Cataclysm

Moonlight

Nino's concentration was interrupted by his girlfriend sighing loudly by his side. He stopped looking at the screen of his computer to see that Alya was stretching, then standing up.

''Babe?'' He asked. They had been doing their research for about an hour with no results, but the fox heroine was not known for giving up this early.

''I'm just getting some water'' She said as she left his room. Nino shrugged then continued.

When Alya came back, instead of sitting down to work again she looked over his shoulder to see his screen. Nino was looking at the myriad of links he found after starting with the Italian embassy official page (That was in italian only) one by one. He still hadn't found one with the addresses of their members or anything remotely close to a clue to where Lila might be living right now.

''I think they hid it on purpose, babe'' Commented Alya, then sipped her water. ''Or it was classified information to begin with'' She continued after he stubbornly kept trying to translate Italian to French only to find it was another web filled with advice for lost tourists.

''I still have a couple pages left to check'' He said with little hope. His girlfriend shook her head.

''Just think about it, her house got attacked and she's a politician's kid. Yeah the media is pretty convinced it was Chat Noir who did it, but the Italians are not familiar with our heroes, they probably concluded it was a terrorist attack or something'' Said the fox heroine, sounding convinced of her own hypothesis. Well, she convinced him too. He stretched.

''What do we do then? This was our task to help the team'' He asked, knowing she had an answer because she would sound a lot more depressed if she had just given up.

''Trixx!'' Alya called, and the little kwami came to her floating after a little moment. Both Trixx and Wayzz had their own little corner on Nino's room to hang out when they knew no one would suddenly come in.

''Yes?'' Asked the tiny god, and Alya smiled.

''I'm a fox, right?'' The question took both kwamis and Nino by surprise, all of them looked at the reporter rising their eyebrows in confusion.

''Ummm... I'm a fox, you are the holder of the Fox kwami'' Clarified Trixx, still not sure where Alya was going.

''Foxes have good tracking abilities, like smell and eyesight'' She continued ignoring what the Kwami just said.

''Babe, where are you going with this?'' Asked Nino chuckling, entertained with his girlfriend antics but still a bit confused.

''It's simple, I just need to bond with Trixx so I get the abilities of a fox to track Lila'' She said as if she had the best idea ever.

''Or we could ask Adrien to do that...'' Said Nino suddenly hopeful, and Alya looked at him like he just ate the last bite of cake she was saving after a long day of drooling about it.

''But-'' She was about to argue when Trixx interrupted her

''Bonding with a kwami is not that easy, or fast, or simple'' Said the tiny fox, blunt as always. ''You have great qualities for the power of illusion, Alya, but you lost some connection with me for a while and are just now getting it back. It's a slow process, the Ladybug and the Chat Noir have been heroes permanently for longer, that's why they have bonded with Tikki and Plagg'' Nino kind of expected that already, since he was not feeling any different either after spending the last couple of weeks with Wayzz. But Alya looked extremely disappointed.

''Is it because I fell for Lila's lies?'' She asked sadly. Everytime that particular topic came out, his girlfriend would get so regretful he wanted to punch Lila himself. But he felt guilty for the same reasons, so he knew words of comfort didn't do much. Only time and making up to their friends would placate their feelings.