MiracuCrack #37J: The Logical Conclusion

(Timeline: Post-Chameleon. Early Season 3.)

Chat Noir bounced across the rooftops of Paris, with considerable urgency in his step and some apprehension in his heart.

"Come quickly! I have something really important to share with you," Ladybug had told him. She hadn't given him any details, which was unusual for her. Is it an Akuma? Has she gotten a threat from a villain? Maybe a huge clue as to who Hawkmoth is targeting next? It isn't like her to be this mysterious.

In the end, it didn't really matter. His Lady was calling him, so he would answer, and his legs carried him as quickly as they could.

Had he known what he would find there...

Chat arrived where Ladybug had told him to meet her, on the rooftop of a tall office building on the south side of Paris. "Good evening, Ladybug!" he called, then repeated it when she didn't answer immediately. She looks... agitated, he thought. Distracted. Whatever this is, it can't be good.

"Hello, Chat," she managed, finally. "Thank you for coming."

"So what's up? I got your message, and I've been wondering all the way over here what it's about," he said. "Has an Akuma hit someone?"

"No. Not yet, anyway," replied Ladybug. "This is... bigger than that. I've been doing some research, trying to figure out patterns in who we've battled. And after looking at all of the information I have... I hate to say it, but I'm 99% sure that I know who Hawkmoth is."

"That's good, isn't it?" asked Chat. "We can go find him and take him out before he knows we're coming."

"It's... well, that part of it is good," muttered Ladybug. "I really wish that I was wrong, though. But I don't think that I am."

"Do you have evidence? You thought you'd figured it out once, with Gabriel Agreste, and then he turned out to be Akumatized himself..." asked Chat. "How sure are you this time, really?"

"I thought you'd mention that," Ladybug said, smiling a tight smile. "So, this time... just like on a math problem in school, I'm showing my work." She gestured to one side of the rooftop and added, "Have a seat."

Chat looked over and saw a plastic chair set up in front of an easel, with a large pad of paper set up on it. Oh, boy, he thought. I have a funny feeling about this...

Once Chat had settled in, Ladybug flipped the first sheet over the top, showing a new page labeled AKUMAS with a handful of names on it.

"First," she began, "I'm trying to not make assumptions as to Hawkmoth is. He could even be a she, for all we know!"

"We've seen Hawkmoth up close, though. He sure looked like a man to me," argued Chat.

"Well, we've seen some crazy transformations of Akuma victims, right? It's not impossible that a woman could transform herself into a male villain form, to throw off suspicion," countered Ladybug. "Or a younger person into an adult form. Kwamis can do some powerful things."

"Fair enough..." he allowed.

"So, what I've been trying to do is figure out what all of these victims had in common! We have had a handful of randoms that don't fit any pattern that I can figure out. But, I figure, Paris is a big city. Once in a while, Hawkmoth has to take whoever he can get." Ladybug picked up a pointer from the easel tray and ran down the list on the current page. "That includes Mr. Pigeon, Simon Says, Sandboy, Philippe the ice skater, Jagged Stone, the Pixelator guy, that poor baby..."

"Yeah, what does Hawkmoth have against that baby? Seems like every time we turn around, there he is, ten meters tall," agreed Chat.

"And then there are a few who seem to have been hit just because they were around you and I," she continued. "Like Clara Nightingale and Nadja Chamack. Wrong place, wrong time, I suppose."

"Uh-huh," said Chat. "That takes a double handful out of the ones we've battled. You're saying that all those others have something in common?"

"I am," replied Ladybug, grimly. "And that brings me to the next page..."

She flipped to the next page on the easel, revealing a room's floor plan covered with notations, circles and arrows in various colors. With a startled look on his face, Chat recognized it...

That's MY classroom at school!

"This is a classroom at Collège Françoise Dupont, a school not far from here," directed Ladybug. "The secret we are looking for is hidden right in here."

"Um..." stuttered Chat Noir. She... CAN'T have figured out that I'm secretly Adrien, can she? he wondered. "What makes you sure of that?"

"The pattern was obvious, once I knew what I was looking for. Almost all of the Akumas we've faced are either people in this classroom, or related to them in some way," answered Ladybug. "FAR too many for it to be any kind of coincidence. Watch, I'll break it down, row by row..."

Chat listened as Ladybug ran down the list. Ms. Bustier, the teacher. Alya, plus four of her family members. Mylène and her father. Juleka and her mother. Alix and her brother. Kim and his new girlfriend. Rose and Nino and Ivan and Sabrina and Nathaniel each had a turn. Max, and even Max's robot. It does sound pretty convincing, he thought to himself, and it doesn't sound like it's coincidental.

"And even people who are just near that class have been targeted. Like Jean, who was an Akuma for like twenty seconds, was in the next room over in Ms. Mendeleiev's class. I think Stormy Weather was in that class, and Nathaniel's friend Marc is in that school, too. And Lila, even though she was there for, what, a couple of days? I sure hope she stays in whatever hole she crawled into."

Chat got a funny look on his face. "You really didn't like Lila, did you? Why does she still bug you more than the others did?"

"She just DOES, okay?" snapped Ladybug. "She threatened someone that I... care about, very much. But ANYWAY, even the school principal, Mr. Damocles, got hit!"

Nodding quietly, Chat felt like there was a follow-up question that he ought to ask, but he let it go for now.

"And then there's Chloè Bourgeois... who's like a one-girl Akuma factory. Herself twice, her mother, her father, her butler, and how many other Akumas has she attracted?" sighed Ladybug.

"Hey... Chloè is trying to clean up her act, in her own weird way," Chat interjected. "I know that she's been a pain in the neck sometimes, but..."

"Yeah, I know," allowed Ladybug. "It still feels really strange to me to see her with a Miraculous, even occasionally. But she's trying. Sort of."

"Okay... that's everyone in the class, isn't it?" asked Chat, hoping to jump past the obvious.

"Not quite."

Ladybug flipped over to the next page... which had the same floor plan, with a red X over everyone who had been Akumatized... and a big red oval drawn around his and Marinette's seats.

"Well! I certainly hope you're not accusing Marinette Dupain-Cheng of being Hawkmoth!" said Chat, nervously. "I can't think of anyone whom I would suspect less."

"Yeah, absolutely!" replied Ladybug, a bit too quickly and emphatically. "I mean, I'll explain why not. Not only has she been targeted twice by Akumas so far..."

"...Twice?" asked Chat. "I know about one of those..."

"A second time, recently. Ask her about it sometime! But so far, let's see... her father, her great-uncle, her grandmother, and a girl that she babysits all got hit. She got ice cream from Andre's one night, and then Andre got hit. Jagged's assistant Penny got Akumatized at her house," Ladybug rattled off.

"That's... almost a Chloè-level body count, now that I think about it," replied Chat. "But Marinette is nothing like Chloè! She's sweet, she's gentle, she's so thoughtful, she's one of the most special... I mean... she's..."

He watched Ladybug's face as he spoke, and her expression became one he couldn't quite figure out. "...Chat?" she asked, hesitantly. "Is there something that I ought to know about?"

"Oh, no, no," he waved her off, "we're not... I mean, I don't... um... she's a good friend of mine, someone that I trust completely. You've met her, right?"

"Uh-huh," stammered Ladybug. "Nice girl! I'm sure that she's not Hawkmoth. But it might well be someone who knows her very well. Now, right in front of her in this classroom..."

"Who sits there?" asked Adrien, with a sinking feeling.

"Adrien Agreste. The fashion mogul's son," said Ladybug, a slight quiver in her voice. "And we really need to take a closer look at him."

"Now... isn't he in kind of the same boat as Marinette?" asked Chat, nervously. "A lot of people around him have been Akumatized. His father, for instance!"

"I know, I suspected his father once, but we can rule him out after the Collector incident," said Ladybug. "And his bodyguard, his fencing teacher, his, um... 'friend' Kagami... and from the voice I heard not long ago, I kind of think his father's assistant, too."

"Nathalie?" asked Chat.

"Yeah, that's her name. ...You've met her?" asked Ladybug, with a raised eyebrow.

"Uh-huh. One of the times that we met Gabriel Agreste, she was around," evaded Chat. "So if all those people around him have been targeted..."

"But he hasn't. Not once," argued Ladybug. "And he's the only person in that class who hasn't been. Why do you think that is?"

"I... don't know for sure," stammered Chat. "Maybe he had been, at some point, and he fought it off?"

"I doubt it," she replied. "I... know Adrien Agreste. I like to think that if he had been attacked like that, he would've come to me and let me know. I'd hope that he'd want me to protect him... unless he isn't so innocent."

"Do you really suspect him?" asked Chat, hearing emotion creeping into her voice. "I mean... what do you honestly think about him, Ladybug?"

"Adrien and I are... complicated," Ladybug allowed, after a pause. "Especially right now. It's not like I want to believe this about him. But if I've eliminated everyone else, and he's who all the arrows are pointing towards..."

"Come on, Ladybug, be reasonable," Chat insisted, increasingly desperately. "If you know him that well... does Adrien seem like the kind of person who would do all of the horrible things that Hawkmoth has? I mean, one time that big gorilla had you and him in its clutches, and he jumped off the building to get away! He would've died if you hadn't saved him!"

"I don't know, Chat!" Ladybug cried out, visibly becoming more emotional. "It's impossible! But it's also the only answer that makes any sense! It has to be someone else around that school... around that classroom... and who else is there? Who else is LEFT?"

Chat stood up, walked over to Ladybug, and put his hands on her shoulders, gently. "Ladybug... I didn't want to do this. I shouldn't do this... But I have proof that Adrien Agreste isn't Hawkmoth."

"You DO?" Ladybug said, wide-eyed.

"I can say one thing and prove it to you. If you ask me to prove it, I will. But I have to hear you ask me to."

"And what's that?" she sniffled. "Go ahead. If you can prove it... please show me."

"Claws in."

The setting sun, as always, cast many dramatic shadows over the city of Paris. On this particular evening, there was one more... a tall, thin figure, dangling from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.

"Confess, Hawkmoth!" yelled Ladybug, from the top of the monument.

"I'm telling you, I'm NOT Hawkmoth! You've got the wrong person!" shouted Ms. Mendeleiev, the science and math teacher, in shock and terror, hanging upside-down with a red-and-black yo-yo wrapped around her ankles.

"That's exactly what Hawkmoth would say, lady!" smirked Chat Noir. "We did the math! It HAS to be you!"

As Ms. Mendeleiev continued to yell at them, Ladybug whispered, "Chat... could we be wrong about this?"

"It's possible, I suppose... But remember that pop quiz we had in her Physics class last week?"

"CONFESS, HAWKMOTH!" repeated Ladybug.

~fin~