mind over mask

thirty-nine

꧁꧂꧁꧂꧁꧂

Chat Noir still isn't answering my calls, and I can't locate him anywhere on my yo-yo.

My hands were shaking a little bit, because he had never missed an akuma. Sure, he had missed patrols and meetings because of his father, but he had never missed a fight.

What was going on?

Nightwing places a hand on my shoulder trying to comfort. "We don't have time to wait for him. We have to act now before it's too late for Paris."

He's right. I just really wish that Nightwing wasn't.

The akuma bangs against the jar, urging us to go.

Duty calls.

"I know." I turned to Princess Honey, "this is it," while she put a hand on my shoulder in comfort.

I swing in the air, tucking the jar under one arm, with my yo-yo in the other.

We weave through Paris, and pass all the places I've known since birth. The Seine, the Louvre, The Eiffel Tower, my bakery, my home.

We passed the school, when an eery chill ran down my back. This feeling only gets worse, as we're lead to Adrien's house.

NO.

I pause.

Princess Honey calls me back, "Ladybug—"

"Not now Princess Honey." I tell her, because if I lose my confidence, I'd never go in. We would never find the truth, and defeat Hawkmoth. And we would be stuck in an endless cycle of violence.

I had to know. For better, or for worse. It had to end tonight.

I hope that this akuma was wrong, that I was wrong.
I landed in front of the Manor doors, and knocked them down with a kick. The Manor is as cold and empty as Adrien describes it to be.

The masked people follow us to the Agreste Manor, but they are stopped by the gates.

The akuma guides us deeper into the house, to Gabriel Agreste's office.

It's completely destroyed, poets and fabrics are scattered across the room. The portrait of Adrien's mother is carelessly tossed aside, and the wall were it once hung is carved out. Peering deeper into the hole, it connects into another room.

An observatory of sorts.

Nightwing gives me a cautious look, but I ignore him and enter the room. Robin follows close behind me, with Nightwing and Princess Honey watching behind us.

Butterflies on the floor scattered at our arrival, and flittered to the ceiling.

We were in the right place.

A door was strung aside with claw marks, and I knew that Chat Noir had been fighting his father, or maybe even a Sentimonster.

We hadn't had one in months, and Mayura had disappeared from battle.

I tiptoed deeper into Hawkmoth's lair, past the observatory, an into a larger room. It was dark, barely illuminated by the large skylight.

It was beautiful. Horrifying, but beautiful.

It reminded me of a tomb.

I looked down the catwalk, and it realized that this was a tomb when I saw Adrien's mother lay in a class casket at the end, surrounded by trees. It was unmistakably her, Adrien looked exactly like her.

This was a crypt.

Something shuffled behind us, and the door slammed, trapping us in here. I turned, swinging my yo-yo. "I don't like this," Princess Honey whispers in the stale air.