Show Stoppers

Progress?

Chapter 7: Progress?

"And he's still there?" Sabrina was beside herself with excitement. She was practically skipping on their way to school.

"Probably." Chloe infused her voice with as much disinterest as possible to try and calm her friend down,"I'm not his keeper, not normally anyway." Chloe rolled her eyes and gave Sabrina a smile. It was a clear morning and she was feeling the most rested she had in as long as she could remember.

"So what else happened?" Sabrina was wearing a jean and blazer combo they'd picked out the other day. It added three years to her, her bouncing took off six.

"Gah. NOTHING Sabrina." Chloe tickled Sabrina's side,"He helped me re-sort all the things Jean had moved, and I went to bed. Now tell me about your night."

Sabrina visibly ordered her thoughts,"Marinette did come back near the end of the film. It looked like they were having fun. He dropped her off afterwards and went back to the cool boat he lives on. I didn't really get to talk to him."

Chloe hmmed, "Cutting out of a movie is a very Marinette thing. Try to get a word in at school if you can run into him."

Sabrina brushed at her bangs nervously, she was working up to something and Chloe let her,"I can try. Is this right Chloe?"

"Right?"

"Like, they're going out. Should we really be messing with that?"

Chloe sighed,"Sabrina, Sabrina." She put a hand on Sabrina's shoulder,"People do dumb things all the time, especially Du-Pain-Chang. Adrien is PERFECT. If she settles for some other boy she'll only make herself miserable, and then he'll be miserable. We absolutely HAVE to intervene, for her own good, for the boy's good, and for Adrien's good." Chloe gave Sabrina an encouraging smile,"Right?"

It was easy to lead Sabrina to the right choices. Chloe just let the pieces fall into place, until Sabrina finally brightened,"Right." She squeezed the books she was carrying,"We're helping."

"Exactly." Chloe spread her arms wide and did a slow pirouette,"We're heroes!"

That got a giggle and so Chloe prompted,"This evening we'll spend some time going over the routine, and maybe poking around the internet for this." she tapped the Necklace. It had been blissfully docile this morning.

"Oh! I did get something last night." Sabrina shifted her burden and Chloe actually deigned to take a few of the books from her arms. Sabrina pulled out her phone and Chloe leaned in,"I got a video of the dock explosion. I also dug around some university archives online. There's a few descriptions of something like the necklace but not much." Sabrina tapped quickly and efficiently through her phone, paging through a long organized list of sources. Chloe glanced up at Sabrina's face. Focused Sabrina was an entirely different person in poise and voice. Chloe resolved to figure out how to get more of this out of her.

"You did all this last night?" Chloe looked back down, trying to follow the documents flashing across the screen.

Sabrina shifted back into embarrassment so quickly Chloe nearly got whiplash. She hid her phone and mumbled,"Well, I had some time."

Chloe tried to pry her back out,"So what did you discover?" They were nearing school.

It half-worked. Sabrina held her phone out again, and her voice switched over to a more confident tone, but she was still slouched,"There's a lot of similar images, but none connected to a necklace. Most of them seem to be Slavic, some Celtic. There's lots of names too. Old English, Slavic, and Latin." She scrolled,"See?"

Chloe squinted at the screen," Cz- Cher- How are you even supposed to say that? It doesn't sound like a Miraculous name."

Sabrina turned the phone back to herself and tapped through a few screens. She cleared her throat,"Tschernaboch." The ending was almost a cough instead of a word.