Chasing Chat Noir

Chapter 25

"We have to tell them what we know." Mari paced back and forth, looking to Master Fu for answers.

He looked tired, and sighed as he took a seat. They had been going at it all night, narrowing down which facilities could hold Chat.

They had even narrowed it down to two potential options, based off of the little information Mari had gotten from her... encounter(?) with Chat.

He nodded and spoke with a questioning tone, "once we trust them with this, Mari, nothing will be the same. They may ask questions we cannot answer."

Master Fu and Mari's relationship could now be likened to a father and daughter. There was that level of trust that had been built through hours of training, through secret sharing, through fighting.

She trusted him with her life. There was only one other person in the world she would give that same privilege to.

"They may be able to give us some answers. I don't think we can do this alone anymore." She closed her eyes for just a moment, and fought to open them once more. Sleep hadn't exactly been priority number one for her recently, and it was starting to show.

Master Fu held his hands across the table, and Mari took them. He was doing this for her sake, she knew. "We will face this together, then. No matter the consequences." For this first time in days, Mari saw him offer her a shadow of a smile.

He poured the tea and they sat in silence, giving each other time to prepare for what was to come.

••••••

They were now all in the secret fight-club-whatever-you-wanna-call-it facility, and Mari was having a hard time hearing everyone talking over one another.

"We have to go to both facilities-"

"We split up-"

"Who is this old dude anyway-"

Mari stayed silent as the rest of the voices around her got louder, and looked to Master Fu for an answer. He looked at her and shrugged his shoulders .

There was one other, staying surprisingly quiet in the chaos. Chloe was looking at the city blue prints they had brought over, and Mari had the sense Chloe was onto something.

"What is it, Chloe?" The room turned silent as Mari asked the question. Everyone looked to Chloe at the large table. She looked pale.

"I...I'm not sure. I think maybe I'm mistaken..."

Luka made his way to the table and the rest of the team followed suit. He looked to her and waited for her to look back, and for the first time Mari saw how Chloe looked at Luka. How she really looked at him.

She imagined that might be how she would look at Chat, if she'd allowed herself.

"Trust your instincts, Chloe. They're trying to tell you something." Luka encouraged her, his eyes shining with hope.

Chloe swallowed hard. "It's just that... if I'm right... this could be opening up Pandora's box and I'm not sure if we want to do that. This could change everything and I don't know what it means and-"

"We're doing this for all of Paris, Chloe. Remember the why behind the mission." Chloe held his eye contact a moment longer before looking back to the table.

She grabbed the blueprints and put them on the board. The facility had been turned into a study room, with blueprints galore and any details or clues the group could find that could possibly trace them back to Chat.

They all looked at Chloe, waiting for her to speak on her own time. Behind her eyes, her mind was working a thousand miles a minute.

Mari had had a pit in her stomach ever since she'd lost Chat, but looking at Chloe suddenly turned it into a black hole, threatening to consume her from the inside out.