MiracuCrack #J7: It Wasn't Plan "A"

Marinette and Adrien sat in Master Fu's sanctum, holding each other's hands nervously for reassurance. The lack of their familiar Kwamis buzzing around them was unsettling... like being in a sound-proofed room and cut off from hearing even the slightest whisper.

Master Fu emerged from the back room, visibly downcast. "It is as I feared," he told them. "Hawkmoth's latest Akuma has... to put it bluntly, sealed off the power of the Miraculouses."

"How is that possible?" boggled Marinette.

"I am not sure, entirely," the old man admitted. "One Miraculous should not be able to override the others like this, but I cannot argue that it has not happened! It has done something sneaky, cutting off the lines of power from which the Miraculouses draw. The power is still in them, but they cannot expend or express it in any way."

"So, that means... we can't transform to Ladybug and Chat Noir, until it's fixed?" asked Adrien.

"Correct. Nor can I give you a different Miraculous to try; they're all just... jewelry until then," muttered Master Fu. "This is a most serious dilemma."

"What about the Kwamis? Are THEY all right?" gasped Marinette.

Master Fu smiled. "Yes, they should be unharmed... merely sleeping. But it is good of you to think of them with such care." His smile quickly faded, however, as he added, "But we face a crisis I had long hoped to avoid. We must defeat and purify an Akuma... without the power of the Miraculouses."

"Is that even... possible?" Marinette asked.

Master Fu steeled himself for what he knew he must do. "Come close," he gestured to them, examining one of his vases carefully. "There is an alternative, but..." He shuddered. "You will see."

His fingers found long-disused hidden patterns on the vase, making them glow when touched in a particular sequence. After several seconds of manipulation, the kids heard a sound, and turned to see a panel in the wall leading to a hidden staircase.

"Follow me... to a destiny that I would not have wished upon you," he said, forebodingly.

Walking down the staircase, Master Fu took a torch from a receptacle on the wall, lighting it with a match.

"No light switches?" asked Adrien.

"No one has opened this room up in years. You will understand why, shortly," the old man replied.

"Well, that makes ME feel all warm and cozy inside!" muttered Marinette.

They descended into a cold and musty basement, brushing cobwebs aside as they walked. "Is this... dangerous, Master Fu?" Marinette asked.

He stopped them as they reached a long-disused filing cabinet, locked shut, with a hand-written sign on it reading "BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD."

"Not as much dangerous, as... you will see. Help me with this," he motioned, as he turned a key in the lock and tugged at the bottom drawer. "This drawer... used to stick... back when we USED it," Master Fu grunted. "Now, it's... all but... fused shut."

Adrien added his muscles to Master Fu's, and both spilled backwards when the drawer suddenly came loose.

Marinette gazed inside it, with a bit of wonder and more than a little trepidation.

"It's... another jewelry box!" she said, questioningly. "What's inside it?"

"DO NOT TOUCH IT YET," ordered Master Fu, donning rubber gloves. "Letting that power loose without taking precautions could turn you all into hermit crabs."

He lifted it out gingerly, then motioned for them to follow him back upstairs. Marinette and Adrien stayed two steps behind, giving him room in case he should stumble carrying his precious and precarious cargo.

Back upstairs, he sat it on a table and pulled up a chair. "I must perform a brief ritual to sanitize this. I will call you when I am ready."

Marinette retreated to the next room with Adrien. "What in the world can be in there?" she wondered. "Master Fu is so protective of it. Some kind of super-Miraculous? An artifact from another time, another place?"

"A book of spells, maybe? Rings of power?" Adrien shrugged. "Do we really want to know?"

"I think we're about to," Marinette shuddered.

Adrien put his arm around her shoulders. "Bugaboo, we'll get through this. Together."

"I thought I told you to stop calling me that," she grumbled, but laid her head on his shoulder affectionately.

About ten minutes later, Master Fu called for them to reenter. They did, hesitantly, seeing him stand over what looked much like the now-familiar Miraculous jewelry box. This one, however, seemed to twitch gently with some hidden energy locked inside it.

"Master Fu... what are we looking at?" breathed Adrien.

Master Fu sighed. "If we are cut off from the power of the Miraculous, we have no choice but to invoke the terrible power... of the Ridiculous."

"...Come again?" asked Marinette, with a funny look.

"The Ridiculous," he repeated. "Ancient talismans of power, connected to the infinite by long-lost mystical pathways. But whereas the Miraculouses have connections to the Chinese Zodiac, to creation and destruction, to hallowed traditions..."

Master Fu frowned. "These are just... WRONG. Now, stand back..."

With a grim expression, he pushed buttons on the front in a long sequence... and the box opened up. A large barrage of multicolored glitter and confetti burst forth as the lid opened, and a hidden source deep within it started playing "Yakety Sax" on repeat.

"Do you have any idea how long it's going to take me to get that out of my carpet?" grumbled Master Fu. "AGES."

"What are we looking at here?" asked Adrien, wide-eyed.

There were ten visible compartments; unlike the Miraculous box, there were no evident tiers separating artifacts of different levels of power. The items were arranged in a circle, with a crude drawing of a laughing face in the center.

"The Ridiculouses," Master Fu explained. "I will describe each for you, and then you must choose... and if necessary, take some for your friends to use. Though they may or may not stay friends after you do that to them."

"They're that bad?" marveled Marinette.

"I will begin at the top..." said the old man.

The first compartment was red and green, with a brooch shaped like a tiny toolbox. "The Mad Patcher," he said. "Whosoever controls this Ridiculous can conjure up unlimited amounts of duct tape."

"Did they even have duct tape in ancient China?" asked Adrien.

"Thanks to him, they did," replied Master Fu. "This next one..."

He pointed out a ring with what looked like a wrapped piece of candy as its insignia. "The Taffy," Master Fu explained, "grants stretching powers. With it, you can reach things hundreds of yards away with ease, just by stretching out your body parts."

"What's so bad about that?" asked Marinette.

"You can't UNSTRETCH afterwards," he said. "You're stuck like that."

She grimaced. "Oh, they get worse," he warned.

The third compartment was orange, with a bracelet whose design was shaped like a carrot. "The Carrot," Master Fu said, prepared to move on quickly.

"What does that do?" both asked him.

"The wearer becomes... a carrot."

"Just... a carrot?" Adrien looked perplexed. "Not a walking, talking, fighting carrot?"

"A carrot," Master Fu replied, with a deadpan expression. "Okay, it can talk. For a carrot, that's a superpower."

Number four was a red ball. "The Rubber Nose," Master Fu intoned. "The power of clowning. You might be interested in this one, Marinette, as it's arguably the closest to Ladybug's powers. You can pull coconut cream pies out of thin air for throwing, you have a bucket that can produce either water or confetti at will, and instead of a yo-yo... you get a rubber chicken."

Marinette just looked at him. "And that does... what?"

"It stretches out, so it's similar to your yo-yo. You can swing from buildings and such with it... but it squawks every time it's squeezed. And you don't EVEN want to know what its Kwami is like."

"Ohhhhh...kay. Next?"

The fifth one was another brooch, with the appearance of a paintbrush. Its compartment was speckled with many colors.

"What does this one do?" asked Adrien.

"Ah, the Misunderstood Abstract Artist!" Master Fu replied. "With it, you can apply seemingly random dots and lines and blobs of color to any solid object. And when you explain to the viewer that your creation signifies an interpretation of the role of spiritual consciousness in the progression of humanity, they get a bad headache and have to lie down."

"Lovely," Adrien mused.

"Number six," pointing to a dark compartment with averted eyes, "is Bob. We don't talk about Bob. We don't touch Bob. We don't even look at Bob."

Marinette and Adrien looked at each other. Both opened their mouths to ask...

"NUMBER SEVEN," snapped Master Fu, cutting their questions off, "is the Laughing Man." He pointed to a ring with a grotesquely grinning face as its insignia. "The wearer can spout a seemingly endless supply of jokes, puns, limericks, dirty songs... but they are all terrible and cringeworthy. No one can stand for long against its abuses of the wearer's language."

"So what would be different from the normal Chat Noir, there?" Marinette asked, and grinned as Adrien elbowed her gently in the ribs.

"Moving on... The eighth compartment contains the Worst Musician in the Universe." The necklace bore an insignia that neither hero could recognize.

"What is that thing?" asked Marinette. "It's like a musical instrument, but... not."

"It's a combination of an accordion, a set of bagpipes, and a pan flute. It's surprisingly easy to play... much harder to turn OFF. Its every moment produces a horrible cacophony. As if that was not bad enough... it bears a magical curse."

Master Fu leaned in close and whispered, "IT ONLY PLAYS NICKELBACK SONGS."

"Euuuuuugh!" gasped Adrien, in revulsion.

"Nine..." Master Fu said, showing what looked like a puzzle token with colored wedges in it, "is the Trivia Wizard. You can call forth at will any knowledge you like about the obscure, the bizarre and the inexplicable."

"What's the drawback?" Marinette inquired.

"You empty out the parts of your brain that store USEFUL information," he explained. "You may not know how to get to the grocery store or what a banana is, but you know what Hank Greenberg's batting average was in 1938 and what river lies on the border of Albania."

"And number ten, if I dare ask?" she replied.

"The Microphone?" He pointed to a jeweled microphone on a gold chain. "That one automatically qualifies its owner to represent his or her country at Eurovision." Master Fu shuddered. "That got loose a few years ago, somehow. You wouldn't BELIEVE what we had to do to get it back from Jedward."

"So... which ones should we choose?" asked Adrien.

"That is up to you, my child," intoned Master Fu. "Take a few others with you, if you can think of worthy holders."

"And you will want these back as soon as the fight is over?" Marinette asked.

"Do you really think you or they would want to keep these?" replied Master Fu.

"Fair point..."

A short time later, five young people huddled together in a small circle on Marinette's balcony. "This is not how any of us wanted this..." Marinette said, "but it's up to us to save Paris, and perhaps the world. Are you all ready, and know what to do?"

Adrien nodded. Nino and Alya both said, "Ready." Chloe refused to look at any of them, but mumbled, "Fine."

"All right, let's DO THIS!"

The five spoke their transformation phrases...

A loud "BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWK!" was heard as The Clown launched herself into the night, with the Laughing Man right behind her. "There once was a man from Nantuckkkkkkketttttttt!" he sang, fading into the distance from a mighty leap.

Nino blew a terrible blast on his musical instrument from hell. "Look at this photograaaaaaaaaph..." he sang, unwillingly, as the mutant bagpipes propelled him into the sky. Alya hung on for dear life to the duct tape wrapped around her wrist, using it to hitch a ride with Nino.

On the ground, a carrot laid very still. "You CANNOT BELIEVE just how ANNOYED I am by this," it said, quietly. "Seriously."

~fin~