#which would be like added layers to unravel considering everyone else is probably gonna be trying to talk him down

[darkchocolatedimples]

ik there’s a lot of speculation around kenji and brooklynn having possibly broken up before her “death” (still not believing it) but doesn’t darius’s phone call with brand in the first episode kind of point away from that. didn’t he say kenji doesn’t want to hear anything i have to say or something like that? or am i tweaking

[ladylynse]

Chapter 13 [FF | AO3] of Whirlwind (SQ fic): Jake should be used to ominous predictions by now. Randy should know better than to blindly follow McFist. Adrien should think twice before sneaking away. And Danny should’ve expected something like this when he got that phone call.

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7:50 PM

Jake couldn’t see Danny as he winged around to the building where Hawk Moth stood with Susan, but he had a feeling he knew Danny’s plan: namely, get Nino out of danger. Specifically, do that by phasing him out of Susan’s claws. Randy—who was clinging to the edge of the roof and barely showing more than his eyes and fingertips—looked ready to jump into action the moment that happened, and Jake knew he should be, too, but….

This situation wasn’t just his fault.

It was the fault of the World Dragons in general.

If they’d ever found a replacement for the French Dragon or at least done a better job of checking up on France, this might not have happened.

Which meant it was Jake’s responsibility not just to diffuse this particular situation and deal with the fallout but also to, well, see what he could do about Hawk Moth so that he didn’t keep doing this in Paris.

Jake hovered in the air for a moment, knowing he’d been spotted, but despite the telling flick of her eyes, his mother didn’t call any attention to him. He wasn’t entirely sure if that was good or bad; she still recognized him, right? Was she ignoring him on purpose? She had to know he couldn’t let this slide. Between her letting everyone in the city—and, let’s face it, beyond—know that dragons exist and this Hawk Moth guy misusing magical artefacts, there was no way he couldn’t get involved.

Jake took a deep breath, folded his wings, and let fire burn away his scales. He landed on the roof with very human feet, rolling with the impact and rising from a crouch as Hawk Moth turned. Jake gave him a wide berth, ignoring Hawk Moth in favour of his mom. He edged around to keep her in sight, though he knew better than to turn his back on an enemy. “Mom,” he whispered, “don’t do this. Please.”

He saw Hawk Moth’s triumphant smile out of the corner of his eye. “So. This is your son, one of the city’s great protectors.”

Susan said nothing, though she held Jake’s gaze.

“You’re better than this,” Jake said when he noticed Hawk Moth open his mouth again. “You know what I’m fighting for. You know why I fight for it. You have to know this is wrong. Just step back and think about it for a moment, like you always taught me to do. This isn’t you. Please.”

“Dracona,” Hawk Moth said sharply. “Tell me what else I should know about your son.”

What else he should know.

That meant he already knew something.

That she’d already told him something.

How much?

“What? What did you tell him? Why did you tell him anything?”

For a few heartbeats, Jake was sure his mom wasn’t going to answer—him or Hawk Moth. He hoped she was ignoring his questions because they were ridiculous and she’d never tell someone like him anything important, whatever he demanded. He hoped he’d managed to get through to her when it came to Hawk Moth, too. She was still looking at him, and he was familiar enough with reading dragon expressions to see determination settle on her face. It gave him hope—until she opened her mouth and said, “I made a deal. I’ve realized that I have to fulfill it.”

“You don’t!”

“Fighting doesn’t work.” She sounded more resigned than she looked, which was weird, but whatever. “I’ve tried. I can’t.”

Jake wanted to wipe the smug expression off Hawk Moth’s face, but Danny was right. If Randy’s book did mean that he could talk his mom down, he had to try—and if he could do that without giving Hawk Moth any more information about the magical world, dragons included, then all the better. “You can, I swear,” Jake insisted. “You just said you’ve fought it before. You can do it again. And you know what it’s like to try to fight off mind control; G would’ve trained you, I know he would’ve. You can’t give up now, yo. You have to keep trying. You can do this!” She turned back to Hawk Moth, and he called again, “Please! I’m sorry about earlier! I’m sorry about everything. Just don’t do this. You know it’s not right!”

Susan ignored him, instead answering Hawk Moth’s question as if they hadn’t let him have his say at all. “My son is foolish, and he is brave.”

“Mom, just stop, okay?”

“He is young, and he is skilled.”

“Don’t tell him everything. You can’t.” If he didn’t think he’d lose against her in a straight up attack, he’d do it. Nino’s magic suit looked more durable than Randy’s and seemed to protect him from a lot; it should protect him from being crushed underfoot or impaled by a stray claw. Trouble was, Susan was still the bigger dragon, and even if she didn’t have as much practice as Jake when it came to being a dragon and moving around, that inexperience hadn’t shown up so far. Besides, she knew way more theory than he did, and if she didn’t have any trouble applying it….

Attacking her now would just make him more vulnerable.

And attacking Hawk Moth was likely to invite a retaliatory attack from her, and he didn’t particularly want that in either form. Randy was not enough back up for that. So where the heck was Danny?

“He makes mistakes, many of them, but he always tries his best to do what is right.”

Jake shifted on his feet. He hadn’t expected a glowing review, exactly, but he hadn’t thought his mom would put it quite like that. He could guess why Hawk Moth might ask—if he’d identified Jake as a protector of the NYC, if not the magical world, then he knew Jake was here to fight him—but he still didn’t know why Susan had answered.

For that matter, he didn’t know why neither of them had just attacked; he was a lot more vulnerable in this form, and Hawk Moth at least had no idea how quickly he could change…unless his mom had already passed on that bit of information.

A subtle movement caught Jake’s eye, and he tracked it in time to see the tips of Nino’s ears slide downwards and disappear through the roof.

Strangely, Susan said nothing about it, even though Jake knew she must have noticed. He turned to get a better view of Hawk Moth, but he didn’t seem to notice, either. He was still staring at Jake. Maybe this hadn’t been a bad plan, after all, even if Nino had gotten who was a suitable distraction completely wrong.

“He also possesses a greater magic than yours,” Susan said quietly, “because the magic you use is borrowed and not your own.”

Hawk Moth scowled and looked back at her. “My magic will be greater than either of you can imagine once I have the Miraculous I seek. Give me Chat Noir’s.”

“Gonna have a hard time with that,” Randy called, drawing everyone’s attention. He was sitting on the edge of the roof now; Jake hadn’t even noticed him climb up. Maybe he’d still been underestimating Randy’s Ninja skills, despite having ample evidence of exactly how good Randy could be. “I mean, you kinda gotta have something to give it in the first place.”

“What?” roared Hawk Moth. He spun back to Dracona, and Jake had to look twice at the cane in his hand to confirm that, yes, it had hidden a sword, and now Hawk Moth had discarded its sheath. “You let him escape?”

“I brought you his ring, as you asked. It’s hardly my fault you didn’t take it when you had the chance.” She tilted her head towards Jake and added, “I’ve also told you about our local hero. Consider our contract fulfilled.”

“The Miraculous is not in my hands!”

“But I did bring it to you,” she repeated, “and—”

Hawk Moth lunged.

Despite how focused he’d been on Susan, he came at Jake. Jake scrambled back and somehow tripped over his own feet. He handed hard on his bottom and breathed a spout of fire in Hawk Moth’s direction to encourage him to keep his distance, but Jake realized a split second later that that hadn’t been necessary. Jake had a brief glimpse of Randy’s scarf wrapping around Hawk Moth’s torso and forcing him to a stop before one of Susan’s wings spread out between them as protection.

“Get his Miraculous!”

Jake turned as he climbed to his feet and saw Nino already back on the roof, racing towards Hawk Moth. Susan dropped her wing, looking like she was preparing to breath her own fire instead, and Jake saw Hawk Moth snarl and twist back towards Randy. He raised his sword and severed the scarf in one quick swipe.

Randy let out a cry as the fabric fell, and Hawk Moth froze even as he turned his blade on Nino.

That’s where Danny was, then.

“It’s his brooch,” Nino explained as he started unravelling the layers of scarf that covered Hawk Moth’s chest. He had to duck around the sword but didn’t seem overly bothered by the inconvenience; Hawk Moth’s arm had frozen mid-swing, partially blocking his chest, and his sword was still held in a tight grip, judging by how it didn’t even tremble. “If we can get it, then we can stop everything right now, and—” He broke off.

Jake didn’t need to walk closer to see what the problem was—even he was sure the Miraculous wasn’t supposed to be glowing that bright green colour—but he reached Nino only a few steps ahead of Randy. On closer inspection, the situation looked worse, with cracks of bright purple spiderwebbing across the entire brooch that grew wider as Jake watched.

“Um. You probably don’t wanna touch that,” Randy said. “It looks like it’s about to explode. Can those things explode?”

“I didn’t think so,” Nino said, but he sounded as confident as he looked—which, when he was chewing on his lip and staring at the brooch instead of reaching for it, told Jake all he needed to know.

Jake felt a hand on his arm, and he turned back to see the familiar face of his mother. “I don’t know if I’m free of him,” she said quietly. “You need to end this now, before—”

Purple light exploded.

Jake stumbled forward, hearing multiple grunts behind him and more than one body hitting the rooftop.

As he hadn’t been looking directly at the Miraculous, he wasn’t blinded like the others undoubtedly were. Still, he was too stunned to react as Hawk Moth’s sword flashed towards Susan, slicing away her necklace—and into her flesh. He heard her scream. He heard himself scream as he scrambled forward to try to catch her.

There was so much blood.

There shouldn’t be this much blood.

Red smoke clouded his vision, but at that point, it didn’t matter; Jake couldn’t see through his tears anyway.

7:53 PM

McFist thought he had a plan. Rotwood claimed that it was more his plan than McFist’s. Haley just had a budding headache and a growing, panicked worry in her chest that wouldn’t go away without more information.

The plan, as it was, wasn’t very good. It required a lot of luck, which in Haley’s experience tended to go sour; a healthy dose of lies, which sounded terribly unbelievable to her ears; and the remaining supply of Ninja Cold Balls, which McFist had picked out with unnerving accuracy. “How long would a pop-up skating rink even last?” Haley asked, interrupting whatever Rotwood and McFist were arguing about.

“Ninja ice lasts longer than regular ice,” McFist said. “Magic. Figured you knew.”

“Right.”

“So we’ll expand on the patch you started. It’ll still be there. We’ll call it a teaser if anyone asks. People like sneak peeks.”

There was absolutely no way this would work.

“Little bit of fashion, little bit of skating. It’ll sell. People eat this stuff up all the time.”

Rotwood sniffed. “And when people call your bluff, I will tell them the real reason for all of this—don’t look at me like that; I respect the deals I make, so of course I do not mean the real real reason. I will insist it is the work of magical creatures and use the fight of the Ninja and the dragon as my proof.”

“At which point I remind people that the best advertising is the viral kind, and people believe me instead of him. Everyone loves a good show.”

There was no nice way to tell them this wouldn’t work, was there? “I’m not sure—”

“You can even come out and pretend to be a ninja if you like. Really sell it. You any good at skating?”

She was better at the violin. “I don’t even have skates.”

McFist shrugged. “No one else will, either. You ever wear an expensive pair of shoes meant for indoors? Those things have no grip. It’ll be fine.”

It wouldn’t be. Not on its own. Maybe she’d get lucky and think of what else they could do to supplement it once they got going, though. Haley glanced at Rotwood. “You’re really okay with your name being dragged through the mud again for making false claims?”

“I will hardly be the only one reporting on this magical creature sighting. Besides, I can always try to prove the existence of the magical world again later. A visit the Magus Bazaar—or whatever you will do for me instead of that—is worth more than an attempt to get people to see the truth when I know you are already working against me.” Rotwood spread his hands. “Think of it as me hedging my bets. I have more chance of success in the future, when you and your brother are not aware of my actions.”

Haley had no idea how Jake put up with Rotwood in school every day. She sincerely hoped Rotwood would find another job by the time she went to Millard Fillmore, at least if he didn’t change his tune. It was hard to admire his perseverance when she knew how much his success would cost the magical world.

Maybe Jake should just try to sit him down and strike a long-term bargain with him. Rotwood might not be so set on exposing the magical world if he finally understood what that exposure would mean. She doubted he’d be happy to consistently work to protect the magical world, but he might agree to keep silent about it—and keep his personal rivals away from it—in exchange for more information. From what Jake had told her, he was working off a lot more fiction than fact.

Heck, if Randy could come up with something better to offer McFist, he might think twice about working with the Sorcerer, too. She was less certain on that front, of course, but McFist seemed to be in it only for his reward. Dealing with a rogue sorcerer technically fell under the purview of the dragons, too, so Randy would be perfectly within his rights to ask for help. It just seemed to her like there might be a better way to do this, since McFist and Rotwood were acting more reasonable than she’d expected.

And a lot more helpful, too.

It was different with Nino. He didn’t know Hawk Moth’s identity, and from what she’d seen and heard, Hawk Moth wasn’t someone that could be easily talked down. He had an agenda, and he’d see it through no matter who got hurt in the process. That made him someone they needed to take down, not someone they might be able to negotiate with.

But if Jake didn’t defeat him now, he’d have to play politics himself to get help to Nino. It would be a lot easier if he didn’t have to go through the Dragon Council to get permission for something like that, if he and the others could just make some agreement and do it all under the table. Gramps might not wholly approve, but he wouldn’t disapprove, not if Jake was doing the right thing, and Fu would be more than willing to help. She could cover for him if he ever had business elsewhere, with Trixie and Spud for backup if they were still around, and—

“I’ll keep these throwing balls in case they come in handy later,” McFist said as he started to pocket everything that wasn’t a Ninja Cold Ball. “You start making the rink, and Rotwood and I will seed rumours.”

“What if this doesn’t work?” Haley asked. “What if no one believes us? What if they see through it?”

McFist jerked his thumb towards Rotwood. “So you’re saying people might believe him? I was getting the impression that he was a bit of a Cassandra type myself.”

“That’s not the worst comparison you could have made,” Rotwood muttered.

“No, but…. What’s our backup plan?”

“What was your backup plan?”

She bit her lip. “I trusted that I’d come up with something that would work if it came to that.”

McFist snorted. “Yeah, well, my backup plan is the simple fact that if you act like you know what’s going on and you’re good at selling it, people will believe you, even if it’s outrageous. I mean, my company cleans up the messes our own robots make, and we’re commended for it. It’s all about having good PR. I may not be good at inventing things to get the results I want, but I am good at handling the public. You follow through on your end of the deal, and I’ll make sure they don’t turn on you.”

7:54 PM

“Randy said he can help,” Danny said as he pulled Jake away from Susan. “Let him. He’ll help your mom. You and I need to catch that akuma. Nino’s going after Hawk Moth. He grabbed one of Randy’s smoke bombs and escaped. We’re lucky it wasn’t one of those bee balls.”

Jake didn’t respond.

He might not even be listening.

He wasn’t fighting in Danny’s grip anymore, not even when Randy bent over Susan and held his hands over her to do some Ninja thing. Jake was just dead weight, conscious but not home, which was not what Danny needed right now. It wasn’t what any of them needed, Susan included.

Danny formed a handful of ice cubes and dumped them down the back of Jake’s shirt.

The reaction was thankfully immediate, with Jake jerking away from him. “Yo, that is not cool, man!”

“Actually, it’s ice cold, which is why I did it.”

Jake turned to glare at Danny, but his anger was short-lived; Danny could see new tears forming in his eyes. He started to turn back to his mom, but Danny caught his arm. “Hey. We need to deal with the akuma. You’re the American Dragon. This is part of that.”

“I don’t care about the stupid akuma.”

“You will if it multiplies and you’re dealing with a whole lotta people who can turn into dragons. Let’s go.”

“Mom—”

“Randy is helping her,” Danny repeated. “Let him. Help from your friends, remember?”

“That’s not—”

“We need to go before we lose the akuma entirely,” Danny interrupted. He was two seconds away from leaving Jake behind and just going to look for it on its own, even if he didn’t know what he’d do if he caught it, but Jake had better night vision than he did.

Jake took a shuddering breath and ground out, “Fine,” before transforming without another word.

Danny flew up to join him in the air, deciding Jake didn’t care about the other details right now. With any luck, Nino would catch Hawk Moth. That would make dealing with the akuma easier. Maybe. They needed something to go their way for once.

Danny knew better than to ask if Jake had spotted it yet, so he just hovered and waited as Jake looked and listened. When he picked a direction and started flying, Danny followed. He didn’t see anything that look remotely like a butterfly, but he trusted Jake.

After about a minute of flying with no butterfly in sight, he started to question that. They weren’t flying that slowly. The butterfly shouldn’t have been this far in front of them. “Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Danny ventured. “I mean, I can always scout behind us if you’re not.”

“The last one we saw was flying in this direction,” Jake said. “I think it was going for higher ground.”

“This is a city of skyscrapers. Isn’t everywhere higher ground?”

“You know what I mean.”

He didn’t, but Danny didn’t bother pressing the point. There was a more important question to ask. “What makes you think this one is going to the same place the last one was?”

“I…don’t, really. But it makes sense.”

Danny tried to figure out what he could say to that that wouldn’t sound completely insensitive when he knew Jake was preoccupied with worry about his mom. The truth of it was, it didn’t make sense, at least not to Danny, and he really wasn’t keen on the idea of them not splitting up to look for this thing if Jake wasn’t sure.

“I think it’s like those zombie ants.”

Danny blinked. “What?” He couldn’t have heard that right.

“You know. Those zombie ants. That get infected with that fungus. It, like, takes over their mind and makes them go to higher ground to die and then it spreads. This might be like that.”

“Okay, one, how have I never heard about this before if it’s real, and two, pretty sure the magical butterflies aren’t infected with a fungus.”

“I didn’t say they were! Just that it would make sense with the higher ground thing.”

Danny groaned. “I don’t suppose you know if Spud found that thermos?”

“I’m not even sure if he’s looking for it. He’s doing something that he thinks will help.”

“With what?”

“I dunno. Everything, maybe. I trust him. He and Trix have my back.”

It would be a little hypocritical to argue against the whole ‘trust your friends and let them help you’ bit now, but it was hard. Jake might be clutching at straws because it was better to do that than to think about what he’d left behind. Danny really had no idea what Randy could do, but he’d sounded confident, so Danny hadn’t asked.

Maybe he should’ve; it would’ve made this conversation easier to navigate.

“Look, this akuma is as important as Hawk Moth right now. Pretty sure it won’t go away when he drops the mask, so we need to figure out how to contain it. Would Spud and Trixie know of anything that would help? Are they following a hunch?”

Jake didn’t answer.

Perfect.

Danny followed him in silence, debating the merits of breaking off to check any other direction and then deciding that if Nino wasn’t successful in catching Hawk Moth, it wouldn’t be in their best interest to leave Jake alone in this mood.

“I’m sorry,” Danny said when the silence started to stretch. “I know this sucks. I know you’re worried about your mom, and what the Dragon Council is going to do when they find out about this, and—”

“Two o’clock, maybe thirty degrees up,” Jake interrupted, altering his course.

Danny blinked, and in his moment of hesitation, Jake let out a plume of fire that lit up and then completely engulfed a butterfly.

It didn’t immediately incinerate, like Danny had expected. It bubbled, roiling magic boiling across wings that fluttered frantically to stay aloft. When the flame died, all Danny could see was the afterimage seared green and white into his eyes.

“You wanna catch it?”

“It’s still alive?” Danny asked, looking around as his vision started to go back to normal. “I don’t—” He broke off. The white butterfly wings stood out more clearly against the sky than the purple ones had, and he caught the butterfly in his hands with surprisingly little effort—or maybe it just felt that way after everything else.

It was hard to believe he’d been in Amity Park for lunch.

Of course, coming from Amity Park and having the experiences that he did, he wasn’t about to assume that the colour change of the butterfly (or, frankly, its survival) was a fluke. Chances were good Nino could explain what had happened, but Danny just hoped it was a good thing. If they’d just released the magic and now didn’t have something concrete to chase after, he didn’t know how they were going to gather it all back up. Well, maybe Pandora could tweak her box if he borrowed it, but—

“I was trying to kill it,” Jake admitted as Danny stopped to hover across from him. The butterfly’s wings beat against Danny’s closed fingers, but he couldn’t lead the way back to Nino and (hopefully) answers. He’d already gotten turned around, and he wasn’t sure where they were. “I just…. I dunno. I wanted this problem gone. I should’ve known it wouldn’t work. The last one survived, too.”

“What? Really?” Danny hadn’t thought much about the first butterfly, but in retrospect, he supposed it must’ve survived if Nino was right about Hawk Moth recalling it. Maybe this was the same butterfly? He glanced down at his hands. Maybe Jake had had the same thought. He didn’t typically go for straight up destroying stuff, but if the butterflies were the only way Hawk Moth could release his magic….

“Just don’t let go of it,” Jake said, as if Danny had had any intentions otherwise. He flew back faster than they’d flown out, likely because he wasn’t trying to track a butterfly this time, but Danny easily kept pace.

He didn’t try to force a conversation, though. It was obvious enough Jake still wasn’t in the mood to talk, and Danny’s dismal attempts earlier made it clear that he didn’t know what to say.

Hopefully, by the time they got back to Randy, they’d get some good news for a change.

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