"A curtain. A heavy damn curtain," Kevin repeated, his voice dripping with so much sarcasm you could scrape it off with a spatula. "We're facing a sixty-foot geological abomination that just ripped the seats out of half this stadium, and the great mystical power of the universe just gave you… upholstery fabric."
The girl in the red suit with black polka dots gritted her teeth, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks. She looked at the massive roll of thick fabric in her hands, then at the stone giant tearing up the bleachers about a hundred and fifty feet away, and finally locked her blue eyes on the white-haired boy.
"Shut up for a second and listen to me!" she snapped, her anxious tone vanishing for a split second, replaced by a firmness that surprised even Kevin. "You just said he hasn't opened his right hand at all, right? That means whatever is giving him that power is hidden in there. If we attack his body head-on, we already saw that your… whatever it was you did, only made him grow bigger and stronger. We can't win this with brute force."
Kevin crossed his arms, shifting his weight onto one leg while the black tail of his suit swished back and forth behind him, betraying his mild interest.
"Enlighten me, then. What are you gonna do? Knit him a custom sweater so he feels hugged and gives up?"
"I'm going to blind him!" she replied, completely ignoring the jab as she unrolled a section of the heavy fabric. "It's basic instinct. If something suddenly blocks your vision and you can't see anything around you—especially if you're in the middle of a panic or a fit of rage—your first impulse is to bring your hands to your face to get it off. Both hands."
Kevin blinked. His feline pupils dilated slightly. The logic behind the plan was absurdly simple, but on a tactical level, it was brilliant. Combat psychology dictated that the sudden loss of sight triggered an involuntary and immediate defensive reaction. If they managed to cover his eyes, the monster would drop whatever he was holding in his right hand to claw the obstruction away.
The boy uncrossed his arms and let out a low whistle of appreciation.
"Well, well. There's actually a brain ticking behind all that clumsiness and panicked rambling," Kevin admitted, flashing a half-smile that subtly revealed his now slightly sharper canines. "Alright. I like the plan. It's pragmatic. But there's a slight logistical problem: that thing is three times the size of an elephant. How the hell do you plan on getting up to its face without getting squashed like a bug in the process?"
The girl clutched the fabric to her chest, her heavy breathing proving the fear was still there, but her eyes were dead-set on the target.
"You're going to be my distraction," she declared. "You're fast. I saw it when you were dodging his punches before he dragged you with the yo-yo. You need to get his attention, keep him focused on you, and force him to lean forward. I'll use my yo-yo to swing from the light poles that are still standing and drop the fabric right over his head. Once he drops the object, you grab it and destroy it."
"Easy for you to say, Wonder Woman. You get to swing comfortably through the air while I play target practice with a walking mountain," Kevin scoffed, extending his metal staff with a metallic clack that echoed in the dust-filled air. "But I accept the terms. Just make sure you don't miss the shot. If he flattens me, I swear I'm coming back from the grave just to haunt you."
Without waiting for a response, Kevin bent his knees. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, feeling the suit's energy course through his veins. The dark magic of the Miraculous hadn't just suppressed the pain from the open wound on his left shoulder and the hellish migraine; it had temporarily rewritten his biological limits.
He felt every fiber of his muscles pull taut like steel springs. His hearing picked up the crunch of rocks dozens of yards away; his sense of smell caught the dampness of the churned earth and the metallic tang of the rubble.
"Hey, gravel-face!" Kevin yelled at the top of his lungs, his magically amplified voice booming through the stadium's structure. "Did you get lost on the way to the quarry, or was your mother a cheap cinder block?!"
Stoneheart stopped his assault on the bleachers. His massive head, devoid of any distinct features other than glowing purple eyes, slowly turned toward the boy in the black suit. A deafening roar that rattled the fillings in Kevin's teeth ripped from the monster's throat.
The giant raised his left arm and threw a devastating punch straight at Kevin. The massive fist, roughly the size of a compact car, cut through the air with the force of a miniature hurricane.
For a normal human, it would have been instant death. For Kevin, the movement seemed to happen at a surprisingly manageable speed.
At the last possible microsecond, Kevin pushed himself up and to the right. His tactical boots left the ground with an explosive burst of speed. It wasn't a normal jump; it was a fluid, elegant, and unnatural movement. The stone fist slammed into the ground exactly where he had been standing a blink prior, shattering the concrete and kicking up a curtain of debris.
Kevin landed nimbly right on the monster's outstretched arm. He dug his metal claws into the rocky surface to anchor himself and started sprinting up the giant's limb, heading straight for its face.
"Is that all you got?!" Kevin taunted, a purely adrenaline-fueled smirk on his face. "I've fought punching bags with more initiative!"
Stoneheart, enraged by the pest running up his arm, raised his right arm—the one with the stubbornly clenched fist—and tried to smash Kevin against his own body.
The boy's feline instincts flared. He felt the shift in the air currents from the incoming attack before he even saw it. Kevin slammed on the brakes, jammed the tip of his metal staff into a crack in the giant's rocky shoulder, and used it like a pole vault. He catapulted himself into the air just as Stoneheart's colossal right hand smashed into his own left bicep, staggering the behemoth with the force of his own blow.
Suspended fifty feet in the air, Kevin spun with a grace that had been completely foreign to him until an hour ago. He landed perfectly on his feet, knees bent, on the steel beam of one of the stadium's few intact floodlights.
His heart was hammering a mile a minute, but not from fear—it was pure euphoria. It was intoxicating. Not having to worry about the fragility of his own body, not feeling that limiting throb in his temples. For a moment, he forgot his father's warning, forgot Silas, forgot the mysterious machine. There was only the fight.
"Now, bug! Hurry up!" Kevin muttered to himself, his yellow eyes scanning for his partner.
From the top of a light tower on the opposite side, the heroine in red took a running start. She spun her magic yo-yo at breakneck speed, creating a sharp hum that sliced through the wind. She launched it with pinpoint precision toward a crossbeam situated just above the giant's head. Throwing herself into the void, she swung like a scarlet pendulum against the clear sky.
Stoneheart, still trying to locate Kevin, tilted his head up in confusion at the hum of the yo-yo.
It was the mistake they needed.
At the apex of her swing, the girl released the heavy curtain. The thick, sprawling fabric fell like a net straight onto the monster's head, completely enveloping his rocky face and wrapping awkwardly around what would be his neck.
The stone giant froze for a second. Then, absolute panic took over. Deprived of his sight and entirely disoriented, Stoneheart let out a wail of frustration. Just as the girl had predicted, his self-preservation instinct overrode whatever magical command was keeping his hand closed.
He brought both of his massive, clumsy hands to his face, desperately trying to claw away the heavy fabric blinding him.
As he opened his right hand, an object—minuscule compared to his colossal size—dropped into the void, bouncing off his rock chest and plummeting toward the ruined turf of the field. It was a small, crumpled piece of paper, dark iridescent purple in color.
"Bingo!" Kevin shouted from his vantage point.
He didn't waste a millisecond. He dropped from the beam, going into a nosedive toward the field. The wind violently whistled past his ears, his white hair whipping like a war banner. His feline eyes were locked exclusively on that tiny ball of purple paper falling in slow motion.
As he fell, Kevin clenched his right hand into a fist. His first instinct was to call upon his old friend: the power of the Gura Gura no mi. He could summon a small, concentrated vibration to his fingertips and blow the paper to pieces the second he touched it.
But then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught the state of the stadium. The obliterated bleachers, the massive crater in the center, the twisted metal foundations. His base power, amplified by the stamina and strength the Miraculous gave him, was too wild, too unstable.
If he hit the ground with seismic energy, even holding back, he ran the risk of collapsing half the stadium and burying them all under tons of concrete and steel. Silas had said it: he was a ticking time bomb.
I need controlled destruction, Kevin thought. I need what the kwami offered.
Still in mid-air, just a few feet from the ground, Kevin extended his right hand, claws out, and called upon the dark magic residing in his ring.
"Cataclysm!" he roared.
The black ring let out a blinding flash. A sphere of crackling, pitch-black energy, dense as the void itself, swirled around his right hand. It felt different from the quakes. The Gura Gura no mi was brute force, pressure, violent expansion. This… this was instant rot. It was the absolute end of matter, contained in the palm of his hand.
He hit the turf with a fluid roll to cushion the fall, sliding across the synthetic grass until he stopped right in front of the crumpled paper. Without hesitating, he slammed the palm of his dark-energy-infused hand onto the object.
There was no explosion. No tremor.
Just a dry sound, like the crunch of dead leaves being stomped on.
The instant his claws touched the paper, the darkness consumed it. The object oxidized and disintegrated in less than a second, turning into a fine gray ash that was immediately swept away by the wind.
Behind him, Stoneheart's gigantic body paralyzed. A brilliant violet light began to pour out from inside his rocky fissures, illuminating the fabric still covering his head.
With a sound like shattering glass, the rock monster fell apart. The stone dissolved into thousands of harmless purple particles that floated up into the sky like fireflies. In the spot where the destructive titan had stood, a large student in a black shirt and open vest dropped heavily to the ground, rubbing his head in confusion.
Kevin, still crouching on the ground, stared at his right hand. The dark energy had completely dissipated. He clenched and unclenched his fist a couple of times.
"That trick..." he muttered to himself, a mix of respect and unease in his voice. "It disintegrates matter on a molecular level, but doesn't generate a shockwave. It's lethal, fast, clean. The exact opposite of the earthquakes. This is... insanely useful."
The sound of rapid footsteps pulled him from his thoughts. The heroine in the red suit landed nearby, immediately rushing over to the dazed student sitting in the crater.
"Are you okay?! Does anything hurt?" she asked, with a genuine, maternal concern that Kevin found nauseatingly out of place.
"I... what happened?" the boy named Ivan stammered, looking around with eyes wide in terror. "Where am I? Why is the stadium destroyed? I was in the principal's office and then... then I got really mad and..."
Kevin stood up, dusting off his dark suit. He didn't approach the civilian. He stayed a few yards back, casually leaning on his extended staff, watching the scene with the coldness of a bored spectator.
"Take it easy, big guy," Kevin interrupted, his voice rough and drawling. "You had a magical temper tantrum, trashed half a stadium, and almost squashed me a couple of times. But we cured your little fit. You're welcome, by the way."
Ivan looked at him, intimidated by the figure of the white-haired hero with the yellow eyes and hostile attitude.
The girl in red spun toward Kevin, a deep scowl on her face.
"Don't be so cruel to him! He was being manipulated by that villain, it wasn't his fault!" she scolded him, standing up and crossing her arms. "A superhero is supposed to be understanding and support citizens after a trauma."
Kevin let out a dry, utterly humorless laugh.
"Listen, Wonder Woman. I agreed to stop the rock monster so it would stop destroying the city I live in, and I did. My job was to keep that meathead from killing us, not give the kid psychological therapy afterward. I'm sure the French government has hotlines or shrinks for that. I'm not a social worker."
The girl opened her mouth to shoot back, visibly outraged by her partner's total lack of empathy, but a detail caught her eye. Her blue eyes darted to the gray ash left on the ground where Kevin had used his Cataclysm.
From the remains of the disintegrated paper, a butterfly emerged, fluttering unsteadily. Its wings were pitch black with deep, dark purple edges, radiating an ominous, sinister energy. The creature flapped a couple of times as if disoriented, and then slowly began to float up toward the open sky.
Both heroes fell silent, watching the little butterfly drift peacefully away toward the Parisian horizon.
"Is that... normal?" the girl asked, tilting her head, feeling like something wasn't quite adding up.
Kevin shrugged, losing interest almost immediately.
"The floating cat that gave me this ring mentioned something about a guy who controlled dark butterflies or whatever," Kevin replied, scratching the back of his neck. "I'm guessing that was the one possessing this kid. I already destroyed the object it was hiding in; the monster is gone. Job done. Let the butterfly go pollinate flowers or whatever goth butterflies do. I don't care."
The heroine nodded, though she didn't look entirely convinced. "My kwami, Tikki, said something about purifying the evil... but she didn't explain exactly how. I guess if the kid is back to normal, we won."
At that exact moment, an electronic sound shattered the calm.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The sound was coming from the black ring on Kevin's finger. One of the small, neon-green paw prints inlaid in the metal began to blink intermittently. Seconds later, the girl's earrings emitted the same warning chime.
"You've got five minutes before you detransform. That's what the creature told me," Kevin pointed out, stowing his staff on his utility belt. "And considering I have absolutely zero intention of you finding out my identity, or of finding out yours, this is where we part ways."
"Wait!" she called out, taking a step forward. "We didn't even talk about how we're going to contact each other the next time..."
"There's no guaranteed next time," Kevin cut her off, his voice turning icy and sharp again. "You came up with a good plan today, I'll give you that. But we're not a team, we're not friends, and I'm not going to be at your beck and call every time a civilian gets pissed off that someone stole their lunch and turns into a monster. I joined this circus for my own reasons. Survive your way; I'll survive mine."
Without waiting for the girl's indignation or saying goodbye to a terrified Ivan, Kevin vaulted his staff against the broken asphalt. With a powerful push, he launched himself into the sky, clearing the stadium's outer wall and vanishing across the Parisian rooftops, leaving the heroine completely alone with a civilian and a pile of unanswered questions.
The wind was still exhilarating, but sheer urgency now dictated his every move. Kevin leaped from roof to roof, using his staff to vault over the wider streets, moving with the agility of a silver ghost. He needed to get as far away from the stadium as possible and closer to his own neighborhood before the clock ran out.
He landed soundlessly in a narrow, pitch-black alleyway about five blocks from his dad's old garage. He was surrounded by overflowing trash cans and soot-stained brick walls. A perfectly miserable place to hide.
Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeep.
The ring gave its final warning. The dark magic retracted. An emerald green light engulfed Kevin entirely, and with a sound like a muffled gasp, the black leather suit, the claws, the white hair, and the superhuman vitality all vanished.
Plagg, the tiny black kwami, shot out of the ring and dropped right into Kevin's hands, looking exhausted.
"Cheese! I need Camembert right now or I swear I'm going to eat your shoes!" the little creature groaned, slumping lifelessly.
But Kevin didn't answer.
In the exact millisecond the detransformation completed, reality hit Kevin's body like a runaway freight train.
The magical buffer that had kept his body functioning past its limits evaporated in an instant. The pain, which had been dammed up and ignored for the last half hour, flooded his central nervous system with a vengeful fury.
"Gggghh...!" An agonizing groan escaped his lips.
His knees buckled instantly. He collapsed heavily onto the grimy asphalt of the alley, dropping Plagg carelessly. His trembling hands immediately flew to his left shoulder.
The wound from Silas's blood spear, which had been cleaned and bandaged by Master Fu, had torn open again from the violent movements and acrobatic jumps. The adrenaline had burned off, giving way to a searing, unbearable burning sensation. He felt the hot dampness; thick, dark blood was already soaking through the bandage again and staining the sleeve of his casual jacket.
But the shoulder wasn't the worst part.
"Aaaaahhh!" Kevin squeezed his eyes shut so hard he saw stars. He curled in on himself in a fetal position on the filthy pavement, bringing his right hand to his temples.
The migraine was back. And it wasn't the simple headache he'd woken up with that morning. It was a punishment. It felt like a red-hot drill bit was trying to bore into the base of his skull, spinning relentlessly. Overusing his Devil Fruit, combined with the magical strain of the suit and the lack of his meds, was taking its toll.
His breathing was erratic, ragged. Every beat of his heart sent a shockwave of pain through his brain. His vision blurred, swimming in a sea of muted colors and dark shadows. He felt incredibly dizzy, violent nausea churning his stomach.
"Hey... kid. You okay?" Plagg's tiny voice sounded far away, no longer demanding food, but genuinely concerned. The little cat floated close to Kevin's pale, sweaty face. "You look terrible. And you smell like blood."
"Shut up..." Kevin managed to hiss through his teeth, clenching his jaw so hard he feared he'd crack a tooth. "I just... need a minute."
He lay there in the alley for what felt like hours, though it was really only a couple of minutes, fighting desperately to control his own breathing and stay conscious. If he passed out here, someone would find him. The cops, or worse, the assassin syndicate Silas belonged to. He couldn't afford to show weakness. Not on the streets.
Slowly, using an iron will forged from pure stubbornness, Kevin braced his uninjured right hand against the brick wall. He pushed with everything he had, dragging his feet until he managed to stand. The world was spinning around him, and he had to swallow hard to keep from puking.
He dug a shaking hand into his pants pocket and pulled out the small box of painkillers and anti-inflammatories he'd managed to buy at the pharmacy before Silas attacked. Clumsily, he tore the foil blister pack with his teeth, popped three pills out at once, and dry-swallowed them, scratching up his throat in the process.
"Listen to me closely, fleabag," Kevin growled, glaring at Plagg with his brown eyes, bloodshot and squinting from the pain. "You are going to get into the inside pocket of my jacket. You are not going to talk, you are not going to ask for food, you are not going to breathe too loud. I'm walking back to my house, and if my dad sees me like this, I'm going to tell him I got jumped by some gangbangers in an alley and they slashed me with a switchblade. You do not exist. The cat superhero does not exist. Understood?"
Plagg, thoroughly intimidated by the murderous glare of the injured teenager, nodded quickly and flew obediently into the inside jacket pocket, hiding completely out of sight.
Kevin adjusted his clothes as best he could. He popped the collar of his jacket to try and hide the deathly pallor of his face and pinned his left arm tightly to his torso, concealing the bleeding wound under the dark fabric.
He stumbled slightly as he walked out of the alley, blending in with the few pedestrians starting to peek back out onto the Parisian streets, still spooked by the tremors from the stadium attack.
Every step he took was torture. His boots felt like they were cast in lead, and the hammering in his head threatened to drop him on any given street corner.
Twenty agonizing minutes later, the dusty old auto shop finally appeared in his line of sight. The garage door was half-open, exactly how he'd left it.
Kevin stopped before walking in. He pressed his forehead against the cold brick of the facade for a moment, taking a deep breath, forcing his facial muscles to relax, trying to wipe away the grimace of pure pain tattooed on his features. He had to fool Arthur. His dad was incredibly observant, and if he suspected Kevin had used his powers—or worse, that an assassin with supernatural abilities had found him—everything would go to hell. He'd make him pack up and they'd run away again, to another city, another crappy country, to another life hiding like rats.
Kevin straightened his back, completely ignoring the screaming agony in his shoulder, and crossed the threshold.
The inside of the garage was quiet. The air still smelled of old dust, but Arthur's tools were meticulously organized on the large workbench in the center. However, there was no sign of the blond man.
"Dad?" Kevin called out, his voice sounding raspier and weaker than he would have liked.
Silence.
He walked slowly toward the small door that connected the garage to the main house. Sitting on a cardboard box near the entrance was a hastily scribbled note. Kevin picked it up with his good hand.
Went to sort out some paperwork for your registration with the principal at the new school. Don't wait up for lunch. If you didn't buy your pills, I don't want to hear you complaining when I get back. -Arthur.
Kevin dropped the note, letting it fall to the floor like a dead leaf. All the pent-up tension, the lie he'd been constructing in his head to fool his father, crumbled. A monumental sigh of relief, heavy with pain, emptied from his lungs.
He was alone.
He didn't have to pretend anymore. His knees finally gave out and he collapsed onto his backside on the hard concrete of the garage. His breathing turned rapid and shallow. Clumsily and desperately, he ripped off the bloodstained jacket, exposing Master Fu's makeshift bandage, which was now soaked a bright, fresh red.
Plagg slipped out of the discarded jacket's pocket, floating near the boy. He watched in silence as Kevin gritted his teeth, grabbed a toolbox, and started rummaging for clean bandages, rubbing alcohol, and scissors, mentally preparing himself for the agonizing process of patching up his own body, totally alone in the dim light of the old garage.
His first day of school in Paris never happened. Instead, he almost got murdered, destroyed half a stadium, discovered a secret organization wanted his head on a platter, and now had a magic bug demanding cheese from him.
As the alcohol burned his open wound, drawing out tears of pure pain that he refused to let fall, Kevin Mercer came to a dark conclusion: if the only way to find out who the hell he really was and what that machine had done to him meant tearing apart an entire syndicate of assassins, and if playing the Black Cat gave him the strength to do it... then Paris was about to meet a hero with absolutely no mercy.