Chapter Text
Five weeks ago
POV:
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The Guardian
Holder of the Ladybug Miraculous
“Cataclysm!”
My back immediately felt the surging pain from every cell on my back, each one dying as the molecules dissolve and turn to dust. Dying nerves send impulses through synapses up my spine, screaming agony as I collapse onto the floor of the plane, sliding towards the cockpit as my consciousness threatens to fade into the darkness. All from the touch of one finger.
“I’ve waited a long time for this.”
My attacker, wearing the missing Black Cat Miraculous that I’ve spent my entire life searching for, readied a second cataclysm.
“And I believe this is a day you’ve been dreading.”
He placed his hand on the bookshelf, destroying my Lucky Charm. Along with it, any chance I could have in repairing my fatal injury.
I’m…I’m going to die.
My thoughts were shaking by the rush of cabin pressure exiting the plane, reminding me that the bookshelf was sealing the destroyed emergency door that our intruder disintegrated to come in.
“What’s it gonna be Guardian?” the assailant asked. “The Miraculous or your precious pilot?”
I gulped. My pilot. My heart. They were beyond the steel door of the cockpit. She was probably pulling back on the throttle as far as she could, desperately clinging to higher altitude, yet slowly losing altitude until we crashed hard in Paris.
“Don’t take me for an imbecile,” I spat. “You’ll just kill us both without a second thought once you get what you want.”
The assailant chuckled, finding amusement in my plight.
“Eh. Before you said that? I’ll admit. It's crossed my mind once or twice after I pinned ya. But now? I’ll give you a good deal. Give me the Miraculous, and I’ll have my wish heal ya right up. Even save the girl too. Hill in the Hamptons. Summer home in the Caribbean. Yacht around some other foreign fuckin’ country. Doesn’t matter. Just for the price of a cheaply made piece of jewelry.”
“But then I’d be condemning a complete stranger to the same fate! I’m not paving my name through the blood of others.”
“I might be a cat right now, but this is a dog-eat-dog world. You’ve been stupid with the Miraculous. I bet you haven’t even touched any of the cooler ones. I mean, the Dog and Pig Miraculous are stupid, but the Peacock? The Rabbit? The fuckin’ Bee! The world was your bitch as the Guardian of the Miraculous. And you left a perfect opportunity go to waste. For what? Morals? It’s only a matter of time before someone comes along and actually uses the shit they have laying around in a stupid box.”
“I would rather die than to have the Miraculous fall into evil hands.”
“Let’s put that to the test, shall we. Cataclysm!”
A dark swirl of charged destruction surged around his claws as he closed his right hand into a fist. An evil chuckle escaped his lips. “Even if you escape, you have about two to three months to live. Hell, an oncologist gives better prognosis on their snippy days! What I’m offering you is eternal youth and maybe give ya girl a bit more in the chest there.”
“Don’t talk about her like that!”
He shushed me with one finger from his unpowered left hand to my lips, tsking away at my outburst. “Shhhhhhhut up while I’m speaking. Anyways, I can give you all you desire and more. Or I kill you with another Cataclysm and then torture the shit out of that bitch before remaking the world as my own.”
I swallowed my spit. The suffering in my back was still quite extraordinary. My love was still in danger. My death was near. The plane was crashing from 30,000 meters above Paris. Five people died fighting the intruder. I was about to be wiped from existence. Someone unsavory would create a wish that ends the world.
All these and more.
I felt so lost.
And all I knew was that there was only one thing I could do.
Forgive me. I’ve let you all down.
“You win,” I conceded. “You w-win. Just, just let her live. D-don’t hurt her.”
His lips cracked alongside his cheek, turning it into a callous snarl.
“I ain’t a monster,” he lied. “Just doing business. Hand it over. Now!”
Reluctantly, I took out my yo-yo and opened it up, bathing myself in the soft white glow that emitted from my weapon. My fingertips dipped into the veil, slowly putting my entire hand down into the make-shift portal. After securing my grip on the box inside, I tugged, bringing the box to the surface and into this reality from the yo-yo’s pocket dimension.
The Miraculous Box.
Along with seventeen objects of extraordinary abilities.
The Bee Miraculous, with the power of Subjugation.
The Butterfly Miraculous, with the power of Transmission.
The Dog Miraculous, with the power of Adoration.
The Dragon Miraculous, with the power of Perfection.
The Fox Miraculous, with the power of Illusion.
The Goat Miraculous, with the power of Passion.
The Horse Miraculous, with the power of Migration.
The Monkey Miraculous, with the power of Derision.
The Mouse Miraculous, with the power of Multiplication.
The Ox Miraculous, with the power of Determination.
The Peacock Miraculous, with the power of Emotion.
The Pig Miraculous, with the power of Jubilation.
The Rabbit Miraculous, with the power of Evolution.
The Rooster Miraculous, with the power of Pretension.
The Snake Miraculous, with the power of Intuition.
The Tiger Miraculous, with the power of Elation.
The Turtle Miraculous, with the power of Protection.
Barrk, Daizzi, Duusu, Fluff, Kaalki, Longg, Mullo, Nooroo, Orikko, Pollen, Roarr, Sass, Stompp, Trixx, Wayzz, Xuppu, Ziggy…
I’m sorry.
But I have to do this.
This is the only way.
I held the box out, my arm quivering with the weight of my decision.
The intruder merely chuckled. “There,” He reached for it with his left hand, tracing the etchings of the magic box while nearly sneering at me. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“No, it was actually the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” I disagreed, taking one last pitiful sigh. “But, the hardest decisions are, often, the ones we have to make for a just and sane world.”
Quickly, I hurled the box just off to his right. And, as expected, he grasped it tightly in his right hand. The same hand that held his charged cataclysm.
The box turned a sickening ashy black, disintegrated in front of our very eyes, right before the wooden container turned into nothing but soot and dust. The powerful airflow of the cabin pressure exiting the plane caused the various Miraculous jewels to exit the plane. All of them. Into the wind.
“No!” The Black Cat user screamed, running to jump out of the plane.
Before he could make it much farther, I quickly lassoed my yo-yo around him, restraining him before he could grab even one of those jewels. My body slid across the floor as he started freefalling out of the airplane, only stopping as I brace my feet on either side of the plane door.
I looked back to the skyline, seeing the Miraculous small little blips in the Parisian skyline.
“What did you do?!” My captive screamed at me.
“Protected them. From you!”
“By throwing them out of a plane?! They can be in anyone’s hands now! Anyone’s! I know people! I know humanity! There’s a lot more fucking degenerate criminal scum then me out there!”
“I know.”
“Then why would you do something so stupid?!”
I grimaced, a reflex from the wave of destruction flowing through my back. The pain was immeasurable.
“Because all it takes is for one singular Miraculous to fall into the hands of a person pure of heart. Someone who is selfless, kind, and a defender of the innocent. Someone like –”
Now
POV:
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RJ Hennox
Future Holder of a Miraculous
“Where do you want the couch?”
“Facing away from the windows. But I don’t want it back up too close to the wall. Like, it should be close to the wall. Not against it? Unless we should have it facing the windows? I do like the view from the windows.”
“Dad…”
“But then where would we put the TV? I mean, do we need a living room TV? We’re not really a TV family. I think actually the TV should go in the kitchen and make the living room into a sitting room.”
“F-father…”
“But that’ll distract us from our family meals. I mean, new country, new life, new start. We can be a sit-down family. Eat dinner at the table family. I can cook. Not well, but I can cook. Decently. Did I ever tell you about your mother?”
“P-p-papa….”
“Well she went to this restaurant back in Liverpool and she was adamant that it was authentic Mexican. Authentic, she says. I go to the back of the kitchen and there’s only cooking done in a microwave. They just sell frozen food. I guess it’s not frozen food anymore after it got nuked. What would you call that?”
“H-h-h-h-h-helllllpppppp……….”
“Warm food? TV dinners? Oh, right. TV dinners are a thing. I guess I could always have the TV in the dining room and then we can watch football while eating a smorgasbord of food. What an odd word. Smorgasbord. How do you even spell that? There’s gotta be a ‘U’ in that, right? S-H-M-O-R-E-G-U-S-B-O-A-R-D. That doesn’t sound right. Maybe it’s bored, like when that annoying windbag just keeps talking on and on and on. I hate people like that on planes. Luckily, there was nobody like that on our flight. Why did we fly again? I know there wa –”
With a loud bang, my fingers slipped and dropped the couch right onto the hard wooden floor.
Well, mostly on the floor.
One of the legs bounced square off my foot.
“Fucking cunt Jesus shit bastard donkeyballs licked taint Sandra Day O’Connor bullshit fuck cunt cuck funt shit ouch! Fuck!”
I bounced on one foot, hopping mad, yelling every single obscenity to the world.
“You okay?”
One of the movers, a beefy man named Raoul, came over after setting down the fridge. “Take off your shoe. Lemme have a look. I coach weightlifters at the gym. I’ll know if it’s broken.”
As I started taking off my shoe, three more of the movers came to start huddling around me. That’s just how bystanders work.
Raoul examined my inflamed foot with careful interest, checking to make sure every bone was intact and still attached.
“You’re good,” the buff mover said. “Nothing’s broken. I say you got lucky.”
“Don’t feel lucky.”
He slapped me hard on the shoulder twice, laughing at my pain.. “I don’t blame ya. Three months ago I had a baby grand pinch my fingers into the wall. Stung like a hornet of wasps.”
“Ouch, man,” I said, injecting sympathy in my voice. “Didn’t know a mover’s life was so hard.”
“Nah, man. I mean, yeah, it’s mostly manual labor, but stuff like this is rare. And hey, you got some serious muscle on ya.”
“Thanks. It’s more of a recent development. I was the fat kid in primary school. Hundred pounds overweight.” I gave him a smile. “I decided after I hit puberty that I was going to make my own path in life and be healthier. Haven’t stopped since.”
“Really? Well, I have to congratulate you on your determination.”
“Determination?” My old man interjected. “Bah. It’s cockiness. RJ here did it because my smart-ass kid thought that once all that weight was gone, there would be no end of people lining up to ask a certain someone out. Guess how many dates Don Juan got over here?”
He chuckled to himself before running his hand in my hair.
“Dad, seriously? I was thirteen! I don’t tell strangers your embarrassing stories when you were thirteen!”
“‘Cuz you weren’t there!” He proceeded to flick me on the nose.
The movers started shuffling away from the room with Raoul silently encouraging them to go back to do their jobs. Before he left, however, he took a card out from his shirt pocket and handed it to me.
“Don’t let your old man tease ya. You’re doing good work here. If you ever need to earn a little more pocket change, come on by the gym. I can hook you up with some odd jobs.”
I looked down on the business card and looked it over silently to myself. “I’ll give you a call, definitely.”
“Lookin’ forward to it.” Raoul gave me a lazy salute as he walked back into the kitchen. “Just keep off that foot for a while until you feel better, you hear.”
“Yeah, thanks.” I put the card into my shirt pocket, thinking about maybe seeing that later.
My old man plopped down next to me on our new hallway couch.
“I’m alright by the way. Thanks for asking.”
“Shut up.” The older man’s stern voice took me out of my joking mood.
“Where’s Anne anyways?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.
“You mean your sister ?” I knew what he was implying with the inflection in his voice.
I sighed heavily, rubbing my eyes. “Can we not do this right now? Especially with everyone else in ear shot?” I whispered. “Just tell me is Anne alright?”
“Anne’s fine,” he grumbled. “In her room. Sleeping. Long day for her. We’ve had a lot of those lately.”
“What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry?”
“Sorry isn’t going to cut it!” He snapped, his voice still hushed. “The only reason we’re here right now is because of you. A foreign country, mind you. And not once have you dropped that smartass tone.”
I tsked, not caring if I annoyed him further. “It’s not being a smartass when I know everything will work out just fine. I have my dreams and I’ll know they’ll work out.”
“Not this time. Life is going to get a lot fucking harder for you, kid. So show some fucking respect for what we’re all sacrificing to be here.”
He jumped up off the couch, storming out of the front door before storming down a flight of stairs, proceeding to get something else from the truck.
My head knocked back further into the sofa, allowing me unfiltered access to our new ceiling. The pain in my foot was still throbbing, but I wasn’t thinking about that anymore.
No. I was thinking about what he said. About why I’m here.
...
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Right now? I’m RJ Hennox. Just a normal teen, with a normal life. But there’s something about me that nobody knows yet, because I got a secret.
Decision Point #1: What is your gender?
A) Male
B) Female
Decision Point #2: What is your secret?
A) I’m a world famous influencer.
B) I’m being stalked by a nutjob.
C) I’m competing in underground fights.
D) I’m developing true AI.
E) I’m dying with only two years to live.
F) I’m from the past.
G) I’m hallucinating my dead mother.
H) I’m heir to the mob.
I) I’m illiterate.
J) I’m looking for my biological father.
K) I’m multi-platinum.
L) I’m plotting a massive heist.
M) I’m recovering from alcoholism.
N) I’m secretly royalty.
O) I’m the parent of a three year-old.
P) I’m unable to empathize with other people.
Q) I’m working undercover for Interpol.