding his discarded sweater (a cleaner, not bloodied section) to the base of the wound and holding both sides of the wound closer, Marinette quickly sews up the slice on her bicep. Thankfully, again, muscle wasn’t torn.

As they do this, Alya and Chloé move to investigate the crypt at the end of the mausoleum.

“Hey, guys?” Alya calls back to the others. “I think we have a problem.”

“What is it?” Marinette asks, sewing up the middle of her wound by this point. 

Nino, at the door, stands up, but he doesn’t leave his position lest the creature attempt to come through the door at just the wrong moment. “What is it, babe?” 

Alya hesitates. “Remember Carlswell the Creeper?”

Everyone but Félix, Chloé, and Adrien nod. 

“He’s alive and in jail,” Alya says slowly, “but this is… supposedly his crypt, where there should be a body. His body.”

“Who would—that’s—maybe a different Carlswell?” Marinette asks, finishing up the wound on her bicep. She quickly bandages the wound with some gauze and tape before slipping her hoodie back on. 

“Same birth date,” Alya says, shaking her head, “along with the same name and wife and child.”

“Who would do something like that?” Adrien asks. “If he’s alive, then who’s in the crypt?”

“We should find out,” Alya says gravely, “but I think it might have something to do with this creature.”

Marinette purses her lips, but she sets to cleaning her calf wound with some of Félix’s guidance. As she does so, Chloé and Alya try opening the crypt. It’s a heavy ordeal, and one that requires more assistance, but Nino, Luka, and Adrien have to stay at the door to the mausoleum to keep it closed in case the creature comes back and tries to get through, so they pause the opening of the crypt to wait for Marinette and Félix to take Luka and Adrien’s places. 

Marinette quickly cleans, stitches, and bandages up her calf wound, and then, after packing the first-aid kit back up, she—begrudgingly—accepts Félix’s help with standing up. They take Luka and Adrien’s places at the mausoleum door beside Nino, and Alya, Chloé, Luka, and Adrien move to open the crypt.

What they find inside is almost as startling as finding Carlswell’s name on the crypt.

“The hell?” Alya exclaims.

“What?” Marinette asks from at the mausoleum door. “What is it?”

“It’s just… there’s not even a body,” Alya says, reaching inside. 

What she pulls out is something no one from the original members thought they’d see again—a backpack stuffed with Carlswell Creeper’s old costume. 

“The hell is right,” Nino says, brows drawn together. “How did that get here? That should have stayed buried in—”

“City Hall,” Alya says slowly. “It could have been stolen, maybe?”

“What is it?” Adrien finally asks. 

Alya glances over, shoulders drooping. “A backpack with the costume a criminal wore in an old case of ours. Carlswell Creeper—he was trying to rob his own bank and cash in on the insurance.”

Chloé leans over the crypt, reaching inside. She pulls out a slip of paper, reading it in the moonlight of the mausoleum’s skylight. 

“What’s that?” Félix asks, slipping down to the floor against the door. 

Chloé frowns. “It’s a transfer slip to CCHS. Dupain-Cheng, who’re we investigating here at the cemetery?”

Marinette grimaces. “Well, all this only solidifies my theory about our case. Or, well, the slip and the creature do, at least.” 

“What theory, Dupain-Cheng?” Chloé asks, looking over at her pointedly. 

Marinette worries her lower lip. “Can I not continue to gather proof for my theory? No one will like it.”

Chloé’s stare turns into a glare. “No one at all?”

Marinette shakes her head firmly. “No one.”

“Funny,” Chloé says dryly.

“What case was the suspect who was supposed to be here related to?” Alya asks, putting the backpack with the Carlswell Creeper costume back. 

“The ghost girl one,” Marinette says, shrugging.

Alya nods, turning back to Marinette. “So, reasonable to assume that this crypt and its contents, as well as the creature, are related?”

Marinette thinks it over a moment. “Reasonable.”

“Or we have two mysteries to solve,” Félix grumbles.

Marinette finally grins, raising her brows. “Four, if you count the old gang and Émilie.”

Félix’s expression only sours. “Great. Will we ever catch a break?”

Nino glances over, shrugging. “Unlikely.”

~*~

The gang eventually ends up leaving the mausoleum at around midnight, escaping the creature’s wrath just barely with Luka carrying Marinette piggy-back style. They check in at the hospital with Félix’s information, him and Chloé splitting the bill, and they make sure their wounds are fine. 

They get home at about 3 a.m. and manage to get to sleep at about 4 a.m., sleeping in til they absolutely have to leave for school.

The day after going to the cemetery is Halloween. Many have mixed feelings on the subject, but they’re determined to have a good evening trick-or-treating and watching movies afterwards at Amélie’s. 

Well, they’re all determined to have a good evening. The day, however, is very much up for grabs.

~*~

Against his better judgement, Luka finally reaches out to Chloé about his turmoil. Her behavior the past two weeks has really bothered him—or, well, confused him might be a better way of putting it.

2:31 p.m.

Luka

hey

could you explain some stuff?

to me

about. well.

how you’ve been acting

Chloé

why do i have to explain anything to you

                 read 2:35 p.m.

Luka grits his teeth, but he wants an answer. He wants to stop questioning everything she does, questioning everything he does, and he wants to go back to just ignoring her.

He can’t do that, though, if he keeps getting stuck in a loop of trying to puzzle out why she suddenly acts so normal and kind and sweet to Nino, to Chris, concerned over Alya, empathetic to him, acting like anyone other than Adrien matters to her. (No hate to Adrien, of course, Luka thinks. Not his fault he has a guard dog who can’t seem to care for anyone else. Except, well—that’s the issue—)

2:39 p.m.

Luka

please?

Chloé

no promises ill answer

asshole behavior is automatic block

Luka

got it

Chloé

what is it you want me to explain then

Luka

why’d you say what you did to nino in the caverns?

i thought you only cared about adrien

Chloé

ure gonna have to elaborate

what did i say and when

i remember a lot of conversation that

night

Luka

you asked him why we couldnt decide for ourselves

whether or not we wanted to hear about chris’s case.

you said chris was important

and that nino & chris’s relationship was important

and kinda lowkey implied you cared about chris’s case

Chloé

do u guys not care about that stuff??

Luka

we do.

thought you only cared about adrien, though.

and yourself.

not someone who technically hurt you.

yk?

Chloé

think of it like i just said what had to

be said.

Luka

but why YOU?

you don’t like any of us

Chloé

i feel surprisingly neutral towards some

of you, actually. not you, but the others. 

Luka

okay, so,

(don’t block me u started it but)

fuck you.

im so confused though

can’t you just explain why the fuck you said that

to nino

why you even cared to

Chloé

no.

i dont want to

nor do i have to

frankly, i dont feel the need to be understood

by you or anyone else in the gang

          [replied to Luka: im so confused though]

sounds like a you problem

          [replied to Luka: fuck you.]

🤭🫵🤡

Luka

i hate you

Chloé

right back @ u 🫶

            read 2:52 p.m.

Luka very nearly pulls his pink hair out right there in the library, but he settles for quietly groaning and sinking further into his chair with a scowl. He debates talking with Alya or Marinette about it—about Chloé—but he isn’t sure in the end.

He sits there until his first period class is over.

~*~

The evening of Halloween comes with the realization that everyone is too tired to really investigate much into phantom limousines and ghost girls. It’s only been a week since the night Chris was arrested, and they’re still healing from the cuts, bruises, and bites from that night and, to be honest, the days before in delivering food to the affected children. Not to mention, Marinette walks with a slight limp and her and Félix can’t carry a whole lot on the sides they got hit with the axe the night before. 

It doesn’t help that not many of them have been sleeping well, if they even get the chance to sleep much at all at night. Their breaks and open periods since the Chris case are mostly spent trying to nap, however briefly, to catch up on sleep. Nightmares and small noises jolt them awake pretty often, though. 

Halloween night, with only a little convincing from Amélie as they get ready at her, Félix, and now Nino’s home, becomes the first day the gang decides to screw off and relax instead of working on a case. Halloween night and the next day with the Halloween dance, as well as Saturday, will be their resting days. On Sunday, if the case is still an issue, they’ll pick up working on it again.

The van is filled with somewhat real smiles and relaxed shoulders and fun music when the gang, along with Ella and Etta, drive to the richest neighborhood in town for the best candy.

Marinette and Chloé are braiding Ella and Etta’s hair and tying the braids into space buns for the twin Princess Leia look the girls are going for. They’re sitting in the captain’s chairs with the girls on their laps, and Alya and Luka are finishing painting the girls’ fake blaster guns on the benches in the back of the van. In the front, Nino drives, with Adrien beside him, and Félix in the passenger seat by the window. Adrien commands the music, Nino sings along with the twins, Marinette, and Luka, and Félix texts Kagami about the project they’re working on for English. (Félix and Kagami are only barely on speaking terms, this allowance due to the school’s insistence that both Tomoe and Amélie must authorize a change back to the old system that tormented so many other students. Neither Kagami nor Félix wants to explain—as they inevitably would have to—to Tomoe and Amélie why they aren’t on speaking terms anymore.)

The gang makes it to the neighborhood in question after a bit, and everyone tumbles out of the car in their tentatively happy mood. 

They smile for Ella and Etta’s sake, but it’s Félix who has to work to not have his hands tremble at the silence of his phone and the chilly, ocean-scented darkness so reminiscent of the caverns and dead bodies and journeys that ought not to have been had. It’s Nino who has shaky breaths as he’s remembering that Chris can’t do things like this—can’t be a kid like Ella and Etta—anymore. It’s Chloé who has tears welling up in her eyes at the memories regarding the last time she went trick-or-treating, who has tears welling up in her eyes at that last time being with Armand. It’s Alya who has a nervous grip on one of each of the twins’ hands, her eyes darting around anxiously to anyone who comes near the group. It’s Marinette who feels a bit numb from the past few days and the near-constant reminder she’s had that she’s not someone who’s needed or important to the gang. It’s Luka who’s so confused by Chloé’s behavior of late with the gang that he’s tripping over his feet and losing himself in time and space thinking so hard and trying to rationalize her behavior with what few facts he has. It’s Adrien who has a creeping ache growing over his shoulders with the evening’s activities and with seeing parents guiding children from door to door for something as simple as candy and compliments.

It’s an effort—a group one—to keep it together for Ella and Etta. In the van, at least Nino, Chloé, Adrien, and Alya had the benefit of not being confronted by the barbs and thorns pressing at everyone’s skin in different areas and to different depths. In the van, at least Marinette, Félix, and Luka had the benefit of being able to sink into a simple, grounding task to avoid their thoughts and feelings.

Still, they’ve each made a promise to themselves to make the evening enjoyable—if not for themselves, then for Ella, Etta, and the rest of the gang. 

So it’s Nino who steps up behind Alya, walking beside her and gently prying her hands from Ella and Etta’s, who look uncomfortable with the grip. It’s Marinette and Chloé who nod to Nino, gently taking Ella and Etta’s hands instead, leading them up to one house for candy. It’s Luka, Adrien, and Félix who scout the next few houses to see which have the candy Ella and Etta listed off as ‘tolerable’ or ‘enjoyable’ ones in the van.

While the others drift away to their separate, self-initiated tasks, Nino pulls Alya into a hug, kissing the top of her head and rubbing a hand over her back in small circles. 

“How’re you doing, babe?” he asks quietly, making sure to keep an eye on their surroundings. 

Alya buries her face in his shoulder and clings to the front of his fluffy hoodie. “Tired,” she whispers, voice trembling. “You?”

Nino smiles a little, though it’s not something happy. “I’m tired, too,” he says, voice tinged with a deep sadness.

“Nightmares,” she explains, closing her eyes. She turns her face to his neck, tears in her eyes.

“Nightmares,” he agrees, acknowledging hers and sharing that his own tiredness is due in part to nightmares as well. He holds her closer, curls his arms around her more fully. He kisses her temple, kisses it again, and turns to rest his cheek atop her head.

“They’re okay, you know,” he says softly. 

“They weren’t,” she says, voice watery. Her breaths are uneven. “Ells and Etts—they weren’t, and I—I keep waiting for things to change again. For them to turn on me, or for my parents to leave again, and I—Nino, I—”

Nino holds her gently as she sobs against him, and he soothes her with soft noises and sweet words murmured into her hair.

After a long while, her sobs quiet. “I’m so tired,” she whispers. “I’m so, so tired, Nino. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Nino nods, closing his eyes to his own tears. “I know, Als. I know,” he whispers back. “I don’t know what to do, either, but I’ll be here at your side, yeah? I’ve got your back, and so do the rest of the gang, and we’ll be here for you, okay? Even if we’re tired, even if we’re not sure what to do, we’ll feel that way together and figure it out together.”

Alya nods slowly, and she starts to hug Nino back fully, wrapping her arms firmly around his waist. “Thank you,” she murmurs, turning slightly to kiss a spot at his neck. “I really—I really needed to hear that. I just… I’ve just been feeling so alone, I guess, with my family, that I forgot I have you guys with me through it all. Or, well, it’s hard to forget—I think I just got… distracted, y’know?”

Nino nods, hugging her back. “I know.”

“Are Ells and Etts with the gang?” she asks after a bit.

Nino nods again. “They’re safe, yeah. No need to worry.”

Alya relaxes a bit. “Yeah, they’re safe with them.” 

Nino smiles a bit, and he closes his eyes some. “Hey,” he says, rocking them both one way, and then the other.

“Yeah?” Alya asks, yawning. 

“I love you,” Nino whispers, smiling wide. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Alya can’t help but smile into his neck, flushing with the words. “I love you, Nino,” she says quietly. “Thank you,” she adds on, nuzzling closer. “I really, really needed you today, and like usual, you made things better.”

Nino laughs a little. “Well, it’s easy when I just have to be myself.” He pauses for a beat, hums, and he asks, “Hey, wanna walk around some? We can try and find the gang and the twins.”

Alya nods, stepping away from the hug slowly, but she only moves a bit away, slipping under one of Nino’s arms and holding one of his hands over her shoulder. “How are you feeling, by the way?” she asks as they start to walk. “I… I know you’ve been having a hard time with everything, as much as you try and hide it from me.”

They head in the direction Nino last saw the gang and the twins, and he kisses Alya’s temple gently. “I’m… having a rough time, yeah.”

“Want to talk about it?” Alya asks carefully.

Nino hesitates. “M-maybe another time.”

Alya glances over. “If you’d like.” 

Nino nods. 

Alya glances away, and she takes his hand over her shoulder, turning it slightly. She presses a few kisses to the back of his hand before leaning into his side. “Will you let me know when you’d like to talk about it?”

Nino hesitates, but he ultimately nods. “I will.”

Alya looks over at him carefully, gaze doubtful, but she nods.

~*~

With the twins, the rest of the gang is… well, they could certainly be better.

Félix, to start, has given himself no other choice but to say the shaking of his hands is because of lack of sleep. He still refuses to explain Belle Perry and what he did to save the others from the sight of her or having to deal with moving her corpse. He still refuses to deal with the side effects of it—side effects that have him smelling the cold ocean air and instinctively feeling so incredibly small and tired, side effects that have him knowing he’s surrounded by open air but noting the darkness with shaky breaths, side effects that give him nightmares about being stuck in that cavern and never getting out, side effects that plague him every day and night. 

Despite these side effects and how he feels in the cold Halloween evening, Félix only claims he’s tired.

He doesn’t think about Kagami. (He does everything he can to not.) He walks ahead of the twins, scouting houses to keep distracted, and he keeps his hands stuffed in the pocket of his hoodie.

Chloé can’t stop crying, though she’s being silent about it. She has three packs of tissues in her jacket pockets, and she’s careful to walk behind Ella and Etta and to keep her voice cheery and light. 

When anyone asks if she’s okay, she says it’s just the cold.

No one bothers pointing out it isn’t that cold.

Marinette walks behind the twins as well, trying not to let herself drop from the precipice she can tell she’s on between strictly being numb and doing something she knows she shouldn’t. She’s so unsure of where she’ll end up with this precipice that she lags behind a bit to text a suicide hotline. 

It takes her fifteen minutes to realize (and be told) that she needs more help than just a text hotline.

6:56 p.m.

Marinette

does our insurance cover therapy?

Sabine

It does. Would you like to look into options?

Marinette

i’ve heard the counselor at school can refer students to

good therapy resources. i’ll check them out tomorrow

and send you the details?

Sabine

Alright. Is there anything else I can do?

Marinette

no

but thanks, maman

ilu

Sabine

I love you, too.

Let me know as soon as you do where your

counselor says is a good place and I’ll see 

what I can do to get you an appointment

ASAP.

Marinette

oh

thanks

             read 7:00 p.m.

Marinette is slightly surprised that her mother is being so urgent about it, but there’s a part of her that feels really, really grateful. There’s a soft, nearly aching feeling blooming in her chest at the thought and the feelings that arise with her mother’s urgency. It spurs her to set a reminder to visit the counselor in the morning to ask about therapy options, and she feels a bit better with a plan, now—a plan to get help for what has her feeling helpless to her own mind and body. She walks up to the houses with the twins with a bit more truth to her smile, though it still wavers.

Luka, staying back with Adrien and Félix, frowns. He’s still lost in his thoughts concerning Chloé, feeling quite like the world is upside down. He’d accepted she only cared about Adrien and herself—had come to terms with it. 

She hadn’t said or shown anything otherwise, yet, nothing to disprove that she only cared about Adrien and herself, but then she had been acting strange when Alya was captured by Max and she’d been acting really weird with Nino and the situation with Chris, as if she actually cared about not just Nino and Chris, but the others in the gang, too. 

Now, he’d never go so far as to say she cared about him, either, but she certainly acted like it with the Skittles in the library. It had been weird. It had thrown him off-kilter.

And then, to make matters worse, she wouldn’t explain anything about why she’d been acting like all this.

It honestly had him out of sorts—did she care about them? Did she no longer hate him? Should he try and curb his own hatred, give her a second chance if she was giving his friends second chances? If she was caring about them? Because, honestly, aside from her short-sightedness and quick, blind anger, he really only had problems with how she wasn’t giving anyone—he or his friends—a chance. But, if she was now, should he give her one?

Then again, she still acted like an asshole when he tried asking her about her behavior. Perhaps if he’d been more direct—had asked instead if she liked the gang—he would have gotten closer to what he’d been looking for. Still, the behavior towards him hadn’t changed. 

(There was a voice inside his head, though, that said maybe she needed a push from him in the form of him giving her a chance. He wasn’t sure whether to bury the thought or not.)

The point was that he didn’t know what to think or say or do or how to act around her, all of which was immensely important to figure out, because she was currently one of the seven people he spent most of his time with and was in close proximity to him every morning, afternoon, evening, and many, many unfortunate moments in between. 

Even so, he makes the effort to appear normal for Ella and Etta, since the trick-or-treating excursion is for and about them.

Adrien, though, has a harder time separating himself from the evening. 

He’s had the creeping ache of hands on his shoulders all evening. (His mother’s hands on his shoulders.) He’s had this creeping ache with dressing up, seeing the trick-or-treaters, watching everyone go up to the houses with their parents and guardians, and knowing, knowing, knowing his own mother was out there, not being involved in his life for better or for worse. Granted, she hadn’t done much to celebrate Halloween with him aside from getting candy in the years since he was 14 and watching movies with him and Chloé on the couch, but still—it’s the thought of being out here and being reminded that has him feeling the knife of her absence twisting in his chest. 

It doesn’t help how, partway through the night, Lila Rossi asks him to the dance the next evening. He does his best to let her down easy, but it’s hard with how overwhelmed he already feels. He lets her down, though, explaining he’s already got plans, and he puts his phone away, bumping shoulders with Félix.

“Hey,” he murmurs to his cousin, “I know none of us are really doing okay—”

“How did you know?” Félix interrupts before he can even stop himself. He winces. It sounds incredibly rude to him and even mean, something he hates to even consider being towards Adrien. “Sorry, Adrien, I—”

Adrien nods at him, smiling a little, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You’re tired. I know.”

“I’m sorry,” Félix repeats, quieter. “I’m trying—I’m trying not to let everything get to me.” It’s only the fact that he’s been so careful to keep it hidden that keeps the seed of worry that Adrien might know about Belle Perry—what Félix did—from growing into something much more pervasive. “I… I’m really sorry, Adrien. I know you’re really perceptive to that sort of thing.”

Adrien shrugs. “It’s fine—not a huge deal. I just wanted to ask if you’re… happy. Despite it all. With the gang and making friends with them, you know?” 

Félix doesn’t hold back his smile or the huff of laughter, though he doesn’t explain that he’s only amused because at least half of the gang dislikes him. “Yeah,” he tells Adrien, though. “I’m… happy, I guess. Nino and Luka are really cool.”

Despite being next to them, Luka doesn’t move or make any acknowledgement he’s heard Félix. He’s texting away on his phone, messaging Juleka about the string of concerts they have in a few weeks. 

Adrien nods, smiling. “Yeah. The others will warm up to you soon, too.”

Félix raises his brows, surprised Adrien even knew he was on thin ice with the girls.

“Yeah,” Félix says, “I hope so.”

Adrien turns and gives Félix a half hug, squeezing him tight. Félix shakes his head, smiling a little, but he hugs Adrien back, patting his head. 

“Thanks,” Félix whispers. You don’t know how much I needed this, he thinks. Or, well—maybe you do.

~*~

The gang goes trick-or-treating with Ella and Etta til about 8:30 p.m., at which point Nino and the gang drive the twins home before heading to Amélie’s, where they stay up a few hours to watch some movies before falling asleep collectively on the floor in the area Amélie made for them. They’re fast asleep and dead to the world about halfway through Coraline. Amélie comes downstairs shortly after, and, seeing them, she smiles. She covers them up in blankets and turns the lights down low before turning off the movie and heading to bed herself.

Together, the gang sleeps a bit better than they have in a while.

Notes:

wheeeeee a Lot of stuff happened this chapter 🥰

hi marinette’s beliefs about herself 👁️👁️ time to meet Félix’s Unmentioned Care For Your Safety 🤡 who will win do you think 🥰

also hiiiii chloé and luka . i love you . who will win luka’s frustration and confusion or chloé’s rigid I Dont Care About Anyone But Adrien . fight fight fight !

hi djwifi im so sorry for hurting you guys with max and chris and ella and etta <3 have some softness my beloveds <3

also 🥰 yay marinette thank you i hope you like Therapy and confronting your feelings <3

félix. i love you. everyone wants you to tell the gang about belle perry. will you 🤡

and hi adrien’s complicated feelings about émilie we meet again

anyways i love our emotionally constipated gang of mystery solvers 🥰 next update from them will be on . tuesday or wednesday depending on how busy my work and life are lol

i was debating pushing this chapter to saturday or sunday lol as im going to a concert today but i might not get a chance to post on either day of this weekend because im Also busy then lol so <3 have this chapter now before i rush to get ready and leave ahahah but i hope you enjoy this chapter and are excited for the next one !!! 🥰🥰🥰

Chapter 29: chapter twenty-nine

Summary:

The gang settles in to enjoy the Halloween dance, forgetting about ghost girls and creatures with axes that want them dead.

Notes:

the last scene (marked with a ⚠️ emoji) has marinette talking about the same things that have been mentioned and gone over in the past few chapters concerning her views of herself and her passive suicidal ideation. this is technically her “starting” to “deal” with it/her getting help, but i marked it just in case. a brief summary will be at the end of the chapter if you’d like to skip the scene!

The next day after school, everyone gets ready for the Halloween dance at Félix’s. As decided three days before, Félix wears Alya’s grandma disguise from the Chris case, Adrien wears another old lady disguise made from Marinette’s disguises, Luka wears Marinette’s disguise from the Chris case, though made to look older, Alya and Marinette go with old men costumes from the clothes of Félix’s wardrobe, and Chloé wears Luka’s disguise from the Chris case, though made to look older as well. 

After they’re in their costumes, they settle downstairs with Amélie to have dinner and hang out before the dance. Dinner tonight is lemon pepper chicken, baked potatoes, macaroni salad, broccoli, and canned peaches and pears, with chocolate chocolate chip cake for dessert. 

Amélie starts the dinner conversation with asking everyone in order of seating how their classes are going.

“Mine are going fine,” Nino says with a shrug, cutting up his chicken. “History is so-so, Algebra II and Chem suck ass—” he pauses, glances at Amélie, and flushes, “—sorry, Ams, uh, they’re not very… fun. English is whatever, and Home Ec, too, and Econ is just… blech.” He cracks open his potato and slips some butter and garlic salt between the halves. “Honestly, they’re all fine, just really, really boring.”

Amélie smiles, amused. She takes a sip of her water. “Understandable, Nino. I’ll have a question later about the music you’ve been working on, alright?”

Nino nods, smiling, and Amélie turns to Alya beside him. 

“How about you, dear?” she asks, eating her own chicken.

Alya smiles a bit and swallows the broccoli she’d been eating. “Chem is okay now that I understand it to a degree, History is fun and so are Creative Writing and English, but I could do without the Econ and Calculus.”

Pausing between bites of chicken, Amélie nods. “I’ve seen your blog—you’re a great writer. I hope you continue working on it; it’s a wonderful resource.”

She freezes. “You know my blog?” Alya asks, surprised but overjoyed even so. “For how long?”

Amélie’s smile grows. “Oh, since just after you started it. I read all of your pieces—they’re written really well, and in a cohesive manner. You really break down the mysteries and crimes, making them digestible for readers. Honestly, I’ve been wanting to fund a paper circulation, but I’m not sure how that works.” She finishes half of her chicken and she starts in on her macaroni salad. “Have you looked into paper circulation at all?”

Alya’s eyes blow wide. “Funding? You—you’re kidding.”

Amélie only shakes her head, smiling. 

Around the rest of the table, everyone else has to hold back their own smiles. 

“I’ve been considering paper circulation for years—I’ve done all the research and even mockups of what a physical paper circulation would look like and require, I just never had… well,” Alya says, laughing humorlessly, “the money.” She takes a breath, exhales slowly. “Wow. Really, Amélie? From the start you’ve been reading it?” She returns to her food slowly, working at her broccoli again. 

Amélie nods happily. “From the start. You know, if you’d like, we could talk the details of starting a paper circulation sometime.”

“I’d love that,” Alya says giddily, glancing up from her dinner. 

Amélie’s smile softens. “Me, too.” She takes a sip of her water before looking to Luka. “Now, how about you, Luka? How have your classes been?”

Luka’s mouth twists to one side in a wry smile. “English, History, and Econ are pretty meh, but I’m enjoying AP Bio, Home Ec, and Calc.”

Amélie nods. “Hmm. You discovered the material on Max’s crab, yes?”

Luka nods, biting back a proud half-smile. “I did.” He finishes off his macaroni salad.

Amélie smiles. “Good at science, then, I see.”

Luka shrugs humbly. 

“Bomb at science, he should tell you,” Marinette says, sitting across from Luka with a grin. 

Adrien, at the opposite head of the table from Amélie but sitting between Luka and Marinette, shakes his head. “He’s genius—he always understands the stuff; it’s crazy.”

“What he found with Max was gold,” Félix says, finishing off his potato. “No one else would have thought about it—considered it, even.”

Luka flushes with the compliments, but he grumbles, shaking his head. “Oh, come on, guys—”

Amélie only grins, hiding it behind a hand to her mouth. “Would you like me to ask Adrien about his classes now, Luka?”

“Please,” he groans. “They’re killing me.”

Amélie laughs, but she looks to Adrien with a raised brow. “Well?”

Adrien smiles a bit and shrugs. “Home Ec is nice—I like learning all the cooking and sewing stuff. English is okay; I like the book we’re reading. Creative Writing is really fun. I like Alya’s stories a lot,” he says, smile widening. He starts cutting his chicken up. “Chemistry, Econ, Algebra, and History… I could do without how boring those feel,” he says with a small wince. “But overall, things are pretty nice.”

Amélie nods, taking another sip of her water. “You’ll have to show me some of the things you’ve written, then—you’re so smart and thoughtful, I’m curious to see how it translates into fiction.” With a smile, she sets her cup down.

Adrien smiles happily back at her.

She then turns to Marinette, starting to eat her broccoli. “How about you, Marinette? How are your classes?”

Marinette shrugs, finishing off her macaroni salad. “Same old, same old. Not enough traps, not enough mysteries exciting enough to hold my attention. I don’t really like Home Ec, though—I knew a lot of it going in, so I just end up tinkering with my traps or sewing clothes in the back of class while I help Juleka with the assignments.”

Amélie nods thoughtfully. “Any new traps you’ve been making?”

Marinette brightens, sitting up more. “Well, I made The Orange for Max’s crab, but since then I’ve been working on a trap that will swing down from a point high above to wrap around a suspect. I’m thinking of calling it Pendulum or something.”

Amélie nods again, smiling. “Sounds exciting.”

Marinette nods, happy to have had someone ask her about her traps.

Amélie moves to Chloé, who picks at her chicken. “Chloé? How have your classes been?”

“Can’t complain,” Chloé says dryly, shrugging. “No time to fall behind, you know?” She glances over at Amélie, something unreadable but almost upset in her gaze. 

Amélie’s expression softens. “Let’s talk about it later, alright, hon? We can figure out something to lighten the load.”

Chloé’s shoulders drop a little, relaxing, and she nods.

Amélie finally looks to Félix, giving him a soft smile. “And you?”

Félix bites his lip, wondering if this is a moment he can—and wants—to be honest. He glances, however briefly, to Alya, and he recalls her words. There’s a line, I’m sure, that you wouldn’t cross for us. Maybe that line isn’t something physical or a task—maybe it’s just opening up. Despite the feeling that he’s being crushed from the inside out by what he wants to say, he speaks. He’s honest. “My classes are fine, but I… miss Kagami.”

Amélie’s eyes widen—she hadn’t expected the honesty, and, frankly, neither had anyone else at the table. Even Félix has to wince and shrink back, stare down at his plate instead of risking looking anyone else in the eye.

“You sap,” Chloé finally whispers, only to be elbowed by Marinette. 

Félix quickly resumes eating at a speed that renders him unable to respond.

Across the table, Alya watches Félix carefully, a bit of hesitancy in her eyes. 

Amélie wordlessly reaches a hand over to Félix’s forearm, which she squeezes gently. “I understand,” she says quietly.

Nino, across from Félix, nods. “We do, too, no matter what Chloé says. And we’re here for you, if you need it.”

Félix shrugs, trying to come off as though everything is fine, but then he thinks better of it. He looks up at Nino and nods, expression softening. “Thanks.”

Nino smiles a bit. “Of course, man.”

The rest of the time at Amélie’s with dinner goes well, with the gang and her talking about Nino’s music, Alya’s blog, Luka’s career thoughts, Adrien’s writing, Marinette’s Pendulum, Chloé’s workload, and Félix and Amélie’s gardening over the rest of dinner and cake before they all head to the dance.

~*~

At the Halloween dance, Kitty Section plays their latest album, the same one they’re about to play in concert in a few weeks. The tracklist, an amalgamation of powerful rock songs, slower songs of heartbreak, and even a pop-ish love song, is a hit with many. The school saved on costs, too, by requesting a local—and student—band play for the evening, but Kitty Section is still getting a decent paycheck by their standards.

They play covers of songs like “Dancing Queen,” “You’re Somebody Else,” “Stressed Out,” “Safe and Sound,” “Call Me Maybe,” “Starships,” Maroon 5’s “Payphone,” The Neighborhood’s “Sweater Weather,” and they play their own, older songs, too, like “Dancing On A Dream,” “Shut Up,” “Hold Me,” “Killing Waters,” and “Jewels”.

Among the music dances the gang, who are finally, for once in the past few weeks, letting go and loosening up like all the others around them. For the faster, dancier songs, Chloé, Félix, and Adrien reveal their background in growing up with Dance Dance Revolution as their main source of entertainment and not-so-friendly friendly competition, breaking out old memorized moves to wow both the growing crowd around them and the gang, who laughs along, watching. For less intense songs, Alya, Marinette, Nino, and Luka join in, dancing with the others in a less organized and less sad manner (sad being the fact that Chloé, Félix, and Adrien were so starved for entertainment that they memorized DDR moves so intensely that they could be recalled so many years later). For slow songs, Alya and Nino dance closely or crowd with the rest of the gang around the snacks table. 

At one point, the gang groups out a ways from the gym for a bathroom break, laughing and dancing to music they can only half-hear. Everyone feels a bit lighter with the distraction from their lives and thoughts and losses, and it’s hard for them to remember that there was a danger predicted several days before for this same evening.

It’s hard to remember this even when they come back from the bathroom to meet Kitty Section at the snacks table getting water. The DJ has taken over the music, playing more music in the break, and the gang talks with Kitty Section for a bit.

They don’t even recall the predicted danger or the need to be on alert when screams erupt in the air from across the gym. All they do is nod to Kitty Section, Luka telling them to be sure to get out of the gym and to safety, before they head off towards the danger.

Marinette, Luka, Alya, and Nino head the group as they push through the crowd pushing back against them. Adrien, Félix, and Chloé are close behind the four, with Chloé and Félix peering over the heads of everyone else to try and see what’s happening. 

The message ‘advising all students NOT to get into phantom limousines the night of the dance if at all possible,’ especially if said limousine also carries a ghost girl, is only recalled when they actually come face-to-face with the axe-wielding creature from the cemetery who is currently crashing their school’s Halloween dance.

The gang supposes the axe-wielding creature could resemble a ghost girl, though the axe she swings at them now is arguably the more important thing to have on mind.

The gang stumbles back from the blade of the axe with Marinette at the front of the group pushing everyone back. Félix, Chloé, and Adrien are quick to turn, yanking everyone back towards the door, and someone grabs Marinette, yanking her along, too, as they run after everyone else headed for the door.

“Adrien!” the creature screeches in sing-song. “Oh, Adrien! I’d like to have your last dance!”

“Shit,” Adrien mutters, glancing back from where he is at the front of the group. “No thanks!” he calls back, picking up speed as Luka pushes at his back, giving him more forward momentum. 

The creature only growls, chasing after them.

Finally, the gang tumbles through the exit to the gym, slamming the doors closed behind them. Always with her trusty keys to the school, Marinette pulls a key ring from an unexpected place and locks both doors before turning to the rest of the gang.

“Follow me,” she says, grinning. Despite it all—her numbing feelings, the question of her sacrificial-related thoughts, and the evening being the first she’s been able to relax in a while—she loves a good mystery coming together. Plus, this will give her the chance to use her trap Pendulum. Thankfully, she’s been carrying it around in the van lately. 

Marinette takes off for the junior class’ lockers and the rest of the gang follows her as the sound of the ghost girl’s axe hitting the gym doors starts up behind them.

The gang gets to Lila Rossi’s locker, which Marinette unlocks before taking the key taped to the back of the locker door and closing it. She then leads them, as they question her, to the basement door further down the hall. 

“Marinette?” Adrien asks. “Why’d you take the key in Lila’s locker?”

“How did you know what her locker combo is?” Alya asks, surprised. 

“Wait, why’re we going to the basement?” Luka asks.

Félix raises his brows. “Why does Lila have a key to the basement? I thought she only had a key to the locker rooms?”

“How’d you know that?” Chloé asks.

At the same time, Nino asks, “Why would she have a key to the locker rooms?”

Marinette doesn’t answer any of them, only guides them into the basement before standing at the door with a grin. “Look for clues, will you? I’ve got to go get Pendulum. I’ll be back, but here’s the key,” she says, passing it to Félix. 

Before anyone can stop her, she’s turning and locking the door with the key from her own ring of copies, disappearing from the other side to find the van with the keys she swiped from Nino on the dance floor.

In the silence of the basement, as everyone turns to Félix for answers, Félix looks down at the key in his hand. Slowly, he connects the dots himself, reaching the same conclusion Marinette had, albeit with less certainty. 

“—Félix?” Adrien asks, having been talking the whole time Félix had been lost in his thoughts.

Félix looks up from the key, eyes wide. “Yes? Sorry. I can give reason for Marinette’s… instructions. Can we look for clues while I explain?”

“What are we looking for, exactly?” Alya asks, crossing her arms. She has a hunch, but it makes her purse her lips with displeasure. Lila hasn’t been anything but nice to them, and to Alya, this feels like Marinette is making the same mistake that she and Alya made with Kagami, the same mistake that Alya has been doing everything to learn from. 

“We’re looking for clues that point to the ghost girl,” Félix says simply. “Or, well—the creature with the axe, as we better know.”

“And Lila?” Alya asks, brows drawing together.

Félix shakes his head, pocketing the key to the basement. “Don’t worry about that.”

Alya nods slowly. “So she’s… not a suspect?”

Félix shrugs. “Anyone is a suspect at this point, but as I explain things, it might make more sense why Marinette has her own suspicions.”

Alya nods slowly, and the gang scatters to look for clues in the school’s basement. As they look, Félix talks.

“The night we were here in the library, while Marinette and I were searching the locker rooms, Marinette bumped into Lila. She was apparently there with a key from the janitor to use the showers because the water was out in her house, but Marinette found it suspicious that she was showering so late and hadn’t been seen in the school since eighth period. Plus, the timing was off—right after Marinette had been attacked?

“Anyways,” Félix says, “we didn’t say anything in case Lila had a different story for anyone else. The next night, I later found out, was supposed to be us going to visit Lila’s house. I texted Marinette about it after we left the cemetery, and she said that the cemetery address had been listed as Lila’s residence in her school files, files of which also had Lila with a fake school and fake address in a different state from where she supposedly had moved from. When all we found was a cemetery with the ghost girl, or the axe creature, Carlswell’s costume, and the CCHS transfer slip, things clicked in Marinette’s mind. 

“Instead of saying anything, though,” Félix continues, “she, along with the rest of us, took a break for trick-or-treating and hanging out for movies, as well as the dance tonight, but she did research yesterday on the ghost girl articles. She didn’t find a whole lot, only information dating back to the 1920s across the U.S. here and there, but she found the formatting of things suspicious enough to tell me.”

“Why only you?” Alya asks, voice sounding almost hurt. 

Félix frowns, turned away from Alya, but he carefully says, “I think she didn’t want to make you feel any differently about Lila in case she was wrong. She wanted to have unshakeable evidence, but until then, I had already voiced my own dislike of Lila for how she acts with Adrien.”

Alya nods slowly, but she turns with a backpack in her arms. “Well… I found something.”

The rest of the gang turns away from where they’re looking, and they meet Alya in the middle of the basement, where she sits on the floor with the backpack in her arms.

“That’s the backpack from the crypt, right?” Nino asks, sitting beside her.

Félix sits beside him, Adrien on his other side, and Chloé sits next to Adrien. Luka sits between Chloé and Alya, leaning back on his hands. They form a small circle.

Alya nods, setting the backpack between them all. She opens it slowly, frowning. “Anyone see Lila today?”

Luka nods. “I did. She was in Home Ec with me, in my seventh period.”

Alya stops opening the backpack. No one can see the contents inside. “What was she wearing?”

Luka raises a brow, thinking. “Uh, a white turtleneck with a black vest and orange belt, and an orange skirt.” 

“And thick plastic orange hoop earrings with black pumps?” Alya asks. 

Luka nods. “Pumps are those ones with the wider heel, right?”

Alya nods, and she opens the backpack fully in one swift move. 

Everyone is silent looking at the top of the contents: the same outfit just described by both Luka and Alya that Lila had worn that same day.

After a long moment, Alya speaks, looking around at everyone. “Remember how we found the Carlswell costume in this backpack? Now, I’d like to write off the fact that it looks the same—say that maybe Lila just conveniently has the same backpack, placed where it shouldn’t be, and that’s fine. But I think this,” she says, pushing aside Lila’s clothes to reveal Carlswell’s Creeper costume buried at the bottom, “is enough evidence to point to her as our number one suspect. Yeah?”

Slowly, everyone else nods.

Just then, the door to the basement bursts open with Marinette stumbling inside. She haphazardly locks the door back up with her keys, something large, something smaller, and her toolbox all in her arms. She then comes down the stairs, grinning ear to ear, and she comes over to sit between Chloé and Luka. 

“You guys find anything?” she asks. 

Alya frowns at Marinette, still looking a little hurt, but she quickly nods and tries to clear her expression. She’ll bring it up later, she decides—now might not be the greatest time to ask if they can be a team on their theories, even if they might be uncomfortable or seem impossible. Instead, she says, “Yeah—we… understand what you meant about Lila. We think she could be the ghost girl, too.”

Marinette’s smile softens. “Really? Ah—sorry,” she says, frowning and looking away. “I know she’s been nice and you wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt.” She looks back at Alya, smiling softly again. “Still, while this case might not be going how ours normally do, I… I’ve felt really certain. So thank you for understanding.”

Alya nods. “Later, we’ll talk about being a team with our theories even if we might not like them, but for now… it’s time to trap a ghost girl, yeah?”

Marinette grins, and Alya meets it with the same.

~*~

When the ghost girl returns to the gym, the lights are set low. Kitty Section plays the intro to a slower love song when she enters, and only Adrien stands on the dance floor. No one else from the gang can be seen from the ground floor, with everyone else hidden up in the bleachers or behind the makeshift stage. 

“I’m sorry—you said you wanted a dance?” Adrien asks with a smile, holding a hand out. He still wears his old woman costume, but the ghost girl nonetheless sets her axe aside to one of the snacks tables before nodding and walking closer.

The ghost girl is about a yard and a half from Adrien when there’s a click. Pendulum, arms wide open, swings down in a clean arc, extending several yards as it goes. It hits the ghost girl around the waist and traps her arms by her sides, wrapping around her and locking with a metallic ching. The momentum swings the ghost girl off of her feet and into the air in front of Adrien, who stumbles back in surprise. The ghost girl screeches as she’s caught, writhing as much as she can in Marinette’s Pendulum.

Marinette, for one, is incredibly excited. She sprints out from behind the stage, skidding along the floor briefly, before turning and running for the ghost girl caught in her trap. She jogs around the swinging criminal from a few feet away, watching in calculative awe as the trap slows down until the ghost girl is back on her feet.

In this time, the rest of the gang comes out from their hiding places. Alya, having called the sheriff, along with Luka, Nino, and Adrien, helps Kitty Section put away their instruments and get out of the gym in this time as well.

A few moments after Kitty Section has left, the sheriff, along with the mayor, arrive. 

“Didn’t you kids hear the announcement?” the sheriff asks incredulously. “If you see a ghost girl, don’t go to the dance with her? The way you kids act, you’d think you enjoy being in danger,” he says, walking closer. 

The mayor walks beside him silently, hands folded behind his back. 

“Like he endangers us any less,” Nino mutters darkly, turning away. Most of the others follow him back to the stage and away from the trap, the sheriff, and the mayor.

Marinette and Félix are the only ones who hang back to explain things.

“Well, look on the brightside,” Marinette says flatly, “at least this way you don’t have to catch her or work to solve anything.”

Sheriff Raincomprix rolls his eyes. “Let’s get on with it, then, yeah?”

Marinette scowls, but she leans up to pull the mask off of the ghost girl. Revealed is Lila Rossi, expression flat.

“Don’t know her,” the sheriff says, yawning.

Félix steps in before Marinette threatens to assault the sheriff. “She’s Lila Rossi, a new student at the school.”

Mayor Agreste raises a brow, looking at Lila. “Can you explain yourself, Ms. Rossi?”

“Ms. Carlswell,” Lila corrects, sniffing. “Mystery Incorporated destroyed my father, and I wanted to get rid of them. I was close, too, when they found me in the cemetery,” she says, looking flatly at Félix and Marinette. “A hair’s difference in aim, and they likely would have died,” she says, turning up her nose.

“And how’d you pull off this ghost girl thing?” the sheriff asks boredly, leaning back on his heels. He ignores the casual mention of attempted murder, looking around in disinterest.

“I used my dad’s old costume to make my own, fabricated the legend of the ghost girl online, and kidnapped some kids from surrounding towns to add to the story,” she says simply, sounding just as bored. “Can I be let out of this stupid contraption already?”

Marinette looks ready to rip someone’s head off, but with a simple hand on the shoulder from Félix, she stiffly unlocks Lila from her trap. The sheriff arrests Lila and they and the mayor head back out of the school, only leaving behind a weird sense of something left unfinished.

~*~

The rest of the evening after Nino drives everyone back to Amélie’s is spent watching horror movies until they fall asleep. They talk briefly about sharing their theories as a group even if it might be uncomfortable, and everyone agrees to this with a bit of relief.

~*~

Two days later—a rainy Sunday afternoon—the gang accompanies Chloé to Armand’s funeral. 

~*~

Thursday of that week, Chris Lahiffe goes on trial. 

Friday morning, he’s sentenced and sent off to jail.

~*~

⚠️

Later that same Friday, Marinette attends her second therapy session. 

“You said last time we met that you think you might be suicidal?” Stacey, the therapist, asks. “Why do you think that is?”

Marinette looks at her hands, curled up in the bean bag chair in the room. “I’m… well, first, I should say that I’m in a group of mystery solvers.”

Stacey smiles gently. “Mystery Incorporated, yes—I’m familiar with your work. You’re very bright.”

Marinette nods, frowning. “Well, we.. run into danger a lot. It’s part of the job.”

Stacey only nods, waiting for Marinette to continue. 

She does, after a breath. “There’s seven of us, now. There used to be four. It was only me, Alya, Nino, and Luka. Now we have Adrien, Félix, and Chloé, though. 

“Alya’s the one who writes the blog. Nino drives us, along with now Félix, since Félix has defensive driving skills. Luka is the science-y guy who also helps me with my traps, and Adrien is really good with suspects and families and victims. Adrien, Félix, and Chloé fund us a lot, and, oh—yeah, Chloé is useful with the business stuff.” Marinette sighs before she continues, closing her eyes. “They all have family that care about or rely on them a lot,” she says, quieter. “Félix, Adrien, and Chloé have Amélie, and now so does Nino, but Alya has her little sisters, Luka has his sister, and Nino has his little brother. I—I just have my parents, and most days I wonder if they even care about me at all.”

Stacey frowns. “Why do you wonder if they care?”

Marinette opens her eyes, fiddling with her thumbs. “Well, they probably care about the me who was eight years old,” she says dryly. “Or the baby I was, or the toddler, or the little girl who didn’t care about murder or fraud and just wanted to find her maman’s recipe book or her papa’s keys. But not me. Not anymore, at least. Or, not seventeen-year-old me. The me who currently matters.”

Stacey nods, still frowning, but she doesn’t say anything, yet. 

“Well,” Marinette continues, curling her legs up into the bean bag chair with her, “all that to say, my friends have people who care about or rely on them a lot. So, naturally, I’m the one to sacrifice.” 

Stacey raises a brow. “Everyone decided you should be sacrificed?”

Marinette scowls. “No, no one said that. I… I did. I decided it.” 

“What does anyone else have to say about this?” 

Marinette’s scowl deepens. “Well, no one but Félix even knows I’m doing it. But he thinks I can’t make that decision for everyone, since it affects them all.” 

Stacey waits for Marinette to continue. 

Marinette does after another long moment, finally looking up at Stacey. “But I think it is my decision, since it’s my life. …Right?”

Stacey smiles at Marinette’s hesitancy. “Well, it is your life, but it does affect other people. Why do you think you feel the need to sacrifice yourself?” 

Marinette grimaces. “Well, I thought it was only because I really wanted to protect them, but I don’t… I don’t know anymore.” 

Stacey nods. “Do you want to elaborate on the idea of protecting them? Can they not protect themselves? Is there too much danger to account for?” 

Marinette shrugs, uncomfortable with her own feelings. “I just… the stakes are high. I’m the one who makes the most sense for risking my life—in the sense of having the least on my plate for who’s caring about me back home or who’s relying on me. It makes sense for me to be the one shot, cut, burned, caught, or… well,” she says, voice dropping to a whisper, “tortured.” 

“Tortured?” Stacey asks, expression instantly growing gravely serious.

Marinette looks away, back towards her hands. She nods a little. “Just a few times, back at the start or whenever somebody has to get left behind. Nothing too bad, just…” she trails off.

“Just?”

“You know that thing,” she says with a sigh, “where they put you in a dark room with no light, food, or water? Or when they dunk you under water ‘til you can’t breathe, again and again, usually to get information out of you? Or when… when they burn you, again and again, and you can’t stop crying, but you have to, because they won’t stop until you stop crying?”

“You’ve been through a lot,” Stacey says gently. “It’s understandable why you wouldn’t want your friends going through that, too.” 

Marinette shrugs, shoulders curling a bit more as she folds in on herself. “Yeah, well, two weeks ago, I couldn’t—I couldn’t tell why I was doing it. Not anymore. The… lines, if you will, they got blurred.”

Stacey waits for Marinette to explain. 

“My friends are also talented,” Marinette says, a smile spreading across her lips. “Alya is a brilliant writer, and so is Adrien, I think. Alya does incredible research into our cases and suspects, and she’s a computer whiz. Nino is a great driver, and he’s probably the most stable out of the original four, and he’s great with victims and families. Luka can do my traps and he can sew alright—he actually makes better, less convoluted traps than I that work a lot more often than mine ever could. He’s also great at science and Chemistry. Adrien and Félix and Chloé bring more resources to the table with money, and they can supplement any clothes needed. Félix has his defensive driving, lock-picking, and a bazillion other skills. Chloé has her business savviness and knowledge in politics, and Adrien is by far the best empathizer and person for suspects, victims, clients, and families to talk to, now.”

Stacey smiles, too. “It sounds like you care a lot about them,” she says softly. 

Marinette nods. “I do,” she says, smile fading. “They don’t need me, though. Not like they need each other.”

“Don’t they care about you, too?” Stacey asks. 

Marinette frowns. “They do, yeah. A lot.”

“But you still don’t think they need you.” 

Marinette sighs, fiddling with her thumbs. She looks up at the ceiling, twisting her lips. “They don’t need me physically or intellectually, beyond the obvious sacrificial needs. They might think they need me emotionally, but they can move on,” she says, looking back down at her hands. She quiets. “They can go forward without me. I’m the one who doesn’t matter as much. Or matter much at all, really, given I don’t contribute a whole lot that no one else could do just as well or better.”

Stacey frowns. “Is not being their friend a contribution? Is not the support a contribution? The protection, the devotion, the love?”

“You sound like them,” Marinette says softly. There’s a quiet moment. “You know, I used to think I was just… practical. Ruthless, maybe. Someone once said something like this once: ruthlessness is the clear line from A to B, from motive to means, beginning to end. That ruthlessness is the not caring about all that other stuff that can get in the way, because all you see is that clear line. I used to think I was like that, that I was just following the line from my motive of my friends’ survival to the means of sacrificing myself. I didn’t care if they loved me—I loved them, that’s what the sacrifice was about, that’s why it had to happen.” Marinette’s hands start to shake. She presses them against her thighs, then moves to sit on them, and then moves to have them hidden behind her back.

Stacey watches this with a careful, gentle gaze. 

Marinette hesitates, looking back at Stacey. “But then I got scared, because suddenly that was all I could think about—that I didn’t matter, that they didn’t need me, that I mattered less, that without me they’d be better, that it didn’t matter if they loved me, and suddenly… suddenly, it felt like they didn’t love me.” She blinks away tears. “I know they love me, right? They have to still love me—they have up until this point. Still, it doesn’t feel like it anymore. I don’t… know it, anymore. I spent so long disregarding it and now I can’t find it and now it’s like it isn’t there and now I suddenly think I might want to die, but not in an aggressive way, just—I—I—” Marinette’s hands come up quickly to cover her mouth, and she curls to one side, legs pulled closer to her, and she closes her eyes against the tears overflowing there.

Stacey gently moves a box of tissues closer before leaning back in her own chair. 

It takes a while for Marinette to speak again. Her hands tremble, her breaths shake, and her body feels so, so cold. “I don’t actively want to die,” she whispers, sitting up. “At least, not yet. I don’t… I don’t have any plans, I mean. And I don’t self-harm. But if the situation arose, it now feels like I’d jump at the chance. Like I’d do it without a second thought, like it wouldn’t even matter why.”

Stacey nods. “Passive suicidal ideation,” she says. “Do you feel up to making a safety plan with me now in case anything happens between appointments, or would you like a few moments?”

Marinette shrugs, sniffling. “We can now, yeah.”

For the rest of the appointment, Stacey helps Marinette get together a safety plan to use when needed, including people to talk to and coping mechanisms for certain thoughts or behaviors and things to distract herself with. They make plans to work on Marinette’s self-confidence and distorted self-worth, too, and to work on trauma from Marinette’s mystery solving and her family as well.

By the end of the appointment, Marinette is feeling a bit better about the future.

Notes:

⚠️- marinette attends her second therapy session the day that chris gets sentenced. she talks to the therapist, stacey, about how important the other members of the gang are and what all they have to be able to go home to. she mentions that she wonders if her parents even care about her at all at the age that she is (and the age that she isn’t, not anymore: that she’s not eight years old, that she’s not just a young child). stacey pokes holes in marinette’s thinking (“so, naturally, i’m the one to sacrifice” (marinette) -> “everyone agreed that you should be sacrificed?” (stacey) / “it’s my decision, since it’s my life, right?” (marinette) -> “it’s your life, but it affects other people” (stacey)). amidst this, marinette “casually” mentions that she’s been shot, cut, burned, caught, and tortured, and that these are very real risks the gang faces when trying to solve mysteries. marinette says that she doesn’t matter as much as the rest of the gang, given that she doesn’t contribute as much, and stacey asks if the friendship, support, protection, devotion, and love is not a contribution. marinette says she’s been forgetting that her friends love her, that in the midst of thinking so much that she doesn’t matter and that she’s holding them back or putting them in danger, she started feeling like they didn’t love her and that she wants to die. she says she doesn’t have any active plans to die and that she doesn’t self-harm, but, if the situation arose, she feels like she’d jump at the chance to die, and it wouldn’t even matter why she was doing it. her and stacey make a safety plan and they make plans to work on marinette’s self-confidence and distorted self-worth, as well as her trauma from mystery solving and her family.

whew. that was a chapter, huh?

anyways how do you guys feel 🥰 some amélie interactions this chapter, which i know some of you like 🫣 félix starting to be Honest 🫣 and the Dance where the gang relaxes 🫣 and the gang finding out the ghost girl/axe creature is lila and catching her 🫣 (but things feel a bit unfinished, don’t they..? 🫣🫣) and then the gang talking, the funeral, chris getting sentenced, and Marinette going to Therapy…! 🫣 Kind Of A Lot Happened now that im thinking about it lol

oh and if u want to see more of kitty section 🫶 bcos i have only given you Crumbs so far…! or if youre just curious lol. next chapter is the start of one of my FAVORITE episodes both to watch and to write and it has LOTS of kitty section and LOTS of chloluka and . well. i shant spoil any more… 😏 but let’s just say you guys are about to go on a WILD ride 👹

anyways lol the concert i went to last friday went Great, though i have never seen so many horny old men and women in one room Ever Before 😭 and they would not let me bring in my water bottle Or my Frigging pop tarts to the concert . but i did manage to get a knife in there. (i did not intend to get a knife past security, but i don’t go anywhere without my knife lol ! alas i was Going To This Concert Regardless Of My Contraband Items so i just stuffed it between my Thankfully Voluminous Thighs and the seat of my wheelchair and it managed Not to be found despite the very thorough waving of a wand over my legs Three whole times (in comparison to the once over my front and back lol)). anyways. concert was fun despite my not being hammered like the rest of the population who came to this venue. work is fine and life is stressful still, but i should be able to post the next chapter on friday like usual 😌🫶 Have Not been able to write much but 😭 working on that lol…

anyways i love u all and hope you are staying safe and i LOVE and ADORE your comments they make me smile so so so so so big every time i get the ao3 email 🥹

Chapter 30: chapter thirty

Summary:

Two weeks later, the gang is relaxing and unwinding at a Kitty Section concert.

Notes:

when i tell u im so excited about this episode

Soft bass notes thrum through the concert venue and the cymbals on a set of drums tremble lightly, a beat from the large drum thumping evenly. The band Kitty Section begins playing their new hit “I’d Do Anything To Kill You (‘Cept It Might Just Kill Me, Too)” from their album Immortalize The Mortal. They’re halfway done with their concert in playing this.

As the notes build in volume, a low voice opens the song. “Your blood haunts me in the dead of night,” Rose Lavillant sings with her eyes closed, “calling my name and pulling me in, drawing me up and pulling me close.” There’s a small pause.

The bass notes drop in tone and Rose’s voice grows lower as she sways at the hips to the beat. 

“You’re like an ache,” she sings, “you’re a sick desire—you draw me iiiin, pull me clooose, and I, oh I, I’d—I’d—”

Her voice grows higher and Ivan Bruel crashes out a small crescendo at the drums while Juleka Couffaine switches her fingers from her bass guitar to the keyboard in front of her, dropping a different string of notes on the bass setting from there and looping it before tossing in some higher piano notes. Together, Juleka and Ivan keep things lighter as Rose resumes singing. Her eyes remain closed.

I’d kill you if I could,

But there’s a line holding me back

And it says you’re tied to me,

That I can’t kill you without killing me—

 

Oh, I’d kill you if I could—

Raging temptation, a knife in my hand,

My eyes glued to yours, my hand

Shaking as it bends for you

Rose repeats the last line again, voice growing louder and louder until it climaxes at the word ‘bends’ before dropping low again. Ivan drops another drum solo while Juleka hammers out some higher piano notes before Rose again repeats those last four lines but quieter. While Rose repeats these lines, Juleka loops another string of piano notes, though these are lower. She picks up her bass guitar again just before Rose sings the next lines with her voice still soft.

In my dreams, I ache 

For the taste of your blood

It rages in my veins, this desire,

Pulling me from my bed and

Pushing me to you, 

And I want—I want—I want—

Rose’s voice grows higher. Ivan’s drumsticks beat on the drums, cymbals crashing again and again, but Rose’s high voice and Juleka on the bass both remain steady.

I’d do anything to kill you,

To take your skin in my hands,

To have your blood ‘tween my fingers,

To pull you in and drink you up,

Tear you to pieces and eat you down

Rose’s voice drops again, soft as a whisper. Her eyes are still closed as she sings. Juleka loops the higher string of piano notes, the bass loop unsuffering as she makes the quick move to keep it going.

Your blood haunts me in the dead of night,

Calling my name and pulling me in,

Drawing me up and pulling me close

 

You’re like an ache, you’re a sick desire,

You draw me iiin, and you pull me clooose,

And I’d—I’d—oh, I—I’d—

There’s a long pause as everything drops into a beat of complete silence, and then Ivan comes down heavy and loud with the drums just as Juleka crashes in with the bass. Rose cries out:

I’d do anything to kill you,

But I have this suspiiicion

That if I merely took you in my arms

And held you the whole night through,

If I merely kissed you, made you mine instead,

Folded you up inside me, inside my arms,

Oh, I have this suspiiicion that I’d

That I’d—

Rose’s voice grows into a scream. She stomps her foot once, raising a hand, as her voice shouts into the microphone: 

That I’d satisfy this ache and I’d

Satisfy this burn, and I’d

Satisfy this de-sire, and I—

I’d—

I’d—

I’d do anything to kill you!

But I suspect the desire would

Eat me up from inside 

If you were to die and I’d—

I’d do anything! I’d do anything!

I’d do anything to kill you!

Rose’s voice breaks off abruptly, and she finally opens her eyes. The bass and the drums grow softer, dropping off slowly, but the piano continues with its strong lower tone. Rose’s expression is one of grief, and as her voice wavers, she sings:

I’d do anything,

Oh, I’d do anything to kill you,

’Cept it might just kill me, too,

So instead I think

I think I’ll just

I think I’ll just kiss you

Rose’s expression slowly morphs into a smile, although it’s sad. Still, as Ivan hammers out another fast drum solo, she bends low, screaming:

Or I’ll just kill us both!

~*~

The song ends with a bang, everyone in the crowd screaming. The gang stands at the front of the mosh pit, Luka, Nino, Marinette, Adrien, and Chloé screaming along, with Félix and Alya clapping. It’s been about two weeks since the end of the Lila case, and everyone has spent the time relaxing and unwinding, trying to catch up on as much sleep and homework as they can. Tonight, in support of the band and Luka, they attend Kitty Section’s first concert of their third small, local tour. 

Kitty Section thanks the crowd and readies for their next song, “See You Next Never”. As the opening notes start to play from Rose’s electric guitar, there’s a flash and a bang at one end of the stage. Fog rises up from that end, and when it clears, “See You Next Never” stumbles to a stop as the band members turn to see the figure standing on their stage. 

The crowd is quiet as Rose—and Juleka, protectively—move closer with their guitars.

Luka, however, is already climbing over the fence to try and get to the stage. The rest of the gang follows him, even as he fights and argues with the bodyguards in front of the stage.

“Let me through! I’m Juleka’s brother!” he cries, shoving his ID in one guards’ hand. “Just look at me and her and you’ll see it!”

“Listen, Kitty Section, carefully!” the figure on the stage shouts, chilling everyone in the concert. 

Luka fights against the bodyguards even more. “Let me through!”

“Sir, no one is allowed onto the stage unless they’ve been granted access, which you have not—”

“You are bound for misery!” the figure on the stage shouts. “This will be your final show, or you will suffer endless woe!” 

“That’s my sister!” Luka cries, struggling against the bodyguard having locked him in their arms.

Marinette and Nino tug at that same bodyguard’s arms, and Félix, Alya, Adrien, and Chloé have an argument with another bodyguard who won’t let them through.

“So sayeth the phantom!” the figure on the stage cries, pointing at Kitty Section. 

As the gang continues struggling against the bodyguards, Rose turns defiantly to the phantom, electric guitar in hand as she glares at them. 

“No one tells Kitty Section what to do,” she says, mic still hooked up. She strums a heavy guitar riff, widening her stance, and Juleka grins, adding in her bass guitar. Ivan starts up the drums again, expression firm and defiant. 

The phantom cries out in anger at the band’s refusal to listen and obey. Before the gang can react, there’s a ball of energy soaring to meet the base of one of the large speakers beside Ivan, where Rose and Juleka have strayed. The speaker shorts and wobbles, beginning to tip towards Juleka and Rose. Neither of them notice it, though, glaring daggers at the phantom.

Luka sees it, though.

“Juleka!” he screams. “Get out of there!”

The rest of the gang turns. Félix’s first order of business, as is Chloé and Nino’s, is to get Luka free. While Chloé delivers a short but heavy and strong roundhouse kick to the side of the bodyguard holding Luka back, Marinette, Adrien, and Alya shout again for Juleka and Rose to get back away from the speaker. When the guard holding Luka back tumbles to the ground, Félix and Nino are quick to pull the bodyguard’s arms from around Luka. Unbeknownst to Luka, Chloé is the one who helps him to his feet and shoves him towards the stage and his sister. 

Juleka only turns back to look at the commotion. With wide eyes, she looks up behind her, and she sees the speaker still tipping towards her.

Chloé and Félix take down the other bodyguards rushing at them, allowing the rest of the gang to run for the stage. 

Juleka takes a single step to the side, dropping her bass to hang at her hips and waist, and she shoves Rose out of the way.

The speaker crashes down as the phantom disappears in another cloud of fog.

Luka is still trying to heft himself up onto the stage when a single scream rings out through the whole concert.

~*~

“We don’t want to cancel the tour, Daniel!” Rose shouts.

She’s the only one standing from the band, with Juleka sitting on the couch in the small tour bus and Ivan sitting beside her protectively. Rose and Daniel, Kitty Section’s tour manager, stand arguing by the door.

The gang crowds by the couch where Juleka and Ivan sit, with Luka on Juleka’s other side—the side of her freshly made leg cast, meant to stay on until her broken leg heals. 

“You don’t even have a bassist or keyboardist, now,” Daniel pleads. “Come on—you guys can go on tour after your senior year if you still want to.”

Rose turns to Juleka, wide-eyed and desperate. “Jules—”

Juleka smiles a bit. “I know. I don’t want the band to not tour, either, but… well, you don’t have a bassist anymore. Or keyboardist. Not for the time being, yeah? Daniel’s right about that much.” 

Chloé shifts nervously on her feet at the rear of the gang, feeling a preemptive sort of disgust climbing up her throat. She swallows it back. 

Nino, near the front of the group, glances to Luka. 

“What if…” Adrien starts, “what if you did have a keyboardist?”

Rose and Juleka both look to Adrien.

Luka grimaces. 

“Well,” Rose says, looking to Juleka, “what do you think, Jules?” 

Juleka looks back at Rose, smiling some more. “I think it’d be great. I can still tag along for the tour and help out where I can, but yeah.” 

Rose glances back to Adrien. “What do you propose, Adrien?”

Adrien smiles. “Well, I happen to know at least one keyboardist, and I think they can learn how to do the bass on it if they don’t already know how.” 

Alya’s lips twist and she looks at Rose. “We should also probably replace Rose til we find the phantom. She defied them and made them pretty angry by saying what she did.”

Rose’s expression drops. “Are you serious? Kitty Section needs a singer and electric guitarist.” 

Juleka worries her lip. “Rose… they may have a point. Ivan was the last of us to play along, but you were the first to verbally and audibly defy the phantom, and that’s what made him angry enough to tip the speaker over us.” 

Rose looks back to Juleka, mouth flattened into a thin line. “Our band needs a singer and electric guitarist.” 

Juleke looks to her brother, expression pleading. 

There’s a moment of hesitation before Luka nods. “I can be your electric guitarist and backup singer.” 

Adrien looks back to Chloé, eyes questioning and hopeful. 

Chloé moves from behind the group to view. “I can sing and play the keyboard, and bass shouldn’t be too hard to relearn on the keyboard. I used to do all three when I was younger, and I kept it up up until last year,” she says quietly. “Luka and I can keep your band going until the phantom is caught.” 

Luka’s eyes couldn’t be any wider, his brows any higher, or his surprise any more clear on his face. Still, this is the chance to help his sister and Rose, so he does his best to morph his expression into one of blankness before he turns to Rose and nods. “We’ll do it. You and Jules should step down for your safety, and we’ll play in your place.”

Rose and Juleka look at one another for a long, tense moment. 

Finally, they nod. 

“Alright,” Rose says, “but you might have to write some songs. We haven’t played the others in the album, yet, and we want to keep those set aside. You can write some songs, play some covers, and supplement with our old songs for the concerts til you find the phantom. I’ll tell Boggs, our band manager, and we can get started today. Sound like a plan?”

Next to her, Daniel flounders silently.

Luka nods, glancing as briefly as he can at Chloé. 

We’re going to have to talk, he thinks.

~*~

Luka doesn’t have the chance to confront Chloé the rest of the evening. 

He’s busy, for much of it, with memorizing the band’s old songs and recalling how he and Juleka would practice at home when she couldn’t with the band. He plays much from memory but memorizes also the latest single from Immortalize The Mortal, following along with Juleka, who plays her bass on the couch in the dressing room with him.

The rest of the gang—minus Chloé—investigates the stage and does research, surveillance, and trap planning in the van. 

Across the dressing room from Luka and Juleka, though, sit Chloé, Rose, and Ivan. They’re helping put together Chloé’s new Kitty Section look, dressing her like the others have been for most of their musical career. 

Rose has always worn a pink corset over a black leotard with black chunky boots, a cropped pink jacket, and a poofy pink tulle skirt for her Kitty Section look. Juleka has always worn a dark purple A-line dress with black fishnets, black knee high boots, and a torn black mesh top over her dress and under a black leather jacket. Ivan has always gone for the simple look in wearing a black t-shirt with a grey-green long-sleeved shirt under it with grey-green cargo shorts and black boots.

None of them had ever had enough money at the start of playing in their band to spring for more clothes, and even as they grow in popularity locally, gaining shows at small concert venues, local café’s, parties, and events, they keep their one look consistent. 

With Chloé, Rose and Ivan help her find a black and yellow outfit reminiscent of Kitty Section’s look in one of Chloé’s favorite online shops. Luka’s outfit has already been decided between him, Juleka, and Marinette. He’ll wear a pair of ripped blue jeans, black chunky boots, and a black band tee for Kitty Section with the sides cut out over a cropped, long-sleeved blue mesh top. Chloé’s outfit will be a short yellow bodycon dress with a black corset, black knee high boots, yellow leg warmers, and a black choker. 

After finalizing Chloé’s look, Rose and Ivan start helping her write a song. 

“First, I think you should find something you want to write about,” Rose says, leaning back on the rear two legs of her chair. 

Ivan nods, sitting in his own chair but leaning against one of the dressing room tables. Chloé sits across from him in a bean bag chair, legs criss-cross applesauce.

“Do you guys have any suggestions?” Chloé asks. If Luka could hear her, he might have a heart attack over how amiable and pleasant she’s being. 

Ivan shrugs. “I usually sing about my shitty family or bullying,” he says offhandedly. 

Rose nods, smiling. “I sing about death, love, or my shitty family.”

Chloé bites back a laugh. “Alright, well, shitty family I’ve got. Hm…” 

As Ivan and Rose watch, Chloé pulls out her phone and begins to type. It’s several minutes before she looks up.

“How about something like… drop the leash,” she sings softly, quietly, so as not to disrupt anyone else, “drop the chains, call the dogs off and—call back the hounds. Loosen my collar and drop the act, drop the act; ‘cause I ain’t perfect, I’ll never be, and neither are you, so quit acting like I’ll ever measure up. How’s… how’s that?”

Ivan and Rose both think for a few moments before speaking.

“I like the idea of calling off the dogs but still asking for them to loosen your own collar,” Rose says, a grin spreading across her lips.

“Like you’re a dog, too,” Ivan says, smiling, “someone they can sic on someone else, but you don’t want to be like that.”

Chloé smiles, curling her legs up to her chest. “That’s what I was hoping would make sense,” she says. 

“I love the double meaning you have there,” Rose says, nodding. “It reminds me of ‘I’d Do Anything To Kill You.’”

Chloé grins. “Oh—ugh, I love that song so much. You’re talking about the vampirism metaphor, yeah? About how you’re the one killing, the one taking, but they still have so much power over you in ruling your desires, wants, and when you sleep or don’t? They—their very being controls you, telling you where to be and when, and you’d do—ugh, you’d do anything to kill them, but the sudden absence of them might just kill you, too, if you don’t get more blood?” she asks, leaning forward excitedly.

“Exactly,” Rose says, pointing at her with an equally large grin, “but it’s also about loving that person, too, you know? Wanting them dead, wanting to kill them yourself, but wondering if maybe the love will be enough to satisfy your own bloodlust. Love versus bloodlust: which will win, which will kill you faster?”

Ivan shakes his head, smiling, too. “That song is so good—I’m glad it ended up being the single.” 

“It was so awesome hearing the crowd sing it back tonight, right?” Rose asks, laughing and looking to Ivan. “It was like magic.”

“Magic,” Chloé says, “was hearing you guys play that song live. I’ve had it in my repeats for literal months, I’ve been memorizing it and singing along to it every night and every morning, in my free periods when I walk down to a café to do the college work. It’s so fucking good.”

Rose and Ivan both grin, blushing happily.

“Well,” Rose says after a moment, after she’s collected herself, “maybe you can play it for us on stage tomorrow, yeah?”

Chloé nods, and she pulls up her messages quickly on her phone, giddy.

8:29 p.m.

Chloé

hey, think you could learn to play i’d do anything to

kill you? if u dont know it already

Luka

it’s not like a wish of yours is it 💀

to kill me i mean

Chloé

no

the world does not revolve around you

i just love the song and rose said we could play it tmr

Luka

i’ll see what i can do

for rose and jules and ivan.

but if i see one weapon on you im running

Chloé

coward

[replied to: Luka: for rose and jules and ivan]       

yeah i didn’t think ud do it for me 🙄

Luka

duh.

           [replied to: Chloé: coward]

marinette showed me a video of you kicking 

that guard’s ass, so. no. im not a coward.

i just know my limits 💀

aka Lethal Force Meant To Kill Me

Chloé

just learn the song please u clown

read 8:32 p.m.         

Chloé exits out of her messages with a roll of her eyes, but she looks up to a curious Ivan and Rose. “Should we finish this song?”

Rose nods. “We usually start off with a chorus. What’s something you feel like will tie the song together?”

Chloé purses her lips. “Here, let me draft the rest of it and see if I can figure out a chorus to show you.”

Rose and Ivan both nod.

In twenty minutes, Chloé has a draft of a song. 

“How about for a chorus, something like this?” Chloé asks. She starts to sing softly, mindful of Luka and Juleka working on their guitars across the room. “Can’t you do anything right? Can I, can I, can I? Well, can you lay off a moment, give me a sec to breathe—call off the guard dogs and loosen my chains, please.”

Rose and Ivan nod, thinking.

“In the draft, I wrote it as leading into the first verse and the first half of the bridge or third verse,” Chloé says, worrying her lip. “Should I show you the first lines of both as they connect to the chorus?”

Ivan nods. “That’d be nice.”

Chloé nods, nervous. “Well, for the first verse, it goes, call off the guard dogs and loosen my chains, please, because I’ve gotta have room, I need some space. It goes on, but the second play of the chorus leads in like this: call off the guard dogs and loosen my chains, please, and drop the act, you imposter.”

Rose crosses her arms, closing her eyes as she thinks. “That’d work, yeah.”

Ivan nods, too. “What’s the first verse like? The rest of it, I mean.”

Rose purses her lips. “Should we maybe try moving to the stage? Try having her sing it to us?”

Ivan nods again. “Yeah—I can get a feel for the drums, too, and we can play it a few times.”

Rose grins. “Then I’ll do the electric guitar, note it down, and send it off to Luka tonight. He’s got a couple free periods, right?”

Chloé grimaces. “He’s got one, but we’ll probably skip Chemistry with Adrien, Marinette, and Nino tomorrow. It’s just a study period for the quiz on Monday, but we all have plans to study over the weekend, too.”

Rose nods, smiling. “Great—let’s get out of here.”

Chloé and Ivan stand up and Rose grabs her electric guitar, letting Luka and Juleka know they’re going to work out a song on the stage. Luka shoots Chloé an unreadable look, but she ignores it, following Ivan out to the mostly empty stage that only still holds Ivan’s drums and Juleka’s keyboard. 

Once on the stage, Rose and Ivan plug in the keyboard and guitar before setting up at their respective instruments with Chloé turned to face them both with her phone.

It’s about an hour before she’s figured out and memorized the piano keys and the bass notes, looping the latter on the keyboard while she plays the former. Once she has a good rhythm she’s happy with, she guides Rose and Ivan both in the sounds she thinks fit the song best for another hour, humming the tune of her lyrics as she goes. 

After this, Chloé feels comfortable singing. The gang messages her and Luka, asking if she and him can catch a ride home with the band, and Ivan nods, saying they should all be able to fit in his truck. The gang heads home, Adrien, Nino, and Félix to sleep, and Marinette and Alya to work on trap ideas and research respectively.

Still, the band and Chloé and Luka work together through the night.

It’s about 10:45 p.m. when Chloé begins to sing. 

First, she starts off the song with a fast looping bass line, with Ivan metering out soft, even clashes to his cymbals. “Can’t you do anything right?” Chloé starts off gently, adding in some low, distorted piano notes. “Can I, can I, can I? Well, can you lay off a moment, give me a sec to breathe?”

Rose comes in then with the electric guitar, heavy and low. Chloé lightens up the tone of the distorted piano notes as she continues.

“Call off the guard dogs and loosen my chains, please,” she sings, finishing the chorus, “because I’ve gotta have room, I’ve gotta have room, and I need some space, I need some place to be, so can you give me a break? Close your eyes and shut your face,” she starts to cry aloud as her piano notes grow more fevered and higher, “before I shut it for you and break some teeth!”

Ivan stops with the cymbals, dropping out a heavy thrumming on the drums: bada-bada-badabada-clang. Rose speeds up on the electric guitar, shifting on her feet with a smile, and she lightens the tone of it.

You’ve gotta give me some space,

Give me some space,

Call back the dogs and police, 

Call back the hounds and drop the act,

’Cause you ain’t perfect,

So why do I gotta be?

You ain’t perfect, so let me be me

And drop the act,

Drop the act,

Call off the dogs and

Pull back the guards

The bass drops off and Chloé deftly switches it up, slowing it down and looping that instead. She adds on top of it more bass notes, though more fevered and random, and she nods to Rose, who starts singing the chorus while slowing the notes she plays on her guitar. Ivan switches back to a steady, even bada-bada-bada-bap-bap-bam on the drums.

In the last two lines of the chorus, Chloé and Ivan join in. 

Call off the guard dogs

And loosen my chains, please,

 

And drop the act, you imposter,

Because you ain’t perfect 

And neither am I,

But you’re the only one acting 

Like you are and I gotta be

But it’s impossible, it’s impossible,

So let it go, you gotta let it go

Ivan cuts in with a heavy drum solo as Chloé drops the bass lower in tone, adding in a higher string of piano notes. Rose keeps steady on the electric guitar, throwing in some higher thrums that add to the depth of the song. 

Chloé repeats the last two lines of what’s now the bridge before her voice cuts into a shout.

But it’s impossible, it’s impossible,

So you’ve gotta let it go, you’ve gotta let it go,

 

And drop the leash,

Drop the chains,

Call the dogs off and

Call back the hounds,

Loosen my collar and

Drop the act, drop the act, 

‘Cause I ain’t perfect, I’ll never be with you

But you aren’t perfect,

You aren’t perfect, either,

So quit acting like I’ll

Ever measure

Up! And drop the act, 

Drop the act, 

“Drop the act,” Chloé shouts, before her voice drops lower, almost to a softer normal speaking volume. “‘Cause I’ll never be perfect, I’ll never be perfect with you, so quit acting like I’ll ever measure up to a standard you can’t reach, not even for miles.”

The drums, guitar, and bass drop lower and lower, growing slower in speed as they go, until they finally peter off. Chloé keeps the lighter piano keys going soft and slow as she sings the last few lines again. When she finishes, she tags on a few more piano notes before dropping even those off, too.

Finally finished, she looks up to see Rose and Ivan grinning. 

“That was awesome,” Rose says, letting her guitar fall as she picks up her phone. “I’ll make a few adjustments to the notes I’ll send to you guys, and I’ll toss it in a new group chat. Any adjustments to this song should be made in the group chat, but we can send small recordings, pictures, or do a phone call if necessary, yeah?”

Chloé and Ivan both nod.

“What do you want to call it?” Rose asks, typing away.

“I was thinking ‘Drop The Act,’” she says sheepishly, “but what do you guys think?” 

“I think that’s great,” Ivan says, nodding happily. 

Rose nods, too, still looking at her phone. “We should play it through a few more times so Ivan has it down. Tomorrow, Chloé, do you think you and Luka can practice in your free period?”

Chloé nods, though she isn’t happy about it. “Sure,” she says.

“Great,” Rose says with a large smile. She sets her phone aside and picks up her guitar. “We ready to play it again?”

~*~

They play “Drop The Act” for another hour, at which point Ivan and Chloé both feel like they could play it again well, Ivan can write down the notes to practice himself, and Rose can write down the chords for Luka to learn. 

At about midnight, the band and Luka and Chloé get into Ivan’s truck, which, much to the disappointment of Luka and Chloé, only has three official seats. Luka and Chloé end up huddling in the truck bed with the instruments under a few blankets, having told the band that, really, it was fine and no big deal at all. 

This was evidently a lie, given their normal interactions with one another and self-proclaimed mutual hatred, but between Chloé’s likening towards the members of the band—and her desire to make it work—and Luka’s mind-boggled confusion concerning Chloé, the ride isn’t only insults and is mostly silent. It helps that they believe the band might be able to hear them. (They can’t.)

“Hey,” Luka says a bit into the ride with his arms wrapped around his knees that are pulled to his chest. He and Chloé, to conserve resources and warmth, are huddled close under two blankets. This is a very uncomfortable arrangement for them both, but pride—and the tit-shitting cold—keeps them from moving. 

“What?” Chloé asks, staring straight ahead.

“Can you explain something to me?”

Chloé gives him a dark side-eye. “No.”

Luka grumbles. “Please?” 

“Nope,” she says, popping the ‘p’. 

Luka sighs. “Fine.”

There’s a few moments of silence before either of them speaks. 

“So,” Luka starts. “Your song looked interesting.” 

“Is it a requirement that you talk?” Chloé asks, sighing. 

Luka badly wants to elbow her. It doesn’t help that he has an elbow right beside her ribs.

“We can practice and talk about the song tomorrow,” she says, voice softer. “I’m tired, now.”

Luka frowns. “Can I ask just one question?”

Chloé scowls. “I don’t want you to.”

“Can you not ruin things with the band just because we hate each other?”

There’s a beat of silence.

“Me hating you has nothing to do with Kitty Section,” Chloé eventually says, voice quiet. “I’m not going to mess things up with them just because you’re there, too.”

Luka doesn’t know if he should feel glad about her answer or not.

Notes:

wwaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhggghhh.

woke up today to edit and post this chapter and i asked my sister to turn on the light (we share a room) and she said no and i said but im posting an atitl chapter todayyyyy and she was like 😐 post it in the dark. anyways lol

okay so when i set out to write this episode lol i was like i at least need to know What songs kitty section is singing . so i planned out some album and song titles. and i was like great thats good i can stop there . but then i couldn’t stop thinking about the song titles and i was like okayyyyyyyy but What If! i wrote some of their songs…! and then next thing you know theres like six or seven maybe eight songs written for their band. so yeah. 🥸 and also ive never written Any songs before except ones that will never see the light of day and my only experience in anything music was gaslighting my way through four years of school band where i “played” the flute (<- read: did not play well at all despite one-on-one lessons and practicing at home and many many many tutoring sessions) until i eventually was like fuck this shit and left… 🤡 so i also Do Not know how to describe music. literally all i can do is play some notes on the flute and like. read notes. couldnt tell you what notes they Are but i know the shorts, the extra shorts, the bippity boppitys, the longs, the regulars, the really longs, and like. the places on the scales. lol. so yeah. but i wanted to write their songs ahahhaha soooo…. here we are

ANYWAYS! lol i hope you liked this chapter and the bumps in the lukloé/chloluka rollercoaster there will be More for this episode, and then the next with some adrienette, and then it will be more Féligami…. ! and stuff. i hopee you are Excited for the next chapter bcos Boy am i . there will be luka and juleka convos… a song about ivan’s dad (did i mENTION. the insane kitty section lore being dropped in these songs !!)… chloé’s song… a fave duo of mine from kitty section called “I THINK I LOVE YOU” and “I THINK YOU HATE ME”… and also Other Things I Shant Spoil… 😌

writing unforch still hasn’t been going too well & im debating going on a hiatus after the pre-written chapters are posted but 😭 not sure… or spacing them out more and just posting once a week instead butttt idk 😭 life and work are same as usual, got a KIller sinus migraine going on almost two weeks now, uhhhh yeah thats about it lol. gonna make a cake today for my moms bday… And as usual ill post the next chapter on tuesday !! and if yall are like girllllll space them out one chapter posted a week…! ill still post on friday but not post the following tuesday and just. let yall know friday posting will be the new jig for this fic until further notice 🤔 anyways love yall love ur comments hope u Enjoyed 🥰

Chapter 31: chapter thirty-one

Summary:

Later that night, Luka and Juleka are dropped off at home. They have a long talk before heading to bed, and, the next day, after the band practices and the rest of the gang sets up a trap, Chloé, Luka, and Ivan go on stage for their first concert together.

Luka and Juleka get home late that evening, being the last to be dropped off before Ivan himself. 

Luka helps Jules carefully out of Ivan’s truck with Ivan helping with the cast and the crutches, and they slowly but surely make it to the boat before Ivan drives away.

“Think we can get by Mom without her noticing?” Juleka asks, glancing over at Luka, who carries his electric guitar, having taken her bass guitar and the keyboard inside already. 

Luka shrugs a bit. “If we’re quiet, yeah. She’s passed out on the couch again. If you want, you can sit outside while I take your crutches in and I can carry you in after?”

Juleka frowns. “I think I’ll take my chances with the crutches. I’d rather you were here with me if she woke up to find me, rather than her finding out I broke my leg while you’re off to school with the gang before Ivan gets me, you know?” 

Luka nods. “If you want, I can break it to her in the morning and we can drop you off at Ivan’s before school?”

Juleka smiles at him a bit. “That’d be great.”

Aside from earlier in the evening with the bass and electric guitar practice, this is the longest he and Jules have talked since the Gatorsburg case with their father. 

There’s a few minutes of silence as they make their way across the boat and inside, slowly crutching past their mother on the couch, who lies there, snoring loudly with a mostly-empty bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand. Luka grits his teeth, but he walks past her instead of taking the bottle away and he helps Jules down the stairs to the bedrooms. 

Once they’re in her room, they find the very real issue of clothing. 

For several moments, they both stare into her closet, wincing.

“I can just wear my underwear and one of your long shirts,” Juleka whispers, standing beside him. 

Luka nods. “That’d probably be best,” he whispers back. “In the morning, I can have Mari, Alya, or Chloé come in and help you get dressed for school?” He only mentions Chloé since Juleka doesn’t really know the terms he and her have been on since the Fruitmeir case.

“Thanks,” she says. 

Luka nods again and heads out to his room, where he grabs one of his oversized tees. When he comes back, Juleka is in the skirt she borrowed from Alya and her shirt, having discarded her jacket and kicked off her single shoe. 

“I need your help with my sock,” she says plainly, sat on the bed with a frown. “Sorry.”

Luka shrugs. He tosses the shirt onto the bed and crouches, pulling off her sock gently. “You’ll probably need help with a lot, but we’ve got plenty of friends willing to help and I’ll do whatever I can, so try not to worry about asking for too much.” 

Juleka nods, thanking him, and he leaves to go get changed into different clothes himself.

Juleka texts him a few minutes later, asking him to come back to take her clothes. He does, in his sweatpants and an old Metallica tee, taking their clothes to the front of the washer, and she tells him to come back again. 

When he comes back the final time, she’s sat up on her bed and patting the space next to her.

“You want me to sit with you?” he asks, trying not to sound too surprised. 

Things between them were at first icy after his father was taken in, thawing only slightly in the weeks since the case and sentence. He’s surprised she’s being so amiable towards him and reaching out tonight, even if he’s been wanting it the whole time. He’d especially wanted to have their usual connection after hearing what his father had told him about some things lasting and others not, but he hadn’t wanted to push it in her anger with him. 

“Yeah,” Juleka says easily, as if the past few weeks hadn’t existed. “Come here already.”

Luka carefully goes to sit beside her, feeling a bit awkward in the next few minutes of silence as he looks around her room. He eventually notices a stack of his old CDs and a photo frame with all of his old guitar picks inside it. 

“You’ve kept all those?” he asks, gesturing to them lightly. He thinks about the Kitty Section band tees he wears all the time, about the sweaters and hoodies and jackets with their band name and logo on it, all of which he shares with the rest of the gang. He thinks about the posters for her band he still has hung up in his room, the CDs of theirs he carries around and has stacked up in his room, similarly to how she’s stacked up his old CDs of bands they used to talk about for hours—including, of course, the now sore spot of their fathers’ band. 

Something in his chest softens and shifts, and he feels like he could cry.

Juleka nods. “Of course. You gave them to me.”

I thought you were angry at me, he thinks to himself, sniffling quietly. He rubs at his eyes, as if tired. I thought you hated me for taking Dad to jail. He doesn’t say anything. Neither does she.

After a bit, she looks down at her lap, fiddling with her fingers. “Thanks for helping save the band,” she says, voice barely audible. Louder, she says, “I… didn’t think you would, but thank you.” 

Luka looks over at her, brows drawn together under the flop of his faded pink hair. “Why would you think I wouldn’t? You love music, and I’d do anything to help you.” 

Juleka frowns, and the movements of her fingers speed up. “I… I thought… well, you wouldn’t help me after how… how things went down with Dad. How… mad I’ve been.”

Cautiously, Luka reaches over to take her hands in his. “Jules, I’d do anything to help you. I felt like you were angry at me, that you hated me for bringing him in to court, but none of that changes what I’d do to help you if you asked or needed it.”

Juleka looks over at him, tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she breathes. “I’m so sorry.” 

Luka reaches out, pulling her into a hug. “It’s okay, Jules. I mean—it wasn’t, but I—I understand why you’re angry.”

She hugs him back for a moment before pulling away and wiping at her eyes. “I—do you forgive me? Can you?”

His expression softens. “Of course I can.”

“Can—can we talk about him?” she asks after a beat, wiping some more at her eyes. “Please?”

He hesitates, now, pulling away from her fully and pulling his knees up to his chest. 

“I didn’t look at the case online—how it was going or what it was about—and I didn’t even check Alya’s blog,” she whispers, crying. She’s stopped wiping at her eyes, finding it futile. “I wanted you to tell me, but you never did.”

Luka looks at her, frowning, though he’s crying now, too. “Why not look at the case online? Or Alya’s blog? It’d be—It’d be easier than hearing from me what he said and did to me and the gang, to us.”

Juleka cries harder, trying to muffle the sound with a hand over her mouth. “Is it really that bad? Is it so bad you can’t even tell me?”

“I don’t want you to feel like I did hearing or experiencing those things,” he says, looking away.

“It’d be easier than not knowing and having to wonder,” she cries. She pulls her uninjured leg up to her chest, curling around it. 

Luka thinks about it for a while, and the whole time, Juleka tries to get her tears under control. 

His eyes unfocus and his hands start to shake as he thinks, and he goes back to those moments from that night—moments that have kept him awake each evening, staring at the ceiling of his room and crying silently; moments that have given him nightmares of waking up, cold and alone with Juleka out in the streets and nightmares of trying to protect Juleka and his friends from his father, but he lies there, bleeding out and dying, only able to watch as his father mauls them to death. He returns to those moments from that night so many weeks ago. It has his breath catching in his throat and his body feeling unusually, terribly cold again. 

“Welcome to the Drowsy Gator,” Penny Rolling had said dryly, filing her nails. “We have no vacancies.”

The door had opened behind Nino, Alya, Adrien, Chloé, and Luka, and the figure from the truck had entered the room. They all had turned, and Luka had frozen, eyes widening. 

“I told these folks to come here, Penny,” the figure—his father—had said. “We have a few rooms for some passerby, don't we?”

Penny had sighed, looking up from her nails. “Jagged, you know what I say about strays.”

Jagged had looked back at the group between them, his mouth in a thin, straight line. He hadn’t changed much from the dilapidated rockstar poster Anarka used to throw darts at—his hair had maybe greyed some, and he’d acquired some wrinkles. There was a roughness to his voice that Luka had recognized from the CDs that were contraband in the houseboat, but that he had still listened to as a kid in his always-hidden Walkman. The voice had been the same in court, too, and it has been the exact same in Luka’s nightmares weeks later.

Luka couldn’t seem to move back then, that night, as much as he terribly, terribly wanted to. There had been no recognition in his father's expression as his gaze had flit over him. “Something tells me these ones won't cause any trouble, Pen.”

Penny had sighed, and she had come around the counter. The black-haired boy at the piano had stopped playing, and he had walked across the room to stand beside Penny. Jagged had moved to stand on the other side of the boy, and Luka had started to feel sick to his stomach as the pieces began falling into place.

“Welcome to the Drowsy Gator,” Penny had repeated. “I’m Penny Rolling, and you’ve met Jagged. This is our son, Fang,” Penny had said, gesturing at last to the boy beside her.

Nino and Alya had nodded. Luka had only blinked slowly, and things began to unfocus around him. He’s gotta be right around my age, he had thought. That's impossible, right?

“We have two—” Penny had started to say, but Luka had interrupted her, holding up a shaking hand. 

“How old is Fang?” he had asked, his voice a bit hoarse. Chloé had shot him a look that had said shut up, and Nino had looked at him, confused. Luka hadn’t taken the question back.

Fang had smiled at him. “I’m nineteen.”

Luka’s skin had turned ashen, but he still had managed to glare at Jagged as he’d muttered, “I’m going outside.” He had stumbled out of the hotel, waving off Nino, Alya, and Adrien and their concern.

Penny had looked to Jagged sharply as the door had slammed behind Luka. Luka had stumbled along one side of the hotel, one hand on the worn and aging wood of the building keeping him up. Jagged had come out a moment later, door slamming again, and he had followed Luka outside at his wife's order, frowning sharply. Luka had stopped walking several yards down the side of the hotel, and he had bent over at the hips, dry heaving into the thick darkness.

Behind him, Jagged had slowed down, but he hadn’t stopped until he was about a foot away from Luka and to the side.

Once he had been able to finally breathe, Luka had said hoarsely, “Go away.”

Jagged had only stuffed his hands into his jean pockets. “You can throw up inside, you know,” he had said roughly. “We have a bathroom downstairs. You just had to ask.”

“Well, I didn't, okay?” Luka had shouted, leaning against the side of the hotel. He had lowered his voice, dizzy with its volume. “So you can leave me the hell alone—I’ll sleep in the van.”

“It isn't safe.” 

“Like you fucking care,” Luka had muttered darkly.

Jagged had glared at Luka. “What’s your problem, kid?” 

Luka had quieted, and after a few tense moments, he had turned and looked right at Jagged. “You don't even know who I am, do you?” he had asked.

“Should I?” Jagged’s brows had drawn together. It had taken several minutes for the realization to dawn on him, but even then, he had still frowned. “Anarka.”

“I turned eighteen two months ago,” Luka had said. He’d smiled wide, though it had appeared more sickened than anything.

Jagged had nodded, but he hadn’t moved and his expression hadn’t changed.

Luka had sighed and turned away from his father. “So you’ve been here the whole time, then,” he had said quietly. It hadn’t been a question, and his voice had sounded more like a child’s than it had in more than eleven years.

Jagged had nodded again.

Luka had closed his eyes. “Why didn't you stay with us?”

“Anarka and I hadn't been right for years when she had you two,” Jagged had said quietly. “You guys were her last ditch effort to make her and I work, and even with that, I had to fight to keep her from drinking those nine months.” He had sighed, heavy and long. Luka hadn’t felt sorry for him, and he still doesn’t, weeks later. “It was hell, but she apparently came out of it with two healthy kids. She went right back to drinking, and I decided it was time to get out.”

Behind his closed lids, Luka had had tears in his eyes. His voice had wavered, but he’d said, “You didn't answer my question. What about me and… my sister?” He hadn’t want to tell Jagged Juleka’s name, he hadn’t want to give him even that one detail. In only this, half of him had hoped Jagged hadn’t remember much about the life he had left behind. It had felt easier that way—just the slightest bit. In the same way, he later didn’t tell Juleka about this encounter. It felt easier that way—just the slightest bit. Only one of them suffering. “Why didn't you stay with us? Why did you come here,” he had said, voice growing angrier, even as it had wobbled, even as a few tears had escaped his grasp and slipped down over his cheeks, “to some other life, to some other woman, to some other kid?”

Jagged had been quiet for a long time before he had turned and started slowly walking away. A few yards from him, when Luka was still turned away, Jagged had called back, “Things happen, kid. Some of those things last. Others don't.”

Luka’s eyes start to focus again, even as his lower lip trembles. He says, “He had a kid, Jules. And a wife. The kid was 19.”

Juleka is quiet, now, watching Luka.

“He didn’t even recognize me,” he says quietly, looking down at Juleka’s bed past his knees. He’s still cold, still uneasy, still shaking, but he continues. “He apparently had a kid with some other woman just before having us with Mom. I guess it was hard to keep her from drinking when she was pregnant, but she went right back to it after having us. He left, then.” 

“I hate her,” Juleka whispers, though they both know it isn’t completely true. 

They’ve talked about it before, how they feel about their mother. I hate her, I want to hate her, I can’t do anything but hate her, Jules had said, but I also can’t help but love her and long for my mother. Luka had understood. Later, these ideas had developed into the Kitty Section songs “Rip Me From Your Womb (Before You Destroy Me),” “Mother, Mother, Monster,” “I Wish I Could Hate You,” and the Kitty Section album Birth Death, which had also featured a song about Rose’s mother (“Sending You To The Home”), a song about Ivan’s mother (“Should’ve Killed Her (When I Had The Chance)”), and a heartbreak song based on Jagged and Anarka’s relationship as Luka and Jules had heard from their grandmother Jeemee (“Drink It Down”).

“Well,” Luka says dryly, “Dad sure didn’t do anything to stick around or support us in any way.”

Juleka nods slowly. “What’d he do instead?”

Luka keeps it simple. “Murder, fraud, assault.” 

“I should have expected with your usual cases,” Jules whispers. “I just thought… well, Dad.”

Luka nods, looking over at her finally. “I know.” 

“What’d he say to you? You said it was bad.” 

Luka makes his expression blank. “I forgot.”

“Bullshit,” she says softly, watching him. “Come on—tell me, Lu?” 

Luka looks away, closing his eyes. It’s a minute or two before he speaks. “I asked him why he didn’t stay with us and why he turned to some other life, woman, and kid. He said, and I quote,” he says bitterly, “‘Things happen, kid. Some of those things last. Others don't.’ Like some fucking soap opera.”

Juleka is quiet for a long time. 

When Luka looks over, he sees silent tears rolling down her cheeks. He reaches out an arm to pull her close into a half-hug, leaning his head onto hers. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry they’re both assholes and Jeemee is dead.” 

“I miss her,” Juleka cries quietly. “It sucks so bad that she died knowing Mom was just getting worse.”

Luka nods, hugging Juleka tighter. “But she had us, Jules,” he says. “She loved us,” he whispers. 

“Yeah,” Juleka cries. “I just wish she was still here.”

They’re quiet for a while as they cry, and it’s a while before either of them speaks.

“Think she’ll survive us graduating?” Juleka asks quietly.

Luka frowns. “If she doesn’t, I won’t let us get seperated. I’ll take care of you—and so will the band and the gang.”

It’s a long moment before she says anything else. “I don’t want you to get hurt with the phantom thing,” she whispers. “Not like I did, and not worse.”

“I’ll be okay,” he reassures her. “We’ve got everyone working real hard to keep us safe. To keep you and the band safe.”

“Thanks,” she sniffles. “I’m—I’m glad it’s you. I’m glad you’re taking our place. I wouldn’t want anyone else.”

He scoffs. “Come on—you think I wouldn’t take the chance to sing your guys’ songs? There’s a reason you’re famous around here. There’s a reason we’re at all your local concerts that we can manage.”

Juleka laughs, sniffling. A moment passes, and she yawns. “I love you,” she murmurs. “And thank you, again. For everything.”

Luka nods, drawing away. “Well, I should probably let you get to sleep, now, instead of keeping you up.”

“Will you cover me up?” she asks as he gets off of her bed. She rolls back her blankets and she scoots into the warm spot beneath. 

Luka rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Sure, but you’re not six years old anymore.”

Juleka pouts. “Oh, but my broken leg,” she says. 

“Woe is you,” he says, covering her up. “Be careful of how much you milk that, Jules,” he says, laughing, as he walks over to her light. He turns it off and waves to her. “‘Night. I love you.”

“You, too,” she whispers with a yawn. 

He nods and steps out of her room, leaving the door open.

~*~

The next day after school, Ivan, Chloé, and Luka dress in their outfits and practice for the evening’s concert. Their setlist for the evening will be “Father, Father, Killer,” from the band’s album Hometown & Other Songs, a cover of The Neighborhood’s “Daddy Issues,” “I’d Do Anything to Kill You (‘Cept It Might Just Kill Me, Too),” from the band’s latest album Immortalize The Mortal,  a cover of The Killers’ “Read My Mind,” a cover of The Neighborhood’s “Afraid,” Chloé’s new song, “Drop The Act,” a cover of Lorde’s “Ribs,” “I THINK I LOVE YOU” and “I THINK YOU HATE ME” from Kitty Section’s album Birth Death, a cover of I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME’s “Choke,” “See You Next Never” from Immortalize The Mortal, “Natal Emergence (Emergency)” from Birth Death, a cover of Waterparks’ recent song, “Easy To Hate,” and, finally, from the band’s album Shitty Dreams (They’re Mine), the song “Just Like A Dream (It’s Mine).” Shitty Dreams (They’re Mine) is Kitty Section’s third album, Hometown & Other Songs their fourth, Birth Death their fifth, and Immortalize The Mortal their sixth and latest.

The gang, while the band practices the setlist, splits into two groups. Nino and Félix help Marinette set up a trap in the rafters of the concert venue, and Adrien helps Alya set up surveillance equipment around the stage and backstage.

Once the gang has finished and are set up backstage in the dressing room, Chloé, Luka, and Ivan come back from practice to join the gang and Rose and Juleka. 

“Setlist ready?” Rose asks Chloé. 

Chloé nods with a smile. “All ready. I’m super excited. Will you guys be watching from the side?”

Luka moves over to the makeup table, touching up his eyeliner in the mirror. Ivan moves to sit with Rose and Juleka on the couch, and he sighs. “I’m excited,” he says.

Rose nods, grinning. “Yeah, we’ll all watch from the side. Are you ready to sing in front of the crowd?”

Chloé bites her lip. “I think so.”

Juleka smiles at her. “You’ll do great, Chloé.”

With that, Chloé settles in to wait for the time to get onto stage again.

~*~

“Hey, Crystal Cove,” Chloé says an hour later, in front of the biggest crowd she’s ever seen. She smiles wide at everyone, stood behind the keyboard. Behind her to one side stands Luka with his electric guitar. To the other side sits Ivan on the drums. “Rose and Juleka couldn’t make it, today, so Luka and I are filling in for them. We’ve got a great setlist today, so I hope you enjoy. Tonight we’re starting off with “Father, Father, Killer” from Hometown & Other Songs.”

The crowd roars and claps, and Chloé can’t help but grin over her shoulder at Luka and Ivan, who nod at her. 

Ivan starts the song with a countdown and a rapid, complex beating of his drums that Chloé can’t fathom even beginning to understand. A few moments after he starts the beat, she starts out the bass on the keyboard, looping a soft line of notes before dropping in with some low, distorted piano notes. At the same time, behind her, Luka starts in with a loop on his guitar, keeping it high and upbeat. “My dad, I think he wants to kill me,” Chloé starts to sing, staring out at the crowd, “‘Cause some days, the way he looks at me, it’s like he’s ready to take his knife and slit my throat like one of his—”

The drums speed up into a deep crescendo, and Chloé’s voice grows louder as she shouts, “Rabbits! Rabbits! Rabbits! Oh, I’ve got to jump, I’ve got to run, I can’t end up like the rabbits!”

Chloé lightens up her piano notes, growing upbeat along with Luka. Ivan continues the fast beating of his drums, throwing in some crashes on his cymbals. Her voice grows higher and lighter, and she smiles a bit, though it isn’t a pleasant smile. 

Oh, my dad, I think he wants to kill me

But I can’t let ‘im, I can’t let ‘im,

’Cause I can’t hang there on his wall

Like all those rabbits and watch him

All the day long as he

Kills and he kills and he kills—

He’s my dad, my father, my father,

My father the killer!

 

But I’ve got to run! I’ve got to jump!

I’ve got to hide—maybe in the cupboards,

Maybe in my mother’s arms, maybe under the house,

But not my room and not the woods—

‘Cause he’ll ruin the former, destroy me from inside out,

And he knows the latter too well, I’d die, 

‘Cause he’s my dad, he’s my father, my father,

My father the killer!

The woods are his home and he has no

Care for me at all—my father, my father,

’Cause he’s my dad, my father, my father,

He’s my father the killer!

Chloé drops her voice low and she deftly adds another layer of the bass guitar setting of her keyboard onto the one already present, hammering out the second line of bass notes as she sings, “And he’s my dad, he’s my father, he’s my father the killer. My mother, she don’t know no better, ‘cause she married, she married, she married the rabbit killer, who’d sooner kill us both for minor sleight! He’s my dad, he’s my dad, he’s my father the killer!”

As Ivan slows the beating of his drums, Luka slows down and lowers the tone of his guitar. Chloé drops the second layer of the bass and returns to her higher piano keys, tapping out a light tune as she cries, “So you’d better watch out if you get to this part of the woods! My father, my dad, my father the killer—whether he’s killed me or not, he’ll just as soon kill you like his rabbits. So stay out, stay out of the woods, beware the killer! Run like a rabbit, jump like the rabbit, don’t get killed like the rabbit—‘cause my dad, my dad—my father, my father, he’s my father the killer!”

Ivan drops off with the drums, clanging only one of his cymbals evenly, and Luka strums a single chord of his guitar, repeating it again and again with a higher chord every three. Chloé slows the bass and piano, singing the last few lines again and again, quieter and quieter, until the song ends with a final quick double crash of Ivan’s cymbal. 

The crowd, having sang along to much of “Father, Father, Killer,” erupts in cheers and clapping, and Chloé grins.

“Next up we have a cover of a song by The Neighborhood. You might be a bit familiar with it, so sing along if you can.”

They play “Daddy Issues” by The Neighborhood to a happy crowd before moving on to Chloé and Luka’s rendition with Ivan of Kitty Section’s “I’d Do Anything to Kill You (‘Cept It Might Just Kill Me, Too),” from the latest album Immortalize The Mortal. After this, they play a cover of The Killers’ “Read My Mind” and a cover of The Neighborhood’s “Afraid” before moving into Chloé’s song “Drop The Act.”

“This next song is a new one,” Chloé tells the crowd after she, Luka, and Ivan have finished the last cover, “called “Drop The Act.” Let me know what you think?” she asks with a wink.

The crowd cheers and whistles. 

Chloé starts the song by beginning a fast rhythm with the bass on the keyboard. She loops it as Ivan meters out soft, even clashes to the cymbals.

“Can’t you do anything right?” she sings, adding in low, distorted piano notes. “Can I, can I, can I? Well, can you lay off a moment, give me a sec to breathe?”

Luka comes in heavy and low with the electric guitar as Chloé raises the tone of the distorted piano notes she plays. 

“Call off the guard dogs and loosen my chains, please,” she sings, finishing the chorus, “because I’ve gotta have room, I’ve gotta have room, and I need some space, I need some place to be, so can you give me a break? Close your eyes and shut your face,” she cries, piano notes growing higher and more fevered, “before I shut it for you and break some teeth!”

Ivan stops with the cymbals, drumming out a bada-bada-badabada-clang beat. Luka increases the speed of the chords on his electric guitar, shifting on his hips as he lightens the tone of the chords. 

Chloé continues singing:

You’ve gotta give me some space,

Give me some space,

Call back the dogs and police, 

Call back the hounds and drop the act,

’Cause you ain’t perfect,

So why do I gotta be?

You ain’t perfect, so let me be me

And drop the act,

Drop the act,

Call off the dogs and

Pull back the guards

Chloé drops the looping bass, deftly switching it up to a slower rhythm and looping that instead. She adds more fevered and random notes, and Luka starts singing the chorus as he slows the notes he plays on his guitar. “Can’t you do anything right? Can I, can I, can I? Well, can you lay off a moment, give me a sec to breathe?”

While Luka sings, Ivan switches back to a steady, even bada-bada-bada-bap-bap-bam on the drums.

In the last two lines of the chorus, Chloé and Ivan join in, singing: 

So call off the guard dogs

And loosen my chains, please,

 

And drop the act, you imposter,

Because you ain’t perfect 

And neither am I,

But you’re the only one acting 

Like you are and I gotta be

But it’s impossible, it’s impossible,

So let it go, you gotta let it go

Ivan then cuts in with a heavy drum solo. Chloé drops the bass tone lower and she adds a higher string of piano notes. While Chloé does this, Luka keeps steady on the electric guitar while throwing in some extra higher chords to add to the depth of the instrumental. 

As they do this, once the drum solo is over, Chloé repeats the last two lines of the bridge before bringing her voice into a shout.

But it’s impossible, it’s impossible,

So you’ve gotta let it go, you’ve gotta let it go,

 

And drop the leash,

Drop the chains,

Call the dogs off and

Call back the hounds,

Loosen my collar and

Drop the act, drop the act, 

‘Cause I ain’t perfect, I’ll never be with you

But you aren’t perfect,

You aren’t perfect, either,

So quit acting like I’ll

Ever measure

Up! And drop the act, 

Drop the act, 

“Drop the act,” Chloé cries. Her voice then drops lower and softer, and she leans closer to the microphone, closing her eyes. “‘Cause I’ll never be perfect, I’ll never be perfect with you, so quit acting like I’ll ever measure up to a standard you can’t reach, not even for miles.”

The bass, drums, and guitar drop lower and lower in tone, growing slower as well until they finally peter off. Chloé keeps the lighter piano keys going soft and slow as she repeats the last few lines. She finishes off the song with a few extra high notes, opening her eyes, and the crowd cheers immediately and loudly. 

“You guys liked that one?” Chloé asks with a grin, grabbing the microphone briefly in her hand. 

The answering screams make her laugh.

“Alright, well, next up is a cover of Lorde’s “Ribs,” so enjoy.”

After “Ribs” is played and received with high praise, Chloé turns to Ivan and Luka, brows raised. 

Luka starts the next song, “I THINK I LOVE YOU,” with a heavy but high riff on his electric guitar. As Chloé turns back to the keyboard with a smile, putting the microphone up, Ivan jumps in with an upbeat, even clashing of his cymbals and thumping of his bass drum. Chloé brings in some middle-tone piano keys, and crowd cheers.

“Hey, I think I might,” Chloé sings lightly, “hey, I think I might, hey I think I might lo-lo-love you. Hey, I think I might love you.”

The music builds to a crescendo, and when the beat drops, the music still loud, Chloé and Luka sing cheerfully, “It’s a disease, it’s a curse, it’s a joyless experience—drains me, exhausts me, makes me wonder when and where the bar dropped so low.”

Ivan joins Chloé and Luka still singing together as the music continues in an upbeat manner:

But I gotta—I gotta—I can’t stand to be

Anywhere but by your side

Anywhere but where you are

Anywhere but right with you

 

And, sure, I might be a sap,

I might be a wimp, 

I might be weak as hell,

But I think I might—

I think I might—

Hey, I think I might love you

Ivan and Luka stop singing, and they both drop into solos on their respective instruments. Chloé drops off her piano playing, picking up the microphone in her hand as she sings:

And, damn, ain’t that the shit

The diagnosis for life, 

The terminal illness

To say I love you

When you hardly have a heart,

Let alone the capacity to

Love me right back!

She puts the microphone back in its stand and picks up her piano playing as Ivan and Luka slow their respective drums and guitar playing, dropping in tone slightly. Chloé drops her voice low, but she keeps her piano notes high and light. “You treat me like shit, you call me all these names,” she sings, “and you drink yourself to death right before my eyes, you hold a gun to my head and shout that this is the only way, but hey—hey, I think I might—I think I might—I think I might love you.”

Ivan joins in for the sixth verse, singing with Chloé:

And ain’t that the shit, 

To love someone making you less of worth,

But I’ve got my heart on my sleeve

And it thumps something uneasy when you stay away

And I cover it up, say it’s just my teenage body,

But the truth is, 

The truth is—

The drums and guitar lead back into another crescendo, going back to their light tone. Chloé, Ivan, and Luka repeat the third and fourth verses before dropping back into the chorus with one last bang, the drums hitting hard with every few notes while the electric guitar thrums easily between the higher piano notes, tying them to the drums. 

“Hey, I think I might—I think I might—I think I might love you—I think I might love you anyways!”

Rather than end the song as usual, Ivan and Luka deftly slow and lower the tone of their playing as Chloé starts the next song, “I THINK YOU HATE ME”:

I think you could hate me

The way you drag this damn crap out

Like, who gives a shit if you die? (I do, I do)

Why you gotta do it in the fucking living room

And with that stupid slow drug?

Luka joins in with Chloé, his voice high and threading nicely with Chloé’s lower tone. As she peters off her piano playing, she adds in a low bass loop on the keyboard and sings with Luka, “It’s like you hate me more than yourself, the way you make me a witness to this shit—like I should enjoy it, or ignore it (like I even could), but hey, hey—”

Ivan throws in a small drum solo, bringing the beat of the song to a decrescendo. When the beat rises after a second of silence, Chloé, Ivan, and Luka sing:

You’re my mother, you’re my father,

You’re my brother, you’re my friend,

And you hold me down, you

Bring me back, so maybe I should

Do the same and hold you down from

Drinking yourself to death

Out here on the Queen Anne’s couch

Ivan and Luka stop singing, but Chloé adds in some lower piano notes as she sings, “You sit like a king in your chair, with a bottle of beer in hand and seven more beside you, with nine—ten—twelve already downed right there beside you. I walk inside, I call hello. You don’t say a word, you don’t say a word. You stare at the T.V., you ignore me, you wait for me to walk past—and I do, I’ve got no other choice.”

Ivan joins her in singing the next verse:

I’m pretty sure you hate me

I’m pretty sure the hate was in the womb

It crawled inside beside me

And, boy, it held me all night long.

It cradled my head in its hands,

Hands to crush my skull,

But we’d turn and shift and

Start all over again. The hate

Lived with me in that womb and it

Crawled out beside me to cry up

At you, and, oh, you pulled it in your arms

And you’ve hated me long since

For daring to share its place

Luka joins in after several moments of instrumentals softening and relaxing, and he, Ivan, and Chloé all sing the last two verses. “I think you hate me, I think you hate me, I think you hate me with the way you make me watch you die—all while you ignore me, all while you ignore responsibility, all while you let it go to shit. (You hate me) You make me watch you die, (you hate me) and, fuck, if it doesn’t send the message, (you hate me) ‘cause you hate me, ‘cause you hate me, ‘cause you hate me,” they sing, finishing the first of the last two verses.

As the song continues to soften, slow, and ease, they softly sing the last verse of the song:

And my heart right on my sleeve,

It bleeds black and blue, stained by you.

I think you hate me,

But I wanna hate you more

(Can I? Can I? Why can’t I?)

The song ends shortly thereafter, with Luka leading them to the end on his guitar. 

The crowd cheers and claps, screaming and whistling. Chloé smiles wistfully, and she glances back at Luka and Ivan is if to say, hey, we really did that.

Before the band can lead into their next song, a cover of I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME’s “Choke,” there’s a crash and a pillar of fog rising up in front of Chloé and the keyboard.

Knowing Marinette’s plan is now in place and her own next parts are to happen now that the phantom is here, Chloé rolls the keyboard away from her and she moves aside the microphone, taking a large step back. 

The phantom appears from the fog as it dissipates, a hand raised in the air. Energy crackles from it, black and blue. “You have disobeyed!” the phantom cries. “Prepare now to be made, fools who did not listen to the warning I had given!”

Chloé raises a brow defiantly. “Or we just didn’t care,” she says.

“Chloé—” Luka hisses, setting aside his guitar behind her. 

Her speaking hadn’t been part of the plan—well, oops. Not like she minds, though. She’d say it again, just to be a bitch.

The phantom steps closer, hand shifting nearer to her. It buzzes and the energy in it seems almost electric. Chloé’s eyes widen an imperceptible amount.

“Now!” Marinette calls from the side of the stage. 

There’s a distant clang and the sound of ropes rushing through Marinette’s pulley system, and, rather than the metal cage portion of the trap landing in front of Chloé, over the phantom, it slams down behind her.

Chloé only glances back briefly, eyes wide. She sees Luka caught in the trap, having stepped towards her. His expression morphs into something she’s hesitant to name, and he shouts for her to move.

Before she can, though, there’s a wave of intense pain.

Everything goes black.

~*~

Luka gets caught in the trap instead of the phantom. Chloé looks back at him for some reason, holding his gaze for a solid second.

He only just manages to see the phantom coming up behind her, and he shouts her name, telling her to move.

The phantom’s hand, crackling black and blue with electric energy, comes around behind Chloé and touches her bare arm. 

There’s a sizzle and the sound of a groan through the concert speakers from the mic hooked up to Chloé’s ear, and before the look of agony can fully show on her face, suddenly, her eyes are rolling back in her head. She falls limp into the phantom’s arms.

The phantom looks at Luka a moment longer. He thinks the phantom might be smiling behind their mask, pleased. Luka shakes the bars of the metal cage he stands in, trying to move it or break it somehow. 

It’s a Marinette original, so it doesn’t. The phantom laughs and throws down something small and round to the stage at their feet, and fog erupts around them and Chloé in their arms.

The phantom and Chloé are gone when the fog dissipates.

Notes:

hehe :3

ughghghhghggh i frigging LOVED writing this chapter and the songs… they had me so insane. btw!! “father, father, killer” is about ivan’s dad :) and “i think i love you” and “I think you hate me” are amalgamations of how ivan, rose, and juleka felt about their families and some past friends 3 anyways lol im so excited for yall to read the other songs 😫

anyways heehee what did yall think of the major Lore Drops and stuff (esp of side characters like the band and their families)… 🫣 oh and how could i Forget that cliffhanger 🥸 well. lol. howd ya feel about that, too…?

(ALSO! FAE! if ure reading this hi i love u yes i included the waterparks song for u specifically)

do u guys have any theories on what’ll happen next? how everyone will react to chloé being abducted? what’s gonna happen to the band now? will they get to continue to tour…? 😫 what will happen to chloé…! will this event kick lukloé into high gear…?! man if only we knew… (<- i know lol and so will you… ish! on some of those questions ahah! on friday <3)

oh but that reminds me !! so i thought over it a lot lol and, starting This Friday, i’ll switch up to just posting fridays? hoping to get more into the swing of things this way, since posting a single chapter is like two hours long lol and it’s two extra hours that i Could be writing ,,, on top of the writing i picked up again Yesterday…! and hope to be doing more often now that im pulling back on some other things lol. but still wanting to switch to one chapter a week just in case !!

anyways work and life have been just kinda Whatever, im trying to chill out about some stuff and get back to writing, etc etc. all Meh stuff . but im getting back to writing 😈 how are u guys !! ♥️ i love all ur comments and thoughts and theories and things—it’s smth to look forward to like the posting of a new chapter on a fic ahah!!

hope you all enjoyed !!! cant wait to see u friday heehee 🥰

Chapter 32: chapter thirty-two

Summary:

The gang does their best to try and find Chloé.

Notes:

🥰

The next morning, the sheriff arrives at the concert venue where Chloé disappeared. Needless to say, him arriving is an unfortunate and useless affair.

Everyone in the gang (minus Chloé, of course) and the band has gathered in the dressing room as their home base for the moment, and it’s there that the sheriff ‘asks them questions’ about what happened. ‘Asking them questions,’ or, also known as, ‘listening to a quarter of what they say and insisting he has no jurisdiction over the supernatural,’ which is the sheriff’s favorite hobby, it seems. 

“Sheriff, could you please focus?” Rose asks, putting her hands on her hips.

The sheriff doesn’t look up from his phone, but he raises a brow. “Well, are there any suspects?” 

“The phantom,” Adrien says flatly, arms crossed over his chest. He looks angrier and more upset than the gang has ever seen him in working with him the past several weeks, and everyone but the sheriff notices it.

The rest of the gang and Rose stand around the sheriff, but Luka and Ivan both sit with Juleka on the couch. Ivan has his head in his hands, his eyes closed, and Luka is bent over with his elbows on his knees and his head bent low. Luka, as is his custom with his emotions, has bottled everything up and shut down. Between Ivan and Luka, Juleka watches Rose and the gang try to get the sheriff do his job, an unreadable expression on her face. 

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” the sheriff says, looking up from his phone with a clearer expression. 

“Are we?” Adrien asks, mouth in a thin, flat line and one brow raised. 

The sheriff doesn’t answer, surprised.

“So what’s your next move?” Rose asks, leaning forward to catch the sheriff’s attention.

“Well, don’t look at me,” the sheriff says, brows drawn together as he meets Rose’s insistent gaze. “This phantom isn’t even human, so I don’t exactly have jurisdiction over it, and it’s going after a high school band, as well as taking one more annoyance off my hands from this band of geeks.” He gestures to the gang dismissively before shrugging and putting his phone away. “Where do you even start? You should probably let it go on to bring in more tourism, quit your band, and all of you can focus on school like you should have been in the first place.”

Rose’s jaw drops open. 

“So you’re just going to do nothing?” Alya asks, brows drawn together. 

“What about Chloé? What about the thing that put her in danger?” Adrien asks, hands flying into the air. “What about her life? We don’t even know if she’s okay right now!”

The sheriff raises a calm brow, as if Adrien is overreacting. “From what I heard, she and you all put her in danger. Didn’t the phantom warn you not to play?” He then looks to Alya. “And of course I’m going to do something. I’m going to call the mayor—he’ll want to be down here ASAP to handle the start of the marketing for the phantom.”

The sheriff walks away, seeming almost excited, from a fuming Adrien and Rose and a calculating Alya, Nino, Marinette, and Félix. Luka, Juleka, and Ivan still sit on the couch, but now the rest of the gang and Rose come over to sit in the surrounding seats and remaining couch.

“We’ll find her, Adrien,” Nino says, patting Adrien on the shoulder.

Adrien only relaxes marginally, checking his phone for the time. He counts the hours Chloé has been gone and he bites the inside of his cheek.

~*~

The gang spends most of the day doing research and trying to find suspects for whoever the phantom could be, knowing that’s how they’ll find Chloé the fastest. Still, Adrien and Félix go out searching the venue for signs of where Chloé could be, and Alya pours over the surveillance feeds while Marinette, Luka, and Nino do research. 

The band reaches out to the press and explains that, in addition to Juleka’s broken leg, they all now have a violent stomach bug. They don’t—not really—but it’s enough of an excuse to keep from cancelling the tour while also following the gang’s orders that the band is not to go on stage until the phantom is found. 

They can’t lose anyone else, you see.

~*~

That evening, Juleka asks Luka to sit with her again before they head their separate ways to sleep.

“Are you really not mad anymore?” Luka asks, sitting down beside her on her bed.

Juleka shrugs. “Not at you.”

Luka nods, pulling his knees up to his chest. 

It’s a few minutes of silence before Juleka looks over at him. “So…”

Luka looks back at her and raises his brows. “So?”

“You and Chloé,” Juleka says, worrying her lower lip. 

Luka looks away, brows and shoulders falling. “What about us?” he asks, thinking there’s hardly any ‘us’ to refer to. He and Chloé couldn’t be further apart, he thinks.

“I heard things were complicated with you guys,” Juleka says quietly. “Is that why you’ve been all quiet and moody since she disappeared?” 

Luka grimaces. “Who told you all that?” 

Jules shakes her head, pursing her lips. “I don’t reveal my sources.” 

“Sure you don’t,” he murmurs, sighing. 

Juleka only waits for him to respond.

“She started it,” he says after a bit, as if that explains anything. He sounds defiant and childish saying it, but he says it anyways, since he’s not sure what else to begin with. “She was the one who didn’t give me a chance and insisted on being short-sighted and short-tempered with me.” 

“What about?” Juleka asks carefully.

Luka shrugs. “Adrien.” 

“You probably made one of your stupid jokes,” Juleka says knowingly. “She probably got defensive, as you should’ve known she would over anything Adrien-related, given we’ve known her half our lives, and you got pissed off and called her names, and she got even more mad, and here we are.” 

Luka scoffs, but his cheeks are a bit flushed in embarrassment at that being quite close to the truth. “I’d just been trying to lighten the mood. He seemed like he needed it.”

“So what’d you call her?”

Luka purses his lips. He feels bad, now, saying it. He still thought he was right, but something about it now felt off and mean. “I called her a short-sighted guard dog.”

“Ah,” Juleka says. “Quite the blunder to make with the Queen Bee.”

Luka groans. “Oh, don’t call her that. I can hear her ego growing three times in size.” 

“She’s actually pretty cool, once you get to know her,” Juleka says, rolling her eyes. 

“Oh, like you know her,” Luka says. “You’ve literally only interacted for two days before this.” 

Juleka crosses her arms. “Now who’s the short-sighted one? Look, she’s rich—she’s been attending most of our concerts and getting backstage access to meet us for a while, now, so you can put your attitude away, Lu. She’s pretty alright once you get to know her.” 

Luka quiets, though he still feels irritated. So she could like his sister, but not him? First it had been Nino, and now it was Jules—was there something so wrong with him specifically?

“The first case we worked together was Fruitmeir’s,” Luka says. “Next was Dad’s. After that, Ladderton, Max, Chris, Lila, and now this one.” 

“And you guys have fought this whole time?” Juleka asks. She tips her head back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. “Sounds exhausting.” 

Luka hesitates. “Well, if we’re in danger, we work pretty well together. And… well, she wasn’t too mean after we figured out it was Dad attacking us. With the Ladderton case, she even paid me a half sort-of compliment. With Max, she…” He flushes, feeling like this is a stupid thing to remember. “With the Max case, she gave me a bag of Skittles and wanted to know what kind of food I liked.”

Juleka rolls her eyes. “It sounds like you just need to suck it up and consider that she’s trying, and maybe you should try, too.” 

“Well, it’s confusing to consider,” he says, brows drawing together in frustration. “Around all those seemingly nice things, she either ignores me in full or insults me.” 

Juleka’s lips twitch, threatening to break into a smile. “You’ve seen Félix and Marinette, right? Maybe she’s just following the only other influence in her life who has a sort of tentative relationship with someone they fight and argue with.” 

“And she couldn’t have used Adrien as that influence?” Luka asks, incredulous. 

Juleka raises a brow. “You really think Adrien would call someone a short-sighted dog?” 

“Maybe the sheriff,” Luka mutters. 

“Without reason, I mean.” 

“I had plenty of reason! She was acting like a total drama queen in thinking I was ruining Adrien’s life by trying to lighten the mood literally not even three times. Other people were doing it, too, but because I didn’t know Adrien too well and didn’t talk much with him, suddenly I’m a greedy fake and a liar whose bullshit she can see right through.”

“Well,” Juleka says carefully, “maybe she didn’t know what to think about you, and that was the only thing that made sense to her. I think she’s trying to treat you differently, though, at least now.” 

“I don’t know,” Luka says, irritated. “I can’t seem to understand any of her behavior. She seems to only care about Adrien and doing all this stuff with us for his sake, but then she goes and gets all guilty when Alya gets kidnapped by Max and she acts all kind and compassionate towards Nino about Chris, and then she turns around and gives me Skittles while looking like she’d rather claw her eyes out instead. She insults me daily, glares at me all the time, and she regularly tells me she hates me and shoots down any attempts for me to understand her. It’s confusing, Jules—do I let the bullshit and insults slide and give her the benefit of the doubt, or do I keep dishing out what she’s giving me?”

“You ever hear of this thing called treating people how you want to be treated?”

Luka gives her a dry look. “Next, you’ll tell me to turn the other cheek.”

Juleka’s lips twitch in amusement. “Well, it might help.”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m just going to continue as I have been until she’s less confusing and either drops the insults and bullshit or drops the weird behavior.” 

“If you insist,” Juleka says with a sigh. After a moment’s hesitation, she says, “Are you worried at all?” 

“About Chloé?” he asks, brows drawn together.

Juleka nods. 

Luka sighs. “No matter how much we hate each other, as misguided as her hatred might be of me—” 

“And yours of her,” Jules adds. 

Luka gives her a dry look. “No matter any of that, she’s still a person. She can kick ass, but I am a bit concerned, especially with whatever the phantom did to her to take her out. She’s not invulnerable, I know, and she… well, as surprising as it was to me, she risked her life for you and Rose—for me and Ivan, too.” 

Juleka nods. “I’m glad you know that,” she says, fiddling with her hands in her lap, “because we all really appreciate what she did and we’re worried, too.” 

Luka moves to pull Juleka into a side hug. “Well, we’ll find her. I promise.”

“I hope so,” Juleka murmurs, frowning.

~*~

The next day is the last day of the weekend, and the gang and the band are really feeling the stress of limited time. Adrien getting a call from a slightly concerned Andre didn’t help the stress, though Adrien was able to convince Andre that Chloé was just staying with him more this weekend to study together for the Chemistry quiz on the unit they’ve been struggling with. Still, things will be harder to excuse if they don’t find Chloé before the start of school the next day.

That’s why, while the rest of the gang reconvenes with the sheriff and the band in the main floor of the same concert venue where Chloé disappeared, Marinette and Luka examine Marinette’s trap up above in the catwalk where it had been set up. Marinette starts out on one end with Luka on the other, and they each have a radio to keep in contact as they look for what could’ve gone wrong.

Luka is grumbling, as he has been for much of the morning after the conversation the night before with Juleka, about a certain someone being weird and confusing. 

“She just had to say she could sing and do the keyboard and bass,” Luka mutters, grimacing as he examines the knot of one rope around the rail of the catwalk. “She couldn’t just walk away and be indifferent or bitchy like usual,” he says, waving his hands around to himself before he tugs at the rope with the knot.

It’s tight, just how Marinette requires for her traps. 

He sighs and moves across the walkway to the knot on the other rail. “And, even worse,” he continues, tugging at this knot, “she went and got herself caught! For all we know, she’s hurt and isn’t getting food and water.”

He moves down the walkway, brows drawn low and shoulders tense. “There’s a reason Mari told her she was just bait and not meant to get caught.”

Approaching one of the pulleys, Luka turns, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Stupid! It’s so stupid.” 

It takes him a moment to collect himself and open his eyes. 

What he sees, looking at the pulley, is most unusual: a grey-white substance has been distributed over the ropes. Grimacing, although for a different reason than the tall blonde one he’d been just grumbling about, he lifts his radio closer to his face, clicking it on. “Marinette?”

“Here. What’s up?” 

“Got a strange substance on the ropes,” he radioes. “Grey and white, pale… all over the rope on the pulley.” 

“Probably… shouldn’t touch it. Just in case. Does it look like it’s eaten away at the ropes at all?” 

“Not that I can see,” he radioes back, moving only slightly closer to examine the way the substance and the ropes have interacted. “Can you bring up an evidence kit from the van?”

“Sure,” she says easily. “Over and out.”

Luka drops the radio back to his side and he steps across the catwalk to the other pulley on this side. The ropes on this one, too, is covered in the same grey-white substance.

Luka sighs and he turns to lean back against the rail of the catwalk, sinking down to sit with his knees up to his chest. He looks tiredly out to the rest of the top of the concert venue, over where the nosebleed seats are.

“Stupid guard dog,” he mutters, back to thinking about Chloé. “Why’d she even look at me? She should have been more—she should have been more focused on the phantom.”

Something about the thought of her looking back at him makes him feel a bit colder inside. He wraps his arms around his knees, closing his eyes. 

“Why’d you do it, Chloé?” he asks himself.

Unbeknownst to him, Chloé hangs up above him in the fetal position, tied to the top of one of the rafters with many strands of rope that she’s been slowly cutting away at today with the metal bit from her choker that she—in a painfully slow manner—sharpened the day before against said rafter after weaseling it off. Duct tape covers her mouth in multiple layers, so she hasn’t been able to yet tell Luka to “shut the fuck up” or that he doesn’t need to know the answer to why she looked back. Frankly, she isn’t quite sure of the answer either.

(At least, that’s what she tells herself.) 

It isn’t long before Marinette arrives and she and Luka collect the substance off of the ropes into a container from an evidence kit. Luka will analyze it later that night after he gets Juleka settled in bed, breaking into the high school’s Chemistry lab to figure out its properties. 

When they head back down to the main floor of the venue, Chloé manages to cut through the last of her ropes. She attempts to peer over the edge of the catwalk to see how far the drop is, but she slips and starts falling through the, as she discovers, very long drop to the cement floor below. 

It’s a wonderful, insane amount of chance that the gang that’s been convened down here while Luka and Marinette looked over the trap sees her tumbling through the air when she’s only just fallen from the rafter. It’s another huge amount of chance that they even make it to her in time, with Adrien, Alya, and Félix being the main three who catch her, with Nino just behind them. She’s extremely lucky, by all accounts, to even be alive, let alone without any broken bones, sprains, or other injuries, but… she is. Out of breath, but alive and uninjured from the fall.

And she’s pissed.

Not about being alive, no—never—but about Luka. 

“That asshole,” Chloé hisses, squirming out of Adrien, Félix, and Alya’s grips. She only tumbles to her knees once free, her limbs unused to being needed after having been kept in the same position for two days. 

Adrien catches her, laughing incredulously, giddily. She’s alive! “That’s the first thing you say?”

Alya shrugs, crouching before Chloé and examining her briefly. “It makes sense she’d be angry at the phantom for holding her so long.” 

“Is your body numb?” Félix asks, crouching beside her. 

“I’m mad at Luka,” Chloé huffs, trying to grasp onto Adrien’s shoulder and lift herself up. He helps her up after a moment’s hesitation, slipping under one of her arms and wrapping one of his around her waist. Félix stands on her other side, slipping her other arm over his shoulders, and he helps Adrien carry her weight.

“You literally haven’t seen him in two days,” Alya says, brows raised. “How are you so angry at him that that’s the first thing you say?”

It’s then that Luka and Marinette reach the main floor of the venue, and they head over quickly to where the others crowd around Chloé. 

“When did they find you?” Marinette asks, moving to stand beside Nino. 

“More like when did she fall from the rafters, ready to rip off Luka’s head,” Alya says, turning her head to give Luka, who’s come to stand beside her, a very curious look. 

“What did I do this time?” Luka asks, incredulous. “I’ve literally just been collecting evidence.” 

Chloé’s expression darkens. “Someone get me out of here before I strangle him.” 

Luka stares at her, disbelief only growing. “You’re such a—ugh.” He turns and walks quickly away, muttering under his breath as he pulls at his hair. 

Everyone turns to Chloé, whose expression hasn’t changed. 

“Can someone take me to the dressing room?” she asks. “I’ve got to change, but we’re playing tonight, and I’ve got two or three songs to write.” 

~*~

That evening, the concert is moved to a bigger venue. It’s helped by the fact that the mayor insisted upon it for tourism and advertised lengthily about the phantom. Only Boggs, the band manager, the band, and the gang are able to tag along for the concert, with Daniel, the tour manager, being caught up in meetings all evening about the band. 

Still, once Chloé is in the dressing room and helped into comfier clothes by Marinette and Rose, Félix takes Luka to the high school to break in and find out what the substance is. The rest of the gang and Marinette, once she finishes helping Chloé, hangs out in the band’s tour bus while they keep an eye on the surveillance tapes and continue doing research for suspects between working on homework and studying. 

After an hour of songwriting, Chloé turns to Rose, Juleka, and Ivan, and she says, “I think I’ll call this one “In The Back Of The Truck Bed, Ignore You.””

Another twenty minutes, and “Queen (You Call A Dog)” has been written. 

A half hour, and then “I THINK I LIKE YOU” has been written, being a sort of spin-off of the Kitty Section song “I THINK I LOVE YOU” from Birth Death. 

It’s another fifteen minutes before “I THINK YOU HATE ME (Chloé’s version)” has been written.

In this time, Luka and Félix have figured out the substance. It took a long time to arrive at the conclusion that they do because neither of them expected it to be so… well, mundane. 

Still, they call the gang.

“It’s lotion?” Marinette asks incredulously.

“What did you think it was?” Adrien asks innocently. 

Luka can feel the flat look she gives Adrien even through the phone. “Maybe Félix can explain it to you sometime.”

Félix laughs at this. 

“Well,” Luka says, bringing the conversation back to the topic he called about, “it means your trap was sabotaged, and likely by a human. Phantoms, I’m pretty sure, aren’t known for being able to handle or need lotion.” 

Marinette laughs a little. “Well, alright. Come back to the venue, then—we’re studying, and Félix can join in. As for you, Luka, I think the band wants to practice. Chloé texted asking if we’d send you back to ‘do your job.’”

Luka scowls. 

“On our way,” Félix says, holding back a half-smile. 

~*~

Félix has the windows rolled up and the heater on high, and, for once, the van is silent and without music. They drive down the street to the venue in content quiet, Luka looking out the window and Félix looking ahead, when they see the smoke. 

“Is that—” Luka starts.

“The venue?” Félix says, stepping harder on the gas.

They make it to the source of the fire in less than a minute, climbing out of the van in two seconds and racing towards the flaming tour bus in less than that. 

They’re only stopped by several forms crowding them and holding them back, pushing them away. 

“We got out!” Adrien shouts over the roar of the fire. “Everyone is fine!”

Félix and Luka both relax marginally, and they stop fighting against the gang, who pulls them back towards the van. 

“We should head over to the dressing room in the venue,” Marinette says once they’re away from the loudest of the fire. “Meet up with Chloé and the band and regroup.”

They file into the van, with Marinette, Luka, and Félix in the front and Adrien, Alya, and Nino in the back. 

“Did you guys—were you guys in there? When it caught fire?” Félix asks worriedly.

“And how did it catch fire?” Luka adds, incredulous. 

“We were in there when it caught fire,” Marinette says indifferently with a shrug. “And we saw who did it and how.” 

Félix and Luka wait a beat for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t.

Instead, Adrien does. 

“Remember the phantom?” he asks. “I don’t know how, but he got into the tour bus, confronted us, and basically set the whole thing on fire.” 

“We barely had enough time to get our homework and get out before the whole thing was up in flames,” Marinette says with a heavy sigh. “Plus, they wanted to check us all in at the ambulance for smoke inhalation, but—” 

“Homework is not more important than your lives,” Félix says sternly, hands tightening at the steering wheel as he drives the gang closer to the venue and the dressing room. 

“It is when if I’m living I’ll still have a Chem quiz tomorrow,” Marinette says dryly, rolling her eyes. 

Félix shakes his head, letting out a slow, even breath to make sure he doesn’t step on the brakes only to turn and shake Marinette by the shoulders.

Soon, they arrive at the dressing room, where they find Chloé and the band unaffected by and not knowing about the fire. The sight has Marinette, Adrien, Alya, and Nino relaxing into the seats around them, mentioning it briefly, but it has Félix standing with his hands on his hips as he and Luka watch the scene. 

“Are literally none of you concerned that the phantom has now put seven of your lives in danger?” Félix asks incredulously.

“Good thing, then, that we’ve still got all ten lives,” Chloé says flatly. 

Adrien looks over at Félix gently. “We’ve got stuff to do if we’re to find the phantom, Félix. We can’t exactly be worried about all of that at the same time.”

“Speaking of things to do,” Chloé says, looking over at Luka, “come here, we’ve got three songs to learn and eleven others to practice.” 

Luka frowns. “Three to learn?” 

Chloé nods. “I wrote four songs today, but we’re saving one for tomorrow night because of the rest of the setlist.”

“The setlist being…?” 

Chloé smiles. “We’ll start off with “Should’ve Killed Her (When I Had The Chance) from Birth Death, follow it up with a cover of “Bubblegum Bitch” by MARINA, “In My Arms,” from Shitty Dreams (They’re Mine), “Sending You To The Home,” from Birth Death, “Natal Emergence (Emergency),” from Birth Death, a cover of “Happy Pills” by Weathers, “Killing Waters,” from Shitty Dreams (They’re Mine), “Can I?” from Let’s Go Out With A Bang, a version of “I THINK I LOVE YOU” called “I THINK I LIKE YOU,” followed up with a version of “I THINK YOU HATE ME” that I wrote today, “Sunshine, Sunshine,” from Kitty Section, “Mother, Mother, Monster,” from Hometown & Other Songs, a cover of “When It Lands” by Rainbow Kitten Surprise, and then “In The Back Of The Truck Bed, I Ignore You,” one of the ones I wrote today.”

Luka grimaces. “Truck Bed was written today?”

Chloé’s smile fades. “It was.” 

Suddenly, he feels sick to his stomach. He wonders if he can plead the stomach bug case again with any validity.

~*~

While the band practices their setlist, the rest of the gang does a bit more of their homework while the wreckage of the tour bus cools down. When the firefighters have deemed it safe enough to enter with masks on and the windows and doors open, Marinette, Alya, Nino, Adrien, and Félix search the wreckage for clues.

It’s then that they find a piece of the phantom’s robe: a sparkly white piece of cloth that Nino recognizes but can’t yet place a finger on. They do decide to talk to Boggs about it sometime, because Nino thinks it’s the same cloth a different singer used.

They save it as evidence and continue searching the wreckage from the fire, but they don’t find much else before the concert is about to begin.

~*~

For lack of time, materials, and Chloé’s own give a shit with her life after falling a couple hundred feet through the air and surviving, it’s absent of anyone’s mind to build a trap and have a plan in place for the evening.

So the concert starts with a mad scramble from the gang trying to contact Chloé and Luka to tell them and Ivan to get off the stage when Rose comes over to let them know Chloé simply didn’t mind the danger of going on, and Luka was too busy feeling sick to his stomach to say much. Ivan, for his part, was just excited to play live again.

After having already greeted the crowd they open up to, Chloé, Luka, and Ivan start off the first song slow. They take a long minute to establish the beat, as the song “Should’ve Killed Her (When I Had The Chance)” starts out. Luka starts strumming them gently into the song on the electric guitar, with Chloé and Ivan adding in slow, even beats with the bass setting of the keyboard and the bass drum respectively. Luka throws in some more complex chords, starting to loop them. The loop goes three times before Chloé begins to sing with Ivan and Luka as backup. 

She’s got a hold on my head (could crush my skull)

Shouldn’t have one on my heart (but I think she does) 

I should’ve killed her at the start (right when I had my chance)

But I couldn’t—I couldn’t—and somehow (oh, somehow)

Somehow even now, after all the torture, 

After all the neglect, the letting him at me,

I still can’t kill her (even as I get the chance)

The tempo increases and Ivan adds in some clashing of his cymbals, starting out a small, quiet drum solo. Chloé keeps even on the bass setting, waiting for the next verse. She sings it with Luka and Ivan singing once more as backup, and when they sing their parts, she pops in with some lighter piano notes. 

“She’s got a hold on my head,” she sings, and Luka and Ivan sing, “(On my head, on my head)” while she drops in some piano notes. 

She could crush my skull (my skull, my skull)

With her thick hands or if she

Asked the rabbit man to help

“(And he would, he would),” they all three sing, “(but only to kill me).”

Luka speeds up the tempo on his electric guitar, doubling the loop of chords over to lay atop the still-slower beat Chloé and Ivan keep. Their voices all grow higher as they sing, 

I should’ve killed you when I had the chance!

It would’ve saved me so much pain, so much sorrow,

Would have spared me the torture of

Having you as my mother, and

Man, if that doesn’t sound nice

 

I should’ve killed you when I had the chance!

Killed you on that table where you spilled me out

And left you behind in that grimey hospital—

But I can’t even kill you now, so I guess

I guess that means you’re right

Luka starts slowing his chords again, slipping neatly back into the same tempo Ivan and Chloé keep. They all repeat the last line slowly and softly three times before continuing with the next verse, louder, now. 

I guess that means you’re right, 

And I’m a failure, a failure,

’Cause I couldn’t kill you and I

Couldn’t save me, and you

Tell me someone should be spared

From the rabbit man

From the rabbit man

From the rabbit man my father

The tempo speeds up by half and Ivan and Luka drop back to singing in the background as Chloé continues singing strongly. 

Oh, I’m a failure for not

Killing you (no, I’m not, no, no you’re not)

Oh, I’m a failure for not

Saving us both (you’re just a kid, you’re just a kid)

Oh, I’m a failure ‘cause I didn’t

Kill you way back when I was born

(No, I’m just a kid, you’re just a kid)

The tempo slows again for the last time, slowing even more than it’s been the entire song. Chloé’s voice lengthens every few notes and the bass, drums, and electric guitar slow. 

“You tell me someone should be spared from the rabbit man,” she sings. “From the rabbit man, from the rabbit man, but you don’t do any sparing yourself.”

Luka and Ivan join in for the line, “Can I blame you? I want to, I want to.”

“You don’t spare me, you don’t spare you,” Chloé sings, once again on her own. “You just sit there saying someone should be spared, and I think I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

After a faster loop of chords from Luka’s guitar, all three of them join in repeating the last few lines that Chloé had sung once more, and it’s only a few more discordant notes before the song ends. 

After the crowd screams and cheers, the three of them play a cover of MARINA’s “Bubblegum Bitch,” “In My Arms,” from Shitty Dreams (They’re Mine), and “Sending You To The Home” from Birth Death. The crowd has great responses to all the songs so far, singing and screaming and cheering along, and Chloé smiles as she thanks them all.

“Next up is a favorite of mine from Kitty Section, and one I’m honored to play with you all. I hope you sing along, especially to the last part. Remember,” Chloé says, voice turning gentler as she repeats the trademark Kitty Section phrase, “it’s okay if you feel this way, but let’s not let it swallow you whole.” 

The song starts out upbeat, with Ivan starting with a fast tempo on the drums and Luka and Chloé bringing their respective guitar chords and piano notes together in a fast, happy tone. 

The crowd, recognizing the song, cheers loudly. 

“Got your natal emergence,” Chloé sings. Behind her, Luka and Ivan shout, “Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

Got your natal emergence (it’s an emergency)

Got your natal emergence and 

Your mother, your mother (oh, mother—)

She wants you fuckin’ dead! (dead!)

Will she strangle you with 

Your own umbilical cord,

Your own desire to live?

Will she beat you to a pulp

Right inside her womb?

Or will she take you home,

Take you home (take you home)

And torture you (torture torture torture you)

For the rest of your life?

The crowd screams happily. The beat continues, cheerful and light, and there’s buildup to the chorus in a crescendo with the guitar and the piano.

“Oh, oh, your natal emergence!” Chloé, Luka, and Ivan sing. “It’s an emergency, an emergency! Come get the police, ‘cause we got a natal emergency! Your mother, your mother, oh, your mother, she’s tryin’ to kill you—she’s got a knife in her hand or her cold fingers ‘round your throat, or a hammer in her hand—call the police! call the police! Tell ‘em we got a natal emergency!”

Ivan hammers out a long drum solo, and mid-way through it, Chloé starts the next verse. “Oh, your mother, the way she looks at you—she wants you dead, she regrets you—she’ll never say it, never breathe a word, but you see how she stands over your bed in the cold dead night, and you think, you think, you think, she should’ve killed me then!”

They repeat the chorus, then, and then there’s a long few moments where Luka and Ivan both war for the tone in dual solos as the song demands. Chloé adds in a line of bass notes from her piano, looping it, and she slows her higher piano keys as they move closer to the next section of the song.

“You can’t kill her first,” Chloé sings softly, “you don’t even have half the heart. She’s your mother, and the torture can go pretty far, but you feel bad, you feel bad, but, damn, she didn’t have the heart to spare you, so what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? Take the poison,” she sings, and Luka and Ivan both sing, “(like I know you won’t),” repeating that for the next two lines, where Chloé sings, “take the knife, take the hammer, and hold them in your hands, feel the weight of it—”

Luka and Ivan come in as background for the next lines, singing the lines back halfway through Chloé singing them:

Know she’s your mother and

Think you could never kill her—

 

But some days, some days,

Oh, some days, you wish she would’ve killed you

Back then in the natal emergence.

You often wish in the

Torturous cold, in the dark

Closet where you get locked away, 

In the mornings when she tells you

Shit you never should’ve heard

From a mother or anybody else,

Oh, 

Oh, it’s then that you wish

She would’ve killed you in that natal emergence

Chloé, Luka, and Ivan’s voices grow deeper and Luka adds in another loop of chords on his electric guitar.

“Call the police,” they sing, “we’ve got a post-natal emergence emergency, and it’s called get out of the sad house and make some friends; find a reason to live and a place to be happy, ‘cause I’d kill your mother for you, if I even had the heart for mine, but I won’t let you kill the self you hold in time. So call the police, tell ‘em we’ve got a post-natal emergence emergency—tell ‘em to get on their way before you take that poison, take that knife, take that hammer, and do your post-natal emergence self the harm your mother dreams about.”

The three of their voices grow into a shout, and Chloé loops the last of her piano keys, taking the microphone in hand. As she, Luka, and Ivan sing, she steps away from her keyboard, moving to crouch on the edge of the stage. She reaches out a hand to the crowd, as if imploring them, and her voice mingles with both Luka and Ivan’s and the crowd’s.

Because your mother ain’t shit

But damn you are,

And you’ve got to keep going,

You’ve gotta keep going, 

You’ve gotta keep going, 

So let’s not have a post-natal emergency

And let’s keep going on together

Tears well up in Chloé’s eyes as she remembers first listening to this song and feeling heard, but she doesn’t let the tears stop her from singing the last verse once more with everyone as she stands and walks back to the keyboard.

Notes:

the next chapter starts off with a bang—chloé’s next songs ;)

song lore for this chapter lol: “should’ve killed her (when i had the chance)” is about ivan’s mom (and somewhat his dad, w the mention of the rabbit man) ; “in my arms” is about rose’s dreams wishes about what she wants with juleka ; “sending you to the home” is about rose’s mom ; and “natal emergence (emergency)” is a song juleka wrote about her own mother and herself, a song she wrote because she wanted to share her story with others in hopes that they could someday feel better as she now does w rose, ivan, and luka
(more details on the songs that the band will play after in the Next chapter !!! 🥰 bcos i dont wanna spoil anything lol. though because i do plan on having kitty section star a bit more than i had previously planned in this fic lol… if theres any songs you guys want to “hear” aka read lol or know more about, let me know!! i can try writing them or having idk a band interview lol… but yes 🥰 i hope youre liking the band and their songs so far !!!)

anyways heehee. adrien Was mad pissed and feeling vvv stressed about chloé’s disappearance, as were rose and jules and ivan and the rest of the gang, Even luka 🥰 oh AND! there was the luka and jules scene with a bit more explanation into the chloé and luka relationship—most of it Is misunderstandings only encouraged by chloé’s stubbornness and luka’s confusion and unsureness, but yeah basically it Is really kind of stupid and they Did really overreact about a lot, but chloé is too proud to admit such things and luka is too confused and afraid of getting really hurt to try and act differently :) but there will be loads more stuff soon on how and why theyre feeling the way that theyre feeling, things of which have Not been before addressed because lol there was a Lot of other stuff going on with the ladderton, max, and chris cases, and, well, they’ve also slowly been easing up with themselves around each other and letting some genuine care slip through the cracks :) so WHO is excited for chloé’s new songs 🤩 bcos i am 🤡 bcos hint hint if it wasn’t obvious/didn’t get caught, they Are about luka :) though hes a bit in denial about everything but the truck bed song because. well. the truck bed and getting ignored Did happen lol and was a lot more,,, obvious to him than. anything else chloé has been doing lol

oh also :) the tour bus getting set on fire :) that was fun . initially i planned on going more in depth into what happened bfr i changed my mind but 🤡 wauw marinette… shes so real though id do the exact same if i had a chem quiz the next day and loads of hw before it to study 😔 unfortunately lol i Still failed chemistry despite my insane dedication 🤡

anyways how do we feel about this chapter !! did you guys like it do you have any theories or guesses about what’ll happen next or sooooon? sososo curious ahaha to see where you guys think things will go !! 🤩 is like a second fic to me but like from you guys and just in my or ig our brains ahahhaha

heehee anyhow From Now On ! or at least until further notice ahahah ! chapters will be posted on Fridays instead of fridays and tuesdays/wednesdays ! im writing a bit more again lol but still wanting to make sure i dont fall behind ahaha 😌

work and life have been alright but im mostly super excited about writing heehee can yall BELIEVE the words and number of chapters for this fic that have been posted already???!?!??!?!?! i cannot lol ive never done smth so huge so this is like…. 🤯. and then to THINK. that we are only like. just over 2/17ths of the way………….. like…………….. this is insane <3 anyhow i love u ALL and hope you are well and enjoying this fic so far !! loving your comments, too, by the way!!! 🥰 see you guys next friday!!! 🥰

Chapter 33: chapter thirty-three

Summary:

The rest of the concert proceeds and Chloé sings all but one of the songs she wrote after falling from the rafters.

Notes:

hope yall enjoy :) <3

The song ends shortly thereafter, as happy and upbeat as it started, and then they play a cover of “Happy Pills” by Weathers, “Killing Waters,” from Shitty Dreams (They’re Mine), and “Can I?” from Let’s Go Out With A Bang. 

It’s then that it comes time for Chloé’s version of “I THINK I LOVE YOU,” called “I THINK I LIKE YOU.”

“I wrote this one today with the help of the original members,” she says with a slow, partial smile. “I hope you like it.”

This song starts out with a dominant piano sound, with Ivan on the drums only tapping an even beat on the cymbals and Luka looping a small set of chords on his electric guitar.

“Hey,” Chloé starts to sing.

Hey, I think I might

Hey, I think I might

Hey, I think I might

Li-li-like you

Hey, I think I might like you

Her voice grows higher, and Luka adds some variety to the chords he plays, though he still loops them. Ivan adds in an uneven thumping of his bass drum.

“It’s a knife to my throat,” she cries, “it’s—a grenade in the mouth, it’s—the sour taste in the back of my throat that builds and builds til I’m spillin’ my guts right out on the floor. It drains me, exhausts me, only makes me angry, only makes me wonder when and where my standards dropped so low. But I gotta—I gotta—I can’t stand to—not meet your eyes, not see you at all today, can’t stand to not speak with you today, even if all we do is fight.”

Her voice drops off and she starts adding in a looping set of piano notes on top of what she already plays. Behind her, Ivan and Luka only add more to the song with their instruments.

Chloé continues singing after a few moments. “And sure, I might be a bit of a bitch, I might be a bit of a pessimist, an asshole, a jerk, the absolute piss; I might treat you like shit and say I detest the very thought of you, but I think I might—I think I might—hey, I think I might actually like you. And, damn, ain’t that the shit—the diagnosis for life, the terminal illness, when you can’t stand me and hardly have the capacity to see me as anything but a bitch! A pessimist! An asshole, a jerk, the absolute piss, the bane of your cursed existence!” She finishes the chorus, and she adds more complexity to the piano notes, drifting into a bit of a riff. 

She goes into the second verse with Luka and Ivan repeating each line as soon as she finishes, things sounding half-overlapped but in a nice, cohesive way. “You treat me like shit, admittedly with reason—we call each other names and we’d spit in the other’s drinks if we thought it’d do anything. You call me a bitch right to my face, call me a pessimist, an asshole, a jerk, the absolute piss—the bane of this lousy existence! But hey—hey, I think I might—I think I might—I think I might like you.”

Luka joins in for the third verse, and together, he and Chloé sing, “And ain’t that the shit, to like someone you’ve made to hate you—but I’ve got my heart on my sleeve, and it makes me look to you when I’m most in need. And I cover it up, say you were blind, say I’ve got no reason to explain, and I’ll kick your ass if you ever ask again! But the truth is, the truth is,” they finish, before Chloé alone cuts back into a repeat of the chorus and the second verse. She finishes off the song by varying the last lines of the second verse to go as follows while Luka and Ivan drop into their own respective guitar and drum solos:

But hey—

Hey, I think I might

I think I might

I think I might like

I think I might like you

I think I might like you anyways

As the song ends, Chloé starts the second part of the duo songs: her version of “I THINK YOU HATE ME.” The music doesn’t stop, but Chloé explains to the crowd that this is her version of Kitty Section’s “I THINK YOU HATE ME” in the moments before she starts to sing. 

“Oh, I think you could hate me, the way you drag this damn corpse of a conversation around—like, who gives a shit if I’m a bitch, if you think me a dog (I do, I do)? Why you gotta make it everything I am? Why you gotta make it everything to hate?”

Luka starts a heavy and fast strumming of his guitar and Ivan beats out an uneven, discordant beat of his drums. Chloé leans closer to the microphone, hitting her piano keys hard as she plays, and she sings, “It’s like you hate me more than you understand me, the way you make me a witness to this bullshit, like I should reciprocate it (like I even could), but you’re an idiot. But, hey, you’re his friend, now, and he considers you cool, so I’ve been trying, trying, trying my best, but it’s hard when you take every chance to spit back in my face and call me a bitch, call me a dog, when we’re just sitting here on the Queen Anne’s dressing room couch.”

The tempo evens out some and Chloé slows her fingers on the keyboard. Luka builds the chords he plays into rapid crescendos again and again, and Ivan continues his discordant notes.

“You sit on your high horse,” Chloé continues, “with a bottle of Coke in hand and your guitar right beside you, poking me in the leg. You’ve got the sheet music in your lap, a pen in hand, and I just—I just want to push you off the couch, if only so you know what it’s like. I look over, make a note, say, hey, these chords should be the same, and you don’t say a word, you don’t say a word, only shift away like I’ve got disease, so I look away and talk with just one more fool who thinks I should give you a chance. Oh, I know you hate me, I know you think me a bitch, call me a dog, I know you despise me and think me self-centered, self-absorbed, selfish, only caring for one or two, but why’d you gotta make it everything about me? Why’d you gotta make it all I am?”

Ivan hammers out a drum solo quickly, and Chloé’s piano notes draw out slower in tempo. She lowers her voice as Luka slows his guitar playing, too, and she sings, “’Cause I’m better than that, I’ve got more to me than this, I’m more than just a bitch, more than just a dog, more than just someone to hate, but you do, you do, you do—”

Luka joins in for the next few lines, singing backup, and Chloé slows her piano playing to a stop. By the fourth line, Ivan has petered off the drums, and by the last line that Chloé sings, she sings it alone as Luka’s guitar playing fades out.

You hate me (I hate you)

You hate me (I hate you)

You hate me (I hate you)

And I wish I had more will to

Hate you just as much

(How can I? How can I? Why can’t I?)

As Luka stops singing with her, the crowd cheers and screams.

Chloé glances back behind her, at Luka, and she sings alone, “How can I hate you like you hate me?”

The song ends there, and more cheering and screaming follows.

Chloé, Luka, and Ivan then play “Sunshine, Sunshine,” from Kitty Section, “Mother, Mother, Monster,” from Hometown & Other Songs, a cover of “When It Lands” by Rainbow Kitten Surprise, and then it’s time for the last song of the night: “In The Back Of The Truck Bed, I Ignore You.” 

The song starts out slow, with only the piano’s lower notes. Luka switches out his electric guitar for an acoustic, still looking a bit pale and disconnected, as he has for most of the afternoon. He and Ivan both chime in with softer, low notes on their instruments. Chloé begins to sing after a moment.

I watched you care

And get to know the 

Only one who mattered to me,

I watched you grow past

The griefs of parental figures,

Watched you grieve a friend,

Watched you help another,

Watched you care and care and care and

Prove me wrong

Chloé, Luka, and Ivan build into a crescendo with their respective instruments before dropping off into a beat of complete silence. As they start the tempo and even, low sound back up again, Chloé sings. 

“I watched you turn around and prove me wrong, while I could only stand there and stare as you turned out to be the person I said you couldn’t possibly be, and I—and I—oh, I—I only proved you right, every step of the way.” After a pause, she slips into the chorus. “I’ve made you hate me, and I can’t seem to stop, ‘cause what’s the point if I only change and mess it up? Is it pride or is it only wanting to get it right that has me ignoring you in the back of the truck bed tonight?”

After Chloé finishes the chorus, Luka speeds up the chords of his acoustic guitar, still looking distant and disconnected from reality. Chloé continues singing, moving into the next verse.

Well, the next night I disappear

’Cause I look back at you

And up in the rafters, you said

You said it was stupid, that I

Shouldn’t have looked back,

But I did, but I did

Ivan performs a drum solo behind her, bringing things once more back into a crescendo. She continues singing.

“And if Eurydice and Orpheus were switched, and if Eurydice looked back at Orpheus and died once more, can—can you blame her? A moment and a glance, a prize from a friend, a momentary relief in the darkness, even if it means it comes to an end. And I used to hate you, but I’m not so sure, now—oh, I’m not so sure, now—‘cause I think I might like you, and I’m afraid of what could happen if I tried to be someone you didn’t hate.”

Chloé repeats the chorus twice over next and, in the background, the music slowly builds into another crescendo. At the height of it, once she’s just barely finished both repetitions of the chorus, she sings the last verse just as softly as she’d sung the whole song. 

Now, I think I might have the answer, 

And it’s not one you’ll like—

I think it’s both, I think it’s both

That has me ignoring you 

In the back of the truck bed tonight

Even as you pester me and

Try to tell me my song was cool

And that you don’t want things ruined, too

And I’m sorry—I’ll never say it not in song,

But I’m sorry, I’m sorry

Still, I think I’ll ignore you a little longer

In the back of the truck bed tonight

~*~

Luka finally reenters reality a few hours later, once the concert has ended, the gang has met up to discuss the surprising lack of a phantom for the evening, Ivan has driven Rose, Juleka, and Luka home, and Luka has taken Juleka to her room. 

Juleka stops him on his way out of her room for the evening, calling him quietly back to sit beside her.

“Hey,” she finally says when he’s beside her. “Are you okay?”

Luka stills, glancing over at her, and he moves his expression into one more lighthearted. “Yeah, of course—I’m fine,” he says, shrugging. 

She looks at him disbelievingly. 

“Really.” 

“What did you think of Chloé’s song?” she asks. 

“It was nice.” 

“Which one?”

He freezes. “All of them?” 

Juleka crosses her arms. “What’d you think of what she said in the songs?” 

Luka shrugs, shying away slightly. “Ah, I don’t know. Should I think anything about what she said?”

Juleka points to the table at the of her bed. “Bring my laptop here.”

Luka rolls his eyes at the commanding tone, but he crawls to the end of the bed, grabbing the laptop. He brings it back to her, and she opens it, quickly unlocking it and navigating to YouTube. 

“What’re you doing?” he asks, pulling his knees up to his chest. He’s starting to get that same sickened feeling as before.

He watches Juleka type in Chloé Kitty Section In The Back Of The Truck Bed, I Ignore You, and he shakes his head. “Jules, come on—are you serious? I was there. I played the song.” 

“Did you hear it? What she said to you?” 

Luka grimaces. “No, because she sang the whole time.” 

“It was a song to you,” Juleka says quietly. “All of them were. Did you even listen to “I THINK I LIKE YOU” and “I THINK YOU HATE ME”? The versions she did tonight, I mean. And have you even looked at her song for tomorrow night? Ugh, do I have an idiot for a brother?” 

Luka glares at her. “You do not—I just haven’t bothered listening to her stuff because it just confuses me. Is that so bad?” 

Juleka rolls her eyes. “It is when she’s trying to apologize.” 

There’s a beat of silence.

“Apologize?” he asks. 

Juleka only nods. “Should I start with the first song, then?” 

Luka bites his lip. “Maybe.”

Juleka finds a video of Chloé singing “I THINK I LIKE YOU” that evening, and she presses play, making the video full screen. 

Juleka pauses on the lines “But I gotta—I gotta—I can’t stand to—not meet your eyes, not see you at all today, can’t stand to not speak with you today, even if all we do is fight.”

“This one lines up with the original somewhat,” Juleka says, pointing at the screen, “but she was the one who came up with those words all on her own. I can’t stand to not meet your eyes? She wrote that. Can’t stand to not see you at all today? That, too. Can’t stand to not speak with you today, even if all we do is fight? Do I need to make it any clearer? In addition to writing all this after calling you several colorful choice names, the timeline with the other songs and the events in them matches up to only you two.”

Luka shakes his head, frowning. “She—that doesn’t make any sense.” 

“It will,” Juleka says, pressing play. “Just wait.”

She pauses again when Chloé, Luka, and Ivan sing, “You treat me like shit, admittedly with reason—we call each other names and we’d spit in the other’s drinks if we thought it’d do anything. You call me a bitch right to my face, call me a pessimist, an asshole, a jerk, the absolute piss—the bane of this lousy existence! But hey—hey, I think I might—I think I might—I think I might like you.”

“Calling each other names, calling her a bitch and so on so forth,” Juleka says, looking over at Luka. 

“She said I treat her like shit, admittedly with reason,” Luka says, surprised. He stares at the video.

Juleka looks flatly at her brother. “You sang the fucking song, Lu.” 

“I shut down after she told me the setlist,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t remember anything after that til trying to leave your room.” 

Juleka looks a bit concerned, but she turns back to the video. “Well, anyways—yeah, she did say that. I guess she thinks she gives or gave you reason to treat her like that, but I still don’t buy it.” 

Luka only looks a bit self-satisfied.

Juleka grumbles under her breath, but she presses play again on the song.

She pauses one last time for the song when Luka joins Chloé in singing the third verse: “And ain’t that the shit, to like someone you’ve made to hate you—but I’ve got my heart on my sleeve, and it makes me look to you when I’m most in need. And I cover it up, say you were blind, say I’ve got no reason to explain, and I’ll kick your ass if you ever ask again! But the truth is, the truth is—”

Juleka looks over at Luka carefully. 

He worries his lower lip. “Why’d she say it like that? ‘Someone you’ve made to hate you.’”

Juleka shrugs. “I’m not sure—we only talked about how it was a cool line, that instead of someone just hating you, you’ve worked to make them hate you. It sounded kind of self-deprecating and like she was trying to make it worse, and you know how much we like that type of rawness and complexity in our music.”

Luka’s brows draw together. “Did she agree? That that was the idea?” 

“Yeah,” Juleka says, turning to look back at the video. She moves to press play, but Luka stops her with a hand. 

“I’ve got more to say,” he says, shaking his head. 

Juleka merely raises her brows, but she pulls her hand back from the play button. 

“‘Heart on my sleeve, and it makes me look to you when I’m most in need,’” he says. 

Juleka shrugs. “Think about it.” 

“When the phantom took her, she looked back at me. I’ve been wondering why ever since.” 

Juleka rolls her eyes. You could’ve just listened to her music, she thinks to herself. 

Luka nods after a moment, satisfied. “And all that stuff about saying I’m blind, she’s got no reason to explain, she’ll kick my ass—that all checks out.” 

Juleka sighs. “Alright, well, next is “I THINK YOU HATE ME,” and that one, you guessed it, is about her thinking you hate her.” 

Luka’s expression contorts in disbelief. “She doesn’t have to think it, I tell her often.” 

“That sounds really bad,” Juleka says plainly, searching for the second song. 

“Without the context of her doing the same, yeah,” Luka says with a shrug. 

Juleka finds the second song and she pulls it up, making it full screen. She pushes play.

The video starts, and it zeroes in on Chloé and her slumped shoulders. 

Juleka pauses the video just after Chloé sings the first part: “Oh, I think you could hate me, the way you drag this damn corpse of a conversation around—like, who gives a shit if I’m a bitch, if you think me a dog (I do, I do)? Why you gotta make it everything I am? Why you gotta make it everything to hate?”

“She was really glad the (I do, I do) part worked for this song,” Juleka says.

Luka nods. “And the corpse of a conversation—ironic, since she’s the one who keeps bringing up the guard dog comment.” 

Juleka elbows him. “Yeah, and if someone called you a dog, you’d be so forgetful.”

Luka rolls his eyes. “Alright, alright.”

“She does have a point, though,” Juleka says, “with the part about you isolating her entirely to one facet of herself.”

He hesitates. “Y…yeah, I can see that.”

Juleka nods and presses play again before he can say something stupid like she started it.

She pauses again after the lines: “It’s like you hate me more than you understand me, the way you make me a witness to this bullshit, like I should reciprocate it (like I even could), but you’re an idiot. But, hey, you’re his friend, now, and he considers you cool, so I’ve been trying, trying, trying my best, but it’s hard when you take every chance to spit back in my face and call me a bitch, call me a dog, when we’re just sitting here on the Queen Anne’s dressing room couch.”

“It really wasn’t cool how you acted today,” Juleka says quietly. “All distant and kind of snotty—even with me. I’m kind of glad she pointed it out, even if it’s now immortalized in song.” 

“Ah, the crux of why I shut down,” he says dryly. “I don’t want my mistakes to be immortalized.” 

“You sure act like it,” she says sarcastically, “changing the behavior and stopping making the same mistakes again and again intentionally.”

He purses his lips. 

It’s a moment before she says, “The lines you hate me more than you understand me and like I should reciprocate (like I even could) are also important.” 

“She calls me an idiot,” he says, grimacing. 

“Details,” Juleka says, rolling her eyes. “She had to call you something in order to lend back to the original song.” 

Luka grimaces more. “I’m guessing the ‘him’ is Adrien?”

Juleka nods, and she presses play again.

When she pauses, she looks dryly at Luka. “This was just today,” she says, playing the video again.

“You sit on your high horse,” Chloé sings from the laptop, “with a bottle of Coke in hand and your guitar right beside you, poking me in the leg. You’ve got the sheet music in your lap, a pen in hand, and I just—I just want to push you off the couch, if only so you know what it’s like. I look over, make a note, say, hey, these chords should be the same, and you don’t say a word, you don’t say a word, only shift away like I’ve got disease, so I look away and talk with just one more fool who thinks I should give you a chance.”

Luka’s shoulders droop. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s not only me that you have to apologize to,” she says. 

She presses play again, only pausing a last time after Chloé sings after the drum solo. “’Cause I’m better than that, I’ve got more to me than this, I’m more than just a bitch, more than just a dog, more than just someone to hate, but you do, you do, you do—”

“She’s got more to her than whatever it is you hate,” Juleka says softly. She quickly navigates to the “In The Back Of The Truck Bed, I Ignore You” video from before, making it full screen. 

She glances over to Luka, who hasn’t responded. 

“Lu?” 

He glances over at her. “You can play it—I’m just… processing.”

Juleka smiles a bit. “First time for everything, yeah?” 

He shoves her lightly, a smile breaking out across his lips. 

She laughs, but once she rights herself, she presses play. 

Once the following lines are sung, she pauses: “I watched you turn around and prove me wrong, while I could only stand there and stare as you turned out to be the person I said you couldn’t possibly be, and I—and I—oh, I—I only proved you right, every step of the way.” 

“Proved me right every step of the way?” Luka asks, brows drawn together. 

Juleka nods. “It might make more sense as the song goes on, but she’s basically saying you both said things about the other, but only you seemed to have proved anything wrong. She thinks she’s still what you called her.” 

Luka worries his lower lip. “But she’s not completely that—not anymore. She was different with Alya, with Nino and Chris, with me, even, and—” 

“She doesn’t believe that, clearly,” Juleka says, shrugging. “That’s what the whole song is about.” 

He frowns, brows still drawn together.“Press play?”

She does, letting the pause and the chorus play. “I’ve made you hate me, and I can’t seem to stop, ‘cause what’s the point if I only change and mess it up? Is it pride or is it only wanting to get it right that has me ignoring you in the back of the truck bed tonight?”

“That’s confusing,” Luka says, raising his brows in disbelief. 

Juleka rolls her eyes. “How’s it confusing?” 

“If she’s making me hate her by acting like this, why not just stop?” 

Juleka groans. “That’s literally what she’s saying. She’s afraid of messing it up. Like, what if she stops trying to make you hate her and you still hate her? And, yeah, she asks herself if it’s pride or just wanting to get it right—AKA, not messing it up—that has her still acting like she does, but it’s just ‘cause she’s afraid.” 

Luka pulls his knees closer to his chest and he says, “That’s still stupid.” Even so, a bit of him feels hesitant and unsure, and like he understands things a bit more. 

Juleka huffs, but she plays the video. She pauses after the next few verses.

“She disappeared the night after we drove her home, right?” Juleka asks. 

“Yeah,” Luka says, looking away from the video. 

“The only thing I don’t understand is why she thinks it’s because she looked back at you?” 

Luka grimaces, but he looks back at the video for something to focus on. “She would have had a fighting chance—and a good one, given how lethal she is,” he says, exaggerating slightly with the word lethal, “—but instead, she looked back at me. That’s how the phantom got her—he surprised her from behind.” There’s a pause as he remembers the moment clearly. “She looked like she was in a lot of pain—did—did anyone see if she had any burns?” 

Juleka looks curiously at Luka. “Rose said Chloé only let them help with her pants and stuff. She had on a hoodie and sweatpants today, though, and we couldn’t see anything with her dress.” 

Luka nods, lips set in a thin line. “I’ll… approach her tomorrow and see if she’s unhurt, but for now, don’t tell anyone or ask her about it? She might be really defensive if she’s been hiding it already.” 

“What about the lines and up in the rafters, you said, you said it was stupid, that I shouldn’t have looked back?” Juleka asks, video still paused. 

Luka shakes his head. “I don’t know how she heard it, but I guess she had been held in the rafters for two days. She… honestly, she probably heard me saying it was stupid that she looked back, that she wouldn’t have been caught if she hadn’t.”

Juleka nods, and she starts to smile.

Luka looks over at her after there’s a beat of silence. Seeing her smile, he grimaces. “What?”

Juleka shakes her head. “Nothing, just—these next lines, they… might explain why she did.”

Luka rolls his eyes, and he pushes past Juleka’s hand to press play on the video. She swats his hand away, but the video resumes.

“And if Eurydice and Orpheus were switched,” Chloé sings through the laptop, “and if Eurydice looked back at Orpheus and died once more, can—can you blame her? A moment and a glance, a prize from a friend, a momentary relief in the darkness, even if it means it comes to an end. And I used to hate you, but I’m not so sure, now—oh, I’m not so sure, now—‘cause I think I might like you, and I’m afraid of what could happen if I tried to be someone you didn’t hate.”

Before Chloé can repeat the chorus twice, Juleka pauses the video again. 

“You remember the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, right?” Juleka asks.

Luka’s shoulders droop. “She said friend—does that… does that imply she sees me as a friend?” And I’ve been treating her like this the whole—well, she wasn’t being a very good friend! But, still, a friend? Is that how she sees me?

Juleka’s expression softens as she watches Luka grapple with this. “At the very least, a friend because of Adrien. She asked when we were writing if she could refer to a sort of friend-in-law as a friend, and we said sure. At the time, we didn’t know the line was still about you—she hadn’t revealed many of the lyrics by that point.”

Luka nods, but he’s still not quite sure if he understands. He supposes he can only really ask her, but he’s not sure if he’d get any reply. 

“You hear the line I’m afraid of what could happen if I tried to be someone you didn’t hate?” Jules asks.

Luka nods. “I still think it’s stupid, since I only hate her for how she treats me without giving me a chance to—well. I suppose I already proved her wrong about not caring about anyone or even just Adrien, but she’s still acting like I didn’t prove anything wrong. So… I don’t know. I think it’s stupid, though, because it’s not like I hate her for some unchangeable thing, you know?”

Juleka shrugs lightly. “Maybe she doesn’t know that.”

She presses play on the video before Luka can respond. 

There’s another crescendo while Chloé repeats the chorus twice, and then she sings the last verse. 

“Now, I think I might have the answer, and it’s not one you’ll like—I think it’s both, I think it’s both that has me ignoring you in the back of the truck bed tonight, even as you pester me and try to tell me my song was cool and that you don’t want things ruined, too, and I’m sorry—I’ll never say it not in song, but I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Still, I think I’ll ignore you a little longer in the back of the truck bed tonight.”

The video ends shortly thereafter, and Juleka closes her laptop. 

“Pride and the worry that she’ll mess it up,” Juleka summarizes. “That’s what has her ignoring you, because it’s easier to just keep doing the same things she knows you hate than to try and do something else and still be hated.”

Luka’s lips twist in discomfort. “I… suppose it makes sense. In a way. If you ignore that the only thing I hate is the asshole behavior towards me.”

Juleka shrugs, leaning back slightly against her pillows. “Well, if she doesn’t know that, or thinks you could hate her for other things, then it makes one hundred percent sense.” 

Luka hesitates, but he nods after a moment. 

“I can understand why you’re angry at each other,” Juleka says, “but it’s completely unfounded and it was made with a heat of the moment belief she had because she’s really, really protective over those she cares about. But that same protectiveness—it’s why she offered to take mine and Rose’s place.”

“I thought…” he trails off. “I thought it was maybe just because Adrien suggested it.” 

Juleka laughs a little. “She doesn’t do everything Adrien says or suggests. If she did, she’d be buddy-buddy with half the city. Admittedly, Adrien played a part in her decision, but it was just because she saw how much the band meant to me and she knew that you’d do anything for me, just like she’d do anything for Adrien. Well, anything meaningful, like protecting him or saving something of his that makes him happy. She also just loves the band, and she wanted to protect us for that reason, too.” 

Luka raises his brows. “That’s… okay. I guess it makes sense. That’s probably why she was so nice with Nino, too, at least when it came to Chris.”

Juleka shrugs. “She’s a lot more complex,” she says, “than what you’ve already made her out to be. I won’t… spoil, I guess, some of her nicer qualities for you—I’ll let you find them on your own—but she’s really cool, Lu. She’s just… she’s got a hard time apologizing, and communicating, and feeling things without shutting down or shutting people out, but so do you.”

Luka grimaces. 

Juleka bumps her shoulder against his. “Thngs might make more sense tomorrow, though, after she plays her last song.”

He only nods, head down and frowning. “Well, thank you for showing me those. I probably wouldn’t have understood them without you, let alone tried to.” 

“I know,” she says.

Luke looks at her from the side and elbows her.

It’s hard to keep the laughter quiet.

~*~

The next day, Luka tries to corner Chloé alone at school. He’s largely unsuccessful, given they only have three classes together that they all have to attend, they don’t have any free periods together, and they have lunch with the rest of the gang. 

Still, he’s persistent.

She evades him even so at every chance, mildly confused. 

“Do you need something?” Chloé asks him with a raised brow as he jogs to catch up to her outside Chemistry. 

Marinette and Adrien, who they usually tag along with to walk to lunch, lag behind. They’re going over the homework packet received in Chemistry and circling the things they know on each others’ packet that they can help on. 

“Just wanting to talk with you,” Luka replies, pulling at the straps of his backpack over his shoulders almost nervously. 

“And why do you think I’d want to talk with you?”

“Can’t stand to not speak with you today, even if all we do is fight,” he sings from her song, “I THINK I LIKE YOU.”

Chloé rolls her eyes, grumbling unintelligibly under her breath. She only raises her voice to say, “Well, then, shove off—we already fought today in Calc.” 

“But if I need to talk to you more?” Luka asks.

“Then you can look up how to deal with withdrawals,” she says, lengthening her steps easily and moving quickly ahead of him. 

Needless to say, he doesn’t have much luck at school.

In the van on the way to the concert venue, while Marinette describes her elaborate trap involving Chloé’s latest song, Chloé insists on sitting up front with Nino and Adrien. Luka doesn’t have the chance to talk to her then, either, much to his dismay.

When the gang separates, with Chloé and Luka heading for the dressing room and the others heading up for the catwalk to rework Marinette’s other trap after cleaning it, a plan starts to form in his mind.

It only solidifies when he sees a storage closet up ahead, just before the dressing rooms where they’ll meet with the band to start practicing the day’s setlist before changing for the concert that evening. Quickly, before he can overthink it and debate his own safety and the potential compromising of it with this plan, Luka grabs Chloé by the elbow, pulling her over to the storage closet, which he opens before shoving her in and following, closing the door shut behind him.

In the dark, Chloé turns on Luka, already fuming. Luka has grabbed his phone from the pocket of his jeans and is fiddling with it a moment.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Couffaine?”

Luka’s phone’s flashlight turns on, illuminating the room and them both. 

Chloé is glaring at him, arms at her sides with her fists clenched. “You’ve got five seconds to tell me what the hell you’re doing before I kick your ass and get out of here.” 

Luka blinks. Maybe he hadn’t thought this all the way through, actually. “I—”

“Five, four, th—”

“Chloé,” he says, frowning. “Show me the burn mark and you can leave.” 

She stills completely. The only clue that she knows what he’s talking about is the slight widening of her eyes. Even so, she says, “What burn mark?” 

Luka doesn’t say what he wants to say, which is don’t play dumb with me. “The burn mark from the phantom,” he says instead. “He burned you, didn’t he? That was some form of electricity in his hand, and he touched you.” 

Chloé’s fists begin to tremble and she takes a single, small step back in the cramped space. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Luka.” 

“I listened to your songs,” he says quietly. “You know you looked back at me—you know I know you looked back at me. I saw your expression. You were in pain before you blacked out.” 

Chloé’s expression becomes an impassive slate. “No, I wasn’t.” 

“You were,” Luka insists. “I saw you, Chloé.”

“I wasn’t,” Chloé says. “And if you’ve been spreading the lie that I was—” 

He takes a breath. “Look, I think it’s stupid the way you think that I’ll still hate you even if you stop acting like an ass to me, but I saw you. I looked back at you when you looked to me, Chloé, like fucking Orpheus looking back at Eurydice if you will, just for your weird metaphor. I saw you in pain when the phantom touched you, and I didn’t tell anyone else, but I know you didn’t let Marinette or Rose let you see your back where the phantom burned you. I just—I know what I saw. I’m saying it happened.” 

Chloé doesn’t move. 

“Just show me?” Luka asks again. “So I can make sure it’s not going to kill you? Burns can be really bad if left untreated.” 

Chloé doesn’t move another moment longer, but soon her shoulders are drooping. “You promise not to tell anyone?” 

“At most, Amélie, since she’s the one who taught Félix all the stuff on wound care.” 

Chloé hesitates, but she slowly nods. “Okay.” She turns slightly, stepping to one side, and she gingerly lifts the back of the baggy green and gold hoodie she’s been wearing all day. Nothing is underneath as to clothes, but it makes sense as Luka turns and shines the flashlight over her back. 

He inhales sharply at the sight of the wound.

A large black hand mark is on the middle of her back, the fingers just barely brushing one side of her spine, and, radiating outward from the blackened hand, mottled red and purple skin stretches out across the length of her back, sinking down past the waistband of her black leggings and stretching up her spine to her shoulders. The blackened skin is wrinkled and threatening to flake, and the red and purple skin blisters.

“Is it that bad?” Chloé asks quietly. “I tried seeing it yesterday, but it didn’t look like anything I found online, and I couldn’t reach it to put a bandage on.” 

“I can put one on, if you want,” Luka says, collecting himself, “but we may have to go to the store, because I don’t know if we have big enough gauze for this in the van. Frankly, I—could I call Amélie now?” 

Chloé’s shoulders droop. “Yeah,” she says dejectedly. 

Luka quickly calls Amélie, explaining the situation to her and sending a picture of the wound. 

“It doesn’t look like there’s a lot of deep tissue damage, which is unusual with the coloring of the wound,” Amélie says after a moment. “The skin in the hand print looks black, but I think once that starts flaking it’ll show raw skin underneath that’ll probably be leaking pus. Her back should be wrapped with a roll of gauze—I believe I made Félix restock your guys’ first-aid kits with multiple gauze rolls—after being cooled with a wet washcloth for the pain and dryness. She should have aloe vera or cocoa butter under the bandages to keep the skin from drying out more than it already is, and she can also take Ibuprofen and Tylenol for the pain. It’d be best to redress the wound multiple times throughout the day and before and after bed, too, so she should have someone with gauze, washcloths, aloe vera or cocoa butter, and medicine around.” 

“I don’t want anyone else to know,” Chloé says weakly. 

The phone doesn’t pick what she says up, but Luka hears. He puts a gentle hand on her arm as he says, “Alright, well, thanks, Amélie. Do you think you could hold off on tell anyone about what I showed you? Just for now,” he says. Once she agrees, he thanks her again and hangs up.

Notes:

uhmmm So. how do we feel about the lukloé 👁️👄👁️

yay juleka shes #1 lukloé stan <3 but also like fr it must be so hard to get the most dense and not-gonna-feel-their-feelings people together 💀 oh but yeah so in the way that luka is Not Going To Feel His Feelings, he is more than willing to feel other peoples’ :) but chloé she doesnt want to feel her feelings and she doesnt want the bs of other peoples’ feelings (unless………… they are the feelings of someone shes growing to like)

oh but yeah so one more song from chloé :) but before that… ohohoho she was Injured…? 😥 damn what are they gonna Do… ! 😫 well. 🥰😏 i shant spoil………

anyways not a whole lot of other interactions w the gang unforch but yall got some juleka and also some amélie crumbs <3 <3 <3 but next chapter is the last one for this episode !!!!! 🥰

work has been good and life has been exhausting but what else is new 🤣 trying to write more, though !!! 🥰 really excited about all these upcoming chapters !!! 😈 anyways Next chapter will be posted next friday!!!! see you all then !!! 🥰

Chapter 34: chapter thirty-four

Summary:

Luka and Chloé figure out their next steps.

Notes:

last chapter for this episode :) hope you enjoy! 🥰

Standing from his crouched position, Luka turns Chloé slightly towards him with the hand on her arm. “It’ll be really hard on you and your wound if only I know,” he says carefully. 

“I know,” she says, finally meeting his gaze. “But I can’t let Adrien know, and neither of my parents care. I don’t want anyone else to worry, either—not when we’ve already got so much on our plates with Émilie’s case, the phantom, school, Chris’s case, and the rest of our families.” 

Luka watches her a long moment before he nods. It’s unusual, for him, to be let in on her thought process, but he finds it isn’t as bad as he’d thought. She wasn’t wanting to torture him, she wasn’t only thinking about Adrien, and she showed genuine care towards the other members of the gang. He finds it almost… nice. In fact, there’s a song he thinks he wants to write. 

“Well,” she says, “should we head out to the van?” She drops her hoodie gently back down, the only sign that it causes her pain being a twitch of her eyes and the slight tightening of her mouth at the corners. 

Luka nods, watching her expression. “Sure—can you text the band? I’m not sure what you’ll want to tell them, but we’ll need time to give you the wet washcloths for the pain, put some aloe vera or cocoa butter on, and bandage your back.” 

“I’ll pass on the washcloths,” she says, turning away from him and going for the door. 

“Is the pain not bad?” he asks as she opens the door. 

“I’m fine,” is all she says, turning away and stepping out of the closet. He follows her closely, trying to see her expression again, but she’s gone back to her impassive mask. 

“Well, then it should only take about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Do you want help getting into the outfit for the concert before meeting up with the band? It might mean less questions than me tagging along with you to the dressing room stall when we’re with the band,” he explains.

Chloé frowns, thinking it over as they walk out of the concert venue’s back parking lot section and towards the van. “Yeah, but you have to change into the band outfit, too, so it doesn’t look weird.” 

He rolls his eyes. “Sure.” 

“Thanks,” she says offhandedly and quickly, walking faster to get ahead of him. 

“You don’t like saying thanks, either, huh?” he asks, jogging to catch up. “I noticed you said you were sorry, last night, but you also said you’d never say it in anything but a song.” 

“Do we have to talk about the songs?” she says, irritated. 

They reach the van, and he frowns, digging a key from his pocket from Marinette from earlier. “We don’t, I guess, but… I think they explain a lot, and I feel like I should explain some things you talked about in them, too.” 

Chloé watches him unlock the back of the van. “You don’t have to. We can just move on.” 

“Can we?” he asks, opening the van and crawling in to reach for one of the first-aid kits and their bag of band clothes. 

Chloé shrugs behind him, looking at her feet. 

Luka glances back once he has one of the kits and the bag of band clothes, and he quiets, crawling back out of the van with the kit and bag in hand. He locks up the van without saying anything else, and he leads a quiet Chloé back into the concert venue. She texts the band, letting them know they’ll be another twenty-five minutes, and they slip into one of the bathrooms before the dressing room, locking the door behind them. 

There, Chloé lifts up the back of her hoodie again, only allowing Luka to quickly clean the wound with a cool washcloth before she insists he next apply the aloe vera they have in the first-aid kit. He does so gently and slowly, moving around the blackened skin as he goes and trying not to cause her more pain than she clearly must be in with the blisters and the burn as a whole. The blackened skin, strange as it is for a burn not going very deep, flakes away under his hands when he finally gets to it. He moves over to a trash can in one corner of the bathroom and he carefully kicks it little by little to be beneath her back. He then washes her hands and turns back to her, saying, “This might hurt, but I’ve got to get this blackened skin off as much as it’ll flake away willingly so it doesn’t get in the aloe and affect the rest of your wound.”

She nods. “Go on, then.”

Carefully, he brushes away the blackened skin, revealing a redder wound leaking pus. He winces at the sight, but he continues brushing away the blackened skin that flakes away easily. He then cleans this redder wound with soap from the first-aid kit and water from the sink, being as gentle as possible. Still, with every wince of Chloé’s and every twitch of her muscles and skin at the process, he frowns even more. 

He applies a topical antibiotic instead of the aloe vera to this part of the wound, putting some extra gauze patches over that specific section, and he washes his hands again. When he’s finished, he grabs one of the rolls of gauze from the first-aid kit. 

“Ready for the bandage?” he asks, voice quieter than he expected. 

Chloé only nods. 

“I’ll need your help a little,” he says, putting the start of the roll just outside the burn’s edge on her hip. “Think you could take this around your front to your other side?” he asks, holding the gauze down at its start.

Chloé nods again, taking one of her hands and bringing the gauze across her front to her other hip, where Luka takes it and wraps it gently around her back and hands it to her again. They continue like this up the most of the wound until they reach her chest, where she insists they just tape several pieces of gauze across her upper back and shoulders. 

Luka complies, cutting the gauze off where they end it and tucking it under another layer. He tapes gauze pads across the top of the wound on her back, tucking the top of the gauze wrap under the tape as well.

When they’ve finally finished with the bandages, he turns around so they can both change—her, out of her sweatpants and into a bra, boots, and with her dress pulled up to her hips, where she’ll need assistance with making sure the bandages don’t get pulled or caught in the rest of it; and him, from his jeans and hoodie into the whole of his Kitty Section outfit.

When Chloé says she’s ready for his assistance, he turns around and moves the trash can aside, and he helps her carefully pull the rest of her dress over top of her bandages, making sure the bandages aren’t pulled up or down by the dress’s fabric and that they aren’t caught in the zipper. He also helps her with the corset she wears over it, making sure it’s not too tight at his own insistence. 

She leaves her hair down, as it has been all day, but she moves her hair aside and hands him not her choker, but a dog collar. “Can you put this on me?” she asks. 

“Please tell me this isn’t because of what I said,” he says, frowning at her in the bathroom mirror they’ve turned to. 

Chloé raises a brow. “It’s for a song. You and Ivan will have them, too, but you’ll put yours on at the start of that song, not before. Help me put this on? It’s hard to lift my arms with this.” This being the wound on her back. The wound she hasn’t called a wound, or a burn, or an injury. Just this or that or it. 

Luka takes the collar begrudgingly, and he slips it around her neck, testing the tightness. “Can you swallow comfortably?” he asks. 

“I can,” she says. “You should go tighter.” 

He gives her a look in the mirror, but he goes in a hole closer to the inside of the choker, clasping it in before she can tell him it’s still too loose. 

He meets her gaze in the mirror as she lets her hair fall back over her shoulders. 

“Thanks,” she says quietly, before turning away. 

~*~

The same evening, everyone on Kitty Section’s team will able to attend the concert, including Boggs, the band’s manager, Daniel, the band’s tour manager, the whole of the gang, and the whole of the band.

Until then, though, the band practices their setlist and the instrumentals for Chloé’s technical fifth written song, “Queen (You Call A Dog)” on the stage. While they do this, Daniel attends more meetings with the venue owners while Boggs meets with the gang.

“Have you ever seen this fabric before?” Nino asks, holding out the fabric they gathered as evidence from the tour bus’s charred remains. 

Boggs takes it in one hand, examining it briefly. “Yes, this fabric was also used in the costumes of another artist I managed. Fantzee Pantz—dreadful name, but it made some sales. Thankfully, he was dumped. His absence made room for the brilliant teen trio Kitty Section about to take on the world with music so much more relatable than Dance In My Pantz,” Boggs says, grimacing. “Their record sales for the self-titled album alone more than quadrupled the sales from Pantz’ albums. Not to mention, the success of their following albums? Immeasurable in comparison. As soon as it’s summer, they’ll be marketed more and bringing in more sales with a short tour through the whole of California. The summer after their senior year, we’re reaching for the entire United States,” he says proudly.

The gang nods, and Boggs leaves shortly thereafter, off to meetings himself.

“Well, I don’t think he’s sabotaging them,” Adrien says. 

“You’re right,” Alya says, nodding. She opens her portable. “He doesn’t have any emotional or material motivations, and he seems to like them a lot.” 

Nino goes to sit beside Alya on the dressing room couch, and Adrien and Félix sit on the other couch. Marinette lies on her stomach on the floor between the couches, drawing on some paper.

“Fantzee Pantz is,” Alya says, pausing while she searches the name up, “literally nonexistent. There’s no record of him online at all.” She types furiously for another moment, but her brows only become furrowed and a frown begins to mar her expression. “He literally doesn’t exist,” she says, looking up from her portable to look at the others. 

Nino hums, thinking a moment. “No, I think Fantzee Pantz did exist, but… there might not be any trace of him now.” 

Alya looks curiously over at Nino. “Do you remember listening to him?”

Nino raises a brow, giving her a grin. ““Dance In My Pantz” was one of Chris’s favorite songs as a baby, so yeah. We had to play the whole music video every morning and every night to get him to brush his teeth twice a day.” 

Alya smiles a bit and she nods. “I believe you. Alright, then—we don’t know who Fantzee Pants is, but we know he exists and he has some motive for wanting Kitty Section gone or doing poorly. Any other suspects?” 

“Maybe instead of suspects, we should wrap this case up with a trap?” Adrien asks. “Work off of what we know of the phantom so far and trap them based off of that?”

Alya nods. “That might be easier than trying to find a suspect. What do you think, Marinette?”

Marinette finally looks up from her paper. She’s smiling. “I think I know how to trap this phantom.”

~*~

Chloé, Luka, and Ivan start off the concert with the song “Tapioca Pearls On The Beach” from Kitty Section’s self-titled album. They follow it up with “Just Like A Dream (It’s Mine)” from Shitty Dreams (They’re Mine), “Winding Up” from the Kitty Section album, and “I’d Do Anything To Kill You (‘Cept It Might Just Kill Me, Too) from Immortalize The Mortal, the latest album. 

When they finish with all of these songs, a spot on the stage is illuminated in gold light. Chloé steps out from behind her keyboard, and she approaches the light slowly. In its glow, she finds a golden crown. 

She looks carefully at the crowd before picking up the crown and lifting it slowly onto her head, where her hair, still down for the evening, shines a soft and warm yellow. 

Chloé then tugs noticeably at the dog collar around her neck, and the dog tag hanging from it makes a small clinking noise that her mic picks up. 

As she turns around and walks back to the keyboard, Luka and Ivan both put on their own dog collars. 

When Chloé is back at the keyboard, Luka starts the song off with a heavy, fast, and low strumming of his electric guitar. Ivan pitches in with his drums about thirty seconds in, and Chloé grabs her microphone. 

“Oh,” she sings, “can you really say that I’ve been anything but logical? I’ve got my head in my hands and my heart at your feet, and I’m telling you, I’m telling you, I’m telling you that I’ve done this all for—oh, that I’ve done this all for—”

Ivan brings the drums into a quick crescendo and Luka varies the chords he plays, quickening the pace. All the while, his curiosity builds. He hadn’t been allowed to see or hear the lyrics for this song—only the title, called “Queen (You Call A Dog)” and what lines he was to sing backup for. The only other things he knew about this song were that it had him wearing a dog collar and it was probably related to him, with the way Chloé had reacted and responded in the bathroom that afternoon when he’d asked. 

When she sings, now, he listens carefully, even as he’s sure to follow his cues in pitching in with the background lines with Ivan. 

Golden crown on my head

Heavy with power and

Ex—pec—ta—tion,

I hold my head up high

And protect those I love;

Some see me and cower,

Others hide and run, 

But I’ve got a crown and I’m a queen (Oh, you’ve got a crown, you’re a queen)

 

Still, somehow you look at me

And rather than see the royalty

You see a bitch with eyes for one

And you call me—

You call me—

You call me a fucking dog 

Luka supposes, if the song is about what he said to her, it’s pretty accurate so far. He wouldn’t call her a queen, necessarily, but she does have power in money, personality, and family, and she has expectations from and with each of those things. She’s also very protective, meaning some who see her run and hide while others cower, but the same—in his mind—can be said of a guard dog. 

Not to say he was right (he was, he thinks), but… hearing how she feels about it so far, he does feel a bit guilty. 

As Chloé adds in a loop of bass notes on her keyboard settings, Luka slows the pace of the chords he plays, growing lower in tone. Behind him, Ivan adds to the rhythm of the song with his drums, speeding up his playing.

Chloé continues singing.

Oh, I’m a queen, can’t you see?

Confident and firm,

Protective and powerful,

But you look at me—

You look at me and all you see

All you see is a dog with a leash!

Luka supposes, as he speeds up the chords he plays again, that the leash might be what he implied her relationship with Adrien was—that she was the guard dog, always on attack mode for the one she called master. He does admit, though, that she is confident, firm, protective, and powerful. 

The guilt in his stomach grows. 

“Don’t you know how sick I am of being called the guard dog to someone sweeter than anything?” Chloé sings.

Luka wonders how many times she’s been called a guard dog. He wonders if that means it’s deserved. (Briefly, he wonders if it ever gets to her—if she starts to believe it, too.) He wonders if he’s been wrong this whole time. (He doesn’t think he is, but he’s slowly reaching the conclusion that sometimes the truth might not be bad, but it still hurts to hear and shouldn’t be said.)

“Am I necessity or a penance,” Chloé continues, “a crime or a punishment, a poison or a violence? Is that all I am, that you call me a dog with a leash?”

Luka starts to feel sick. 

“Why can’t I be Queen instead?” she sings. “Protect those in my care and walk with confidence and an air that I’m to be respected in a world that demands my disrepair?” Her voice turns agonized and quiet, and she sings, “Can’t I be a queen? Can’t I be a queen? Can’t I be a queen?”

Luka doesn’t fumble the faster pace of the chords he plays, leading the music into a crescendo. He wishes he could—maybe she’d turn back to him, pause the concert, and he could say he’s sorry. He’s sorry he called her a dog and he’s sorry that she’s felt this way and he’s sorry, he’s sorry, he’s sorry. He wishes he could stop everything and say he’s sorry.

Still, Ivan and Chloé’s instruments follow him into the crescendo and, after the beat drops again, she’s singing again.

Oh, I’m a queen, I won’t be

Bound by anyone’s leash, 

I won’t be held back by any commands

From being myself—

Protector, confidant, friend, and foe

I’ll be Queen and not just

A dog on someone’s leash

Luka deftly adds in a loop of chords on his electric guitar, listening carefully.

“So, pretty boy,” she sings, and Luka thinks his heart stops for a second before she continues, “calm yourself, ‘cause I’m not some dog, I’m not a bitch with a leash—I’m a queen, royalty, girl with a crown, a queen: protector, confidant, necessity, penance, friend, foe, crime, punishment, a poison and a violence, the cure to your insolence!”

Luka raises his brows high. Still, he follows the song, continuing even as Ivan and Chloé’s instruments drop off, to give the song a faster, more upbeat tone. The chords he plays are low, but with the speed and beat, it follows Chloé as she repeats the last two verses, shouting the words to the crowd. 

When she sings the last word, he drops his hands from his guitar, letting the last chords ring out through the venue. His fingers buzz with tension and leftover energy, and he looks to Chloé. Fog from fog machines set up on the stage swells up, taking over his, hers, and Ivan’s forms, though for a moment, Chloé’s form glows golden through the fog as she takes off her crown.

Once the golden light goes out, he turns off his mic and reaches out in the darkness. 

It’s a moment’s time, but soon Chloé’s hands are grabbing his and he’s pulling her back around the speaker he knows was just behind him.

As soon as they’ve hidden, while the fog is still clouding across the stage, there’s a crash. 

“I warned you, and you disobeyed!” the phantom shouts, “So this will be your dying day.” 

There’s a whoosh of air, and Luka flattens himself and Chloé to the side of the speaker, just in case the plan was failing. 

Beside him, Chloé grips his hand tightly. He holds hers just as tight.

There’s another crash and a screech, and they know that the phantom has been caught in Marinette’s trap.

~*~

The gang takes the phantom backstage to the dressing room, holding him hostage and watching over him while Chloé, Luka, Ivan, Rose, and Juleka finish the concert, with Juleka sitting down with her bass guitar.

When the concert is over and the cheers and screams are fading after an additional sixteen songs (following the five already played, which amounts to an extra seven songs for a Kitty Section concert, much to a happy crowd’s pleasure), the band and Chloé and Luka head back to the dressing room backstage. 

Once everyone has been settled and Boggs, the band’s manager, the sheriff, and the mayor have arrived, Luka approaches the phantom, who has been tied up to a chair in chains after being released from Marinete’s trap. 

Luka stands before the phantom, examining the face, and he notes the edge of a cowl neck connecting to the mask worn by the phantom. 

Behind him, the sheriff clears his throat. 

Luka frowns, closing his eyes briefly, but he soon opens them and reaches forward to take off the phantom’s mask. 

It comes off easily, revealing Daniel, the band’s tour manager. Luka steps aside quickly, setting the mask to one side as he joins his sister on the couch.

“Daniel?” Boggs asks, brows drawn together. 

Daniel scowls. “How quickly you forgot Fantzee Pantz,” he says lowly. 

If the man hadn’t tried to kill them, these first words would have the gang and the band laughing. 

Boggs balks. “Well, of course! You were a one-hit wonder. A man has to make money, you see. You should be lucky I gave you this job as tour manager instead, Daniel.” 

Daniel sneers. “Should I be? Because I don’t feel so lucky, following a bunch of teenagers around and attending meetings to talk about how great they are.” 

“It should be easy,” Boggs says indifferently. “They’re just kids, but they’re brilliant musicians. That was you, once.” 

“Once,” Daniel emphasizes. “Before they came along. They took my career! They stole my life’s work, took my wife and kids from me, took everything!” 

Boggs frowns. “Fantzee, you were a star, once, but one who quickly burned out. Your falling from fame has nothing to do with these children—they might have taken your place, but it wasn’t a place you were going to hold anyways.” 

“I could kill you!” Daniel shouts, rocking violently forward in the chair. 

The sheriff is quick to push Daniel back, grumbling about having to actually use his handcuffs on someone tonight.

The gang and the band watch and wait as Daniel is slowly let up from the chair and arrested, the chains that had been around him falling to the ground. He’s then led out of the room with the sheriff guiding him and the mayor following, and Boggs shakes his head, apologizes, but he, too, leaves.

There’s a moment of complete silence in the room after all the adults leave before anyone speaks.

“How’d he do it, though?” Ivan asks.

Marinette shrugs. “As your tour manager, he had access to the stage, the equipment, and your bus.” 

Ivan nods slowly. “And he was trying to kill us, I guess. At least, that’s what I got from tipping a giant speaker onto Rose and Jules.” 

Luka grimaces. “Yup. Incredible how many adults in this town want literal children dead.”

“Definitely,” everyone agrees quietly. 

After a moment, Félix sighs. “So, does everyone want some pizza?”

~*~

While Marinette, Alya, Nino, Adrien, and Félix clean up Marinette’s traps and the surveillance tapes and after Rose, Juleka, and Ivan have left and driven home, Luka and Chloé change in the dressing room. Luka helps Chloé with the corset, collar, and he unzips the back of her dress, making sure the zipper doesn’t get caught on her bandages, and then he heads into one of the smaller rooms within the dressing room to change and give her some privacy. 

When they’ve both changed into their civilian clothes again, Luka helps her with her bandages, taking them off and revealing the burnt and blistering skin below. He again takes the first-aid kit from the backpack with their clothes and he gets a wet washcloth, gently cleaning the wound. 

As he works, neither of them say anything at first. 

After a bit, though, Chloé winces as he brushes against an open blister. 

“Sorry,” he murmurs, frowning. 

“‘S fine,” she says softly, shaking her head. Then she says, “I guess my rock star days are over, yeah?”

Luka freezes a second, but he nods and continues washing her wound gently. “For what it’s worth,” he says quietly, “You had some good songs.”

“You think?” she says, and at first it sounds rude and expectant, but then she repeats it, gentler. “You think?” 

Luka nods, a corner of his mouth turning up. “Yeah.”

She nods. 

“Hey,” he says gently, finishing with washing her wound. “Could I ask a couple questions?” 

She sighs. “You always have questions,” she says flatly, looking over her shoulder. 

Luka shrugs, setting the washcloth aside. “Sure.” He grabs the aloe vera. “Can you answer a few?” 

“We’ll see,” she says, turning forward again.  

He frowns, but he puts some aloe vera onto his fingertips. “I’ll start with an easier one, how about that?” 

As he starts putting on the aloe vera, she says, “I don’t know what easier means to you.” 

He rolls his eyes. “Why’d you give me the Skittles that day in the library?” he asks, voice softer.

There’s a couple beats of silence. 

“You looked like you needed them,” Chloé eventually says. 

“When you sang “In The Back Of The Truck Bed, I Ignore You,”” he starts, “you—”

“We don’t have to talk about that song,” she says firmly and abruptly.  

Luka hesitates, fingers hovering above her skin. “Alright,” he says, and then he swallows back the urge to ask why not. He resumes putting aloe vera over her burns. “How about… so, pretty boy, calm yourself?” 

Chloé rolls her eyes. 

He waits for an answer.

Chloé eventually sighs. “I don’t know what your question is.” 

Luka smiles. “I don’t think I want to ask that one, anyway.” 

“Really?” she asks dryly. “Can’t comprehend that I find you pretty and pretty fucking annoying?”

Luka freezes, but when Chloé laughs lightly, he relaxes, shoulders dropping. “Sure,” he replies easily. “Comprehension is the issue.” 

She shakes her head, still smiling a bit. 

“Can I ask one more question?” he asks. 

She sighs. “One. No promises I’ll answer.” 

He nods. Quietly, he asks, “Did you want to talk more? In general, I mean.”

She doesn’t answer him. 

He sighs, and he finishes putting on the aloe vera in silence. When he’s finished, he washes his hands and grabs the bandages. 

“Ready?” he asks her, holding one end of the roll to her hip rolled out a bit so she can grab it and wrap it around her front. 

She nods, taking it, and they work in silence a bit longer. When he’s taping the bandages along her shoulders, he finally says something more. 

“If you ever want to write more songs, the band and I would be more than happy to play them with you,” he says gently. 

It’s a moment before she responds. “Thanks,” she finally whispers. “That’d be—” she clears her throat— “that’d be nice.”

Luka nods. “They really like you,” he adds, turning back to the first-aid kit. “I’m done, by the way, with your bandages.” 

Chloé nods. “Thanks, Couffaine.” 

Luka shrugs, packing the first-aid kit up and back into the backpack. “No problem. Want to meet tomorrow morning in one of the bathrooms before homeroom and I can redo them?”

Chloé shifts on her feet, worrying her lower lip. “Sure.” 

He glances over and pauses. “You okay?” 

Chloé shrugs, turned away from him. “You’re not going to tell anyone?” she asks quietly. 

“About what?” he asks. 

“About the burns.” 

He takes a breath and sighs. “I won’t.”

“Promise?” 

“I promise. You can trust me.” 

Quieter, she says, “Yeah. I know.”

Notes:

IMPORTANT: the next four weeks, there won’t be a new atitl chapter posted on fridays! posting will resume on friday, april 25th :)

anyhow !!! what did you guys think of this chapter and/or this case/episode in general!!! did u like the lukloé, the songs, kitty section lore, and the way things ended here…? 🫣🫣🫣 for me this was one of my favorite episodes to write—the lukloé and the songs and kitty section lore were SO fun to include!!

i love all of your comments and thoughts and excitement—thank you so much for sharing them with me!! it means the world!!! 🥰🥰🥰

anyways, see you again on april 25th!!! please stay safe and i hope you all are well!!! 🥰🥰🥰

Chapter 35: chapter thirty-five

Summary:

The gang has some time off before their next case, which is already proving to be another emotionally trying one.

Notes:

:)

Two evenings after the concert, on Wednesday, Luka helps Chloé with her bandages again in the chilled yellow light of her bathroom at the hotel. 

“It’s getting hard to not have anyone figure it out,” he says in the quiet, washing her wound carefully. 

“I know,” she says. “Just… please.” 

Though he knows what she’s asking, he says, “Please what?”

She grimaces. “Please keep quiet about the bandaging.” 

Luka shrugs. “Alright, well, when they find out—which they will, they’re mystery solvers—you’ll be the one explaining things to them.”

“You’re the one who insisted on helping me,” she grumbles. “You should explain.” 

“You’re the one who wanted to keep it quiet,” he says, shrugging again. “You should explain why, since that’s the only issue here.” 

“We wouldn’t have an issue if you’d minded your own business,” she says petulantly.

He rolls his eyes. “Oh, and you want to explain infection and random bleeding and pus leaking off your back? Sure, go right ahead,” he says dryly. 

“Fine,” she says quietly. “I’ll tell them, but… but can you…” 

“Can I…?”

Her voice drops even quieter. “Could—would—can you—I…” 

Luka bites back a sigh, but, in the spirit of giving Chloé more opportunity and reason to trust him with herself instead of being an ass, he doesn’t say anything. 

“You’re still helping me with the bandages,” she finally manages. “No one else.”

That response was unexpected, to say the least. He lets out his sigh.

“What?” he asks. “Are you serious?” 

“Yes,” she says simply. 

“Why?” 

“You’ve already been doing it,” she says, sounding like he should have understood this logic already. “We’ve got a system.” 

“A system and a job anyone else can adopt with some instruction,” he says. 

“But you’re already doing it,” she says simply. 

He scoffs. “Do you think I want to spend my time hanging out in a bathroom with someone who argues with me the entire time I try to help them?” 

She quiets. 

Luka sighs. “Look—I don’t mind this. I just really dislike how you went about not even asking me if I wanted to do this, all while treating me like—treating me like—”

Chloé worries her lower lip. “What if I were… nicer?” 

“That’d be a million times better,” he says, shoulders relaxing. 

He should have expected what happened over the next three days—he should have expected she would instead ignore him and ignore his questions, following his instructions and not fighting, but not saying anything, either. 

It’s Friday night when he finally sets out to write the song he’d been thinking about since she opened up to him initially about not wanting the gang to know about her wound. He calls it “Can You Stop Ignoring Me,” an answering song to her “In The Back Of the Truck Bed, I Ignore You.” 

I know you said it was ‘cause you were scared, he writes, 

But I’m tired of this frosty back and forth

I don’t hate you and I’m sorry if I ever did

But you aren’t a dog and

I don’t find you detestable, either

So please stop ignoring me 

In the back of the truck bed tonight

~*~

Adrien and Marinette work quietly in the library Thursday afternoon in their eighth period. The task is a U.S. History project between pairs where they’re to make a creative element to demonstrate an important part of one one of the lives of the people they’ve been learning about in the latest unit. 

They’re currently bored out of their minds and not making much progress when Adrien’s head shoots up and he looks at Marinette, an idea forming in his mind. 

She looks up at him because of the sudden movement and she raises a brow. “Everything okay, Adrien?”

He flushes slightly. “We’re not getting much done right now, are we?” 

Marinette shrugs, but then she hesitates, pursing her lips, and she nods. “Yeah, not much. We still have tomorrow, this weekend, and Monday, though, and if we don’t have another case, we can always work at my house tonight.” 

“Well, no offense to us, but I don’t think we’ll get much work done at all if we don’t take some breaks and motivate ourselves,” he says, smiling a bit at her. 

She purses her lips again. “What do you propose?” 

Adrien smiles wider. “What if every fifteen or twenty minutes, we had five minutes of time to get to know each other better? In the fifteen or twenty minutes, we do as much work as we can. Every fifty minutes to an hour, we take a small snack break to eat a macaron or something.” 

Marinette hesitates, but she eventually nods. “Alright, Agreste, you’ve got yourself a deal. Twenty minutes starting now and then I’ll ask you about your favorite bands after?” 

Adrien grins. “And I’ll ask about yours.”

Twenty minutes passes, and they end up having their five minutes coincide with the end of class, so it turns into ten minutes as they also gather their things from their lockers. Adrien learns about some of Marinette’s favorite artists, like Halsey, Lana Del Ray, Lorde, Billie Eilish, Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski, and Arctic Monkeys. Marinette learns about Adrien’s favorite artists, like The Cure, Car Seat Headrest, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Mitski (like Marinette), The Killers, and ABBA. 

They talk about their favorite movies, with Adrien’s being The Princess Bride and Princess Mononoke (courtesy of Chloé) and Marinette’s being the 1990s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies (courtesy of Nino) and Howl’s Moving Castle.

When the gang drops them off at Marinette’s place, they grab some snacks and head up to her room to work for another twenty minutes. 

Their next five minute break, they tell each other about their favorite foods and Marinette asks about Adrien’s writing. 

“Do you ever think about doing it as a career?” she asks. She’s sat up on the floor with her back leaning on her chaise lounge.

He shrugs, sitting a couple feet in front of her. “Briefly, I did. I’m not sure what I want to do, yet, still. There’s making clothes—or, designing them, really, because I like adding to and making my own already, or I guess there’s writing, but I’ve also been told I’d be a good teacher or a good therapist.” 

Marinette hums a noncommittal response, looking at him as she takes a bite of a strawberry macaron. “Alright.” 

The next twenty minutes pass, and then it’s time for a break. 

“You know,” Adrien says, “my parents used to be so strict about what clothes I wore. I always wanted to wear things more colorful, more myself, but they wanted only blacks, whites, and greys. They believed standing out colorfully would draw unwanted and untruthful attention—black and white was elegant and it spoke of professionalism and collectedness.” He leans back on his hands, tipping his head back to let his eyes drift over her ceiling. “I really liked color, though,” he says quietly. “I wanted to be loud and imperfect and myself—not elegant and professional, calm and cool and collected. I felt things, feel them intensely, and color showed that. I didn’t want to be shoved into a black and white box, forced to stay in the lines and stay on the greyscale of professionalism and elegance.” 

“Is that why you wear the clothes you do?” Marinette asks, finishing off another macaron. “The patchwork denim, the mismatched colors?” 

Adrien smiles, glancing at her briefly. “Yeah, that’s why. Chloé buys me new clothes like this and we restock my closet whenever I grow out of my other clothes. We’ve been doing that since… yeah, I think we were fourteen when we first started doing it.” 

“Do you make a lot of your clothes?” Marinette asks. “I know you’ve knitted some stuff, like the green and orange cardigan you wore at the beach.” She smiles. “Also, the 2HOT 4YOU shorts—those are so awesome.” 

Adrien grins. “Thanks,” he says, laughing. “I did the bedazzling of those, but, yeah, I knit some stuff. Mostly cardigans and sweaters, though I’ve done some scarves and a hoodie. Oh, and some beanies. Lots of beanies. But, yeah—I kind of just knit and bedazzle things.” 

Marinette nods, smiling, too. “You’re really good. I like all the bedazzlement, though it definitely takes me by surprise. Y’know the Bitch Behavior bedazzled denim jacket? That’s one of my favorites,” she says, pulling a knee up to her chest. 

“You can borrow it, if you’d like,” Adrien says with a shrug. “Honestly, you could have it—it’s too much work to wear it more often, since I’ve gotta be wary of someone seeing it and telling my father.” 

“You mean it?” 

“Yeah,” he says, smiling wide. “I’d love it if you got to wear it—you’d probably make better use of it, anyways.” 

Marinette smiles. “Alright, then. I’ll wear it often, so you can see it and be proud of your hard work.” 

Their five minute timer goes off, and they get to work for another twenty minutes. 

In the rest of their breaks for the evening before Marinette and Sabine drive Adrien home, they talk about Marinette’s treehouse, Adrien’s hotel sleepovers with Chloé and movie nights with his mother, and the trap Marinette has been working on since they finished with the Kitty Section case. 

When Adrien gets home, he texts Marinette, feeling a bit lighter as he walks up to his room. 

8:21 p.m.

Adrien

hey—thanks

i had a lot of fun today

Marinette

right back at you

i had a lot of fun, too :)

They text the rest of the evening, off and on between doing homework for their other classes, before they finally say goodnight at about 12:32 a.m.

~*~

Thursday night, on one of their—surprisingly frequent, of late—nights off, Nino and Alya hang out at one of their favorite cafés. For the most part, they work on homework together and talk on and off. When they take breaks, Alya works on the article for the Kitty Section case, Nino works on his music editing, and they sometimes switch projects, showing the other their progress and asking for feedback. 

While they work on their Chemistry homework for the day, Alya asks about Chris. 

“How was he today when you visited?” she asks. 

Nino shrugs, frowning. “He’s still afraid and not sleeping well, but he tells me he’s made a few… ‘allies,’ he calls them. He said they aren’t friends, but they protect him because of his smarts.” 

She looks up, distressed by the fear Chris is having and these ‘allies.’ “At least he’s protected,” she says weakly. 

“At least, yeah,” Nino agrees, expression a bit grieved. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I wish—I wish we could do something, that I could do something.” 

“I know,” he says, looking back at his homework. He hesitates, but then he reaches across the table, taking her hand gently. He rubs small circles into the back of her hand, and he looks back up at her. “How’s Ells and Etts, though?” 

Alya smiles, but it comes off more sad than anything. “Ah, about the same. I’m just trying to build a relationship with them between mysteries and my blog and school in hopes that that’ll make it—that it’ll be easier. And maybe they won’t feel the need to… do something like that again.” 

Nino nods, watching her carefully. “How’ve your nightmares been?” 

She shrugs, the motion half-hearted. “What can I do?” she instead replies. 

Nino shakes his head, but he squeezes her hand gently. 

She squeezes back. “I’ve been… thinking,” she says quietly. “Marinette’s told you about her going to therapy, right?” 

Nino shrugs. “She mentioned it, yeah. Are you wanting to go to therapy, too?” 

Alya worries her lower lip. “Considering it. Considering it for Ells and Etts, too.” 

“Would your parents be okay with it?” 

“I think they’d believe it’d help them avoid responsibility even more,” she says. “And that’s what they want, because it’s impossible to get them to… to have them see that they had any part in Ella and Etta’s actions.” 

Nino nods. “You think it might help, though?” 

“Even if my parents agree to it for selfish reasons?” 

He nods again. 

“Yeah,” she says. “I think it would.” 

“Let me know if it does—I might go see the counselor at school, anyways, since my parents aren’t going to give a shit enough to pay any copays and I’m not going to ask Amélie for anything like that.” 

Alya nods, understanding, though she frowns. “How’s it been, by the way? Living with them still.” 

Nino shrugs and sighs, looking back at his Chemistry. He writes part of an equation down before he says, “I really like them and living there, I just… I want Chris there, too, and I want my own parents to give a damn about me and him.” 

“Yeah,” she says softly. “Have you seen them at all?” 

“No,” he murmurs, shaking his head. He blinks away tears, staring down at his Chemistry, but still, tears escape his eyes and hit the inside of his glasses. He curses beneath his breath and he looks up, wiping at his eyes and pulling off his glasses. He sets the glasses on the table and he pulls his hand away from Alya’s, wiping at his face with both hands. 

After a few minutes, once he’s gotten his tears under control, he pulls his hands from his face and he reaches for his glasses, which are now clean, thanks to Alya. 

“Thanks,” he whispers hoarsely, taking them and putting them on. “I just… yeah.” They haven’t even reached out to me or tried to find me, he thinks, and tears once again well up in his eyes. He ignores them.

Alya nods. “I get it. With your parents, I mean.” 

Nino nods slowly. “I know.” 

“How’s your song coming along?” she asks lightly. “Did you manage to get that part at the two minute mark figured out?” 

The remainder of the evening, they talk about the lighter things and finish their homework.

~*~

Thursday night, Félix decides he can’t take it anymore. 

He talks briefly with his mother before he grabs the keys to his car, and then he’s headed out the door and driving quickly to a home he’s thought about driving to every morning since, well… the incident. 

When he knocks on the door, there’s a gentle thumping sound from within the house. It grows closer, and Félix shakes out his body quickly, taking a measured breath. 

The door opens a moment later. 

“Speak and tell me who you are and what you’re here for,” the owner of the house says firmly. 

Félix stills completely. “Félix Graham de Vanily, ma’am, to see Kagami about some notes I left with her by accident.” 

Tomoe raises a brow. “You should be more responsible, then.” 

“I do my best, ma’am, but we all make mistakes,” he says as calmly as he can. 

“I don’t,” Tomoe says, raising her chin imperceptibly. “Kagami is upstairs in her room.” She opens the door and steps to one side.

Félix accepts the offer with a quiet thanks, stepping past her. He follows the path he already knows to her room, where he knocks at the closed door. 

Kagami, on the other side, is already in her pajamas for the evening as she works at her desk to one corner of her room. Hearing the knock, her brows draw together. Her mother never knocks, but her mother never lets anyone untrustworthy in, so…

She gets up and goes over, opening the door with a blank expression. “Hell—oh,” she says, seeing who is on the other side. Her expression drops comfortably into one of anger. “It’s you.” 

So, scratch that—her mother usually didn’t let anyone untrustworthy in. 

“Hi,” Félix says weakly, shoulders relaxing at the sight of her. 

“How did you con my mother into letting you up?” Kagami murmurs, crossing her arms. She speaks quietly, but she doesn’t let him in from the hall. 

He shifts on his feet, swallowing thickly. “I told her I had left some notes with you by accident. She called me irresponsible.” 

Kagami’s expression doesn’t change. “As she should. You’re an irresponsible, mean-spirited, cruel amalgamation of sinister theatrics that you use to get your way and make people think you’re genuine.”

Weakly, he says, “Kagami, please.” When she doesn’t move or say anything, he closes his eyes briefly before opening them again and settling his gaze on her. “Can we talk?”

“I don’t know what you could possibly want to talk about,” she says, raising her chin imperceptibly. 

Félix notes that she’s doing the same thing as her mother did downstairs. His gaze softens. “I’m sorry about what happened,” he whispers. “I’m sorry we were investigating your mom and I’m sorry that I brought them with me when I went to see you and I’m so, so sorry, Kagami,” he says, voice breaking, “but I never suspected her, and I never meant to hurt you, and I genuinely didn’t think—”

“No, you didn’t think,” she says quietly. “You didn’t think about their own curiosities, about their history of doing things like that, and you didn’t think about me. You aren’t even thinking now. I’ve blocked all contact with you outside of projects we have to do for school, and even those I’ve limited so much so that we each do more work in order to finish things, and I don’t even speak with you, Félix. You clearly haven’t seen that I’m doing everything I can to avoid you at all costs, have you?” 

It’s a rhetorical question, he knows, but he still doesn’t think that she’ll close the door on him after asking it. It’s gentle, the closing of her door, for her mother’s sake, but it still breaks him inside. 

~*~

Sunday night, the gang is all dressed up. Well, mostly.

Marinette and Luka, quite nearly the sore thumbs compared to the rest of the group, wear pirate costumes. 

Marinette wears a puff-sleeved white shirt with ruffles at the wrists, with a black leather corset over top of it. The shirt hangs a bit below the corset and over a black leather skirt that’s layered over a brown ruffled skirt that goes to her knees in the front and her ankles in the back. She also wears a pair of black heeled leather lace-up boots, loads of jewelry, and a brown leather belt with a scabbard holding (what she claims is) a fake sword. (No one has wanted to test the validity of the sword’s supposed lack of sharpness, a bit afraid of the actual answer.) Her hair is up in two high pigtails, a white ruffled bandana wrapped over top of her hair with some of her bangs peeking out.

Luka wears a similar white shirt, though his is mostly open above his brown leather corset and it has faux ripped sleeves. He also wears a pair of soft brown pants and a black belt with a scabbard holding a (genuinely) fake sword. He has on black boots, too, and his hair, grown out some, has had its pink ends replaced with a soft yellow. He wears lots of jewelry, like Marinette does, and he’s got on fake tattoos along both arms.

Alya is dressed as a maiden thanks to Chloé’s help and generous offer of paying for the costume. She wears a deep orange dress with a white corset-type bodice and lace trim. The sleeves are puffed at the shoulder, but are otherwise form-fitting, and the neckline is a simple scoop. Her hair has been done up in braids with matching deep orange curls that go to her waist, also courtesy of Chloé’s bank account. The braids along the top and sides of her head wave along her scalp before dropping off into the rest of her hair and the deep orange curled extensions. Marinette had taken some of Alya’s braids and formed them into flowers with tiny clips and bobby pins along the line where the braids stopped waving, bringing some of the orange extensions up and creating another layer to her hair. Alya also wears some thin gold bracelets and some gold necklaces, with gold hoop earrings and a lacy gold choker. For shoes, she wears some orange and white lace-up boots, another item thanks to Chloé. 

Nino is dressed as a knight in silver armor that he’s had every year thanks to his parents running the event the gang is dressed for. He wears a black hoodie beneath the armor and instead of the metal boots he wore last year, he wears a pair of black boots because he’s gone up a shoe size since his parents bought the costume the year before. He also wears one of his trusty hats and a pair of small gold hoop earrings. 

Chloé is dressed as a maiden like Alya. She wears a yellow dress with a corset bodice and multiple layers to the puffy skirt. She has bell sleeves and a simple square neckline, and her hair has been done up in a bun, with some hair free and curled loosely. She wears a pair of black heeled boots, a pair of yellow earrings in the shape of suns, and some gold necklaces. 

Adrien, classically gaudy but dressed as a sort of knight, wears a rainbow-colored chain-link shirt over a shiny, gold-colored, long-sleeved button up. Over the chain-link shirt, he wears a shiny and glittery light blue denim jacket with the main body cut out and replaced with lines and lines of thin, shiny gold chains. In addition to this, he wears a pair of silver pants that, when he turns in the light, are rainbow colored. Over top of the pants he wears a gold sequin miniskirt. For shoes, he wears a pair of rainbow knee-high (he showed everyone in the van just how high) Converse that he personally bedazzled that night with silver and gold sequins and thin gold chains. 

Félix, the actual sore thumb of the group, is only dressed in a (boring, Adrien says) pair of black jeans and a (boring, Chloé says) pair of black Converse, a (boring, Marinette and Luka say) plain white hoodie, and a (boring, Alya and Nino pitch in) lack of jewelry and pizzazz. 

“We don’t have to go to the Knights and Maidens Faire,” Marinette tells Nino, sat in the back of the van on the benches. “We can skip like yesterday.” 

“Yeah,” Luka says, sitting across from her. “We can just hit up a café or something.” 

“Or visit Andre’s,” Alya suggests from one of the captain’s chairs.

Félix leans against the passenger side window in the front where he sits. “Or there’s the house and pizza.” 

Nino hesitates, but he eventually puts on a small smile and glances in the rearview mirror. “And what of the costumes?” 

“I’ll stab anyone who gives us crap about them,” Marinette says nonchalantly. 

“I really don’t think that’s a fake sword,” Adrien says quietly, sitting between Nino and Félix in the front. 

“How much do you wanna bet she’ll actually stab someone tonight?” Chloé whispers loudly over to Adrien from where she sits in the other captain’s chair next to Alya. 

“I would pay money to have her not stab anyone,” Félix says dryly, staring out the window dejectedly. He’s been this way since Thursday night, everyone knows, thanks to Nino, but no one knows why. Adrien suspects Félix’s emotional state is also affecting his ability to dress up. Chloé just thinks Félix is being intentionally boring. 

“I’m afraid I couldn’t take the money,” Marinette says, smiling but attempting to sound serious and disappointed. “What if I really badly had to stab someone, tonight especially?” 

“The ease with which you accept that possibility is scary,” Adrien says, glancing back at her.

She winks at him. “Oh, come on—we could find and solve a case tonight for all we know! Or encounter muggers, or robbers, or—”

“Alright, enough,” Chloé says, rolling her eyes. “You’re going to scare somebody.” 

Marinette scoffs. “Sure.” 

Nino shakes his head, smiling. “Anyways, we can go to the Faire, still. My parents co-running it or not, it’s still fun for us all, and tradition is tradition.” 

Everyone quiets. 

“Are you sure?” Adrien asks after a few moments. 

“Yeah,” Nino says, nodding. He keeps his smile on. His hands tighten on the steering wheel of the van. “I’m sure.”

~*~

After some minor reevaluation, they get pizza on the way to the Faire. They get two pizzas to split between them all, and they eat them in the parking lot of the Faire (the lot of which is really just a clearing in the woods that make up the area the Faire is in).

Nino chose to eat in the Faire’s parking lot partially because he needed to steel himself for going into an event his parents were most definitely going to be at and because he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to eat pizza on the way or elsewhere and not drive somewhere else for the night. He also needed to get a good spot before they were all taken up by tourists, but that seemed less important in the face of his parents. 

That’s how they end up being parked next to one of the last few open spots in the lot, the smell of pineapple, sausage, pepperoni, and tomato sauce filling the fan as they quietly eat. That’s also how they end up being the spot next to the one where the coroner’s van pulls into. 

The coroner and Nino both look over to each other at the same time and do a double take. 

“Is that the coroner?” Adrien asks around his pizza, a hand over his mouth. “What’s he doing here?” 

Marinette jumps up from her seat on the bench, stepping over the pizza boxes, and she pushes open the van’s doors. “Let’s find out!” she says.

The rest of the gang files out of the van pretty quickly as the coroner watches with a heavy, heavy sigh. 

Some days—or, rather, a lot of days since Mystery Incorporated was founded again—he finds hates his job.

The coroner only ends up coming around to the back of his van after the gang has crowded around the back of theirs, Luka holding the box of pizza he consolidated both pizzas into. He, Adrien, and Alya continue eating, still hungry, but the others have either finished or put their mostly-finished slices back into the box as they look around for the source of the coroner’s visit. 

Soon, it arrives, much to the gang’s pleasure and the coroner’s displeasure. 

The sheriff is with the source of the coroner’s visit, and he glares at the coroner. “Gary, did you call them in?” 

“You think I would?” the coroner asks, scowling. “No—they ruin just about everything they touch.” 

Sheriff Raincomprix makes a noise of agreement, coming closer. Behind him, two paramedics roll a dead body by on a stretcher. Alya and Adrien both quickly put their pizza in the box Luka holds, grimacing at the sight of the body. Félix turns away, holding a hand tight to his mouth as a heavy wave of nausea rolls over him.

“Wow,” Marinette says, looking over the body in awe. Its veins are all bright blue and strain against the skin, which has become very ashy and pale. The body is abnormally stiff with rigor mortis for what looks like such a recent death, given the still-drying nacho cheese and ketchup stains down the front of the body’s pirate costume. 

“Medics,” the sheriff says sharply, “get that body in the coroner’s van while I deal with these misfits.” He then stomps around the stretcher, towards the gang, to try and shoo them back from the body and towards the Faire. “Shoo! Go on, get!” 

The gang scowls, but they follow orders. Mostly. Marinette lingers at the edge of the back of the group, peering around the sheriff at the dead body, before Félix and Nino pull her away sharply, Félix still with a hand over his mouth. 

In the faire, the gang looks for some tables to sit at and finish their pizza. Once they’ve found one, Félix excuses himself for the bathroom, where he heaves for about fifteen minutes over a disgusting Porta Potty toilet. 

Back at the table, the gang has found the girlfriend of the dead guy that had been carted away. She’s dressed as a princess and had been crying at one of the tables, where there was a spilled tray of nachos and another spilled tray of fries with a puddle of ketchup. Putting the clues together, the gang had gone to interview her. Or, well, having ruled Adrien, Nino, Chloé, and Luka as the best suited for interviewing someone right now with Alya’s queasiness and Marinette’s excitement about another mystery, they send over those four. 

Félix eventually returns to the gang’s table, where only Marinette and Alya still sit, and they wait quietly for the others to return. 

When they finally do, Luka nods to Marinette. “It sounds like another mystery,” he says, finishing off another slice of pizza. 

Chloé, beside him, rolls her eyes. 

“Describe it to me,” Marinette says excitedly, leaning forward on the bench where she sits. 

Luka shrugs, looking to Adrien, who pulls out a small notebook from his strange jacket. 

“Well,” Adrien says, “she described just eating with her boyfriend when a ‘giant, evil gnome’ with ‘horrible, glowing hands’ jumped down onto their table. It grabbed her boyfriend’s wrists and then her boyfriend’s veins turned bright blue and his skin got all pale and then he was dead.” 

“And it didn’t go after her?” Alya asks, not looking so queasy now. 

Adrien shakes his head, looking up from his notebook. “Nope,” he says, popping the ‘p,’ “she said it looked at her, cackled, and ran away back into the woods.” 

Marinette grins. “Oh, this is exciting.” 

“Not really,” Félix says, still looking queasy himself. 

Marinette shakes her head. “Yeah, it is—we haven’t had a mystery in, what, a week?” 

Félix leans his head on his arm on the table. “It’s only been five days,” he says weakly. 

“Basically,” Marinette says, “a week.” 

“I hate you,” Félix says. “Why did I join this band of maniacs?”

“Because you love me,” Adrien says, sitting down across from Marinette. Nino sits beside him, across from Félix, and Chloé sits on Adrien’s other side. Luka goes to sit beside Alya, setting the pizza box in front of himself. 

“Ugh,” Félix says. “Love. Kill me now.” 

“Queasy from the dead guy?” Nino asks, watching Félix. “It’s alright—happens to us all.” 

Félix groans lightly, knowing it’s really because of Belle Perry for him. 

“Well,” Marinette says, grinning and folding her hands on the table in front of her, “I think this is a great start so far. We have a supposed evil gnome, at least one dead person, and a whole weekend full of potential next victims.” 

“When you say it like that,” Adrien says, “I feel a little scared.” 

“Yeah, Mari,” Luka pitches in, eating another slice of pizza, “you really didn’t have to say ‘weekend full of potential next victims.’ It implies you’re on the side of the gnome.”

Marinette rolls her eyes. “You guys know I’m not. What’s our next step?” 

“Probably figuring out if this really is an evil gnome and not just another criminal,” Alya says, rolling her eyes.

Luka nods. “Do evil gnomes even kill people? Do they live in the woods? Are they toxic via touch?”

Nino sighs heavily, looking over at the main event that is the Faire. “I think I know just the person who could answer those questions,” he says. 

“Who?” Marinette asks, leaning forward excitedly. 

Nino doesn’t look back at the gang. “My mom.” 

Marinette’s expression falls and she gags. “Eugh.”

Alya shakes her head. “Is there anyone else?” she asks, even as she knows the answer.

Nino turns back, shaking his head as he looks at the gang. “She’s the only person I know who would know something as outlandish as what evil gnome habits are.” 

With this, the gang heads over to the booth where Nino’s mom is selling books from a small section of the Lahiffe bookstore. They stop along the way to get chicken strips, fries, some drinks, and some nachos, eating as they walk. 

When they finally get to the booth, Nino’s mother looks half-surprised to see them. 

“Nino,” she says, as if she’s seen either of her sons at all in what’s been nearly a month. “It’s nice to see you here.” 

“Sure,” Nino says, looking away from his mother and down at his feet. Adrien and Chloé step in front of Nino before Félix, Marinette, Alya, or Luka can even move to do the same. 

“Hi,” Chloé says flatly. “We have some questions about evil or scary gnomes we were hoping you could answer.” 

Nino’s mother watches her son with an unreadable, almost empty and blank expression, but she nods to Chloé. “Sure, I’ve got a pamphlet on them around here.” 

The gang waits in silence as Nino’s mother turns and scans the bookcases around her. After a moment, she grabs a thin pamphlet from one bookcase, turning back to the gang with it in hand. She passes it over to Chloé. 

“That’ll be $7.99,” she says. 

Adrien reaches out to pay for it. The gang quickly leaves the booth after the transaction goes through, crowding around Nino like penguins as they walk over to another table out of sight from his mother and his mother’s booth.

When they finally reach a table, Nino sits on the middle of one bench, putting his head in his hands, and the others quickly fill in around him. Adrien sits on one side of him, with Chloé beside him, and on Nino’s other side sits Alya, with Félix across from her, Marinette across from Nino, and Luka across from Adrien. 

“You okay?” Adrien asks quietly. 

Nino doesn’t respond, only sniffles and takes off his glasses before rubbing at his face with both hands. 

Alya wraps an arm around his back and sets her head against his shoulder. 

Everyone keeps quiet until Nino moves, several minutes later. He pulls his hands from his face and picks up his glasses, wiping the bridge and the sides of the frames meant for his nose with the bit of his hoodie peaking out from his sleeve of armor. He then looks over to Chloé, who still has the pamphlet. 

“You got it, still?” he asks, sniffling.

She nods. “Do you want it?” 

He sniffles again. “Yeah, I can take it and read it.” 

Chloé hands him the pamphlet, though she frowns. 

Nino takes it and unfolds the first section. “It’s Okay, You’re A Scary Gnome,” he reads, brows drawing together. 

“More like, ‘It’s Okay, This Is A Crock Of Shit,’” Alya says glumly, moving to put an elbow on the table and put her chin in one hand. 

Nino cracks a bit of a smile, but he reads the next page, skimming it. “Gnomes… are typically kind… often found with animals or nature…” He unfolds the next page. “They like gems… particularly any that are brightly colored and sparkly… they possess weak magic… are good and helpful to animals, but some…” He flips the pamphlet around, where it’s just a picture of a scary-looking gnome and some text. “Some are evil… blah, blah, blah, but nothing about killing humans.” He shrugs, folding the pamphlet back up.

“So,” Chloé says. “What next?”

“I guess we should investigate by seeing if we can find an evil gnome,” Marinette says, pursing her lips in thought. “We can ask around and see if anyone knows anything, too.”

The gang nods, and soon they’re off to canvass the Faire in pairs, with Félix tagging along with Chloé and Luka to make sure they don’t fight the whole time. 

Notes:

btw !! i’ll post the chapters for this episode and Then i’ll be taking a two month hiatus because Writer’s Block & also i have a trip coming up :3 so basically that means i’ll post a chapter next friday, may 2nd, may 9th, and then may 16th, and then i’ll be on hiatus until july 18th, where i’ll post chapter 39 and give another update as to how i’ll be posting (like how often and if there'll be another hiatus 😭😭😭 lol)

wheeeee i’m back beloveds <3 alas i suffered from writer’s block much of my time away, and i have a trip scheduled soon that’ll take up a lot of my focus, so after i finish posting the chapters for this episode, i’ll take another hiatus in hopes to be able to write some more and get back into the swing of things :) anyhow, i love all of you and i greatly appreciate the patience and kindness and encouragement all of you gave me in the comments 🥹 i Did cry a bit lol reading your comments while i wasn't posting 🥹🥹.

anywho, how did you guys like this chapter !! 🥰 a bit of softness, a bit of angst, a bit of Development with the main characters, and now the start of another case…! how exciting 👀 i’m so curious to see how you guys are liking the development so far !! 🫣🫣🫣

anyways !! i love u all and hope u enjoyed and are excited for the next chapter, which i’ll post next friday !! 🥰 see you all then !! 🥰🥰

Chapter 36: chapter thirty-six

Summary:

The gang digs into the case in hopes of catching a killer who is proving to be a lot more dangerous than they thought.

Notes:

hope you guys enjoyyyy 🥰🫣🤭

It’s only about half an hour before the gang finds out two more people have died. 

Mystery Inc.

9:47 p.m.

Chloé

hey

just found out we have two more victims

Marinette

meet up at parking lot?

Nino

sure

Luka

sounds good

Alya

anyone close by?

Félix

We’re by the entrance. Chloé is taking 

pictures in case they don’t let us close 

when you guys get here.

Marinette

sounds good

thanks chlo

Adrien

yess thanks, ur cam is so good too 💀

we’ll probs be able to see the dead

ppls pores w it 💀

Nino

ew no thanks chlo

ill pass 🙏

Luka

no dead ppl pores for me either 🙏

Alya

same 🙏

Marinette

dont zoom 🙏🙏🙏

Chloé

[sent 14 images]

Adrien

😭

Marinette

she fucking zoomed 😭

Nino

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Luka

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Alya

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Adrien

😭😭😭😭😭😭

Chloé

oh sorry lol didnt see these

Adrien

when i get you 🥲🔪

               read 9:53 p.m.

The gang finally reaches the entrance of the Faire, where two medics are loading a second body into the coroner’s van. Another body already lies inside. The sheriff is too busy directing a few officers on holding back the crowd of onlookers forming to notice the gang having slipped through behind the vendors to get closer to where Chloé, Luka, and Félix hide behind some bushes. 

Chloé has her phone out, zooming in on the body being loaded into the coroner’s truck when the gang reaches them. 

“What’s the deal here?” Marinette asks, excited as she crouches beside Chloé. She peers over her shoulder at the camera’s view and quickly grimaces. “Man, you really can see everything. Well, it’s probably for the best—we don’t know if we’ll get a closer look ourselves, anyways.”

Chloé nods slowly. “I noticed all three victims were dressed as pirates,” she says quietly, watching as the medics move the bodies onto different opened drawers, strapping them into the largest compartments and closing them in. “Seems a little strange, given 88% of this event is knights and maidens.” 

“I wonder if pirates specifically are its victim pool, then,” Marinette says, grinning. 

“Well, there was nothing in the pamphlet about gnomes, evil or otherwise, hating and killing pirates,” Nino says, crouched by Luka and Félix. 

Adrien, beside him, nods. “Maybe this means it’s not an evil gnome.” 

Alya rolls her eyes and sighs, crouched behind Marinette. 

Adrien looks to her with a smile. “Sorry, maybe this means the realm of possibility has once again shrank down to just evil human suspects.”

Alya rolls her eyes again, but there’s a hint of a smile on her lips. 

“I think we should break into the morgue tonight,” Marinette says suddenly. 

“Break in?” Chloé asks. “I thought we already had keys to the Morgue.” 

“Not the Morgue at the library,” Marinette amends. “The morgue morgue—where actual dead people are, awaiting autopsy.” 

Félix grimaces, moving to hold his stomach. “Why?” 

“To get blood and skin samples,” Marinette says, as if this was obvious. “We’ve got to figure out what that blue stuff is.” 

“Won’t someone notice if someone is missing some blood and skin when they do the autopsy?” Adrien asks. 

Marinette scoffs. “Well, sure, but they won’t know who did it or why.” 

“Marinette,” Alya says, “I think you fail to realize that we’d be the prime suspects for who, and the reasoning they would assume would be meddling. Or, worse yet, killing them ourselves.” 

“That’s outrageous,” Marinette says. 

Félix raises his brows, still holding his stomach. “More outrageous things have happened concerning you maniacs.” 

Marinette purses her lips. “Fine—we’ll have an airtight alibi. Everyone will sneak out of their homes later tonight after making sure it looks like they’re still asleep in their beds, and we’ll be dressed in all black with masks. Alya can bring her portable, hack into the camera feed and loop the cameras, we’ll break in using Félix’s lock-picking skills, and while some keep watch, some of us will quickly pull a body out, examine it, and take a sample of blood and skin. Then we’ll get out and hightail it back to our homes, catch a few more hours of sleep, and go to school the next morning, where Luka can analyze the samples in Chemistry tomorrow.”

Everyone sighs, dreading the hours of sleep they’ll be missing.  

“Until then, though,” Marinette says, grinning, “I think we have two very-well known pirate detesters here at the Faire that we can question.” 

~*~

There are five owners who run the Knights and Maidens Faire every year: ‘Queen’ Isabella, ‘Lord’ Barthalomew, the ‘Fool’ Richard, and Nino’s parents, the lattermost two of whom run the vendors side of things. The Queen and Lord Barthalomew run the costumes and design of the Faire, and the Fool runs the entertainment and theatre side of the Faire. 

Understandably, given the circumstances, no one wants to question Nino’s parents. No one has qualms, though, with questioning the other three owners. 

“Those filthy pirates shouldn’t have even been here,” Barthalomew says, scoffing. “You pirates shouldn’t be, either,” he says, looking at Marinette and Luka with disgust. 

They merely give him easy, practiced smiles, used to this sort of behavior with pirates and the Faire, but also used to adults treating them this way. 

The Fool sighs. “I’m sorry,” he tells the gang. “Lord Barthalomew needs to relax about the pirates mixing with the knights and damsels. I’ve told him not to worry about historical inaccuracies because, really, more people means more money.” 

Adrien nods, writing this down in his notebook. 

The Queen scoffs. “Richard, you fool—the Faire must be kept historically untainted for its purity.” 

“Purity?” Adrien asks, looking up from his notebook. 

The Queen raises a brow, looking disdainfully at Adrien’s outfit. “Yes, boy, though I see you wouldn’t have any sense of what the word means.” 

Félix and Chloé both step protectively in front of Adrien. Félix’s gaze is steely as he crosses his arms, and Chloé’s hands clench into fists, her lower lip curling as she glares at the Queen. Adrien looks mostly unaffected, turning back to his notebook, though there’s a slight tremble to his hands. 

“Hey,” Nino says sharply, brows drawn together. In speaking, he draws the Queen’s attention from Adrien. “Why’s it gotta be kept pure? What happens if it isn’t? It’s just a Faire.”

The Queen looks down her nose at Nino. “Who knows what shambling lowlives will arrive if it isn’t?” she says. 

Richard frowns, looking at the gang. “I’m sorry, everyone—do you have any more questions?”

“Yes, actually,” Alya says, lips pursed. “Do you have any remorse for the lives of the people killed today?”

“What does that matter?” Barthalomew asks, waving a hand. 

Alya levels the Queen with a stare. 

The Queen shrugs. “They were pointless deaths,” she says. “If they had adhered to the Faire’s dress code, perhaps they would have still been alive.” 

Chloé’s jaw drops. “You can’t be serious.” 

The Queen glares at Chloé. “I take much pride in being serious, girl. You’d be wise not to cross me, as I’d take it as such and respond appropriately.” 

Richard’s eyes widen, and he steps away from Barthalomew and the Queen, shooing the gang out of the makeshift court. “I’m so, so sorry,” he says quickly and quietly as he ushers them back into the makeshift streets of the Faire. “Normally, she isn’t like this—” 

“Oh, we know she is,” Luka grits out.  

“Well, still, I must apologize for her behavior,” Richard says quickly, looking remorseful. “She’s…” 

“We know,” Marinette says, shrugging. “Still, you should probably have your people notify as many pirates as possible to be wary and to not go anywhere alone.” 

Richard nods quickly. “Very well, very well. I’ll send out a message before I go back to the court, but thank you kids for your investigation.” 

Richard then bids them goodbye, and the gang wanders over to a funnel cake vendor. 

“He was surprisingly nice,” Adrien says, putting away his notebook. “I’m not so used to people treating us kindly.” 

Marinette nods, lips pursed. “Yeah, he’s one of the few good adults we know, along with Andre, Félix’s mom, uh, maybe a teacher or two… Well, Mendeleiv went to jail, so maybe just one teacher and the janitor at school.” She pauses to think on more people, but, not really finding any, she gives up her search and shrugs. “It’s nice, though.” 

“The Queen is such a bitch, though,” Chloé says, fuming. “I could have kicked her ass right then and there.” 

“She practically admitted to murder,” Nino muses, sounding surprised. “I was sure that she would’ve caught herself or maybe backtracked, but she just dug herself a deeper and deeper hole.” 

“Yeah,” Alya says, “Like, as shitty as it was for him to say more customers, more money, Richard was probably the sanest person in that room.” 

“Not too shitty in comparison to everyone else,” Marinette says with a shrug. 

They approach the funnel cake vendor and order and pay before stepping away to wait. 

“Still,” Alya says. 

After a moment, Chloé grimaces. “The way she looked at us, too—ugh. I would have thrown hands if I didn’t think she either paid someone to kill the pirates or killed them herself.” 

“Oh, paying someone—that is a good theory,” Adrien says, pulling out his notebook again and writing it down. “I felt like Barthalomew could have been a good contender, myself.” 

Marinette nods. “Yeah, Barthalomew was suspicious.” 

“I agree with Chloé,” Luka says, shrugging. “She not only didn’t feel remorse, she openly talked like it was a certainty that obviously that’s what happen when you break a simple dress code.”

“And she threatened us,” Nino says. 

“Yeah,” Félix says, brows drawing together. “Honestly, you and Luka shouldn’t be left alone—in addition to just being there and questioning her, you guys are dressed in pirate costumes.” 

Marinette grimaces. “Fine. I’m going with Adrien, though, if we split up.” 

At this, Chloé and Félix roll their eyes and Adrien flushes. 

“We probably should split up, at least to interview as many people as we can,” Alya says, pulling out her phone. 

“Got it,” Luka says, nodding. 

Marinette links arms with Adrien. “We can all get our cakes and split up for canvassing, then meet back here in an hour to go home?” 

Everyone nods, agreeing. 

~*~

When the gang drives to the morgue later that night, after they’ve all changed and made sure their alibis are airtight, it’s about 2:30 a.m. They drive Amélie’s van with the plates taken off.

With Amélie’s van heater on high, no one wears coats or bulky clothes. They wear all the dark turtlenecks they could scrounge up and share, with only Luka and Marinette wearing black long-sleeved t-shirts with black bandanas around their necks. Everyone wears black pants or black jeans with black sneakers or boots, and everyone’s hair has been tucked under beanies that cover their whole faces. The eyes have been cut from each beanie and they wear black sunglasses over them, and black gloves cover the rest of their remaining skin. 

They park Amélie’s van two streets over from the morgue and in a dark alley before they take one evidence kit, Alya’s portable, and Félix’s few lock-picking tools. The kit gets hidden under Luka’s shirt and the portable is hidden in a black side leg pouch belted to Alya’s thigh and around her hips. Félix’s lock-picking tools are concealed as they always are in a place no one in the gang bothers to figure out. 

Everyone gets out and Félix locks the van before they all quickly make their way to the end of the alley. 

No cars are out this late, and neither are any people. All the storefronts are dark, their cameras looping the same empty feeds as they have been since before the gang arrived, thanks to Alya with her portable.

Marinette leads the way, with Alya on one side just behind her, Félix on her other side, and Adrien and Chloé just behind them, with Nino and Luka bringing up the rear. In this formation, Adrien and Chloé, the least experienced in the group, are surrounded and protected, not let out of the sight of anyone who can get an experienced handle on any situation that may arise this evening. Marinette, taking, once more, the mantle of leader, leads everyone to the morgue, and Alya to her side can make sure everything is good for them to go with her portable. Félix is on Marinette’s other side for his lock-picking skills, and Nino and Luka bring up the rear because of their experience and lack of immediate need at the front of the group. 

Together, in this way, the gang moves out of the alley, down the street, one block over, and then they avoid the police station by going behind the second block and approaching the morgue from the other side. From this side, they find another dark alley and crouch there to wait. 

Alya pulls out her portable, stopping the loop on the camera feeds by the van (the feeds which don’t go into the alley at this time of night), and she works a few minutes to start up a new one on the side of the police department building and in and around the morgue as well as the buildings on the street they’re about to cross. Once it’s up, she closes her portable and tucks it back into her leg pouch, standing. The rest of the gang stands, too, and they follow her, Marinette, and Félix as they lead the rest of the way to the morgue.

The gang exits the alley, moves to the end of the street, and they have Chloé come forward with her camera on her phone opened up and ready. 

“Alright,” Marinette says, “can you see the front and side of the police department?” 

“Got it,” Chloé says. She zooms in. “No one is out, though the lights are on and people are definitely inside.” 

“Anyone look like they’re about to leave?” 

Chloé zooms in a bit more. “Nope. They’re either at the desks or they’re milling about by the water and what looks to be danishes.” 

“Maybe we should break in there,” Nino says. 

Félix shakes his head. “We can get danishes in the morning before school.” 

Nino sighs, but Chloé moves back to her previous position and the gang jogs across the street to the morgue, where they find the side door on the opposite side of the police department.

Félix moves to the front of the group, working beneath Marinette’s phone flashlight to pick the lock of the door. It takes him a moment, and then another, but then it’s open and he’s stepping back to let Marinette take the lead. 

She does, leading them in with practiced ease down a dark hallway. At the back of the group, Luka closes and locks the morgue’s door, and then he follows, too. 

The gang reaches the main room of the morgue where the dead bodies reside, and they’re surprised to find seven more bodies out on different tables, with the other drawers that would’ve been able to hold the bodies curled in rigor mortis already likely full. 

“Holy shit,” Marinette says, looking at the array. 

Félix turns and abruptly leaves the room, disappearing. He heads for the bathroom, the others staying back behind as he leaves. 

“This is a lot more than there was when we left,” Alya murmurs. 

“This means a very active serial killer, at the least,” Luka says quietly, shifting nervously on his feet.

“All of them are dressed as pirates,” Chloé says softly. “So that’s definitely the victim pool, right?” 

“Right,” Marinette answers. 

Adrien looks at Marinette and Luka both. “Any chance we can get you guys to dress as knights and maidens?” 

“No chance in hell,” Marinette says, glancing back with a serious expression. “We’ve got a killer to catch, and we’re bait.” 

Everyone but her and Luka looks uneasy at this. Luka, for his part, has a clenched jaw and fists, steeling himself in this idea easily. 

After a moment, Alya speaks up, pulling them all back to the conversation and task at hand. “We should check over the bodies to make sure there’s no clues that were left behind.” 

“Got it,” Chloé says. “Should I take pictures of each one?” 

“Yeah,” Nino says. “Luka can pass out vials for blood and skin samples from each victim on the tables, and we’ll go over each body in two groups: Alya and me and Adrien, Marinette and Luka and you.”

Luka opens up the evidence kit tucked beneath his shirt and he hands six empty vials to Adrien, three needles to Alya, and three pairs of tweezers and a few bags for extra clues to Nino. He then hands eight empty vials to Chloé, four pairs of tweezers and some bags for extra clues to Marinette, and he holds onto the four other needles they’ll use tonight. 

The groups then move to the first two bodies, with Luka, Chloé, and Marinette bringing up the rear and Alya, Nino, and Adrien going to the one next over. While Luka and Alya take blood samples, Nino and Marinette take skin samples and examine the bodies for other clues. Chloé and Adrien, during this, take pictures, guided by Luka and Alya through taking pictures of what they’ll need exactly.

Félix doesn’t come back into the room, but he texts the gang to let them know he’s keeping watch at the side door and front door.

After a half hour, all the necessary pictures, blood and skin samples, and clues have been found, tagged, and put back in Luka’s evidence kit, including one earring that was clutched in the hand of one of the victims. Nino had found it, the gem hanging from it glittering and reflecting in the soft blue light from the victim’s veins, and he had put it in one of the bags for other clues. 

It’s another half hour before they get to the car, at which point Alya disables the loop on the cameras around the morgue. Another twenty minutes has them driving the first few members of the gang home, and everyone is back in bed at about 5:00 a.m. to take a two hour nap before heading to school the next day. 

~*~

On the way to school, Nino’s phone rings. He takes it, not even glancing at the caller I.D., as he pulls into the parking lot for a gas station stop. He waves the rest of the gang out to go get danishes, breakfast sandwiches, coffee, and some apples, mandarins, and bananas from inside while he answers the call. 

“Hello?” he asks, voice light as he thinks about a cream cheese danish with a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich and an apple and mandarin. 

“Nino? It’s me, your mom.” 

He goes completely still. 

It takes him a long minute to speak. 

His voice cracks when he finally asks, “Why are you calling me?” 

“I just…” there’s a pause. “I just wanted to talk to you. See how you’ve been.” 

“Really,” he says weakly. 

“Yeah,” she says, distantly. She moves closer to the phone. “Yeah. That’s all.” 

Nino looks out of the van, peering into the gas station. The gang wanders around slowly, not appearing to be in any rush. “Why now?” he asks quietly. 

There’s a pause. 

“What do you mean?” she finally asks. 

He closes his eyes. “Why now and not, like, the day after I left? The day Chris got sentenced? The days since?” He opens his eyes. “Why almost a month later?”

Her voice comes out a little childish. “I’m calling you now.” She sounds almost confused as to why he’s asking—as if, obviously, he should be grateful and happy that at least there’s this. 

He’s not grateful. “But why didn’t you earlier?”

“I was… busy,” his mother says. “You know how things with the bookstore and your pa are.” 

“No,” he says, voice hollow. “I don’t.” 

“Well,” his mother says, “I would’ve been less busy if I hadn’t had all of these chores piling up, too.” 

Nino swallows and doesn’t say anything. 

“There’s so many chores,” his mother says, “that I haven’t even had the time to see your brother, Chris.” 

He waits out the pause she has. 

“You know,” she says, “if you hadn’t left, I might have been able to see him or talk with you more.” 

There it is, he thinks. 

“Even when I was there,” he says slowly, “you didn’t have the time of day to see us. We lived in the exact same house and did all the chores for you, and you still couldn’t be bothered to walk the twenty feet from the living room to one of our rooms, or call us out to talk with you in the living room. What makes you think that if you had the chores done by someone else again that you’d go and drive to a jail where you have to check in with an I.D. and everything to see your own son? What makes you think that if you had the chores done you’d even pick up the fucking phone to talk to either of us?”

There’s a few moments of silence.

She starts of quiet. “Well, maybe things are different, now.” 

He doesn’t answer. 

“Maybe I’m different, now,” she says weakly. 

“Then hire a fucking maid,” he says, closing his eyes again. “I’m not coming back, and neither is Chris.” 

He opens his eyes only to hang up and toss his phone across the seat. He tilts his head back, eyes closed again, and he yanks his hat off to pull at his hair. He groans, tears welling up behind his closed eyes, and the sound tapers off weakly. 

“I hate this,” he whimpers, rocking forward to curl in on himself. “I hate this so much.”

I wish you were here, Chris, he thinks. I wish I at least had you here with me. 

~*~

In their fourth period Chemistry class, Luka sneaks the evidence kit with the vials of blood and skin samples into the lab under his hoodie. Chloé begrudgingly, quietly, takes the seat beside him in the lab for the day. 

Class begins, and they have a lengthy lab mixing chemicals, describing the reactions that take place, and writing their chemical equations. He finishes his lab paperwork in about ten minutes, writing out the equations quickly and describing the reactions that should occur for each combination, before he moves the packet into Chloé’s view. Chloé goes through the motions of mixing each chemical combination and she writes down the equations and descriptions, checking her work against Luka’s. They sit at the back of the class, so Luka quickly pulls some test dishes and a microscope to their table from the counter behind him while the teacher isn’t looking, propping it behind his open textbook which lays against the back of his backpack. 

With this setup, Luka starts reviewing the blood and skin samples from the morgue, carefully analyzing them. When he finds the shape of the cells for the blue substance, he draws it out on the back of his lab packet. From there, he compares the same cell shape to the cell shapes from the other blood samples, though he doesn’t find much from the skin samples. 

Once he’s finished, he sets aside the dishes and puts the microscope away. He then puts the remaining sample matter that hadn’t been taken out from the vials back into the evidence kit under his hoodie. For the rest of the class period, he helps Chloé finish with the chemicals and the lab paper work. 

When they’ve finished, there’s still time in the class period. Luka gets up with Chloé and together they clean the dishes—him cleaning the blood and skin sample ones specially and her cleaning the ones for the Chemistry lab. After finishing, she goes back to their lab table and he goes up to the teacher’s desk at the front with his lab work and Chloé’s. 

“You’ve finished with the lab already?” the teacher asks. 

Luka nods. “Yeah, and I had a question about a cell structure I was hoping you could help me with.” 

The teacher leans forward, taking the labs Luka hands him. 

“The structure is on the back of my labs, by the way,” he says. 

The teacher flips the packet over and examines the cell. “Hm. Well, it’s certainly familiar. Do you mind if I send a picture of it to my wife? She’s a marine biologist, and she might know.” 

Luka raises his brows, shaking his head. “No, no—go right ahead. I’d love to know what it is, and if she can help me figure it out, then great.” 

The teacher nods and he takes a quick photo, sending it to his wife. “I’d also like to thank you and Chloé for being civil enough to finish the lab quickly. I was worried when you two sat beside each other, because I know how you both get, but you’ve been pretty quiet and tame.” 

Luka forces a smile. “Yeah. Guess things are getting better. Let me know what your wife says?” 

“Will do,” the teacher says, smiling. 

Luka returns to his seat, where he rolls his eyes. “Dr. Jacobs is so impressed how we’ve been quiet this whole time and managed to finish the lab before class ended,” he tells Chloé quietly. 

“Is he now?” Chloé asks, reading in her Business I textbook. She writes down a note in the notebook beside her. “Did he also identify that cell?” 

“No,” Luka says, shaking his head, “but he at least knew someone who might be able to. He sent it to his wife, and he’ll let me know what she says.” 

“Good,” Chloé says, moving to highlight a line of her textbook. 

“How’ve the bandages been holding up this morning with wearing more layers?” he asks, referring to her different clothing choice for the day rather than her usual loose hoodie and long-sleeved shirt over the bandages. He puts his chin in one hand, elbow on the table, and he looks over the classroom. 

“They’ve been fine,” Chloé says emotionlessly.

Luka sighs. Can you stop acting like this? he wants to ask. I thought things could be different, like you said, he wants to say. 

Instead, he says nothing more. 

After a while, the teacher comes back to Luka and Chloé’s table. 

“Luka,” the teacher greets, “my wife got back to me on that cell structure.” 

“What’d she say?” Luka asks, turning a bit to look up at the teacher. 

The teacher frowns. “I don’t know how you would have this cell structure, but it’s apparently a deadly jellyfish toxin.”

Luka’s brows draw together. “Wow.” 

“May I ask what you were doing with it? Why you knew how to draw the structure?” 

Luka shakes his head, smiling a bit back at the teacher. “No reason. I found this weird puzzle game that gives you cell structures to memorize and that was one of them—I couldn’t figure it out, so I figured you’d be my best bet.”

The teacher nods, lips pursed. “Interesting. You’ll have to tell me more about this game sometime.” 

Luka nods.

The teacher is called away by other students before he can say anything more on the subject. 

“That was close,” Chloé whispers after a moment. 

“Yeah,” Luka says, wincing. “I might have to make a game, now, though.” 

~*~

That night, the gang returns to the Knights and Maidens Faire, dressed in the much same outfits as the night before, though Nino has forgone his armor and Chloé has her hair down tonight. They start the evening off by separating into pairs to get food and drinks for dinner, having not picked up pizza that night like they’d done yesterday. 

Nino, Alya, and Félix go off for drinks for the gang and don’t have any issues. Instead, they have a pleasant trip, Nino thinks, avoiding his parents. He still hasn’t told the gang about the call that morning or that his mother reached out. He hadn’t even told Chris that afternoon in his open period that he’s spent most days driving to and hanging out with Chris at the jail for. 

He hopes against all hope that he doesn’t have to see or interact with either parent this evening.

~*~

Marinette and Adrien, splitting off and looking for chicken tenders and fries, don’t do so well. Marinette can’t stop looking over her shoulder, her hand clenched around the hilt of the sword no one is sure is fake. Adrien hovers a hand just behind Marinette, at her lower back, and he walks closely beside her, eyes scanning his surroundings diligently. 

That’s how they wind up in this position, with Marinette lying on her back in a pile of hay with Adrien propped up on his arms over her, red-faced but looking over his shoulder. 

They’d been nearing the chicken tenders vendor when Adrien had sucked in a breath, turning and shoving Marinette towards a pile of hay and covering her with his gaudy outfit as best he could. Red-faced, he had turned to look over his shoulder and froze. 

“I see it,” he whispers.

“Then get off of me, Adrien! You shouldn’t be in danger—” 

“And you should?” he hisses back. “I’m not letting you get hurt, Mari.”

She goes silent, then, but he keeps his eyes on the gnome peering through the branches at them. 

“Just stay still,” he pleads, still whispering. “Please.” 

A moment later, she asks, “Can you still see it?” Her voice is small.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “It’s looking right at us.”

Marinette pulls him closer by the collar of his gold shirt. “So if we crawled into the pile of hay, it would know?”

Adrien glances at her quickly, and he flushes a deeper shade of red at their closeness. “It would know,” he says, looking back at the gnome. 

Marinette nods, but she keeps a hand at his collar. “Thank you,” she whispers. “For… trying to keep me safe.”

Even turned away from her, Adrien’s expression softens. “Of course,” he says. “You’re my friend.” 

Marinette smiles, though it feels like she could cry a bit, now. “You’re mine, too,” she says. “Promise me you’ll move so I can use my sword if the gnome comes closer?” 

Adrien grimaces, still looking at the gnome and meeting its gaze. “I don’t want to, but a sword is probably better against however that jellyfish toxin is transferred.” 

Marinette nods. “Probably,” she says, slipping her sword carefully from its scabbard at her side. She slips it between their bodies and brings it to her other side, in the hopefully clear view of the gnome. 

After a few minutes, Adrien says, “It’s gone—back into the woods.” 

They both breathe a sigh of relief.

~*~

Still, when Chloé and Luka go further into the Faire for mac and cheese and salad, they somehow have it worse than the other two groups. 

Unfortunately for them, the mac and cheese and salad both are on the other side of the Faire than the gang from the makeshift court where the Queen, Lord Barthalomew, and the Fool (Richard) stay. The court that Chloé and Luka approach also butts up against a grove of trees on either side of the rear of the tent. As Chloé and Luka come near, they hear Barthalomew scoffing. 

“I say, good riddance to those sea scum. I never let pirates in when I ran things.” 

The Fool replies flatly. “You ran things into the ground, you silly tot. That’s why I’m in charge.” 

Chloé freezes. She looks to Luka, who’s already looking at her and nodding. He takes her hand in his and leads her to one wall of the court on the side, where there’s a large window. They crouch beneath it, hiding, and Chloé swipes open her camera from the lock screen and she puts up her phone’s camera lense just above the sill. This way, she and Luka can see inside without revealing themselves by their hair and foreheads to see. 

“I did not,” Barthalomew says, fists clenched as he stands a few feet from where the Fool lounges on the Queen’s throne. “I ran an elegant, well-put together, and well-thought out Faire until you married Isabella and took over with your foolish notions of bringing in more money.” 

“Is that not what the Faire is all about?” the Fool asks flatly. “Money?” 

Barthalomew cries out, stomping his foot. He’s beginning to get red in the face. 

Luka and Chloé glance at each other, brows raised.

“No! The Faire is about historical accuracy and—”

The Fool waves a hand around, looking exasperated. “Lordy, you’re angry about that. You know, they might just think you killed those pirates if you keep acting like this.” 

Barthalomew begins to shake. “I could kill you!” he cries, pointing a trembling finger angrily at the Fool. “You insolent, idiotic, arrogant—”  

“Oh, my oh my!” the Fool says dryly, looking unimpressed. “Shall I tell that little gang of mystery solvers you said that?” he asks with a deep pout. “See what they do about that? Maybe they’ll have you arrested!” 

Barthalomew fumes silently. 

The Fool smiles pleasantly. “You can host a Faire in jail, then, and shank anyone who dresses up outside of your historical accuracies, just like you’ve been killing those pirates this weekend.” 

Barthalomew turns on his heel and storms off to one side of behind the court, exiting out of a regal wooden door and slamming it behind him. 

On the throne, the Fool sighs and leans back against the armrest, closing his eyes. His expression is relaxed and unimpressed by Barthalomew’s outburst. Chloé looks to Luka, who’s already reaching for one of her wrists. 

“Come on,” he whispers. “There’s a few windows down near where Barthalomew left.” 

Chloé nods, and he guides her down the side of the makeshift court to another window near the end of the court. As they get to the window, they hear the sound of a sewing machine—the sound recognizable thanks to spending time around Marinette when she’s mending clothes in her room while they all work on homework. 

Chloé sets up her camera to sit over the sill again, and she and Luka watch and listen as Lord Barthalomew sews together a corset. All around the small room hang fully-constructed pirate costumes and stand more on busts and mannequins set up around the room. 

Chloé turns to Luka. “No fucking way,” she hisses. “The guy notorious for hating pirates is out here making pirate costumes in his spare time?” 

Luka bites back a grin. “A bit ironic, yeah?” 

“Ironic is an understatement,” she whispers, turning back to the camera. 

Barthalomew starts humming a sea shanty as he sews, but he shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. 

Beside her, Luka turns away and slumps against the wall of the court, sighing. He can still hear the sewing machine and the humming, so he’s not too worried about things as he writes in his Notes app a summary of what went down. 

After a few moments, Chloé turns and slumps down beside him, sighing. “Should we wait to see if he leaves, and then we can search the room for the gnome costume or something?”

Luka doesn’t look up from his typing. “I’ve actually got a different theory for who the gnome might be,” he murmurs. “I’ve got to look the person up, but I think this is a dead end with Barthalomew. He might just really like pirates but feel like there’s a time and place for them.” 

Chloé looks back towards the main part of the Faire, stomach growling. She sighs again. “Could you hurry it up, then?” 

Luka glances over before looking back at his phone. He finishes his summary and shrugs. “I’ll go as quickly as I can,” he says, starting his search. 

Chloé looks forlornly at the Faire, moving a hand to rest over her growling stomach, and she frowns. 

After a few minutes of staring, a movement in the shadows between two vendors across from the makeshift street between the vendors and the court catches her eye. Something blue starts to glow from within those shadows—two dots, a short distance from each other. She squints, trying to see it better amidst the dark shadows, and then it hits her. 

It’s the gnome.

Notes:

ohmgh this chapter was jam-packed 👀

what did you guys think of the queen, lord barthalomew, and the fool ?? 👀 how about nino and the phone call with his mom? 🫣 chloé and luka’s interactions in chemistry? 🧪 marinette and adrien’s… hay adventures…? 🫣🫣 the fool and barthalomew’s interactions towards the end?? 🤔 and that Cliffhanger…??!?! 🤡 so cruel of the author am i right ?? like jeez louise cut the readers a break !!

hahaha i will Probably Not cut yall a break BUT ! the next chapter starts off INSANELY . and i hope you all are Very Excited 😏

anywho !! 🥰 still struggling with writer’s block 🤡 but also just being busy and sick and of crappy health lol but even my therapist is like girl lets get you WRITING and finishing More Chapters…!!! and im like 🧐🤓 but yeah lol hoping to get back to writing more Soon because 🙏🤡 i got plans for this fic and for making yall insane !!

lol but i LOVE YALL so much and i am so so so grateful to everyone who comments and reads and oughhhh you guys are the best . loves of my life.

again, just a reminder, but after these chapters for this episode are posted, i’ll be on a two-month hiatus :) for specific dates, you can refer back to the author’s note in the previous chapter !! 🥰

anyways, HAPPY FRIDAYYY !!! hope you all enjoyed this chapter and are excited for the next one !!! 🥰😉 next chapter will be posted next friday 🫶 much love!! stay safe yall hope you guys are finding a little bit of joy in each day !! 🥰

Chapter 37: chapter thirty-seven

Summary:

I'm not even going to tell you how this chapter starts. I just hope all the Lukloé stans are ready <3

Notes:

if ure like damn girl this is posted early...! that's because it is. i started prepping this chapter at four twenty-six a.m. my time. i've been up since two a.m. (for no reason, no less.) but it's a good thing i guess since i've got a dentist's appt for a possible abscess tooth that's been swelling in my mouth and i've got other health appts and work today lol and wouldn't have had any other time to post :insert clown emoji because this is also on the laptop and not my ipad lol sobs: anyways. if u see more mistakes this chapter. it's probs because i'm not wearing my Ass glasses (bad prescrip and also im not cleaning them at four in the fucking morning. if they don't even work. lol.) and also i'm awake at an Unholy hour. i love yall if you couldn't tell. posting when i could be sleeping :sly sexy emoji i'm just gonna look these up so no one gets the wrong idea: 😏 okay that looks frigging weird in windows. is that what yall been seeing lol. sobbing anyways HERES THE CHAPTER HOPE YOU GUYS ENJOY 👹 i think that's the right emoji everything looks weird on windows

She turns to Luka, eyes widening, and she shoves his phone out of the way, climbing over him and quickly making sure her skirts cover his pants and boots. He looks up, startled, and she sweeps her large bell sleeves over his shoulders so his sides are concealed, too, and she puts her hands on either side of his neck, tilting his face up by the jaw towards her. Trying not to think too much about it, she crashes her lips to his, closing her eyes. Luka, frozen and startled, doesn’t move.

Across the way, in the shadows, the blue eyes glowing in the shadows avert themselves. 

As Chloé’s kiss softens slightly, growing gentler, Luka closes his eyes. He kisses her back, and as the moments pass and she parts for air quickly, only to return a second later to kissing him with more fervor, his hands stray hesitantly to her waist. Her hands at his neck relax and she draws one down to the open front of his shirt, fingers splaying over his collarbone. Her other hand she moves to his arm, slowly drawing down it to his hand at her waist, and she brings his hand up to her cheek, holding it there gently. 

Luka moves the thumb of that same hand in a small and repetitive but gentle motion under her closed eye, and he parts his lips against hers. She parts her own lips in response, leaning closer, and she draws her tongue hesitantly over his lower lip. He slips his hand around to the back of her neck, fingers tangling in the hair she left down for the evening, and he touches his tongue to hers.

She moves her body closer, tilting her head slightly, and she slips her tongue slowly over top of his. Luka makes a small noise, pulling her to him. She moves her tongue from over his to beneath it, and she breathes him in. She moves her hand over his collarbone, sliding it up to his neck, and she tugs gently at the hair at the nape of his neck. 

At the end of the alleyway between the makeshift court and another vendor, there comes a shout. 

“Hey!” 

Chloé and Luka part slowly, turning to look at the source of the noise. A man stands awkwardly by the wall of the makeshift court. He’s dressed in knight armor. 

“This isn’t the place for that,” the man says, sounding almost hesitant with the awkwardness with which he says this. 

“O-okay,” Chloé says, moving off of Luka to sit on her knees at his side. Her face is flushed and she quickly moves her hands from him to her lap, curling them into fists beneath her large bell sleeves. 

The man gives them a half-stern look before he turns and leaves. 

“What was that?” Luka asks.

Chloé flushes deeper. She turns and looks at him. “I saw the gnome across the way.” 

Luka’s eyes are wide and, though his cheeks are flushed, too, he raises a brow and says, “So you couldn’t just move us both behind the court and out of sight?” 

Chloé blinks. 

Needless to say, the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind. 

“Sorry for trying to save your life,” she says lowly, turning her nose up and looking away. In her lap, her hands are no longer fisted. Instead, they lie limp and still beneath her sleeves as something uncertain and sickly curls in her stomach. 

Luka stares at her, suddenly embarrassed. 

He had kissed her back. He had pulled her closer. He had parted his lips, tangled his hand in her hair, made that noise, and, ugh—he was done for. 

“Well,” he says weakly, “luckily I caught on, but you could have warned me.” 

This is a lie, obviously, but he hopes she doesn’t catch him in it as he pulls his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around himself. 

“Not really,” she says dryly. “Warning you would’ve taken too long, and you might have said no.” 

He doesn’t mention that he’d only done the opposite and pulled her closer.

“I covered you with my dress so it couldn’t see you in your pirate costume,” she says quietly. 

He glances over, face still flushed. “Thank you,” he whispers. “For trying to save me.” 

Chloé turns away, flushed but grimacing. “Well, don’t expect it to happen again,” she says, louder, now.

Luka keeps looking at her, noting the set of her shoulders and her flushed skin. “It was a nice kiss,” he eventually says. 

Chloé’s gaze at the rest of the Faire turns into a glare and her hands clench into fists in her lap once more. Before she can agree and suggest trying it again sometime, she squares her shoulders and says, “Well, obviously. I’m a good kisser.” 

Luka’s lips twitch with amusement and he raises his brows. “Obviously.” 

“You’re not so bad yourself,” she says after a moment. 

He smiles a bit. “I think that’s the third compliment you’ve ever paid me.” 

“And now it’s the last,” she grumbles, getting to her feet. “Come on, we’ve got mac and cheese and salad to get.” 

“You’re hungry still, right?” he asks, getting to his feet, too. He reaches out to take her hand gently before leading the way back to the Faire. He glances back at her, waiting for her response. 

She doesn’t take her hand from his. Instead, she sighs. “I am.” 

He smiles a bit, turning back to continue leading the way. “Well, let’s hurry, then. We wouldn’t want you attacking me again, this time out of hunger.” 

Chloé squeezes his hand tight, trying to cause him pain. “You’d better watch yourself, Couffaine.” 

“Oh, if there’s the threat of you jumping me,” he says with a laugh, “I am.” 

“I should have strangled you when I had my hands around your neck,” she hisses, moving closer so she can lower her voice. 

“Instead you made out with me,” he whispers, glancing over with a wink. “I see what your priorities are, Bourgeois.” 

She grimaces. “I think I must have gotten hit over the head this afternoon.” 

Luka smiles wider. “Hit over the head with looove .” 

“More like we both got hit over the head with the delusion stick,” she says, face flushing again. 

“Who’s delusional?” he asks. “You kissed me.” 

“You kissed me back .” 

“As part of the ruse I figured out seconds into the kiss,” he lies. 

“I think I’ll kill you now.” 

Luka shakes his head, stifling a laugh as they approach the mac and cheese vendor. Chloé orders and pays for a few trays of different flavors of mac and cheese, and Luka holds onto the containers. Chloé then takes his elbow, leading the way to the salads booth, where she pays for a few different types of salads. Luka carries those containers also, and then Chloé, with a hand at his elbow, leads them back to the tables the gang agreed to meet at. 

All the while, they both keep a careful eye on their surroundings, genuinely not wanting to have to risk either of their lives again.

When they reach the table, the rest of the gang is already seated and eating. 

“Where were you guys?” Adrien asks, eating some fries. Beside him sits Marinette, and across from him sits Nino, with Alya and Félix on either side of him. 

“We got caught up eliminating a suspect and escaping the gnome,” Luka says simply, sitting down beside Alya with the containers. Chloé sits next to Adrien and she swipes a large chicken tender and a napkin with a bucket of ranch dipping sauce from him. Quickly, she begins to eat.

“We did, too,” Marinette says excitedly, sipping at her soda. “Well—just the gnome part. Where did you guys see the gnome?”

Luka glances at Chloé before looking back at Marinette. “Between the vendors across from one side of the court. You know the side where the trees come closer to the court?” 

Marinette nods. “The vendors—those are just under a tree, right? The ones you said were across from the court?” 

Luka nods, too. “Yeah, I guess there were trees next to us and the gnome.”

Marinette grins.  

Luka passes out the mac and cheese and salad containers, spreading them out along the table. “Did you guys escape okay, though? When you saw the gnome, I mean.” 

“Yeah,” Adrien says, blushing some. He quickly changes the subject. “Who did you eliminate as suspect?” 

Chloé glances over at Luka, who’s trying out the fruit salad with a grimace. She pauses her eating. “Lord Barthalomew,” she says before taking another bite. She chews and swallows before continuing. “He’s actually a closet pirate cosplayer.” 

“Or he just makes the costumes for fun,” Luka says with a shrug, popping open the mozzarella and parmesan mac and cheese instead. He takes his fork and cleans it on his pants before he starts eating the mac and cheese between bites of chicken tender that he swiped from a tray in front of Alya. “He’s got loads of them in his office or quarters or whatever.” 

“Wow,” Marinette says, taking a bite of the Caesar salad. “That’s… unexpected.” 

“To say the least,” Chloé says. “Oh, but Luka said he might have another suspect.” 

Luka rolls his eyes. “I don’t, actually. Not anything concrete, yet.” 

“I thought you did?” Chloé asks. 

Luka gives her a flat look. “Well, you shoved my phone out of my hands before I could actually finish my research,” he says. 

He doesn’t mention the kiss, which she’s half-grateful for.

Chloé flushes. “Oh,” she says. “Sorry.”

“Rude,” Adrien says, giving Chloé a look. “I thought we talked about being nicer.” 

She only flushes deeper, but her gaze turns a bit sharper with annoyance.

Before she can retort, though, Luka reaches out, free hand brushing the inside of her elbow, and she glances to him. His expression is one of ease as he finishes chewing, and he looks at Adrien, shaking his head. “No, don’t worry. She was actually trying to save my life in that moment, I was just doing my research then by coincidence.” 

Chloé keeps her gaze on him, forearm twitching a bit in response, inching closer to his touch, and her gaze softens slightly from its previous sharpness, though if anyone looked at her head-on right now, they wouldn’t be able to describe the look. 

Adrien looks at Luka, pursing his lips, and he tilts his head some. After a moment, he smiles a bit knowingly. “She was trying to save your life?” 

Luka, his mind drawn back to the kiss, pauses. His hand on Chloé’s arm tightens, flexes, and his cheeks turn pink. Still, he slowly nods. “She… saved my life, yes. So she was nice—not rude at all. Very nice. Very, very nice.”

Adrien smiles a bit wider, eyes crinkling a bit at the corners, and he glances between them, gaze falling to Luka’s hand on her arm. “Hm.”

Noting Adrien’s attention, Luka moves his hand away quickly, clearing his throat. He brushes that hand off on his opposite pant leg, looking down at the mac and cheese in front of him with very, very pink cheeks. “So, anyways.”

Everyone else, who had been eating and watching curiously and—somewhat—cluelessly, adjusts, glancing away. Only Adrien and Félix still watch the pair, the former with a sly curiosity and the latter with a more protective uncertainty. 

“So, who were you thinking as our other suspect, Luka?” Alya asks, pulling out her portable. “I can look them up while we eat.”

Luka frowns. “The Fool. Richard, you know.” 

Alya raises a brow, but she starts typing on her portable. As she works, she takes bites from a batch of spicy mac and cheese and some chicken tenders and fries. 

“The gnome came out of nowhere for us,” Chloé says. “I saw it in an alleyway across from the court while we were hiding and spying on Barthalomew, but it hadn’t been there seconds before.” 

“It appeared out of the trees for us,” Adrien says, brows drawing together. He tastes the spicy mac and cheese and winces, waving his hands at his mouth. Félix passes him his water, rolling his eyes, and Adrien drinks quickly, relaxing. “Thanks,” he tells Félix. “I think I’ll stick to the cheddar and mozzarella mac and cheese.” 

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Marinette says, putting her elbow on the table and propping her chin in one hand. “How’s it been getting around so fast? It killed ten people in the span of just a few hours, in ways we still aren’t even sure of.” 

“Maybe there’s tunnels,” Nino says. “Maybe it’s a burrowing creature.” 

“Or maybe it can teleport,” Félix says mockingly. He eats some fries and takes a few bites of the fruit salad. 

Marinette rolls her eyes. “Thanks for the input, Félix.” 

“Have you guys looked at those pictures of the bodies very closely?” Alya asks, looking up from her portable. She takes a bite of the spicy mac and cheese. 

Nino shakes his head. “Nope—I looked enough last night.” 

“Same here,” Félix says. 

“You didn’t even look,” Chloé says, rolling her eyes. 

Félix smiles pleasantly at her. “And, magically, that was enough for me.” 

Alya shakes her head. “Luka? Adrien? Mari? Chloé?”

“I figured I’d seen them well enough last night,” Adrien says with a shrug. 

“Same here,” Marinette says. 

Luka frowns. “I looked through them and zoomed a bit, but I couldn’t find anything too conclusive.”

Chloé shakes her head. “I didn’t look much beyond taking the photos.” 

Alya shrugs, turning back to her portable. “Well, Luka’s right. There wasn’t anything too conclusive, except for small bruises on exposed wrists, which could be indicative of needle marks.” 

“Hm,” Luka says. “I hadn’t thought about that.” 

Alya shrugs again, taking another bite of the spicy mac and cheese. “It’s just a theory for now. I want to get back into the morgue or see more bodies tonight to make sure, but yeah.” 

“Are you finding anything on Richard?” Nino asks after a moment.

Alya shakes her head. “Not much—just that he’s been in theatre for a long time after dropping out of a university a few states over. I guess he lived out there, but on the tours that Isabella and Barthalomew do, he met Isabella and fell in love. They got married and he started touring with them, taking over and expanding the entertainment side of the Faire. They’ve been doing the Faire with him for about 30 years.” 

Luka nods. “Well, it’s probably related to the theatre thing, but he was a completely different person in secret with Barthalomew.” 

“A total bitch,” Chloé says, shaking her head. 

Luka nods again. “He was leading Barthalomew in suggesting Barthalomew had killed the pirates and he kept egging him on, making him angrier and angrier.”

“And the whole time,” Chloé says between bites of some of the mozzarella and parmesan mac and cheese, “he looked totally bored and like he was gonna take a nap after he was done pissing Barthalomew off.” 

“Wow,” Nino replies. 

“Man,” Adrien says dejectedly, “I really thought he was nice.” 

Marinette shrugs, used to the bitter disappointment of adults screwing up in their lives or lying. It’s almost commonplace, at this point. “Well, the same happened to Mendeleiv, Ms. Jackie, Carlson, Max, Lila, Candace, Mr. West, Miss—” 

“Okay, you’re making it feel worse,” Adrien says, wincing. “Does everyone eventually betray us?”

“We’ve still got Andre, Amélie, the janitor, and Mrs. Bishop,” Marinette says cheerfully. 

“So do we note him down as a suspect?” Alya asks. “Richard, I mean.” 

“I think the way he was acting is indicative of something being hidden beneath the surface, or the possibility of it,” Luka says, eating some chicken tender. “Plus, he has all the entertainment section at his disposal—any one of them could have been the gnome, especially the people who do the Houdini acts.” 

Alya nods, writing this down on her portable. “We also don’t know what his major in university was—maybe it was marine biology.” 

Everyone nods.

“Speaking of university,” Chloé says after a moment, “did you guys sign up for your classes this next semester?” 

Alya nods, smiling as she puts her portable away. “I’m taking Journalism I.” 

“Music Theory and Composition for me,” Nino says. 

Marinette shrugs. “I passed on it, since I don’t even know which path I want to take or if college is one of them.”

Adrien nods. “Same here.” 

“I’m taking Advanced Chem and Earth Sci II,” Luka says. 

“Earth Sci III, Business II, English 1C, and Advanced Calculus for me,” Félix says, shrugging. 

Adrien looks to Chloé. “How about you?”

She shrugs. “Business II and Advanced Economics.” 

Adrien nods. “So, you’re going to be even more of a business nerd in Spring.” 

Chloé kicks him sharply. 

“How much yapping do you think will occur for the semester?” he asks, mouth twitching with a smile.

Chloé grimaces. “I’ll shove that spicy mac and cheese down your throat if you continue.” 

Adrien smiles wider, knowing and feeling excited about how happy Chloé will be with the business classes. She knows that that’s what he’s saying, that she’ll be happy. “Alright, alright, I’ll stop.” 

Right then, Adrien’s phone rings. 

He scrambles to dig it out from his silver pants beneath his gold miniskirt while sitting, and it rings three times before he manages to get it free. 

Breathlessly, he answers it. “Hello?” 

“Hello, Adrien,” Lady E says, voice like velvet.

He scrambles to turn the call on speaker, setting it out for everyone to hear. “Lady E,” he whispers. 

The gang leans closer. 

“Hi, Lady Elusive,” Nino greets. 

“Hello, Mystery Incorporated,” she says. “Need a clue about the evil gnome?” 

Marinette hesitates. “Sure.” 

“Begin your search at the end.” She pauses. “Enjoy the rest of the Faire.” 

There’s a beep as Lady E hangs up, and Adrien takes his phone back. 

“Begin at the end?” Marinette asks, groaning. “I thought clues were supposed to point you closer to something, not confuse you more.” 

Alya grimaces. 

“It’s definitely not helpful, given how many beginnings and ends she could possibly be meaning,” Félix says. 

“Exactly,” Marinette says, grimacing. 

Adrien frowns. “Okay, so let’s ignore her this time. What would have been our next steps without the clue?” 

“Well,” Marinette says, “does anyone have a map of the Faire?”

Félix pulls out a map from the pocket of his hoodie and he hands it to Marinette. 

“Got a pen?” she asks him, raising a brow. 

Félix shakes his head, but Adrien hands her the pen from the pocket of his jacket, which she accepts with a thankful nod. 

Marinette unfolds the map fully onto the table, and she starts drawing circles in different areas. “Ten circles for ten victims,” she explains. 

“I should check to make sure no one else has died since last night,” Alya says, bringing her portable back out and opening it up. 

Marinette nods. “And where, if you can.” 

Alya nods, and her brows draw together as she starts typing out a few searches. 

While she does that, Marinette moves some of the food containers aside, putting the map in the middle of the table. Everyone but Alya leans in to see it. 

“Notice the presence of trees around or near each of the places where the victims were found,” Marinette says. She points at two other spots on the map, uncircled. “If you look here, also, you’ll find there’s trees very near or right where Adrien and I and Chloé and Luka found the gnome.” 

“So do you think there’s some form of travel with the trees?” Adrien asks. “He was higher up in the one I saw him in.” 

“Maybe he climbs them and jumps between them?” Nino asks, doubtful.

Marinette pauses to think a moment. “I think you’re both right, in a way.” She frowns, looking down at her map. “We’ll have to get closer and find a way to get up the trees.” 

Félix grimaces. 

~*~

It doesn’t take long for the gang to get to the patch of woods after they finish eating. While eating, though, Alya helps Marinette mark the places of death of five other victims, all occurring tonight and also all occurring just under or very near trees. 

They decide to work behind the vendors across from the entrance where the woods butt up against the Faire. From here, they go some distance into the trees, only so they aren’t caught by the knights patrolling to make sure no funny business goes down in the Faire. (This was the same group of knights that the one who shouted at Chloé and Luka belonged to. Neither mentions the mortifying ordeal of having been in that situation and getting caught, not by a gnome seeking to kill them, but by a slightly disappointed adult figure.)

Some trees in, the gang starts knocking on trees to see if they’re hollow, following a theory of Marinette’s. After a bit of this, Marinette looks over to Félix. 

“Hey,” she calls out to him. 

Félix glances over with a dry look before looking away, not answering her. He turns to another tree.

“Hey,” she says, a bit more insistent. “Félix.”

The rest of the gang glances over, anticipatory. Some of them pause their knocking as Marinette does, having turned to look at Félix fully with her hands on her hips.

“What?” he asks dryly, knocking on another tree. 

“Remember when you made that list of skills asking if you could join us?” she asks. 

He grimaces, knowing where this is going. “What about it?” 

She smiles. “Was there anything in there about tree climbing?” 

“Anyone can climb a tree,” Félix says simply. 

“Not Alya, Chloé, or Adrien,” Marinette says. “I might not even be able to, in this outfit.” 

Félix glances over. “You could. Or, well, I could in that outfit.” 

“Shall we trade?” she asks, grinning.

His expression drops into a death glare. “I’ll climb your stupid trees in my own clothes,” he grouses. 

“Great,” she says, and she steps aside to point behind her. “Can you climb this one?”

He sighs, but he walks over. The rest of the gang follows, quiet and ready to watch. Félix grumbles unintelligibly under his breath. 

When he reaches the tree, he walks around it briefly, assessing the best way to climb up it. It doesn’t have many branches near the bottom to start climbing, but one close to it does. He nods to himself and walks over to that tree instead. 

“Hey,” Marinette calls out to him. “Wrong tree?” 

Félix shakes his head. “Let me do this my way.”

Marinette rolls her eyes, but she quiets as the rest of the gang already has. 

They watch as Félix climbs a tree nearby, getting about halfway up it before he makes his way down one branch to another branch outstretched from the initial tree Marinette had asked him to climb. From the still somewhat-sturdy middle of the first branch, Félix calculates how far the drop is if he misses.

It’s a broken arm or leg at least if he can’t roll into a ball and tumble back to his feet after trying to break his momentum in crashing through at least twenty branches. 

Félix sighs. He looks back towards the branch he needs and those just around it on the initial tree one last time. Then, he pushes off of the branch he’s on, extending his body in those last moments to reach out for a sturdy section of one of the branches of the initial tree. He swings on this point, hitting the trunk of the tree with his feet, and he quickly moves his hands along the branch towards the trunk, moving his feet at the same time to stand on other branches.

Once he’s situated and not at risk of falling, he pauses to take a breath. 

From below, Marinette calls up, “You know we could have lifted you on our shoulders to these branches, right?” 

“Oh, fuck you,” Félix calls back, breathing just the slightest bit unsteady. He closes his eyes, shaking his head. It’s almost laughable, he can admit. 

Still, when she laughs, it makes him roll his eyes and grimace.

He resumes climbing a moment later, the rest of the trek pretty easy. It’s about two-thirds up the way of the tall tree that he sees it, though: a catwalk. It stretches out in three directions, connecting to other trees, and it goes on for as much as he can see, even over top of the Faire.

He sighs again, and he shifts so he can pull his phone from his jeans. He navigates to his contacts, and he calls Marinette. 

“Hi,” she greets. “You get to the top?” 

“Nope,” he replies. “But I found your means of travel. I’ll see if I can find a ladder in this tree. You were thinking it was hollow, right?” 

“Yup.” 

“Okay,” he says, pinching his phone between his shoulder and his ear. He continues climbing, albeit slower. “Well, I’ll see if there’s an entrance to the tree and a ladder from the catwalk.” He pulls himself over one branch of the catwalk while heaving a sigh, and he gets to his feet. 

“Catwalk?” she asks. 

“Yeah,” he says, glancing around. “Probably miles of them, but I don’t know how he could have gotten these built on his own.”  

“He didn’t,” Alya says, voice growing louder as she approaches the phone. “The catwalks were made years ago at the start of the 2000s.” 

“For what ?” Marinette asks, incredulous. 

“The entertainment part of the Faire,” Alya says. “The Queen funded the Fool’s request that they revamp their home base attractions, which included trapeze artists and tightrope walkers over everyone. They had to stop doing it, though, after a couple of walkers died because they didn’t have a net beneath them. I guess the catwalks stayed, though, and the access points.” 

“Did you just know that?” Félix asks dryly. 

“Well, I forgot about it ‘til you mentioned catwalks,” she says, “but it was one of the cases I did a recap on for my blog.” 

Félix doesn’t say anything to that, just raises his brows, but he turns back to the trunk of the tree, pulling his phone from his ear to turn his flashlight on. There, a dark brown knob comes out from the bark, a rounded door around it. He reaches out to turn the knob and open the door, and it opens smoothly and without any squeaking. He nods, opening the door fully, and he peers inside and down into the dark to find a pale yellow wooden ladder extending down to the base. 

“Ladder confirmed,” Félix says to Marinette and the others through the phone. 

“Can you go down it?” Marinette asks. “Open the door for us or confirm if it’s sealed shut. I couldn’t find any knobs or anything when I went around the tree.” 

“Me neither,” he agrees. “I’ll head down it now.” He hangs up the phone but leaves the flashlight on before he takes it in between his teeth so the light shines down. From here, he slips into the trunk of the tree and starts heading down the ladder. 

It takes him about five minutes to get down the ladder and reach the bottom. Once there, he takes his phone from his mouth and he shines the light around the inside of the tree. From the inside, he can see the faint line of another rounded door with the knob hole filled in with expanding foam cut to fit and painted over. Hesitantly, he reaches out and pushes against the door. It doesn’t budge. 

“Hey!” he shouts through the door, knocking on it. “Hey! Try pushing this in!” 

From the other side, there’s a moment of silence before someone’s knocking at the door. 

“Right here?” Marinette calls through. 

“Yeah,” Félix calls back, stepping aside to the ladder. 

There’s a heavy shove at the door and it opens almost immediately,  Marinette tumbling through. Félix catches her just in time, sighing again. 

“No knobs down here, but the doors up the ladder have them. This must be how he gets in, but not how he gets out,” Félix says, helping Marinette to her feet. 

She nods and glances back through the door. “Alright, let’s head up the ladder, then,” she says. “We’ve got to figure out his routes and I need to see how he works in order to get a trap together.” 

The gang nods back, and Félix leads the way up the ladder to the catwalk, the rest of them following. At the end of the group, Luka closes the door of the tree. 

~*~

The gang explores the catwalk over the Faire for about an hour and a half before they head back down one of the ladders to the ground and head back into the winding down evening’s event. Marinette leads the gang back to the van, where she pulls out her trap idea. 

While the rest of the gang stands in a half-circle around the back of the van, Marinette sits on the van’s bumper. On one side of her sits a pile of metal gloves and on her other side sits a small shovel and a metal dome about the size of a mini bundt cake. 

“What are the gloves for?” Chloé asks, raising a brow. “We’re not going to be electrocuted by the other thing, right?”

Marinette rolls her eyes. “This thing,” she says, gesturing to the dome at her side, “won’t electrocute you. Plus, if it were to electrocute you and my goal was to keep you guys safe, the gloves would need to be rubber or something, not metal. The dome is a netted trap meant to capture someone. The gloves,” she says, gesturing to them, “are made to corral someone, but they’ll also protect us from getting the toxin like the other victims did at their wrists.” 

“Do we have enough for all seven of us?” Nino asks, shifting on his feet and frowning. 

Marinette nods. “I’ve been modifying all of my four person traps to accommodate seven, so there’s seven pairs of gloves, yeah.” She passes out a pair to everyone and she puts on her own pair, showing them the button on each glove. “At least two pairs of gloves need to have their buttons pushed to activate an electric current tracing between each glove to another. The current should go around the subject we’re trying to catch so that the barrier can extend to the ground or whatever blocks it, like a wall or a tree. The barrier then can shock the subject if they try to break free, and if they try to touch the gloves or take them off, it delivers a worse shock to them.” 

“But it doesn’t capture them,” Chloé says slowly, pulling her gloves on. Around her, the others do the same. The outsides of the gloves are metal, but the insides are lined with soft fabrics.

Marinette shakes her head, looking back at the dome. “No, but that’s where Spiderweb comes in. We dig a small hole in the ground and put the dome there, extending the plate that the subject will step on to activate it, and we corral the subject to step onto the plate using these gloves and while both moving to where the trap is laid and making the corral smaller.” 

Chloé frowns. “Sounds complicated.” 

Marinette shrugs, smiling a bit as she looks at Chloé. “It’ll make more sense when we set it up, but if nothing else, they’ll protect you from the gnome.” 

Chloé raises a brow. “They’d better, ‘cause they don’t match my costume.” 

Adrien laughs a little. “Come on, Chlo.” 

She rolls her eyes. 

Marinette shakes her head, turning back to the van, and she picks up Spiderweb and the small shovel. “We ready to go?” she asks everyone. 

The others nod, and soon they lock up the van and they head back into the Faire, moving past the vendors and such and into the woods behind with the trees leading up to the catwalk. 

It’s about 10:04 p.m. when Luka starts digging a hole for Spiderweb some distance into the woods. Marinette sits next to him, extending the plate for the trap and adjusting some controls hidden under a panel on the side. At 10:11, a hole the proper size has been dug. While Nino and Alya show Félix, Adrien, and Chloé how the gloves work, Marinette and Luka put Spiderweb in place and cover the plate in some excess dirt and grass, though they make sure the holes where lightweight nets come through are free of dirt. 

At 10:18 p.m., both parts of the trap and the gang are ready.

Marinette, Luka, and Félix head out into the Faire while Alya, Nino, Adrien, and Chloé keep hidden in bushes near the trap. Marinette, Luka, and Félix are meant as bait, as two of them are still dressed as pirates and the other understood best out of the newer recruits how the gloves worked. The plan is for them to be loudly pirate-ish and rambunctious in order to draw out the gnome, at which point they’ll run for the woods or corral it themselves to bring it to the trap. Alya, Nino, Adrien, and Chloé are meant to keep watch and be able to corral the gnome themselves if it they find it first trying to get to the catwalk from the trees.

In this manner everyone waits about forty minutes, quietly for those in the bushes and loudly for those in the Faire. 

Adrien and Chloé in particular are glad that their group finds the gnome first. 

Alya sends a quick signal to Marinette as the gnome comes into the part of the woods where they sit before she, Nino, Adrien, and Chloé ready themselves to exit the bushes and corral around the gnome. Alya sits in one bush with Chloé and Nino sits in another with Adrien and, as the gnome comes closer, completely unaware, Alya nods to Chloé and Nino nods to Adrien.

At once, they all exit the bushes and click the buttons on their gloves, trapping the gnome in the electric current corral. 

It turns on Alya and Chloé at the sound of the loud buzz through the air, eyes wide, and the half of the gang in the woods closes in on him, mindful of also moving closer to the half-buried Spiderweb . 

The gnome at first tries running at the light blue translucent barrier, but it gets shocked and startled back onto its butt. After getting to its feet, it runs at Alya, reaching for her gloves, only to be shocked back with a higher voltage. It lies on the floor a long moment before the gang, still closing in, moves the barrier closer. The gnome rolls to its feet, getting to the middle of the barrier, and it tries to jump, but Alya, Chloé, Nino, and Adrien all raise their hands higher, increasing the height of the barrier surrounding the gnome. 

The gnome falls to its knees in defeat, glaring at them all as they close in. 

It only shifts back when the barrier moves closer, and there’s a small metal click as it steps on Spiderweb . Lightweight silver chain nets burst up from the ground around the gnome, arcing towards the sky, before they shoot down with a snap , clinging to each other as they wrap around the gnome. 

With a cry, it flinches and stretches at the nets, trying to break free, but the nets only follow its movements, extending with it from the ground and clinging to its form. 

Once they’re certain Spiderweb has the gnome under control, Alya and Nino nod to each other and click off their gloves. Adrien and Chloé follow suit, and together they all sit in a circle around the gnome, making sure to keep a few feet out from it. They wait for Marinette, Luka, and Félix to come back to the woods with the sheriff in tow. 

~*~

At 11:27 p.m., the half of the gang around the gnome see Marinette, Luka, and Félix coming through the trees. Some distance behind them, the sheriff follows them. 

Marinette is grinning as she comes closer. “It worked, right?” 

Alya smiles back at her. “It did.” 

Marinette skips over, happier, and she leans close to the unhappy gnome curled up under her chain nets. “I wonder if you are who we think you are,” she says, expression falling slightly. She steps away as Luka, Félix, and the sheriff come closer. 

“Well,” the sheriff says, sighing and leaning back on his heels as he finally stops a few feet from the gnome. “I guess this is the end of the gnome marketing. We’ll have to throw out the evil gnome keychains, coffee cups, and posters, now.” 

The gang is tensely quiet. They don’t mention the fifteen murders occurring in just the past two nights. Instead, Marinette steps forward again and, with her gloves on, she pulls apart a small section of the net, muscles straining with the force she has to use. Carefully, she drops the net past the gnome’s head and she lets it clasp around its shoulders instead. She then takes off the mask of its face, hair, and the attached hat, revealing Richard the Fool. His eyes still glow blue, due to contacts, but it’s otherwise him. 

The sheriff’s mouth settles even lower in his frown. “Richard? Really.” 

Richard only raises a brow, silent. 

Marinette sits in front of Richard, criss cross applesauce. Her expression is neutral, though her voice is low and soft. “Why’d you do it?” she asks. 

Richard doesn’t meet her gaze with the same nervous gentleness he’d always had before. She knows she should have expected it after hearing Chloé and Luka’s recounting of Richard and Barthalomew’s private conversation, but still, it stings. 

“I wanted the Faire shut down,” he says evenly. 

The only sign that Marinette might be affected by this conversation is the slight tightening around her eyes. “So you killed fifteen people in two nights,” she says quietly. 

Richard shrugs. “I’ve done worse to get less.” 

Marinette sits up straighter. “Is that so?” she asks, voice flat. 

Richard only looks at her without remorse.

~*~

The gang leaves the Faire shortly after Richard is taken away, moods greatly dulled by having Richard confirmed as the killer. 

Marinette, as much as she’d like, isn’t as strong as she’d hoped about it. Richard had been someone the gang had liked for a long time—someone they’d looked forward to seeing every time they went to the Faire. 

Nino and Alya are understandably upset as well, but they make no move to hide it or pretend they aren’t. They’ve had so much disappointment in the past two months that this is just the icing on the cake. 

Luka, for his part, has shut down as usual, just walking alongside the others with a blank expression and not responding much to questions. Félix only barely convinced him to sit beside him in the front seat of the van, and it took nothing less than much nagging to get even that.

Adrien and Chloé are newer to the gang, but they’re also new to disappointments such as these. Adrien reels from the fact that he was so easily deceived, and by a murderer no less, and his hands are clenched into fists at his side. Chloé simply grits her teeth. Her hands shake from how she hadn’t been able to see all of this coming from the interactions in the court when they’d interrogated the Queen, Barthalomew, and the Fool himself, and how she had still given the Fool the benefit of the doubt after the interaction with Barthalomew. 

Félix, aside from grappling with how much Belle Perry’s death is affecting him through even the death of others and the chilly evening night, is the most adjusted to the turn of events. He’s already accepted that the Fool was a good actor in a great environment who only had to seem better than the people around him claiming no remorse for the deaths of the pirates. He’s already accepted that he should have been looking for more signs and that the Fool must have certainly showed some to have, quote, “done worse to have less,” which, in and of itself, is a concerning statement. Still, he doesn’t see the point in blaming himself or feeling guilty about not seeing it before. He’s only silently made an agreement with himself to do better in the future, but aside from this he’s not very torn up about it. He’s very glad, though, that no one from the gang got hurt. 

As they approach the van, they notice a note and a box hanging from the rearview mirror. Félix, Marinette, and Luka slowly approach the front of the van while the others crawl into the back. Félix and Luka get into the front while Marinette gingerly takes the box and the note off of the rearview mirror before stepping away from the van. 

“If it’s a bomb,” Félix says, “it’ll kill us anyways from that distance.” 

“Unless it’s a small bomb,” Marinette replies, turning on her phone flashlight.

Félix rolls his eyes. “And why would it be a small bomb? Just to kill the person sitting in the middle seat in the front?” 

Marinette shrugs. Turning the box and note over in her hand under the flashlight, she frowns. “It’s from Lady E,” she says.

She doesn't step any nearer to the van.

Notes:

okay 😏😏😏😏😏😏😏 what did yall think.... like first up can you TELLLLLL why this is one of my Fave chapterssss

i'll number my questions heehe 😏😏😏😏

1. THAT KISS.... HELLOOOOOOO HELLOOOOOOO WHAT DID YALL THIIIIINKKKKK LIKE HELLOOOOOO how quickly the gnome averted their eyes and CHLOE STILL KISSING LUKA LIKE GIRL CAN YOU SPELL UNNECESSARYYYYY . him kissing her BACKKKKKKK like ive got my head in my FRICKING HANDSSSS i need to be ADMITTEDDDD to a psych ward Immediately <3 the hands on her waist the hand on her cheek the parted lips the pulling closer and FUCK that FUCKING night and FUCK the author too WHYd they FUCKING do that (<- says the author. lol. sometimes i forget that im the one writing and im like why am i doing this to myself and then im in writing mode and im like 🥸 it has to be done. 🥸 for the plot. 🥸 and im like fuck YOUUUU (me) .

2. the post-kiss convo what did yall think lol her going Needless to say, i did Not fucking think of just Moving us out of sight. LIKE ME TOO GIRL I WOULDNT HAVE EITHER (<- i slip so easily into reader mode ahahahah sorry head in my Hands) and then him going oh well . Luckily i caught on. ha ha. ha ha. like BITCH AS IF . U SIMP. and then the whole it was a nice kiss well Obvi im a good friggin kisser 🙄 like girl stfu take the compliment . anyways. her going u better watch urself couffaine . and him going oh well i am if theres the threat of u jumping me (yeah i would be watching me too. watching to make sure i mess the fuck up so she Does jump me. wait who said that. lol)

3. also LUKA DEFENDING CHLOE? like who cheered. i cheered. was i the only one cheering. (<- i made it up. i wrote it. i may have been the only one cheering 😔) also the forearm shit made me insane can you tell im normal about pride and prejudice. can you tell.

4. did yall catch that protective félix line 👁️🫦👁️ (sorry WHO is biting their lip WHO !! not me stfu) anyways who do yall think he's feeling all protective over. chlo? luka? a mix? 😏😏😏😏

5. oR mAyBe It cAn TeLePorT smdh

6. "and, magically, it was enough for me" 🥰 i would have looked at the pictures. if alya asked ME. (WHO SAID THAT !!)

7. to this day, after watching the scooby doo mystery inc show like seventy thousand times, i still dont fucking know what the "begin at the end" clue fucking means. and maybe im just dumb as rocks. but like

8. félix "anyone can climb a tree" graham de vanily . i cant believe him. marinette said "i might not even be able to in this fit :(" and he was all "you could 😐 . or, well, *i* could . in that outfit." LIKE NOW I WANT TO SEE IT. WHY DIDNT YOU DO IT AUTHOR. well because the plot. thatd be too much crack cocaine for yall and esp me and i DID say cross dressing in the tags but like COME ON ! it would just. okay why didnt i. brb pov me making a list of crack chapters i gotta make once im finished w this honking ass fic.

9. the whole "yk we could have lifted you on our shoulders to these branches right?" "oh, fuck you" KILLS ME. had me dying in my bedroom at four fifty a.m.

10. okay but marinette making all of her traps seven people traps since adrien chlo and félix joined makes me cry every time i think abt it :')

11. "i've done worse to get less" okay. biyatch.

12. marinette i think u need more therapy (obvi)

anyways thems my notes thems my questions Were they just an excuse to leave my thoughts. Yes. Will i do this again if yall like it or i really vibe with a chapter. Also yes. anyways i am gonna have to jet to get ready for my dentist's appointment (LE SCARY!!!) but i'll answer comments either before i leave or on the way lol whenever i have time (so sorry to anyone who Does rely on those as like. main means of Wauw New All There Is To Lose Chapter news . u may find out a few hours later. but like. the dentist bro. u get it 🙏 ugh im so scared though i dont want them to be mean to me. or kill me. or gut me like a fish and give me a bazillion dollar bill despite my fucking insurance that should be paying for it all. anyways. check chapter 35's ending author's note for update schedule but i'll be posting One more chapter before another hiatus !! but despite ALL ODDS !! (basically . my health crapping out and my vision being all blurry beyond a few inches from my face yeah babey 😏😏 and like three migraine sources every day and also. my usual chronic pains and work and stuff. i am writing again. 😏😏😏😏 she's back yall....!!! but still hiatus bcos i am slow as fuck from those Horrors. but my glasses r coming in and i have dentist today sooooo hopefully. fix some issues lol. anyways. man i just remembered i am an ao3 author lol)

ANYWAYS. hope yall are having a BOMBtastic friday and staying safe and that u enjoyed 😏😏😏😏😏😏😏 today's chapter.... 😏😏😏😏😏 please let me know ur thoughts i am DYING to know ur thoughts lollll and ill reply to ur comments on prev chapter asap !! love yall buh byyyeee 😏😏

Chapter 38: chapter thirty-eight

Summary:

The gang goes over what Lady E left behind in the van.

Notes:

bit of a smaller chapter unfortunately before the start of the two-month hiatus, buuuuut there's a sorta-kinda-really-cool-and-exciting(-in-my-opinion-at-least-lol) surprise in the author's note at the end when you're done reading !! anyways, hope you enjoy today's chapter!!! 🥰🥰🥰

“It’s from Lady Eat Shit?” Nino asks from the back of the van, peering over the front seat and out at Marinette. “Bring it in here, I want to see it.” 

Marinette glances up, frowning, but she moves back towards the van, getting in once Nino has settled back in the captain’s seat in the back behind her. Marinette closes the van door behind her and she turns on the overhead lights and turns off her phone’s flashlight. 

She sets the box in her lap and she opens the note. 

“ Congratulations on Richard ,” she reads, raising a brow. “ He fooled the old gang, but I finally connected him to the old murders in the 2000s and the ones in the 1990s. Thank you. ” 

“That was fast,” Félix says quietly. He looks around at the cars around them, trying to see if Lady E might still be there. 

It’s a fruitless effort, given none of them know who she could be.

“Maybe that’s what he meant, then,” Alya says from the back, “with the having done worse for less.” 

“Or,” Chloé says, “he’s murdered other people for just the fun of it.” 

Adrien nods, sighing. “That, too.” 

“Still,” Nino says, “maybe we should ask Lady E to give us the evidence for the other murders and we can connect him to those, too.” 

“We’ll probably just have to do the work ourselves,” Alya says, frowning. “Though I think I could connect the dots between the 2000s murders and the old gang’s case in the 1990s.” 

Marinette nods. “Well, we’ll have to do that before he’s brought to court so he can be charged with those, too.” She sets the note aside and moves onto the box, opening it carefully. Inside is another note and another picture of the gang, this one with two figures circled and the same one as before cut out. Opening the note, she reads, “ Don’t give up, even in the face of the people around you showing their true colors. This has all happened before. ” 

“What does that mean?” Adrien asks frustratedly. “ This has all happened before— okay, and it’s still pissing us off. Why does everyone have to be awful?” 

Marinette frowns, picking up the photo again. “Well, I don’t know the answer to that, but she also included another photo of the old gang. The same person has been cut out, but now Gabi and Tomoe have been circled in red.” 

“Maybe they betrayed the rest of the old gang?” Chloé asks.

Félix frowns. “I wish she’d just give us more information.” 

“I can look in the old cases and see if there were any signs that Gabi and Tomoe betrayed the old gang,” Alya says, shrugging. “Maybe there will be something there.” 

Félix down at his hands on the steering wheel and he sighs. “We can keep the Tomoe thing to ourselves, though, right?” 

The gang nods. 

“Yeah,” Marinette says, putting the notes and the photo back in the small box. “Yeah, we can.”

Félix nods and starts the car, pushing through the sudden exhaustion weighing on his shoulders as he reverses out of the parking space. 

~*~

After he comes back down to earth that night in his own room, Luka goes back to the song he’s been writing. 

The back and forth has got to stop already

Queen, I know you aren’t what I said—

Can’t have you pushing me away 

And kissing me and pulling me in 

Only to push me away again

Oh, I had a good time singing songs 

With you and playing doctor in your bathroom, but man

I just want it to last without wondering when

You’ll switch it up and ignore me in the back of the truck bed again

 

And why’s it gotta be so hard?

Why’s it gotta be so cold to try and

Talk to you like we’re friends?

I don’t hate you and I’m sorry that I ever did

But I’m sorry, I’m sorry, can we let it go?

 

And I know you said it was ‘cause you were scared

But I’m tired of this frosty back and forth

I don’t hate you and I’m sorry that I ever did

But you aren’t what I said and 

Not everything has to be so cold

 

When you kissed me and I helped you and

When we made plans, well,

Was it just me or were you thinking the same

That we’re not so bad together, are we?

 

So please stop ignoring me 

In the back of the truck bed tonight

~*~

Alone in her room that night, Chloé holds a pillow to her chest as she scowls, blushing, into the darkness. 

I kissed him , she thinks. I should have just pushed him to the ground and pummeled him.

The thought of beating him up instead of kissing him, after all he’s done for her in keeping her secret safe, it makes her scowl soften and something akin to guilt squirm inside her stomach.

No, kissing him was better. 

Well— better —she scrunches her eyes shut, face feeling hot. Almost against her will, she thinks about how gentle the kiss was, how soft his touch was, how careful and slow it all felt. She curls around the pillow, stomach flipping, and she shakes her head quickly.

No, no—kissing him—she should have pushed him behind the court. 

Well, still —if—no,— kissing him also felt like a thanks , she thinks hesitantly. 

Still— kissing him?! What had she been thinking! 

Ugh— she has to get it together before the next morning. 

~*~

The next afternoon, Nino visits Chris in the jail during his open eighth period. 

“Hey, buddy,” Nino says, smiling when Chris sits across from him. “How’s it going?” 

Chris shrugs and pushes his glasses up his nose. “Okay, I guess. My allies have increased by one since you visited on Friday.”

Nino nods, leaning closer and propping his chin in one hand. “Any good food over the weekend?” 

Chris pauses to think a moment, glancing away before looking back at him. “We had a cookie on Saturday, and chocolate cake on Sunday.” 

Nino nods again. “Was it as good as neighbor Mandy’s?” 

Chris scrunches up his nose. “Her cake was fluffier and she had more frosting, so no.” 

Nino laughs a little. “As soon as you get those privileges the judge talked about, I’m asking her to bake you a cake.” 

Chris smiles a bit. “Thanks.” 

“Sorry about not coming by yesterday—we had a case that was really important. Want me to tell you about it and the weekend, though?” he asks. 

Chris nods. “Mom told me some, but—” 

Nino freezes. “Mom?” 

Chris stills, and his expression falls slightly. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.” He looks away.

Nino waits, completely still.

Chris worries his lower lip. “I… know she’s not been good to us, but…” 

“But…?” Nino asks gently. He has to work hard to look open-minded instead of angry. 

Chris looks back at him. “I love having you visit me, but sometimes I wish other people would visit, too.” 

“Who do you want to visit you?” Nino asks, shoulders drooping. “Whoever it is, I’ll ask them or bring them with me or—I’ll—whoever it is, bud, I’ll figure it out if that’s what you want.” 

Chris hesitates. “I… I don’t know, is the thing. I didn’t like many people on the other side anyways.” 

Nino nods. “Okay, well…” He hesitates, but he asks, “What did Mom tell you about the weekend?” 

Chris watches Nino carefully, unsure. “Really?” 

Nino takes a breath, but then he nods. “Really.”

Chris sits up slightly, eyes brightening the slightest bit behind his glasses. “Okay, well she told me you and the gang were working on another serial killer case.” 

“The gnome,” Nino says, nodding. “ Evil guy. When did Mom visit, again?”

Chris winces. “This morning.” 

Nino keeps his expression gentle and open for Chris’s sake. “So you know we caught him.” 

“Yeah,” Chris says, relaxing. “Yeah. Good job, by the way.” 

Nino smiles a bit. “Thanks, man.” 

“What trap did Marinette use? And how did the Fool do it?” 

Nino smiles a bit wider. “Well, he used this deadly jellyfish toxin. He’d grab the victim’s wrists and stick some of the toxin in their veins, and, from what Luka tells me, it multiplied from there, filling their veins and killing them once it reached their brain or heart, whichever was faster. Marinette had us all wear the barrier gloves—you know the ones?” 

Chris nods, so Nino continues. 

“Well, she had us wear those so we wouldn’t get stuck with the toxin, and we corralled the Fool til he stepped on the plate for Spiderweb. ” 

Chris raises his brows. “Wow. How did he get around the Faire so quickly? I heard he killed fifteen people in two nights.” 

Nino grins. “We found these old catwalks that he used in murders that we’re tying him to from  the 2000s, actually, in addition to murders he committed in the 1990s, and so far we’ve tied him to, oh, thirty-nine deaths? Alya’s still digging through the Missing Persons files and coordinating with the police to find another twelve people who went missing around the same time who fit his victim pool.” 

Chris’s eyes widen. “That’s wild.” He leans forward, putting his chin in his hands. “You’ll have to tell me how the court case goes and how many people you guys finally tie him to. Did Lady Elusive help?” 

Nino grimaces. “If by help you mean she just pointed us in a vague direction, then sure.” 

“I’m still curious to see who she is. Have you guys made any progress on that?” 

He shrugs. “Not much—just that she could be a bunch of people, but there’s really not enough information to definitively say who.” 

Chris frowns. “Well, be careful, please.” 

Nino smiles. “We always are.” 

“No,” Chris says, expression falling into a flat stare, “you rarely are.” 

Nino rolls his eyes. “Well, we try.” 

Chris raises a brow. “Literally only a third of the time do you try to be safe.” 

Nino grimaces. “Okay, okay, I get it.” 

Chris smiles a bit. “I just want you safe.” 

“So I can bring you cake,” Nino says, rolling his eyes but smiling. 

Chris shakes his head, turning serious. “No. You’re the only one who cares about me.” 

Nino’s expression immediately falls. Tears prick his eyes and he shakes his head. “No—I’m—I’m sorry, Chris.” He moves to put his face in his hands, glasses getting pushed to his forehead. 

“I’m sorry,” Chris says quickly, wincing. “I didn’t mean to make you upset.” 

Nino shakes his head in his hands. “No, no, I—I’m so sorry. You’re right, and I hate it. 

“I wish Mom and Pa—I wish—I wish they cared for more than an hour and an argument about how I have to come home unhurt for their sakes. Not yours, not mine, not anyone else’s, and for their sakes is always the dishes, the laundry, the groceries. They don’t even care about us, Chris, and it makes me sick. Mom just cares about me for what she can shove off at me, and Pa—Pa, he’s so stuck inside his books most the time, and when he’s not and he finds me, he acts all high and mighty. He says all I’m in is a mystery phase, he says my friends put me in danger, he says I should be home so I don’t get hurt or die, and he says he doesn’t—he doesn’t trust me, but he’s—he’s never there, Chris, and he doesn’t want anything to do with me when I’m even home.” Nino sniffles, heaves a shaking breath, and he sighs. “I just—I just can’t with them. They’re so two-faced. They claimed to care about you and to be so distraught over you, but they happily shoved your case and the parental rights onto me, which no one in the court system or the police department even thought was wrong, and they don’t visit or call you until yesterday, they don’t call me until just a few days ago, and they—they—I can’t.” He takes a long, ragged breath, but it breaks into a sob.

“I just—I can’t be the only one who cares,” he finally whispers. 

Chris frowns, shrinking in his seat. “I’m sorry for making you upset,” he mumbles. 

“It’s not your fault,” Nino says softly. “It’s not your fault, Chris.” He looks up, eyes red-rimmed, and he shakes his head. “None of this is your fault.” He hesitates, on the brink of telling his brother about the call with their mother in more detail, but he only says, “Things just… keep coming up with Mom and Pa, is all, and I… I’m really tired.” His expression firms up and he squares his shoulders, staring at his brother. “But none of it is your fault, Chris.” 

“Well, some of it is,” Chris says. His expression crumples. “I killed some people and lost the town a lot of money, put a lot of people in danger. I hurt you and the gang.” 

Nino shakes his head again. “The money doesn’t fucking matter , not when you do, Chris. It doesn’t matter, not when all those parents turned tail so quickly, not when the police blocked food from getting to those kids, not when we were the only ones who ended it all. Not when we ended it all despite everything working against us from the city to our own parents.” 

“And… the gang?” Chris asks, staring at the floor with his uneasy, crumpled expression. “What—what do they think?” 

“They care about you,” Nino says simply and softly. “They care about you because you’re my brother and they care about me.” 

Chris squirms in his seat. “I… I’m still sorry. I should have talked with you, should have done something else. I should have put you first like you’ve always put me first.” 

“It’s not your job to put me first,” Nino says with a small, gentle smile. 

Chris shakes his head hard. “No, no—I should have been thinking of you! I should have been smarter! Kinder—a better brother.” 

Nino’s shoulders and expression fall. “Chris…”

He squares his shoulders, lifting his head to look at Nino head on. “No. I’m going to be a better brother. Starting today.” 

Nino can’t help the watery smile he gives Chris. “Buddy, you don’t gotta do that.” 

“I want to be someone worthy of your visits and worthy of that cake, though,” Chris says, giving a small smile back. 

Nino laughs a bit. “I love you,” he says instead of fighting. He reaches out a hand to touch the clear plastic barrier between them. 

“I love you,” Chris replies, putting his hand out to meet Nino’s. The size difference between their hands has tears welling in Nino’s eyes again. 

“I’ll get you that cake,” he whispers, nodding.

Chris smiles wide, eyes rimmed pink.

~*~

Tuesday night, after the gang has done more cavern exploring beneath Crystal Cove and decided to call it an early night at 9:30 p.m., Alya comes home to find her sister Nora waiting up for her with her mama and her papi. They’re talking and laughing quietly when she comes in through the door, but they fall silent when they see her.

Nora is the first to turn on her, frowning slightly. “Alya,” she says sternly, evenly, quietly. Her voice sounds silver and sharp, just like the blade of a guillotine hanging above her head. 

“Nora,” Alya says, voice soft and quiet, like a young girl staring up at the blade glistening above her. 

Her parents turn on the couch to look over the back at her—mere spectators, people settled in to be entertained. “Alya,” they say. Their voices are deceptively inviting. “Come sit.”

The warmth and glow that had been present just moments before in Nora, her mama, and her papi’s conversation—it’s gone now. Anything pleasant has been blown out like a candle and its bitter remnants swirl like smoke around her. 

She has to work not to choke on it. 

Alya moves to the chair across from Nora, beside her mama. She doesn’t sit, instead only stands beside it. Her backpack hangs off one shoulder, heavy from the day’s work.

“What were you doing out so late?” Nora asks, crossing her arms. 

“It’s not that late,” Alya says quietly. She stares at Nora. 

“It’s a school night, right?” Nora asks.

Alya only nods, expression blank and dulled by this point. 

“What case were you working on?” Nora asks, tilting her head. 

Alya’s voice barely comes out. “A longer one.”

“Huh?” Nora’s brows are raised. 

Alya clears her throat. “A longer one,” she says, a bit louder. 

“Describe it to me,” Nora says, pursing her lips. 

“I’ve still got work to do, Nora,” she says, blinking slowly. “And I’ve got school tomorrow, remember?”

Nora rolls her eyes. “You should have thought about that earlier. What’s the case?”

Alya doesn’t let her frustration show, having had years of practice masking it from Nora. “An old group of mystery solvers,” she says. She doesn’t mention the connection to Adrien’s mother, the mysterious Gabi, or Chloé’s parents, or Tomoe Tsurugi. 

Nora raises her brows again, kicking back slightly in her chair. “Interesting. Nothing to do with school, I’m sure.” 

Alya only shakes her head imperceptibly. 

“Who’re the victims?” Nora asks. “I’m sure they’re so important for you to be digging into this case so late at night.” 

Alya wishes her parents weren’t here so that Nora would punch or kick her instead. “We think they’re the victims. At least some of them.” 

“Culprit?” 

“Others in the old group.” 

Nora smiles, though it isn’t anything pleasant. “How long have you been working on it?” 

Alya stills and her breathing stops. “Couple months,” she murmurs. 

Nora laughs. 

Alya’s breaths stutter back to normal and she takes a moment to tune out the sound before she resumes listening. 

“Let me guess,” Nora says. “Your little gang is doing everything they can ?” she asks, tone dropping into one of mocking. 

Alya knows where this is going. She watches the blade of the guillotine drop sharply down a few inches. Though it’s closer to her neck, now, she says, “We are.” 

Nora grins. “Yeah, how’d that work out when you were stuck in those caverns?” 

Alya swallows thickly. Her ears start to ring. Are the walls closing around her? No, no, it’s just a figment of my imagination. Still, she pulls her backpack closer and she flicks her gaze from left to right before it lands shakily on Nora again. “They found me,” she whispers.  

“After how long?” Nora whispers cruelly. 

Alya can’t count. Well—she can, she was , but— “I don’t know,” she tells Nora slowly.

She knows every second she was down there, though. Each second sits quietly, counted carefully out each morning as she dresses in the warmest clothes she has to escape the burning cold that sits in her chest, along the walls of her mind. Sometimes she thinks about carving them into her skin, just to make sure she’s counting right, but, no—no, she shouldn’t—no— she was worth being found— no— she was found— no— they still thought she was worth looking for— no, she tells herself, don’t carve it into permanency— they still found her—

“How long did they let Nino’s brat brother run amok, then?” Nora asks, raising her brows. 

Alya doesn’t respond. 

She wishes Nora would just kick her in the stomach and break a rib before driving her to the E.R. She wishes Nora would just punch her over and over along her arms and stomach and legs, color her black and purple, make her throw up in the toilet in the bathroom. She wishes Nora would just press on her windpipe until her vision goes black before slapping her awake. 

Instead, her parents are here. 

“Answer your sister, Alya,” her mama says. 

Alya swallows thickly. “I don’t know,” she says hollowly. “A few days, maybe.” 

“Five,” Nora says firmly. “It was five days.” 

“Okay,” Alya says, voice cracking. “Five, then.” 

Nora shakes her head, disappointed. “And Ella and Etta—do you think they would have done this if they had better relationships with you guys? Mama and Papi have the excuse of work, but you, Alya, you just play detective with your friends when you could be here fostering healthy relationships with your little sisters.” 

Alya knows these words well, having had the same voice repeating it to her in her head every day since Chris was arrested. 

Nora continues. “If you were a better sister, Alya, they wouldn’t have done those things. Instead, you prance around, doing dangerous things and putting your life in danger getting nowhere, all while you ignore your sisters and parents.” 

“I don’t ignore them,” Alya says quietly. 

“You being away so much is you ignoring us,” her mama cuts in, shaking her head sternly. 

“And what about you guys being away so much?” Alya asks weakly. 

Nora frowns. “ We have to be. You don’t.” 

“And what if I’ve been bettering my relationships with Ells and Etts?” she asks, tears welling up in her eyes. “What then? Will it ever be enough?” 

Her papi looks over at her tiredly. “Not if you die out there with your group of misfits.” 

Her lower lip trembles. “I won’t.” 

“You can’t control other people,” her mama says. 

“I can stop them,” Alya says, closing her eyes against the tears welled up there. “I can make sure they pay for the crimes they’ve committed.” 

“At what cost?” Nora asks, angry. “At the cost of your family? Your life?” 

Alya shakes her head, eyes still closed. Tears slip past her lids anyways. “I have to go,” she says, opening her eyes as she turns away. She quickly walks away from the living room, head down, towards her room. 

Behind her, Nora stands indignantly. “Alya!” she calls. “Come back here.” 

Alya only goes to her room, covering the sob that tries to break past her lips with one hand. She closes the door behind her once she reaches her room, and she pushes her desk against the door before curling up under it with her knees pulled up to her chest. 

Her phone is already up to her ear, Nino’s name across her screen, when her sister pounds at the door. 

“Hello?” Nino asks on the other end. Hearing the pounding on the door, his voice grows worried. “Alya?” 

She only sniffles, choking back a sob. Nora shouts through the door, telling Alya to open the door, but she shakes her head, curling her knees as close as they can be to her chest.

At Alya’s sob, Nino’s voice softens. “Oh, babe,” he says. “Want me to ask Amélie if you can stay the night here?”

Alya manages a broken whisper. “P-please.”

~*~

Wednesday afternoon, Marinette and Adrien are sat up in her room with snacks as they finish up the last of their homework for the day. Marinette loves having a case, but she also really loves having enough time to finish her homework and sew or work on a trap, as she plans to do while Adrien bedazzles a pair of jeans he brought over for the afternoon. 

It doesn’t take especially long to finish up their essays for English class the next day, having already done most of the work Sunday before the Faire and Monday afternoon before the gang went down into the caverns. Once they finish, they take a break to each eat a sandwich and discuss the essays before putting their school stuff away. After that, they move to her desk along one wall, Adrien taking one of the extra chairs in her room and pulling it up to it with his jeans and bedazzling kit. She pulls her sewing machine back from the wall and her latest sewing project from the backlog: sewing Félix’s hoodie from the Lila case back together again.

After working quietly a bit, Marinette logs in to her desktop and opens Spotify, pulling up a playlist she’s been working on. She presses play and returns to her sewing machine. 

A few songs in, Adrien looks over. “What playlist is this?” 

Marinette glances over, eyes widening slightly. “Oh—I’ve… I just made a playlist for both of our tastes, is all. It should have a bunch of stuff we both like in it, with some stuff I thought you might like, too.” 

Adrien raises his brows. “Really?”

She nods hesitantly. “Is that… okay?” 

“Yeah,” Adrien says, a huge smile breaking across his lips. “It’s more than okay—that’s so cool. Can you send it to me so I can listen to it more after today?” 

Marinette smiles. “I can make it so you can add to it, if you’d like.” 

Adrien nods happily, and she moves to the settings in the playlist, getting a collaboration link. She sends it to her phone, and then she sends it to him over text. 

“There you go,” she says, returning to her sewing with a smile. 

“Thanks,” Adrien says, clicking on it and adding it to his saves as well before he returns to bedazzling the back pockets of the jeans he brought.  

Marinette nods, and they continue quietly for a bit with the music. 

After some time, Adrien glances over. “Hey,” he says, setting one last gem down on one back pocket. “Could I ask you a… question? If it’s weird or you don’t want to answer it, you don’t have to, obviously.” 

Marinette glances over and shrugs, brows drawn together. “Sure—go ahead.” She returns to her sewing machine, feeding a lighter fabric beside the darker fabric of Félix’s hoodie under the presser foot. 

Adrien hesitates, worrying his lower lip. “Why do you not like your parents? I just… they seem nice, and they help us sometimes, so… I’m just… it’s a little confusing. Should I be mad at them for something…?” 

Marinette cracks a half-smile as she continues feeding the fabric through her machine. “You don’t have to be mad at anyone just because I am or someone else is, Adrien.” 

“I know,” he says, “but I trust your judgement. I’m just… curious, is all. No need to answer if it… makes you uncomfortable or hurts to talk about.” He starts slowly bedazzling the second back pocket. 

Marinette shakes her head. “It doesn’t, it just… it’s difficult to talk about sometimes.” 

Adrien nods, not saying anything. 

After a moment, she sighs. “Well, it’s a lot of little things and some big things, all piled up to make it difficult to be around them or have a good relationship with them. 

“To start,” she says, heaving another sigh, “they don’t see me as I am. Like—I’m almost an adult, right?” 

Adrien nods. 

Her shoulders droop. “They see me like I’m seven years old most of the time. They want me home all the time, they want me solving the mysteries I ‘solved’ as a kid, where I just found my papa’s wallet or my maman’s keys. Stupid things. Things that don’t really help anyone because the wallet and keys were never lost, they just hid them for me, and things that never do anything that matters , like saving lives or putting dangerous people in places where they’re not hurting anyone or themselves. 

“Not to mention, some of the time, my parents are the dangerous people, or let them roam about. Well, my papa, at least.” She sighs again, pulling the hoodie from the sewing machine and carefully flipping it right side out. “Papa’s always got shady figures around and he’s in debt from when he was younger, and sometimes I see needles around on the days when he’s about to get much worse. He and my maman fight a lot, especially at night, and sometimes she stays away at a friend’s place or her maman’s.” 

Adrien’s expression falls and he glances over. “I’m sorry.” 

Marinette shrugs. “It’s… not okay, I guess,” she says, laughing, “but I’ll hopefully be dealing with it better soon, and, if nothing else, I’ll be able to move out when we finish our senior year.” 

“You shouldn’t have to,” Adrien says softly, still looking at her.

She doesn’t look back as she finishes pulling the hoodie right side out. “None of us should be getting the cards we’ve been dealt, Adrien,” she says quietly, “but we are. Might as well make the best of it, yeah?” 

Adrien nods slowly. “Yeah, I guess.” 

Marinette glances over, smiling a bit. “So, what are you bedazzling today?” 

~*~

Thursday night, while Nino is out with Alya working on his music and her blog, Félix and Amélie sit curled up on one of the benches on the front porch under some blankets with some hot tea and fresh cookies. It’s a bit chilly, but the blankets have just been through the dryer and the tea warms them up from the inside as they watch the sun set. 

“So,” Amélie says, eating a warm snickerdoodle. “You haven’t talked about Kagami in a while.” 

Félix sighs, both hands wrapped around his mug of tea. He takes a long sip, gaze focused on the soft oranges of the sun slowly reaching the horizon. “Not much to talk about,” he murmurs. 

Amélie glances over, brows raised. “Why’s that? You usually have loads to talk about concerning her.” She smiles a bit. “Just a month or two ago, I remember you coming home every day with things to say about her, and if not every day, then every other day at the least.” 

He looks down at his tea. “I might have messed things up really badly,” he murmurs. 

“When?” she asks softly. “You had plans to drive her to school and to take her home, and everything else has been the same, right? When did things go wrong where they haven’t before?” 

Félix frowns and pulls one of the blankets closer around him. “Remember the Ladderton case we had?” 

At Amélie’s nod, he continues softly. 

“Well, I… I got really scared one of the times we were nearly run off the road. I didn’t know what to do, but she was the closest person I could think of who was stable and—and—and who’d make me forget about all the mystery stuff.” 

“You went to see her,” Amélie murmurs. 

Félix nods, and he quickly brings his mug back up to his lips, taking a long sip. “I did. I should have—I should have known, that with Adrien’s friends looking into Tomoe, that they’d… they’d ask Kagami about it.” 

“You were afraid,” Amélie reminds him softly. 

His brows come together sharply over his eyes. “I wasn’t thinking,” he corrects, voice rough with unshed tears. “I should have thought about it for more than a second, I should have thought at all , and I didn’t , and I—I—” he takes a hand from his mug and wipes hard at his eyes. “I should have known better,” he mutters. 

“Félix,” she says gently, “you can’t be expected to know better with everything, or think, even in the very worst of moments, about what might be best for everyone else.” 

He looks over at her, eyes filled with tears. “But I hurt her,” he whispers. “And she’s angry with me, and I think she hates me, and she won’t talk to me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” 

Amélie’s expression softens. “Have you tried apologizing?”

Félix shakes his head, looking back at his tea. “That was the first thing I did, and then the second thing, and the third, but she won’t—she doesn’t want to hear it. She hates me, Mum. Hate .”  

“She’s in a really hard space right now,” Amélie says gently. “That’s her mother, the only person she’s really ever had consistently besides her father.” 

“I know,” he says, voice wavering. "I know," he repeats, because he does know, having had his own mother be just the same for him.

Amélie leans her shoulder against his. “You’ve also not actually been friends for very long,” she adds, voice still gentle. “Hurts are more likely to sting in that stage and not get fixed.” 

“But I want to fix it,” he whispers, voice thick with tears.

She keeps quiet. 

“I’d do anything to fix it,” he says, even quieter. “Anything, Mum.”

“I know,” Amélie says. “I know, dear.” There’s a pause, and when she speaks again, her voice is a bit wet with tears, too. “But you can’t fix this one, I don’t think. It’s her choice, now.” 

Félix sets aside his tea, leaning against his mother, and he closes his eyes shut tight as his tears start to fall.

Notes:

NO ONE FREAK OUT !!!!! 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 two month hiatus and the end of that chapter....... i PROMISE !!! not the end of feligami and yall................... by chapter uhhhhh forty-five they Are better . heart hands. but also check my Surprise out if u want More . l o l.

anyways what did yall Thinnnnnnnk 🥰🥰🥰🥰 bit of a Lot happening right 🤡🤡🤡

lady eat shit's ominous This Has All Happened Before 🤡

luka's well, / was it just me or were you thinking the same / that we're not so bad together, are we? :sob:

chlo...................... uhm. 🤡

also who cheered for another nino and chris scene i did i cheered i cried i . ouiihgh. ouiighh. ouw. oww.. ooow..

the alya nora scene caught even me by surprise. "yeah how'd that work out when you were stuck in those caverns?" (her ears start to ring.) (are the walls closing around her?) (no, no, it's just a figment of my imagination.) "they found me," she whispers. "after how long?" nora whispers cruelly. alya can't count. well--she can, she was, but--"i don't know," she tells nora slowly. she knows every second she was down there, though.
SHE WAS WORTH BEING FOUND SHE WAS FOUND THEY STILL THOUGHT SHE WAS WORTH LOOKING FOR THEY STILL FOUND HER alya . alya im so sorry . im so sorry . i.m so s,orr,rry
* also. unintentional im only realizing this now 🤡 the way nora Doesn't tell alya How long she was in the caverns and lost to the world but she tells her how long chris was around and how long she didn't have ells and etts . like. the torture of that. im quite sick. why did i write that. (<- for the plot. the nora alya arc is ouchchhchchchhhh)

marinette and adrien talking about her parents.......... none of us should be getting the cards we've been dealt, adrien 🤡 i cried did you

okay felix amelie im sorry . "you were afraid," amelie reminds him softly. "i wasn't thinking," he corrects. "i should have known better." "felix, you can't be expected to know better with everything, or think, even in the very worst of moments, about what might be best for everyone else." he looks over at her, eyes filled with tears. "but i hurt her," he whispers. (i cried i cried i cried i cried i cried i cried i cried)

anyways 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 here's the surprise i talked about in the notes at the start of the chapter !! 🥰🥰🥰😅😅 admittedly, i'm not sure if anyone would be interested in anything like this, but i thought it would be at least cool for getting notified on chapter updates or if hiatuses are getting cut short (cough cough idea i've been turning over in my head for this two month one... 😅) and maybe chatting, so!! 😅 i don't know lol!! 😅 but !! if any of you have discord and/or just wanna check it out or feel comfortable, and No Pressure , then here's the link !! ( https://discord.gg/mqUeZpfrwq ) i made the server a fewwwww days ago lol when i first had the idea, so it's a bit set up, but i wasn't sure on some things, but i figured we could figure whatever else out!! 😅😅😅 anyways lol If yall want to chat and stuff, the option is there 😅😅🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

anyways Now i am off for my two month hiatus i shall be back on july Eighteenth 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

Chapter 39: chapter thirty-nine

Summary:

It is December and everyone yearns. (Don't we all? Sorry. It's July. No, but currently in the story it's December. My bad.)

Notes:

HEEHEE. im back. sorry this chapter is late in the day. read the chapter and then so sorry major life update 🤡 in the end notes that will explain why my chapters for a while may be kind of sporadic and probably not posted at the same time as usual ! but still posted hehee sooooo........ still winning still slaying yeah? anyways. enjoy. enjoy my beloved readers i missed you guys so bad.

Friday, a week into December, the gang visits Chris at the jail despite news of a blue monster raging through the town. Today, visiting with Chris has been deemed more important than a new case. 

“Hey, buddy,” Nino says, coming to sit at the table where Chris is. Behind him comes the gang, sitting at the table with them. “I brought the gang with me today—thought it might be a nice change of pace, yeah?” 

Chris looks at the gang with wide eyes. “You guys wanted to see me?” 

Alya is the one who looks at him with a small smile. “It wasn’t all your fault, what happened.” 

Chris frowns. “We can… agree to disagree, but… thank you for visiting me.” He pauses, and then looks over to Chloé, expression softening. “And… I’m sorry about Armand’s family. Nothing like that was supposed to happen.” 

Chloé doesn’t respond, but she nods imperceptibly before looking away and down at her lap. She, along with Adrien and Félix, are only here for Nino. They don’t know Chris like the others do, and so they don’t have the same sympathies and cares, but they understand why Nino visits and they’re here for him. 

“Heard you’ve made some allies?” Marinette asks Chris, folding her arms on the table. Her shoulders slump easily, relaxed with Chris, and her expression is open and curious. 

Chris nods. “I have about nine, now.” 

She smiles a bit. “That’s good.” 

“Tell me about your trap for Lila?” he asks. “Pendulum, I think is what Nino told me it was called?” 

Marinette smiles a bit more, and she tells him about Pendulum for a bit. 

While she does this, Alya reaches over and takes one of Nino’s hands in hers. Quietly, he asks about Nora being around more. 

Alya replies, just as quiet. “She says she’ll be staying with us a few weeks—probably through winter break, or at least through December.” 

Nino frowns. “I don’t like that she’s back with you again,” he murmurs, brows drawn together. 

“I know,” Alya says. She squeezes Nino’s hand gently. “Neither do I.”

Beside them, while Marinette tells Chris about Pendulum, Adrien and Chloé text back and forth. 

4:34 p.m.

Adrien

do you want to step out for a bit together?

for some air or something

Chloé

‘something’ being you asking me fifty times if i’m

okay, right?

i’m fine, adrien

Adrien

please don’t lie to me

i can tell when you’re not fine, chlo

Chloé

really?

funny.

i’m fine, adrien.

genuinely

Adrien

it was the ‘nothing like That was supposed

to happen’ right??

Chloé

adrien

im fine

now drop it

Adrien

look, if you want to ignore it til you blow

up, fine, but i know you’re upset and ik

that you feel better sometimes after 

talking about it, okay? i just

i don’t want you to feel like you have to

bottle it all up because we’re here w

chris. it’s not…

it doesn’t have to be like that

Chloé

okay

got it

you can drop it now

Adrien

really?

Chloé

what do you want me to say, adrien?

Adrien

i just want you to say something

you havent said anything since the funeral

anything since we found out, really

and you keep acting like everything is fine

when it’s not

i know it’s not

Chloé

do you want me to say that nothing is fine?

do you want me to tell you how he was like a 

father to me and he loved me and i loved him

and then he left to have his own family and 

i never stopped being angry about that and so

i never visited, even when i really should have

and even when he offered and he sent me 

invitations to birthday parties and sent me 

messages and flowers and new teddy bears every 

year? you want me to say how he was everything 

to me and then suddenly he wasnt, he was a hole

burning in my chest, a twisted reminder that 

anyone who treats me like a child and cares for me

 like one eventually leaves for something better 

than me because im never enough im never ever

 enough and i never measure up and i was angry i 

was so angry but i still fucking loved him like a 

kid and i never returned his messages or went 

to those fucking parties and i never told him 

happy birthday after he left and now hes dead 

hes DEAD, adrien, and now ill never get to 

return those messages or go to those parties or 

tell him happy birthday or tell him i saved every 

fucking teddy bear and ive still got every fucking 

flower rotting in a box stuffed in my closet. is that 

what you want me to say, adrien?

 because there. 

fine. 

i said it.

Chloé shuts her phone off after sending the message and she abruptly stands, muttering, “I have to go.” 

Adrien is the only one who doesn’t look up after her, reading over her message slowly.

Still, she walks off alone, leaving the jail and curling up in the van under some blankets and backpacks, hidden between the captain’s chairs and the front bench seat like that will help with the feeling of being too big and too much and somehow still too small and still not enough. She hides there until the gang comes out from the jail, and only then does she move to sit in one of the captain’s chairs with her knees pulled up to her chest and a blanket wrapped around her. 

Back in the jail, though, just after Chloé leaves, Luka, Félix, and Adrien join in the conversation about Lady E that Marinette and Chris switched to after talking about Pendulum. Soon after, Nino and Alya join in after having continued to talk about Nora staying with her family for the month. 

“Is there any more progress on figuring out who she is?” Chris asks. 

Marinette shakes her head, frowning. “No, not really.” 

“Well,” Félix says, “she said that thing about the old gang—connecting Richard to an old case they had?”

Chris raises his brows. “So maybe she’s old enough to remember them or their cases?” 

Alya shrugs, pursing her lips. “Possibly, but we can’t say with any certainty because anyone could have looked those cases up. I have them up on my blog, and have had them up for at least a year, but anyone can go through the Morgue, too.” 

Chris nods, frowning thoughtfully. “Well, she seems to know a great deal about this old gang to have known about Tomoe and Gabi with the betrayal thing.” 

Marinette nods, too. “Yeah, well, her knowledge won’t do us any good if she doesn’t share it with us.” 

“It’s hard enough trying to work around all the missing stuff in the Morgue and the school library without her dodging any questions and just confusing us,” Luka agrees, sighing.

Chris nods. “There are some older people here—I can ask around and see if they know anything, if that would help.” 

Alya raises her brows. “Really?” 

“Yeah,” Chris says, looking to Nino before he gives Alya a small smile. “I can do that and get back to you guys with anything I find.” 

“Just… be careful,” Félix says, looking carefully at Chris. 

“Please,” Nino begs, setting a hand on Chris’s shoulder. 

Chris cracks a smile. “Hypocrites.” 

~*~

The next week, despite the considerable uptick in monster attacks, the gang focuses on their finals. They’ve got a few days before the last week starts when Chloé and Luka finish up their Chemistry packet for the final in her suite of the hotel. Almost like clockwork, as they’ve managed all week under the guise of pushing each other to do better on the finals via insult and belittlement, they put their work away and head for her bathroom where Chloé has been keeping her bandages and aloe vera. 

When Chloé lifts up the back of her fuzzy sweater, Luka starts undoing the bandages on her lower back. They’ve since been able to stop needing to bandage across her shoulders, only still bandaging her lower back where the worst of the burn was located. 

Once he’s pulled off her bandages, he steps back towards the sink to wash his hands. “It’s looking nearly healed,” he says, gaze fixed in the basin of the sink. “I don’t think we need to bandage it anymore—keeping it under your clothes during the day or to open air at night should be fine if you’d like, now, and bandaging it more will probably just stunt the healing process.” He finishes washing his hands and he looks in the mirror back at her. 

Her hair, left down for the day, was pulled to the side facing the mirror before she raised her shirt. It covers her face, now, hiding her expression as she looks at the floor. 

“Chloé?” he asks hesitantly, drying his hands with the towel hung on the wall. “Did you hear me?” 

She nods slowly. “I heard you. So… no bandaging it tonight, then? Or tomorrow?” 

Luka shakes his head, turning back to her.

She keeps turned away. 

“No, but this’ll be good for winter,” he says, leaning against the counter and crossing his arms over his chest. He keeps his gaze on her, waiting for her to turn towards him. “With the colder weather, you’ll want extra layers, right? Now you can wear them freely without worrying if they’ll move the bandages around and stick to your wounds.”

Chloé doesn’t turn back to him, but she lets her sweater drop back down to her hips. “Okay, then.” There’s a pause, and her hands twitch at her side. 

She waits for him to ask to stay for a bit longer tonight anyways. Maybe for a movie. Maybe to talk.

He doesn’t.

“I suppose you should… leave now, right?” she asks. “If there’s no reason to stay.” 

He stares at her, brows drawing together. “I… guess.” 

He waits for her to take it back, to ask him not to leave. To ask him to stay to chat, to do more homework.

She doesn’t. 

“Do you… do you want me to leave now?” 

Chloé lifts her head, not staring at the floor anymore. Still, she doesn’t turn at all towards him. “What reason would you have to stay?” 

“Look, Chlo,” he says, leaning over. He still can’t see past her hair or over her shoulder—can’t see what she’s feeling. “Do you want me to leave?” 

He waits a beat.

“I don’t have to—I don’t have to have a reason to stay,” he finally says. “It can just be that you want to hang out or you don’t yet want me to leave.” 

Chloé’s shoulders rise a bit as she notes he never says he wants to hang out or that he doesn’t want to leave.

She decides to rip off the band-aid. “You can leave now,” she says quietly, still turned away. “You know the way, right?” 

It’s better this way, anyways, she tells herself. I know how to be mean. I know what to expect when I’m mean.

“I… do,” he says, leaning back away from her. After a moment’s hesitation, he stands up fully from where he leans against the counter, and he lets out a breath. 

He waits a beat for her to ask him not to leave. 

She doesn’t. 

His shoulders drop. “I know the way, yeah.” 

Chloé only nods. 

She lets him leave without another word.

~*~

The next day, when the others ask if Luka’s going home with Chloé again, Chloé tells them their studying method isn’t working as well as they’d thought. 

The gang laughs, saying obviously being mean to each other isn’t going to help anything. 

Luka stares at Chloé, waiting for her to say they might as well try one last time to see if it might work. 

She stares at him, waiting for him to say they could try a different method tonight anyways, just as a last ditch effort. 

Neither says anything.

Chloé ignores him the rest of the day, though the silence is somehow even icier than before. 

~*~

The Friday before the last week before winter break, Kagami sits curled up in her desk chair with a blanket and a cup of tea, staring at her saved folder of her and Félix’s old emails from just a couple of months before. 

Her hands were once warm from the tea, which had once been hot in her hands, but now both are cold as she stares blankly at her computer screen, thinking about that morning with him. It had been a single morning, but it had somehow made up for so many others, for the sleepless nights trying to get past him in the fortnight competition, for the barbs and insults and middle fingers that had all—somehow, along the way—grown softer and warmer at the edges. 

She thinks about receiving his text that morning— I’m on my way; fifteen minutes. Don’t stand out in the cold waiting. I’ll text when I’m there.  

She had waited outside anyways, something freshly bloomed around her heart keeping her warm in the chilly fall air. When he’d pulled up, she’d walked over, but he was already out and holding the passenger side door open for her before she came close. 

“That’s almost annoying,” she’d said. 

It hadn’t been. It had been sweet, endearing, and kind. 

After she’d gotten in the car, well, he’d handed her the danishes his mum had made for her. She hadn’t been sure about the danishes until she’d lifted the container closer, smelling the baked goods. 

He’d asked if she wanted anything like coffee. She had only asked for his opinion on coffee with them when he’d begun driving towards a café. 

She’d mentioned offhandedly the report they’d been working on, they’d talked about it briefly, and she’d asked if she could have a danish before the coffee. 

He had looked over at her, surprised. 

He’d said he’d brought them for her. 

She had taken a strawberry one, then, and she’d gotten so lost in thought eating it that she hadn’t realized they’d arrived at the café and he’d gone in as she finished it. 

She had wiped the crumbs from her mouth, had relaxed against the passenger seat as she watched him order coffee. 

He’d known her order without her telling it to him. He’d also known she wasn’t vegan or vegetarian, that she didn’t like going to The Bloody Stake anymore, that she only got to see her father when he would take her to restaurants and such. He’d known when her father had died. He’d known how many times she’d cried around him, and why—and he’d said—he’d said—

Her hands clench around her cup of tea. 

“I’ve cared for a long time, because I consider you to be someone important in my life.”

Her eyes now burn with tears. How silly she’d been to believe that. 

Still, she’d told him her only allergy and he’d apologized for not connecting the dots concerning it. He’d implied that the things she elected not to say because she deemed them unimportant were, to him, important enough to keep tabs on and to pay attention to. 

When they talked about The Bloody Stake, he had apologized again after hearing that Rung was, quote, “not the most willing to compromise or listen.”

She’d tried to keep it light—had made a jab about his record for apologies. 

He had ignored this, reaching out a hesitant hand to brush a bit of hair behind one of her ears. She’d looked at him, then, fully. He’d drawn his hand back, putting both in his lap, and he’d asked her if there was anything he could do. 

She had asked, “For what?” 

“For you,” he had said quietly.

Kagami’s stomach still flips at the memory of the words. She wishes she hadn’t looked away from him to her coffee. 

She’d told him, though, that his kindness was the only thing he could do. 

Funny, then, how terribly it had backfired for her just hours later. 

Still, he had unbuckled and given her what was probably the most awkward car hug known to mankind. The gentleness of it and his almost-apology had made up for the awkwardness, though. 

She had hugged him back. 

Most nights, these days, because her time is no longer filled with replying to his annoying but endearing emails and studying hard with the thought of winning against him on her mind, she thinks about this morning a couple months before. 

She thinks about that stupid, silly, terribly awkward hug, and she wishes, stupidly, sillily, and terribly, terribly much, that she could rewind time back to that moment and stay there forever. 

He had apologized for his past behavior and acknowledged that it wasn’t much better than anyone else’s around her. He’d said she deserved better. And, for the first time in a long time, even she partially believed she deserved better, too. 

That hug meant—and still means—the world to her. 

She wanted it—still wants it—to stay pristine and unmuddled by the future that had come and the past that now is, but, well. Kagami rarely ever gets what she wants. (A father who stayed, a friend, a mother who cares, a friend, a father who lived, a friend, a mother who glances her way, a friend, a friend, a friend, just anyone who would stay.) 

Kagami hates wanting.  

~*~

The following Tuesday, after the biggest of their finals have been finished and put aside, the gang goes to investigate one of the destruction sites where the monsters they’ve been hearing about for nearly two weeks attacked. 

They’ve split up, with Nino and Chloé searching one area, Félix, Luka, and Adrien searching another area, and Alya and Marinette searching a different area, when Tsurugi Construction arrives from their late lunch break. Nino and Chloé see them coming into the cordoned-off area from where they investigate at the entrance, and they text the others, letting them know they’re about to get some company. The others text back an affirmation and they settle in to wait as at least twenty people swell into the area spanning a half-block. As forklifts and cranes and bulldozers begin to move, the manager of the crew comes over to where Alya and Marinette are, sat atop another bit of machinery. While Alya scans the camera feeds from the day of destruction, sat criss-cross applesauce in her fuzzy pajama pants and an oversized hoodie with fuzzy boots, Marinette sits beside her in leggings, short-shorts, Converse, a long-sleeved tee, and a tank top with the sides cut out, watching as the manager comes closer. 

“What are you kids doing here?” the manager asks, looking up at them. In his hands are a clipboard, a pen, and a walkie talkie. 

Behind him, Nino and Chloé meet Félix, Luka, and Adrien, and the five of them approach the manager, Marinette, and Alya. 

Marinette shrugs. “Investigating,” she says simply. 

The manager frowns. “Investigating what?” 

Marinette smiles. “What do you think?” 

Nino, Chloé, Félix, Luka, and Adrien reach them, and they crowd under where Marinette and Alya sit, watching the manager as well. 

The manager hesitates, taking a step back. “I think you kids should leave. We’re working here, and you’re liable to get hurt.” 

Marinette hops down from where she sits atop the machinery, and she takes a few steps closer to the manager, smiling still. “How do you feel about the influx of destruction in the past two weeks, sir?” 

The manager takes another step back. He hesitates, but his shoulders finally droop as he says, “Well, it has me getting paid more.” 

“You work for Tsurugi Construction, right?” she asks. “A branch of Tsurugi Industries?”

The manager nods slowly. “We all do, yeah.” 

Behind him, the sheriff’s police cruiser pulls into the construction site. Sheriff Raincomprix steps out, grimacing, and he starts making his way over to the gang and the manager. 

Marinette, not seeing him, takes another step towards the manager. “Have you guys been working at all of the destruction sites?” 

The manager pulls his clipboard to his chest. “It’s public information.” 

“They have been,” Alya calls out from atop the machinery. Her gaze is still focused on her portable.  

The manager grimaces. “Now, you kids should leave. It’s dangerous for you here.” 

Marinette finally spots the sheriff behind the manager, but it’s too late. He comes up beside the manager, a hand on his gun already. 

“You kids aren’t needed here,” Sheriff Raincomprix says gruffly. “The police are already investigating.” 

Marinette keeps her pleasant smile stretched across her lips, but she turns her attention on the sheriff. “Oh, great. Got any theories?” 

The sheriff grimaces, hand shifting over his gun. “None we’d share with you meddlers.” 

“Do you have a plan to handle the sources for all this destruction?” she asks. 

The sheriff rolls his eyes. “We’ve already got plans on corralling them to a stadium to fight and destroy things before a live audience, so yes.” 

“Corralling them,” Marinette says slowly. “Not… stopping them.” 

“They’d be great for more tourism,” the sheriff says simply, hand shifting on his gun and brows drawing together. 

Marinette keeps her eyes on the sheriff’s hand at his gun. Her voice grows somber. “Do you know how many people they’ve hurt? How many they’ve killed?” 

The sheriff’s hand tightens at his gun. “You kids need to leave them alone.” 

Marinette moves her gaze up to meet the sheriff’s uneasy stare. “Fifteen people have been put in the hospital. Thirteen more were injured but refused or were denied medical treatment. Seven people have died.” 

The sheriff clenches his jaw. “Mayor’s orders, kid.” 

She smiles thinly, taking another step forward.

Quietly, behind her, Félix and Alya caution, “Marinette.”

She doesn’t move her gaze from the sheriff’s, even as his hand lifts his gun just slightly from its holster. “And it doesn’t bother you? That so many have been hurt and so many have died already?” 

“We’re outfitting a stadium with adequate safety measures,” the sheriff says quietly. 

Marinette tilts her head slightly. “But not stopping them.” 

“You kids need to leave the premises and leave this case to the police, where it belongs,” he says. His voice is still quiet. He lifts his gun a bit further from its holster.

Marinette lifts her chin, gaze softening. “Do you truly think it belongs to the police?”

The sheriff swallows thickly. His gaze shifts to the rest of the gang behind her before it lands back on her. “I do. Now remove yourselves from these premises.” 

Marinette smiles pleasantly. “You’re lucky I don’t believe you. We’ll solve this case and stop these creatures, but you can keep acting like you’re doing everything to stop us if you’d like.” 

The sheriff finally pulls his gun fully from its holster, and he points it at the ground between him and Marinette. His hands shake imperceptibly. 

Beside him, the manager of the construction team steps back, eyes wide. He quickly turns away, walking swiftly away and then speeding up to a jog, waving down the other workers in their machinery to stop and get away. 

“You kids need to leave,” the sheriff says. “Now.” 

Marinette is about to respond when there’s a loud roar at the entrance of the construction site. Everyone turns to find the source of the sound, but all they see are construction workers running towards them. A moment later, a large, red, bipedal creature erupts from behind the scattered machinery the construction workers escaped from. It gives another roar, its long, furry arms reaching for the sky, before it brings its arms crashing down on some of the machinery in its path. 

The sheriff, gang forgotten, turns his gun on the creature with one hand, reaching for his walkie talkie at his side with his other hand. “Red creature spotted at destruction site 9,” he says shakily. “Raincomprix calling for immediate backup.”

The gang all crowds behind Marinette warily, having gotten off of and away from the machinery they were at before. 

“What should we do?” Nino asks, voice wavering slightly. “The van is behind it on the street.” 

Marinette nods, resolve solidifying as she watches the creature. “We need to draw it away from the entrance so the construction workers, the sheriff, and we can escape.” There’s a beat of silence, and then she turns around, expression serious as she looks at the gang. “Adrien, Chloé, and Félix, I need you to go with Nino to the van. You’ll work around the left side of the construction site to get there while I draw the creature around to the other side. Alya and Luka, I need you to get the sheriff and the construction workers out of here while I draw the creature’s attention from you all. I’ll get the creature trapped temporarily before getting out of the construction site through the back, meeting you guys in the van on the other side of the block. Got it?”

While Alya, Nino, and Luka quickly nod, Adrien, Chloé, and Félix hesitate, but they, too, eventually agree. 

Not another moment passes before Nino is leading Adrien, Chloé, and Félix to one side of the construction site. As they move, Alya, Marinette, and Luka move towards the sheriff and construction workers. While Marinette swiftly disarms the sheriff, passing his gun to Luka, who’s already waving the construction workers after Nino, Adrien, Chloé, and Félix, Alya is grabbing the keys to a crane and tossing them to Marinette with a gesture towards the crane in question before joining Luka. 

While the rest of the gang rushes the others to safety, Marinette runs for the crane she now has the keys to, hopping into it easily and quickly assessing its workings. She only glances up at the creature tearing through the other machines towards the construction workers and the gang before she starts the crane up, swinging its empty long arm towards a pile of steel I-beams. Picking one up, she carefully raises it up in the air, rolling forward in the crane towards the creature at the same time. 

The creature doesn’t turn towards her from where it stands, roaring, over the running construction workers and Alya and Luka. Still, Marinette swings the I-beam towards the creature, aiming for its front. It turns to her just as the beam swings towards its chest, and it reaches out as if to catch it. Instead, the beam hits it square in the chest, sending it falling backwards on its rear end. 

Marinette rolls closer, dropping the beam on its lap, and she winces at its resounding roar. It looks at her, then, eyes wild and bright, and it lifts the I-beam off of itself. Marinette only has a split second to realize what its plan is before it’s sending the I-beam flying at her. 

She rolls out of the crane’s seat and tumbles to the ground just in time for the I-beam to go right through the windshield of the crane, piercing through it right where she’d been sitting a moment before. 

The creature gets to its feet with a growl, stalking towards her.

She gets to her feet, too, running for the I-beams behind her. She knows it isn’t a smart decision, but she knows it’s the furthest thing from the entrance where the gang, the construction workers, and the sheriff are trying to escape, so she runs faster. 

Once she reaches the pile of I-beams, she hops onto them and glances towards the large structure of poles outlining the structure of the building being reconstructed. Having a new idea, she stumbles down the side of the pile of I-beams, even as the creature reaches them, and she sprints for the large poled structure.

As the creature steps over the pile of I-beams, reaching for Marinette, she races inside the pole structure, just out of reach, and she starts climbing up it. The creature reaches through the poles for her, stretching, but Marinette swings out of the way, slipping around a pole to grab a different one, swinging from it with both hands. 

From this higher vantage point, she can see the construction site is now cleared of people, with police cruisers parked in a half-circle just outside of the entrance. Marinette relaxes slightly, only to have to try and swing out of the way of the creature’s other hand reaching for her. 

With both hands occupied and a drop onto concrete and metal awaiting her if she lets go, Marinette can’t do much in trying to escape the creature’s hand as it reaches for her. It’s only a matter of seconds before it crushes her in its grip. As it yanks her from the pole structure, stealing the breath from her lungs, she flops like a ragdoll in its fingers. 

It brings her up to its face, growling at her, before it stretches its arm back and throws her through the air and out of the construction site.

As soon as she’s free from its hand, she takes a gasping breath and folds her hands behind her head, folding her arms so one forearm is over her head, another is at the side of her skull, and her elbows poke out a bit from her face. She closes her eyes shut tight, not wanting to see death as it reaches out for her with cold hands, and she repeats one thought to herself as she flies, breathless and weightless, through the air. 

Bones and body loose like jelly. Bones and body loose like jelly. Bones and body loose like jelly.

Notes:

ohmgh the past two months (really the past three weeks 🤡) have really made me realize . i am an ao3 author :sobs: so anyways lol here is chapter thirty-nine i hope you enjoyed and i genuinely wish i could say ohmgh i can update on a lovely weekly schedule and forever until the end yayyayayayyayyy but alas 🤡 i have discovered i am in a terrible housing situation and must move out pronto across the united states 🤡 (short story because i have been being poisoned :smirk: (<- because otherwise i will sob) and my family treats me like shit and steals my money and i guess that's not actually okay) so anyways i need to get a second job and move out 🙄 so i may only be able to update every other week or two :sobs: BUT!!! you can know more on when i'll be able to update if you join the discord server for this fic! here's the link to join!! https://discord.gg/egFmSwDGvB (should never expire, but lmk in the comments if the link doesn't work or something and i'll send you a new one) anyways there's also other stuff in the server too lol like snippets for future chapters and we can discuss more in depth about chapters that have already been posted or ideas and things or just regular miraculous stuff or other fandom stuff or other random life stuff !! whatever yall might like hahah <3

anyways !! i hope you guys liked this chapter !! what did you think of the gang visiting chris? adrien and chloe's conversation? chloe's feelings about armand? luka and chloe kinda sorta breaking up a little :( (FOR NOW !) ? kagami's side of the feligami conflict? marinette being a MENACE in the minds of the sheriff and tsurugi construction crew?

i'll try and update again soon, hopefully on the first of august or the eighth of august, but it kind of depends on how my job search goes and also how incredibly evil and spectacular (/joking.) i become in coming down off of some of my medications 🤡 ! will also be attempting to writing during that time, between also writing mad cover letters and resumes and maintaining my first job while also trying to move out! this ao3 author business is so insane but like. we ball right. this is also going to help motivate me so it's a win win win. anyways i love you all please take care of yourselves and most importantly don't let anyone kick your ass--you kick THEIR ass, babyliege.

Chapter 40: chapter forty

Summary:

Marinette lands.

Notes:

i'm back !!!! and with great news 😌 i have a plane ticket for OUT OF MY FAMILY'S HOUSE and halfway across the country on september 27th !!!! and i'm hoping to update every two weeks 😏 also i did reread chapters forty through forty-nine and holy fuck yall 🤡 are u guys readyyyy !!!! because i am 🤡 and i cannot FRIGGING wait until i can get back onto a once-a-week posting schedule. anyways. still looking for a second job and i'm going to be looking for health insurance for my new state this weekend but i did have to skip posting on august first because i was crashing out and literally decided to buy a flight ticket and get my shit together to move out in less than two months 🤡 so. i waited a week on posting and also took the time to catch up on where i was in the fic 😌 anyways. HERE WE ARE!!! rollercoaster chapter hope yall ENJOY <3 <3 <3

It’s an incredible amount of luck that has Marinette landing in an open, full dumpster after hitting the side of a building. It’s an incredible amount of luck that also has her without broken bones and with her life still in her hands. 

Still, the breath has been knocked out of her and it takes her a long time to even be able to reach for her ringing phone in her pocket, and still a while longer to even say anything to the worried Alya on the other end. 

After twenty minutes, she manages, “Dump… dumpster.” 

She tells herself it’s shock. Fear, even. Fear so intense it has her speechless and still trying to shudder a full breath through her lungs. Later, she’ll say it was flying through the air and not knowing if she was going to die. 

It takes an hour for the gang to find her. 

When they finally do, she’s got her phone on her chest and an arm still wrapped around her head. Her legs are splayed out over full trash bags in the same positions they’ve been since she landed. Her eyes are wide open, staring up at the cold blue sky. 

She only utters seven words in the entire hour, including the one and a half utterance of the word dumpster. 

“A dumpster where?” Félix asks, having taken over driving when they saw the creature coming towards the entrance of the construction site after having thrown Marinette. 

It takes her a while to say, “Al… alley.”

When Félix, Nino, and Alya pester her for another fifteen minutes to look around, she glances as far as she can down to look across the street without moving her head. She says then, “Red and… white.” She rests her eyes for a few minutes before opening them to look back up at the sky.

It’s another while before she can be convinced enough to elaborate on ‘red and white’. She says then, “Sandwich.”

About ten more minutes pass before they find her, Félix pulling slowly into the alleyway. Before he even rolls to a stop, Alya, Nino, and Luka are already out of the car and rushing towards her. Chloé, Adrien, and Félix quickly follow. 

“Are you hurt?” Alya asks, looking over her worriedly. Her hands shake when she pulls aside Marinette’s arm around her head, but she leans over her. 

“Mmn,” Marinette says, flicking half-lidded eyes to the side and raising her brows. They take it as an annoyed no. 

“Nothing’s broken?” Nino asks, biting his lower lip. 

“Mmn,” Marinette says, rolling her eyes. They take this as a tired yes. 

“We should probably still go to the hospital,” Félix says slowly, crossing his arms. 

Marinette grimaces, closing her eyes. “‘M… fine.” 

“You can hardly speak,” Adrien says, brows drawn together and lips turned down in concern. 

“Can you move?” Chloé asks, looking over Luka’s shoulder. 

Marinette opens her eyes, glaring at the sky. “‘M fine.” 

“So that’s a no,” Chloé says flatly. 

“Let’s carry her into the van,” Luka says, frowning. “We can drive her to the hospital, then.” 

Marinette groans, but she moves one leg with great effort, nearly kicking Félix and Luka who stand closer to her legs as she throws that leg over the side of the dumpster. She rolls her body to the side, nearing the edge, and Alya, Nino, Luka, and Félix rush to grab her as she rolls over the lip of the dumpster, grumbling unintelligibly. 

“I’m fine,” she says, pulling her legs from Félix and Luka to drop them to the asphalt. She grumbles again, sighing, and she leans against the side of the dumpster, moving her arms from Alya and Nino’s grasp.

Everyone takes a step back, many of them frowning and upset. 

“Never do that again,” Adrien pleads, moving between Félix and Luka to crouch beside her. “And please let us take you to the hospital.” 

Marinette heaves a sigh, shaking her head and closing her eyes. “I’m fine, Adrien—just… got the wind knocked out of me. It’s a bit of a shock, getting thrown a whole block through the air.” 

“You’re lucky you didn’t die,” he says quietly, shifting to kneel beside her. He reaches out a hesitant hand to touch her shoulder. 

“I am,” she agrees, softening slightly. “But I’m alive and, miraculously, fine.”

Adrien’s expression falls. He pulls his hand away reflexively.

“Come on,” Luka tells Adrien, patting his back. “This is just how she is.” 

Adrien looks up at Luka, expression pained. “But…”

Luka tries to smile, shaking his head. “It’ll be easier to just go along with it, trust me.” 

Adrien glances back at Marinette, watching her shoulders droop, her eyes open, and her gaze focus on the ground in front of her. He looks up at Alya and Nino, who’ve turned to each other, frowning. Nino has his arm around Alya, who has her head down and is on her phone. Her brows are drawn tightly together, her eyes shining with unshed tears. With a small sigh, Adrien carefully stands. 

To Marinette, he says, “Let me help you up and to the van?” 

She doesn’t look over at him, but she nods and reaches a hand up to him. Rather than take it, he slips under her arm and wraps one of his own arms around her waist. He takes her hand now at his shoulder and he holds it as he carefully lifts her to standing. She takes a few hesitant steps with him, turning towards the van, and she waves off any other help. 

Together, everyone gets back into the van. Félix takes the driver’s seat again with Nino and Alya taking the rest of the front bench, and Chloé takes one of the captain’s chairs. Luka takes the bench next to Chloé, and Adrien and Marinette take the bench across from him, with Marinette leaning against Adrien with her knees pulled up to her chest. 

As Marinette’s gaze shifts and unfocuses, Félix starts the van. He wordlessly drives everyone to Amélie’s for an early dinner.

~*~

That same night, after the gang has had an early dinner of pork steaks, baked potatoes, broccoli, salad, and slices of peaches, and after the gang has spent a few hours in the caverns, Nino and Félix drive everyone home. Marinette goes to her treehouse for the night, Adrien to his house, Chloé to the hotel, Luka to his houseboat, and, finally, Alya gets driven back to her place. 

As she walks up the driveway, noting her parents’ missing car and the overwhelming presence of Nora’s truck, she starts to feel a little sick. Slinging her backpack over one shoulder, she glances over her shoulder and waves at Nino and Félix, who finally drive off when she gives them a half-smile. 

She makes the rest of the trek to the front door as slow as possible, taking a long look at the time and checking her blog along the way before she finally, finally reaches the porch. Once there, she takes a breath. 

Please let Ella and Etta be asleep, she thinks as she reaches for the knob, keys in hand. Please let Nora be asleep, she thinks, turning the key in the knob with a slightly trembling hand. Please let me get to my room quickly and with all of my things, she thinks, turning a different key in the deadbolt. Please, she finally thinks, turning the knob and opening the door slowly. 

~*~

The thing about Alya’s sister, Nora, is that she’s very insistent. If she thinks Alya should be home at a certain time, then Alya has to be home by that time. If she thinks Alya is doing nothing important, then, surely, whatever Alya is doing isn’t important. If she thinks Alya is at fault for something, then that is the truth and nothing can shake this belief, and Alya must make every effort to make up for this fault to everyone who could possibly be affected by it. 

The thing about Alya’s sister, Nora, is that she’s a very physical person. If she thinks Alya must be disciplined in some way or taught a lesson in some manner, it is Nora’s job to deal out such disciplines and lessons. 

The thing about Alya’s sister, Nora, is that she solves her problems with her hands and her feet. This can mean defeating someone in the ring using a breath-taking roundhouse kick or a powerful uppercut or, by extension, a rib-breaking elbow to the side or a strong chokehold using her thigh and calf around someone’s throat. 

The thing about Alya’s sister, Nora, is that she doesn’t discriminate. Well—not really. Not when it comes to Alya. She equates a fight in the ring to a fight with Alya to a fight in the bar and she uses nearly the same force with all three, only hindered in one by the fact that Alya can’t exactly go around everywhere covered in bruises and sporting broken bones. Still, that doesn’t mean Alya can escape a kick to her stomach that will never see the light of day, or the crushing grip on her arms that leave handprint bruises that she’ll cover with long sleeves, or the every-so-often short stints where she loses consciousness from a hand at her throat. It doesn’t mean she can escape being holed up in her closet, locked in from the inside and locked inside an indestructible, cushioned box of Marinette’s making to hide from Nora pounding at the door. It doesn’t mean she can escape the worried gazes of her younger sisters in the morning, or the concerned looks of Nino, Marinette, and Luka when she forgets to cover up a wince, limp, or a bruise. 

The thing about Alya’s sister, Nora, is that she hurts Alya. 

But the thing about Alya is that she has a group of friends always ready to help her out. 

~*~

911, she texts Nino. 

On my way, he quickly replies. 

~*~

When Nino drives past the house behind Alya’s, he doesn’t stop—he only slows. Alya is already jogging for the van by this point, and it only takes her a bit of effort to open the van’s passenger side door and slip in beside Nino and Félix, pulling two backpacks in with her. 

They’re back at Amélie’s in no more than fifteen minutes, Nino having sped up a bit when Alya mentioned Nora’s use of a knife tonight. 

When they get to Amélie’s, Nino helps a somewhat sleepier Alya from the van. Félix rushes past them to the front door of his house, leaving it open behind him, and he finds one of the first-aid kits and a few towels from the house, bringing it to meet Alya and Nino in the dining room, where Alya has sat in one of the chairs at the table. Nino crouches beside her. 

“Where’s the worst of it?” Félix says quietly, kneeling in front of Alya. 

She frowns at him, but she closes her eyes a long moment and replies. “My arm.” She lifts one arm up, revealing the dark, saturated fabric wrapped around it. “I wrapped it up as best I could, but…,” she trails off.

Félix nods, and he stands, lying out a few towels on the table. He opens the first-aid kit beside them. “Set your arm on the towels?” he asks quietly. 

She complies silently, and when Félix glances over, he sees Nino holding her other hand in both of his, lips pressed to her skin. He glances away and sets himself to focusing on her roughly bandaged arm on the table. Holding his breath, he turns her arm over, looking for the easiest way to pull the saturated fabric from her skin. 

After a moment’s hesitation, he pulls one end of the fabric from beneath another section, and, lifting her arm slightly, he carefully unwraps the makeshift bandage. As he does this, he frowns, wincing. 

It’s a long wound, a bit shallow in some places, but deeper in the middle and at the end closest to her elbow. It wraps around her arm, as if she’d turned mid-slice, and it wraps around the back of her forearm to her wrist, only nearly missing the worst places to be cut. 

“Is it bad?” Alya asks quietly, looking up at him. 

He doesn’t look back at her, setting her makeshift bandage to one side of the towels. It soaks a dark red patch into them in just a few moments. “It’s not as bad as it could be,” he says simply. He reaches for a clean towel and he passes it to Nino. To him, he says, “Could you get this wet with warm water? Not dripping, just damp.” 

Nino nods and he takes the towel and stands, completing the task quickly. When he comes back, Félix is threading a needle with a long black thread. 

Félix takes the towel from Nino with a nod of thanks, and, as Nino crouches back down beside Alya, he starts gently wiping away at the blood covering Alya’s forearm. 

“Did she cut you anywhere else?” Nino asks quietly after a few moments. 

Alya watches Félix’s hands wiping away at the blood on her skin, and she shakes her head. “No. She got scared at the blood dripping on the carpet.” 

“Was she not trying to cut you?” Nino asks incredulously. “If she pulled a knife on you, you’d think she’d expect there to be blood.” 

Alya closes her eyes against the tears welling there. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe she was just trying to scare me, but then she got really close with it, and—and—she… she pulled away when the blood was getting everywhere. That’s when I ran,” she says. “I ran to my room and I locked myself in there and I tried to bandage my arm after texting you.” 

Nino nods slowly. 

Félix finishes wiping her arm clean. Quietly, as he reaches for the needle and thread, he says, “Nino told me you often get bruises from her. Do you have any tonight? We can ice them while I stitch up your arm.” 

Alya glances to Nino, frowning slightly. “Just two ice packs is fine. There’s definitely a bruise over my stomach and a big one on my thigh, but the others aren’t too bad.” 

Abruptly, Nino stands and goes to the freezer, grabbing a few bags of peas. His hands shake as he follows Félix’s instructions on putting them into ziplock bags and then wrapping them with towels, but when he turns back to Alya with the ice packs, handing them to her carefully, his expression is carefully composed, except for his eyes. His eyes watch her cautiously, examining every wince and tender movement, every micro-adjustment to her expression. 

Félix starts stitching Alya’s wound together at the top of the wound, near the elbow. 

After a bit, Nino asks quietly, “What was it this time?” He’s since knelt back down beside her. 

Alya looks down at her lap, holding an ice pack to her stomach and one over her thigh. Her lower lip trembles slightly. “One of the usual things—being home late on a school night.” 

Félix grits his teeth, thinking, a bit of an excessive punishment for a low crime, huh? But he stays silent and steady as he sews her skin back together.

Nino nods slowly, and he looks to Félix. “Would Ams mind, you think, if Alya stayed with me tonight?” 

Félix shakes his head. “She wouldn’t mind in the least, I’m sure,” he replies softly. 

Nino looks back to Alya, expression gentle. “Why don’t you stay the night with me, then? Rather than going to Mari’s treehouse.” 

Alya hesitates, worrying her lower lip. She glances over to Félix. “Could you ask your mum? Just to be sure?” 

Félix looks up briefly, meeting her gaze. “Yeah,” he says. “She should be up, still, sewing a dress she’s been working on this past week. If you want, Nino,” he says, looking back at what he’s stitching, “you can go up and ask real quick.” 

Nino nods, squeezing Alya’s knee with one hand. “I’ll be back, babe,” he whispers, standing and kissing her on the temple. He then leaves the kitchen, heading upstairs to talk with Amélie. 

In the resulting silence, Alya looks at Félix carefully. 

He keeps focused on his work. 

“Thank you for helping me,” she says quietly. 

He turns her arm slowly, rotating it so he can better get to the part of the wound on the side of her forearm. “Of course,” he says simply. You’re… he thinks. Nino is my friend, now. You matter to him. Now you matter to me. He knows that’s not what she wants to hear, though. 

After a moment, she says, “He likes it here.”

It’s unspoken that she means Nino. 

“We like having him here,” Félix says carefully, not pausing as he sews her skin back together in slow, measured movements. 

“Both of you?” Alya asks, brows raised. In any other context, the question might sound disbelieving, but Félix hears the pointed is that really true? laced between her words.

He nods, a strange lightness in his chest telling him he’s being honest. “Both of us.” 

Alya purses her lips, though her calculating look is dimmed by her tiredness. “He says breakfast with you guys is the best, and, though he’s unused to it, he really enjoys how you guys eat together.” 

“My mother enjoys the extra conversation and I… I enjoy the company.” He pauses—hesitates. “We… talk a bit, when he’s here, and he’s quite funny. Talented, too.” 

Alya, against her better judgement, smiles a bit. “You really like him, don’t you?” 

Félix looks up, eyes wide. Cheeks a bit pink in embarrassment, he frowns. “I…” He knows what he wants to say— I don’t know what you’re talking about. If it were anyone else asking, he’d say that. But… things have been tense between them, and he doesn’t like it. 

Instead of saying what he’d like to, he tells her the truth. 

“I consider him a friend,” he says quietly, meeting her gaze still. 

Alya nods, smile fading. “I’m glad,” she says. “You both need more of those.” 

Félix returns to her wound silently, hands a bit unsteady. He takes a deep, measured breath before he resumes stitching her wound back together, movements carefully steady once more. 

“Thank you for being honest,” she says softly. 

He only nods, saved from saying anything more by Nino coming back into the kitchen with a smile. 

“She said that’s more than fine,” he tells Alya, kneeling again beside her.

She smiles at him a bit. “Thanks for asking her. I just didn’t want it to be not okay come morning and have anything be ruined.” 

Nino nods. “I get it. Well, as soon as you’re all bandaged up, you can get some rest. I’ve still got a little bit of a study guide to finish up, but I’ll get to bed in a little bit, too.” 

Alya nods, yawning. “Alright,” she manages, and she glances over to Félix. “How much longer, do you think? Not to rush you.” 

Félix shakes his head, turning her arm over again. “I’ve just got to sew up this last couple of inches and put a bandage over it, but it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.” 

“Alright,” she repeats. “Sounds good. Thank you, again.”

He shakes his head. “No need.” 

With that, he finishes stitching her up in a few minutes, bandaging her arm in some gauze in silence before taping her arm. 

“If you want to shower or anything today or tomorrow, just wrap a bag around your arm and tape it,” he says, finally standing and beginning to put the first-aid kit supplies back together. He nods to her. “You guys can head upstairs, though, whenever you’re ready. I’ll clean this stuff up.”

Nino nods, and he smiles at Alya, standing as well. He holds out his hands for her, and she takes one, accepting his help standing. 

While they head upstairs, Félix takes care of the bloody towels and her initial makeshift bandage, draining the blood from both as best he can in the kitchen sink. He rinses them with warm water, squeezing out any excess blood, and he does his best to not gag at the sight of the pink water swirling down the drain. The smell envelops him, filling his lungs and threatening to choke him, but he steels himself, tensing at the sink. 

Calm down, he tells himself. She’s alive. 

Still, when he sets aside the towels and her makeshift bandage, forcing himself to clean one side of the sink of the red and pink clinging to the metal basin, he shudders. His hands come away blotchy and pink with not just her blood, but the force of his cleaning. He scrubs with soap and water at the sink with just his hands for several minutes, even past the blood being cleaned. 

When he finally pulls away, it’s with heaving breaths and tears in his eyes. He quickly glances around to make sure he’s alone. His shoulders drop when he sees the empty kitchen around him, and he turns back to the sink, trying to hold in the breaths that threaten to come out as sobs. He drops the bandage and towels to the now-clean side of the sink, and he sniffs, blinking back his tears.

He leans back over the sink to clean the other side, scrubbing at it with just as much vigor as he did the first side, biting his lip hard against the sobs wracking through him. 

After a long while and some generous sprays of a scented disinfectant spray, soon the smell of blood is masked. His hands, after some more scrubbing with soap, soon become free of Alya’s blood, too, though they’re still splotchy and pink with the force of the past half hour at the sink. He soaps and washes his hands again and again and again, cleaning his nails vigorously as well until not even the slightest scent of blood clings to his skin. Once he’s finished, he wipes at his eyes and the tears that had fallen over his cheeks, his skin feeling raw at this point. 

He backs away from the sink after a moment and after taking the towels and bandages in hand. He moves quietly through the house to the laundry room, where he puts a load in with the damp towels and bandages. He pours in some soap and starts the load, looking at the timer. He resolves himself to staying up a few more hours to handle the load between the washer and the dryer and folding it, and he makes his way quietly upstairs to grab a few things. 

When he returns to the laundry room, it’s with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and the hood of a hoodie pulled over his head. He sits in one corner of the room with his headphones in and with a few textbooks, some study guides, a pen, a pencil, and a few highlighters in his lap. Before he starts studying, he turns up his music, increasing the volume until it drowns out the sound of the washer. 

Still, about twenty minutes into the washer’s load, he has to turn his music up further as the clothes bang against the sides of the washer. 

As he clenches a highlighter in his hand, he tells himself it’s not a dead body trapped in the machine.

~*~

The same day, after he’s been dropped off after the short exploration in the caverns, Luka spends about two hours home. He makes dinner for Juleka and his mother, serving the former in her room and checking on her leg, and serving the latter in the living room without more than a glance and a nod towards her. After packing the rest up for his mother to have for lunch the next day, he retreats to his room, where he tries to do some studying for the next day. 

He gets about a half hour of studying done before he admits he really can’t focus. 

9:47 p.m.

Luka

hey

are you still home?

read 9:47 p.m.                   

He waits ten minutes for a response before he stands, grabbing a hoodie and a parka. He pulls the hoodie on and slips his arms through the parka, pulling both hoods up, and he grabs his phone and a ring of keys. 

He only stops briefly by Juleka’s room, knocking at the door jamb and peeking through the open doorway. “I’m headed out—need anything before I go?” 

She raises her brows. “Where’re you headed? And for how long?” 

He shrugs. “Couple hours.” He hesitates. “And I’m going to Chloé’s.” 

Juleka’s lips twitch in amusement. “Chloé’s. No, I don’t need anything. I’m just going to wear this to bed and I’m good on water for a few hours. My dinner plate can wait til morning, though.”

He rolls his eyes and heads in to grab her plate. “Want your door closed?” 

“Yes, please,” she says lightly, watching him with a half-smile. “Have fun with Chloé. Tell her I said hi.” 

Luka rolls his eyes again, leaving her room with a nod goodbye. Before he shuts the door, he tosses back, “Love you, pipsqueak.” He closes the door on her response, smiling a bit, and he quickly heads upstairs to the living room, where he walks quickly past his mother and her half-lidded, glassy-eyed stare. He puts Juleka’s plate in the sink, rinsing and washing it quickly. As he dries the plate, he hears his mother shift on the couch behind him. He tenses, glancing in the reflection of the window over the sink back at her. 

No gun, he tells himself after looking her over carefully. He locked her old one up a long time ago, but still, the worry waits in his muscles like sediment. She has friends in low places, and she can always get another. 

“Where are you headed?” she asks, sat up now. A half-empty bottle of liquor is clutched in her hands. An empty one is already on the other end of the couch, uncapped and fragrant. 

His voice is quiet when he speaks. “Just out to help a friend in a bind.” This is his usual excuse, and it works most of the time. Chloé, of course, isn't in a bind—or, at least, she's not in one that she’d stoop to ask Luka for help on.

“I think you need fewer friends in binds,” she says slowly, taking a hearty sip from her bottle with one hand. 

He only shrugs, finishing with the plate. “I’ll be back in a bit, but don’t wait up,” he tells her, turning from the sink. He sets the plate back in the cupboard, moving quickly to the front door. 

“You’re always out so late,” his mother says, movements wavering as she turns her head to watch him leave. 

He doesn’t know what to say to that, hand hesitant on the door knob. He glances over at her. “Do you need anything before I go?”

Anarka gives him a lopsided smile and she lifts the bottle in her hands up in the air. “Another one of these from the fridge.” 

Luka’s hand clenches around the door knob, but he nods slowly. After a moment’s hesitation, he lets go of the knob and heads for the fridge. He grabs the bottle closest looking to the one she had in her hands, and he closes the fridge with his foot on his way back to her, passing her the bottle with a barely-masked grimace. 

“Anything else?” he asks. 

“Just come home safe,” she says, grabbing the bottle he hands her. She opens it greedily, taking a long swig of it despite the still half-full one in her lap. 

Luka only just restrains himself from muttering as if you really care. Instead, he walks resolutely to the door, leaving the houseboat as quickly as he can. 

~*~

When he gets to the hotel where Chloé lives, he quietly makes his way up to her room using the methods she told him to when they first started meeting to bandage her wounds: in through the servants’ entrance using a key she copied for him, in through the kitchen with a wave to the quiet Marciel, up through the servants’ elevator, and down the hall of the fourth floor suites to her suite after a long look down both ends of the hall.

He hesitates outside her door, knocking quietly. 

She opens the door almost immediately, glaring at him.

Suddenly, in seeing her, his shoulders drop. He relaxes, feeling like a weight has been lifted from his chest. He can't name the weight—not yet, at least, but he knows it's nice to see her.

Now it's just time for him to tell her what's been on his mind. Hi. Can you stop ignoring me? I like you. I want to be friends. I know you're scared, and we can take it slow, but… please, stop ignoring me?

“Why’re you here?” she hisses, yanking him out from the hall. She shuts the door behind them with a rough click, pinning him with her stare as soon as the small noise resounds. 

“I needed to see you,” he whispers. He’s unsure of why he’s whispering, but he doesn't repeat himself any louder. He looks at her earnestly, trying to convey the importance of his needing to see her. 

She settles her hands on her hips, frowning. “And you couldn’t wait til tomorrow?” 

He meets her stare head-on, expecting this. “You ignore me whenever we’re at school, with the gang, or anywhere in between.” 

“So come to my room?” she asks, raising a brow. 

Now, he hesitates. “I needed to see you,” he repeats weakly. 

“Why?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. For her, there's a part of her that feels good—that feels reassured—that he’s here. That he made the effort. 

Still, she wants to hear him explain why he did. 

“Because,” he says quietly, “I—”

It’s then that she clamps a hand over his mouth, eyes widening. She shakes her head sharply as footsteps come down the hall. (Footsteps she knows.)

She drags Luka over to her bed, gesturing quite violently for him to get under it and be quiet. 

He complies, though his brows are raised. He crawls under, holding his breath. 

There’s a knock at the door a moment later. He hears Chloé’s quiet, rushed footsteps, hears her open the door, and he pillows his face on his arms, closing his eyes, as she opens her door. 

“Mother,” she says quietly. 

His eyes fly open and his breath catches in his throat. He doesn't know the woman—has never met her—but he heard that Chloé’s song “Drop The Act” was about her. He doesn't have any positive feelings about Mrs. Bourgeois, to say the least.

“Caroline,” Audrey says, walking past her daughter and into the room.

Chloé doesn’t move to close the door behind her. She doesn't correct her, either, on her name.

“I heard you skipped the bus to that modeling camp yesterday,” Audrey says, nose turned up in the air as she shifts on her feet, turning towards her daughter.

Chloé’s voice is quiet. “I did.” 

Audrey frowns sharply. “This is the seventh trip to camp you’ve skipped this year, Coraline.” 

“I’m going to college,” Chloé says, speaking just as quietly as before. “I’m busy.”

Audrey huffs. “I don’t know why you're pursuing that. That—that business degree or whatever you’re wanting? It won’t do you any good.” 

Chloé stays silent.

Audrey rolls her eyes. “You’re good for one thing, darling: being silently pretty.” She strikes a small pose, raising a brow at Chloé. “You get it from me. You get your terrible business decisions from your father, and, well, that bitchy attitude…” She looks down her nose at Chloé. “I don’t know where that came from, but it's been there all your life.” 

Chloé doesn’t say anything.

Audrey huffs again. “I’ve told you time and time again to ditch that silly degree. I’m paying for modeling camps and whatever clothes you could want— use the camps and use the money on clothes, not that silly gang. You’re terrible with money, you have no good ideas, and you’re awful at anything business-related,” she says, turning her face away in disdain. “You’re better off following my lead and modeling at the agency I work with.” 

Chloé stays quiet. 

Audrey heaves a sigh at Chloé's silence. “Plus, you’re such a bitch to everyone, you couldn’t network for the life of you.” She looks at Chloé sharply, then, mouth downturned. “Your best bet is to work with me and keep your mouth shut. Just like you're doing now.” She smiles prettily. “It’s less disappointment, Carrie. Do the math—or, well, use a calculator, since you don’t have anything worth a damn in that pretty blonde head of yours.” 

With that, Audrey sashays out of Chloé’s room, through the doorway, and into the hall. “Tata, darling. I’m sending you to a different camp this Saturday. Be there, or we’ll have words.”

Luka waits silently under Chloé’s bed, even after the door to her room is quietly shut. He stays there, frowning, even as she walks closer and crawls onto the mattress and blankets above him. He stays there, in the dark, trying to sort out his thoughts. 

He doesn’t make it very far before Chloé is speaking to him softly. “So—now you’ve sort of met my mom.”

He hesitates, but he ultimately rolls out from under her bed, staring up at the ceiling once he’s out and on his back. “Yeah,” he answers, voice just as soft. 

“She’s a real hit at family dinners,” she says sarcastically. 

“Do you even have those?” Luka asks, folding his hands over his stomach.

Chloé rolls onto her side, pulling a pillow to her chest. She hugs it close. “No.” 

“Then I bet she’s great at parties,” he says softly.

Chloé nods. “Yeah.” 

Hesitantly, he sits up, glancing over the top of her blanketed mattress at her. “Still want to know why I needed to see you?” 

Her expression doesn’t change, but she blinks slowly at him. “Come up here,” she says quietly. 

He raises his brows slightly, but carefully, he stands, moving to lie on her bed, curled up on his side and facing her. They’re a foot and a half apart. 

She only looks at him—doesn't speak—her gaze moving carefully over his face.

He tucks an arm beneath his head. “Want me to tell you why I needed to see you?” he repeats quietly, watching her watch him.

One of her brows twitches, threatens to raise. “I’ll ignore you,” she says softly. She holds the pillow tighter to her chest.

He curls his free arm to his chest, tugs on the choker around his neck. “Why can’t you just… not ignore me, and we can clear things up?”

Chloé’s lips twitch a bit—in amusement, he thinks. He frowns. 

“Could you please not ignore me?” he asks. “I really—” 

Her eyes widen and she reaches out a hand to quickly press a finger over his lips. “Don’t,” she whispers. He readies himself to turn and get back under her bed, thinking she's heard someone out in the hall. Instead, she scoots closer and says, “Don’t explain.”

He sags a bit in defeat, shaking his head. He moves his hand at his neck to grasp hers at his face, and he pulls it away slightly, even as she moves closer, leaning up over him. He turns onto his back to meet her gaze without turning his neck to one side for too long, and he says, “I don’t get it—do you like not getting along? I’ve been trying to apologize and tell you I—”

He stops. She’s leaned even further over him now, face only an inch or so from his, and, around the pillow she brought near with her, she’s slipping a hand between the fabric of his hoodie and his neck, drawing her thumb along one side of his jaw, and she’s brought her other hand up to cup the opposite side of his face. Red blooms across his cheeks, and his gaze flicks down to her lips and back up to her eyes. 

“What’re you doing?” he breathes.

She leans closer, eyes still meeting his, as though they never wavered, and she whispers, “I’m going to ignore you, now.” 

“I like you,” he whispers back, cheeks burning. “Is that so bad?” 

She leans in, eyes closed, to brush her lips against his in a brief kiss. Her hands touching his face and neck are gentle and warm, and her lips are a bit chapped against his. Thinking this is her saying I like you, too, he kisses her back, his eyes closed, too. 

When she pulls away, eyes fluttering open, she whispers, “I’m ignoring you. I’m going to ignore you tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and for as long as I have to.” 

“You don’t have to, though,” he whispers back, upset. “I—I’m sorry about all the things I said before, about the way I treated you, about ignoring you, too, and I—I’m sorry, Chloé, I—”

She silences him with another kiss, relaxing over him. He kisses back, hesitantly, but he’s the one who pulls away this time. 

“I like you,” he whispers, opening his eyes to look at her earnestly. “Please, can we not do the ignoring each other thing again—”

She leans in, brushing her lips over his skin, and she murmurs, “I’m a bitch.” 

“No,” he says, eyes fluttering shut, “you’re not.” 

“You’ve said it yourself,” she replies, kissing the corner of his mouth. 

“Have I?” he asks, opening his eyes. He closes them again, brows furrowed. “It doesn't matter. I’m still sorry.” 

She shakes her head, moving to kiss the opposite corner of his mouth. “You aren’t the only one who knows I am one.” 

He huffs a sigh, shifting, and he frowns. “Your mom can fuck off, for all I care. She’s wrong. About everything.” 

Chloé smiles. “So I’m not pretty?” 

He opens his eyes, moving both of his arms to come around her. He cups her face in both hands. “No,” he says. “You’re beautiful.” 

There’s a pinkness to her cheeks, even in the half-dark. Still, she rolls her eyes. “I’m still ignoring you,” she says, looking back down at him softly. 

“Why?” he asks, moving his hands as he wraps his arms around her at the waist. “Why?” he repeats. 

She leans in to kiss him chastely again. “You don’t like me,” she whispers as she pulls away. 

“You don’t know that,” he says, gaze hurt. 

“I’m mean,” she says, and her gaze drops to his lips. She moves a hand to tug at his choker lightly. “I’m a mean dog,” she says lightly, amusement tinging her voice. 

“You’re not,” he manages, before she kisses him again. 

“I toy with you and ignore you as I please,” she drags out, drawing her lips in slow, chaste kisses down his jaw. 

“You don’t have to,” he says weakly. 

“But I do,” she breathes, at his ear. “It’s my nature.” 

“I don’t believe that,” he says quietly. 

“Oh,” she says sweetly, pulling away to look at him fully, “are you ignoring me, too?” 

He shakes his head, meeting her gaze. “You’re kind, and compassionate, as much as you try not to seem like it, as much as you try and hide it behind rudeness, you’re willing to put your life and everything on the line for people you hardly know, and you try to hide it as much as possible, but you care about all of us.” 

“I care about you?” she asks, something unreadable in her gaze. 

He hesitates. A second of doubt—just a seed, just a moment, just a breath, and—and—and—does she? He reaches out within himself for some certainty, some knowing, but all he finds is emptiness in his grasp. He feels something in him shudder to a stop and freeze up—his resolve.

Does she? he thinks. Sure, she’s kissed me, and protected me that one time, but—

Memories of how he’s spoken to her, how he’s acted—they swell up within his mind, choking him for words. 

Why would she like me?

She smiles lightly. “I think that answers my question,” she says, before moving off of him and to the side, escaping his loose hold and taking her pillow with her. 

When he finally looks over at her again, her gaze is locked on him. It looks hollow. 

“You can leave the same way you came,” she says quietly. 

He doesn’t fight her, not like he might have just an hour before. He leaves silently, shoulders already hiked up and gaze already hollow and distant. Why would she—why would she like me?

Notes:

sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. uhm. hey i'm sorry 😔 lukloe shippers don't shoot me the lukloe WILL be . will be. coming back. strong. soon..........................ish. i will give you crumbs trust though ! and like you know just think of all these pre-relationship kisses i gave yall. and like yeah they kind of just broke up without even getting together but that was also after like twenty kisses. and trust i will find a way to give yall more lukloe kisses before they make up. don't worry. im insane like that.

but in other news like who cried , (i did yeah)

marinette 🤡 damn. hello. please. 🤡

ohmgh also what did yall think of the alya felix relationship building.... 😔 like thanks felix for being honest about nino but also damn. ouch. can You start going to therapy sir. and alya............. can you just stay forever at amelie's . 🤡

also can we talk about nino and felix . like 😔 i for real need to see more of them (<- said when i'm the author like girl legitimately just Write it.) like. wough. helloooooo. [im crashing out about them]

BLECH anarka. BLECH. but hi jules. kitty section can we see you again. (<- said again when I Am The Author. i'll talk to the board of supervisors (i'm the board) and see what i can do yall. to get more kitty section in here.)

anyways let me know what yall THink !!!! i'll post chapter 41 on august 22nd, but feel free to join the all there is to lose discord server to chat and stuff whenever and be notified of any updates beforehand like if i post early or if i'm dropping snippets for yall !!! and also lol you and other readers and even i sometimes can chat more about the fic if you want ofc <3 but haha here's the link: https://discord.gg/egFmSwDGvB

also because life has been so hectic for me (due to moving like. halfway across the country in less than two months. and trying to get a second job and also changing health insurance and doing a bunch on top of all that), i may not be able to reply to comments as often as i'd like !!! which is literally the most sad and upsetting thing for me as an ao3 author because it's like WHAT 😭😭😭😭😭 so if you've noticed i haven't replied to your comments it is not because i have fallen off of the earth or that i despise it now, it is because i am so busy 😭😭😭

Chapter 41: chapter forty-one

Summary:

Kagami overhears some troubling information, Luka struggles with what happened in Chloé's bedroom, and there's another attack in Crystal Cove.

Notes:

im so sorry lukloé shippers but i PROMISE it gets better don't worry :( in the meantime have this Lovely Chapter 😇

When Kagami comes downstairs the last Wednesday before winter break, her steps are silent as usual. Her clothes, just a simple black skirt that goes to her knees and a white turtleneck with white boots, make no noise as she comes down the stairs.

When she hears her mother in the kitchen, she pauses on the last step, her backpack heavy on her shoulders. She hesitates, there, though she’s unsure why. 

It clicks as her mother speaks. 

“—no, the monsters are untraceable. Yes, of course I made sure that you weren’t attached to them. I’m not an idiot.” 

There’s a pause as someone speaks on the other end of the line. Kagami holds her breath.

Tomoe taps her shinai on the ground in boredom, sighing. She’s quick to speak. “I called to discuss sending them to a larger site. The payouts so far have been nice, but we have a taste for it, now. My team is antsy for a larger project.” 

As the person on the other end argues, Tomoe sighs again.

Kagami’s hands tighten at the straps of her backpack.  

“Fine—Rose Park and the community center block will do. Should I…” Tomoe’s voice fades as she moves from the kitchen out into the backyard.

Kagami hesitates only a moment before she’s quickly moving for the door, heading out to the front of the house to her car and getting inside. She sets her backpack in the seat beside her and she turns the ignition over with shaking hands. 

She reverses out of her driveway before heading for school with trembling breaths. She manages to drive a few blocks before she pulls into park alongside a near-empty street. 

She pulls her phone from her backpack with shaking hands. 

She navigates to her text messages through the tears welling up in her eyes, and she clicks on a message thread, clicking on the contact photo of Félix rolling his eyes at her. She scrolls down on the options that pop up, thumb hovering over the unblock contact option. 

Then she shakes her head sharply, gritting her teeth. She tosses her phone onto the passenger seat and she pulls her car out of park. “I don’t have enough evidence,” she whispers to herself. “And neither will they. I can’t make a fool of myself by acting rashly.”

~*~ 

Wednesday, Chloé ignores Luka. He does much the same, albeit unintentionally, still trying to sort out his feelings. After going home the night before, he stayed up for a long time, eyes fixed on the ceiling above him in his bed. 

He’d thought she liked him, genuinely, from not just her songs, but also from the kisses, her protecting him at the Faire, and, well, unexpectedly, her kissing him again (and again and again and—). 

All it took, though, was that single seed of doubt for him to wonder and to think about how he’d treated her before and how she’d been treating him all along outside of those few moments. Sure, those few moments were… something, but did they really mean she liked him? Maybe she just liked kissing him—she’d admitted herself that she found him pretty but pretty annoying, at least. 

He tells himself it’s just that: that she finds him attractive, but annoying and rude enough to ignore and to hate. Or—not hate. But not… like. 

The thought is hard to swallow, but he manages to choke it down in one go, letting it fester and rot where it sticks inside his chest.

Pretty enough to kiss, but annoying enough to not like. That's all I am.

~*~

Wednesday morning, there’s another attack. 

Wednesday afternoon has the gang visiting this site—one of the city’s community centers and Rose Park, this time—where Tsurugi Construction is already hard at work clearing the destruction. 

“Now,” Adrien says, tagging along just behind Marinette as she leads them into the closed-off area, “you’re not going to throw yourself into danger this time, right, Marinette? You’re not going to get yourself thrown through the air again?” 

Marinette rolls her eyes. 

Alya frowns, on her other side. 

“If it’s necessary, it’s necessary,” Marinette says simply, sighing. She’s been working on it in therapy, actually—the tendency and insistence on throwing herself into danger—and she’s made a few small steps so far. For example, only go into danger if it’s necessary. She’s just been working on what comes along with that: necessary versus unnecessary risks, how much danger is actually necessary to go through, and… accepting help afterwards. 

The last part has been quite hard, if she’s honest. Stacey explains that she should take baby steps to accept help when it’s offered. Marinette figured, the day before, that accepting Adrien’s help to the van was enough of a baby step. Today, if she’s hurt, she might accept two people helping her to the van.

Adrien frowns sharply. “Can’t we find a different solution, though? One that doesn’t have you getting hurt?” 

Marinette glances over, a brow raised. “If there were another option, getting hurt wouldn’t be necessary.” 

Adrien meets her gaze, shoulders drooping in defeat. 

The gang walks the rest of the way into the center of the construction site in a somewhat tense silence. When they finally reach the manager of the site, it’s after many other workers have stopped their machines and have begun to watch them in silence. 

“Hi,” Marinette says, slipping her hands into the pockets of her embroidered bell-bottom jeans. She smiles pleasantly at the manager, shoulders and posture relaxed.

The manager turns, lips already downturned and a sigh already escaping him. “You kids shouldn’t be here,” he says, clutching his clipboard in one hand. His walkie talkie is in his other hand, both items clenched in straining fingers. “You’d think after last time and getting thrown through the air, you’d stay away.” 

Marinette smiles wider. “You say that like we’d have any idea where the creatures would be and when. If I’m not mistaken,” she says, raising her brows, “the creatures have been attacking pretty randomly. This is the first community center and park they’ve attacked, but they’ve also destroyed various businesses, some roads, some residential areas, a stadium, a radio station… It’s pretty random, and no place has been attacked more than once, excepting where we were yesterday. How would we know it would show up at the same place twice? It hadn’t before.” 

The manager grumbles. “This is still an active construction site. It’s unsafe for anyone but myself, my team, and anyone we escort through the premises.” 

“So escort us,” Marinette says lightly. “Walk us through what happened and what you’re doing.” 

The manager grits his teeth. “I’m not explaining anything to you kids, nor will I escort you anywhere but off the premises. It’s unsafe.” 

Before Marinette can respond, there’s a low, metal groaning behind her. She turns, as do the rest of the gang, and her eyes widen. 

A large, blue creature—identical to the red one from just the day before, excepting, of course, its coloring—stretches up from behind a pile of concrete, dirt, and trees from the destruction just that morning. It reaches up for the sky and it roars, and Marinette reaches for Adrien and Alya, who are reaching for Nino and Chloé, who reach out for Félix and Luka. Just before she can start pulling everyone back, strong arms have lifted her into the air from behind and pulled her from the rest of the gang. 

Marinette only has to turn her head slightly to see that it’s the manager pulling her away. She slams her fists onto his arms, kicking her legs wildly, and she shouts, “Let me go!”

The manager only holds her tighter, stepping away from the gang. He calls out for them to follow him, but none of them turn to him, staring at the creature who has come closer to them with a roar. 

Marinette looks up, and everything in her turns ice cold. The creature has leapt over the pile of concrete and debris and it stalks close, reaching furry, blue hands towards the gang, who are just now looking back for her. Her, the one usually pushing past them and urging them to safety. Her, the one usually in danger after having gotten them to safety. Her—they’re looking at her, trapped in the arms of some strange man with misplaced protectiveness, and they’re in danger. 

I’m not the one who should be protected, she thinks desperately.

In one swift move, she’s slamming back against the manager, causing him to stumble with the sudden force back instead of force forward. With his unsteadiness on his feet now, Marinette rocks forward, aiming to plant her feet on the ground. 

In front of her, where the gang is, there’s a crash. She knows she can’t focus on it right now, so she squeezes her eyes shut tight and clenches her jaw briefly.

She lands to the dirt in a crouch with a growl at her lips, breathing deep, and she opens her eyes and slips a leg behind the manager’s left leg, so she’s a bit to the side and he can’t lift her back up without swinging her back around to stand in front of him. From here, she pulls her elbow out to her front, an open 135 degrees to his chest, and she slams her elbow to his sternum, again and again and again, even as there’s another crash and a shudder that shakes through the ground at her feet, until his arms finally loosen around her. 

She wastes no time slipping free and delivering a powerful side kick to his stomach, bowling him over, before she’s racing back towards the gang, who’ve scattered somewhat as the creature looms over them. 

“Run!” she shouts at everyone, finally reaching Alya and Nino. She yanks them back from the hand of the creature reaching for them, and she slips around them, pushing them in the direction of the manager. She slips beneath the blue creature’s hand, running for Félix and Luka, who are trapped beneath an overturned machine. 

They push at the machine, trying to lift it off of them, and Marinette notes with a drop of her stomach the blood soaking Félix’s side and back, where the windshield of the machine broke over him. Luka only has a few long cuts over his cheeks and arms, Marinette notices, but the machine seems to weigh heavy over them both. 

As Marinette reaches the two, a few workers who had been hiding nearby behind another machine rush over. Marinette scowls at them, knowing they could have helped sooner, but she doesn’t push them away as they help her lift the machine off of Félix and Luka, allowing them to escape. 

Still, she glares at the workers as she says, “Get them away from here and to safety.” 

She only watches for a second as the workers take Félix and Luka over to their previous hiding spot before she’s turning back to the blue creature. In its hands are Chloé and Adrien, squirming but not managing to escape the creature’s grasp. 

Marinette’s breath catches in her throat as she watches them for a half-second, but she’s soon running for the creature’s back legs, taking its thick fur in her hands. She hardly thinks about it before she’s climbing the creature in seconds, climbing up the back of its leg and then up its back, teeth gritted the entire time. As she climbs up to its neck, Adrien and Chloé finally see her. Adrien’s eyes widen, and Chloé shakes her head sharply, but Marinette swings a leg over its yoke, yanking her knife from beneath her pant leg. 

With a growl, she wraps an arm around the front of its neck, as far as she can reach, and she digs her blade roughly into it. 

“Marinette!” Adrien cries. “Someone could be in there!” 

Marinette growls, yanking the knife through what she can already tell is artificial flesh and metal. “I don’t care!” she shouts, pulling her knife out enough to cut through the flesh, the tip of it grating along the metal with a sharp, uncomfortable screech. She pulls her knife to her, slicing through the flesh of the creature, and then she’s taking the handle of her knife between her teeth as she yanks at the skin, looking for a seam in the metal. 

The creature roars, raising Chloé and Adrien in the air, and the force of the noise shudders through Marinette. Still, she hangs onto the fur and clenches her jaw.

When the creature throws Chloé to the ground, where she tumbles and rolls to a stop, Alya and Nino are already rushing to help her up and bring her to safety. Marinette only has enough time to climb up the creature’s neck to the base of its skull when the creature’s now-free hand flies at her, swatting at its neck. She climbs out of the way just in time, reaching for its ear, and she takes her knife back in one hand, digging the blade again and again into the flesh. 

The creature roars again, tipping its head back, and it drops Adrien to reach both hands around its head. It slams Marinette to its ear, but she digs in, cutting the flesh away to the wide metal divot beneath it. Using her knife, she wedges a panel of metal from the rest, even as the creature beats at its head and her back with heavy hands. Losing her footing, she grabs onto the now-bent metal panel, yanking on it to lift herself high enough to grab onto more fur. The metal panel distorts further under her weight, revealing many wires and blinking sensors curving beneath where the panel had been.

As the creature beats its hand against her once more, roaring, Marinette cuts through several wires with a grunt. The creature’s hand at her back clutches at her, squeezing, but she cuts through more, digging her knife into a box with several blinking sensors along it. 

She’s torn from the creature’s head with a final distorted cry and squeeze of its hand, and then everything goes still. A metal groaning fills the construction site and Marinette feels a sort of life leaving the air as the creature tips forward.

Marinette, still in its grasp, only has enough time to duck her head and wrap her only free arm around her head and neck before her and the creature are crashing to the ground.

~*~

When she opens her eyes, Marinette thinks something must be wrong.

All around her is darkness, and she feels terribly cramped. It’s difficult for her to breathe, and she can’t seem to move. 

It takes her ten slow minutes to realize she must be trapped beneath the creature, still crushed in its hand. 

It takes her twenty more minutes to realize it’s so difficult to breathe because she’s got at least four cracked ribs and a couple more bruised ones. Plus, she still has a heavy, metal creature rotting over her. To make matters worse, though, blood soaks through her shirt and into her pants from a wound in her side. Her knife has dug into her flesh, stuck there from the creature’s hand around her, but she distantly remembers it being important to not pull out a knife once you’ve been stabbed, so she doesn’t try and pull it out.

It takes a half an hour before the creature is lifted off of her, thanks to many of the construction workers’ machines, an extra crew of construction workers lifting the metal corpse from her with the gang, and many hands pulling at the death-grip around her. 

It’s only a few minutes of protest before Marinette is gingerly helped to her feet. She leans dizzily against Alya and Adrien with the inability to breathe. She doesn’t protest any more as the gang carefully loads her into the van and Nino drives them to the hospital.

~*~

Luckily, neither of the three broken ribs or the two cracked ribs punctured her lungs. Still, she’s been ordered to rest and she has bandages all over her chest and some stitches in her side where her knife landed and dug in in the fall. She had to get a blood transfusion, too—one bag of blood. To add to the list, she has a few more bruised ribs, and a long, dark bruise along the length of her spine, and another long bruise on each of the outside of her thighs.

In addition to Marinette, Félix, Luka, Chloé, and Alya are all treated. 

Alya’s stitches from Nora from the night before had been ripped open in the scuffle and the edges of her wound had been stressed and torn even further, so her arm gets sewn back together again and bandaged. Otherwise, she’s relatively unharmed.

Chloé only has a concussion, some bruises, and some jagged cuts from some stray glass she caught in her fall. She’s begrudgingly treated, though she insists multiple times that she’s fine and the others need more care. 

Luka has to get stitches on half of his face and one of his arms from some glass that fell and had even, in some places, been pushed in with the weight of the machine that had been over him and Félix. He has several bruises, and he’s walking with a small limp where he twisted his ankle under the machine.

Félix has it about as bad as Marinette, though in a slightly different manner. The doctors spend an hour and a half digging glass out of his side, sewing him up, and bandaging him. He gets a bag and a half of blood once they’ve finished, and he has several bruises as well.

It’s about 11 p.m. when the gang finally manages to get home after being treated and hitting a drive-thru for a late dinner. Marinette goes to her treehouse, Adrien to his house, Luka to the houseboat, Chloé to the hotel, and Alya stays with Nino and Félix again. 

There’s not much talk about the case for the night, not after seeing all the damage it did to their bodies. Still, Marinette silently resolves to pick things up in a few days after everyone’s finals are done.

~*~

The next afternoon, Félix and Kagami are working in the library for their second-to-last AP Biology class period. They’ve been working silently for about thirty minutes in the secluded corner behind bookcases when Kagami looks up from her laptop, brows drawn together and mouth set in a low frown. She settles her frustrated gaze on Félix. 

“Can you answer a question?” she asks quietly. 

He stills across the table from her, gaze going unfocused on the poster board on the table in front of him at her words. He lifts the blue marker he’d been writing with from the board, pursing his lips. 

“About the project?” he asks, keeping his voice even and devoid of emotion, just like he has for the past couple months. It makes it easier , he tells himself. In actuality, he just feels hollow for longer parts of the day. Now, not only does he feel hollow whenever he eats breakfast in the mornings, when he hears Belle Perry’s name, when he sees the volleyball team, when he enters the lunch room and his eyes inevitably stray towards the bustling table where he knows she used to sit (where she no longer sits, because she’s dead, because she’s just closed eyes, blood-matted hair, caved-in skull, purpling skin—)—no. No, now he’s hollow also anytime he sees Kagami, anytime they work on their homework or projects, anytime she’s brought up or mentioned, anytime he sees their emails or text thread, anytime they fence, anytime they—

“No,” Kagami finally says, interrupting his train of thought. “My question isn’t about the project.” 

Félix looks up, though his gaze is uncertain and wary. “Then… what is it about?” There’s a little bit of hope that blooms in his chest, and he does his best to stamp it down. The hope that blooms whenever she seems close to asking him something personal or something not school-related, whenever things seem close to being what they could have been before he impossibly ruined things—it’s been a smaller and smaller bloom each time. Today, it’s only a single flower of hope.

Kagami hesitates. “Your left side. Or, well—your right. You’ve been favoring it all day.”  

All hope disappears, carving him hollow. His first thought is that she’s noticed despite all his attempts to seem normal and fine, but then his mind is instantly drawn to the main and only suspect for who did this to him and who they think is behind his and the gangs’ injuries. Tomoe Tsurugi. 

Félix looks back down at the posterboard he’s paused working on. He hesitates, setting the tip of his marker back down to the board, and he finishes spelling out the word he’d stopped on. Stasis. He swallows thickly and he works hard to keep his hand steady. “It’s nothing.” 

Kagami sits up straighter, eyes narrowing. “Don’t lie to me.” Then, softer, more hesitantly, as her shoulders droop, she murmurs, “What happened?” 

He keeps his gaze locked on the poster board, continuing to write, though he does so slowly. “You don’t have to worry about it,” he says. “I’m fine.” 

She’s about to argue, leaning forward, when he suddenly caps his blue marker, looking up at her blankly. 

“I’m going to go, but I’ll finish the posterboard later tonight. I’ll finish my portion of the slides and print them out after, so don’t worry about the project.” 

“Wait—” she says, reaching out a hand to grab the posterboard and keep it on the table. 

Still, he stands and puts his bag carefully over the shoulder on his uninjured side, not looking at her. 

“Wait, please,” she says, looking up at him. She reaches for her bag with her free hand, pulling it up into her lap. “I just—”

Félix shakes his head, expression carefully blank. “You’ve got fencing, today. You can’t come with me.” He reaches for her hand on the poster board, telling himself, we suspect her mother, we suspect her mother, we suspect her mother. With fingers gentle, he lifts her hand from the poster board, moving it back from the board and onto the table. 

When he moves to let her hand go, she flips her hand around and grips his fingers tightly in hers. “Wait,” she says firmly. “I’m going with you.” She closes her laptop with her free hand and she slips it into her bag, zipping it closed with that same hand, and she swings her backpack over her shoulders. She grabs his forearm with that hand once it’s free to slip her other arm into her other backpack strap. 

“You have fencing,” he says quietly, staring at her hand on his forearm. He forces his hand not to touch her arm, but he reaches out to pull her hand from him. 

She only moves closer, tightening her grip on his arm, and she says lowly, “You’re not escaping the question, Félix.”

He frowns, brows drawn together, and he tries not to feel sick. He can’t tell her about the injury. She’d ask where he got it, what had happened, who had hurt him, and—and—and the only answer he could give her would be the one name she’s hated him for saying for two months, now. The one name that started all of this—all of the ignoring, the lack of text messages and emails, her blocking him, the absence of the middle fingers, the absence of him giving her rides to school—all of it caused by the same and only name to offer as to why he’s hurt. “You have fencing,” he repeats weakly.

She looks up at him, her hand moving down to wrap around his wrist. “You have fencing, too, today,” she says, eyes narrowed.

He avoids her gaze, trying hard to keep his expression blank, and he folds up the poster board, tucking it against his injured side. “I’m not going,” he whispers. 

“Why not?” she murmurs, hand tightening at his wrist. 

“I have a note,” he says, looking at the table, now, instead of at her. It’s easier, like this, to keep his gaze blank and his expression empty. 

“Let me see it,” she says, grip loosening only slightly. 

He clenches his jaw. On the note is a description of his injury. “It’s only for D’Argencourt.” 

“It’s not locked,” she says. She moves her other hand to his jaw, turning his head gently but firmly so that his only option is to look at her. Her expression and voice softens at the visible effort it’s taking him to manage even a mostly blank look, his gaze strained. “You were hurt, weren’t you?” 

He looks at her forehead, at the stray bangs escaping her usually carefully controlled look. “It doesn’t matter,” he manages. “You don’t have to worry about it.” 

In a fit of frustration, she moves both her hands to his cheeks, pulling him closer. Surprised, his torn gaze falls to meet her irritated one. “It does matter. Who hurt you?” 

Félix shuts his eyes tight, expression crumpling with her question. “Don’t worry about it, Kagami. I’m fine.” His voice, unsteady and wavering, gives him away. 

“You’re not,” she says softly. “You’re not. Stop lying to me.” 

He shakes his head, brows drawing together. “I have to,” he whispers. 

“You don’t,” she says weakly, eyes scanning his face. “You can tell me, Félix, I promise.”  

“I can’t,” he says, finally reaching up a hand to pull one of her hands from his face. “Please,” he whispers, shaking his head. 

His hold is, as always, gentle when he pulls her hand from his face. She notes with a frown that he turns away before opening his eyes, letting her hands go once she stops resisting him. 

“I wish you looked at me like before,” she whispers, letting him go. Her hands fall limply to her sides. “You… you used to be honest with me. Your eyes gave you away.” 

He stops, turned halfway from her. “You hate me,” he says simply. 

She doesn’t know what to say to that, expression pained. I miss you, she wants to say. I miss how things were. I don’t like seeing you hurt. 

Still, she is angry at him. She has been. She hated him, too, for a while, she tells herself, and, while the feeling has softened and weakened over time, she can’t explain why. 

She doesn’t tell him that she’s angry but she misses him. She doesn’t tell him that she doesn’t like seeing him hurt and that she misses how things used to be. She doesn’t say anything.

He turns away fully.

She lets him go.

~*~

Hours later, Kagami is still turning over the conversation from that afternoon. 

She’s curled up in her bed with her blankets pulled tight around her as if they can ward off the cold feeling emanating from her chest. Her phone is in her hands, and her thumb hovers over a number on Alya’s blog. 

To reach Mystery Incorporated about any clues, inquiries, or cases, please text “Mystery Inc.” to (949) 497-2096.

Worrying her lower lip, she tells herself this is an inquiry. She doesn’t have to tell them about her mother and what she overheard the morning before, even if she knows the attack later that day happened at the place her mother said it would. She’s only checking to see if that’s how Félix got hurt. That’s all, she tells herself. 

She clicks and presses on the number, copying it. She navigates to her messages, holding her breath, and she opens a new conversation. 

9:21 p.m.

Kagami

Mystery Inc.

It takes several minutes to get a response, Kagami finds. She’d messaged what Alya’s blog told her to before quickly navigating to a novel she’s been reading online. She half-reads it, leaving her initial place still bookmarked, until a response finally comes in. She quickly exits the app with her novel and she opens her messages again.

9:29 p.m.

(949) 497-2096

Hi, this is the number for Mystery Inc. 

How can I help you?

Kagami worries her lower lip. 

Kagami

I have an inquiry. May I know who I am

speaking to, if that’s okay?

It’s Kagami Tsurugi from school.

(949) 497-2096

oh hi kagami

lol yeah this is marinette

Kagami

How quickly your attitude changes.

Marinette

lol

what can i help you with though?

you said you had an inquiry?

Kagami

I do.

Can you tell me what’s wrong with Félix?

Why he was favoring his left side all day, I

mean.

Marinette

oh

uhhh he told me not to tell you about this case

Kagami

And why’s that?

Marinette

lol he told me not to tell you that either

Kagami

Is there anything you can tell me?

Marinette

uhhhh not really lol

’cept we’re gonna get right on solving this case

as soon as finals are over, at least

Kagami

The case with the monsters, right? The red and blue 

ones.

Marinette

yeah

that one

Kagami

Do you often listen to Félix?

Marinette

not usually lol

Kagami

So why insist on listening now?

Marinette

well

he only told us not to tell you about the case

because he really cares about you

Kagami

Did he tell you he really cares about me?

Marinette

no.

he tries not to talk about you

it makes him upset

but i can tell he cares a lot about you bcos he

asked us not to talk about this case w you

Kagami

Why don’t you tell me about this case, Marinette?

Marinette

i don’t want to hurt him

Kagami

He doesn’t have to know you and I talked about it.

Marinette

he’ll know when things between you two get 

worse after you know about the case

Kagami

Then things between us won’t get worse.

Marinette

you can’t say that

you don’t know what he asked us to keep from

you

Kagami

Please tell me, Marinette.

I need to know why he’s hurt.

Marinette

why?

She decides to be honest with Marinette. That’ll get her the answers she wants the fastest, at least.

Kagami

Because, try as I might, he was my friend. And

I miss him. I still care about him. I want to know

why he’s hurt and who hurt him.

Marinette

mmmmmmm

fine. if he asks, u tortured me for this info.

the creatures have been terrorizing the city

for a couple weeks, now. we’ve been trying

to investigate btwn studying for finals 

(🤡 fucken hell btw. félix coming thru for

us hardcore 🙏😭) and we’ve only made 

a little bit of progress, but yesterday we went 

out to check the community center n park

that got hit. 

a lot of us got hurt.

félix included

Kagami

How bad were you all hurt?

Marinette

i’ve got three broken ribs, two cracked ribs, 

and like thirteen stitches

luka has twenty-one stitches, alya thirty-

four stitches, chloé has a concussion and 

three stitches, and félix has fifty-two stitches.

otherwise, it’s just scrapes and bruises

oh, and luka’s twisted ankle

Kagami

I see.

And who hurt you all? Do you have a 

suspect?

Marinette

about that

lol

Kagami

This is what he didn’t want me to know, isn’t it?

Marinette

it is

Kagami

Then tell me. I want to know who hurt him.

Who hurt you all.

Marinette

our only suspect is your mom

Kagami looks up from her phone, staring across her room with a flat and blank expression. She expected this, but, still, it takes her a long moment to look back down at her messages to read what else Marinette has said.

Marinette

granted, we havent had a whole lot of time

to really investigate or explore many

options, but that's who our first and only 

suspect has been after investigating two

sites of destruction and the camera feeds

and who benefits from all this

Kagami

I see.

Marinette

im sorry

please dont be mad at félix

be mad at me or the rest of us

but not him

not for this, at least

please

Kagami

I’m only mad at him for lying to me about

it today.

Marinette

he just doesnt want to hurt you again

im sure of it

Kagami

I’ll handle it, Marinette.

Don't worry.

Marinette

you handling it is what im worried 

about 💀

                 read 10:02 p.m.

Notes:

so uhm L O L........... first of all did anyone guess tomoe.............. 😇

second of all how are you guys feeling about feligami right now 🤡 like. i mean. just to recap. they were pretty banger at the start. like danishes and coffee and that hug but then the whole bloody stake thing happened where felix was scared and kagami was hurt and the gang was like hmmmm so is ur Mom killing ppl rn 🤡 and then kagami was like felix why would u bring them right here right now 🤡 like you Know how i feel about the bloody stake and that my mom is Literally the last of my family 🤡 maybe i was right to hate you 🤡 and then they were both so sad alexa play despacito #feligami depressed for like two whole months . and then. now kagami overhears her mom has been ACTUALLY KILLING PEOPLE? 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 AND HURTING FELIX???? sob sob sob. anyways so then she tries to talk to felix but he is still Depressed (obviously) so then she reaches out to the gang. and. yeah. so here we are. but like. HOW DO YOU GUYS FEEL 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 because right now i feel a little 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 but also im like eight chapters ahead writing wise and im like 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 hot damn the things that are happening haha

third of all. uhmm.. sorry luka. so sorry. it will get better i promise. hang in there my boi

fourth of all OUCH ? OUCH? so much injury. so much injury. so much. to be expected since im the author but like damn hello. yeoooowwchh........ what did yall think of marinette's desperation . and the gang just instinctively relying on her just out of habit to protect them that they kind of forget to run away in those first precious seconds. marinette just not caring if someone were in the machine if it meant they were hurting her friends she was just gonna kill them like.... lol okay. haha. uhm. you're so normal queen. haha. yeah. yeah. (adrien being so concerned. marinette being like no if someone is hurting my friends i will kill i don't care. i knew in seconds there wasn't a person in here but even if there was i would have taken them down.) honestly kind of slay of her but also im like hm. hm. don't become evil queen <3 please <3 (me saying all of this like i'm not the exact same way. like. sadie we cannot become evil EITHER. under ANY circumstances. (we are trying our best))

also ! update on my moving situation 🤡 my parents hung basil in the kitchen this last week which im apparently SUPER allergic to (as in like i legit cannot breathe with it hanging from the ceiling) and so like i couldnt get any of my food or water from the kitchen (i had some snacks in my room though and my younger sister got me water) and my parents just kept laughing it off and eventually told me to "just don't breathe" and that "it's not our problem" so uhhhh lol i moved my flight up to september 10th lollllll. (soonest i could get 🤡😭) anyways as soon as i did that Suddenly They Can Remove Basil From The Kitchen 🤡 so anyways dw now i can eat but im STILL moving out earlier. because that basil shit was BULLCRAP !!!! anyways. so im moving earlier. probably gonna write a Little bit less in the days before my move but once im moved out i should be back on that writing grind i think.

anyways next chapter (A DOOZY) will be posted on september fifth (FIVE DAYS BEFORE I LEAVE can you believe because i cannot im so frigging excited lol) i hope yall are Excited . i may actually end up posting chapters forty-two and forty-three as celebration and also because forty-two is like 🤡 kind of a sad chapter that ends cliffhanger-y but then chapter forty-three has felix emotionally knocking some SENSE into our girl marinette. (as he should.) AND ALSO? forty-three will be legitimately like. insane. for me. and yall. because. i will have manifested a scene from it into my real life by the 10th of september. (insane i know.) but also you guys will have some pretty fire feligami development.

anyways. hope yall are EXCITED for the next chapters. don't forget to enjoy a part of your day today and remember how beautiful and stunning and intelligent you are, and thank you guys for being the BEST readers an author could ever ask for. i love u guys so much 🥰 try your best not to turn evil, beloveds <3

Chapter 42: chapter forty-two

Summary:

Kagami does her research and decides to reach out to someone she hasn't spoken to in a long time.

Notes:

⚠️ self-harm depictions in this chapter will start with this emoji and go on until the end of the chapter ! please be aware ! end of this warning here :)

so sorry these two chapters are a few days late !!! had a hectic last few days packing and then one of the worst going-away parties one could imagine (and i have another one tonight, fucking hell 🤡), but i leave my family in THREE DAYYYYYSSSSSS YAYYAYYAYAYAYAY so here are two chapters as CELEBRATIONNNNNNNN can we say HOORAYYYYYY sadie ? hooray !!!!

Kagami does a little bit of research into the attacks after talking with Marinette. She finds that Tsurugi Construction—or, rather, her mother—has been employed to clean up every site of destruction. 

She carefully marks each site and the fact that her mother’s company has been working at that site down in a notebook. Her hand shakes only imperceptibly as she writes. 

Once she’s finished, she sets her notebook and laptop aside. She makes herself get up from her bed and go downstairs for some tea despite her shaking hands. When she returns, she sits in her bed with the mug, curled up in her blankets once more. 

She unlocks her phone and props it against her knees that sit pulled up close. She navigates slowly to her messages with a lump in her throat, and she swallows back some tea as the app loads.

She clicks on the thread that still sits near the top, and she clicks on the image of Félix rolling his eyes at her. She scrolls down on the options that pop up, and she lets her thumb hover over the unblock contact option for a long, long moment. 

She takes another sip of tea. She closes her eyes. She clicks unblock contact and she opens her eyes. 

11:09 p.m.

Kagami

Tell your friends I have a suspect for them to look

into with the monsters.

She waits a long time. She finishes her tea, takes two Tums, and she downloads and starts playing a puzzle game.

11:41 p.m.

Félix

Kagami?

Kagami

[replied to: Kagami: Tell your friends I]          

[have a suspect for them to look into with]          

[the monsters.]          

^

Félix

I’ll make it happen.

                  read 11:42 p.m.

11:49 p.m.

Félix

Would you be free tomorrow to meet with

them during the lunch period?

She notes how he doesn’t say meet with us. 

Kagami

I’ll be free then, yes.

Library?

Félix

Library works. 

            read 11:52 p.m.

~*~

The next day, the gang meets with Kagami in the school’s library during lunch. They meet in the secluded corner Kagami and Félix had been working in just the day before. 

For lack of chairs, only Kagami, Alya, Luka, and Adrien sit at the table. Marinette and Nino stand behind Alya, Chloé stands behind Adrien, and Félix stands the furthest from everyone in the corner where the library walls meet, his gaze unfocused but settled on the floor. 

Alya is the first to speak after Chloé, Luka, Nino, and Adrien have said hello to Kagami. “So, Félix said you had a suspect for us to look into with the case we’ve been working with the creatures?” 

Kagami nods slowly, pulling a piece of paper from an inside pocket of her blazer. “I do.” She sets the paper on the table and she pushes it across the table to Alya. It’s folded in half, all the writing on the inside and hidden from view.

Alya takes it with raised brows, opening it, and she frowns. She looks over the paper at Kagami, lips parted in surprise. 

Kagami’s voice is quiet. “That’s a log of every site of destruction these monsters have made. Next to each site is the company who is handling the clean-up and reconstruction.” 

“Tsurugi Construction,” Alya says slowly. 

Marinette tucks her hands into the pockets of her jeans from where she stands behind Alya, and she frowns as well. Nino, Luka, Chloé, and Adrien keep quiet, unmoving.

Félix only looks up, gaze locking on Kagami. 

“My mother’s company, as I’m sure you all know,” Kagami says simply.

Before Alya can reply, Nino is shifting on his feet, asking, “And who would you like us to look into as a suspect?” 

Kagami folds her hands neatly in front of her. “My mother,” she says softly. 

“Her company handling all the construction may not mean something,” Luka cautions. “They’re a large company, and they handle a lot of the construction projects in this county.” 

Kagami nods. “I’m aware. I also heard her talking on the phone Wednesday morning before I left for school. She asked the person on the other side of the line if she could send the monsters to a larger site. She said that her… team had a taste for it, now. The other person suggested Rose Park and the community center, and, later that day, that same place was attacked twice.” 

Alya’s eyes widen. “That’s…” 

“Incriminating. I know,” Kagami says, nodding again. “I’d like you all to stop her.” 

Marinette smiles. “Already planning on it.”

Kagami glances over to Félix, and then she puts her hands, folded, on the table. She then steadies her gaze on her clasped fingers. “I’d also like to help with stopping her.”

Félix glances up sharply, brows drawn together and pointed resistance on the tip of his tongue. Before he can say anything, though, Luka is reaching over to hesitantly put a hand over Kagami’s. 

A pang of hurt swallows the words Félix had been ready to say.

“You don’t have to,” Luka says gently, looking at Kagami carefully. “We can handle it from here, if you’d rather.”

Kagami clenches her hands tighter together. Luka draws away hesitantly. “I’d like to help,” she says firmly, closing her eyes. 

“It’s dangerous,” Nino says quietly. “You could get hurt.” 

Kagami opens her eyes, gaze flashing with something sharp and bright. She stares at him, mouth pinched in a thin line. “You all have already been hurt because of my mother. I want to stop it.” 

Félix’s shoulders raise close to his ears. He turns away. 

Alya nods slowly. “We’ll be keeping you from as much danger as we can,” she says. “You’re a civilian, after all.” 

Kagami raises a brow. “Then what does that make you all?”

No one answers her. 

She only waits a long minute before she frowns, still looking at Alya. “I’m going to help.”

Marinette’s lips twitch with a bit of amusement. “Tonight, we’ll be going to the city library. We had a barely pieced together plan, but if we’re investigating your mother, now, we could hack into her databases and see about moving the creatures to a designated location—one where we’ll have a trap set up. We could probably even trap them early tomorrow morning, if we wanted.” 

Kagami nods, sitting up straighter. “Should I meet you all at the library?” 

Félix speaks up, voice quiet from across the small alcove. “We’ll pick you up. Less risk if we’re all together in the same vehicle.” 

Kagami only glances at him from the corner of her eye before she’s looking to Marinette, a brow raising.  

Marinette looks to Félix curiously, but she nods to Kagami, turning back to her. “Félix is right. The less risk, the better. How does 10 p.m. sound? Can you get out of your house without suspicion? Félix can text you more details later, like where we’ll be and where might be the best place to exit your house, since he’s been there and can drive us wherever might be safest for you.” 

Kagami’s eyes tighten. “You can text me, Marinette. Have Félix dictate or something, but text me yourself.” She stands abruptly, grabbing her bag, and she nods to the members at the table, still carefully avoiding looking at Félix. “I’ll be ready at 9:50 for whatever directions you have for me, Marinette, but I should study in these last few minutes of the lunch period. Goodbye.” 

She nods to them, and Luka and Nino wave weakly at her, Marinette and Alya already pouring over the paper Kagami handed over. Adrien waves happily to Kagami, his expression concerned, and Chloé watches Félix as he picks up his own bag, pulling it over his body so the strap pulls over his already-wrinkled sweater vest and button-up. Chloé meets his hollow gaze when he finally looks up, feeling her eyes on him, and she frowns.

Something wordless passes between them before her expression softens. She nods at him, and she turns back to the others, asking them a meaningless, rude question. Their attention is drawn to her in surprise and sighs, and Félix slips out of the alcove, unnoticed. 

He doesn’t follow Kagami across to the other side of the library. Instead, he heads out of the library and to the wing with the nurse’s office, knowing his pale, slightly green, and unusually disheveled state, in addition to his doctor’s note about his injury, will be more than enough to claim sick and miss the last few periods of the day.

~*~

The school day ends and winter break begins with a bang: knowledge of another attack from the blue and red creatures reaches the school body quickly, just as their last period classes are finishing up.

The gang, minus Félix—who has been sitting in the driver’s seat of the van for the last few hours of the school day, trying to calm down from the three breakdowns he’s had since lunch—meets with Kagami at her car. 

“We’re going to go investigate the latest attack from afar,” Marinette tells Kagami, shifting her backpack uncomfortably over her back with a frown and a wince. 

“You should go back home, though,” Nino says, looking at Kagami carefully. “Go about your regular business and act like nothing’s out of the ordinary, and we’ll text you with details closer to when we’ll pick you up, alright?”

Kagami hesitates, gaze flicking over the others’ faces, but she nods. “Very well. I’ll see you all later, then.” She pauses, frowns, and then she says, quieter, “Be careful.” 

Marinette, Nino, and Adrien smile a bit. “We will,” Marinette says.

Kagami nods, and she turns back to her car. She gets inside, and the gang heads for the van, already knowing Félix is in there. He had texted them after lunch, notifying them that he was in the nurse’s office, and then he let them know he had moved to the van. 

The rest of the gang gets into the van, talking about the day’s classes and their teachers and classmates, and Marinette offhandedly mentions to Félix that he can stay in the van while they investigate the latest attack.

He nods, not even attempting to argue. 

The others fill in the silence with lighthearted conversation, trying to keep things as normal as possible—even as they all feel the echoes of tension from the meeting with Kagami.

Félix is grateful that no one voices their questions or concerns, their worries and curiosities, though he only shows it in the silence that rolls off of him in waves as he drives to the scene of the latest attack. 

He stays in the van as the others get out once they finally reach their destination: an abandoned, long-evacuated daycare. Thankfully, the children and nannies had been out at a park, having taken their lunches and favorite toys to play with, but now, parents and police officers dig through the wreckage with construction workers after the latter group had deemed the area safe enough to search through. 

As the gang gets out, finally quiet and somber again, and Félix watches from the driver’s seat, some parents return to crying children, tears in their own eyes, with the dusty, torn, and ragged belongings of the children that had been left behind. Some parents drive away, having found all they needed or having lost the will to go on searching through wreckage that could have so easily contained their children, as dusty, torn, and ragged as the few belongings they could manage to find before such will was lost, tumbled to the ground where it laid to rest among the rubble. Other parents still search through the wreckage, tear-stained faces collecting dust and grime as debris is moved and shifted, sending up clouds of dirt. Some turn to each other, sobbing with the very thought of the possibilities that were so close to being realities, and they clutch at each other and even some officers in a mixture of barely held in grief and an overwhelming, sorrowful relief. 

The gang stays quiet, on the edge of the property, and they watch as many more parents leave to hold their children close and to thank the nannies and other daycare staff. The gang stays quiet, on the edge of the property, until every parent is gone and only the police and construction workers remain, talking quietly or digging through the rest of the rubble for whatever can be salvaged. The daycare owners, staff, and nannies stand, trembling, by their cars in the parking lot. Some of their cars have been smashed to bits, but there still remains that resounding ache and relief that the worst did not, thankfully, happen. At least for today, they all can go home. At least for today, they don’t have to face horrors far worse than damaged cars, property, and many tear-stained faces. 

The gang leaves this site of destruction after a while, quiet and somber. 

They head to Amélie’s for a short dinner, where she brings their attention back to the school day. Félix leaves the table quietly after a long, tense moment of silence, and Amélie lets him go, her gaze curious. 

The rest of the gang quietly explains how the day went, and Amélie gently comforts them, reminding them that none of the destruction of the past few weeks has been their fault. Some of them linger on the specification in their minds, knowing they’re in part responsible for some of the destruction Félix is suffering through. 

After far too long, 9:20 p.m. arrives. The gang loads into the van, and they stop at a gas station for some snacks. Félix gives them a short list of the foods Kagami likes, and they get some things for her, and then they’re headed back for her neighborhood. 

Félix dictates a message for Kagami that Marinette dutifully sends, and they park on the street in front of the house behind the Tsurugi’s. Félix keeps the key in the ignition, one hand tense on the wheel and the other on the key, and everyone waits silently in the dark for several minutes, similarly—but not equally—tense. 

Finally, Kagami messages that she’s headed for them. Before Marinette even finishes reading the first few words, Félix has turned the key in the ignition, starting the van. Both of his hands rest tensely on the wheel for the two minutes it takes for Kagami to escape her home and knock at the back of the van’s doors. 

He’s already driving off by the time her feet leave the pavement, Adrien and Nino helping her inside. The van doors close resolutely behind her, and everyone settles into a tense silence once more.

Inside the van, everyone wears dark clothes in case the gang really does end up capturing the creatures early the next morning. Kagami is the only one in dress, with black slacks and a black turtleneck with black boots, but Alya and Luka hand her a few items to change into, thanks to Amélie, Félix, and Marinette’s help with guesstimating her sizes. She's handed a pair of black jeans from Marinette’s wardrobe, a thick black sweater of Félix’s to wear over her turtleneck, a black hoodie of Luka’s, and a black beanie from Alya’s things. 

The others wear all black from their things, with Alya doubling up two shirts of hers, a sweater of Félix’s, a hoodie of Nino’s, a pair of leggings of her own, a pair of thick, double-lined cargo pants, and a pair of black boots from Marinette. Nino wears a black hoodie with a long-sleeved tee, black jeans, and faded black sneakers. Adrien wears a pair of purple leggings beneath some black sweatpants, a pair of black sneakers from Nino, two shirts layered over each other, a hoodie of Félix’s, and a black scarf and black beanie. Chloé wears a pair of black jeans, some black lace-up winter boots, a black, fleece-lined jacket, a hoodie of Luka’s, a turtleneck of her own, and a Kitty Section band tee. Luka wears a pair of ratty cargo pants, a black hoodie of Nino’s over a black t-shirt of Félix’s, and a pair of beat-up boots from Nino. Marinette wears a turtleneck beneath a ratty black tee, a black jacket zipped up, some black cargo pants, and a pair of black, beat up Converse. Félix wears a pair of fleece-lined black jeans, some black boots, a long-sleeved tee, and a flannel-lined hoodie. 

The drive to the library is quiet and quick, and the gang soon files into the dark foyer, locking the doors behind them. Alya leads Kagami through the dark to the bathrooms, where she turns on the lights, and the rest of the gang lights up an area in the main room that's secluded to one side. 

There, they set themselves up with their snacks, some computers, and Marinette’s tools and a trap idea while Kagami dresses in the gang’s rattier and less fancy clothes.

When she comes out of the bathroom, she follows the dim yellow glow of the light from the end of the hall, and she makes her way over to the softly illuminated area where the gang sits. Everyone but Félix, Chloé, and Marinette smile and wave at her, and Alya gestures to the seat beside her, where they arrayed out some of the snacks Félix said she'd like. 

She sits hesitantly, gaze flicking over the snacks, before she settles her hands in her lap. “What are these?” she asks, nodding to the snacks.

“Food,” Alya says with a small smile. “We’re not sure what all we’ll be able to do tonight, but we tend to get really hungry with working more, so we got you some snacks.”

Kagami doesn't ask how they knew what she liked—she has a good enough guess, but she doesn't want it confirmed. It would only make the strange wanting and grief in her chest worse.

Instead, she thanks Alya quietly. “What do you all do first, then? In this sort of situation,” she asks, reaching slowly for a bag of M&Ms.

Alya turns to her portable in front of her, and she shrugs. “Well, first, I’m going to try hacking into whatever databases might have details on the creatures. Their movements and a way to direct them is what would be nice, but we'll know more once we can see what's available.”

“From there,” Marinette says, tinkering with a medium-sized, complicated-looking device, “I’ll know more about what sort of trap I can use, or if we even need a trap. If there's a kill switch in the databases Alya is getting into, we can simply use that before breaking into wherever the creatures are held between attacks for me to destroy them from the inside, given their mechanical nature.”

Kagami nods, beginning to eat her M&Ms. “Knowing my mother, the databases with information on these creatures are buried deep.”

Alya nods, already typing away at her portable. “Understandable, but I should be able to find them soon.”

Kagami raises a brow, but she doesn't say anything.

There's a few long minutes of silence as Alya works and Marinette tinkers with her device where the others eat and sip at their drinks quietly.

Though Kagami is incredibly curious on the workings of the gang and why and how they're doing the things they've been doing or plan to do, she keeps quiet, not wanting to betray her actual interest yet and not wanting to receive any answers pointing or relating to a certain nameless boy on the other end of the table from her, who eats slowly and with his head down, as methodical as she remembers from their late nights, early mornings, and many, many days spent together. She only glances at him from time to time, always from the corner of her eye, and every time, there's a pang of longing that echoes through her.

Still, it's only a few minutes before Alya is sighing, leaning back from her portable and stretching.

“How far in are you?” Marinette asks, setting her device down on the table. She takes a long swig from her Rockstar before setting it back down on the table as well. 

“I’m actually done,” Alya says with a yawn, moving back to her portable. She smiles. “There's no kill switch, like I’d been hoping, but there is a sort of GPS option where I can set coordinates for another destination and a specific action, like ‘destroy,’ ‘rest,’ or ‘repair.’”

“Can we do ‘rest’ without being suspicious?” Nino asks, eating a muffin.

Marinette hums in thought a moment, looking over her small device before her. “I think the best option would be to pick ‘destroy.’ That way, we can't exactly be blamed for hacking into the databases, and anyone who says, ‘hey, I didn't command these creatures to go here, they shouldn't have even been there,’ is only incriminating themselves. We can be seen as innocent, only testing a trap when, miraculously, the monsters fell into it. The people or person behind all this would then be cast under suspicion of following us and intending to harm us, which, to be honest, isn't too much of a stretch, given how the only places that have been attacked more than once have been places where we've investigated, and only when we're there.”

Alya nods. “That makes sense. It’d probably also be only incriminating against us if we destroyed these creatures wherever they currently rest.”

“Yup,” Marinette says, popping the ‘p’. “Trapping them and sending them to try and destroy a place of our choosing seems like the best bet.”

Kagami worries her lower lip, unsure. “It also seems the best way to get hurt.”

Marinette shrugs, though her lips flatten out into a thin line. “We do our best to not get hurt, and you, Chloé, Adrien, and Félix will be the ones in the least amount of danger. I promise.” 

Kagami frowns, not quite believing this to be enough. Still, she only nods. “Very well.”

“What address should I put?” Alya asks, glancing up from her portable to look across the table at Marinette.

Marinette rattles off an address from memory, pulling the small device before her closer. Her brows draw together as Alya types in the address.

Nino glances at Marinette, finishing with his muffin. “What's your trap tonight? Are you planning on using it on the creatures?”

Marinette nods slowly, frowning. She tucks the device against her stomach and she shakes her head, gaze unfocusing. “You guys will see what it does later tonight or tomorrow morning, don't worry.”

Félix glances over at her curiously, but he doesn't say anything, methodically finishing a KitKat. The others nod or shrug, distracted either with their food or Alya’s portable as she enters in the address and commands for the creatures.

Once that's finished, Alya closes her portable, putting it in the pocket of the hoodie she wears. She starts eating the muffin from her snacks, and the others finish their food with her in silence.

After several minutes, Kagami is the first to speak up. “What next?”

Marinette shrugs. “What’s the time of tomorrow's attack?” she asks quietly. The trap is still pressed against her stomach, and she sips at her Rockstar. Her blinks are slow, and her face is a bit paler, even in the dim light, but no one else’s attention is really on it.

“4:30 a.m.,” Alya replies.

“And both creatures will be there?”

Alya nods. 

Marinette relaxes slightly. “We’ve got some sleeping bags in the van, so we'll nap at the next site for a couple of hours while I set up the trap, and we'll keep watch in rounds at various points around the property, then.”

Kagami grimaces at how unpleasant the plan sounds to her. “Nothing else here in the library? Where it's warm?”

Marinette shakes her head. “We want to be completely ready for the creatures as soon as possible, and there's not much else to do here, anyways.”

“There's staying warm,” Chloé mutters, rolling her eyes.

Félix cracks a small smile. “Such frivolities don't matter to Dupain-Cheng,” he murmurs, nodding to Chloé conspiratorially. 

“Ha, ha,” Marinette says, rolling her eyes. She stands, grabbing her Rockstar and the trash from a sandwich and a cookie, and she slips her extra Rockstar, rack of mini donuts, two apples, two cookies, and a bag of gummy worms into various pockets of her cargo pants. “We should go—we’ve got blankets and more coats in the car, and this trap is going to take me a while to set up.”

“Won't it go faster if we worked together?” Kagami asks, standing. She slips her remaining snacks into the pocket of the hoodie she wears. 

“Yeah,” Adrien says, brows drawing together. Still, he, too, stands.

Luka looks curiously at Marinette, slowly putting his food away for later. “We usually do that. What's different about this trap?”

Marinette shifts on her feet, frowning. She pulls the trap tighter to her stomach, biting back a wince. “I have to put some of the parts together out in the area where we’ll trap them.”

Nino raises his brows. “We can still help—we’ve done it before with other traps that had to be partially built in the field.”

Marinette’s shoulders rise a bit. “It's really complicated to set up,” she says.

“We can follow directions, Dupain-Cheng,” Chloé says, standing and going across the library to throw away her trash.

“It's late,” Marinette says weakly.

Félix hesitates, watching Marinette. “Could one of us at least hold a flashlight for you while the others set up the sleeping bags and things? I’ll do it, if you'd like.”

Marinette is quick to nod. “That works,” she says, before squeezing the trap closer to her stomach. It digs into her skin, but she only holds it closer and tighter to her, clenching her teeth and hands. “Can we head out, then?”

Alya purses her lips, but finally, she, Nino, Adrien, and Félix stand, clearing their things from the table.

Marinette heads for the door as soon as they stand, disappearing into the darkness outside before anyone can move to follow her.

Nino sighs, gaze on where Marinette had just been. “That was weird,” he says softly.

Alya hums in agreement. 

“Think she's okay?” Adrien asks.

Félix, Kagami, and Luka pointedly stay silent. Nino and Alya only hesitate.

Chloé, coming back to the table with a yawn, says, “She's probably just tired of these creatures and wants them stopped.”

No one disagrees, but no one agrees, either.

~*~

At about 11 p.m., the gang and Kagami arrive at the property where the next attack will take place in just a mere five and a half hours. 

Marinette is the first out of the van, still clutching her trap against her stomach, but she also carries her trapping backpack and trapping toolbox on her back. Another two Rockstars have been slipped into her cargo pants and her belt has been tightened. She spent two minutes looking at the safety plan in her phone that she made with Stacey before deciding it wasn’t ‘bad enough,’ and that she’d be fine, though a seed of doubt has worried itself deep within her lungs, growing and growing and making it difficult to take a full breath between its branches and leaves.

The others follow her slowly, tiredly, with the most of them dismissing her strangeness as just wanting this case to be over. Félix, for his part, follows Marinette closely, not just for want of avoiding Kagami and his feelings there, but also because of the building sense that something really isn’t right. Kagami also notices something isn’t right, but the others don’t seem too worried, so she dismisses it for the most part, though she watches Marinette, and, by extension, Félix, closely. 

Chloé’s words in the library soothed the others’ worries to a degree, but other thoughts also busy their minds. Nino, Alya, and Luka turn over the implied confirmation that Kagami’s mother, Tomoe, has been operating these creatures. They, in addition to Chloé and Adrien, feel a bit off-kilter by Kagami’s insistence and surprising calmness surrounding her mother’s involvement, especially given how stark the contrast is with the last time that they had even questioned her about her mother’s potential involvement. 

Kagami, for her part, is quite numb at this point to her mother’s involvement. She knows her mother is involved, knows her mother has been operating the creatures, from however far away she may be, and she knows, she knows that her mother has played an integral part in Félix and the gang’s injuries. She knows these things with the same certainty that she knows the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, but still, a black hole has been slowly and inevitably hollowing her out since Wednesday morning where she overheard the conversation between her mother and someone else. The hollowness asks her what will happen to her if her mother is arrested. The hollowness asks her how her mother being arrested will affect her chances of escaping Crystal Cove and making a name for herself in the rest of the surrounding world. The hollowness asks her why her mother has done these things—it asks her if her mother considered how her actions would affect Kagami. It asks her: if her mother did or did not consider how her actions would affect Kagami, does that mean that she had any place at all or hold any space in her mother’s life, in her heart? 

The black hole, devoid of answers—the black hole, Kagami herself—the black hole, the hollowness and Kagami all at once, because she was the one asking but also unable to answer these questions—tears her apart from the inside.

Still, Kagami knows how to keep her expression blank, she knows how to walk and to speak and to move as if she isn’t being disjointed and ripped apart from within, and she knows how to make it look like she is fine. 

The gang follows Marinette to the center of the abandoned property where the next attack will occur. Run-down and worn outposts tower above the fenced-in property in four corners. On the rest of the property, broken boats, cars, and other piles of junk litter the ground, but there’s a decently-sized clearing in the middle of the property where attempts were made to salvage some of the debris. The ground is littered with broken glass and small parts, making the gang glad for their shoes, but many of them pull out their phones’ flashlights to illuminate steps with limited glass and debris. 

When they get to the center of the small clearing, Marinette turns to them all, still holding her trap to her stomach. “We can divvy up our supplies,” she says, “and then split up into groups. Nino and Kagami, once you have the supplies you need, you can set up camp under the outpost to the left of the entrance in the front. Alya and Chloé, you can go to the one on the right of the entrance in the front, and Luka and Adrien, you can go to the one on the left in the back. Me and Félix, once we’ve got my trap set up, will set up camp under the outpost on the right in the back.” 

Everyone nods, and they move into their selected pairs, sorting out their supplies. Alya carries a bag of evidence kits, first-aid kits, walkie talkies, flashlights, and extra food. Chloé helps her pass out the evidence and first-aid kits while she passes out the walkie talkies and flashlights, and Adrien helps pass out the food after he sets two sleeping bags in front of Alya and Chloé. Luka sets down two sleeping bags for him and Adrien, and Nino sets down two for him and Kagami, and Félix sets down two for him and Marinette. Each of the boys also carries a blanket over one shoulder, and Adrien passes his to Chloé, who holds onto it. 

Once everyone has a walkie talkie, a flashlight, some food, a first-aid kit, an evidence kit, and a sleeping bag and a blanket, Marinette nods to them all, and they disperse to their respective outposts. Félix stays by Marinette, who lingers in the clearing, and he watches as the others move to their places. After a few minutes, he glances over to Marinette, who’s staring into the distance at nothing. 

Félix clears his throat. When there’s no response or movement from Marinette, he takes a small step closer. “Marinette?” he asks, voice a bit quiet.

Finally, she looks over at him. Her gaze is still somewhat blank, but she’s looking at him, so he counts that as enough of a win. 

“Do you want to set up your trap, now? I’m still good to hold the flashlight,” he says, being sure to include that he’ll help her. 

Marinette doesn’t answer for a moment, back to staring into the distance, but she soon nods, turning around and moving to the rough center of the clearing. Félix follows her, switching from his phone’s flashlight to the handheld flashlight from the gang’s supplies. He illuminates their paths, walking closely beside Marinette rather than behind her, and soon they're in the middle of the clearing. 

Marinette crouches down with a barely-disguised wince, snacks crinkling and Rockstars clinking in her pockets, and she grabs a large piece of glass within arms reach. Félix crouches beside her, lifting the flashlight over them so it lights up the ground around them, and he watches as she uses the piece of glass to scoop a hole in the sand and dirt with one hand. 

After a few minutes of this, she sets the glass aside and she slowly pulls her trap from her body with a small, shaky breath, placing it in the hole. Various nubbins stick out along the edge of the circular and slightly domed device. There’s a few lights that flicker along the bottoms of each nubbin, but otherwise, the device is a plain, dark grey metal contraption that Félix doesn’t even bother to begin to understand. He merely holds the flashlight up over them both as he examines the device, watching as Marinette presses at one portion of the domed surface. There’s a small click as a circular button presses down beneath her fingertip, and then the lights flicker beneath each nubbin. Long, thick claws slip out from the edges of the device between the nubbins, and they dig in sharply to the ground. 

Marinette tests the device’s stability in the ground, attempting to move it with one hand, before she stands halfway up from her crouch with a wince. The trap hadn’t moved despite her rough handling, so she reaches down towards her trap, and she grasps a nubbin along the edge between her fingertips. Slowly and gently, she pulls it out from the trap. 

To Félix’s surprise, a foot of taped wires and more, smaller nubbins stretch out from the device behind the original, larger nubbin. Marinette takes a step away, eyes on her trap, and more wire and nubbins come out, lights flickering dimly. He watches in mild curiosity as Marinette takes several steps away from the domed device dug into the ground, and, once she’s several feet away, she crouches back to the ground with another wince, faltering, before she begins digging a bit with one hand. She buries the original, larger nubbin in the ground some, holding it under a rock, and she covers the rock with sand and dirt, concealing it. 

⚠️⚠️⚠️ (self-harm depictions to the end of the chapter) ⚠️⚠️⚠️

Félix then watches as Marinette slowly moves back along the wires, covering them with sand and dirt to conceal them. There’s small blue lights that flicker from time to time, and Marinette flinches many times, hissing and muttering quietly beneath her breath as she goes. 

It’s only as she’s a couple of feet from him that Félix realizes the wires and small nubbins are shocking her and sparking with electricity and volts as she moves over them. 

“Doesn’t that hurt?” he asks quietly as she comes nearer. 

Marinette’s shoulders rise a bit closer to her ears and she noticeably tenses at the question. Still, she answers a moment later, saying, “I’m fine.” 

Félix watches as she does the same process with four other nubbins, hardly getting even a quarter of the way through all of the ones on the device before her hair starts to frizz and her fingertips are looking a bit burnt whenever he can catch a glimpse of them. When she comes back from the fifth, Félix puts a hand on her arm, frowning. “Marinette?”

She glances over at him, eyes widening slightly. “Yeah?” 

He thinks she looks scared. He softens his expression. “May I see your hands?”

Marinette turns her palms to the ground so he can’t see them, fingers curling towards her palms. “Why?” she asks quietly. 

Félix grimaces. “Because they look hurt.” 

“They’re fine,” Marinette says softly, looking at the backs of her hands. “Look, I really should finish setting up the trap.” 

Félix’s eyes narrow slightly and his hand tightens on her forearm. “What’s the name of your trap, by the way? You haven’t told us.” 

Marinette stills. “This one doesn’t have a name,” she says softly. 

“You always name your traps,” Félix murmurs. “Why not this one?” 

She shrugs lightly, biting back a wince at the motion and its pull on her ribs, and she makes her expression blank. “I don’t know.” 

He decides not to ask what she had to finish building out here—the reason she wouldn’t accept help from the rest of the gang. Instead, Félix carefully, gently reaches down to her hands. “Can I look at your hands, please?” 

“Why?” Marinette asks, sniffling, but she slowly turns her hands palm-side up beneath his. She keeps her eyes averted, though she also closes them, not wanting to see his expression. 

Félix gently pulls her hands near, picking up his flashlight and shining it over her hands. Her fingers and the most of her palms are a bright, burning red. Some of the worst spots are almost purple, and spots of blood decorate her skin. “Marinette,” he says softly. 

“It’s fine,” she whispers, squeezing her eyes shut tight. Tears well up behind her eyelids, but she bites down hard on the inside of her cheek, trying to keep them from falling. 

“Let me help you,” he says gently. “I’ve watched you set up part of it already—let me help, so you don’t get as hurt.” 

Marinette drops her head low, her chin to her chest. She mumbles something quietly, but he can’t quite understand. 

He leans closer, setting his flashlight in his lap. With his now free hand, he hesitantly puts his palm to her cheek, tilting her face up some so he can look at her properly. “Marinette?” he asks. “Can you say that again?”

She closes her eyes shut tight even more, lips trembling. “I’ll turn down the voltage if you want to help me.” 

Félix’s eyes widen slightly at her words. Slowly, silently, things begin to fall into place—Marinette mentioning offhandedly that she wasn’t going to be able to work on any cases during certain times a few afternoons of the week because she was trying out therapy, her insistence that she had nothing to try and keep safe for, the entire conversation outside the locker rooms with the Lila case, her penchant for throwing herself into danger, and, now, intentionally hurting herself with her own trap and turning down any help to set it up…

He lets out a small sigh, his hand at her cheek only turning her face gently more towards him. “Marinette,” he says softly. “Can you look at me?” 

She bites her lower lip, pulling it between her teeth. Slowly, she opens her eyes, though she keeps her gaze downcast. “I’ll turn down the voltage,” she says quietly. “Just—please, can you—can you please not tell anyone?” 

Félix hesitates. “I want you to not hurt yourself,” he says simply, looking at her gently. 

Her gaze flies up to meet his. Her eyes are wide. “Félix—” 

“I also don’t want you to draw away and do worse in secret,” he says, hand still at her cheek. 

She frowns, lips beginning to tremble again. 

“I don’t know what to do,” he murmurs, brows raising slightly. His voice wavers. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want you… hurting yourself, but I don’t want you to hide it and feel and do worse,” he whispers. 

“I…” 

“What should I do? What can I do?” he asks, shoulders drooping. 

Marinette closes her eyes again, expression crumpling. She opens her eyes, which have filled with tears, and she surges forward, wrapping her arms around his shoulders as she buries her face between one of her arms and his neck. There, she cries, “I’m sorry—I’m—I’m so—I—” 

Félix sits completely still in her hold for a long moment, blinking slowly as he tries to process the fact that she’s hugging him. Before she can pull away, though, he’s putting his arms around her and relaxing slightly into the hug.

It’s a while before she stops crying, at which point she begins to pull away. Félix moves his arms back to his sides, watching her gently. 

She sits up, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands, and his expression softens as he sees her palms and fingers and the burnt skin there once more. “I don’t know what to do, either,” she says, sniffling, as she wipes at her tears.

Félix nods slowly. “You’re going to therapy, though?” 

Marinette nods, shoulders drooping. “Stacey says it’s normal to get worse before I get better, especially because we’re digging up all the reasons and stuff for it all,” she says quietly. 

“Still,” he says, voice hopeful, “you should tell her that you’ve been feeling this way and doing these things more, right?”

Marinette hesitates, pulling her hands from her face, and she looks at the ground. “Y-yeah, I guess…” 

Félix tilts his head a bit, frowning. “Can you please tell her? Marinette—this isn’t okay—how you—how you’re feeling, it’s—” 

“It’s wrong?” she asks, voice sharp and eyes closing. “I just want to keep them safe.” 

He reaches out to take her hands, distressed. He holds them gently, but he ducks his head to look up at her. “This,” he whispers, “isn’t keeping them safe. If you get hurt and can’t help them, Marinette, that’s not keeping anyone safe. Not to mention, hurting yourself has nothing to do with their safety.” 

“It does if I’m just a danger to them,” she mutters back. 

He stills. “Is that what you think? That you’re just a danger to them?” 

“It’s not what I think,” Marinette says, voice trembling. “It’s what I… it’s what I am.”

Notes:

"we'll be keeping you from as much danger as we can. you're a civilian, after all." "then what does that make you all?" like OKAYYYYYY STAB MEEEEE. (me stabbing myself?)

how do we feel feligami nation 😔 if it is ANY consolation. chapter forty-nine is like seven chapters from nowwwww. and wow it's really a banger for yall........ hashtag i sure deliver.

⚠️⚠️⚠️ (the self-harm stuff is talked about below and until these emojis are brought up again!!)
anywho HOW DO WE FEEL FELINETTE FOLKS? 🤡 THE TRAUMA? THE INJURIES? LIKE UHM HELLO MARINETTE. first of all felix stepping in when everyone was like hey mari why can't we help you this is legit no different than any other trap 🤡 and felix being like 🤡 something is up but she's not gonna say shit right now soooooo. 🤡 like okay slay king. slay my boy. (i love him asking her what the name of this trap is. fave part honestly like damn son. damn. u ate. left no crumbs.) MARINETTE THOUGH. girl i beg. i know it is so rough to get out of self-harm behaviors i know i know i know but damn it hurts so bad to watch this (said like im not the writer but fr it feels like im just watching this sometimes 🤡 me for real in chapter forty-nine fighting feligami #give_sadie_rights) but ow. ow. ow. watching on the outside again looking in it's oww. ow. and seeing this from felix's pov for a moment? yeowch. anyways trust i will torture us all even further dw <3
⚠️⚠️⚠️

i promise next chapter does start off with felix knocking some sense into our girl marinette i promise . give me like forty mins lol. and then i gotta do more packing and get a shit ton of espresso and then go to the worst ever going-away party ever. but i promise. felix will bring us hope <3

anyways i love yall i hope u guys have a blast today and remember how awesome u guys are and how beautiful u are. keep kicking ass. u got this. and if u can't read the next chapter just yet. here is sneak peek:

Félix is quiet for a long moment before he leans forward, moving his hands to cup her cheeks and tilt her face up a bit so her gaze meets his. “Marinette,” he says calmly, “you are most certainly the wrongest you have ever been.”

so yeah if ur mind or anything gives u any bullcrap this week. just go. nah. felix says that is the most wrongest i have ever been. lets be nice to ourselves. slay my beloveds.

Chapter 43: chapter forty-three

Summary:

Félix tells Marinette that she is wrong, and that she is loved.

Notes:

after this, next chapter should be posted on the 19th of september, but i hope you guys enjoy this chapter :)

Félix is quiet for a long moment before he leans forward, moving his hands to cup her cheeks and tilt her face up a bit so her gaze meets his. “Marinette,” he says calmly, “you are most certainly the wrongest you have ever been.”

She scowls, trying to look away, but Félix ducks his head to look her in the eye. 

“You are just as much a danger to them as I hate Kagami,” he says softly. 

Marinette rolls her eyes, sniffling. “You don’t hate Kagami,” she says weakly. 

“I know,” Félix says with a soft smile. “Just like I know you aren’t a danger to your friends. You do everything to protect them and keep them safe, and any time they do get hurt, it’s generally out of your control or an inevitability.” 

Marinette’s eyes well up with tears. “B-but—my traps. Hardly any of them work right, and they always have someone in danger, and—and—and I—” 

Félix voice is gentle when he says, “That’s a very strong exaggeration, Marinette. In only the time I’ve been with you all, the Fruitmeir trap didn’t work right, but you also had just gotten hurt and we were under a bit of stress. You didn’t make a trap for the Gatorsburg case, but that was because of your injuries. The Ladderton case, your trap worked perfectly. The same goes for the Max case, the Lila case, and the Richard case. For Chris’s case, we were ambushed by a bunch of tiny gremlin kids that none of us could have seen coming, and, well, as for the case with Kitty Section, the first trap was sabotaged, but the second one went excellently.” 

Marinette frowns, lips trembling. “Anything I—anything I do, any of you could do better,” she says quietly, voice wavering. 

“Untrue,” he says softly. “Luka can make traps, yes, but none as elaborate and complex as yours, none as creative and inventive as yours. After a while, I’m sure he’d run out of ideas—he’s said it to me himself. He can sew, too, but not like you, and I can only sew skin and make some very small repairs to clothes. No one else has plans as brilliant as yours, has your skills with makeup and disguises, has your inventiveness. 

“But even if everything you could do, we could do better,” he continues gently, “we’d still want you by our sides. We’d still want you helping us, you keeping us safe, you being our friend. We want you for your laughter, your crazy jokes, your protectiveness, your thoughtfulness, your resourcefulness, your genuineness, your creativity, your joy, your evil grins, your incredibly catching smiles, your always-reaching helping hand, your hugs, your sneakiness, your—” 

Marinette’s eyes close and her lips part on a half sob that she quickly covers with one hand. “I—Félix—”

“We care about you, Marinette,” he whispers. “We want you just as safe as you want us. We’d do anything for your safety, you know. You matter to us, not for however useful you can or might be, but because you’re you. Can you understand that?”

Tears roll down over her cheeks and her shoulders shake with her barely held in cries. 

Félix is the one to pull her into a hug this time. “We care about you, Marinette,” he whispers, turning his cheek against the top of her head. “Not whatever you can or can’t do for us.” 

She cries for a long time against his chest like that, her arms curled around her stomach as she leans against him. 

~*~

After a long while, Marinette finally pulls away. She’s quiet and she doesn’t say anything, only wiping at the tears still rolling down her cheeks, but she stands and she turns down the voltage on her trap. 

Félix watches her carefully, an uncomfortable feeling settled in his chest, but he nods when she looks over at him after adjusting the voltage. Together, they finish setting up the rest of her trap, extending the wires with their nubbins and blinking lights out from the domed center of the trap, and they hide each wire extending out beneath the sand and dirt. 

When they finish with this, Marinette returns to the domed center of the trap, pressing another invisible button on it. The button releases a mechanism from within with a small, mechanical sigh, and the small keypad where Marinette had adjusted the voltage of her trap pops free from the domed surface. She picks it up and she takes the panel off of the top of it that had concealed it from view and she puts that over the hole that was created with the absence of the small keypad. The panel clicks into place easily, and then Marinette, with Félix’s help, covers the domed surface of the center of the trap in sand and dirt, hiding it from view.

Once this has been finished, Marinette guides Félix carefully out of the way of the trap, and she turns them back towards it, lifting the keypad in the air like a remote. She clicks a few buttons, adjusting the voltage, and the lights from the wires extending out from the domed center in a circle light up, flickering blue and white beneath the sand. She presses a few more buttons, and the lights turn red, flickering briefly before shutting off. 

Félix watches curiously as Marinette bends down with a wince, picking up a bit of dirt and sand and curling it into the fist of one hand. She doesn’t step forward, only tosses the dirt and sand out towards where the lights had been, and she steps back, pulling Félix with her.

As soon as the sand and dirt touches the ground between the spaces where the lights had been, there’s a deep sizzling as electricity, white and fiery hot, crackles through the air between the again flickering lights and above the ground. 

Félix’s eyes widen. The hairs on his arms raise and he genuinely believes he can feel his hair frizzing atop his head.

The electricity arcs over the ground in many places, sending some dirt and sand into the air, and it goes on like this for a solid minute before it stops.

Félix looks to Marinette in surprise, eyes still wide. “That’s your trap? Marinette—that’s—”

She looks at the trap, still effectively hidden beneath the sand and dirt. Her brows are drawn together. “Too much?” 

“It’s brilliant,” he says, shaking his head. She looks over at him, eyes widening and lips parting in disbelief, but he continues. “Not too much at all—these creatures are huge, and if they’re as mechanical as we think, this will decimate them. Marinette—this is amazing.”  

“You—you really think so?” she asks quietly. 

He turns to her and he settles his hands on her shoulders, looking at her with a gentle smile. “I do, and so will the rest of the gang.” He pauses, thinking a moment. “What time is it now? Should we get to our post?” 

Marinette hesitates, but she pulls her phone from one pocket, looking at it blankly. “It’s almost one,” she says quietly. 

“Great,” he says, ducking his head to look at her. “We can each have an hour and a half nap before the creatures are due.” 

Marinette nods slowly, and she puts her phone away. 

She doesn’t protest when Félix carefully, gently leads her to their post. She doesn’t protest when he lies out a sleeping bag for her, tucking a blanket inside it, either, and she doesn’t protest when he gestures for her to get inside it. She doesn’t even protest when he zips the sleeping bag closed for her, gently murmuring for her to sleep well.

All she does is follow along quietly, something inside her feeling hollowed out and still surprised. She closes her eyes once he turns away from her, and she tries to sleep.

~*~

Two hours later, at about 3 a.m., Félix gently wakes Marinette. 

“What time is it?” she grumbles from within her cocoon of blanket and sleeping bag, her head propped up on Félix’s hoodie. 

He raises a brow, smiling softly at the welcome normalcy to her waking habits. “It’s just after 3 a.m.”

She forces her eyes open, rubbing at her face with her hands. She freezes at the unusually rough feeling between her fingers and her cheeks, at the stinging with the pressure, and at the sense that she can’t feel her own face. Blearily, she looks down at her hands that have been somehow bandaged in her sleep. She grimaces, wanting to take them off, wanting to feel the pain, wanting to feel something, but then she looks up at Félix, who watches her curiously and unsuspectingly.

He’s clearly the one to have done this, she realizes. 

Her expression softens slightly. “Thank you,” she says, and she rubs at her eyes again, biting back a yawn with a wince.

He nods, smiling a bit. “Of course. Do your hands… do they feel better? If only slightly?” 

Marinette nods, looking back at them. “They’re a little itchy,” she says softly, “but I think that might be to be expected.” 

Félix hesitates. “Do you want to sit up and I can look at them again before my nap?” 

She shakes her head, though she starts to slowly sit up. “No, no,” she says, yawning. “It’s fine—I’ll survive.” 

His expression falls into one more calculating. 

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “Genuinely. Come on, you should get some sleep. My hands can wait until you’re awake again, Doc.”

He smiles slightly at her, but he nods. “Alright.” 

She pushes up from her sleeping bag with another yawn and a wince, and she climbs free, slipping her shoes back on, and she nods Félix to the sleeping bag. “If you want to just take that one because it’s already set up and warm, you should.” She stretches her arms up over her head with a groan, squeezing her eyes shut, and she wanders to the edge of the camp they have set up beneath one of the outposts on the property once she’s done.

Behind her, Félix takes off his boots before slipping into the space she vacated, exhaling slowly at the warmth. He sets an alarm on his phone before softly calling out to her, “They should employ you as a human heater, Dupain-Cheng.” 

She looks back at him, rolling her eyes, but she smiles a bit. “Get to sleep, Doc Frosty.”

He does, after only a short while, and then Marinette is surrounded by silence.

At 3:30 a.m., Alya’s voice crackles over the radio. “Can everyone check in for them and their partners?”

Nino is the first to reply, yawning into his walkie talkie. “Kagami and Nino, accounted for. Kagami’s sound asleep and I’m trying to be wide awake.” 

“Adrien and Luka are accounted for,” Luka radioes next. “Nino, stop yawning over the radio—it’s catching.” 

“Got it,” Nino says with a laugh. 

“Adrien asleep?” Alya asks. 

“Yup,” Luka says. 

“Marinette?” Alya then radioes. 

“Here with Félix sleeping,” she replies into the radio.

“Good,” Alya says. “Anyone need anything?” 

A chorus of ‘no’s answers her. 

“Great. Check-in over. Next one is at 4. Try not to fall asleep.”

Marinette occupies herself by sipping at a Rockstar and eating some of her snacks from before as she thinks on what had happened with Félix at her trap. Before she realizes it, it’s 4 a.m. and the boy himself is crawling out of the sleeping bag over to sit next to her with a wince of his own at the pull at his stitches after pulling on his boots. He brings the warm blanket with him, for which Marinette is grateful, even if he does sit close beside her to slip it around them both. It’s still warm and soft from sleep, which has Marinette’s blinks lengthening and her head lolling to one side before she’s rudely startled awake by Alya’s voice crackling from the radio pulled up to her chest. 

“4 a.m. check-in. Who’s awake and who’s asleep?” 

Félix only reaches over to gently press Marinette’s finger over the button to speak. “Marinette is falling asleep again,” he says, deeply amused, “but I’m awake.” 

“Has she got another Rockstar?” Luka asks, laughing a bit. 

Félix raises a brow at her. 

She rolls her eyes, but she pulls the remaining Rockstar from a pocket of her pants with her freehand. 

“She does,” Félix says, pressing at her finger over the radio again. 

“Have her down it,” Alya says. “We’ve got at least another two hours out here.” 

“Oh, hell,” Marinette says, pressing at the radio herself. “Next time we need to make sure I factor longer naps into this shit.”

Félix smiles a bit at her cursing—another sign of her tiredness, he’s sure—and he shakes his head. 

After a moment, Luka’s voice crackles through the radio. “Me and Adrien are awake, though.” 

“Same with me and Kagami,” Nino says. 

Distantly, on the other side of the radio, Kagami can be heard saying, somewhat sleepily, “It’s Kagami and I, Nino.” 

Nino laughs through the radio, but his voice drops off as he lifts his finger from the talk button.

Beside Marinette, Félix puts his chin atop his arms over his knees pulled up to his chest. He closes his eyes.

Marinette, after a moment of hesitation, leans against him slightly. I know you miss her, she wants to say.  

“Well, Chloé and I are awake, too,” Alya says, sighing. “I’m so ready for this case to be over, though.” 

“You can say that again,” Luka says tiredly.  

“Can we take a nap after this?” Kagami asks, nearer to hers and Nino’s radio. 

“Pleasepleaseplease!” Chloé says through hers and Alya’s. 

“I can text my mother,” Félix says softly, only speaking to Marinette. She relays the sentiment to the rest of the gang, who responds gratefully. 

Kagami, as expected, is silent, but she doesn’t protest.

“Awesome,” Adrien says, sighing into the radio.  

“Oh, but now that you’re awake and it’s closer to 4:30,” Nino says, yawning, “what’s the plan with this trap, Marinette? Should we prepare anything or get ready for anything?”

Marinette clicks the button to speak into the radio, a bit of a smile on her face. “Nope, nothing has to be prepared or done—Félix and I got it all set up, and all we have to do is wait. As soon as we have a good idea of where the creatures are coming from, I’ll need you all to get to the furthest safe place from that direction without entering the clearing where Félix and I set up the trap. Once the creatures arrive, I’ll draw them towards the trap, where they’ll be caught and shut down.” 

There’s a long beat of silence before Félix turns to her, frowning. “I’m coming with you to draw them towards the trap.” 

Before Marinette can respond, Adrien’s voice comes weakly through the radio. “Is there any way we could help you draw them towards the trap? So there’s less chance of you getting hurt?”

Marinette winces, looking at Félix. 

“I’ll help you,” Félix says quietly, meeting her gaze. He pauses, swallowing thickly at the memory of the discoveries and conversations just hours before. “Let me help you, please.”

“Marinette?” Alya asks, voice crackling through the radio. 

Still looking at Félix, she clicks on the radio. “I’ll let Félix help me,” she says hesitantly. 

There’s a sigh of relief through the radio before Adrien says, “Good. Be careful, please?” 

Félix is the one who reaches for the radio, clicking it on. “We will,” he replies before releasing his finger from the speak button. 

It’s several long minutes of silence before either Marinette or Félix move, and it’s only with another voice crackling through the radio. 

“Kagami and I hear the creatures coming down the street,” Nino says quietly. “What should we do?”

Marinette is the one who answers. “Confirm the direction they’re coming from and radio it to us all. We’ll adjust our positions from there, but try and keep out of sight if you can when checking the creatures’ positions.” 

“Got it,” Nino says. A few minutes later, as everyone is gathering up their things and cleaning up, readying to move at Nino’s next message, their radios crackle again. “They’re headed towards us from the left of the entrance. Currently, they’re about 50 yards away.” 

Marinette is quick to radio back. “Alright, then get out of there. Everyone come over with your supplies to the outpost where Félix and I are. I want you all to keep the supplies put away and with you, and I want you to tuck yourselves as far away out of sight as you can but with an opening to run for it if needbe. Félix and I will keep a radio on us both and we’ll radio if there’s a change in plans. Remember, move around the clearing where we stood earlier.” 

No one responds to her over the radio, but neither her nor Félix worry, putting away the supplies with them into an open space where the gang can find them and grab them. A few moments later, Luka, Adrien, Alya, and Chloé arrive. Alya and Luka take Félix and Marinette’s supplies, nodding to them, and they tuck themselves against the back corner behind the outpost, quickly moving some debris to form a wall so there’s a small space for them to hide. As they’re finishing up, Nino and Kagami arrive, and the gang—minus Félix and Marinette—hide in this small space, readying to run from behind the wall and to another point of safety if needed, but hunkering down to wait until then.

As the creatures come closer, their heads just barely visible over the fence around the abandoned property, Félix and Marinette run from the outpost where the rest of the gang is hidden. They move to just outside the clearing where the trap is, and Marinette clicks a few buttons on her makeshift remote from her trap. From the ground, the lights flicker red once more, and a buzz begins to fill the air. 

“What’d you do?” Félix whispers, slipping into a ready stance as the creatures’ heads come around one side of the fenced-in property. 

“Upped the voltage,” Marinette whispers back, slipping the remote into a pocket of her pants. 

He only nods, swallowing and tensing in anticipation. 

Slowly, the creatures lumber around to the entrance of the property. As soon as they cross the threshold, a violent change overcomes them. They both roar, eyes focusing on Marinette and Félix, and they slowly stalk forward, tossing aside debris and crushing things with ease. As they come closer, Félix reaches over for Marinette’s hand. He squeezes it gently, but he pulls her back a step with him. 

She begrudgingly follows. 

With every two steps of the creatures, who growl and roar at them, Marinette and Félix take another step back from the clearing. 

Their breaths come out slow and steady as they watch danger lumber closer and closer, but their hearts beat rapidly in increasing fear. 

They’re about two yards from the edge of the trap when the creatures step over a bit of debris and into the clearing. The buzz that had been in the air grows louder, and white-hot and blue electricity arcs through the air above the ground, wrapping around the creatures’ legs. There’s a low, mechanical groan and screech from both creatures. The lights of their eyes flicker and short out, and they both fall to their knees. 

With this further contact with the ground, the electricity in the air and above the ground builds, sizzling and popping. Félix yanks Marinette back, pulling her behind some more debris and dragging her away from the trap. 

They’re nearing the outpost where the rest of the gang has been hiding when there’s the sound of a small explosion behind them. Marinette glances over her shoulder, eyes widening, as she sees smoke start to rise. With a crash, the creatures fall fully onto the ground. 

Marinette is grabbing her radio and clicking on the speak button as the first flames start to build. “Call 911!” she cries, stumbling as Félix pulls her along to safety. “Fire!” 

~*~

The first to arrive to the abandoned property are the firefighters. As they’re putting out the fire and guiding the gang around the flames and to safety, the sheriff, the mayor, and a few officers arrive to the scene. 

Marinette has only started to explain who the culprit is before she’s stopped. The gang stands just behind her, a tired crew ready for a long nap, and the sheriff and mayor stand before her, upset and irritated. 

“You’ll need to arrest Tomoe Tsurugi,” Marinette starts. “She made these creatures, or, at the very least, authorized their creation, and she’s been sending them all over town to wreck havoc in order to rake in money for leading the reconstruction and rebuilding processes on these properties. You—”

The mayor raises a hand, his other one pinching at the bridge of his nose. “Excuse me,” he says flatly. “I have to make a call. Raincomprix, make sure these children don’t speak.” 

“Should I arrest them, sir?” 

“No,” Mayor Agreste says sharply, already walking away and bringing his phone to his ear. 

Raincomprix turns, confused, back to the gang and Kagami, but he glares at them after a moment, settling his hand on his gun at his holster. “Not a word,” he says, attempting to be threatening. 

The gang, for once, is obedient. 

Adrien, Félix, and Chloé keep their gaze on Mayor Agreste. Luka, Nino, and Kagami watch as the firefighters behind them put out the fire. Marinette and Alya keep their gazes on Sheriff Raincomprix and the hand on his gun.

After several minutes, the mayor comes back, lips in a thin, tight line. He settles his gaze on Marinette, who glances at him. “No more of this,” he says flatly. “No more traps, no more investigations, no more trying to fix things—” 

Marinette narrows her eyes, but before she can speak, the mayor continues. 

“—Or you will face the consequences. Do you understand, Ms. Dupain-Cheng?” 

She can only close her eyes, hands curling into fists at her sides. She turns away, shoulders rising closer to her ears. She opens her eyes, then, settling her gaze on the ground. 

No one from the gang speaks, unsure of what to even say. 

The mayor turns away, sighing, and he pinches the bridge of his nose again. “Raincomprix,” he says quietly. 

Marinette raises her gaze to the sheriff, eyes widening slightly at the hand tightening on his gun. She moves one foot, shifting to stand more between the sheriff and the gang.

“Yes, sir?” Raincomprix asks, not looking at Marinette, dismissive of her.

“You, at least, understand the consequences I speak of?” 

The sheriff turns his gaze on the gang, now, his lips twitching in amusement. His hand unclips his gun from his holster, but he doesn’t remove it. Marinette’s eyes narrow again, her muscles tensing all throughout her body. “I understand, sir,” he says. 

“Very well,” the mayor says, before sighing again. 

The gangs’ gazes, aside from Marinette’s, return to the fire finally being quenched. 

At about 5 a.m., Tomoe Tsurugi is guided onto the abandoned property by an officer who had been keeping guard at the entrance of the property. Kagami stiffens beside the gang, and she steps behind them carefully. 

Wordlessly, they move to surround her, still standing behind a tense, protective Marinette at their head. 

Tomoe reaches the place where the mayor, the sheriff, and the gang stands. She’s frowning, but she doesn’t appear surprised to have been called there so early in the morning. 

The mayor looks to the gang instead of Tomoe. They ready to defend their accusations, but instead, he simply says, “Raincomprix, arrest Tomoe Tsurugi for several accounts of property damage. I’ll specify numbers and other charges later today when she’s processed.”

The gang, except Marinette, who still watches the sheriff intensely, looks sharply to Tomoe. Her expression is still flat and unsurprised, and she doesn’t resist when the sheriff takes her wrists, handcuffing her behind her back. Still, before she’s lead away, she says, “Kagami.” Her voice had not been sharp, but it had also not been anything kind. 

Kagami hesitates only a moment. “Yes, Mother?” 

Tomoe’s expression doesn’t change. “Arrangements have been made for you to stay with Amélie Graham de Vanily while I am not in a position to be your guardian. Be for her as you are for me.” 

Kagami frowns sharply, tensing, but she says, “Very well.”

Tomoe nods, and then the sheriff leads her away. 

The mayor follows, not even looking at Adrien or the gang, but he waves dismissively at them. “Get out of here, children.” 

Marinette leads the way to the van, tense as ever, but she sits in the back, extremely quiet. Kagami, seeing her as the best chance to avoid conversation, sits beside her. Adrien, Luka, and Nino file into the back of the van as well, and Félix drives, with Chloé and Alya beside him on the bench seat.

The first place they go is a Starbucks, where some of them order coffees or hot chocolates, but mostly they order food. They park in the parking lot, eating and quietly drinking their things. 

After a while, Nino speaks up. “Where should we go?” he asks softly, looking at Kagami. 

She looks up at him, frowning. 

“It’s up to Kagami, I think,” Félix says quietly from the front of the van. 

“I agree,” Adrien says.

Luka nods. “Same here—your mom… yeah.” He frowns. “I’m sorry about your mom.” 

Kagami closes her eyes, her hands clasped around her hot chocolate. “I… suppose I have to speak with Amélie Graham de Vanily.” 

“We can call her,” Félix says, voice still quiet. 

“I’d rather talk in person,” Kagami says, frowning. She opens her eyes, staring into her hot chocolate. 

Félix starts the van, but he glances in the rearview mirror. “Nino?” 

“We can do that,” he says, nodding and meeting Félix’s gaze in the mirror. “I’ll text her that we’re headed over.”

Without another word, Félix drives to his house, his hands tight on the steering wheel. Nino lets him know that his mother has responded, and he only nods. 

The rest of the car ride is silent. 

~*~

When the gang arrives at Félix and Nino’s house, they file out of the van quietly. Amélie has the door already open for them, waving them in with a small, sad smile. She leads them to the living room, where they all sit in the main portion of the area. 

“I heard about Tomoe,” Amélie says gently, looking at Kagami. “I’m very sorry.” 

Kagami only nods, gaze on the coffee table. “She said I’m to stay with you while she’s not in a position to be my guardian.” 

Amélie nods. “Yes, the arrangements were made for you at birth, and similar arrangements were made to have Félix in Tomoe’s care should my position as his guardian be compromised.” 

Both Kagami and Félix look up sharply at Amélie, eyes wide. “What?” they both say, and, hearing the other say the same, they glance to each other before looking back at Amélie. 

The gang stays silent, watching this all with surprised and confused expressions.

Amélie nods, serious. “Neither of us had ever thought the possibility would occur, but… It’s a good thing the plans were in place, it seems.”

Kagami frowns. “I want to stay on my own—in my mother’s home, alone.” 

Amélie’s expression softens. “Kagami, dear, you’re only seventeen.” 

“Then I’ll get emancipated,” she says calmly, raising her chin. Her lips tremble the slightest. 

Amélie watches her for a long moment. “Would you like to talk alone, Kagami?”

Kagami hesitates, hands clenching in her lap. “No. I’m fine.”

Félix looks to Nino, who nods. 

“Hey,” Félix says, tilting his chin to Marinette. “Do you want to go take a nap upstairs? You, Adrien, Chloé, and Luka?”

Nino stands and he reaches over to Alya, taking one of her hands. She accepts, standing, but he surprises her by twirling her into a hug, murmuring something in her ear. She nods, and she follows him upstairs.

Marinette glances to Kagami, but she nods and stands. Adrien, Chloé, and Luka follow suit, and they head upstairs, Adrien explaining how they can lay out two mattresses on the floor of Félix’s bedroom. 

Félix is the last to stand, but he walks over to his mother, kissing her on the forehead. He squeezes her hand gently before he’s leaving the living room for the kitchen. 

He briefly texts the gang, asking them what they’d like for breakfast, before he starts making bacon, fried eggs, and waffles. 

In the living room, Kagami continues to look steadily at Amélie, though her lower lip is now clenched between her teeth to keep from trembling. 

Amélie only looks at her softly before moving to sit beside her rather than across from her. “Kagami, dear,” she murmurs, “what can I do for you?” 

Kagami ducks her head close to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut tight. “I—I just want to be home,” she says quietly. “Can you let me go home?” 

Amélie reaches an arm around Kagami’s shoulders, pressing a gentle kiss to her temple. “Dear, I promised your mother I’d do anything to keep you safe. I promised her I’d house you,” she murmurs, “and feed you, and clothe you, and I’d love you as my own. And I intend to do everything in my power to do those things, Kagami.” 

Kagami still sits tense under Amélie’s arm, but she quickly moves a hand to cover her mouth, just in time for a sob to wrack through her. The sound barely escapes her lips, muffled for the most part. 

“Oh,” Amélie whispers, slipping her other arm around Kagami. She hugs her close, only murmuring sweet things to her amidst her sobs.

After a while, Kagami’s sobs quiet. “Why—why did she do this to me?” she says, voice thick with tears. 

Amélie frowns, shoulders drooping. She leans them both back against the back of the couch, and she quietly says, “I don’t know, Kagami. All I know is that she wanted you safe, here with me now.” 

“I just—I just want to be home, though,” she cries, leaning against Amélie some. “I just want to go home.” 

“I know, baby,” Amélie whispers. Tears fill her eyes, and her lower lip trembles. Still, she repeats, “I know.” 

“Can’t I just stay at home until I graduate?” she mumbles, voice catching on another sob. 

Amélie shakes her head, closing her eyes. “It won’t be safe for you, now—with everything your mother and her company was facing as backlash before the—before the creatures, that alone would make it unsafe. But now… now, it’s even less safe.” She pauses, swallows thickly. “There’s a reason your mother arranged for you to stay with me. She knows I’ll keep you safe.”  

Kagami sobs again, again and again, turning her face against Amélie’s shoulder. 

She feels impossibly small, sat there on the couch beside Amélie. The weight of the world rests on her shoulders without her mother there to even stand before her with her reliably heavy expectations and heavier words. 

After her father’s death, Kagami had felt like the universe was opening its large maw to swallow her whole. Still, she had had her mother, strong and resilient and achingly ever-present at her side. 

Now, though—now, she’s alone. She has no one—no family, no friends, no home of her own. She’s been told by her only rock that she must rely on the mother of and the boy who she has come to despise and miss far, far too much. This same boy has hurt her, has lied to her, has avoided her, has ignored her, has made her feel impossibly alone. (The same boy has cherished her, has wiped away her tears, has held her, has been her confidant as he confided in her, has made her feel impossibly special and cared for.) 

How could she possibly trust him? How could she possibly rely on him? How could she possibly rely on his mother, whom she knows far less? How could she—how could she rely on the only thing left in her life that has become so shaky and unstable these past few months?

She thinks it might break her. 

~*~

When she finishes crying, Amélie kisses her temple again. “You’re so strong and brave,” she says, “but you don’t have to be strong or brave anymore, or at least not be that way alone, dear.”

Kagami is quiet, wiping at her face and the remaining tears there. 

“Will you stay with us, Kagami?” she asks quietly. “Will you let us take care of you?”

She hesitates a long, long moment. “I’m angry with Félix,” she says softly. 

Amélie smiles, just a bit. “I know.” 

“I… I miss him,” she says, voice softer and a lot more unsteady. 

Amélie still smiles, though it’s gentler. “I know.” 

“If I stay—if I stay with you,” Kagami says, closing her eyes, “I… can I… can I have my normal life back?” 

Amélie nods slowly. “I’ll do my best to make sure you get to school on time, that you have regular meals, that you sleep regularly, that you can continue your studies and do whatever it is you’d like to do in the future,” she says gently. “I can’t promise that you won’t make friends, that you won’t be loved by more than just your mother, that you won’t be happy in different ways. I can’t promise those things, Kagami, but is that okay?” 

She hesitates again, breaths unsteady. “I… I suppose that’s alright, A-Amélie.” 

Amélie smiles. “Good. I have a guest room that you can have, then, and I’m sure the gang would love to help you move, if you’d accept their help.” 

“I… I might, then,” she says quietly, opening her eyes again. 

“First, though, I think Félix is making breakfast. Would you like to come with me to help him? You don’t have to, of course, but the offer is there.” 

Kagami looks at her hands, fiddling with them in her lap. “That… that would be nice.”

Amélie nods, and she carefully stands after a moment, holding out a hand to help Kagami up.

Kagami looks up at her, blinking slowly, and she blinks back another wave of tears. “Thank you,” she breathes, biting her bottom lip sharply. 

“Of course, dear,” Amélie says, smiling at her softly.

Kagami takes her hand up gratefully.

~*~

Kagami and Amélie help Félix in the kitchen with Amélie passing Kagami plates, silverware, condiments, and trivets and potholders, all of which Kagami carefully and methodically puts on the table. Once they’re finished, Félix goes upstairs to wake the gang, and Kagami helps Amélie bring the food to the table. They sit and wait quietly for Félix and the gang, and Amélie helps Kagami get servings of bacon, fried eggs, and waffles before she serves herself as well. 

As they’re cutting and preparing their own food, the gang comes back downstairs, all of them sleepy and bleary-eyed except for Félix. Still, they perk up at the sight of food, and they eagerly sit and get together their own plates of food.

Breakfast today is a quiet affair after the night’s events and the morning’s consequences. 

Once they’re finished, Amélie broaches the topic of moving Kagami’s things from her house to the extra guest room upstairs, and the gang happily agrees to help. Kagami, grateful, but unable to express it, can only smile weakly and nod. 

After many of them change into different clothes and a few shower, they head over to Kagami’s place in the van with some boxes, Félix again driving. 

They arrive at the Tsurugi residence after a little bit, and Kagami lets them all through the front door with a key. They follow her upstairs, silent and trying to hold back their own curiosity, and she leads them into her room, motioning for her bed. 

“You can set the boxes there,” she murmurs, turning to her desk. She steps forward, pushing her chair with her backpack in it away, and she looks down at her neatly ordered setup.

Nino and Luka set the boxes under their arms onto her bed, but Adrien looks carefully at Kagami. Félix stares at the floor, and Marinette, Alya, and Chloé look around the room. 

“What all would you like us to do?” Adrien asks, voice gentle. 

Kagami hesitates, tilting her head. When she finally speaks, her voice cracks with unshed tears. “I don’t know.” 

Félix finally moves, taking a large step away and towards the door. 

Kagami looks sharply over, though her eyes are somewhat downcast. No one can see her tears at this angle, but they hear them when she says, voice trembling, “Don’t you dare leave now.” 

Félix goes completely still, though his expression contorts into some semblance of distress. 

The others don’t move or speak, even as Kagami moves towards Félix with long, but slow, unsteady steps, raising her chin. Her tear-filled eyes sparkle dimly in the low, winter-blue morning light. “Don’t you dare leave now,” she repeats, voice a whisper. Félix looks away, ducking his head, and he frowns sharply, squeezing his eyes shut tight. She brings her hands, in closed fists, to his chest, and she says, angry and more steady, “Don’t leave now, after you’ve finally got what you wanted. My mother—she’s gone, now!”

Adrien and Marinette step forward, and Chloé clenches her hands into fists. Alya, Nino, and Luka frown. 

Félix opens his eyes slightly, looking at the gang, and he shakes his head. 

They step back, but they look unhappy about it. 

Kagami hits his chest with both her fists, though the motion is weak, he knows, and nothing close to her usual ability and force. “I’m all alone, now!” she shouts. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

He shakes, but he lifts trembling hands to hover over her fists against his chest. “I never wanted this,” he whispers. “I never wanted to hurt you, Kagami.” 

“But you did,” she cries, voice low and trembling. “You hurt me and I’m all alone, now.” Slowly, she leans her head against his hands, against her fists, against his chest, against him. She shudders with a sob. “You hurt me, and now I’m all alone—”

Félix shakes his head, trying to take in a full breath, but he can’t seem to open his lungs beneath the crushing guilt. He knows—he knows that he had never wanted this, that he hadn’t done this to her, hadn’t made her all alone. He knows—he knows she’s just angry. 

But still, it hurts him, too. 

“You’re not alone,” he whispers, turning his cheek to rest against the top of her head. He slips his hands from between her hands and her face and he moves his arms around her shoulders, holding her close and firmly. “I won’t—I won’t push myself into your life,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut tight against the tears welling there, “but I won’t let you be alone. You’ll—you’ll have my mother, Adrien, and Adrien’s friends, you’ll have all of them and they’ll care about you just like I—just like I—” Just like I do.

Kagami shakes her head against his chest, clenching her fists into the fabric of the hoodie he wears. “I—I need you, too,” she whispers, crying. 

“No,” he murmurs, holding her tightly, “you never have. You—”

Abruptly, she pushes him away. “Stop,” she says firmly.

He startles, his upset expression coming into view, but she has her head turned away, tears still rolling down her cheeks. What did I say? he wants to ask. 

He doesn’t have the chance before she’s speaking again.

“You and Adrien can pack up my desk,” she says quietly, angrily. She then turns away, back towards the gang, who look at her with uneasy expressions. “Chloé and Marinette, if you could handle my dresser while Luka and Alya pack up my closet? Nino, I’ll need your help with my bedsheets and pillows.” 

She sniffles, taking a small breath, and then she pushes past the gang towards her bed, grabbing one blanket and folding it up roughly. 

Adrien nods, and he takes a box and moves to Félix. He takes one of Félix’s arms, looking at him gently, and he moves him towards Kagami’s desk.

Luka and Alya take another box hesitantly, moving to Kagami’s closet, and, while Nino goes forward to help Kagami with her blankets and pillows, Marinette and Chloé stare warily at Kagami. After a moment, they, too, move forward, grabbing a box and going to Kagami’s dresser. 

No one speaks at all while they pack Kagami’s things, even despite the myriad of emotions and thoughts they all have concerning not just Kagami and Félix, but Tomoe, her arrest, and her involvement in the old gang as it relates to the case today and the latest clue from Lady E. 

They don’t really speak when they take her things out to the van, either, nor as they drive back to Amélie’s and bring Kagami’s things up to the remaining guest room. Instead, they leave her to her own things as she quietly, softly requests, and, when Félix goes to his room, shutting the door behind him, they hesitate on the landing of the stairs before they finally head down to the living room, though they’re unable to escape their uneasiness.

Notes:

wow what a doozy what a rollercoaster. am i the only one who wants to take a long ass frigging nap after that or. or is that just me. maybe it's just me i haven't been sleeping well or much lol. but also damn reading about how much sleep the gang isn't getting and then all that emotional stuff it was like wowooww. sleep sounds. so good right now. so let me know did that also make you tired or do i just need more sleep

felix i adore you. YES MARINETTE they care about you for you not for what you can or can not do for them. (readers take notes. take notes. are you taking notes for yourselves.) (also side note i for real am going to take a twelve minute power nap before more packing i am falling asleep typing this lol)

felix bandaging her hands...... im quite ill yes why do you ask. the gang's interactions? ugh i need more why didn't past me write more. past me. do better. do betterrrr. do better past me. do better future me. we need more full gang interactions sleepy sadie.

ohmgh uhm so the sheriff the mayor uhhhhh theyre dickwads theyre clowns theyre soooo 🤡🤡🤡 the hand tightening on the gun the "no more of this no more traps no more investigations no more trying to fix things or you Will face the consequences do you understand ms dupain-cheng" him SINGLING her out. i know i wrote all that but damnnnnnn. hellooooo......... wow did past me eat and leave no crumbbsss or what.... (no for real did i)

TOMOE YOU SUCK ASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

how yall feel about amelie though lol. i did cry yeah. yes tomoe does remind me of my own parents now. yes amelie does remind me of the friend's mom im going to stay with soon. yeah im totally normal about how my life is slowly becoming this fic. yeah it's not really fucking weird at all. "i just want to be home i just want to go home." "there's a reason your mother arranged for you to stay with me. she knows i'll keep you safe." (DID SHE KNOW THIS WOULD HAPPEN? DID SHE KNOW SHE WOULD BE THIS WAY?) fuck you tomoe. fuck you tomoe. yeah i did cry what of it.

ohmgh feligami nation i'm sorryyyyyyyy. six more chapters though until yall will adoreeeee meeeeeee. forever and everrrrrr. (well. yeah lol.) anyways. "don't leave now, after you've finally got what you've wanted. my mother--she's finally gone, now!" (he never wanted that. he doesn't get to say that.) "i need you, too." "no, you never have" "stop. (don't say that.)" "(what did i say wrong?)" like UGHGHHGHGHGH what if i FRIGGING CRIEDDDDD

anyways i am so normal about everything as we can tell. are you guys normal. are you. i need espresso and a nap so so so bad. just found out i probably won't be getting a nap. my day is crushed is ruined is so awful #slight_exaggeration. unless i pack so fast at the speed of light anyways i really should post this chapter now but i love u guys and hope you all are WELL and remember how AWESOME you are and that you don't take no shit from NO ONE !!! at ALL !!!! ever !!!!! and i will post again around the 19th of september 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 please let me know what you thought of today's chapters !!!! 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

Notes:

comments are very welcome! they may even encourage faster updates, if you’re nice about it <3 :D