𝗰𝗵𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗼 ;; oneshots

MIRACLE BOX (ii)

ALRIGHT FINE! I COULDN'T KEEP YOU GUYS MORE WAITING... AFTER ALL THIS EFFORT I HAVE PUT IN WRITING THE MIRACLE BOX STRUCTURE, CAN'T WAIT TO SEE YOUR REACTIONS... LE SIGH SORRY FOR YELLIIING.

With that, the call ended. Ladybug let out a long breath- oh, wow, she had still been jittery through that entire call- and closed her yoyo, releasing her transformation. As the last sparkles faded, she turned around and started taking down the sheet she had hung as backdrop before she could forget.

Tikki zipped around her eagerly. "So? How did it go? Did they agree to help? Did they have any suggestions?"

"It went well," Marinette told her, smiling as she pulled the last corner loose and the sheet fluttered down into her arms. "And yes to both of your questions. Master Norbu agreed to make the enchanted metal right away. And he did suggest that I modify the booby trap, actually- now, it's gonna have knives."

Tikki could only blink, taken aback. "Good god."

It was all too easy to swing by a hardware store across the city after a weekend akuma attack ended there. Marinette picked her way through the store, familiar enough with the layout that it didn't take long at all for her to figure out what she needed for both her box and for her prototype spring trap.

There were a lot of gears and wires and screws that were going to be involved, and she was going to have to look at her lock mechanisms to see how she could ensure that it would all tie together and never fail on her. But she had gotten a lot of things to play with so that she could hopefully have something to report the next time that she checked in with Master Norbu.

And then it was time to start the trial-and-error process of making the snap mechanism.

It was difficult.

There were moving parts everywhere, it seemed, and connections that had to be just so. Pieces for the different components kept getting tangled up, wires and gears snarling and coming to a stop before they could do what they were meant to.

"Maybe you should break the trap down to its separate parts," Tikki suggested. "There's the lock, the connection between the lock and the spring, and then the spring for the trap."

"And the extra thing that I wanted to put in, to lock the bear trap in place when it closes, and how that would tie into the lock release," Marinette added. "Which will have to be cast in the enchanted metal. Everything that will be exposed from the top will be. But as long as I have the pieces, in theory we'd be able to cast them? I'd assume so, at least. I don't really have any experience with metalworking." She tipped her head to the side, considering the mess of gears in front of her. "Breaking it down into those steps makes sense, though. Then I can figure out exactly where things are going wrong."

"Exactly!"

Marinette considered the pieces sprawled out in front of her. After a moment, she pushed the majority of the mess to the side, pulling her faux-trap (made of wood, because that was easy enough to throw together) in front of her. That was the main part and the most important, so everything here had to be solid and perfect. If it wasn't, then any of her intended safety measures elsewhere would be useless. Like this, it was easier to see her pieces and how they fit together. All of a sudden, the path forward became obvious and Marinette flung herself into her work again, test-fitting gears and putting them in place. An improved spring mechanism came together in a flash, closely followed by the piece that would lock the trap shut, making it completely resistant to being pried open. Then there had to be a connection between that and the actual lock so that it could be disarmed when she unlocked the box properly, even if the unlocking happened after the trap shut.

It was a pity that she wouldn't be able to show anyone else her work, really. All of the moving parts- the majority of which had to be positioned so that they could be hidden- were an absolute beast to wrestle with and would definitely be worth some extra credit if she could show Madam Mendeleev. But that wasn't the point of the trap, and she had to make sure that she didn't do anything to make anyone suspicious about what she was up to.