**"Big Sister Marinette,"** Manon looked up, her large brown eyes clouded with confusion. "Don't you have Prince Brother's contact information? Can't you just call him?"
The question landed like an arrow finding its mark. How could she *not* have Jaden's contact information? She knew his number and every social media handle by heart, had them memorized the way other people memorized prayers — and recited them just as desperately, scrolling through his profiles a dozen times each night before she could convince herself to sleep.
"Um — Manon, listen." Marinette plastered on her most convincing smile, heat crawling up her cheeks. "This is actually a *secret mission*. A surprise ambush! We track him down, then — *bam* — we appear out of nowhere and completely shock him. If we call ahead, the whole surprise is ruined. You don't want to ruin it, do you?"
For a six-year-old, however, a hypothetical surprise was no competition for an immediate Prince Brother.
"I don't care about a surprise! I want to see Prince Brother *right now!*"
Manon was done. The long walk, the failed expectations, the heat — all of it had worn her patience to a fraying thread, and now it snapped. She dropped onto the nearest bench, crossed her arms, turned her head sharply away, and planted herself there with the immovable conviction only small children and extremely stubborn cats can truly achieve.
Marinette studied her and accepted the obvious: logic was useless against a child mid-tantrum. It was like reasoning with a thunderstorm.
"Okay, okay." She raised her hands in surrender. "How about this — there's a convenience store just over there. We get some cold water, take a breath, and then we'll have the energy to keep searching. Deal?"
"I don't *want* water." Manon's voice cracked toward a sob. "I'm tired *and* thirsty and I can't move *one more step.*"
Marinette exhaled slowly. She glanced at the convenience store, then back at Manon's stubbornly averted face, and made a decision.
"Then stay right here," she said gently. "I'll be back in two minutes. Don't move."
Before she left, she quietly unclasped her pink messenger bag and leaned close, whispering inside it. "Tikki — can you slip out and keep an eye on her? Just make sure she doesn't wander off."
"Leave it to me!" Tikki poked her tiny head out and gave the most authoritative nod her small frame could manage.
Marinette straightened up and jogged toward the store.
Tikki drifted silently from the bag and tucked herself into the bushes behind the bench — a tiny, vigilant guardian wrapped in red — and settled in to watch.
Manon heard Marinette's footsteps fade and stared at the empty stretch of pavement ahead of her. Somehow, that retreating back had felt *deliberate*. Pointed. As if Marinette had been looking for an excuse to leave her behind all along.
The grievance rose quickly, the way children's emotions always do — not gradually but all at once, like a wave that's already cresting by the time you notice it.
*Why couldn't she see Prince Brother?*
*It was Marinette's fault. All of it. She was too slow, always making excuses, always brushing her off. If it weren't for her, everything would be different. Everything would be* perfect.
Manon reached into her pocket and pulled out her two most beloved plush dolls: a princess in a pink dress with golden curls, and a prince in a crisp little suit. She positioned them face-to-face in her palms and began to speak, her voice dropping into the hushed register children use when they are being very serious about make-believe.
"Oh, my dear Prince," she whispered in a high, delicate voice, tilting the princess forward. "You've finally come. I was trapped here by the evil witch Marinette. I've been so lonely without you."
"Fear not, my beautiful Princess." She lowered her voice to something gruff and noble. "The witch has been defeated. I have come to take you home — to our castle, where nothing will ever keep us apart again."
She brought the dolls together, nose-to-nose, murmuring their lines back and forth with the complete, unselfconscious sincerity of a child lost in her own story.
In the bushes, Tikki watched with a small, fond smile. A little venting, a little fantasy — it was healthy, really. Perfectly normal. Nothing to worry about.
The minutes passed.
Marinette still didn't return.
Gradually, Manon's voice slowed. Then stopped. She sat looking at the two dolls in her hands, and the animation drained from her face, leaving something quieter and stranger behind.
The prince doll stared back at her with its painted button eyes.
It didn't move unless she moved it. It didn't go anywhere. It stayed exactly where she put it, always patient, always present, always *hers*.
A thought surfaced from somewhere deep and dark and very quiet.
*Why couldn't Jaden be like that?*
*Why did everything have to be so uncertain — so impossible to reach, so dependent on other people who didn't care, who kept disappointing her?*
*If he were just* here — *if she could just keep him here, the way she kept the doll —*
The thought took root. And with it came a want so pure and so total that it blazed through her like a lit fuse — the desperate, overwhelming need to *control*, to *arrange*, to *never be left waiting again*.
Two beings felt it at once.
In the Dark World's lair, Hawk Moth went still.
He closed his eyes. A slow, reverent smile spread across his face.
"Ah," he breathed. "*There* it is." He tilted his head back as though savoring something. "What is more potent than a child's longing? Adults hesitate. Adults doubt themselves. But a child — a child simply *wants*, completely, without apology or compromise. The purity of it is extraordinary."
He didn't hesitate. He lifted a white butterfly from where it rested on his cane, cradling it for just a moment.
"Go," he murmured. "Cross the rift. Find her. And give her everything she's reaching for."
Dark energy flooded through the butterfly, turning it an immediate, deep purple-black. It swept its wings once — and vanished into a glowing spatial rift at the center of the lair.
In the Main World's lair, Hawk Moth felt the same pulse of emotion a half-second later.
He recognized it immediately. *Manon.* The child from the park.
Then his expression darkened.
He felt it — the other Akuma, already moving, already crossing the space-time barrier, racing toward the girl.
"Again." His jaw tightened. "He just can't help himself."
He released his own Akuma without another moment's delay — and behind it, a small red shape launched itself into the air and followed. Both creatures streaked through the city toward the bench where Manon sat waiting.
Manon was still staring at her dolls when the first dark speck appeared at the edge of her vision.
It grew closer. A purple-black butterfly, moving in lazy, hypnotic arcs — as if it already knew she wouldn't run. It landed on the princess doll in her palm and sank into it like ink into cloth, silently and completely.
Manon blinked.
Before she could form a single coherent thought, a second butterfly arrived. It, too, settled onto the doll. It, too, disappeared.
The air around her seemed to hold its breath.
Then a voice entered her mind — smooth, low, and impossibly certain.
*"Hello, Puppet Master. I am Hawk Moth. I offer you a gift: the power to make anyone your doll. To place your strings in them and never again worry that they'll leave, or stray, or choose someone else over you."*
Manon's breath caught. "Anyone? Even — even Prince Brother?"
*"Especially him."* The voice was silk over iron. *"Get his doll. Attach your strings. And he will stay at your side forever — loving you, listening to you, belonging to* you*. All I ask in return is—"*
"I know, I know!" she interrupted, bouncing slightly in her seat. "Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous! Done! I promise!"
A satisfied pause. *"Clever girl."*
The dark power began to swell around her, and Manon felt herself beginning to rise — her feet lifting from the pavement, the world tilting as the transformation took hold—
A second voice cut through the mental link like a blade through silk.
*"Puppet Master."*
It was different. Steadier. The voice of the Main World's Hawk Moth, and there was no warmth in it at all.
*"Before you get too excited — tell me. Do you have a doll of your Prince Brother? Not a generic prince. A doll made in his specific image, or tied to him specifically. Without a proper medium, your power has no anchor. You'd be able to manipulate strangers, yes. But him? The one you actually want?"*
The swelling energy faltered.
Manon looked down at the prince doll in her hand. The little felt figure in its stitched suit. It looked nothing like Jaden. It wasn't *him*.
"I — I don't," she admitted, her voice going small. "Then what do I—"
*"I have something better."* The second Hawk Moth's voice filled the silence before panic could. *"Forget the dolls. I'll give you strings — living strings of pure energy. No medium required. Touch a target with even a thread, and they're yours. No limitations. No conditions. Perfect control."*
For one suspended moment, Manon sat perfectly still.
Then she let out a sound that was half gasp, half laugh, and pure delight.
"*Yes!* Thank you, Mr. Hawk Moth — both of you!"
The energy erupted.
It poured out of her like a dam breaking — purple-black and crackling, swallowing her whole. The bench, the street, the ordinary afternoon — all of it disappeared into the surge.
In the bushes, Tikki had been frozen since the first butterfly landed.
*Two.* There had been *two* Akumas.
She snapped back to herself and shot out of the leaves like a spark from a fire, streaking through the air as fast as her small wings could carry her.
She nearly collided with Marinette around the corner — who was walking back at a perfectly leisurely pace, a water bottle tucked under each arm.
"Marinette!" Tikki grabbed her shoulder with both tiny hands. "It's Manon — she's been Akumatized! *Two* Akumas, Marinette — I saw two go into her doll at the same time!"
The water bottles hit the pavement.
Marinette was already running.
She rounded the corner and skidded to a stop.
The bench was empty.
Where Manon had sat, something else now hovered above the ground: a girl in a black and cyan bodysuit with a layered tutu of dark gauze that shifted like smoke. A mask covered most of her face, traced around the eyes in glowing pink lines. Her hands were still, her fingers slightly extended — and from each fingertip, nearly invisible threads of pure energy trailed outward into the air, drifting like spider silk in a breeze.
The Puppet Master.
Marinette pressed herself against the nearest wall, heart hammering. She pulled out her phone, fired off an emergency message to Cat Noir, then snapped it shut and met Tikki's eyes.
There was no hesitation left in her face.
"Tikki — spots on."
Deep inside Manon's fractured mental space — a void of flickering dark energy and tangled, luminous threads — two figures faced each other across an empty distance.
Both in black. Both masked in silver. Identical in silhouette, different in bearing.
The silence between them was short.
"Why are you using my name?" the Main World's Hawk Moth asked. His voice was even. Clinical, almost — as though the question were merely procedural.
"Why am I—" The Dark World's Hawk Moth let out a short, disbelieving sound. "I should be asking *you* what you've been doing! Paris has been completely quiet for days. No operations. No Akumas. Nothing. Have you forgotten Emilie? Have you forgotten what we're doing this for?"
"I haven't forgotten anything." The Main World's Hawk Moth looked away, his jaw set. He had no intention of explaining Jaden. "I was choosing my moment. Patience produces better results than impulse."
"Patience," the other repeated flatly.
"Yes." He turned back, and something shifted in his posture — a loosening, a barely restrained excitement breaking through the controlled surface. "And look what patience has given us."
He spread his arms wide.
The energy of the space around them was unlike anything either had produced alone — enormous, layered, resonant with a complexity that only two converging sources could create.
"*This* is what we made together," the Main World's Hawk Moth said, and his voice had gone low and reverent. "She is extraordinary. More powerful than anything either of us could have built separately. Whatever that child wants — she will *take* it. And in taking it, she brings both of us closer to what we need."
The Dark World's Hawk Moth was quiet for a moment.
Then the resistance went out of him — because the energy was undeniable, and the triumph of it was too intoxicating to argue against.
"Absolute victory," he said.
"Absolute victory," the other agreed.
Their laughter rose together through the dark — two voices, one ambition, echoing through the space they now shared.