Miraculous Rewrite- The Baying Wolf
Well, here we are folks, last episode until the finale.
When we start on the episode it’s the dead of night, the moon is full and the stars are bright.
On the roof of an undisclosed building the silhouette of a woman sits on the rooftop. She sits in the darkness, the pale moonlight doing nothing to show us her identity from this distance, but she sits there calmly. She takes a breath and turns to face the camera, and just as we see that it is in fact Monarcha, the image is put through a filter, a camera of sorts, and about a street block away we can see Ladybug hiding in the shadows, her yoyo camera up and doing the spying for her. What we see made Monarcha turn is the appearance of Wu Lian.
Nearby, but not spying himself, is Lionheart. He huffs and folds his arms, clearly he thinks this whole thing is stupid.
“Can you even hear them from here?”
“Not even a bit. And keep your voice down! We don’t know how good Wu Lian’s wolf hearing really is!”
“You’re so paranoid…”
“You’re the one who’s been telling us not to underestimate these people now that we really have shown them we can be a threat.”
“Yeah, but you’re being a child about this.” Sun Min rolls his eyes and closes the distance between himself and Ladybug, slowly removing the yoyo from her grip. “You’re so focused on ensuring they don’t catch you that the idea of actually gathering any information is falling to the wayside.” He pulls out a length of chord from the yoyo and spins it until it’s a lesser version of her yoyo shield. “This thing is recording, right?”
“...yeah?”
Sun Min tosses it. The Yoyo soars over the heads of their targets and lodges itself in a chimney, the extra slack Sun Min had pulled from it making the chord loose and the chord merely vanishes in the darkness of the surroundings. “There.”
Ladybug pales, but the two don’t seem to notice the yoyo’s appearance as they continue to talk. This goes on for a time but as the two stand and move to leave there’s visible tension between the two of them. Wu Lian, though, sighs and looks a bit disappointed as she turns to leave. Monarcha on the other hand stands there for a bit longer, takes a breath and leaves. Ladybug gives the Yoyo a tug and it unravels from the chimney, zipping back to her hand. She and Lionheart nod at each other and when Ladybug opens up her yoyo again it’s to a map, she presses a button and fiddles with the screen.
“Okay. Marked down. Let’s see what prize we got.” she fusses a little more, and finally presses a button, a bit of static filling the speakers as the recording presses to life.
“-I simply feel as though you might be making a hasty decision, most new members are allowed a time to examine all three fields and choose what they feel fits them best. Just picking the warrior class right out the gate might seem appealing, but-”
“I’ve known Master Wan longer than the rest of you. You could argue he’s been training me already since before the Order came to Paris.”
“But think about it young Nathalie, do we really need another warrior?”
“Sun Min betrayed us, we’re lacking a warrior right now. It’s about time that role got filled.”
“By you?”
“Who else? I don’t know if you noticed this Master Lian, but I am full of rage and I’m not interested in being stuffed into a musty library for the rest of my life listening to Master Kai give lecture after lecture.”
“And healing?”
“....As much respect as I have for you Master Lian, I don’t think it’s for me. Maybe a few years ago it would have been a closer race but-” there’s a ruffling noise “-different now I’m going to be a warrior. And I’m going to take back what was stolen from this order.”
There’s a sigh “Well, I hope you’re sure about that, because there’s no jumping when you’re already in training. If you tell them you plan on becoming a warrior, a warrior you will be. And if you change your mind later, then you’ll be keeping that to yourself.”
It’s then it reaches the end of the recording. Ladybug looks troubled, and a bit pale, we don’t see Lionheart’s face.
“Well, that didn’t tell much about where they’re located now, but it did confirm what we were already suspecting. Miss Sancour is going into Old Order training.” Ladybug looks up and she notices Sun Min’s expression. “Lionheart are- are you okay?”
“I don’t care.” He responds easily, stiffly, fakely. “You know, it was only a matter of time, right? They had someone at their disposal ready to jump the second they asked it of her, of course she’d pick the path that I left behind.” he huffs. “Doesn’t matter though, right? I’m on the Hero side now. Why should I care if they replaced me or not?” He takes a breath. “Fuck I miss Yun Eun-Ji.”
Marinette puts a hand on his arm as she stands. “You lived so long one particular way, it must feel weird for everything to be flipped on its head like that.” Sun Min laughs.
“You know anything about living your whole life one way? You’re a literal toddler.”
“Can you just take kindness for what it is?”
Sun Min grins at her and plops a hand on her head. “Of course not. Let’s get out of here before someone spies us spying.”
Cue intro
When we open back up it’s to a small group of the heroes, Sabrina staring intently downward at something. Max grumbling and looking particularly crabby. Amber looks confused. Alix growls and shakes something in her hands. Juleka is looking over something on a paper.
Alix dumps her hands and a small combination of dice spill out “AHA! Success by 3!”
“Did you add in your poison stat?” Sabrina looks up from her DM Board and Alix’s expression froze over.
“.....okay Lady Bunnaria takes 4 damage because the poison stat means failure by 1.” Alix groans and flops backwards. “I’m at like negative 2 HP Sabrina you can’t do this to me!”
“Roll to keep conscious.”
“No, I'd rather just die.”
“....fair enough, anybody got a diamond or is Alix just out of the campaign for a while?”
“Alix can have one of my diamonds.” Amber responds. “I’m rolling in them.”
“Don’t I’m dead, I'm out. I only was playing this so Max had the bodies necessary so he wouldn’t have to GM for once. I don’t even like Hallways and Horrors.”
“But aren’t you glad you at least gave it a try?” Max leans in and Alix glares at him from the corner of her eye.
“No. I regret everything.”
Max chuckles as Alix turns over and kicks her little figurine over with her. “I’m out. Fuck off. I’m gonna go kick Kim’s ass in the sparring ring.” She gets up but Kim has literally JUST started putting away his practice staff. He looks up and his eyes go wide. “Uh-oh-” Alix pounces on him.
The main doors open and Chloe walks in with a small bag on her hip, Shoor zips over to the kitchenette and phazes right through the fridge to get at whatever he’s looking for as Chloe approaches her work area. She glares at everyone present, and reaches into her bag.
“None of you say a word.” She pulls out a pair of glasses.
“HEY BOURGEOIS!” Alix jeers “How’d that Optometrist appointment go?”
Chloe picks up the bag and throws it at Alix. “SHUT UP KUBDEL!”
Alix laughs uproariously as Chloe, face bright red, hunkers down and starts pulling out her translation notes for the tablet. “‘Chloe you’ve got the Kwami of Communication’ ‘Chloe this will be sooooo much easier for you than the rest of us’ ‘Chloe you won’t ruin your eyes and get forced to have to consider glasses designs in all of your outfits from here on out’ I should be making you all chip in for these frames.”
“How soon until the frames you ordered get shipped?” Sabrina quips easily back, before blinking and ducking under the GM stand.
Chloe blinks as well, before rolling her eyes dramatically. “A week.”
“Are they purple and white or yellow and black?” Amber smirks at Chloe who glares at her.
“Just black actually, multicolored frames are more difficult to work with, but black accessories rarely don’t work with an outfit.”
The banter is however cut off by the door sliding open again, this time with Marinette striding in, Sun Min following behind her. “Alright, who wants to learn to make macarons? Our Personal New Order Older Brother needs a little pick me up.”
Sun Min rolls his eyes even as Alix lowkey sprints over to the lot of them. “Great! Something that’s not fucking HaH! I’m in!”
“If it means Alix won’t be trying to kick my ass-” Kim walks up “I’ll pretend I don’t know how to make macarons”
“I’ve got better things to do.” Chloe calls out from her seat. “Besides, you’re doing it at your bakery right? I refuse to be seen anywhere in public with these ‘temporaries’ on my face.”
“I’ll sit out too.” Sabrina adds in “We just started the dungeon and Alix already died of poison.”
“And I'd do it again!” Alix throws a fist into the air before looking back at Marinette “Macarons! Let’s all go make some macarons! I’m pretty sure Rose and Adrien are about to finish up their rounds. I'll text them and they can meet us there.”
We have the general ‘arriving at the bakery’ stuff that begins. Marinette flipping on the lights even though they’re long past closed, the small gaggle of children (now with the addition of Rose, a playful cut showing Kagami dragging Adrien off in a different direction, him making desperate grabby hands toward the bakery doors) quickly making themselves at home, some marvelling at the bare racks without the freshly made pastries lining them, some kicking back and just chilling behind the counter (Kim in particular puts on an apron and starts jokingly acting like he works here) while Marinette starts getting things ready in the back. Sun Min huffs and Alix looks up from where she was messing with the bread paddle. “So- Why’s Marinette taking pity on you?”
Sun Min blinks at her and Alix raises a brow. “She doesn’t exactly invite people into her family’s bakery after hours for macaron recipes unless she’s looking at someone and saying ‘well they’re already having a time of it I should help if I can.”
Sun Min scowls and looks off to the side. “None of your business, Rabbit. Maybe if you learned something more about Burrow beyond it’s dangerous potential you could figure it out for yourself.”
“What was that?”
“You heard me. If you think the only way Burrow can be accessed is by those huge timeline jumps you don’t deserve to be able to use it.”
“You wanna say that to my face?”
“I just did.”
“Okay can you guys not kill each other for long enough to get things in order?” Marinette pops her head in, and Rose chirps excitedly as she pulls out a few more aprons for everyone else, and one of them is a very cute pink apron, a little too small for Marinette herself, but perfect size for Rose.
“Oh how cute! Did you make this one and then grow out of it?” Rose scurries up and takes the offered garment.
“Got it in one Rose.” Rose happily ties it off and bounces in place
“Let’s get started before Alix decides to tear someone’s head off.” Kim agrees as he walks in.
Inside we see a surprisingly chill montage of Marinette teaching the group of kids how to put together the cookies. Every so often Kwamis chiming in with their own opinions, Tikki requesting more sugar, Xuppu knocking over a bowl and Zhuu cheering him on, Valoor falling into the batter multiple times on ‘accident’ and every so often Alix shoots Hopps a glance that she pointedly ignores and continues munching on the baby carrot she’s been munching on the whole montage.
As the macaron shells are starting to come out, some lumpier than others, Sun Min glances over at Marinette and frowns.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” She blinks up at him and nods with a small smile, gesturing toward the back exit. And Alix takes a moment to look back at the rest of them before grabbing Hopps and marching out toward the front galley.
“Hopps have you been keeping something from me?”
But we don’t linger on Alix’s question because we cut instead to see Marinette and Sun Min standing just barely outside, the overhand between the door and the outer world doing a lot to keep their visuals low.
“What’s wrong Sun Min?”
“You’re doing this for my sake. Why.” He folds his arms. Marinette stiffens.
“Whaaaatt what are you talking about? I wouldn’t do something like that-”
“Xiuying.” Marinette flinches at the ‘older brother’ tone.
“....Look, I know we’re not exactly the most efficient or coolest superhero team out there, we’re all a bunch of teenagers trying our best. And- And you cut out the people you’ve grown up thinking of as your family because you decided we were right. Or at least you wanted to help us. And you lost them over it.” He folds his arms tighter and looks off gloomily to the side, but Valoor reaches out and presses a paw to his cheek.
“None of us can REALLY understand that, not in the same way at least, But we want you to feel welcomed here. We might not know exactly how to, but-” She puts a hand on his forearm. “You’re in OUR family now, Sun Min, and when Yun Eun-Ji gets here you can ease her into it and help her feel welcome, too.” Finally, the tension on Sun Min’s face loosens a bit, he doesn’t smile but he nods.
But just as at the beginning of the episode we see this scene suddenly has a ‘statistics overlay’ around it, and peering through the screen projected between the prongs on her slingshot, Wu Lian huffs from several buildings away.
“Well if Miss Sancour is so determined to fill our missing Warrior’s spot, I don’t see any point in keeping the loose end up and about.”
As Marinette and Sun Min vanish back into the bakery, she lets the screen fade from her slingshot, and when she raises said hand into the air, a butterfly lands on it.
“Shall we begin?”
The dark mist makes her vanish against the gloom of the night for a moment.
Before the howling of wolves fills the air.
The bakery seems to shake and shiver under the assault. And one by one the lights above begin to explode, the shelves rattle and spices fall from their places, some caught others not. There’s a faint growling noise, and with a flash of silver fur, there’s a shout from Sun Min, the sound of crunching. And when the lights flicker on again he’s crouched to the ground, a small pool of blood forming under him, gripping his forearm tightly in pain.
“Sun Min?!” Marinette crouches beside him but he throws out a hand.
“I’m fine! We’ve got company!”
The lights flicker but this time when they go out there’s calls of transformation and Ladybug, Roi Singe, Hogwild, Semmix, and an injured Lionheart, are as ready as they can be.
When the lights flicker back on Hogwild yelps and swipes with her rake at something in the corner, a large bag of flour rips open.
“Hog!” Ladybug chides gently “those are heavy to carry in!”
“Sorry! I thought I saw-” there’s a moving shadow and this time Roi Singe makes a strike for it, the staff hitting the wall harmlessly.
“Who is this? They’re fast!”
Then there’s the howling again, and all the lights shatter in a sea of sparks and shattered glass. Ladybug curses and looks away but as one by one communicators light up as flashlights a brown gloved hand rests on her shoulder.
“I’ve got this.” Lionheart mutters, and then by the time Ladybug swings around with the light he’s gone.
“Sun Min?! Sun Min!”
“What happened, did he ditch us?!” Semmix yells back. “What the hell?! He’s injured!”
“We have to get outside! I’m sure that’s where they’re both going!” Hogwild answers back.
“Yeah and if that is Miss Wolf there’s gonna be some problems!” Roi Singe agrees.
“That’s not her usual attack pattern OR her usual power set. Looks like Tsering Wan isn’t the only Old Order member who’s willing to get akumatized to make us suffer.” Ladybug settles on. “Okay let’s do this. We’ve got a friend to keep from getting killed. Move Out!”
We cut back to Sun Min, still holding onto his arm as it sluggishly bleeds and the creature in the shadows watching him.
“Here I thought all three of you elders could take the rest of us ‘trainees’ without having to rely on backup power sets.” Sun Min huffs, pulling his good hand out and summoning his brass knuckles. “What? Are you afraid of being seen because your ‘Akuma’ outfit looks ridiculous? You know with Tsering Wan Miss Sancour just made him look younger and made his whole outfit black. Looks like she plays favorites, huh?”
“Quiet.” The shadow growls before making another swipe at Sun Min. This time moving for his Miraculous, Sun Min dodges, but the claws dig into his side. He winces, but swings down right where it came from and grabs hold of something, spinning his grip and hearing a doglike yelp as he throws the shadowy beast away.
“There!” But just as he does so the lights die and the growl is heard again as the wolf swipes forward. The flash of jaws white against black as it rushes forward, Sun Min covers his face with his good arm out of reflex-
And the teeth close on the body of a staff.
“Well! This is what the cool kids call a ‘Mama Wolf’ isn’t it?” Roi Singe chirps, but he only is able to hold fast for a moment before the wolf sharply jerks its head sending him flying to the side with a ‘Woah!’
The Wolf steps forward, finally stepping into the dim light of the streetlight, and if you were expecting a physical wolf you’re only half right. Wu Lian in her akuma form seems to share a look with an anthropomorphized wolf of similar stature. Much like Tsering Wan when alumatized she appears to be far younger, in her prime, but the furry face and muzzle would make that hard to identify. She’s still wearing her transformation clothes, and when she sniffs and flickes her eyes back her eyes narrow.
She reels back and howls, and the world itself seems to answer back, lights going off around them, glass shattering, and when she pounces again, eyes and teeth remain lit alone.
But then-
“Adaptation!”
The thunder of approaching footsteps comes closer and before the wolf can pounce on Sun Min once again she’s piledrived from the side by a charging pink rhino. The Wolf is knocked to the side and when Hogwild turns back she leans over slightly. “Sorry! Had to!”
It's then that Ladybug and Semmix come in, Semmix getting right up in the Wolf’s face but Ladybug coming in the second she gets knocked back. With Sun Min injured he’s mostly out of this fight, so Semmix and Roi Singe take up the fighting, it seems for a time that they can all only fight each other to a standstill.
But then, just as Wu Lian takes out her slingshot, Sun Min sees it and gets an idea. Kim summons Uproar, but just as he tries to catch the little glowstick that fell into his hand the silver slug hits his chest and the glowstick vanishes. Wu Lian gets close, her jaws opening wide about to chomp down onto Kim’s face, when a brass knuckled punch comes out and smacks her in the back. The Slingshot slips from her grip as she falls forward.
The Wolf howls, but there’s nothing left to break, the earth shivers and some heroes grab their ears, but all the lights are out and all the glass is broken.
She reaches for her Slingshot again but it’s gone, Sun Min snapping it in half under his boot and Ladybug quickly healing the akuma, and him.
“Looks like we’re starting to outclass you ‘Master’” Lionheart crouches low as the Akumatization undoes itself around Wu Lian.
She growls and pulls a knife from a hidden place, Sun Min reels back but-
“Burrow!”
Semmix swipes her umbrella through the portal instead of entering in- and time stops. Semmix looks down at her watch, the first button is already flashing, her time limit is far quicker like this. So she runs. We see on the bottom of the screen a closeup of her watch at all times. The first button has flickered out and the second one has begun to flash as she gets to Wu Lian and Sun Min. Taking the knife from her grip takes two more buttons, Wu Lian’s grip is tight. But she gets it out. She throws the knife on the second to last button, and with the last button-
Plunges the tip of her umbrella into Wu Lian’s side. Time goes forward again and Alix gets exactly two dots back onto her watch, pulling the umbrella loose just as the older woman registers the wound and the lack of her knife.
“Not this time, Lady.” She hisses, grabbing Sun Min and pulling him so he’s forced to stand. “Come on, let’s get back to the base.”
“Sem!” Ladybug gasps, and Semmix raises a brow. “What? She’s an enemy. She was gonna kill Sun Min. She was gonna kill Roi. I do what I have to do.”
Ladybug looks down to Wu Lian, whom is still crouched on the ground, far too old to be able to brush off such wounds, and sighs. “This feels wrong. Ma’am please, come with us, We can patch you up-”
“Do not touch me child.” Wu Lian hisses and the sharp canine teeth flash at her growl. “I do not want your help nor will you be able to force it onto me.” she snaps her teeth once. “Try it and I will make you regret that decision.”
“Ma’am we want to help you-”
“And your Rabbit did an excellent job of proving as much! Leave me be child.”
“Look, Alix was acting in defense and-”
“LEAVE!” she swipes out, her own claws leaving thick indents on Ladybug’s arm guards. Ladybug reels back a bit and, with no better ideas, stands up and gives a gesture.
“I’m sorry ma’am.”
“No you’re not. One less old coot to worry about, right?” Wu Lian sneers, and when Ladybug leaves detransforms, crumbles even further in pain before shakily re-transforming to get her slingshot back, she opens the com screen.
But we cut away before she makes the call, returning to the base and Alix sitting on the couch, detransformed, and feeding Hopps a carrot.
Standing in front of her, is, unsurprisingly, Marinette, she’s nursing a mug of coffee and looking tired.
“....Just why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you think that was appropriate?”
“It’s a little late in the game to be worrying about the ethics of if we should be prepared to do some bad things to our enemies or not, don’t you think?”
“Alix we’re heroes.”
“And I was BEING a hero by saving Sun Min!” She cuts in sharply, loudly, and rummages in her bag before eventually pulling out the knife she’d thrown aside when time was frozen. “She was ready to STAB him, if I hadn’t done what I did, then he’d be the one with a wound in his side instead of her! By striking her, she had to react to that instead of us.”
“Alix, you could have killed her!”
“So? She’s our enemy. One less of them to worry about.”
“Alix, I’m with Marinette, but not in the same way.” Kim pokes his head in, nursing a smoothie. “You’re kind of in a more dangerous situation than the rest of us, The Scorpion AND the Spider both work in the same place you spend most of your time.”
“I’m not afraid of Tsering Wan.” She responds with a huff. “And Miss Spider has another thing coming if she thinks she can trap me.”
The back and forth is stopped after a moment by Sun Min, he’s sipping at something in a thermos and pats Alix’s shoulder. “Hey, thanks for having my back. Especially since I was… you know, lashing out earlier.”
Alix shrugs. “No problem.”
“I see you figured out the real power of Burrow.”
“It’s like, a hubris test, isn’t it?” Alix looks up. “If you reject the allure of going through the portal you get the real power, which is the time stop, but if you go through and like- lose yourself to your pride or whatever, you can only make new timelines so it’s useless in battles.”
“Hey! Sun Min, we're still figuring this out!”
“It seems pretty cut and dry though, doesn’t it? We’re not gonna TRY to kill anybody but if we have to to protect each other it shouldn’t be a big deal. They’ve been trying to kill us this whole time.” he shrugs. “They’re a threat to the city, they’re a threat to us.”
Marinette looks away, her cheeks flush in frustration before she huffs under her breath. “This isn’t over. Kagami and Adrien are finding out the moment they’re back from whatever they’re doing and THEN we’ll figure out what to do about this.” She stalks over into the kitchen and angrily starts pulling out the hot cocoa mix.
But before we can see that specific confrontation, we’re gone from the base.
A door bursts open with a sharp kick, the person at the front desk of an apartment complex flinches and shrinks back as the Scorpion storms in, a pale Wolf in his arms. Wu Lian looks like she’s lost a lot of blood, though there’s a slapdash bandage on her side, it looks like it was done by Tsering Wan himself due to its more amateurish application.
The elevator chimes as he waits for it to descend to the ground floor.
Wu Lian’s eyes flutter open briefly before shutting again.
“Be still, Great Healer.” Tsering Wan murmurs, voice strikingly tender as he presses his face against her hair. “We’re almost there.” he steps in the elevator and the doors shut. He’s entirely calm as it begins to ascend. “Those children will pay for what they continue to do to us. For what they did to you.” The elevator stops on a certain floor.
“Be strong, A-Lian. The time is coming.”
We cut to black.