The Miraculous Spiderman Series

It was a combination safe. Peter couldn’t believe his luck. He’d expected at least a pin code. Nope, just a straight-up combination safe.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, reaching for the little knob.

“What, you don’t know how to crack it?” Chloé replied, inspecting her nails with an air of general disinterest.

“No, this is literally too easy. Just shut up for a sec.” For a normal person, it might’ve been difficult to hear the sound of the locking mechanism as Peter turned the dial. But for him, he could hear it clear as day, the metal bar on the inside making a loud clunking noise as it found the notch of the first digit.

It took him only a few short seconds before he was opening the safe and pulling out the crown. If it was that easy for him to break into what the school thought was ‘top security’ then he wasn’t feeling too confident about them having all his personal information on file.

“Okay, Chloé, I’ll be back in a few minutes. Just make sure no one comes in here. Got it?”

Chloé nodded. Peter decided to trust her abilities and leapt off Mr. Damocles’s desk, jumping back into the air vent they’d come in through. As he made his way back towards the boiler room, he heard Chloé screaming something about her hair. He bit back a grin. Say what you like about her, but the girl was good for orchestrating his mastermind plans.

Reaching the boiler room was not difficult, especially now that he could use his full spider abilities given his lack of audience. Peter easily dropped down into the janitor’s closet, placing the crown on his own head.

“Very stylish,” Suluu commented. Peter was surprised she’d stayed quiet thus long.

“Yeah, well, it’s a trophy, it’s not really meant to look good.” He dug into his pockets, pulling out a small 3D printer, the kind Tony Stark regularly used to make his suits. It was perfect for printing crowns, too, Peter figured.

“Okay Karen,” he whispered. “Gimme my mask.” Karen complied instantly, Spiderman’s mask covering his face and allowing him to connect into the printer. “Scan crown and upload design onto printer four eighty-six.” He held up the real crown, slowly turning it as his computer interface turned it into a printable file. A quick box opened up across his vision, allowing him to adjust the design, and Peter made a few tweaks before giving the all-clear to start printing.

“What are you doing now?” He could hear Suluu’s voice, but couldn’t see her. Yet, it sounded like she was right in front of him.

“Where’d you go?” Peter looked around the small supply closet for his glowing kwami, but she was nowhere to be found.

“You can’t see me with your suit on,” Suluu said. “Kwamis can’t be seen by computers.”

“That’s literally so inconvenient,” Peter sighed, removing his masking. “And here I thought I had all the advantages by being both Spiderman and Helios.”

“The only advantage you have is more power,” Suluu said as she seemingly reappeared from thin air.

“And who wants that, am I right?” Peter deadpanned, inspecting his 3D printed crown. It was nearly done, a few more minutes and he would be good to go.

“Peter?” His communicator carried Alya’s voice into his ear.

“What’s up?” Peter replied, shushing Suluu before she could say anything.

“You need to hurry up. I’m pretty sure Marinette, Adrien, and Nino figured out the crown is supposed to be in the principal’s office. Chloé won’t be able to hold them off. Did you know there were clues we were supposed to find that told you where the crown was and what the combination was? Because apparently everyone except up got that memo.”

“That’s stupid.” Peter turned off his printer, sliding it back into his pocket. “We figured it out just fine. Okay, Chloé, can you get back into the air vents and back to the janitor’s closet?”

“Duh!” Chloé’s voice was a lot louder than he’d been expecting. She was already at the mouth of the vent above him in the janitor’s closet. “Catch me!”

Peter caught her with one hand, placing her on the ground carefully and handing her the real crown. “Wait here until I give the green light.” With that, he slipped out of the closet and into the hall. No one was there, luckily, and he managed to make it to the nearest window and climb outside before Marinette and Adrien rounded a corner, talking amongst themselves.

He had approximately two minutes to get the fake crown in place before Adrien and Marinette reached the office. Nino was nowhere in sight, and Peter assumed he was most likely serving as a distraction somewhere.

Climbing along the outside of the building, Peter made his way up to the office window.

“Peter, what on earth are you doing?” Alya’s voice was concerned in his ear. He’d made sure she didn’t have access to the cameras on the outside of the building, so chances were she’d just seen him slip out the window and appear outside Mr. Damocles’s.

“I’m good at climbing.” Peter engaged his web shooters, shooting a simple web up to the school’s roof so he could hang upside down by his feet and use his hands to slide open the window, carefully touching down inside the office.

He made quick work of it, placing the fake crown in the safe and replacing the bookshelf before he heard Adrien and Marinette’s voices outside the door. There was nowhere to hide, so Peter took a running start; leaping out the window headfirst and shooting another web out, flipping so he stood on the roof. Alya was screaming in his ear.

“Okay, Chloé, take the crown out to the courtyard and just throw it up as high as you can, I’ll catch it.”

“What? Okay, your funeral.” Within a few minutes Peter could see her blond head in the courtyard, then a flash of gold as the crown went airborne. He had to hand it to her, she had a good throwing arm.

Peter ran, leaping off the roof and clearing the courtyard, nabbing the crown as he landed on the other side of the roof.

“How did you do that?” Chloé asked and he could see her peering up at him curiously.

“I told you, I’m athletic. I’ll meet you guys in the library. Heist is up in ten minutes.”

“Are we making dramatic entrances?” Alya asked.

“Hell yeah, we’re making dramatic entrances. Did you bring the fog machine?”

“What do I look like, a basic bitch?” Alya sounded like she was climbing stairs. “See you all there. Good work.”

Peter grinned, silhouetted against the night sky. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Adrien’s face when he realized Peter had beaten him.

“Why are you like this?” Suluu asked, zipping in front of Peter as he made his way along the roof in the direction of the library.

“Why am I amazing, awesome, talented, super smart…,” Peter checked off on his fingers. “Gosh, I don’t know, Suluu. I mean, for starters, thank you. Secondly, with lots of practice, one day you too can be just as great as me.”

“It’s a plastic crown.”

“Small victories, Su. Small victories. Today it’s a crown, tomorrow, it could be the Papillon.”

“I highly doubt it.”

“I highly doubt you, so there.” Peter stuck his tongue out at his kwami, crawling down the side of the building and carefully entering through a window just outside the library.

“I’m glad you’re better at being a hero than you are at comebacks.” Peter elected to ignore Suluu’s snide comment, slipping into the library and hiding on the second floor, prepared to make his grand entrance.

“Heist is officially over in three,” Peter counted down over the communicator. “Two, one!” At his mark, an air horn blew somewhere within the school, signalling the end of the heist. The team with the crown was the winner.

“We’ll let them have their moment,” Chloé said. Peter couldn’t see her, but he could tell she was smiling. “Then we’ll come out with the real crown and absolutely crush them.”

“I like the way you think, sunshine,” Peter said under his breath as the remainder of their classmates filed back into the library. Adrien and Nino were carrying Marinette on their shoulders and she was wearing the ‘crown’.

Everything had gone entirely according to plan.

The winning trio started explaining their master plan, and Peter rolled his eyes. It had taken them so long to find out where the crown was hidden, but apparently the clues they’d been following were difficult to decipher. Not that Peter would know; they hadn’t so much as seen any of the clues.

“Well, I guess our winners are-” Mme. Bustier started, but she didn’t get far before Chloé’s voice called out and the fog machine kicked in.

“Not so fast!”

That was Peter’s cue. He saw Alya and Chloé making their way through the fog towards their classmates and he flipped through the air, landing in between them, holding the crown in his hands.

“I believe this is the real crown,” he said casually, spinning it around one finger.

“What?” Marinette and Adrien looked bewildered.

“Check what yours says,” Peter grinned.

“Kiss my ass,” Adrien read out. “Classy.”

“So we are the true winners here,” Chloé said.

“How’d you get another crown?” Mme. Bustier frowned. “This one was specially crafted by our own art department.”

“I’ve got Stark 3D printing tech,” Peter explained. “And Alya here monitored all the security cameras while Chloé and I climbed through the air vents and into M. Damocles’s office, where we then cracked the safe and got the real crown, made a fake, and replaced it. Boom, you can’t beat CAP.”

“Cap?” Alya glanced at him.

“Chloé, Alya, Peter. It’s our team name, I just made it up.”

“That team name sucks,” Chloé sniffed.

“So you guys didn’t even answer the clues and instead broke multiple laws for the sake of the heist?” Mme. Bustier looked at them, impressed and reprimanding at the same time.

“Technically, I have legal access to all the security stuff,” Peter waved a hand in a non-committal gesture. “But no, we did not know there were clues.”

“Well then, you ought to answer them before you can call yourself the winners,” Adrien declared, having set Marinette back down on the ground, folding his arms across his chest.

“Fine, let’s have them.” Peter held out his hand as Adrien extracted a few pieces of paper out of his pocket.

“Start with this one,” Adrien said, handing him the first clue.

“‘With great power comes the threat of constant peril.’” Peter read it out. “Easy, Damocles. That’s how you knew it was in the principal’s office? I thought it was rather obvious.”

“Wait, what?” Marinette said. “Mr. Damocles said that?”

“Um, no?” Peter glanced at their group, then at Mme. Bustier who nodded for him to continue. “Damocles was a guy in Greek mythology who had a sword suspended by a horsehair above his throne, which is where that concept originated from. What answer did you guys come up with, if not Damocles directly?”

He was rather concerned at this point for his friends’ intelligence. Maybe Alya really had been right; he had overestimated their collective knowledge.

“We just thought it meant that the principal is under a lot of stress,” Nino shrugged. “It took us awhile to figure that one out.”

“Alright, let’s have the next one.” Peter accepted the next slip from Adrien. “‘It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.’ Easy, Christian Nolan’s Batman Begins, where Batman hides the entrance to the bat cave behind a bookcase. So that’s how you knew that the safe was there.”

“I actually got that one,” Adrien puffed his chest out, obviously pleased with himself. “I know my superhero films.”

“Good work Agreste,” Peter said, taking the third and final slip from him. “And this must be the safe’s code, then. I honestly just picked the lock.”

“What? How!” Adrien blinked at him.

“Oh, it was easy. I’ve got a knack for getting into places I’m not supposed to be. Let’s have it then.” He blinked, his mind going blank for a moment.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Peter knew this one. He knew he knew it. Once upon a time, Mr. Stark had said those very words to him, and Peter had found the original quote and read the play it came from so that he might be closer to Tony. And now that knowledge was coming in handy.

“Well, this line was based off the concept of Damocles’s sword, so if you didn’t know it was in his office already, this would tell you. But this specific line is from part two of Henry IV, scene three, act one. Line number varies depending on what copy you’ve got, so I’d assume that the combination would be 02, 03, 01. Not the most sound of passwords, but it does the trick. Am I right?”

He glanced at Mme. Bustier, only to realize that everyone was just staring at him, slack-jawed.

“Peter, how do you remember all that?” Marinette finally broke the silence, her face in just as much awe as the others.

“Anything to win.” He flashed her a grin. “We may not have found the clues, but sounds like we answered them better than the others.”

“Okay, Peter’s group wins,” Mme. Bustier declared. “And you have an impressive amount of knowledge on both history and current pop culture.”

“Making references is quite literally my only personality trait, but thanks! Now I’ll need that.” He gestured to the crown in Adrien’s hands. The blond seemed all too relieved to be rid of it.

Peter turned to Chloé and Alya, bowing and holding out the crowns to them. “My Queens,” he announced.

“Why do I get the ‘kiss my ass’ one?” Chloé snarked, but took it from him nonetheless.

“You know why.”

Mme. Bustier set up a Tim Burton movie to play in the main library area with pizza and drinks, but Peter returned to his alcove to eat all the sugar he’d brought. After such a win, he needed to get his blood sugar levels back up. Alya and Nino elected to watch the movie, but Marinette and Adrien joined Peter.

“Not a fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas?” Peter asked Marinette, who accepted a bag of candy from him.

“Not a fan of scary movies in general,” she admitted.

“That is not a scary movie,” Adrien laughed. “It’s a nice story.”

“A ‘nice’ story told by skeletons!” Marinette shot back, wrapping her blanket around her. “I get scared easily.”

“We’re going to have to have a proper movie night sometime,” Peter declared. “Watching classics like Psycho or Murder on the Orient Express. Those aren’t horrors so much as thrillers. You’ve got to love them.”

“No, no I don’t!’

Peter ignored her insistence, instead grabbing his nightclothes and going to change. He’d acquired a new t-shirt when he was home in New York, one he couldn’t wait to show Adrien.

“Oh my god,” Adrien gasped when Peter returned, then buried his face in his hands. “Take it away.”

“You can say a lot of things about this shirt, but calling it ugly is not one of them.” Peter struck a pose, showing off his shirt which read ‘I <3 Adrien Agreste’ with a massive picture of Adrien’s supermodel face plastered onto it, giving what Peter assumed was supposed to be Adrien’s best attempt at a smoulder. “Best thing is, I didn’t even make this one! They were just selling it!”

“Let me know where you got it from so I can sue.” Adrien was still refusing to look up.

“Sue? Why would you sue someone for bringing this piece of art into the world?” It took all of Peter’s admittedly well-developed willpower not to break down giggling at the colour in his friend’s face.

“Peter, it’s an awful picture of me.”

“I mean sure, you’re making a stupid expression, but the fact that you’re also super attractive slightly diminishes our ability to laugh about it. Right, Marinette?”

She flinched when Peter addressed her, quickly glancing at Peter’s shirt and then returning her attention to her candy. “Sure.”

“See? No awful pictures of you exist.”

“Hmm,” Adrien hummed. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“Fine, since you seemed to be less than enthused about my choice in attire, I’ll tell you something stupid that happened to me today.” Peter settled down, a smug grin written across his features as Adrien slowly looked up.

“Really? Because all you seem to have done today is win a heist because you’re so much smarter than all of us.”

“Chloé kissed me.” Peter rocked backwards on his hands, refusing to look at either Marinette or Adrien as their eyes went wide, instead electing to read the titles of the books on the nearest shelf.

“She kissed you?” Marinette said in disbelief.

“She kissed you?” Adrien was equally incredulous.

“All in the name of the heist,” Peter waved a hand through the air, “but it seemed like the sort of thing that would entertain your simple minds.”

“Okay, we get it, you won, you’re better than all of us,” Marinette huffed. “But how on earth did you wind up adding kissing Chloé into that little master plan?”

“Simple. We needed a distraction, Chloé was more than happy to come up with a solution.”

“I was under the impression that you…,” Adrien gestured wildly. “For want of a better word; hated her?”

“I don’t hate anyone. Find her annoyingly insufferable, yes. But she actually joined in today and you were right, Adrien. She can be cool when she wants to.”

“Really?” Marinette peered out of the alcove, looking at where Chloé currently had Sabrina brushing her hair. “I’ve always felt that she’s…kind of demanding.”

“That’s just part of her sunshiney charm.” Peter shrugged. “Demanding can be good, when you change it to assertive.”

“Never thought I’d live to see the day where you decided that Chloé was someone you’d kiss,” Adrien muttered, his eyebrows creeping their way up his forehead as he processed the information.

“I’m just full of surprises, aren’t I?” Peter laughed, mainly to himself.

“But you don’t actually…?”

“Like her? No.” Peter was more than pleased to set the record straight. “But you know what they say, you gotta get all your ducks in a row before you can make them waddle.”

“Peter,” Marinette giggled. “No one says that.”

“Well then; I’m coining it.” Peter laid back on his sleeping bag, already tired from the day’s activities. “Trademark Peter Parker Phrase.”

It wasn’t long before the movie wrapped up and people were winding down for the evening. Alya had already texted Peter several times about the Chloé situation, and he reassured her (and probably Nino, since they had been curled up together) that he wasn’t planning on continuing any sort of non-platonic relationship with her. So by the time they returned to their sleeping area, the only topic of conversation was Peter’s sleep shirt.

Before he even knew it, Peter was drifting off to sleep. He was usually the last one asleep at sleepovers, but this time he was the first one out. Maybe it was from all the physical activity and scheming, or maybe it was just because he finally felt safe.

It took for-freaking-ever for the class to fall asleep. Suluu was nestled beneath Peter’s sleeping bag, occasionally brushing against his arm, but she had bigger and better plans for the evening. Namely, the two kwamis that were also existing in the same space as her. Tikki and Plagg. And if she could guess anything about them, they would be phasing out of the library to hang out soon.

For the first time in her life, Suluu could meet other kwamis. She wouldn’t be alone in the big, scary world of magic. It had been bad enough, all those years, being abused by her masters and watching everyone with a good heart die by her hand, but all that time she’d had no one to talk to. And now there was Peter, someone she’d die to save, if a kwami even could die. Never before had she been treated with such kindness, with such respect. He was introducing her to the good side of life, all the light and joy humanity had to offer.

Love wasn’t the same for kwamis as it was for humans. Kwamis like Tikki and Plagg were soulmates, and their chosen ones were designed to be the same. Two halves of a whole. That didn’t necessarily mean in the romantic sense; Suluu knew plenty of Black Cats and Ladybugs had been friends and nothing more. But the bond formed between the two heroes was unbreakable. In other cases, the more minor kwamis occasionally bonded with their wielders, but it wasn’t the same. But for Suluu, she was a singular power, different from all the others. Her bond with the Phoenix holder was the same as Tikki and Plagg’s with each other. Not in the romantic sense, of course, but Peter was her other half. Both of them were incapable of reaching their full potential without one another. Suluu barely existed without him. But now that they were one, they were inseparable. She learned from him, he learned from her. Inside, they were one and the same. Beings who’d lived a tragedy worthy of Shakespeare and chosen not to let it break them; to be kind and beyond judgement.

Never had Suluu, as a god, claimed to know everything. She knew a lot, yes, but never everything. And now she had Peter to fill in the gaps. As she slipped out of his sleeping bag, looking down at his sleeping form, her tiny heart softened. She was every bit his chosen one as he was hers. His choice of name, Helios, couldn’t have been more fitting. The Ancient Greek god of the sun, oaths, and sight had never been properly worshipped, and had always been considered as more of a minor god despite his obvious power. She wondered if Peter knew that, or if he just picked the name for purely aesthetic purposes. Either way, it suited him, more so than the Spiderman. That name gave no testament to his ability.

She found Tikki and Plagg in an empty classroom above the library. The pair was settled on a desk, talking about who knows what, but Suluu decided she’d waited long enough to introduce herself. She wasn’t about to wait longer.

“Heyyyy!” She flew towards them and Tikki and Plagg flew backwards, startled.

“Who are you?” Plagg said, while Tikki seemed to be more in the loop.

“You’re the phoenix kwami, aren’t you?”

“My name’s Suluu.” She was suddenly nervous. She hadn’t thought this through enough. Obviously Tikki and Plagg were close, and had been since the beginning of time. What if Suluu was completely intruding?

“No way!” Plagg zoomed towards her. “You’re the one that burned down Rome! Huge fan.”

“Technically that wasn’t me…,” Suluu let her voice trail off, not really wanting to get into the history of her evil owners. Nero had been one of the worst; a past she tried hard to live beyond. “But hey, you killed the fucking dinosaurs, right, so who’s counting!”

Both Tikki and Plagg stared at her, blinking slowly.

“Right,” Suluu plowed onwards. “Pe-” her voice stopped working before she could finish saying her wielders name. That was another thing she’d never had to worry about. There’d never been anyone to talk to except her wielder. She cleared her throat and tried again. “My chosen keeps telling me not to say fuck.”

“He’s right,” Tikki said.

“I wanna say fuck!” Plagg said at the exact same time.

“Plagg!” Tikki wheeled on him. “We are not having a repeat of when you used to call everyone and everything a ‘canker’!”

“That was my peak, Sucette.” Plagg winked at Suluu. “So you’re the kwami behind Helios, huh? What’s he like? Tikki already knows, since her chosen is ‘responsible’ and ‘smart’ and ‘thinks things through’.”

“Chat Noir thinks sometimes!” Suluu defended Adrien. Granted, she hadn’t seen him that much, but him and Peter were great pals so she had to assume he had his merits. Both Plagg and Tikki laughed.

“He thinks less with his head and more with his…,” Plagg trailed off, tilting his head slightly. “Did you hear that?”

Tikki looked confused, but Suluu nodded. She’d heard it too. Something she hadn’t heard in a very long time, let alone in such early hours of the morning.

“We need to go wake them up!” She phased back into the library, zooming straight through the sleeping Peter’s chest. It was surely an uncomfortable situation for him, almost like heartburn, but it did the trick. Peter bolted upright.

“What’s going on?”

“Can you hear it?” Suluu asked. Peter nodded, blinking away any traces of sleep.

“Gunshots.” His expression darkened. “Are you good to go if we need to suit up?”

“Always!” She chirped enthusiastically.

“Be on standby then. I gotta find out what we’re dealing with.”

Peter seemed like he was about to suit up as Spiderman, but at that moment Adrien awoke.

“Peter?” He asked drowsily as Suluu quickly hid. “What’s going on?”

“Someone’s opened fire on the city,” Peter explained quickly. “I need to go.”

“I’m coming with you!” Adrien insisted, sitting upright.

“No, you need to stay here.” Peter’s voice was sterner than Suluu had ever heard it. “I mean that. Don’t get yourself hurt, Adrien. You stay here.” He ran out into the street, still in his Adrien shirt, with Suluu floating along inside his pants pocket, peering out the top. People were screaming, despite the early hour, but Suluu had yet to lay eyes on the source of the commotion.

“What are you going to do, Peter?” She asked as he ran along, his bare feet slapping on the pavement.

“I honestly don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’ll figure it out somehow.” He pulled a stash of cinnamon candies from his other pocket. “If we need multiple transformations, I’ve got these.”

Suluu had an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach (if she had one). So far, she’d watched Peter fight akumas and the likes, but someone with a gun was something entirely different. There was a looming possibility of death there.

And Peter wasn’t invincible. A mistake today could cost him his life.

Adrien didn’t listen to Peter in the slightest. He had grabbed Plagg and was barreling down the street before he’d even thought things through. His mind was still clouded with sleep, but his body was wide awake and charged with shaky adrenaline. What he needed was somewhere to transform, but with everyone charging through the streets, away from the source of the noise, it was rather difficult.

And still Adrien kept getting closer. He wasn’t even sure of what he was looking for until he found it.

The man was obviously akumatized, floating in the air, holding an automatic rifle with multiple bandoliers strapped across his chest. But those were bullets, very real, metal bullets, that he was shooting out with reckless abandon at the people below. So far it didn’t look like anyone had been actually hit, but it was only a matter of time. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

“Adrien!” Peter came running out of a nearby alley, eyes wide. “I told you to stay inside!”

“Then why are you here?” Adrien asked as the gunman fired again. Time seemed to slow; Peter’s eyes got impossibly wider as Adrien realized two things. 1) their road was deserted now, it was just the two of them and the akuma and 2) he was in the direct line of the latest bullet to be fired.

Then Peter was running in front of him, so fast Adrien almost missed it, and Adrien tried to push Peter out of the way. But it was too late. The bullet was there.

And then a blue holographic shield exploded out in front of the two of them, deflecting the bullet with ease. The gunman took off, landing on the ground and running away, belts of bullets clanking.

“How the hell-” Adrien started, but his words died in his throat as Peter turned around, Spiderman’s famous mask swallowing his face. And now instead of his best friend, his hero stood there, suited up and ready to go.

“Suit up, Chat.” Peter’s tone was unhappy to say the least as Adrien quickly transformed, mind racing. Peter was Spiderman. Peter had been Spiderman all along. Spiderman knew his identity. Peter knew his identity. And this wasn’t the time to be thinking about all that.

“What are we going to do?” Adrien’s voice cracked slightly as the two heroes took off down the road.

“We need to catch up to him, for starters,” Spiderman said, leaping through the air and landing in a sports car. Adrien landed next to him, looking at his friend with a curious glance.

“Karen, I need backdoor access to remote start.” Spiderman pressed his palm against the wheel and it lit up with a blue light as his suit hacked into the car, starting its engine.

“Do you know how to drive?” Adrien asked. He knew the answer. He didn’t want to hear it.

“No.”

And with that, Spiderman pushed the pedal to the metal (actually, to the plush leather interior) and they shot off like a rocket, haphazardly steering through the streets.

“Have you seen Ladybug?” Adrien yelled over the noise of the car reaching max speed, doing everything within his power to stay upright as they took a sharp turn.

“No, and I hope I don’t. You’re risking your life being here, it’s stupid.”

“You can’t expect to take on this guy alone!”

“Adrien, you just about died. If I wasn’t standing there, if I had just been Peter Parker and nothing more, you would have just been shot to death. And I can’t always be there to protect you.”

Adrien said nothing for a moment, until Spiderman shot out some webs, gripping onto the nearest building and using that to help them make the next turn.

“We need Ladybug, though, she needs to purify the akuma!” Adrien reminded him.

“There are other ways of getting rid of it without purifying it.” Spiderman’s voice was strained as he looked left and right. Adrien honestly had no idea how he was still on the road with the rate everything was speeding by at.

“Going somewhere without me?” A familiar voice followed a slight dip in the car as Ladybug landed on the trunk. Spiderman sighed, completely exasperated.

“Both of you should not be here!” He yelled, slamming a hand on the horn.

“You drive like a maniac!” Ladybug said.

“Because I don’t know how! Because someone here decided to try and get himself shot! Because I don’t want either of you to get hurt!” Spidey’s voice choked up. “So go.”

“I’m not letting you take this on alone,” Adrien said. “So get over it.”

“I can’t lose you too.” Spiderman shot a web square in the centre of both Ladybug and Adrien’s chests. Adrien didn’t realize what he was doing until he shot the rest of the web out to a nearby building, lifting both him and Ladybug right out of the car, leaving them to fly through the air.

Good thing Ladybug was paying attention, as she managed to whip out her yoyo and swing both her and Chat away before they could become hero pancakes against the building’s wall. Adrien’s mind, however was far away. Spiderman was already far out of sight, off somewhere to chase down that gunman. And here was Adrien, doing nothing to help.

“We’ve got to go after him,” he said as soon as Ladybug set them both down.

“You heard him, Chat!” Ladybug grabbed his belt tail, stopping him in his tracks. “We can’t go after him.”

“You don’t understand!” Adrien ripped his tail out of her grasp, ignoring the flash of hurt that flickered in her expression. And he didn’t either. But he was beginning to.

Peter Parker was Spiderman, and he’d lost almost everyone that mattered to him. Being Spiderman was putting his loved ones at risk. Being Spiderman meant that not every day was guaranteed. But Spiderman was the bravest person Adrien had ever met, and Peter was the strongest. And Adrien wasn’t about to let Spiderman take on anyone by himself.

“‘Nothing you go through needs to be dealt with alone’,” Adrien said slowly.

“What?” Ladybug looked at him like he’d lost his mind.

“Spiderman said, that one time when you were afraid, he said that we had each other to fall back on, because nothing we go through needs to be dealt with alone. Which is why I need to go help him. You and Spiderman mean the world to me, and I can’t lose either of you.”

“Chat…” Her expression said a million different things, none of them good. 

“I’m not asking you to come.” Adrien’s tone hardened with determination. “I’m not even asking what you think. I’m going.” And that was all he had to say before he took off running.

It didn’t take too long to find Spiderman. He simply followed the sound of gunshots. Spiderman was flipping through the air, firing webs this way and that as he took after the gunman. The car had long sense been abandoned, and Adrien gathered that the plume of smoke rising into the air was from a crash of sorts. Either way, it was unimportant to him now.

Spidey’s suit with its shields seemed to be hindering his ability to properly shoot his webs. And being the main target, Spiderman was under continuous fire. Eventually the hero had no choice but to pursue his target on foot.

Chat landed beside him gracefully, baton deflecting a bullet. Spiderman barely even looked his way.

“I told you to stay back.”

“Yeah, and I told you we’re a team. You’re not going anywhere without me, Spiderman.”

“You’re an idiot.” It seemed as though Spidey had resigned to Chat’s presence, however, as he didn’t push it further, instead continuing his firing of webs. “If I can just get the gun, that’ll stop him from being able to kill us.”

“Yeah, but how. Neither of us can fly, and those shields may be stopping the bullets, but it’s not letting us get close.”

“I’m going to get Helios,” Spidey said. “I know him. But I need you to duck into an alley or something until he gets here. He doesn’t have shields.”

“No, but he has that giant fire bird,” Adrien pointed out.

“That’s literally only one of his powers. I’m telling you Chat, stay here. And I know you didn’t listen last time, but this time I’m saying please trust me.”

“Fine.” Adrien begrudgingly agreed, ducking behind a car as Spiderman flipped away. His heart was pounding in his ears and he was terrified and confused, but he trusted Spiderman implicitly.  

“I can see you, little kitty….” A sing-song-y voice reached Adrien’s ears a few moments after Spiderman had disappeared, and it didn’t sound like Helios.

He carefully peeked through the back window of the car and flinched when he saw just how close the shooter had gotten. He was only a few metres away and he was staring right at Chat.

“These bullets are special. They can go right through your little suit. How easy do you think it’ll be for me to take your miraculous once you’re dead?”

Adrien gulped, feeling infinitely less confident than he had before .

“Nice try, bitch.” A voice called out as Helios landed right in the middle of the road, cobblestone cracking under his feet. Adrien had never been so glad to see the fiery hero. Granted, he’d only seen him once before but that fact didn’t make him any less grateful.

“What did you just call me?” The gunman turned his attention away from Chat Noir and focused it on the hero who dared interrupt his little shooting spree.

“I called you a little bitch.” Helios gripped his golden rope, slowly spinning it beside him as the akuma glowered at him.

“I could shoot you down right now.”

“Yet you haven’t yet. Like I said, little bitch. And the second you started threatening my friend, you earned yourself a one way ticket to hell, pal.” The way Helios’s eyes flashed, it was like there was an inferno burning inside him and his glare was the only way to catch a glimpse.

It seemed the gunman had heard enough and he opened fire at Helios, who didn’t seem the least concerned. In fact, as Adrien watched, the hero dodged all of the bullets easily, moving so fast his eyes could barely pick up on it.

“Bro, you’re such a bad shot. Did no one ever teach you how to shoot? Or did Monsieur Papillon just send you out here with no training?”

“You’re a fast one, little fire boy.” The shooter cocked his gun, aiming at something just over Helios’s shoulder. “But I bet she isn’t.”

Adrien followed his gaze, letting out a long sigh when his eyes landed on Chloé’s recognizable blond hair. Why why why was she there?

“I thought your job was to get our miraculous.” Helios tried his best to bring the gunman’s attention back to him, but his rope ceased spinning. Instead, it pointed at Chloé behind Helios’s back. Adrien squinted at it, hard, and the rope pointed at him, then Chloé. Oh. Helios clearly expected Chat to rescue Chloé while he kept the gunman occupied. Great.

“Not yours,” the akuma scoffed. “We have no use for yours.”

“Okay, one, that’s hurtful,” Adrien could hear Helios saying as he made his way back to Chloé, pulling her into an alley.

“What are you doing?” Chloé smacked his hands off her.

“Saving your life,” he muttered. “Don’t move.” Adrien rolled out of the alley, carefully looking to make sure he wasn’t about to be shot. The gunman was still focused on Helios, brow furrowing as the hero danced around him, dodging his bullets.

Adrien glanced up on instinct alone, surprised to see that his partner had made it after all. Ladybug was silhouetted against the sky atop a nearby building, watching the scene unfold before her. It reminded him of one of the first times they’d fought together, where she’d stood on top of the stage, hesitating to join him.

He was so caught up in his thoughts, he didn’t even notice the akuma was no longer preoccupied until a bullet hit the building behind him. Flinching, Adrien twirled his baton, entirely uncertain of what to do. Apparently Helios was prepared to use his secret weapon, though, and at that very moment, he let out a yell that quickly transformed into a shockwave of pure sound, sending the gunman and nearby cars blasting backwards.

The sound was mesmerizing and horrifying at the same time. When Adrien had heard the phoenix song for the first time, it had been sorrowful and hauntingly beautiful, captivating everyone around it and causing time to slow. This song was forceful, leaving him feeling like he’d been punched in the chest and sending things flying. Perhaps it mirrored how Helios was feeling. The first time had been a lament, this time it was pure anger, white hot and burning.

Last time Helios had created a fire bird. This time, a fiery aura surrounded him as he charged at the gunman, eyes blazing with the force of a thousand suns. Even his hair this time was made of pure fire, mingling with the ring around his body.

With a roar, the gunman loaded his bandolier into the gun, holding down the trigger as Helios ran at him, unconcerned. Each bullet vaporized in the fiery aura before it could so much as nick the hero, and Helios slammed his fist into the offender’s chest, sending him flying backwards, but not for long.

Helios followed him, running up the side of a building like gravity didn’t apply to him and doing a horizontal spin through the air, his rope lashing out and wrapping around the akuma, slamming him back to earth, hard. Adrien ran forwards, watching Ladybug leap from the building out of the corner of his eye, joining Helios in the middle of the street.

“It burns,” the shooter croaked as Adrien approached, readying his cataclysm. “It burns so bad.”

“Yeah, it seems to do that to bad people,” Helios said offhandedly, tightening his grip slightly as Adrien reduced the gun to a pile of ashes. Apparently that hadn’t been where the akuma was hiding, as the man stayed exactly as he was.

“Where’s the akuma?” Ladybug asked the man, peering at him. Neither Ladybug nor Chat could get close to Helios, as his aura was extremely hot. The sweat sliding down the gunman’s brow was evaporating almost instantly as it came close to the hand Helios held close to his neck.

“I don’t know!” The man wailed.

“The butterfly, where did it touch you?” Adrien pressed, but all the shooter did was shake his head.

“Lucky charm!” Ladybug tossed her yoyo into the air, evidently out of options, catching the blacklight it dropped. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Shine it on him,” Helios said. “I’d do it myself, but it would destroy the lucky charm.” Adrien could tell from the strain in his voice that the suit was taking its toll, but his grip on the rope held steadfast.

Ladybug shone the blacklight over the man, pausing when it picked up on a spill on the man’s pants. “What’s that?”

“Spill something on yourself? Did it embarrass you?” Helios asked, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “No matter, let me get that for you.” He hovered his palm above the liquid, drying it. As it dried with a hiss, a butterfly flew out, almost immediately combusting due to Helios’s proximity.

“Sorry Ladybug,” he said, releasing the man as the akumatization lifted. “I meant to let you purify it.”

“It’s fine.” She waved a hand. “As long as it’s gone.”

The man looked up at Helios with horror as he rescinded his rope. “Where’s Spiderman?”

“What do you mean, where’s Spiderman?” Helios thumbed his rope, but didn’t return it to its usual spot across his back. “Don’t you usually forget what’s happened by this point? What do you want from him?”

“I was sent here to kill him.” The man said simply. “And now that I’ve failed, because he left, they’ll kill me too.”

Helios glanced at his ankle, then back at the man. “Why did they want to kill Spiderman?”

“I don’t know! They’re always just a voice on the phone, aren’t they? They tell you where to go and what to do!”

“Tell me what they said,” Helios flicked his rope back around him and drew him close to his fiery aura, “exactly.”

“Helios! Your transformation!” Ladybug pointed out. Helios shook the man, ignoring her.

“The voice said to kill Spiderman! Nothing else, just a large figure! I don’t know what to tell you, man! I’m going to get killed when I go back, though!”

“Then I suggest you figure something else out.” Helios whipped his rope back. “Change your identity or something.”

And without a single look at either Adrien or Ladybug, he ran away, taking the heat but leaving the lingering smell of fire.

Spiderman reappeared moments later, mask’s expression unreadable. He knelt beside the man. “I’ve called SHIELD. They’re coming to pick you up and booking you for attempted assassination and acts of terrorism.”

“Spiderman!” The man said. He was shivering, most likely due to the burns Helios’s aura and rope had afflicted.

“Don’t. You could’ve killed someone today.” Spiderman stood up, readying his web shooters. “Ladybug, do you want to ‘miraculous ladybug’ it up in here?”

Ladybug blinked at him, before nodding slowly and throwing her lucky charm into the air as Spiderman wrapped the man up in a web cocoon. Paris reverted itself back to normal as Spiderman worked to make sure there was no way the man could possibly escape.

“Ladybug, Chat, we should get out of here before they arrive.” Spiderman’s tone conveyed nothing of his true feelings as he stepped back. Although Adrien had a feeling he was about to find out.

Ladybug gave them a quick fist bump before she ran away. Spiderman simply begun to swing back towards the school, the sounds of an approaching helicopter fading into the distance. He dropped down beside the school, his Spidey suit crawling up his limbs and vanishing somewhere under his shirt, that stupid shirt Adrien hated so much. And so he continued to stare at it as his own transformation dropped, afraid to face his friend.

“We should get our stuff and head back,” Peter said, stepping around Adrien and heading inside the school. Adrien followed silently, still unable to look up.

It was a silent walk back to the Agreste mansion. Adrien had a million questions he wanted to ask, all in poor taste, so instead he finally found the opportunity to break the silence when Peter instinctively followed him into his room, settling on Adrien’s sofa.

“How long?” Adrien asked, electing to sit on the floor instead of next to his friend.

“Couple years,” Peter said. It seemed to be his turn to avoid eye contact as he stared at Adrien’s coffee table, almost as though he expected it to get up and do a jig.

“What was it like? At first, I mean.”

“Really confusing. I had no idea what was happening, or how to handle myself. It’s…it’s the reason my uncle died. I could’ve saved him, but I didn’t. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what I was doing.” Adrien watched his eyes fill with tears. It seemed natural that Peter was Spiderman, but somehow he’d missed the thought that Spiderman was human beneath the suit too. Adrien had a problem with putting people on pedestals, and he’d done the same for almost everyone he’d known. His father, Ladybug, Spiderman, and Peter himself. And now that the pedestal was crumbling beneath one half of Adrien’s list, he had no idea what to do.

“He was why I had to be a hero. I couldn’t just have the benefits of being Spiderman without the bad too. I had to earn my place on this earth; justify the space I fill by taking on the responsibility no one wants. It hasn’t been easy, and I’d be lying if I said it was fun juggling the trauma, the pressure, and every other plague that follows me, but it’s worth it, you know? Like today, I was able to save people. But the ones I can’t? Those are the ones that haunt me.”

Adrien chewed the inside of his cheek, barely daring to continue the conversation. But he had a feeling this was something Peter needed to get off his chest, needed to talk about. “So your mentor is Tony Stark, right?”

“Yeah, I guess you could call it that.” Peter shrugged. “He’s like the father I never had. One day he just showed up at my house and told me we were going to Germany. Then I went and fought Captain America and then left. And ever since then, he’s given me everything I could ever dream of. My suits, my tech, support. I don’t get to see him too often, but that’s okay because when I do see him, he teaches me so much. He’s my inspiration, he’s why I wanted to be an Avenger.”

“So that day you got hit by the car, you were fine because you’re Spiderman? And when Spiderman brought me food, that was you? Threatening to beat up my dad and stuff.”

Peter threaded his fingers in between his knees, rocking forward slightly and giving Adrien a small smile. “Yeah, I really fucking hate him, if we’re being honest. I know I said I don’t hate anyone, but he’s an exception. And I can stop a bus or train with my bare hands, so yeah, I can avoid being crushed by a tiny car. I once held the Staten Island Ferry together with nothing but my webs, so that was nothing.”

“You what?” Adrien laughed, glad when his friend did the same. “Wait. You know I’m Chat Noir. You know Ladybug’s identity too. How?”

“One question at a time,” Peter held up his hands in mock surrender as the mood in the room lightened. “When I stepped off the aeroplane, there was little Adrien Agreste, all nice and polite and sweet, and then I suited up that night to become acquainted with the Parisian atmosphere and then I saw you again. Only this time, you were dressed in as a cat boy and quite a bit more flirtatious.”

“You’re not supposed to be able to recognize me.” Adrien frowned.

“I’m just incredibly intuitive.” Peter winked. “And yes, I know Ladybug’s identity, but I will not be telling you.”

“So you know that I’ve been….” Adrien didn’t know what to say next. Dating Ladybug? That didn’t really seem to cut it.

“Snogging Ladybug at any given opportunity like you have no control over your hormones? Yeah, yeah I do know. I walked in on you, remember?”

“Aw man.” Adrien pulled the front of his shirt up over his eyes. “That’s embarrassing.” The embarrassment only lasted a few moments before he remembered something crucial, sitting up straighter in a flash.

Peter raised an eyebrow at the sudden change in demeanour. “Yes?”

“Chloé Bourgeois kissed Spiderman?”

“Yeah, the first and only one to kiss him thus far.” Peter refused to get embarrassed. “She’s real lucky, I know.”

“All this time you’ve been covering for me and making excuses to leave dinner early to do patrols, and I just thought it was awfully convenient.” Adrien shook his head. “But really I was saying goodnight to you, then jumping out the window and saying hello to you again?”

“Yeah, I’ve known every single thing you’ve been up to since the very beginning. You literally can’t keep things from me, Adri. I’m omniscient and all-seeing. Plus I have a computer database more extensive than most governments’ at my reach at any given moment, so.” He shrugged.

“That night everyone got drunk! And you took our miraculous, and you didn’t drink!” Adrien pointed a finger at him accusingly. “You guilt tripped us so hard for that!”

“I literally didn’t do anything! I forgave you both right away! Although I admit, it was funny how you tried to come help when you were completely plastered.”

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that my best friend is actually Spiderman and has known that I’m Chat Noir this whole time.”

“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” Peter said. “No one really accepts it right away. My friend Ned actually asked me if I laid eggs when he first found out.”

“…” Adrien looked at him for a good long moment.

“I don’t!”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Of course you don’t lay eggs.” Adrien gave an awkward laugh, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Silly Ned.”

“Hmmm, sure.” Peter regarded him with a look that suggested he knew that Adrien had genuinely thought there was a possibility of Peter laying eggs for a solid few seconds.

“Is there anything you want to ask me? About me being Chat Noir?” Adrien hastened to change the subject, foot tapping on the floor.

“No, not really. You’re kind of an open book.” Peter tilted his head.

“Great. The first person to figure out my identity ever and you already have a way cooler superhero persona who also already knows me inside and out.”

“Actually, can I meet your kwami?” Peter asked.

“Uh, sure?” Definitely not what Adrien had been expecting. He reached into his shirt and extracted a sleeping Plagg in his fist, holding him out for Peter’s approval.

“Is it dead?” Peter peered at the sleeping cat, scooting to the edge of the couch to get a closer look.

“Nope, just lazy,” Adrien said honestly. “He’s not too much of a help. Loves cheese.”

“You mean the cheese fridge…?” Peter blinked at him. “That’s not just a French thing?”

“Yeah…no. I don’t love cheese that much.” Adrien laughed at the expression on Peter’s face.

“I don’t like cheese in the slightest yet I’ve been sucking it up because I thought that would bring me closer to French culture! Only to find out I’ve been lied to.” Peter clasped a hand over his heart as Adrien stuffed Plagg back into his shirt.

“Yeah, well, you told me you worked an internship for Tony Stark and were ground control for Spiderman, but it turns out you are Spiderman!”

“Lies told to protect one’s identity do not count as lies, and that’s a new rule.” Peter snorted.

Adrien laughed with him, until he remembered something he ought to say.

“Listen, I’m sorry for not staying back when you told me to, earlier. I just didn’t want you to get hurt and not have anyone to rescue you. I know you can hold your own and whatnot, but I can’t even count the times I would’ve died if it hadn’t been for Ladybug, and I just want you to have someone who’s got your back too.”

Peter gave him a sad smile. “I’m sorry I got mad at you both, it’s just that you two mean a lot to me, and if something happened to you on my watch, I’d never be able to forgive myself. I’ve lost so many people that I never thought I’d be able to lose, and I didn’t want you guys to just be more people I’ve loved and lost. It wasn’t about your ability as a hero or anything of the sort.”

“I get that. I should’ve listened.”

“No, what you should do is trust your instincts. And I did wind up needing you, both to get Chloé to safety and to destroy the gun.”

“I suppose I should apologize to Ladybug too, I got kinda short with her when I insisted on going after you.” Adrien’s heart plunged as he remembered the look on her face. ‘I’m not asking what you think.’ That had been a dick move and he needed to make it right.

“Yeah, you should go for that.” Peter nodded. “I’m just going to rest here, I think.”

“Hey,” Adrien stood up, holding out his hand for a fist bump. Peter complied. “No more secrets, huh?”

“One more secret,” Peter said. “But a secret for another time.”

“I’m intrigued.” Adrien stopped in his tracks, inspecting Peter’s face for any sort of hint as to what the secret was. As usual, he couldn’t tell anything beyond his sparkling eyes and childlike smile.

“For another time, Adrien. Go make out with your Lady or whatever it is you two do. Actually, I’m pretty sure that is all you two do.”

“One last question,” Adrien said. “A particular incident comes to mind now that you say that. When Marinette and I were talking about your dead parents, how did you know?”

“I have exceptionally good hearing.” Peter grinned. “Now go apologize to Ladybug, you prat.”

Adrien raised a single finger in Peter’s direction as he roused Plagg and suited up, leaping out the window, off to find his Lady. He was glad that Peter wasn’t mad at him, even though he didn’t seem the sort to get mad and stay mad. There was no doubt about it, Peter was his best friend. And as Adrien zipped off into the afternoon, the thought of a singular memory, in which Spiderman brought him a birthday cake, made him smile. Peter cared, and he always had. Now that Spiderman and Peter were one and the same, Adrien could see just how much he genuinely cared; how far out of his way he would go to make Adrien happy.

The fact that Peter could’ve been friends with anybody and had chosen him made Adrien the luckiest cat in the whole wide world.

As soon as Adrien was gone, Peter took a nice long shower back in his own room. Suluu sat on the bathroom counter, positively raving about how grand it was to suit up.

“You totally kicked his ass, Peter!”

“We kicked his ass,” Peter corrected, wrapping a towel around his waist as he stepped out. “You do all the heavy lifting.”

“Technically speaking, we both do. And isn’t it such a relief now that Adrien knows you’re Spiderman?”

“Sure.” Peter mussed his hair. Really, he didn’t think it would make too much of a difference. Of course, now him and Adrien could talk about all aspects of their life openly (minus the bit where he was Helios), but that didn’t seem too different to Peter than what they already did. He was Adrien’s best friend as Peter, and Chat Noir’s second-best friend (second to Ladybug, although if she was taking up the position of ‘girlfriend’ perhaps that was his chance to rise in the ranks) as Spiderman.

“Hey Su, how come my rope burns people?”

“Oh, that’s just if they’ve got bad intentions,” Suluu said thoughtfully. “Like if they’re trying to kill you or if they’re acting out of spite, whatever. It’s more of a judge of character. Just a cool little feature it has built in.”

“Great. Good to know.” Peter sighed, generally uncertain what to make of the fact that his magic rope had taken up the role of the feather of Maat, tugging sweatpants and a sweater on. Adrien the Fashion Police Sergeant wasn’t around to critique his fashion choices, and Peter had yet to run into Fashion Police Captain Gabriel Agreste that week, so he figured he was in the clear to dress as ugly as he liked.

“While we’re asking questions,” Suluu braved, “why does someone want you dead?”

“Who knows, who cares.” Peter shrugged. “For some reason people who do a lot of good have a lot of enemies. Apparently that’s just how life works. Maybe I’m the villain in their story, you never know. But I can’t change how people see me. I just do what I think is right and they choose how to narrate it. And if someone wants me dead, that’s their own personal problem, but I won’t let them hurt others on my account.”

He exited the bathroom, Suluu in tow, but stopped dead in his tracks when he heard an odd noise, one you didn’t hear everyday, coming from the study downstairs and across the foyer. A normal human wouldn’t have been able to hear the sounds of a mechanical lift, but Peter had no trouble picking it up now that the house was quiet.

“Did you hear that?” He whispered to Suluu. She nodded.

He peeked his head out the doorway to his bedroom, watching M. Agreste himself leave the study and head off into another wing of the house. This was Peter’s chance to do precisely the thing Adrien had told him not to do. Go sneaking.

“I’m going to suit up so I can use my suit’s scanners,” Peter said, allowing the Spidey suit to cover every inch of him. “But this certainly piques my interest.”

“It piques mine too,” Suluu said, clapping her hands together.

“No, you stay here,” Peter said.

“No, I’m going with you.”

“No, no you’re not, I need a lookout.”

“If you wanted a lookout you should’ve gotten a dog or something. I go with you, bitch.”

“You’ve really got to stop swearing or you’ll seriously offend me one day.” Peter groaned, carefully slipping out of his room in a flash, running the security cameras in the house on a loop via a simple command to Karen. No one would pick up on it until he’d already done his snoop, Peter was sure of it. He resisted the urge to hum the Mission Impossible theme song as he crept into the study.

His eyes were immediately drawn to a large painting of Adrien’s mother, or it at least looked like a painting at first. With his naked eye, Peter could tell it was more than just a painting. Hinges, subtle ones, but nonetheless there, were connected to the left side, and Peter could make out the tell-tale oil deposit spots on the painting’s surface. Someone had been regularly touching a few spots on the front, and as he engaged his scanning mode he could see the safe behind the painting and the wiring of the buttons in front of him.

“Oh Gabe,” Peter whispered to himself as he pressed the buttons without so much of a second thought as to what he was doing. The floor opened up beneath him, but Peter didn’t fall. Instead, the same mechanical whirring he’d heard before begun as a lift took him under the floor of the Agreste house.

Once the lift stopped and Peter got his bearings, he stepped out, taking every detail of the underground lair in.

“Motherfucker,” he said under his breath. Of course, Suluu leaped at the new language he’d just foolishly handed to her, echoing his sentiments.

“Motherfucker!”