One Way or Another

An Amazing Prize, Twenty Designs and A Butterfly

Research was done. Brains were racked. Minds were exhausted.

But there was still no answer.

A fiber from a born traveler. What in the world could that mean?

After a few weeks of hard work, but nothing to show for it, the group met up again.

"This is impossible," Adrien complained, running his fingers through his hair for the twentieth time that day. "We're not getting anywhere with this."

"That's not true," Marinette said. "We've eliminated a few possibilities, so we're slowly narrowing things down."

"It's okay, baby," Emilie added. "We still have time."

He shook his head. "Annabelle's getting more and more tired. I'm sure you're feeling more tired as well, but you're not telling us. Marinette's skin is getting worse..."

"It's barely worse," Marinette countered, even though it was a lie. "Please calm down, Adrien. You're going to make yourself sick if you continue like this."

Not wanting to upset her, Adrien tried to relax. So he sat down and resisted the urge to run his fingers through his hair again.

"So we eliminated eight different things," Gabriel said in summation. "But that still leaves us with countless others. We're going to need more help."

Emilie faced him. "Where are we supposed to get more help? All five of us are already working on it. We can't exactly start asking random people what they think."

A pause. "And why can't we?"

"You know why," she replied in exasperation. "No one can know that Ladybug is injured."

Marinette gasped and looked over at Gabriel. "But what if they didn't know the real reason?" she said, catching on to what he was suggesting.

************************************

"Remember, lots of smiles, and keep things upbeat," Nathalie instructed as she held up Ladybug's yo-yo to record them.

Chat Noir nodded.

"Keep the camera up here on our faces," Ladybug said. "Make sure you can't see the damage to the suit."

"It looks worse," Chat Noir murmured over to her quietly.

"It's fine," Ladybug insisted. "Now come on Kitty, give your Lady a big smile."

And he couldn't help but do as she requested.

"Alright, we'll start in three... two... one," Nathalie said before pressing the 'record' button.

Two bright smiles from the superhero duo as Ladybug started speaking to the camera. "Hello to all the fine citizens of Paris out there. Ladybug and Chat Noir here, wanting to extend out a warm 'thank you' to everyone who has supported us through the years. We wouldn't be who we are without you."

A brief pause before she continued. "Now the one thing that we hear over and over from people is how much they want to help protect Paris too. Unfortunately, I only have so many Miraculouses that I can give out," she said with a laugh. "But everyone can still be a hero in their own way."

"We're going to need everyone's help," Chat Noir said, jumping in. "As you all know, we've used our power-ups in the past to help us with certain situations. But we seem to have hit a wall trying to decipher our latest formula to create a new power. So we decided, why not have all of Paris help us out? So in that spirit, we're offering a challenge to all Parisians to help us figure out the formula. It's composed of three ingredients, all explained in riddles, and the first person to figure out all three will win an amazing prize."