Miraculous Decendent

A New Lead

Marinette finds herself woken by the sound of something thrown into a wall. She could also hear the faint sound of someone talking. She groggily gets up, while in pink pajamas, she walks towards her door and opens it. She looks down both ends of the hallway to see no one in it before she hears another crash coming from the room across from her. In other words, Nate's room. Tikki appears next to her with a surprisingly mischievous grin on her face.

"It sounds like Nate is having trouble with the Miracle Box and is throwing around in frustration," Tikki tells her with a slight giggle.

With a sigh, Marinette walks across the hallway towards Nate's room. She knocks on the door, but Nate seems too busy to answer. Deciding the best course of action, she opens the door and looks to see if her cousin is alright.

When she enters, she sees her cousin frustratedly stomping on the box. Next to him and the box was a lamp, a bottle of lemon juice, and a bottle of water.

"You stupid, worthless piece of junk. I have been trying to get you open for three straight days. Will you throw me a bone and at least give me a damn hint already." Nate snaps at the magic, inanimate object in his frustration.

"Well, seeing as my family has tried to get it open for generations, I don't think three days of trying will give you anything, Nate," Marinette tells Nate from behind him.

Nate jumps in surprise when he hears Marinette's voice and turns around to see her.

"Do you have to sneak up on me like that?" He asks his cousin with a glare.

"I knocked on your door, but you didn't answer. So, I take it you're having trouble with my family's box?" Marinette asks him in a tired tone.

"Yes, I tried doing the puzzles normally, but that didn't work. I then tried to use the mirror again, but nada. Then I looked up how to uncover secret messages and tried to use lemon juice, heat, and water to find a message. None of it worked." Nate tells his cousin in frustration.

Marinette walks over to the Miracle Box and begins to inspect it. She flips the sides around to see all of them. Honestly, this was the first time she really did this after getting her earrings from it. It was a combination of fear and worry that made her want to steer away from touching the box anymore. Even after giving Nate permission to try and solve it, she never helped him in the last three days.

She looks at Tikki before asking.

"Can you give us some advice on how to open this box?"

Tikki gives them, specifically Nate, a look of pity when she asks that.

"Unfortunately, I can't do that since it goes against the rules we made for this box after its creation. However, I can give you some advice specifically on mine and Plagg's compartments. After all, you opened ours fair and square." Tikki tells them with a happy look.

Nate immediately stands in front of Tikki and goes.

"I will literally take any information to finally have a clue on how to get this stupid thing open," Nate tells the Kwami.

Marinette releases a cough at that.

"I mean. So we understand how to open this when we need to risk putting more Miraculous in circulation against Hawkmoth." Nate quickly corrects himself, not wanting to lose his puzzle box-solving privileges.

Marinette nods at him when he corrects himself and looks back towards Tikki.

"Well, you can say that creation and destruction mirror each other, in a way. The new will destroy the old, whether a young athlete at their peak against someone on the decline or a new invention pushing away the old one. You can't have one without the other, like how you can't move in front of a mirror without it copying your movements." Tikki explains to the two.