Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Calico had no time to gauge his new form, the bullets following his every bound proved this to be a ‘learn on the fly’ experience. He wasn’t satisfied with the smoke as cover, everything about this day told him that settling would be the death of him, so he shot forward with no clear direction, shooting through gaggles of blind soldiers, kicking off one’s head to flip back into the fray, sliding under jagged machinery and launching himself to the first solid wall he could see in frenzied zig-zag motions.

He was chaos, a moving target with no plan to predict, just pure instinct and luck bouncing him around the corners of the room as a man-shaped ping pong ball. He had to keep moving, had to keep the soldiers with no consistent opportunity for a shot; not until he’d ran his claws through every weapon he could find.

Action was also just the best way to get to know your body. The first thing he noted about his new form was his tail, no longer sharing the leather texture of his suit, it was now something long and thick, curling up like a cobra that whipped over his shoulder and pierced the closest soldier’s hand before he could make a move to shoot. From that brief glimpse, he got to see that the Peacock fan had become the tip, creating a sharp and jagged hood that left deep slashes in the metal floor when he let it drag behind him.

His body suit still remained, though now the top half was splashed with blue. However, when some brave soul charged him with some sort of electrically charged knife (he was sure there was some technobabble that made it comparable to his faux armour), he realized the extra weight sitting on his shoulders. The blade passed through the folds of long coat, looking more like a prototype of Argos’ minus the hood and with more black with blue strips trailing down to the jagged coat tails.

Calico drilled the man into the ground with his heel, ripping the blade from his chest, the pain of the exit completely lost to him, and easily chucked the knife down to pin the man to the floor through his sleeve. Feeling certifiably impressive, Calico brought his blue gloved fingers up to straighten his new, thick collar where his bell, now pink, sat at the top of the bodysuit’s zip. He only noted that the blurred edge of his vision when trying to take in his own nose and lips showed the ends of a black domino mask over green skin.

The baton came out just as it always did, extending in a wide, spinning arc as he swept through the room, knocking dozens of soldier-shaped bowling pins onto their assess. It was in this moment that he allowed himself to pause, to let the world continue in slow motion as his gaze fell on the railing, the only thing separating the people from the plunge into the water works below. It was his only escape route.

He'd like to think he was quick, too quick for any of them to do anything but watch his rapidly retreating backside, but the doubt still lingered. If Luka was anything to go by, all they needed was one clean shot, whether it be while he was in front of them or while he was plunging into the deadly drop, and he’d one normal guy against an army built to fight demigods. He didn’t just have to make an exit, he had to leave his mark too.

And hey, Calico was all too happy to leave an impression.

With the backdrop of groaning bodies and screeching heels against metal as his backing track, Calico brought his hand up in front of his face, narrowing it down to two fingers pressed against his nose. He closed his eyes, pushed for the power to fill him whole, let it Chat Noir’s power become familiar to Calico’s body. He wasn’t looking for a hammer, he was looking for a scalpel; he wasn’t looking to kill these men if he could help it.

The energy travelled up his body in arcs, ending as an emerald glow stained with black sparks at the tip of his finger. “Cataclysm!”

His hand came down in one clean slash. This cataclysm didn’t escape him in a rapid burst of energy, nor did it sink into the first thing he touched and consume the whole. This wouldn’t be like the apple; this would be under his control. His mind sunk into the journey of the attack, outlining the very platform it hit with mental echoes that allowed him to visualize the shape, the weight, the presence of his target.

With this knowledge, his will guided the sharp blade of the cataclysm into the metal, embedding itself in between the atoms and letting out a controlled burst that spread in different directions. So many inches to cover, so many directions to consider, but not a piece went where he didn’t want it.

In the span of two seconds that stretched out into hours before him, the platform was ripped apart by the cataclysm, forming a deep gash right down the centre that ended by tearing through the railing. It did not destroy the platform it cracked it, it destabilized it, so that as Calico charged forward and threw himself over the edge, the rest of the soldiers were left to hoof it back to solid ground as they could no longer consider the platform safe.

Calico didn’t intend to test how refreshing the sewer water at the bottom would be, even if these tunnels oddly enough didn’t have the stench of a sewer. As soon as he was out of their sight, he flip in the air and deployed his baton once more, extending it to stab into his landing zone and let him spin around the pole until he met the ground.

“Phew,” he sighed as he clambered back onto stable ground. “Not bad for a new unification on the fly.”

The Peacock felt much weightier on him than the cat or rabbit ever had, even as he accumulated to the new form, there was something lumbering in his chest that followed every step. He supposed it was because of the possibilities that surrounded it. The other miraculous he’d gotten to use had a single ability, same as a tool, with many uses to develop. The likes of the Peacock and the Butterfly were an entire toolbox that could have any tool he could possibly need.

His new feathered tail coiled around his waist for convenience, leaving the tip flat against his chest as he ventured down the tunnels. All he had to do was pluck a feather, pull out an emotion and then unleash it as a doll that almost seemed to be a living being with unlimited potential. Indecipherable echoes rained down from above, no words to make out, but he could recognise the frustration and confusion. If any of the soldiers could follow him down here, it would take them too long to catch up to him.

He knew these tunnels pretty well by this point, knew all of the closest escape routes he needed to bypass the crowds and task force barricades that surrounded the mansion after the reveal. He doubted that his pursuers had the same knowledge; his only threat now was picking the exit that would have the least task force presence. Calico didn’t expect that the soldiers upstairs were anything more than the welcoming party, that there wasn’t an entire army stomping through the streets right now trying to pin down all the places he could pop up without warning.

Still, no matter how much he thought ahead and secured himself, his stomach still turned at the depth of all the variables he still didn’t know. Naturally, the primary one was the rest of the team. No one had responded to his call out, and for all he knew that could be the Task Force figuring out a way to block his reception. It was too high a possibility that they too had faced an ambush for him to hope that they were simply busy with normal, harmless things. He could only trust that they could escape on their own and find their way back to him; they’d probably double back to the Eiffel Tower as a meeting point if his communications weren’t getting through.

Instinctively, his thoughts went to Nathalie, to the fact that she was the only one who was supposed to be in the mansion, and she was unaccounted for. And he hated that. He couldn’t even explain it away as being only worried about Tikki and the ladybug miraculous.

He’d like to think that if the task force had fought her, there would have been evidence of a fight on his way to the ambush. If the task force had captured her, he had to assume that Colt would have been quick to rub it in his face that the ladybug miraculous was now theirs. Then again, Colt didn’t bother trying to bring up that they’d recovered the consequence miraculous from the safe.

Few things were solid, most things were uncertain; and the path of mossy brick work disappearing into the dark boarders of his night vision didn’t help that.

It didn’t take him too long for his cat ears to discern the rushing of the waterways and the rustle of crumbling stone from the heavy boots popping off their heels in slow, heavy steps trying to silence their approach. He didn’t react just yet, simply guiding himself through his mental map, pushing onward to a turn that opened up into a flooded intersection. Calico worked best with a lot of room to move about.

As he considered this new information, he plucked a feather from his tail-fan and held it up to his nose. Fortunately for him, it seemed his allergies were considerate enough to not be triggered by his own feathers.

There was no way soldiers dropped down here soon enough to be this close, even if they immediately had ropes prepared. That meant these guys were probably already down here. Calico felt stupid for not considering that Colt would already have men in the sewers blocking off exits. How many there could be wasn’t obvious. His senses were picking up three sets of bodies approaching him, but there could be more hiding.

Calico stared into the feather, brushing his thumb up and down the spine. This was a powerful weapon, could be transformed into anything his emotions could shape; but that also made it easy to waste. He couldn’t risk using it straight away, not until he had a handle of the threat; then he could tailor a sentimonster to it.

It didn’t help that it only just struck him that he hadn’t used any miraculous other than that cat and the ladybug since his powers ‘matured’ into bumping up how many cataclysms he could use before needing to recharge. He had no idea if that maturity upgrade was universal, or if it only applied to the miraculous that he had plenty of experience with.

The room he found himself in was an abandoned one, a part of the infrastructure that had caved in during an akuma attack. Due to some circumstantial conditions Adrien never quite understood, the miraculous cure just reset it to the state it was in one second before it crumbled under it’s own weight. It left this big, cave-like chamber where multiple tunnels has their walls broken through to create an intersection the size of a small lake. The middle had the curved destroyed ceiling held up by a pillar of rubble and junk that had floated in and compacted together.

As soon as his foot hit the edge of the walkway, putting him just over the murky water with the reflection offering a dim look at his hair drowned in blue, he acted. He propped his baton over his shoulder, triggered the extension, having one end shoot through the opening he strolled through and stab into the wall with enough force to get the stone crumbling around it. He only narrowly missed Weevil’s head, sending the man sprawling on his back.

“I told you he could hear us,” Smith's voice rang out.

Fortunately, her voice didn’t drown out the sound of Thompson whipping around the corner, a disruption rifle in hand. He managed to fire off a shot just before Calico used the extension of the pole to shoot him off over the lake. With full confidence in his aim, Calico lashed out into Thompson’s direction with a sliver of a cataclysm, striking the gun’s barrel head on. It didn’t erase the weapon, but it burned through enough to disable it.

Thompson growled, tossing the now useless tool to the ground. “Of course he could hear us, no one could miss your big ass feet; now wonder your memento is has elephant legs.”

Weevil came back into view, scrambling to his feet, his face already beat red and glazed in sweat. “It don’t matter anyway,” he huffed. “We’ve got the furry bastard right where we want him.”

“Now that’s just misinformation,” Calico tutted, stabbing his staff into the ground and using it as a perch. “I mean, I just have furry ears, the rest’s all leather; even my feathers feel more like metal than anything else.”

“Good to know you still have a sense of humour, Agreste,” said Smith, emerging from the opening cracking her knuckles.

“Wasn’t hard to figure out that the sewers would be your only exit,” Thompson explained, converging on the group. “Don’t worry, we’re alone. The boss wouldn’t want what happens next to be public now; we can all be honest henrys.”

Calico shrugged. “You know who I am, big whoop. Really, secret identities lose their power when I’ve got no family left for you to harass.”

Smith mockingly brushed her knuckles up and down the corner of her eyes. “Awww, poor little rich boy is so lonely, and no one likes him. I can already hear the million-euro country song coming.”

Weevil let out a snort. “I guess money can’t make up for killing both your parents.”

Calico’s eyes narrowed into a predatory scowl, his lips unfurling to bare fangs. “Don’t you dare talk about my mother,” he hissed, starting to get more and more sick of Weevil’s face.

Confusion hit in quick succession; he could see the jab on his father’s side, assuming Lila made it no secret about Chat Noir’s cataclysm on Monarch. His mother, on the other hand, made no sense. Her disease had nothing to do with Chat Noir, and what the hell would Weevil know about his mother anyhow? Why was Chat even giving this made-up bullshit designed just to get a rise out of him any thought?

He reigned in his indignation for now, keeping calm, keeping alert as his eyes peered for any sudden butterfly sneaking in.

Thompson shook his head, tutting. “He’s right, Weevil; that was low.” He prodded at Weevil’s shoulder with his elbow, tongue hanging out as his laughter, sounding more like steam than breath, heaved out of him. “You know parents have gotta be a soft spot for him; he doesn’t actually have any, remember?”

“Right, I never would have expected it. Adrien Agreste, a sentifreak,” Smith said, clapping her hands together. “Had to be a cold son bitch to be killing your own all these years.”

Again with that ridiculous claim, an accusation so stupid it killed brain cells just by being uttered. Why even continue with this charade when there was no audience to convince anymore? Calico drew himself down low, a predator getting ready to pounce, before barking at them.

“You can drop the act down here, you’re not gonna gaslight me into thinking I’m not human,” he howled, trying to ignore how the Plagg and Duusu parts of him suddenly started to shudder and grimace for some reason. “If I were one of Lila’s infiltrators, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

That got the three stooges laughing their annoying little asses off. Calico could admit that this blatant petty disrespect towards his intelligence was starting to get to him; after all the shit this entire group put him through, they could at least have the decency not to be annoying about it.

“Ooooooh, he didn’t know,” Thompson howled, holding his stomach tight and doubling over.

“Look at him, he’s so confused,” Smith wheezed, wiping a tear from her eye. “I almost feel bad.”

Weevil just shrugged, he was clearly here for the more physical humiliation. “Hey, it’s not like he’s gonna live long enough to cry over it.”

Smith nodded along, whipping her head in between them with an excited little jolt. “Who cares about a sentimonster’s feelings anyway? I hear they don’t even have hearts.”

“This is perfect, really,” Weevil giggled, practically vibrating on the spot sneering down at Calico. “With how soft Colt was talking, I was getting worried I wouldn’t have a chance to wipe out the Agrestes.”

Smith, on the other hand, was just straight up skipping along, hopping from one foot to the other in some sort of warm up dance. “Yeah, yeah, the Rossi girl puts us through some grief; but she does deliver on some sweet music. And your bones crack-a-lacking are gonna be my new bedtime melody.”

The three lined up on the edge of the platform, gazing at Calico from across the water on the little junk island he was using as a perch.

“You three sure are cocky for a trio of goons who couldn’t even get themselves a win when they had superpowers,” Calico said it with confidence, but internally he knew that these three being willing to come down against him head on was a good sign that they were about to hit him with a painful twist.

“Oh, trust me, big boy,” Thompson spat, his point emphasized both by him grinding his fist into his palm and Smith’s hyena laugh. “You should have taken your chances up with the chumps.”

Calico crouched low, his new extended tail curving upwards like a scorpion raising it’s stinger. “Well,” he growled, “don’t keep me in suspense.”

Smith grinned. “I think you’re gonna love this, ya little snoop.”

Weevil clapped his hands together. “You get to finally see what that little harness you stole is all about.”

They turned on their heels, kicking off to throw their bodies into a side-ways look forward. All in sync, they collectively grabbed the flaps of their trench coats and, in one smooth motion, ripped them from their person and chucked them over their shoulders.

Underneath, over the sleeveless wife beaters and exposed scarred skin, there was the harness strapped firmly around their torso. This one was less bulky than the prototype Adrien stole, and instead of just the butterfly symbol on the cylinder jutting out of the centre, it was the butterfly and peacock symbol combined.

Arms were thrown out, hands turned into fists that drew back and smashed the symbol into place, bringing the rest of the harness to life with purple glow.

“Surface Pressure!”

“Observer!”

“Meltdown!”

Together, as the harness built up in blinding momentum that made the ground quake, they cried out, “Memento, miraculize me!”

The dark, sludge-like smoke of an akumatizations peppered with blue sparks of the amok sprang out of the ether to consume all three of them with its malevolent haze. It chewed through their weak, mortal forms of flesh and bones. It stripped away the weakness and let their bitter, putrid strength push through to the surface and expand.

Before Calico’s fearful eyes, the mementos materialized without assistance from either the butterfly or the peacock. Surface Pressure, Observer, and this containment suit that formed Meltdown – they were now but a simple transformation.

Lila had turned her mementos into a transformation in the same vein as a miraculous.

“How did that beat you were dropping earlier go?” Pressure hummed, slamming her titanic boot so hard against the floor the force turned the water into waves to lick at Calico’s heel. “Sure are cocky for a hero who couldn’t even take one of us on his own without cheats.”

Her torso dipped back as the rest of her body was thrown upwards, knee swinging over in a violent slash that shot out a shockwave surging towards Calico’s perch. Here, Calico’s new tail proved it was more than a fan holder, his body instinctively spinning around moving with it as it reached out and wrapped around rebar sticking out from the junk pillar and using it as leverage to yank the rest of him back.

Calico flipped over, falling into the junk pillar upside down and scrambling to climb around it just as Pressure’s attack hit the metal shore. She did not let up, hurling her lower body in ever which direction, sending out shocks waves with every step of her deadly dance; all while her torso remained unbendable with her arms in a permanent cross. The world being put on his back did nothing to dampen Calico’s speed, quickly leaping against gravity to dodge around the pillar’s surface, the jagged, lopsided objects being used as footholds.

“I hope that beat drop reminds you of the last time we tangled, Kitten.”

Oh, it reminded him plenty. Pressure was still a heavy encounter, her speed and power devastating when she had a clear shot at him. The Peacock unification buffed Calico’s agility a good amount, but that was still only allowing him to dodge her attacks by a hair; and he knew she was only playing at this for the moment. When she decided to get serious, she’d be springing across the length of lake in seconds trying to apply her surface pressure to his head.

He tried to end his dodges with a fake out, skidding along the side of the pillar, launching himself across to a near by wall with his baton reeled back like he was preparing to strike back with it. However, when she threw her shockwave in a quick draw to hit him before he extended his baton into her cheek, he let his legs shoot out and propel him off the wall. His body zipped over Surface Pressure’s head, and only then did he bring the baton down towards her; too fast for her to react.

At least, he would have if he wasn’t rudely reminded that Pressure wasn’t alone, and this wasn’t going to be an honourable 1v1 deal. He was forced to drop his baton for his tail to catch, throwing his arms up to block mid-air a fraction of a second before Observer’s psycho beam slammed into him at full force and carried him through the wall he just used as a springboard.

“NO CARDS UP SLEEVE. OBSERVER SEES ALL. OBSERVER IS SUPERIOR.”

Calico only had two seconds to run down his memory of Luka and Max’s assessment of Observer. Right, right, guy sees the future. No, he sees what actions you take so long as he can see you. Smoke from the impact of Calico’s landing obscured him for just a few seconds. He doesn’t know what you’re thinking, or why you do what you do; he just sees what you do. And he has laser beams for some reason.

A complete killjoy.

Weevil was still a complete unknown factor. He didn’t show off his powers right away, the small, rat-faced man now standing firm, and far too calm for Calico’s liking, concealed behind a cross between a radiation suit and a diver’s suit. For sure, this Meltdown was holding his cards close until he could really get the drop on Calico.

Still, Calico had to project confidence; he couldn’t give them an inch on any part of him.

“You see,” he hissed, hacking out a cough as the smoke cleared. “there’s two differences between the hero you fought back then and the hero you’re fighting right now.”

Before Observer could get another good look, Calico kicked his baton out, making it extend mid-air, one side stabbing through the spot just above his shoulder, and the other pinning Observer to the wall by his neck. Calico took this moment of confusion to push himself down the staff, a bit of a super powered kick to take off and the staff was turned into a make-shift zip line that Calico spun around.

This time, his heel managed to swipe across Pressure’s face. Enough to knock her on her ass; enough to piss her off.

“First, the guy you were fighting was only using one miraculous,” Calico continued, returning his baton to it’s original form just as he launched himself skyward.

The peacock feather almost seemed to thrum in his hand as he held it up high above him, holding it between his fingers as if it were a sharp weapon to throw. “Second, the guy you were fighting cared about saving you.”

He had no choice right now. No matter how much he wanted to get all the facts before bringing a sentimonster into the mix, Observer wouldn’t be straying pinned forever, and he needed to counter that future sight ability quickly. He just needed to figure out what emotion he could use to forge that counter.

From a certain point of view, it was fortunate for Calico that Meltdown was now spurred into attacking. As fortunate as one could find when powerful streams of acid were being shot at the ceiling and converted into rain that you had to dance in between.

“Gah! Quick!” Meltdown cried. “Make sure he doesn’t get a chance to use that feather.”

Observer joined the mix once more, his beam blasts burning a trail into the stone Calico was two seconds ahead of. Calico was considering whether his fear could be moulded into a creature that disables targets by driving them into a panic through projecting his fears.

“How are you missing!?” Meltdown screeched. “You’re supposed to know exactly where he’s going to be.”

Observer yelling sounded like someone dropping their microphone in water. “PEACOCK CAT. SUPERIOR SPEED.”

Guess knowing where Calico would be didn’t amount to much when you can’t aim for crap.

“Don’t worry, I got this!”

Pressure was back on her feet, and already she was off them, breaking free from the ground and turning gravity into a blunt instrument. It almost looked like she was skating across the air, held up by causing little explosions under her heel that propelled her forward. She was skilled enough to recognise that a direct charge was going to be dodges, so instead she went for diversion. Calico was kept on his toes, his baton his only method of controlling his movements when stuck in mid-air, watching on as she flipped around him, riding her controlled explosions to bounce to his back, try to get in close and clothesline him.

The first one he managed to spin himself around just enough to smack her away with the butt of his baton. The second one saw his toes just barely brushing up against a wall and launching himself out of her path of destruction. The third one faked him out, missing his shoulder be a large margin just to bounce off the wall behind him and throw her entire body into a pin-wheel motion to bring her heel down on Calico’s head.

Now, this was familiar. Just, instead of burying himself in the dirt and the malevolent sludge, he broke through the surface of the water and found himself dragged down deep. He found quickly that he didn’t have a hard time holding his breath.

It was so dark down here, the only light painting his submerged world was the sprinkles paining the heavens. And soon enough, that light too disappeared, consumed by a shadow. He didn’t think too much of it at first, pushing his focus on the possibility that, if Pressure was to dominate in the battle of the air, he might have more of an advantage in the water. It was only when the freezing cold water suddenly started to heat up that Calico took notice.

The shadow that swallowed the light, it hadn’t been a person, it had been downpour blocking out the sky. A river of boiling acid shot from Meltdown’s hands and filling up the lake. Calico didn’t have time to consider options, he was too busy kicking his teeth and throwing his tail in every which way whilst the colours of the water began to shift around him to welcome the skin-singing chemical to dilute the water.

When Calico emerged from the water, shooting out of it gasping and spluttering; Pressure wasted no time immediately propelling herself, or more importantly her knee, into Calico’s stomach. The force threw him up and over her, which she used as an opportunity to head butt him as well, and then continue the juggle him with a whole lot more little punches.

It was to Calico’s advantage when she threw him down into another wall. Too much juice and Calico shattered it upon impact, sending him tumbling into another chamber.

“Oooweee, look at that boy bounce!” she cried out, cupping her hand over her eyes.

Calico took that golden opportunity to get out of sight, clutching the feather to his chest. He needed just enough time with them off his backs if he was going to attempt a sentimonster. He charged into a jungle of pipes, ducking into the shadows where the light fixtures were shattered and his night vision gave him the home field advantage.

Meltdown forced him to get more vertical, firing off streams of acid down the twisting tunnels that swallowed up the floor in seconds. Calico kicked off the wall, finding himself transitioning between hanging from the grates fixed into the ceiling and running along the pipes snaking around the walls.

“Gah, watch where you’re spraying, dumbass!” he heard Pressure cry out, though the wet, squelching thuds of her footsteps reached Calico faster than her voice. “You’re getting burning gunk on my nice shiny boots.”

“ACID HURTS. CAN’T FLY. WHAT THE HELL.”

“While you’re whining about your booboos like a bunch of little babies, that rat bastard is getting away.”

“Observer is our cheat sheet, Weasle; we can’t have him melting on us.”

“Fine, I’ll make a little clear bubble, so the little wimp won’t melt. Just stay close.”

Point to Calico, a 1v3 is a better match up when 1 to 3 don’t get along.

He decided to stop for the moment, hoisting himself up to press his body flat against the ceiling. The running was putting distance between them, but making too much damn noise that allowed the three to stay within his general area; and the further he went down these tunnels, the closer he got to the sections he wasn’t familiar with. Hiding and waiting for the three to pass under him and then doubling back to familiar territory was a plan with merits.

Those merits were challenged when Meltdown’s voice hissed into his ear.

“You’re a little quiet there, brat. Aren’t you supposed to be the loudmouth?”

Calico’s head whipped around, swallowing a gasp as he desperately searched for Meltdown and the rest of the goon squad’s clanky asses in the narrow confines of his hiding spot. They were nowhere to be found. It was only then that Calico realised that the voice was coming from his miraculous’ earpiece.

“That’s right, boy; we hacked your entire damn network. Loved those voice mails crying for your back up dancers to call you back, by the way.” Calico worked through his rising anger, forcing it all into gritting his teeth. “I gotta say, you’re so pathetic when you ain’t the big man in control. So desperate for everyone to give you hugs and kisses and tell you everything’s gonna be alright. What a worm; a filthy, weak, disgusting, worthless worm.”

The hide and wait plan was scrapped, Calico took off onward, though at a much quieter pace. Quiet enough to note that there were no longer the booming echoes of Pressure’s boots. Did that mean they were close enough to be confident? Or had they too found a way to become quiet, to sneak up on him in the dark?

“Your old man was like that, you two are the same cut of bastard meat,” Meltdown spat with so much of a violent lip smack that it made the earpiece whine with static screams. “Of course, your dad was always worse, ‘cus he had that damn ego on top of it. But at the end of the day, he was still a big damn baby crying for the world to give him a gold star.”

Calico tried to ignore the taunting, but comparing him to his father was below the belt and it hit just as hard.

In the confinement of silence wrapped in darkness every sound was the announcement of a threat. Every creak had Calico’s ears tingling for footsteps, every sizzle of the acid bubbles had Calico straining to ask himself if it was more than usual. Corners quickly became a death sentence, one wrong turn and he’d be crawling into a face full of acid, beam blasts and metal feet.

The next time Meltdown’s voice came on, it was gleeful. “Oh, how many people you and him would fuck over just to get that gold star from that special little bitch in your life who does nothing but spit in your face.”

“You can’t see it, Agreste, but he’s fogging up his fishbowl with all the panting he’s doing,” Pressure hummed.

The laughter that followed had Calico jumping to the next wall and doubling back to turn a different corner. It bounced off the walls in a wailing echo but coming from both around Calico and in his ear, he could gauge how close it was, not even the direction. All he could tell was that it followed him.

“Nothing wrong with being excited, Pressure.” Meltdown really did sound like he was a panting dog, slobbering over the prospect of the brutality he aimed to inflict. Calico did not want to ask himself what being melted down would feel like. “I’ve been waiting years to get a chance to wipe out the Agreste bloodline for good.”

Eventually, the taunting was enough to try Calico’s patience, though perhaps it was Plagg in particular who was getting itchy. It drove him to respond.

“What do you guys even get from all this?” Calico whispered. “You don’t care about saving the world, and your bosses clearly wouldn’t care if you dropped dead.”

Pressure tutting sounded to Adrien like a dog constantly trying to work their snout through paste stuck in their mouth. That funny mental image eased Calico tension a little.

“The question ain’t why; it’s why not?” she drawled on. “At least Lila lets me make my music mix.”

Observer’s voice echoed out in loud, near indiscernible buzzing screams. “LIKE MONEY. LIKE POWER. ALTERNATIVE. PRISON?”

“You idiots, you complete idiots.”

Calico agreed completely, but he was taken aback at Weevil being the one to say it, especially right to Pressure’s face. He didn’t care how cocky Weevil was getting with Meltdown’s powers, Calico was sure that pissing Pressure off was still a prospect that scared the man.

“Pfft, what?” Pressure barked out with a laugh, followed by the sound of her slapping Meltdown on the shoulder. “You gonna start acting like you got some moral reason for being here, Weasel?”

Calico could picture Meltdown, crouched down in his acid bath pushing the boundaries to make a little reverse puddle around them where it was safe to stand whilst they walked. Another click of the tongue and Meltdown would draw his fingers up over the glass, wagging them at poor, putrid, stupid Pressure.

“You’re thinking so small scale, working for that brat and her mechanical zombie for what? Some short term sliver of the good stuff?” He paused to howl out some excitement, Calico’s ears picking up the echo of his heels clapping the floor. “Why be pawns when we could run the show?”

That gave everyone pause.

“What are you getting at?”

Calico’s eyes narrowed. Could Meltdown really think he could use the powers Lila and Felix gave them to try and usurp their entire operation? Sure, Calico didn’t know entirely how mementos, nor this miraculous akuma situation, worked, but he was sure that it was a safe assumption that they had the same contingency that the two miraculous they came from had. Their master would be able to snap away their powers in an instant; and Calico knew damn well that Lila wasn’t going to let these three get the drop on her.

“Why do you think I made sure that we were alone down here?” Meltdown wrapped his knuckle against the glass. “Think about it, when we kill the boy, we’ll have our powers and two of the most powerful miraculous in existence in the palm of our hands.”

Somehow, it had completely escaped Calico’s mind that his defeat would obviously mean they would get both miraculous he was holding. He shook his head at that, it didn’t really matter; there was no chance in hell that Plagg or Duusu were going anywhere – no more kwami would be imprisoned by the villains, not while Calico was still breathing.

“Oh… OH,” Pressure exclaimed. “With that kind of power, why would we be sitting around taking orders?”

“With the cat, we can atomize anyone we want. With the Peacock, we can create the perfect power for any situation. And so long as we don’t spoil the surprise, we can keep the powers we already have. One well-timed ambush, and we could wipe the slate clean.”

Meltdown clapped his hands together. “Take over Paris, split it up between us, execute all the would-be heroes, and rule as Kings for the rest of our days. With the Malevolence and sentimonsters scaring people, the dome will stay up – we won’t have to ever worry about other countries sicking their heroes on us.”

Usually, hearing that the enemy team is gearing up to take themselves down from the inside was a net gain for the heroes. The problem, Calico realized with panic thrumming as his heartbeat, was that the plan was severely underestimating the biggest threat here and included destroying the few safe guards keeping said threat at bay.

Scratch what Calico thought before about Meltdown’s new confidence not overriding his fear of other people; the power had gone straight to his head and drowned out reason. By all accounts, Weevil was the ‘smartest’ out of the three, if he was dumb enough to concoct this plan, then the others would have no hope of being reasoned with.

“That’s a big ‘if’ on beating the guys who’ve been pulling our chains,” Pressure pointed out.

Meltdown’s laugh was the sound of something sizzling on a hot stove. “Lila’s practically a corpse now, Felix is worthless without the Peacock and Colt is falling to pieces now that the malevolence gunk is eating him,” he urged, and Calico could just notice the acid sea being pulled back and forth in reaction to Meltdown’s energy.

“You’d really kill the brat?”

“Oh, we’ll do more than that,” Meltdown practically sung, clapping his hands together. “We’ll break into her room while she’s sleeping, I’ll hold her down while you have your fill. Then we take the butterfly, akumatized someone to snatch Felix’s ring and make him off himself.”

Adrien was fresh off a spiteful confrontation with Felix where nothing had been left but bile and bitterness, leaving him trapped under rubble for the police to take him away for a long, long time. All the affection towards Lila was neatly locked away to make way for the anger and disgust that drove him to defeat her, no matter what underhanded trick he’d have to use to put her in her place – he had accepted that, no matter his feelings, she was a monster that had to be stopped.

And yet, his stomach turned at Meltdown’s putrid plan. He imagined the scene of Lila, weak and barely conscious, being ripped from her bed and held down against the floor by three hardened criminals who wanted nothing but her suffering. He imagined Felix being told to smile and nod before picking up whatever rusty implement they thrusted into his hands to rip himself open with. He imagined his worst enemies getting treated as they would treat any of their enemies, and it made him angry.

Pressure grounded her fist into her palm. “And after we hit old metal menace with the beat of a thudding corpse,” she said with such sadistic glee in her voice at the prospect of making Colt look at the mangled corpses of his children, “we ice him too?”

“Or seal him away or whatever, so long as it hurts,” Meltdown answered dismissively. “Then with Amelie we can-”

“Wait, what’s your beef with her?”

Calico’s eyes widened. Aunty Amelie too?! He knew she was in town, he still had her voice message saved on his phone, but he hadn’t been ready to talk to her. To confront the last family member he had that could have a dirty secret that corrupts all his memories of them. The fact that she was now apparently with Lila’s team made that decision feel vindicated; but Calico could only focus on how it’s now put her in danger. And she’d never even met these assholes.

“She looked at me funny,” Meltdown suddenly jumped into a roar, his voice, however confident, stumbling over itself in rage. “When I’m in charge, no one is gonna be allowed to look at me funny! Everyone will respect me, everyone will respect us; we’ll have wealth, fame.”

“Money?”

“POWER.”

“And drugs, and bitches; and god damn everything.” Meltdown’s cheering rang out through the entire complex. “I want it all!”

“I didn’t know how sick and twisted you could get, Weasel. I’m in!”

“AFFIRMATIVE!”

The pipe Calico was pressed against groaned. His ears flicked up; no footsteps, no clanging boots, no impacts. Just the shifting of liquid. His eyes darted down. The water at the chamber’s base bubbled faintly, glowing faint green as it spread outward, forming a circle that slowly swallowed the stone floor.

Fear. Rage. Desperation. He could feel them boiling in his chest like a stormcloud ready to split open. He could shape them into something, anything, if he let himself focus. But the voices in his head weren’t helping. He needed silence, he needed time to-

It happened so fast, the wall at his side exploding open with the joint effort of acid streams and psycho beams. He was knocked clear across the tunnel, bouncing off the next wall with a meaty thud and then crumbling down face-first into the acid lake.

Even with the enhancements of the miraculous, acid burns hurt like hell.

It was like a hundred searing needles curving into his flesh and desperately yanking down, treating his ears to the wet squelch of solids being melted down into slop. He managed to wretch himself to safety relatively quick, hands beating down on the floor to launch himself up and out of the green sea, but that didn’t allow him to escape the liquid fire still clinging to him. Smoke billowed from his burn marks, deep dark patches of his suit reduced to the texture of sandpaper or exposing more bruised flesh underneath.

Though, to be fair, he only had a second to process that pain before Pressure’s foot crushed his spine through the air, sending him back into the intersection and the junk pillar he started his escape from.

This time, she wasn’t content with just letting him fly, she pushed her foot down and drove him into the ground, pinning him there.

“You hear that, Agreste? Your corpse is gonna kick off our coronation band,” she sneered, letting off a point-blank shockwave into his back. “We’re gonna have so much fun playing with all your little friends.”

Calico’s body couldn’t do much but jerk in response, the force seeping under his muscles to crack open his bones. In his hand, he still just barely held on to his peacock feather.

Meltdown waded through the lake rubbing his hands together, Observer sitting on his head. “That Nathalie woman looks like a tough little lady; how much of her do you think my acid can melt while still keeping her alive?”

He ended up at the shore, just beside Calico. Fingers ran through the acid, letting it cling to Meltdown’s fingers before being held above Calico’s head and waiting for it to drip off his fingertips and splash across Calico’s nose. “Oh, I’m going to have a blast finding out.”

The rage was overwhelming; it poured out of every inch of Calico’s face. They don’t get to threaten Nathalie, they don’t get to threaten his family, they don’t get to threaten anyone ever again. Yet, he couldn’t express it, he couldn’t spit the words out through his lips whilst his lungs were still struggling for air.

The peacock feather felt limp and useless in his fingers. They’d never give him the time he needed to create a sentimonster, and they weren’t going to let him run off again. For all the pizazz of unifying the two miraculous, all it amounted to was a stat boost and a new costume. Pressure would keep him down, Meltdown would cut off any escape routes and Observer would ensure they knew every attempt he’d make to avoid them.

He needed backup, someone to run interference, to give him breathing room, and no one was coming. He had no way of contacting his friends. No one was answering their phones, his communicator was probably blocked; it wasn’t like he had any other way of calling for help…

Unless.

Pressure tapped his head with her other heel. “What? No snappy one liners, kid?”

He gritted his teeth, denied her to response as he willed his transformation to fall ever so slightly. Just enough for a hole in it to open by his leg, allowing his hands to root through Adrien Agreste’s pockets.

“I think he’s finally starting to see the walls closing in,” Meltdown bellowed, thrusting his finger through the air to point to the heavens. “He can see our impending victory, it’s written on the wall.”

Pressure yanked Calico to his feet, the three oblivious to the work of Calico’s fingers. As luck would have it, Observer was looking to Pressure instead of Calico. Calico had a chance, he just had to get a grip on it and remember what Chloe said about Monster Mash.

The grip on the back of his head was a vice clamping down on his skull, coaxing out a gasp of pain as Pressure pulled him against her. “Hey, Agreste, if you beg for your life right now; maybe we’ll let you live long enough to watch us tear little Lila apart. I know you gotta be chomping at the bit for a front row seat to the ways we’re gonna-” There was such a heavy pause that gave Calico all the time in the world to imagine Pressure’s predatory, toothy grin. She leaned in close, her teeth nipping at his ear, her voice practically quivering as she finished. “-correct her.”

When Calico still refused to respond, Pressure started to get frustrated. Immediately he was tossed up in the air, giving her a second or two to spin her body around and land a round house kick into his stomach and pin him to the pillar.

“Come on, tonight on ‘Sewer Slasher’s Quiz Special’ it’s a multiple-choice question; this one’s for all the money; do you wanna watch Lila get tortured?”

“That’s a hard one,” he murmured, allowing himself to grin. “I think I’ll use my phone a friend.”

Fortunately, it was just in time for a familiar shape to brush up against Calico’s fingers.

A hair pin.

“ACCELERATOR, RECALL!”

Nathalie was in a tunnel. There was light at the end of the tunnel. She walked towards it, and then the light decided to nail her ass into the dirt. It was a hell of a way for Lady Luck to jolt back into the world of the living from the comfort of a dirt hole in the ground that might as well have been a grave.

Her body groaned and shambled as she rose. It wasn’t pain really, it was more like a constant wave of cold shivers that makes your limbs feel tempted to suddenly spasm for a split second. She got a good look at her arm when she reached up to grasp the edge of the hole. It was flickering between Lady Luck’s sleeve and Nathalie’s coat, and it was grating on her brain the entire journey to hoisting herself out of the hole and back onto the decorated grounds of Marinette’s tomb.

It faded eventually, just a temporary glitch caused by Faux’s blast. Lady Luck shouldn’t have been too surprised that it didn’t kill her, it only stunned Marinette for the sake of switching places with her after all.

Oh. It only hit her, and maybe Tikki too if the sudden burst of energy was anything to go by; Marinette wasn’t dead.

But Nathalie might be in a minute if she didn’t get her shit together. She tried to mentally calm the Tikki part of her transformation down, focusing her efforts on trying to get a view of her opponent. She heavily doubted that Faux simply decided to run away instead of finishing them off whilst they were knocked out.

Before Lady Luck could suggest that Queen Bee had been the one to hold Faux off, she found herself glimpsing a body hanging from the Ladybug memorial; not Queen Bee, but Chloe. Bounding forward, Su-Han too made his appearance, face down in the mud where her heel caught the belt of his uniform. Quickly, Lady Luck snatched him up from the ground and threw him over her shoulder as she sped towards Chloe.

The area of impact didn’t reflect an explosion. There was no crater, no burnt scars of immense heat cutting through, there was simply the area displaced and pushed aside. Not an explosion, just a violent burst of wind. Glancing over Su-Han, Lady Luck found the same discrepancy; he would arguably be the most unprotected when the blast hit him, yet he seemed to take more damage from his fall than the blast itself.

Once more, Lady Luck looked to her arm. Whilst it was no longer glitching out, that image still stuck in her mind. Maybe this suggested that the attack was specially made to target their miraculous.

She reached Chloe with little sign of danger, everything was too quiet and too empty; but she had no way of finding the source of this unease. All she was left with was an almost silent night where the shuffling of leaves was the only sound to replace the skidding of car wheels against the road. It was only when she reached the memorial, just as she dropped Su-Han behind it, that Faux revealed herself.

It immediately clicked why Lady Luck had trouble spotting her opponent; she hadn’t been looking carefully enough at the ground. From the tall grass, a figure rose from being as flat as a board to resembling some limp humanoid form of lumps that lightly swayed with the wind. She was, in all honesty, a punctured balloon riddled with holes being stretched out.

All Lady Luck could do was hide herself behind the memorial and observe, watching as the rubber-like stick woman brought her thumb to her lips and fiercely blew into it. In response, the rest of her body inflated, filling out all her lumps and erasing the holes until she was a human once more.

Faux didn’t resemble Marinette much anymore. Her hair had been stained with blonde around the fringe, and the middle of her hair had been entirely cleared away leaving a massive bald spot. Arms had become a little longer, and her clothes had shifted to incorporate a red skirt and a yellow robe dangling over her hips. The chin was flattened into the head shape of a hammer, more distinctly male.

Lady Luck carefully plucked Chloe from her hanging spot and set her on the ground. With little shame, she pressed her hand over Chloe’s mouth to muffle any screams before driving her knee into Chloe’s stomach, hoping to jolt her awake as quietly as she could.

All she got for that was a surprisingly harsh slap across the face whilst Chloe continued to snore.

“Fuuuuwak uff, Mom,” she grumbled in her sleep. “You… you can’t tell me what to do anymore… I’m an adult…”

“For God’s sake…” Lady grumbled.

Admittedly, her last resort was childish. On the other hand, childish was the best was in which to handle someone from Chloe’s family. Quite simply, Lady drew forth her hands, and tightly clamped down on the woman’s nose through two fingers.

After a minute of choking Chloe out, Lady received a head butt this time.

“Wut da heeeeeell, Lady?” she whined, looking at Lady Luck in the same vein as one looking at a wart. “You are literally the most disappointing sight for a girl waking up; my mother at least looks funny in the mornings.”

“Fight. Focus. Sentimonster. About to kill us.”

Chloe blinked. “Oh. Right.”

A loud sizzling noise filled the air, dragging both woman’s attention back to Faux as they pressed themselves tightly against the back of the memorial. Faux’s features were now melted clay bubbling under intense heat, and in this state they shifted around ever so slightly. The blonde streaks fizzled back into blueberry dark, the eyes returned to Marinette’s, the face moulded into something more distinctly Asian, and the skirt compressed into shorts.

“Hey, did she copy my skirt while I was out?” Chloe grumbled, then paused, then gasped. “The sentimonster has super powered tailoring!”

“Chloe, I hardly think Lila sent a tailor to kill a super-”

The skirt. Blond streaks. Racially ambiguous features. Those eyes. Those were all… Chloe.

Lady Luck felt like slapping herself when it hit her. Faux had been some little girl at first, not Marinette; that meant this wasn’t just a form she was created with, but some sort of shapeshifting power. But why did she try to look like Chloe? And furthermore, why did she stop?

“Gah, I’m not transformed! Pollen, are you okay?”

Pollen settled in Chloe’s hands, stretching out across the palm and burying her head in Chloe’s probing fingers for relief. “Nothing more than a zap, my queen. The full brunt of that blast separated us.”

Lady Luck kept her eyes on Faux, who just seemed to be standing slack, staring at the sky. “Can you still transform?” she whispered over her shoulders.

“I believe so. My energy isn’t depleted, just disrupted,” Pollen said, groggily hovering herself up to Chloe’s face and giving a firm nod. “Say the words, your highness – and let us put this imposter back into her grave.”

“That’s the energy we need,” Chloe smoothed out her hair, and marched around the memorial. “Pollen, buzz on!”

There was a temptation to snarl at Chloe that breaking away from their hiding spot was foolish, but then Lady Luck realized two things. She wasn’t going to be able to stop Chloe Bourgeois from creating a scene, and the dazzling flash of gold from her transformation would have given them away anyway.

“You just gonna sit there, or are you gonna call in the cavalry,” Queen Bee asked without breaking her stride or her glance.

Lady Luck vaulted passed the memorial, whipping out her yoyo to wrap taught around her forearm. “I can’t,” she explained. “I haven’t been accepted into the group network yet, remember? That’s what I need you for.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m just noting that we didn’t have an undead shapeshifter problem until you decided to dig her up.”

“You’re just pissy that I was right.”

“And I’m sure you’ll be delighted to tell everyone when they get here,” Lady Luck spoke lowly, staring ahead as Faux still remained unmoving. “Assuming, of course, you call them in. Or is that too complex a task for you?”

Okay, it seemed that having a miraculous again was bringing some of Mayura’s more belligerent attitude back to the surface.

Queen Bee didn’t balk at the jab, just rolled her eyes as snapped open her spinning top to access the phone functions. Lady Luck was an old woman, nothing she said could be as cutting as the petty remarks Chloe exchanged with her fellow rich prats. However, Queen Bee’s face did curl in offense a few seconds later.

“This is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous,” she grumbled. “What are you playing at, Max?”

“What is it?”

Queen Bee waved her weapon around, cursing it. “This stupid thing is telling me that I’ve been blocked from the team network. I can’t get a message out to them.”

“Max blocked you out?” Lady Luck uttered under her breath, the news managing to stop her stride, an unsettling feeling dropping into her stomach.

“Or those Task Force asshats threw jam on us or whatever.”

“Someone’s making a move tonight,” Lady Luck concluded. “Try to call Adrien’s phone. Now.”

“I can’t, he’s transformed.”

“What?!”

The possibilities finally settled on Queen Bee’s face, dragging her brow down over her panicked eyes. “Damn it,” she hissed, “Felix probably knew that Adrien was gonna find him and pulled some crap so Adrien couldn’t bring back-up.”

“We need to get back to mansion before-”

Faux’s horrid, childish giggles washed over them like sewage water. The two miraculous heroes immediately dropped into fighting stances, both equally unsure how to go about fighting an opponent who could knock them out in one blast. They just had to hope it had a generous charge time they could exploit and interrupt.

Bee fidgeted with her spinning top. “We need to pop this inflatable phony first.”

“You hit her with a venom.” Lady Luck pulled the taut, thin wire in front of her face, watching it gleam in the moonlight super imposed over Faux’s throat. “I’ll end it this with a snap.”

“…I’m sorry, you’re gonna lynch her?”

“It is a sentimonster.” A shrug was exchanged. “Are you planning on inviting it to a sleepover or something?”

“No!” Bee pursed her lips. “Just… seems a little overkill.”

“This thing literally just tried to blow up us. Shut up and venom it already.”

Bee swallowed whatever retort she had ready, settling on glaring at the back of Lady Luck’s head before rushing forward.

As Mayura, Nathalie had seen how much time Ladybug could spend trying to play to her teammates’ hearts, but Nathalie saw that as a waste of time for herself. She needed results before this sentimonster killed them, and before whatever strangeness was going on tonight had time to endanger Adrien. She didn’t care if Chloe walked away from this thinking Nathalie was an asshole.

Faux watched Bee approach, venom’s golden overlay pulsating over her arm, with no visible emotion. There was no bracing for impact, no move to defend or push back, the sentimonster just watched the incoming attack. Considering that Faux was solely made to be a trap that would then pretend to be a dead body, Lady Luck noted the possibility that this sentimonster wasn’t created with combat, or even survival instincts really, in mind.

“Okay, it was terrible meeting you,” Bee cried out, thrusting her venom-tipped fist forward. “So, don’t let the door hit you on the way out!”

There was no dodging. Bee’s fist buried itself into Faux’s gut, the sentimonster offering only a curious glance down at it’s attacker. Lady Lucky delayed only a moment before taking off to deliver the punchline, launching herself high above Faux and lashing out with her yoyo, the line easily securing itself around Faux’s throat just as Lady Luck wrapped her end around the metal spike of a fence post.

Bracing her foot against the fence and not wasting her time looking over her shoulder, Lady Luck heaved down on her yoyo with all her might, yanking it so hard that the fence threatened to be ripped from the ground under her strength. The only sound that mattered to her, that reigned over the relentless downpour of the rain and her hear, was the hard crack of bones snapping.

Only, what her ears picked up were not the brittle crumbling of ligaments. The sound was much lighter, something that squeaked and creaked at a high pitched. When she finally looked, Ladybug found not the slumped over head hanging from a snapped neck, instead she found the neck stretching with the tension of the wire.

However, that wasn’t the real gut punch. No, that was saved for… well, the gut punch. Lady Luck could see it. As in, she could see the shape of Queen Bee’s venom fist, quickly followed by the lumpy outline of her body, pushing through Faux’s back.

Again, Faux was like a balloon; and the sound Lady Luck could hear was that of rubber being stretched to its limits.

There was a snap, and once more Faux ballooned out. All except her head, that deflated just enough to slip easily through the yoyo’s bonds. Her stomach enlarged and, as a byproduct, launched Bee’s body out of the man-made cavity and sent her shooting across the park; eventually smashing through the side of a car at such a velocity that the car fell on its side with her wedge in the deformed door.

Faux whipped around, it’s arm snapping into position and extending all the way across the park to catch Lady Luck by the throat. With one yank, the hero was brought down with a hard slam, dragged into and through the mud to meet Faux’s foot. It had the texture of rubber, but it came down on Lady Luck’s head like a hammer, the resulting shockwave rattling her skull and cratering the ground around her head.

Her arms pushed her back up on shaky ground, fresh blood dripping from her lips. She raised her head just in time to catch Faux, expression still blank, raising it’s foot to deliver another blow. Only this time, it’s arm deflated to let the foot swell up to be bigger than Lady Luck’s head.

Fortunately for her, she didn’t have to find out how much damage that inflated foot stacked. Bee was a golden blur until she materialized by Lady Luck’s side, slamming her shoulder into Faux’s leg to offset it’s aim, resulting in the foot instead coming down beside Lady Luck; breaking through the ground and immediately getting stuck.

Bee dropped down into a crouch, winding up pressure in her legs as she reeled back a punch. That pressure exploded into the rest of her body as she launched herself upwards, finalizing the energy into her fist as rammed it into the underside of Faux’s square jaw. The result was equal parts comical and horrifying, Faux’s head just kept going and going, the neck becoming a titanic snake that followed the head high above the trees before finally being pulled taut.

“Okay…” Bee huffed, showing off that her venom was still active no matter how hard she hit this particular target. “Turns out… she is rubber… and I am glue…”

Lady Luck took the opportunity to flip onto her back and deliver a powerful double kick to Faux’s hips, aiming around the edges to lessen the risk of sinking into the rubbery flesh like Bee did. This knocked Faux a bit away, letting Lady Luck watch as the elongated neckline cleared the street and the head slammed through a shop display window.

Bee scratched the back of her neck, groaning as she pushed something back into place. Her clothes were cut up and bloodied, stained with grease and wrinkles. “Really missing Shell-Head right now,” she murmured. “He could probably just trap her in the world’s smallest hamster ball.”

She paused, clearing her throat. “Don’t tell Nino I said that.”

“Priorities, for the love of God.” Lady Luck sighed, gritting her teeth.

“How do we beat this thing if our attacks just bounce off it?”

Lady Luck flipped open her yoyo, her fingers quickly disappearing into the ethereal pool of pink that flowed from the inside. Ladybug usually used this to create her protection charms or to connect to her miracle box; Lady Luck linked it to her more ‘practical’ miracles.

“We don’t know that it’s all attacks, just blunt force so far.”

Bee’s jaw dropped, doubling over to gawk at Lady Luck as the woman squeezed a particularly large object through that tiny portal through the power of magic. Shrieking, Bee exclaimed, “Is that a tommy gun!?”

“…No…” Lady Luck said quietly, hoisting the large rifle into her arms and tucking the butt under her armpits. “It’s a 'miraculous' tommy gun that fires piercing bullet-shaped 'lucky charms'.” She fitted the drum magazine into place with a loud, satisfying smack. “Let’s put some holes in this rubber bitch.”

“I don’t like Gun Nathalie,” Bee uttered, slowly putting herself behind Lady Luck and, more importantly, behind the gun. “She has a potty mouth.”

The gun roared, spitting streaks of orange across the street. Every shot tore through Faux’s rubbery body, releasing tiny explosions of fiery confetti that fizzled against the asphalt. Faux howled in a warped, helium-laced giggle that rattled through the street.

“Enjoy the taste of lead, monster!”

The force of the onslaught shoved Faux back against a tree, or what had been a tree before the storm of gunfire ripped Faux and the base of the tree apart, leaving them both to collapse into an unrecognisable heap. It was easy to get lost in the action; Nathalie had long since forgotten the cathartic release of a gun pounding back against her arm as the target dissolved before her eyes. It was the one point of order that she could agree with Colt on.

By the time Lady Luck pulled her finger off the trigger, the park was engulfed in thick smoke and the smell of burning rubber. Lady Luck found herself short of breath, shoulders shuddering, but refusing to lower her weapon, as the smoke cleared. The magazine drum, now emptied, was yanked out and left to tumble to the floor.

Soon enough, the smoke parted, revealing a valley of visible mud leading up to Faux’s flattened, hole-ridden body. It resembled strips of fabric more than a human now, and thus Lady Luck allowed herself to sigh, tilting the barrel of the gun down to the floor.

Bee exclaimed, “Holy crap, it worked!”

Only for Faux to jump back up, the holes already folding in on themselves, and it’s wide, inhuman grin stretching past the confines of it’s face..

Bee balked. “Aaaaand, I jinxed it. Sorry.”

Lady Luck’s fingers were already plunging back into her yoyo, feeling around her mental armoury to grasp another magazine. “Good thing I’ve stockpiled on ammo,” she murmured under her breath.

“Uh, Nathalie?”

Lady Luck snapped the fresh magazine into the tommy gun with a click, but her eyes moved back to Faux. The strips of rubbery flesh stitched themselves back together like stop-motion film played too fast, seams vanishing as if they’d never been there.

Faux’s jaw unhinged, rubber peeling back, mouth stretching wider and wider until it gaped like a cannon barrel. The slick surface shimmered under the moonlight, and then there was the wet, slurping noise.

Every bullet Lady Luck had fired was sucked off the ground, the metal rattling as if yanked by a magnet. The casings, the scraps, even the lead fragments embedded in tree bark – all of it slurped down her throat in a rattling cascade.

Bee and Lady Luck froze, backing away one step at a time, their faces caught between amazement and sheer horror. Faux snapped it’s lips shut with a sharp pop. It’s cheeks swelled, and then it pursed it’s lips.

A single bullet spat out with the speed of a rifle shot, clipping past Lady Luck’s ear. The sting left a burning trail of blood.

Both women went stiff.

“…Why’d you give her all that ammo, Nathalie!?” Bee shrieked, her voice breaking.

Lady Luck’s only response was to spin on her heel. “Run!”

The park exploded into chaos as Faux leaned back and fired. Not one, not two, but dozens of bullets, spewed from her maw like a machine gun. The hail of lead tore through the park in shrieking lines, demolishing trees, shredding stone walls, smashing into benches and sculptures. The storm of ricochets echoed off stone and metal, the once-pristine park now a battlefield.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” Lady Luck cursed under her breath, pulling Bee by the wrist as they sprinted. Every step felt like the earth itself was collapsing behind them.

Chunks of stone flew past their heads, and splinters whipped their cheeks as the two heroes ducked and weaved, desperately avoiding the ceaseless barrage. Faux’s laughter gurgled through the storm, high-pitched and gleeful, the balloon-creature revelling in it’s own firepower.

By some miracle, the two of them managed to skid back behind Marinette’s memorial, collapsing against the cold stone just as another volley shredded the air above.

Bee clutched her spinning top to her chest, eyes wide, gasping between words. “How… much… ammo… do you think she’s got left?”

Lady Luck’s hand pressed to her bleeding ear, jaw clenched tight as she peeked over the cracked edge of the memorial. Faux’s silhouette loomed through the smoke, chest swelling again, lips pursed.

“Too much,” Nathalie muttered.

“What… what’s going on?”

The groggy voice led Lady Luck to where Su-Han sat, groaning as he massaged his head. Behind them, Faux letting out a bubbling noise once more, but Lady Luck didn’t let that steal her attention just yet.

She helped him to his feet, and then pushed him gently against their reused hiding spot. “Su-Han, you’re awake!” she whispered.

Bee’s finger reached over to shamelessly jab at Lady Luck’s cheek, again and again. “This loser decided to bring a gun to a miraculous fight.”

Lady Luck fought to pay it no mind but made a mental note to break Chloe’s fingers when they were done with all this.

“Not much time to explain, so I’ll keep it brief,” she explained slowly. “Marinette was replaced with an explosive shapeshifter.”

Bee leaned in to interrupt. “The important thing is, I was right.”

Lady Luck continued to ignore her. “It’s flexible enough that all our attacks just bounce off it.”

Su-Han stroked his chin, peering around the memorial to catch Faux stumbling towards them, every move requiring it to swing it’s entire body in the direction it was moving. “It sounds like grave prospects indeed.”

Bee let out a whistle, squinting at Faux. “Hey, it’s back to looking like Marinette.”

“Isn’t it supposed to?”

Lady Luck joined in the squinting. Faux had indeed reverted to the form they’d first found her in, just Marinette with stretched features, balancing a bullet between her teeth. “No, when I woke up, it was trying to look like Chloe, and then it looked like… uh, well…”

“Like you and Marinette had a very ugly baby,” Bee concluded with a small giggle.

“Chloe, seriously?”

“What?”

Nathalie had no idea how Nino and Adrien put up with this constant nonsense all the time.

Su-Han kept them focused, his brow furrowed. “Are you saying that this creature had my features until just now?”

“Yeah, why?”

“When it looked like young Bourgeois, what was Chloe doing?”

“Nothing. She was-”

Unconscious. Chloe was unconscious, and Faux only lost her features roughly around the time Chloe woke up. And now, the moment Su-Han awakened, she reverted back to Marinette once more. Of course, why didn’t Lady Luck see it before?

“The sentimonster takes on the traits of whoever it hits with their explosion,” she hissed her revelation to herself, “so long as they remain incapacitated.”

Bee let out an exaggerated ‘ooooo’, clapping her hands together. “Interesting fun fact,” she said before her face dropped, “but it doesn’t exactly help us.”

Lady Luck liked to believe that any shred of information was a step closer to a solution, but she had to begrudgingly admit that Bee had a point. Whether or not Faux took on their appearance when they were knocked out didn’t change that getting knocked out again would be the death of them anyway. Though, it did bring to mind that Faux hadn’t attempted another explosive attack since it first knocked them out; so maybe this information at least brought the comfort that the stun attack wasn’t something it could just fire off again and again.

“How are we gonna put this girl down if she just shrugs off anything we throw at her?” Bee continued to question, groaning as she looked down at her hand, which flopped down limp in her drip. “Even venom doesn’t work.”

Blunt force didn’t work. Bullets didn’t work. Magic didn’t work. It made for a complex problem, but Lady Luck found herself a woman of simple solutions.

She tugged her yoyo back into her grip, propping it open on her palm. “It’s simple, we’re going to hit her very, very hard.”

Silence gave her time to feel Bee’s disbelieving stare before the girl shook her head.

“…Okay, Nathalie’s finally cracked.”

Lady Luck stabbed her heels into the mud with a fierce glare, spinning around in place to round on her two allies, pushing her hands out to grasp them both by their collars and pull them under her shadow. They both seemed to shrink at an equal pace.

With a sharp sigh, Lady Luck’s voice dropped to a low, churning hiss that came with the force of a drill sergeant. “We’re going to bait it into stretching out it’s limbs, which we will use as an opportunity to trap them.”

The yoyo was tossed up, the pink flash washed over them, and suddenly Lady Luck had two conspicuous, pokadotted crates at her feet.

“When Stretch Armstrong is all tied up,” she continued, her heels kicked against the box and her pupils shrinking to the size of a needle. “I’m going to rip open it’s mouth and shove two crates worth of grenades down the throat and make sure not a piece of it remains.”

When her fingers loosened their grip, both captive heroes stumbled back, left to look up into the sneering faced of Lady Luck’s stalwart gaze. Unlike Mayura, Lady Luck had brought some of Nathalie’s more intense professionalism from her assistant life into the field; and it came out the clearest when she was giving the unruly employ- co-workers their orders for Mr. Agre- for battle.

“Any questions?” she asked sharply, silently adding ‘REAL questions’ on the end whilst looking at Bee in particular.

Bee cleared her throat. “How exactly are we gonna pin her limbs down?”

“Improvise.”

Bee scoffed. “We’re winging it then? Great plan.”

“Move out.”

They all broke out on their own, taking point in surrounding the sentimonster. Faux looked upon this with only curiosity, looking between all the different victims it had at it’s disposal, and it simply couldn’t decide which one to go after first.

Lady Luck aimed to be patient and wait for the enemy to make the first move. Bee didn’t bother with such subtleties. She stooped, snatched up a loose rock, and flung it hard at Faux’s head. The stone thudded into rubbery flesh and bounced off as if it had hit a bouncy castle.

“Kiss my beautiful ass, Balloon Bug!” she crowed, strutting a few steps closer and turning, deliberately waggling her backside at the thing. “You’re not even half the loser the real Dupain-Cheng was.”

For a heartbeat Faux merely stared at her, that enormous grin frozen across its unhuman face. Then it tilted it’s head, eyes shifting into space as if listening to some private, horrible instruction before taking action. It reached two hands up to its own mouth.

There was a hideous, wet crunching sound, the sick, elastic tearing of skin, and Faux began to pry its jaw wider. Fingertips hooked under the rubbery lips, pulling until the mouth unhinged. The skin stretched and slid, the cheekbones peeled out, veins and sinew exposed; the head ballooned grotesquely as the jaw sank toward the ground. Bone and cartilage gave a wet, elastic pop.

“That’s-” Bee’s laughter cut off in a strangled half-shriek.

The mouth kept widening until it became a cavern, a fleshy maw big enough to swallow a person. The edges of the expanded jaw scraped the mud and gravel with a wet, crunchy noise. Faux reared back on its stubby legs and charged.

Bee’s yell split the air. “I DIDN’T MEAN IT LITERALLY, YOU FREAK!” She pivoted on her heel and sprinted, heels spitting mud, lunging away from the gaping mouth. Faux’s head snapped forward; the ground trembled under the weight of its charge. The rubbery teeth gleamed wetly in the lamplight.

Lady Luck screamed too, more a command than a cry. “Now!”

Su-Han moved quick. He didn’t circle wide to avoid the maw; he went low and fast, slipping behind Faux as it lunged past Bee, its oversized head yawning. The moment its flank opened, he seized an opportunity – one thick arm barrelling forward like a wrecking bar. He grabbed it with both hands, fingers digging into the rubbery texture. For a second he couldn’t budge it; the limb was a pillar of living flesh.

Then Faux, annoyed and surprised by the human cling, snapped back in reflex. The arm whipped outward, and Su-Han went with it. He flew through the air, a human rag doll flung against the far fence. Metal screeched as he slammed into iron, the impact driving breath from his lungs. He tumbled free and slithered across the ground, a spray of mud following his heels.

Adrenaline doled him the first clear thought: the fence. He snatched a jagged spike where the fence had been broken – one of those twisted slivers from the collision – and heaved himself up. With hands slick and shaking, he plunged the spike into the soft, sodden earth right where Faux’s hand had thudded down. Then, in one brutal, clean movement, he drove the spike through the fleshy palm and down into the mud beneath.

Faux shrieked, a gurgling, high-pitched protest that tore at the ears. The arm tangled with the spike, fingers clawing at the metal, but for now the hand was held fast. Su-Han planted his foot on the locked limb, pressing his weight down until the rubbery thing stopped twitching.

“A little brutal,” he said, breathless, voice ragged under the rain. He spat mud from his mouth and the corner of a grin bled through. “But it works.”

Lady Luck turned her attention to Bee, whose chase with Faux’s giant head had taken her out into the street. The head was relentless, chewing apart the world beneath them and spitting the chunks out in deadly boulders of junk. Lady luck couldn’t help but imagine how those teeth would fare when chomping down on Bee’s legs, even now they were getting close enough that they were practically nipping at Bee’s heels.

To make things worse, Faux still had another arm to cast out, using it like a whip to make long, sweeping lashes at Bee that cut through everything in it’s path. Over fences it would chase her, down the road it would force her to flip over it and run down it’s length to smack the giant head across the cheek, and up walls it would demolish the base to bring her down on it.

Eventually, Bee managed to use that to her advantage, baiting the arm into trying to skewer her, only to punch right through the building behind her. Quietly, she activated her venom, holding the now glowing hand up over her face.

“Okay, I can’t venom you,” she sneered at Faux’s blank, but totally smug, expression. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t venom the junk around you.”

She moved quick, leaping up and spinning in the hair to come crashing down on the hood of a car. This force cause the car to flip over on it’s side and, with a few kicks from Bee, was sent hurdling towards the squirming arm, landing directly on top of it. With one application of venom on the fallen car, it became, functionally, a large block of metal that could not be moved until the venom wore off.

Bee cupped her hand over her mouth, calling over to Lady Luck. “Arm #2 is down!”

Lady Luck didn’t waste a heartbeat. “Then let’s make it three for three!” she barked, snapping her yoyo around Faux’s ankles. Su-Han lunged in sync, seizing the other leg with his bare hands and digging his heels deep into the mud. Together, they heaved, pulling the rubbery limbs until they stretched, the monster’s inhuman shriek splitting the air as its body was forced into an unnatural split.

“Now!” Lady Luck growled through gritted teeth. With a flick of her wrist, the yoyo wound around the nearest lamp post. Su-Han seized the slack, looping it over and yanking hard. The two limbs stretched and twisted until Faux’s own legs tied themselves in a grotesque knot around the post.

The sentimonster toppled forward, snapping and snarling, its oversized head flailing like a rabid animal on a leash. The three regrouped in front of it, watching with grim satisfaction as the beast gnawed uselessly at the air, jaws snapping inches from their faces but unable to reach.

Lady Luck let herself savour it for just a moment. She stepped closer, head tilted, enjoying the sight of the monster that had dragged them through hell reduced to thrashing helplessly. Finally, she lifted her foot and pressed it down into Faux’s jaw, pinning it against the broken street.

“Let me put this in a way a creature like you will understand.” Her voice was steel as she braced her weight. With both arms, she wrenched its mouth open wider, wider – until one flapping lip hung over her shoulder like grotesque fabric. From behind the memorial, she dragged the spotted crates forward, one by one, and shoved them past the quivering gums. They slid down into its cavernous throat with wet, rubbery sounds.

From the last crate, Nathalie plucked a single grenade. She turned it in her fingers, her expression cold as iron. “I’m about to do a very bad thing. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

The pin came loose with a sharp snap. She tossed the grenade inside and released the jaw. Faux convulsed, its eyes bulging as its body rippled in alarm. Nathalie didn’t wait, she turned on her heel and hauled ass. Bee and Su-Han had already taken cover, hurling themselves behind broken walls and chunks of rubble. Lady Luck sprinted, lungs burning, trying to get clear.

The world went white.

The crates went up all at once, a thunderclap of explosions stacked atop each other. Faux’s head ruptured outward, a rubber balloon meeting a bonfire with the shockwave obliterating everything in a radius. Nathalie felt the full brunt smash against her back. The blast lifted her off her feet, flipping her through the air before she slammed into a storefront across the street. Glass shattered around her as she hit the floor in a rain of shards and dust.

Lady Luck lay on her back, chest heaving, every muscle on fire. A low groan escaped her lips, then another, her fingers twitching as she tried to push herself up. Her breath came ragged, each inhale dragging through lungs that felt crushed. The world swayed in and out of focus; the flames, the rain, the sky, all of it.

She barely had enough energy to bring her yoyo up to her lips, opening the communicator directly to Bee.

“Did we win?” she hissed, though her voice cracked into a cough, leaving her sprawled in the wreckage, fighting to catch her breath.

Bee groaned back and, in the distance, Lady Luck could see a golden hear peering through the trees and over where the smoke consumed whatever had become of Faux. “Give it a minute…”

A minute passed in pure, blissful, ambience.

“Do you hear any creepy giggling?”

Lady Luck huffed, scratching her chest as if it would sooth her. “No?”

“Then we won.”

There was a collection of sighs all around.

“If anyone asks, she didn’t look like Marinette when we blew her up…”

For a minute straight, Calico was still in the midst of deciding whether or not this was a terrible idea. In the darkness of the sewer tunnel, Accelerator’s eyes were pupilless voids that cut through it and narrowed at him, sizing him up as she did the first time she tried to drill her hand through his head.

Her first action upon being ripped from her cell and thrown into a sewage dump in an entirely different country was to stretch. Stood upon a shore of junk with acid sprays lashing at it, staring down at three perplexed super villains and the boy they had pinned against the pillar, Accelerator took her time popping joints and pressuring muscles until they untangled.

It took a solid minute before anyone actually took action, Pressure and Meltdown exchanging looks that always ended up at Observer. Waiting for his prophetic gaze to tell them what Accelerator was up to. He, however, couldn’t offer any comfort, just telling them that stretching was the only thing in her future so far. That was the flaw that came with contextless foresight in team fight, he could go far enough to see Accelerator acting, but it’d be so far ahead as to be useless as he wouldn’t know which of them, including Adrien, she was responding to.

Accelerator was in the middle of popping out her shoulder when Pressure spoke up.

“You slow in the head or something, Agreste?” Pressure snorted, pressing Calico harder into the metal rubble. “Congratulations, you just summoned one of Argos’ senti-freaks here to help kick your ass.”

It could have been pointed out that, while Calico held the amok, Accelerator’s loyalties would be compelled under his order; but then maybe Pressure already knew by this point that Adrien didn’t have the guts to command a sentimonster.

Meltdown leaned away from the scuffle, snapping his finger like he was calling over a dog. “Accelerator, right? You’ve been away from home for too long, so I assume you might be confused. We’re with Chrysalis and this boy is your enemy. I’m sure the mistress will forgive your past failures if you help us kill him.”

Accelerator leaned over, ignoring Meltdown completely to look at what was visible of Calico under Pressure’s massive boot. She took in Calico’s attire, finding the Chat Noir elements before gazing over those added by the peacock. On some level, Calico could hear the gears in her head turning, walking herself through the major changes since their last conversation that brought them here.

“I’m guessing the cat’s out of the bag now, ey, Bozo?” she finally said, a toothy, taunting grin.

“I don’t know what you mean, but I appreciate the pun,” Calico spluttered out through a crushed lung.

His mind was working overtime with distractions to not think back to his last conversation with Accelerator, to not consider her little jabs and warnings under a new light, to not think of strange burning sensation that struck him whenever he looked to where his twin rings hung under his miraculous disguise.

“I mean,” she drawled, rocking on the back of her heels, “if you die here, you don’t wanna die in denial now, do you?”

Calico took another swing at digging his fingertips under Pressure’s boot, trying with all his might to give himself at least a smidge of breathing room as Pressure’s snarling grin bore down on him. “Well… I was really hoping I wouldn’t die today.”

Pressure threw her head back to cackle. “Brat’s allowed to dream, isn’t he?”

“Hey,” Meltdown snorted, “if I suddenly found out I was my dad’s dress up doll, I’d go delusional too.”

The flash of irritation shot up Calico’s spine and endowed his biceps with just a little more strength, enough to shove Pressure’s boot an inch or so away from him and hold it there. “I’m. Not. A. Sentimonster.”

“Tut, tut, tut, Bozo,” Accelerator crept a little closer, torso bending forward and arms crossed over, pushing out her head. “You sound so offended by the idea for the guy who kept telling me about how sentis are people too.”

Calico gritted his teeth, that same bitter rhythm spiking in his heart beat again. “I don’t like being called something I’m not, and I’m obviously not a sentimonster.” A growl ripped forth from his throat. “I know who I am.”

He knew who he was, what he was, and no one could tell him different. They didn’t know. They couldn’t know. He didn’t spend all these years breaking free from his father’s thumb, wrestling with Marinette’s legacy, only for the answer to be that he was born to be flattened under their designs. He wasn’t some dress up doll, he wasn’t just another mannequin; he was human, damn it. Why were they still trying to peddle this obvious lie to him?

“Relax, Brat.” Meltdown’s version of ‘soothing’ Calico was slapping him across the face. Whilst the gloves protected Calico from the acid bubbling underneath for now, he still felt searing heat from Meltdown’s fingertips as he grasped Calico’s chin.

“When you think about it, there’s worse origin stories than magic,” Meltdown continued, yanking Calico’s head up. “I mean, I always thought you came from some innocent adultery. Anyone whose met your father wouldn’t blame her.“

Pressure clicked her tongue, before using it to lick her lips. “To be fair, Gabriel ain’t that bad looking if you’re into that shrimpy emo rock flow.”

Meltdown scoffed, tightening his grip and bearing down on Calico, and Calico suspected that he was seeing Gabriel in place of the hero. “Yeah, but he’s so fucking depressing to be around. You have no idea.” Calico could imagine a smirk in there somewhere. “Especially when it came to kids because… well, he couldn’t have any.”

Calico didn’t care about anything Weevil had to say.

And yet, he still asked.

“What the hell are you on about?”

That had Meltdown howling, which came out distorted and echoey like there was some interference. His fingers let got of Calico’s chin, instead opting to drum against his cheek.

“You heard that right, golden boy; your daddy was infertile. Your mother was real kind taking in a broken man like that.” Meltdown drew his hand upwards, taking a few locks of Calico’s hair and pulling on them. “I mean, have you never wondered why you and Felix don’t look anything like your dads?”

Pressure interjected curiously. “Yeah, I don’t see what you’re getting so defensive about. Using the peacock at least means they wanted to make you.”

There was a pause, and then she sniggered. “Hey, you think Colt couldn’t get it up either?”

“Pft,” Meltdown leaned back, giggling, “that would explain so much.”

They were interrupted by a very drawn-out groan from Accelerator, who threw her entire toros back to growl at the ceiling. “Geez, you guys talk a lot. I thought we were supposed to be killing a guy.”

The volume, the suddenness of her interruption, and the offence that surged through the villains was enough to make the metallic clink that banged out with the kick of her foot go unnoticed. Calico himself would have missed it if not for his baton bouncing into his foot.

Meltdown whirled around with a snarl, his fingers twitching like he was itching to have a more violent reaction off-the-bat. “You’re here to back us up, freak; your opinion is unneeded.”

When Accelerator showed not a modicum of the reaction he wanted, the shaking fingers stilled, and Meltdown cleared his throat. “This the last chance we’ll have to kill an Agreste, we’ve got to savour it, make it last – make sure he has a good story to tell his daddy when he gets to hell.”

Calico subtly rolled his baton up onto his toes. He spat out whilst he did so, hoping to keep the villain’s attentions up high instead of the plan brewing at foot level. “The longer you draw this out, the closer you get to Chalot’s men getting down here and ruining your little uprising scheme.”

Another slap across Calico’s face, but this time with an acidic edge to it, burning fingerprints across his cheek.

“Smart little shit,” Meltdown snarled.

Fighting against the stinging pain scorching his skin, Calico stared back at Meltdown defiantly. “…That wasn’t even wit, I just pointed out the obvious.”

Observer’s beam lighting up the background as it slammed Accelerator across the room swallowed any retort Meltdown was going to make. It seemed like Accelerator has been bracing to charge him.

“DANGER. DANGER.” Observer squealed, throwing his whole head into the blast.

It was now or never, and Calico’s foot chose now. With one swift kick, the baton was sent spinning upwards, just past Calico’s shoulder. This move was entirely up to pure dumb luck, but it was the only bet that Calico was able to take. He had no hands free to grasp it, so his inly instrument to use here was to reel his head back, throw it forward and pierce the sweet spot with his nose.

“The nerve on that-”’

Pressure didn’t have time to finish her insult as, with her head turned away to gawk at Accelerator, she provided the perfect opening for the baton to extend directly into her forehead, knocking her on her back. Released from her hold, Calico had no trouble rolling forward, crashing through Meltdown’s legs, sending the man into his self-made lake of acid and smoothly catching the baton as it fell.

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” he said, making sure to jump right on top of Pressure’s head before launching himself over to the other side of the room. “You just have such a massive, bullseye-shaped forehead.”

He didn’t need to worry about Observer, the moment Observer took his attention away from Accelerator to acknowledge the hero breaking free, Accelerator canon balled into his stomach at full speed, leaving the villain to scream as he plummeted into the acid.

It didn’t burn through him, and he managed to rapidly swim the shore screaming his distorted little voice box off, but his cap was stripped from him, his visor was distorted, and his armour was melting. In the span of ten seconds, the two had managed to get all three villains bleeding.

Accelerator materialized beside him and, in the blink of an eye, had grasped his arm and dragged him down several turns that ended with him being flung into a wall at super speed. Deep in a foul smelling sewer, surrounded by filth, Calico took a deep breath of non-lung-clenching air; which, naturally, resulted in him dry retching and coughing.

“You must be in a real tight spot if you’re calling me down,” Accelerator grumbled, rolling her eyes at his wheezes.

He fell shoulder first against the grimy wall, feeling his energy ebb in short, spluttering bursts. He could only imagine how exhausted Plagg and Duusu would be after this. “That’s a bit of an understatement.”

He hadn’t even had an opportunity to use any of his powers yet, but the fight with the multiple villains attacking him from all directions was already draining on his energy supply. Calico feared how many hits he had left in him before his unification broke apart and left him defenceless.

When his looked back to Accelerator he found her looming over him, the void of her eyes narrowed into a sneering pin point. She glowered with a twist in her lips that freely dug into her fangs with no flinching from her.

“God, stuck in the sewers with three supervillains coming for my head; I already miss my cell.” She threw her head over her shoulder, spitting and snarling. Her arms came unclamped from her sides and gripped the fringe of her hair, growling. “It was a dump, but it was safe and almost comfortable, you know? Did you even think about that before you dragged me here?”

When Calico failed to respond, staring down into the dismal puddles of slime dripping passed his foot, she lunged forward. She didn’t punch him despite how her fingers quaked in a fist, she merely rapped her knuckles across his forehead, pushing just enough for him to feel her skin scraping as his bended.

“You really got nothing going on up there, do you, Bozo?” Her other hand yanked on his shirt, forcing him around to face her. “Would have got me boiling in acid if we weren’t so lucky.”

He had the peacock, and he had her amok. He had two separate ways of controlling and killing her, that was probably the only thing on her mind when she was ejected from her cell, and the only reason she went to save him from the bosses sure to enslave or kill her if they won the peacock.

Calico hadn’t considered the situation he was leaving Accelerator in when he summoned her, he’d only been thinking about survival, but he knew that this wasn’t fair for her either. He had wrapped a collar around her neck and dragged her down to hell with him to use as a meat shield.

“I’m sorry, you’re right,” he confessed, his head hanging low in her grip where shameful eyes trailed up the bruised skin of her arm. “I was desperate, alone and I couldn’t find my friends, and- and-”

He didn’t realize how raw his vocal chords were until he couldn’t finish that sentence with anything more than a huff. He needed his friends now more than ever. No matter how this night ended, Lila would certainly be exposing him to the world along with the lie about his humanity. There would be no place in this world for Adrian Agreste, Chat Noir or any other identity he could cling to. Effectively, his life was over until Lila was dealt with.

He needed his friends to find him, to understand he was trying his best, to lean on, to be alive, to be here. He needed to hope that they were out there looking for him and hadn’t been captured by Chalot. He needed them to be safe, and so long as the villainous trio hunting him were in play, they were still in danger.

Even with all the power of two miraculous, he was still a boy, terrified of being alone in this world. Which meant, he couldn’t leave these sewers until Meltdown and co were dealt with.

“I just needed help.” He rose to stand on his own feet with a groan, meeting Accelerator’s puzzled stare with his own hardened stare. “I didn’t think about the fact that I was putting you in danger, and I had no right to bring you here.”

One hand fell, once more parting his transformation to rifle through his pockets until he secured the goods, making sure that Accelerator had full view of his actions. No tricks, no lies, just a gesture, an offering.

“Look, I meant what I said last time; you are a person, you get to choose how to live your life,” he said hesitantly.

From his pocket he revealed the very same hair pin he used as a rope to drag her to him, the same hair pin she’d so desperately wrestled from Chloe and Nino way back when she was discovered; the hair pin she’d constantly told him to use to subjugate or destroy her. He placed the amok in her hand, pressing her fingers down over it and then the hand to her chest.

Her snarky tone dropped to blubbering confusion. “Wait, this is my…”

“I can’t guarantee your safety anymore, I know,” Calico admitted, nodding his head towards the other end of the tunnel, “but I can give you the chance to escape if you want to. They’ll focus on me over you.”

Accelerator’s head tilted, the hairpin still pressed against her heart, eyes narrowing with something he couldn’t read. And he was almost certain she wasn’t sure herself what this strange emotion was. Eventually, her face settled on confusion. It probably seemed very stupid in her view, summoning her here and then sending her away before really using her.

The tunnel dripped. Her grip tightened. For a heartbeat she looked like she might actually take off; bolt into the darkness, vanish, leave him to face the three villains closing in on his own. And then she lunged forward and slammed him into the wall, her teeth bared and eyes bristling with fire.

“So, you’re calling me a coward now, huh?” Accelerator’s voice was a low challenge, the tunnel’s dripping echo turning it into a dare.

“N-No, no, I mean-” Calico began, breath rough.

Her fingers unravelled to stab into his chin, the rest of her leering as if she might just open her mouth and sink her teeth into him. “You think I’ll run screaming and crying from these D-Tier nobodies while you get all the glory? Yeah, fat chance.”

“I’m just saying-”

And just like that, she dropped him, barely scoffing down her chuckle as she casually stepped over his fallen body. She gave him a light tap with her heel as she passed.

“Just say the damn plan before I change my mind and hand you over.”

Calico pushed himself up onto his palms, shooting Accelerator a sour look. However, he still sighed and accepted her request. “Surface Pressure’s the big boot lady; she compresses air with her feet. Meltdown’s the radioactive dude, he makes acid. Observer’s the tricky one; he can see every action you take so long as he’s looking at you.”

He managed to get himself sitting up against the wall, desperately trying to ignore whatever wet patches he was feeling sink into his back. His hand came up to press against his chest, trying to sooth the hammering of his heart to no avail. “With two of us to focus on, Observer’s going to less ineffectual, and since we’re both speedy targets, we can make it very difficult for him to keep his gaze on us. Meltdown packs a punch, but I think if we push him enough, we can get him to blow his top and take himself out. Pressure’s pretty flexible, so if we can, we’ll save her for last and gang up on her.”

Accelerator looked over her shoulder, listening to his laboured breath as he struggled to pull himself up. “Are you sure you’re up for this, Bozo? You’re breathing pretty hard.”

Calico pursed his lips. He couldn’t help but feel disappointed that he’d had such a rotten first showing of a new unification. “I’m running out of energy, and a merged form takes more to maintain.”

An exasperated look was shot his way, Accelerator jabbing her thumb towards the feather still clasped tightly in his hand. “Then use that god damn feather already.”

It looked so tiny and insignificant in his hand, a trifle little loose fluff dropped by a bird that, in any other form, would send Adrien into a sneezing fit. Looking at it, it was hard to believe this thing could create something as power and dangerous as a sentimonster. At least akumas had that big, flashy corrupt aura around the butterflies that gave you that sense of power. The feather just looked like it would be best used to tickle his opponents.

But no, in his hand he held the power to create life from his very own heart. And that was a complicated matter for a man whose only experienced power was the destruction of life. It was simple with Cataclysms, for the base use of them you just said the words and made sure you knew exactly where you were sticking your hand. The more complicated uses he’d fashioned came from a lot of training and understanding his power.

The peacock was new to him, and there was no time for a tutorial. Unlike the black cat, it wasn’t beginner friendly. The Duusu part of him instinctively guided him to the basics, the words he needed to speak and a vague pushing and moulding of emotions, but it was nothing simple for a boy whose emotions were only every taken and wielded; never evolving.

“Right… right…”

Did he have to have a good idea of the power it would be blessed with? The form it would take? Or did it have to be directly related to his current emotional state?

He shut his eyes tightly, pressing the feather against his forehead, finding that spark of life he could sense inside it. In that moment, he could feel something being established between them, something that allowed flickers of touch to poke at his mind. It was there, mere seed of power waiting for an emotion to absorb for it’s growth.

In his mind, he imagined his mother. She was in her garden, tending to her plants, patting the dirt over freshly planted seeds. She’d talk with them, laugh with them. Told him once that some things need sunny disposition more than they need the sun to grow. Plants naturally lean towards light, after all, so if you’re honest and open with the light you hold, they will follow you.

He kept that picture in his mind, the amok becoming the seed being patted into fertile ground by his fingers. It needed to trust him enough to let his heart guide it, so he had to be honest. And to be honest, he needed help. He needed a buddy who could shield his eyes from the oncoming darkness that sought to consume him.

“Okay, Little Amok,” he muttered warmly under his breath. “I need you to help me bring my creation to life. I know you can do it!”

The connection blossomed and, before he knew it, the amok was slipping through his fingers, breaking into shards of blue that flew out and then came roaring back. From his heart, a piece was taken, the same compassion that urged him to give Accelerator her amok and apologize for bringing her into this. This emotion flew into the bell under his neck, the amok exploding outward and bulking all out into an ethereal blow. Slowly, his mind carved the sides of the blow, stripping away layer after layer until the perfect shape presented itself to him.

Bursting free from the light, a simple thing hung in the air. A hat. A derby hat fashioned similar to the one Marinette once made for him, with the addition of a thin, sharp eye now sown into the brim and staring back at him curiously.

Calico stood up straight, holding his hand out to the sentimonster. “Buddy Cap, I am Calico! And I’m in desperate need of a helping hand here, think you can help me out?”

Buddy let out an affectionate squeak and charged towards him, rolling up his forearm and bouncing off his shoulder to land comfortably on Calico’s head.

Accelerator blinked at the little derby as it perched proudly on Calico’s head. For a second, she just stared, then barked out a laugh that echoed like a jagged blade down the tunnel.

“You-” she wheezed, clutching her side, “you made a hat!?”

“It’s not just a hat,” Calico muttered, cheeks heating despite himself. He reached up, adjusting Buddy Cap as the sentimonster wiggled on his hair like a crown. “It’s… a friend.”

“Pfft. Oh yeah, sure. A friend.” Accelerator gave him a look, grin baring the tips of her teeth. “What’s he gonna do, Bozo? Give our enemies dandruff?”

Buddy Cap squeaked in protest, the eye stitched into its brim narrowing. Suddenly, the tunnel exploded into motion.

Surface Pressure barrelled around the corner with the ferocity of a freight train, her boot whipping through the air to catch Calico square in the face. “I found you!” she bellowed.

Calico stumbled back and just barely scraped free – a breath, a slide – collapsing backward to dodge the full impact. The taste of dust and the metallic tang of adrenaline were bitter on his tongue.

Meltdown bellowed next, acid coalescing on his fist into a sizzling, glowing orb. He winded up to hurl it but Accelerator was already a blur. She rocketed over Pressure’s shoulder, a streak of motion that became a bone-shattering slam. Meltdown hit the floor with Accelerator atop him.

“A disrespectful teenager is bad enough, but to be betrayed by a mere sentimonster?” Meltdown spat through gritted teeth, firing off spasmodic acid shots at her with the one arm not pinned. The blasts hissed and clanged off the tunnel walls; she dodged them easy, even so close. “This is unacceptable! Come to your senses this instant, or we will destroy you.”

Accelerator punched a rapid series of jabs into his helmet, each hit a percussion of contempt. She ended it with a kick that sent him tumbling him into the wall. “I can’t hear you, you’re talking too slow,” she called after him.

There was incoherent screams of rage in response.

She cupped her hand over her ear. “Sorry, I don’t speak ‘gurgle, gurgle, gurgle’.”

Calico dove once more to avoid Pressure’s next approach, rolling low so the giant boot slammed where his head had been. He forced himself to stay close enough that Pressure, by sheer size, blocked Observer’s direct line of sight on him.

Pressure turned her nose up as him, watching him heave and sweat under her shadow. She flashed a grin that was more predator than smile. “You don’t look so good, Kitty Kat. Maybe it’s time for me to play you some lullabies.”

Buddy Cap decided that was the perfect time to launch.

The sentient derby detached in a furious spin, a tiny blur of stitched fabric and stitched eye. It clipped Pressure’s cheek in one furious streak that took it swinging around her – a clean hit from its sharp brim that drew blood. For a heartbeat Pressure paused.

“…Did you just throw a fucking hat at me?”

Woollen tendrils unfurled from beneath Buddy’s brim – thin, blue filaments that glittered with sapphire light. They latched on to Pressure’s shoulder, digging into the memento itself. A visible hiccup in Surface Pressure’s aura followed, a wave of blue passing over her and leading back to the tendril’s entry point.

Calico grins, watching Buddy eject himself before Pressure could swipe at him and return back to Calico’s head. “Howdy neighbour, would you be a pal and let me borrow a cup of energy?”

Calico’s limbs flooded with warmth and strength, all thanks to all the miraculous energy Buddy just stole from Pressure. The ache in his ribs eased; old pains ebbed away. He felt steadier, more like himself, more like a hero that was ready to kick these tin cans back to the junk yard.

Pressure’s face went from frustration to shocked outrage. She clutched her cheek, gushing light and a little blood. “That’s not fair! You can’t take my energy, it’s mine!”

She charged with a howl, shockwaves pulsing around her ankles to propel titanic kicks through the tunnel air. Calico side stepped with his grace restored to full strength, and then drove his baton forward – a clean, sharp jab into Pressure’s jaw that sent a crack echoing through the brickwork.

“Geez, one little prick took you from big bad supervillain to five year old real quick,” Calico teased, grinning sharply.

Pressure recovered with petulant fury. She launched a string of seismic kicks and stomp-shocks that rippled across the floor, but Calico was faster; slipping, ducking, and countering with short, precise strikes that kept her off balance.

“Stay still and let me squash you, damn it!” Pressure bellowed.

“All that bravado went out the window now that you’re not just beating down on one guy, huh?” Calico snapped back.

“I’m getting real sick of your attitude problem. It’s really messing with my rhythm,” she snarled, swinging herself sideways in an attempt to crush him with sheer mass.

Calico timed a flip over her and, in one seamless roll, landed on top of Observer’s head. Plagg part of him hummed in approval as he slammed down, his weight pinning the seer. Observer’s forehead hit stone with a dull, stunned pop; his beam spasming and sputtering into static.

Pressure, chasing the rolling flash of motion, whipped around in blind fury, her strikes against Calico barely missing Observer and thudding uselessly into the walls. “Kid, when you were learning to spell your name, I was bringing supes to their knees,” she spats, breath ragged. “The moment you slip up, I’m ending you.”

Calico crouched low, his eyes glancing just around her waist with a smile, wry grin. “Okay, but before you do.” He pointed to the floor. “You might wanna duck”

“Wha-”

Alas, his words came too late to save her from Meltdown’s acid blast, which was aimed for a bouncing Accelerator, missing it’s target and burrowing into her back.

“AAAAAARG!”

Calico held up his hands defensively, jumping away. “Hey, I did warn you.”

It didn’t matter that her target was closer than ever, all Pressure could focus on was swinging around to shake her fist at Meltdown, exposing a new charcoal black patch on her back. “What the hell, Weasel!?” she screamed. “You slimed me!”

Meltdown didn’t turn to look at her, leaving her talking to his shoulder as he pulled acid from the water up onto the shore, urging it to form a whip-like shape and lash out at Accelerator. He dismissed Pressure with a wave. “Don’t start whingeing at me, you could have dodged it.”

“Oh yeah?” Pressure’s face twitched for a moment before being pulled into a savage grin. “Why don’t you dodge this beat?”

In a matter of seconds, her heel exploded to launch her forward, flipping in the air before dive bombing Meltdown. Upon hitting the ground, she was still on top of him, riding him like a surfboard across the floor before slamming him into the wall.

A crack formed in the glass of Meltdown’s helmet, his entire body shaking for a moment before releasing a burst of acid all around him, knocking Pressure off him. He shot up to his feet, throwing his arms up in disbelief. “Have you gone mad?!” he cried.

 Observer rushed towards them, wildly shaking his arms and pointing at their real foes. “FOCUS. ENEMIES. DANGER.”

From there, despite Observer’s pleas, things only became more chaotic.

Pressure lunged for Calico with a thunderous kick, but he slipped beneath her arc, letting her heel crater into the stone wall. The shockwave ricocheted off the tunnel and bowled straight into Observer, knocking the villain sprawling into the acid puddles. He shrieked and flailed, rolling out with a fresh trail of smoke following him.

“TARGET LOST. ERROR. PAIN.”

Meltdown swung his acid whip in fury, but Accelerator zipped past it, letting the burning lash slice a pipe overhead instead. Scalding sewer water dumped onto Observer’s back, making him shriek louder.

“See, you guys don’t even need me here,” Calico taunted from behind, twirling his baton before smacking Pressure’s ankle just enough to throw off her balance. “You’re doing a fantastic job wrecking each other on your own.”

“Shut your mouth, cat-brat!” Pressure roared, spinning to chase him.

Except she didn’t land on Calico. She landed heel-first onto Meltdown’s shoulder, caving it in with a thunderclap. His armour groaned under the force, acid spurting out of fresh cracks.

“IDIOT!” Meltdown screamed, backhanding her off with his gauntlet. “You’re all ruining my composure!”

Accelerator zipped between them, jabbing a knuckle into Meltdown’s cracked visor before darting back out of reach. “Wait, you had composure?”

“RAAARGH!” Meltdown reeled, a glow beginning to leak from his joints. His whole frame hissed like a kettle.

Calico, ducking under another of Pressure’s sweeps, stole a glance at him. His grin faltered into something sharper. “Accelerator – look at him. He’s unstable.”

She zipped over to his side for just long enough to give him a raised brow. “Unstable's a generous word. He looks like a soda can left in the sun.”

“Exactly. If we push him to his breaking point, he’ll blow big enough to bring the whole sewer down on our heads.”

Her eyes gleamed, and she bared her teeth in a crooked grin. “Ohhh, I like where this is going.”

“Good,” Calico said, spinning his baton and stepping forward again. “So… let’s piss him off.”

Accelerator didn’t need telling twice. She darted around Meltdown, poking him in the ribs, knocking his hands off-balance, spitting every insult she could between her laughter. “What’s wrong, Puddle Boy? You losing your edge? Or maybe you never had one!”

Calico joined in, dodging around Pressure’s attempts to stomp him flat, but always careful to redirect her momentum into Meltdown’s path. “You hear that? She’s not wrong. All bark, all slime. I bet your acid can’t even melt through tin foil.”

“PATHE-” Observer started to cry, only to get smacked in the head again by Pressure’s heel as she swung wide and missed Calico. He flew face-first into the wall, lenses cracked, squealing in static.

Meltdown’s chest glowed brighter, vents on his back fuming with radioactive mist. “STOP LAUGHING AT ME!”

Accelerator zipped just past his whip, blowing a mocking kiss. “Not until you pop, glow stick.”

And Calico, leaning lightly on his baton, smirked and added, “Come on, Melty. Show us the fireworks.”

The acid whip slivered across the floor, the head darting into the air just for a chance of skimming Calico’s heel, only to be danced around. Calico treated Meltdown to another baton special, one stab to the ankle, another bat to the shoulder before a fiendish pool-cue finish in the stomach.

He cupped his hands over his brow, replicating binoculars to further gaze at the fallen Meltdown. “We’re looking at you funny, Weasel!”

Accelerator stopped, throwing an odd look to Calico whilst holding back a snort. “Wait, is that his actual name?”

“IT’S WEE-”

Buddy sliced Meltdown across the chest, making a show of playfully spinning around Meltdown’s futile attempts to swipe at him. Calico continued to speak. “Of course it is, you haven’t seen normal him; but he really does look like one, so I guess it makes sense.”

“SHUT UP!” Meltdown’s scream surged through the chamber, pulling at the acid lake like the moon pulled at the ocean, causing the rise of boiling waves to crash over the path. “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”

He came to his feet batting Calico’s baton away with his head, slamming his fist into the floor, pouring more acid into his horrid whip until it was long enough to cross the length of the entire room. There was no skill to his flurry of swings, just a mad, blind desire to strike anything and everything so long as one of those things were the blasted brats ruining his perfect day.

This made for tighter spaces to jump through, Calico finding the elongated, flopping laser substitute easily filling up most of the room just by naturally bouncing off of corners, leading to many instances of his nose getting skimmed by the attack. Still, it was Accelerator that worried him.

The defining flaw he and Nino took advantage of in their fight against her was the fact that, whilst her speed was immaculate, her handle on it wasn’t enough to compensate outside of short-term bursts. Here, with the coiled length of the acid tentacles stretched across the room might as well have been a grid of trip wires, and she was not doing a good job of dodging them.

To be fair, there was an upside to this.

“Watch where you’re swinging that thing, Weevil!” Pressure squealed as she was batted down from her perch, leaving a crater in the floor; and once again flattening poor Observer. Her bulky boot size alone made her unwieldy in the face of such a precise obstacle, unable to fit inside the small gaps of room there was without an ankle getting singed.

Her pleas fell on deaf ears, if Meltdown had any in the first place. There was only more incoherent howling that only rose in pitch and bile the more Calico and Accelerator remained standing. More cracks started to show, not just in the glass, but the rest of his outfit as well bleeding light and giving way to smoke; the very fabric of the memento shaking as something more malevolent in his heart demanded to surface.

“I’m bigger than you, smarter than you, more powerful than you. Better than you! You’re not allowed to disrespect me, not you, not anyone!” Meltdown roared, his vocals breaking down to unbearable screamed that tore into Calico’s enhanced hearing. “YOU HEAR ME, AGRESTE!?”

Accelerator saw her chance and went for it. She dashed low, her speed a blur as she slid behind Meltdown’s massive frame, ready to tackle him out of control.

“I don’t think he’s listening, man,” she called to Calico, her grin sharp even as acid hissed around her. “Maybe you need to scream some-”

Her words cut short. One of Meltdown’s wild acid lashes cracked across the chamber, catching her mid-sprint. It splashed across her side, and though the burn was shallow compared to what it could’ve been, it stunned her just long enough.

Pressure didn’t waste it.

“Gotcha!” Surface Pressure came barrelling out of nowhere, boots flaring with the thrust of her air bursts, and nailed Accelerator straight across the jaw with a heel kick. The sentimonster staggered, dazed, when Pressure flipped over her with another blast of force from her heels, coming down like a warhead. The impact rattled the entire sewer as she drove Accelerator into the floor, cracking stone beneath them.

“Going somewhere?” Pressure sneered, her grin wild.

“Accelerator!” Calico cried.

He charged forward, baton raised; but a beam of sickly violet light split the ground in front of him, searing so close he had to leap back to avoid losing his legs. Observer stood there, visor flashing, voice grating like static.

“INTERFERENCE: DENIED.”

Pinned, Accelerator struggled, teeth grit, but Pressure ground her boot into the back of her head, pressing her skull into the stone. “Nope,” Pressure hissed. “You ain’t doing shit.”

Accelerator clawed weakly at the floor, one eye burning up at Calico. Her body trembled with both rage and dread, but Pressure wasn’t finished. That grin got darker, and Pressure… started to hum.

“Half a pound of tuppenny rice.”

She crouched lower, bracing her weight on Accelerator’s back while grabbing hold of her arm. The moment stretched, long enough for Accelerator to realize what was coming, long enough for her eyes to widen in horror.

“Half a pound of treacle.”

“Don’t-” she rasped.

“That's the way the money goes…”

Pressure just smirked. “POP goes the weasel!”

Her heel flared one more time, blasting her upward, and with a sickening rip, Accelerator’s arm tore clean from its socket.

“AAAAARGH!”

There was no blood, there was no wound; but that scream more than made up for it. The scream ripped through the sewer, echoing off the stone. Pressure rose, dangling the severed limb in her fist like a prize, grinning ear to ear.

“Mhm. It’s like snapping the arm off an action figure.” She twisted the wrist until it cracked. “Very nice… pop.”

Calico didn’t care about the burns still fresh on his face, nor did his body demanded rest, pure disgust made him tremble until it burst free. He charged into the fray screaming, batting away tendrils and Observer’s beams with his baton, eyes only for Pressure, ears only for her ringing laughter.

“Leave her alon-”

But Meltdown didn’t care, he let his whip fall and focused his fire on Calico, howling as his stream of acid hit Calico dead on, pinning the boy down against the wall and knocking Buddy into the air.

“Look who looks silly now!” he screamed, firing blast after blast to knock Calico down with every attempt to rise. “Stay down, boy. Play dead. It’ll help you deal with the pain I’m about to put you through.”

Meltdown only slowed his approach to snatch a dizzy Buddy out of the air, crushing the hat in his grip while blubbering squeaks rung out. “But first, why don’t I dispose of this little fella for you?”

Deep in his heart, Calico knew that he wanted to save Buddy, but he was stopped in his tracks. Not by physical force, but through the connection of the peacock, of the amok, that in its screaming, searing pain when Meltdown began to burn through Buddy, became a rope in which to wrap around Calico’s throat. It was an intense feedback loop, hearing and feeling the screams of his own creation.

He was sure that there was a way to turn it off, but through the burns that melted through his mind, he could not conceivably grasp whatever it was. All Calico could do was drop to his knees, eye bulging out of their socket, with his voice ripped from him before he could even scream.

Meltdown cackled, tossing Buddy to the floor and stomping on him. “Burn. Burn! BURN!”

To add insult to injury, Pressure came down in front of him, smacking Calico across the face with Accelerator’s severed arm. “Face it, kid. It doesn’t matter who you bring; you can’t beat all three of us.”

Calico’s vision blurred, his cheek still stinging from Pressure’s savage blow with Accelerator’s arm, when a low voice cut through the haze.

“He can’t,” Accelerator said, her voice shaking as she heaved herself back to her feet, the stub of her shoulder hanging limp in front of her. “But I can.”

Before anyone could react – before Calico could even register the words – Accelerator vanished in a snap of displaced air. Then came the impact.

All three villains were scattered like bowling pins, limbs flailing as they crashed across the sewer. Pressure slammed into the wall hard enough to shake the room. Observer was bowled over, his shriek lost beneath Pressure’s body as she collapsed right on top of him. And Meltdown ended up on his back with Accelerator pinning him down, straddling his chest with both fists clenched.

Buddy, shaken free from Meltdown’s foot, squeaked loudly and flitted back through the acrid mist, planting himself into Calico’s hands. A painful-looking hole was now in the side of Buddy, but Calico could do nothing for him other than stroke the brim with his thumb.

On the floor, Meltdown thrashed violently beneath Accelerator. “Unhand me, you- you-”

His words cut short as Accelerator pressed one hand flat against his chest plate. She didn’t punch. Instead, her arm blurred into motion, vibrating so fast that the hum filled the chamber, and the vibrations spread from her hand across Meltdown’s whole form. His armour glitched, twitching and shaking like static caught on a screen.

“You know…” Accelerator muttered, her grin sharp and humourless, “…it’s so stupid in hindsight.”

The vibrations surged harder, rattling Meltdown, much like a struck bell. His body flickered in and out, burning light spilling from cracks in his suit.

“All this time I’ve been accelerating myself,” she said, eyes narrowing, “but I never thought to try accelerating you.”

Meltdown’s screams erupted, but they weren’t words anymore. They came as a machine-gun stutter of noise, a garbled cacophony too fast for the human ear to understand. His whole frame jittered at Accelerator’s speed, the acid inside his suit boiling out through widening cracks.

Then, suddenly, Accelerator ripped her hand away.

CRK-SHH!

The sound was deafening. The fractures across Meltdown’s armour had doubled, jagged lines glowing like molten cracks in a volcano. Acid leaked freely from his joints, pooling at his feet and hissing into the stone.

And now, finally, his voice returned; hoarse, broken, and filled with horror. “D-Do you even realize what you’ve DONE?!”

Calico’s eyes widened. A cold bolt of realization ran through his veins. She’d brought him to an unstable boiling point; the verge of… well, a meltdown. His whole body was destabilizing, unravelling into something catastrophic.

Accelerator leaned back, exhaling through her teeth, and tossed Calico a look over her shoulder. Her one good arm flexed to wave him off.

“Bozo,” she called, sharp but almost casual, “you better start running.”

Calico’s throat tightened. “What are you doing?”

She huffed, struggling to pull Meltdown up against her, his struggling form draped over her as a meat shield. Or, as Calico realized, a battering ram.

“Bringing down the house,” she said. “Like any good performer.”

She couldn’t settle for just leaving Meltdown to bomb. She had to make sure the other two went down with him. Calico could practically hear sirens in his head warning of a nuclear meltdown, and she was the one refusing to use the exit.

He shook his head, taking a step towards her, pleading. “You… you don’t have to do this.”

Cracked stone pieces were used as a sped-up projectile, striking at Calico’s foot when Accelerator kicked it. “You said I can live my life however I want,” she snapped, fixing him with a sharp stare. “That means I get to end it how I want to.”

When Calico didn’t move, just gawked at her, unable to let the protest leave his lips, Accelerator smacked the floor with her heel and growled. She tried to hide how hard she was breathing, but Calico could hear it plain as day. “Don’t stand there looking like an idiot, you got a world to save, right?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Meltdown spluttered, too weak to do anything more than feebly flail at her. “You’re just a glorified tool. You don’t have it in you to sacrifice yourself for some brat!”

“I was created to pretend to be the great hero Vesperia,” Accelerator said through gritted teeth, turning Meltdown towards the woozy, but not yet escaping, villain duo that remained. “This is just me getting into character.”

The vibrations in her arm flared again, crawling through Meltdown’s fractured body as his form buckled further toward collapse.

Calico’s legs wouldn’t move. His body screamed at him to run, but his chest felt nailed in place. If it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t be here at all. Accelerator wouldn’t be standing on the edge of her own destruction, holding back a monster with her bare hands.

His throat went dry. He opened his mouth to speak, but the look she shot him silenced everything. A single, sharp glance; contempt, humor, defiance all rolled into one. It said: Don’t you dare act like I didn’t choose this.

The words he wanted to say – apologies, protests, pleas – curdled in his stomach.

Calico’s fists clenched, his jaw trembling. Finally, with a broken sigh, he reached up to Buddy, patting the hat as it moaned softly against his head, its grief tangible. “Yeah,” Calico whispered. “I know.”

Then, before he could betray her choice by lingering any longer, he turned and sprinted down the tunnel. The Peacock flared in his chest. Another connection opened, unbidden but welcomed. Even if Accelerator wasn’t his creation, she let him in. She wanted him to see. To remember.

Her voice carried through the bond, crackling in the same vein as the unstable energy building around her. “Can you tell that Chloe chick… I hope she finds her sister?”

Calico stumbled for half a step, nearly tripping, but forced his legs to pump faster. The glow in his mind showed Accelerator shoving Meltdown forward as a burning shield, his leaking body sizzling as she rammed him toward the dazed figures of Pressure and Observer.

“And Adrien?” she murmured, her voice quieter now, tinged with something dangerously close to tenderness.

Calico’s chest clenched, and for a second, he almost looked back.

“Thanks for the memories.”

The bond snapped. The next moment, the world detonated.

The explosion ripped through the sewer with a deafening roar. The ground trembled, ceiling cracking apart as flames and acidic steam surged outward. Calico didn’t dare look, but he didn’t have to. The tidal wave of acid came screaming down the tunnel, hissing and devouring everything it touched.

He ran harder, lungs burning, water vapor and chemical stench choking him as he bolted for the ladder at the far end. The rumble behind him grew louder, closer, a living wall of death snapping at his heels.

The ladder was only meters away now, gleaming faintly in the flickering light. Calico’s boots skidded on the slick stone as the wave thundered behind him, spraying his back with droplets that burned through his jacket. He didn’t slow. The ladder loomed ahead, he just needed to go a little further.

“Come on, come on, come on-” he hissed, launching himself forward and seizing the first rung. His palms were raw, skin blistered from the heat, but he hauled himself upward, shoving Buddy against his chest as the hat whimpered pitifully.

The tunnel below filled with sound; the hissing, roaring, cracking of stone as the acid wave slammed into the ladder’s base. For a terrifying second, Calico felt the surge grab at his boots, licking up the metal. He cried out, legs pumping furiously, his mind screaming only one word: UP.

Just in time for a dying beep to cross his ears and, to his horror, a familiar flash began working it’s way over his body. The flash that took away his transformation, leaving Adrien hanging from the ladder with two horrified kwami trying to pull him up.

The air grew hotter the higher he climbed, acidic steam flooding around him. His eyes stung, throat burning as he coughed, but he didn’t stop until his fingers smacked against the manhole cover. He braced his shoulder, shoved. Nothing. Plagg and Duusu desperately launched themselves at it. It didn’t budge.

“NO, no, no-!” His voice broke as he pushed harder, the cover refusing to move, the roar below rising.

Buddy let out a faint squeak, then glowed faintly blue. Adrien blinked as the hat’s power flared through the amok’s bond, guiding his hands to a weaker spot. He shifted, braced again, and with a desperate roar shoved upward.

The manhole scraped open, cool night air spilling down in blessed waves.

Adrien clambered out, dragging himself and Buddy onto the pavement just as the acid wave slammed against the underside of the street, a dull boom shaking the ground under his body. The cover slammed back into place with a clang, rattling in its frame.

Adrien collapsed onto his back, chest heaving, the echo of his burns screaming at him now that miraculous and the adrenaline wasn’t holding them at bay. Buddy curled weakly beside him, still trembling from the ordeal.

The boy tilted his head to the stars overhead. For the first time since entering that hellhole, there was no roar, no laughter, no taunts – only silence and the faint hiss of steam rising through the cracks.

“Come on, Kid,” Plagg insisted, tugging on Adrien’s shirt. “This is a bad time to rest.”

“Can’t I just have five more minutes?”

“We don’t even have five more seconds,” Duusu squealed, hovering down to press her head against Buddy. “I can’t believe what that nasty man did to poor Buddy!”

“I can’t believe Accelerator…” Adrien couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought as he got back to his feet. He simply pulling Buddy back over his head, patting the hat with an appreciative touch, and letting Plagg and Duusu nestle in the brim.

“She made her choice, Mr. Adrien,” Duusu assured him, though her tone was sniffling and warning of tears to come. “And she was happy to do it. T-That’s what’s important, so let’s get a move on and- and- and find somewhere we can drink ourselves stupid to her memory.”

Plagg tried to interject some soothing humour, patting Duusu on the back. “Oh no, this day is bad enough. Last thing we need is drunk Duusu.”

For the moment, Adrien let himself get swept up in it as he made his way staggering down the empty, silent street. He didn’t know where he was going really, just letting his instincts guide him to somewhere he felt safe to hide, somewhere familiar; maybe he was looking for one of the other’s houses, maybe just falling back to Dupont. Whatever his direction, he walked. And he listened to his kwami argue, let himself pretend everything was normal again, that he could just block everything out.

“But Plaaaaagg,” Duusu moaned, and Adrien felt her roll about Buddy, “everything is so sad, and I just got back, and I can’t take it sober!”

Plagg felt back, paws up behind his head and chest purring. “Hey, Quilltail, we’ve survived worse. Calm down.”

“Spartacus putting you on a non-dairy diet isn’t the same thing,” Duusu grumbled, allowing Adrien to chuckle. “You haven’t even welcomed me back yet.”

“I-I don’t need to do that! If you want some mushy, whiny reunion, go find Tikki.”

“But Plaaaag, I miiiiiissed you.” There was shuffling as Duusu moved to try and hug Plagg and he scrambled to avoid the affection. “You’re my drama buddy.”

Adrien tilted his head up, “Drama buddy?”

Plagg peered over the brim, face looking extra chubby when he was scowling. “Don’t you dare ask, kid!”

The silver lining of this day was the joy of getting Duusu back somewhere safe, somewhere she could talk to other kwamis again. As far as Adrien knew, Felix kept Duusu rather private even before the betrayal, probably scared that she’d get taken or something if he let her out of his sight. It was hard to imagine that Duusu had been inside the mansion all along, sitting in his father’s safe.

Long ago, Adrien had opened that safe and completely glanced over the peacock miraculous when taking the grimoire. How easily things could have been different if, for whatever reason be it his curiosity or Plagg noticing something, he’d taken interest in the broach and freed Duusu from Hawkmoth before Nathalie could even wield her.

He wondered how Duusu had been with Nathalie, with Felix; whether they treated her better than his father treated Duusu, or if they only saw her as a tool for their goals. Maybe he’d ask her later, when they were safe.

Adrien slowed, his steps faltering when Duusu’s voice turned oddly serious.

“Wait… Uh… Plagg?” she said, her little voice wobbling.

“Yeah?” Plagg answered warily.

“Mr. Agreste, he doesn’t know, does he?”

Plagg blinked. “Know wh-” He caught himself, ears flattening. “Uh, yeah, no, he doesn’t.”

Adrien frowned under Buddy’s brim. “Doesn’t know what?”

“We need to tell him before anything else happens,” Duusu pressed, her tiny tail lashing nervously.

“I’d love to,” Plagg said, rubbing the back of his neck, “but that damn guardian magic is keeping our traps shut.”

Ah. That. In the back of his mind, Adrien had always remembered Plagg’s warning, the final secret Marinette ordered the kwami to keep. An order from a guardian that couldn’t be overturned, even by a holder.

Was it really time for him to find out the final betrayal?

“Not anymore!” Duusu chimed. “They technically already told him, so the command isn’t in effect anymore, right?”

Wait, what? Adrien’s brow furrowed. Who told him what? It had to be today since Duusu wouldn’t know about any other instance. Was it something Felix said that Adrien missed?

Plagg’s eyes went wide. “It isn’t?”

“Only one way to find out!” Duusu puffed up her chest and fluttered close to Adrien’s face. “Mr. Agreste, you might want to sit down for this, and maybe take a deep breath, and have something you can faint on, and-”

“Duusu!” Plagg snapped.

“Right, right…” She cleared her throat, wings buzzing. “Well, here goes nothing. Adrien, you’re-”

“Adrien!”

Words couldn’t describe the wave of relief that passed over him, washing away all other thoughts at the sound of her voice. He spun around, staring across the street, where Rene Rogue touched down, looking completely unharmed and unbothered as she stood up to gaze at him.

A sigh escaped her lips, pulling her fingers up to her ear, speaking into her miraculous communicator. “I’ve found him.”

It was only the exhaustion of his recent bout that stopped Adrien from charging across the street to tackle her in a big hug. Trying to put the fates of his teammates to the back of his mind, it was almost impossible, every few seconds plagued with the terrible question of if they’d been captured by Chalot. Seeing Alya alive and well, it at least assured him that Accelerator would be the only loss tonight.

“Alya, thank god, I was really worried Chalot’s men got you.” He was huffing as he stumbled across the road, not caring if a car came along and smashed into him; all he cared about was Alya. “How’s the rest of the team?”

“They’ll be here soon, just take it easy,” she assured him, holding her hand out to signal him to stop.

Okay, she clearly wasn’t in the mood for a hug yet. And he’d respect it, for now.

So, he paused there, taking Buddy off and sweeping his fingers through his sweaty bangs.  He squeezed his eyes shut, told himself to calm down, that he couldn’t let his elation get in the way of making sure they were on the same page. They couldn’t afford to talk around each other by accident.

“Look, I don’t know how much you’ve figured out yet, but my identity’s been exposed,” he admitted, shame leaking into his voice. If he was the first one to be leaked, that meant that it was probably something that he did that exposed him and thus threatened everyone else’s identities. “And for all I know, yours and everyone else’s has too. The Task Force is out for blood and closing in, so we need to find somewhere else to lay-”

Time froze, and yet Adrien still felt slow, struggling to catch up with the present. After all, it was his first time being stabbed.

He didn’t really put together what had happened at first. He just found everything blurring, andf the world had gone silent except for his heartbeat. And then, his gaze just naturally fell down to his stomach where a wound had suddenly manifested, spurting out blood that seemed so bright on the dark streets.

Uncertain footsteps had his body swaying forward, his voice strangled and gurgling. In desperation, he reached for Rena to hold him steady. However, his hand went through her, the girl before him dissolving into mist and leaving him to collapse onto his knees, desperately holding his wound together.

“A-A… Alya? What did you…”

His eyes trailed up the building, finding new sights hanging from the rooftops. The shapes that peered down at him looked so familiar, but almost fake, because they couldn’t be real. The team was all there, minus Bee and Lady Luck, they stood in formation around Rena, almost completely shadowed by the moonlight.

Adrien couldn’t make out their costumes, just the outlines, and the pale glares burning through the darkness. They stood ready for battle, wound as tight as tension would allow, brandishing their weapons for bludgeoning. There was no joy to be found, no relief, no affection – they were united in disgust at the creature before them.

Rena’s arm moved and a gleam from her fingertips caught Adrien’s eye. A new addition of claws to her outfit, claws that were now dirtied with blood. Something was dropped in front him, where the fake Rena had stood there now rested the same scanner Chalot had shown off. And it stared back at Adrien with the same result.

“We know what you are, Monster.”