Chapter Text
Adrien thought that he would figure out what these new heroes were doing snooping around his school.
“Stupid girl, just had to go and ruin everything.”
He thought that his day had already hit its low point.
“Uprooting everything here is going to be a pain. Hmm... perhaps I can frame that bitchy science teacher. I always hated her stuck-up ass. Heh, it’ll be hilarious watching her get arrested for child porn.”
He thought his school would have been a place of safety.
“Or maybe that little Italian girl even. Stupid little bitch thinks she’s got the entire school wrapped around her finger.”
Adrien had thought of a lot of things.
“If it wasn’t for the damn principal’s gambling, she’d have been outed by now. I can’t believe he thought he could influence the results like that without the boss noticing.”
He hadn’t thought this would happen today.
With his back pressed painfully against the server, Adrien’s heart raced as he peeked between the drives. M. Pellé’s silenced pistol glinting in the poor light as he walked by. Right next to him, keeping a hand to his chest, was the tanuki. Her ears were pressed flat to her head, her tail poofing up as the two snuck in the opposite direction Pellé was moving. Adrien still couldn’t believe this was actually M. Pellé, to begin with. He’d talked with the man only a few weeks ago! Pellé been so jovial, commenting on how he didn’t mind keeping the school clean, even after all of his classmate’s crazy antics.
The Pellé he was hiding from was like a completely different person!
A slight jab into his side broke him from his thoughts, and he glanced down at his pocket where Plagg was staring up at him. Plagg gestured to the other side of the room with his eyes, and Adrien looked, seeing a small pile of cans that could be knocked over. Adrien’s eyes lit up with an idea. If that pile were to clatter on the ground, then Pellé would be facing away from the ladder! If they were fast enough, both he and the tanuki girl could knock Pellé out and leave before he realized it. He just needed something to throw.
While Adrien started looking for something, Plagg just rolled his eyes and flew out of the pocket over to the cans and flew into them. Pellé was about to turn the corner when the sound of cans clattering on the floor echoed through the room. He turned to shoot at whatever had made the noise, only to find nothing. The tanuki didn’t waste her chance and immediately whirled around the side of the server. There was a brief pause of shock across Pellé’s face before her fist shot into it.
Literally.
Adrien just stared at her arm as it retracted back to a regular length, and Pellé was left slumped against the far wall. He barely noticed Plagg returning to his pocket. He was broken from his pause as she quickly turned around and grabbed him by the wrist. “Idō!”
Move. That was simple enough to understand. “R-Right.” Rushing to the exit, neither of them could climb up that ladder fast enough.
Unfortunately, they needed to.
As he started to reach the top, Adrien flinched to the side as a few bullets impacted the concrete next to his feet and the tanuki’s head. He risked a glance back and saw Pellé had gotten back up, his bleeding and broken nose only making him look angrier than his father ever had. He scrambled up the ladder faster, praying Pellé’s next few shots continued to miss. “So the pretty boy was the one to sneak in with a friend.” More bullets impacted near his legs, and Pellé swore as his gun clicked. “I always hated your fucking face.”
The moment he was out of that hole, he started to shuffle his way through the corridor as quickly as he could. The tanuki was right behind him, helping push him along. Pellé was cursing a storm as he rushed after them, trying to both catch them and reload his weapon. Michiru turned around as they reached some pipes and kicked. Adrien watched in a bit of amazement as her leg stretched out and landed a solid hit on Pellé’s face, making him fall back into the hole.
Squeezing through a gap between some pipes, Adrien bit back his own curses. If only I could transform right now! Then I’d be able to just destroy a hole in the wall and get us out! His panic reached new heights when he looked at the cameras he was running past and came to a realization. Pellé... he’d have seen so many of my times transforming... He should have let Plagg just destroy everything in that room and use that as a distraction to knock Pellé out.
A bullet impacting the pipe ahead of them and causing water to gush broke him from his thoughts. Pellé must have gotten up after falling and kept after them. The water pressure was almost enough to knock him over until the tanuki pressed him towards the wall and let it fly past them. Pellé’s eyes went wide for a second as it blasted him in the chest, and he stumbled back. The tanuki smirked a bit as she shouted back at him. “Sore o toru, chikan!”
Pellé snarled, and Adrien watched with a hint of horror as Pellé scrambled forward. He tried to grab onto the tanuki’s ankle, only to get another kick to the face that further damaged his nose.
They both ducked under the water and turned the corner, the tanuki continuing to push him forward as they ran. They’d finally reached the last stretch of the passage when Adrien realized they’d run out of pipes to hide with and heard Pellé catching up with them again. The tanuki pushed him faster and quickly got him into the janitor’s closet they’d entered from.
Adrien hurried forward while the tanuki slammed the secret door shut and pressed her back to it. He turned to the door leading back to the rest of the school and tried to open it, only to find the handle refusing to budge. Damn it! Pellé must have locked it when he came in. Taking a step back, Adrien raised one of his legs and kicked. Lashing his leg out, again and again, his foot impacted just under the lock until it finally smashed the door open.
His eyes immediately locked on to the shocked and startled faces of Marinette and the other foreigner. “Call the police!”
Nazuna wasn’t sure if she should have been surprised or not. She honestly should have expected Michiru to run off the moment she’d been left alone. Walking along with Marinette to probably talk with her teacher about the sudden missing person/unexpected guest, Nazuna wondered what trouble Michiru would bring this time.
In hindsight, she shouldn’t have. Not when she could hear something popping in the walls.
Now, she and Marinette were staring at Michiru and Adrien with horror, hands over their mouths. Marinette grabbed the sides of her head in shock. “Michiru!? Adrien!?”
Panting, Adrien looked right at the two of them with terror in his eyes. “Appelle la police!”
She barely noticed that she had shifted back into her fur by the time she’d gotten over to the blonde boy, Adrien, and grabbed onto Michiru’s other arm. “Oh God, Michiru, what happened!?”
Michiru chuckled a bit as she tried to act casually. “Oh, you know... just wandering around and accidentally finding criminals. The usual.”
“Only you would call something like this usual!” Nazuna chided as she started throttling Michiru. How do you find criminals in a JANITOR’S CLOSET!? “You owe me one hell of an explanation!”
The sound of someone clearing their throat made both girls pause. Looking over to the stairs, they saw a frustrated Shiro crossing his arms while pinching his nose. “What did you do this time?”
Michiru felt rather indignant but managed to remember there was a crazed gunman nearby. “I’ll explain in full later; there’s a guy with a gun in a secret tunnel I found!”
“There’s a
WHAT!?
”
Shirou didn’t say anything as he closed his eyes and sniffed, finding Michiru’s trail quickly. “Nazuna, stay here with the students. Michiru.”
Perking up, Michiru’s ears twitched in anticipation. “Right!”
Michiru got ready to run after him, only for Shirou to grab her by the scruff of her neck and plop her back down. “Help Nazuna. I’m the only one here who can survive bullets.”
As Shirou bolted through the janitor’s closet, Michiru pouted and threw her arms up in the air. “Oh, come on!”
Pellé paused his firing in the dark passageway as he watched the two run away and turn around a corner. He walked calmly, slipping through obstacles with ease before heading back down into the hideout. With each step, he dismantled the pistol in his grip, discarding the parts as he went. He wouldn’t need the thing for much longer anyway. Once he was at the computer again, he smiled and looked over to the side.
Where Pellé was still unconscious.
“Pellé” smiled as his appearance rippled. Before long, he shifted in the air like a mirage, and a woman wearing a skin-tight serpentine suit stood in his place. “Don’t worry, Pellé,” she said as she pulled out a glowing syringe. “You will still be of some use today, even if it’s not for your boss.”
The needle was quickly stabbed into Pellé’s neck, making the man groan. Once she was done, the woman looked at the computers and smiled as she brought up several video files and pressed play. “Word is that your little heroes show up here often. If that’s the case, then surely you’d have seen them on these screens at least once. Perhaps in a more... compromising position?” Finding a clip of one of the Parisian superheroes suddenly being in the school, the woman’s fangs glinted in the light as she hit rewind. “Now to see who is under that silly mask. I want this next experiment to be interesting.”
She paused as the video started to get closer to the information she wanted and slowed the rewind. As the screen displayed the hero transforming in reverse, She glanced down at the writing form of Pellé, whose body was starting to grow a thin layer of black fur. Smiling cruelly under her mask, she started messing with a device on her wrist, getting a second needle ready. “Then again, I could also perform another experiment as well. After all, I’m sure you want a little time with the one who ruined your operation here.”
“And bears love eating honey, non?”