LADYBUG FIXED EVERYTHING, AS ALWAYS.

With one of her convoluted plans, she'd completely cleared up any doubts Nino had about his relationship. Nino and Alya were still in love, and now their communication skills were stronger than before. Together forever. Ladybug had saved Paris again from the destructive powers of yet another akumatised victim. The city's hero.

Good. Great. Fantastic for them. The only person not joyously tap-dancing his way out of the emotional rubble of Rocketeer was Chat Noir. His Lady had lied to him.

She's not your Lady.

He landed with catlike elegance on the centimetre edge of a pane of glass.

Chat Noir had left his bedroom window open for easy entry and exit. He always did. A bad move, considering there was probably not a single place more coveted by burglars than Adrien Agreste's bedroom. A rock climbing covered the east wall, and a full length bookshelf the west. He owned an arcade machine, foosball table, the PlayStation 5, which his father procured two months before its public release.

And yet he couldn't give a damn if one day he returned, and these treasures had been stolen. Not that the ten-feet walls around the perimeter of the Agreste mansion and the military-grade security system would ever allow it.

Descending noiselessly onto the polished hardwood floor, he whispered, "Plagg. Claws in."

Green light swept his body, toe to top, and then he was Adrien Agreste once more. Great.

Plagg's head snapped to the door. Adrien knew the Black Cat kwami's enhanced hearing was picking up on something, and seconds later the door handle twisted. Adrien dove for the grand piano, dismissing his shuffled playlist of classical pieces. Replacing the phone, his fingers landed on the keys just as his father stepped into the room.

"Adrien," his father greeted stonily. Gabriel's mouth flattened into a stern line.

That was his way of showing affection, he'd learned. Adrien nodded at his father, hands conjuring Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 17 with rote expertise. His father stopped by the threshold and listened intently.

Plagg, who had zipped into the lid of the piano, let only his green eyes and feline snout melt out of the music stand. "Close one," he mouthed devilishly, pulling faces at Adrien while the boy played.

"How is the sonata coming along?"

Adrien's eighteenth birthday party was in two days, and Gabriel had been arranging the most opulent celebration for his son's coming of age. The type of event with tiny food portions held by massive plates held by impeccably dressed waiters, security checks at the door of the Agreste mansion, and a live piano performance by the birthday boy himself.

His father had been so busy planning his birthday celebration that Adrien felt like he'd hardly seen him. He supposed it must have been a complicated affair—catering, decorations, extra security, housekeeping. If he didn't know better, Adrien would have suggested simply hosting a few of his school friends in his room, ordering pizza and watching action movies late into the evening.

But he did know better.

"I'm making excellent progress, Father."

I'm making excellent progress, Father, Plagg mimicked silently.

Adrien's kwami adopted an annoyingly cherubic expression, a teasing rendition of his wielder. It was a good thing he was hidden by the music stand, and Adrien not, so he couldn't even glare at Plagg.

As if proving himself, Adrien completed a grand flourish down the scale of B-flat major and sank into the next set of bars. Gabriel Agreste looked mildly impressed.

"Good," his father said.

Good, Plagg mocked, face drawn tight into a rigid mask.

Gabriel Agreste nodded imperceptibly, a sign of approval Adrien had honed his eyes into detecting. "I trust that you will be ready for your party. Many of my industry connections are looking forward to hearing you play live for the first time."

"Yes, Father."

There was once a time that his father used to sit alongside his son and play the piano with Adrien.

The Agreste mansion had always been huge. But on those distant afternoons that he, his mother and his father filled its grand chambers with music and laughter, the mansion had felt cosy.

It had been a long time since that feeling had come around.

Sometimes it was so faint Adrien felt like he was imagining it all—or, at the least, glamourising his memory. Surely his father couldn't have played Rocket Man and belted out the wrong words at the top of his lungs. Surely Gabriel couldn't have encouraged Adrien's passion for passion's sake rather than impressing others. Surely the mansion couldn't have grown so cold in so few years.

Adrien knew his father loved him. Was it sad that he had to dig for a sign his father liked him?

Gabriel made to leave, and Adrien blurted, "Will you be at dinner tonight?" Even as he asked he knew the answer.

Emilie Agreste had been gone for nearly five years and Adrien missed her daily. He kept pictures of her everywhere, frequently listened to old home videos, to keep her memory alive. Since his mother disappeared, Gabriel had thrown himself into his work to distract himself.

It was counterintuitive, the fact that utter tragedy could produce work so prolific as to make these last five years the best ever for Gabriel, the brand. Ten new seasonal lines of garments, three new fragrances, multiple fashion shows and award ceremonies.

The grief of losing his wife sat inside, completely unprocessed, whereas Adrien had let himself rage and cry and run away.

But he had to ask. He would always ask.

Breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? How about a picnic? One day, his father—the caring, energetic creative he remembered from childhood—would sit down at the piano again. One day, the Agreste mansion would fill with music, laughter and other people. One day, Gabriel Agreste would come back to the world.

And his son would be ready to welcome him.

"I'm sorry, Adrien. I am incredibly busy finalising your party arrangements with Nathalie, on top of everything at work." Gabriel fixed his tie, his fingers carefully smoothing down the pristine silk. "I need to focus."

I need to focus, Plagg intoned.

Adrien cast a reproachful but affectionate glance at his kwami. He waited until his father's footsteps faded before he shut the piano. Then he launched himself onto the plush couch in front of the 8K OLED television, burying his head in a cushion.

Plagg rested a fuzzy paw on his shoulder. "PlayStation now?"

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Marinette's entire world came grinding to a halt when the bodyguard at the door shook his head.

Her eyebrows jumped so high she could feel them touch her bangs. "What do you mean we're not on the list?"

The primate-like bodyguard glanced at the clipboard in his hand, eyes scanning meticulously, and then back at Marinette. He shook his head again. Even with his taciturn nature—seriously, the man dropped Adrien off and picked him up every day at school, and yet she'd never heard him speak—the body language for no was universal.

Miss Bustier's entire homeroom class had shown up for Adrien's birthday party.

And it was hard work getting everyone assembled like this, let alone getting into the party and surviving it. As the student body president of Francois Dupont High School, Marinette had naturally taken the coordination upon herself. Some people had to manoeuvre shifts at their jobs, some were missing extracurriculars, and others simply had to be violently forced into a tuxedo to fit the dress code.

Cough, Lê Chiến Kim.

Nino shouldered to the front of the crowd of their schoolmates, clad in a hunter green blazer. "Hey, that's my best friend's birthday party." His voice wavered, suddenly overcome with emotion. He wiped invisible tears from the corner of his eyes. "Adrien's my rock. He's gotten me through some rough times lately, and if you think you're keeping us from celebrating him—"

The bodyguard was a mountain of stone.

Nino growled, dropping his facade. "Jesus Christ, let us in!"

Marinette raised a fist, encased in a white satin glove that offset her baby pink dress, and Miss Bustier's class rallied behind their leader. "Yeah!"

The pale, ornate doors opened with a clunk.

Gabriel Agreste stepped out, dressed in a fitted blazer made of the highest quality silk—dark, and yet so exquisitely woven that it seemed to reflect light. Damn it, the man had taste, and the aspiring designer noticed it every time.

From inside the mansion, Marinette heard the party.

Well, party was being generous. She registered the dense noise in the atrium as the type that was all conversation and no laughter. Slow string music underscored the discussions that would surely be about politics and the economy and the fashion industry, and then the door fell shut again.

Gabriel Agreste arched a manicured eyebrow. "What seems to be the problem here?"

"Mr. Agreste, please hear us out. I'm Marinette, one of Adrien's classmates." Marinette placed a palm on her chest, eyes pleading and hopefully genuine. "I was under the impression when you said that you looked forward to welcoming everyone to your mansion for Adrien's party, you meant everyone was welcome."

Gabriel's face remained flat. "It was a turn of phrase. Perhaps a clumsy one on my part. I'm terribly sorry, but we simply didn't plan for such a high number of students at this party. Catering, security and housekeeping are not prepared."

"We don't have to eat anything!" Marinette insisted.

"And we won't cause any trouble," Alya added.

Nino nodded in agreement. "We can even help clean up afterwards!"

The students behind them chorused their support.

"Please, just let us attend this party. We all love Adrien," Marinette told him. Her heart ached at the thought of not being able to deliver this gift, on one of Adrien's most special birthdays, with her eyes looking into his. "We want to be there for him."

But Gabriel, eyes like a glacier, did not so much as give them an apologetic smile. "You may see Adrien at school tomorrow. Enjoy your evening."

The bodyguard opened the door for Gabriel, and it slammed shut in their faces.

Marinette tried to keep everyone's spirits up as they trudged down the stairs of the mansion and towards the opulent front gate. There were other ways into the party, surely. Maybe if she called Adrien, he could pull some strings to get them in. Sure, she'd wanted to surprise him with the class' attendance, but surely the attendance was more important than the surprise—

"What's the point?" Nino muttered, glancing forlornly back at the mansion. "Even if we did get in, someone would throw us out again. I'm so sick and tired of his old man."

Ivan Bruel nodded. "It must be hard with a father like that." Mylène Haprèle, Ivan's girlfriend, curled her arm around his back, her face looking just as pitiful.

All around her, Marinette's classmates wilted in their disappointment. It was hard not to feel the same, the tug towards the deep and dark.

"Come on, everyone," she encouraged, steeling herself. "We need to think positively."

"Why?" Max Kanté whined.

His robot companion, Markov, emitted a sad, modulated sigh. "According to my calculations, there's a 0.01% chance that we'll ever be able to set foot in Adrien's house."

"Why?" Marinette spluttered. "Because—"

A flash of movement caught Marinette's eye.

And then the sky disappeared behind a swarm of purple butterflies.

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Adrien was beginning to think that, aside from his father, he wouldn't see anyone he truly cared about on his birthday.

And then the akumas had descended—dozens of them, way too many to count, and it was absolutely sick the way he'd been relieved. Because Ladybug would come to save the say. She always did. And he would get to be with her.

He'd thought long and hard about the situation. Perhaps because Nino and Alya did not hold their Miraculous permanently, the rules about secrecy didn't have to be as strict. Perhaps because they held the two most powerful Miraculous, they were bound by harsher oaths. Perhaps she hadn't done anything wrong.

Adrien slipped away throughout the furor in the atrium. The mega-rich were scrambling for the solace of their private security details, and everyone was simply running for cover behind statues or under tables. He followed the crowd initially, then ducked into a linen closet and transformed.

Chat Noir took his place on the roof of the mansion.

Hawk Moth had only attempted mass akumatisation a few times prior to this. From those experiences, he'd always shown his face, and Ladybug determined that it was a consequence of the limits of his power. One akuma could fly for miles and miles, but spreading the Butterfly Miraculous' power among many akumas meant that each one couldn't travel as far from its maker.

Hawk Moth had to be close by.

He hadn't been waiting for a minute when Ladybug landed next to him, shooting a wry glance at the frantic people filing out of the doors and into their town cars and limousines. She started catching the corrupted butterflies with her yo-yo immediately, though there were people holding their own on the ground.

Specifically, Nino and Alya, helping to keep the crowd calm and upbeat.

"What a pity we had to crash this party," she quipped. Another de-evilised butterfly flew out from her magical yo-yo, now coloured pure white.

"It's not a pity," Chat Noir chuckled. "I heard the mew-sic sucked."

Ladybug chuckled and shook her head, eye crinkling, midnight hair swaying. "That was such a bad pun, kitty."

Ladybug thinks he's obnoxious, and she's right!

Chat Noir turned his head to the civilians in his front yard.

"Have you seen any sign of Hawk Moth?" Chat Noir asked, looking for the familiar silhouette of their nemesis among the surrounding buildings. "Wait."

He slung an arm around Ladybug's shoulders, dragging her lower to the marble, and pointed his other claw to the horizon. The sky was a rich blue in the late afternoon sun. "There."

Ladybug nodded silently, poising her yo-yo at her hip. She saw him.

Hawk Moth, half-hidden behind a chimney. That building was beyond the gates of the Agreste mansion, just across the road. Where the potential akuma victims went, running for the vehicles that had delivered them, so did their enemy.

Without exchanging a word, the superheroes crept around the roof until they were closest to Hawk Moth.

Then they gave chase.

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Ladybug landed on the fractured concrete and somersaulted out of her fall.

Chat Noir fell into a sprint beside her as she gracefully rolled to her feet, not an inky hair out of place as they bore down on Hawk Moth. She was flawless, as always, even in the most dire of battles.

The superhero duo had corralled their nemesis into a ring of rubble, their battle laying waste to the 6th arrondissement. On either side of the narrow road, ivory residential apartments framed the conflict, some buildings flattened, others only missing chunks of their creamy, gilded facades.

At the beginning of the evening, curious families had peered from wrought iron-wrapped balconies and silk-curtained windows at the standoff. When they realised who was fighting, all the civilians smartly hid. Chat Noir knew no-one else in Paris knew what it meant to witness tragedy upon tragedy, reverse it all, and have no-one remember the trauma.

He and Ladybug were the only two to carry that grief forward. No-one else would really understand the way it weighed on the soul with no evidence it ever happened.

With any luck, this would be their final battle.

"Now, Chat Noir!" Ladybug called, her yo-yo blurring a pink circle by her side.

Chat Noir yelled, thrusting his fist to the ruined cobbles. "Cataclysm!"

His power drove deep cracks into the ground, splintering and snaking their way to Hawk Moth's location with a rumbling vengeance. Just before the supervillain could leap to solid ground, Ladybug threw her Lucky Charm—a quilted blanket—over his fleeing form, obscuring his vision.

Her yo-yo looped around the blanket and cinched before Chat Noir could even blink, unfailingly securing Hawk Moth. The latter struggled and writhed even after he fell into the tight chasm Chat Noir's Cataclysm had pried open. Trapped.

"Hawk Moth," Ladybug intoned as she strode forward. Chat Noir followed, his staff extended and poised to knock Hawk Moth back into his place should he try anything shady.

"You have terrorised this city and its people." Ladybug didn't waste any time—he was slippery enough—reaching between the folds of the blanket and ripping the purple locket brooch from his collar.

Her hand closed around the amethyst. Hawk Moth roared in fury, in defeat, his voice ricocheting off the surviving buildings. Purple light swallowed him.

Ladybug spoke through it all. "Paris' guardians are reclaiming the Miraculous of the Butterfly so that you may never harm her again. Ever."

The violet glow faded. Hawk Moth's head lolled forward under the crushing weight of failure, the head of white-blond hair strangely familiar. Chat Noir thought of all the people he'd watched corrupted, the years of destruction and loss they'd witnessed and then erased. On the cusp of finding justice, suddenly all of his bottled anger rushed up into his throat, unstoppable as a tsunami.

The end of his staff slammed into Hawk Moth's throat. The weakened man spluttered a cough. Chat Noir tipped it up, and with it, the face of the person he hated the most.

He wanted to look Hawk Moth in the eyes before the authorities came and took him away.

Ice grey. Chat Noir knew those eyes, that face, and his heart cracked. The pain was visceral—surely, some fibres of his aorta had splintered and now he was bleeding internally, why did his chest burn—and he saw his father playing the piano with his twelve-year-old self and he saw all those decimated buildings and then he saw nothing as his eyes swam with tears.

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

He couldn't think or speak or even help his Lady clean up the aftermath as she threw the blanket to the sky and rejoiced. "Miraculous Ladybug!"

Chat Noir let Ladybug's fist go un-bumped, their little ritual at the end of every battle now a hundred items down the list of his most pressing thoughts.

"I have to go," he whispered numbly, stumbling away as the Channel One news crew, spearheaded by Clara Contard, crowded around their heroes.

"What? Chat Noir."

He had to get out of here. Get the fuck out of here. Because the man he hated the most?

It was his father.

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A / N :

Mwah ha ha. And we're off. Yet another long chapter today, but we have officially set up the main conflicts of the story! Hopefully the next update will be in a week's time; till then, vote and comment your thoughts!

AImee <3