As soon as Alya reached her house, her phone started ringing.
After seeing it was Adrian, she ran into the alleyway that the fire escape led to before answering and holding the phone up to her ear.
"Alya, thank god you're okay! Is Queen Bee alive?"
Alya hesitated before answering. "I don't know, Adrian. My detransformation countdown was ticking, and I had to back off the chase or risk revealing my identity and falling and breaking my spine."
"Wait, chase? What happened to her? Last I saw of her was an angry swarm of bees taking off after Steel Peacock."
"I found blood stained on the pavement outside of some alleyway, and I looked up and saw Peacock carrying Bee away, and I tried chasing after her, but my countdown-"
"Alya, no one's blaming you for what happened. Ladybug and I couldn't do anything about it, we were already detransformed." He paused, before speaking again in a venomous tone. "I can't believe that slimy peacock almost killed Ladybug, and then has the nerve to capture Queen Bee!"
"I know!" Alya growled. "We have to get her back."
"But how?" Adrian sighed. "While I'd love to come with you and get Queen Bee back and find some other places we can stick those arrows of hers, we don't know where she is, and we can't find her."
"I know. And then there's why did she even take Queen Bee? She doesn't exactly strike me as the type to go around helping her enemies, especially after almost impaling Ladybug."
"Add that to another link in this daisy chain of mysteries..."
Alya suddenly remembered something. "Wait a minute." She looked at her necklace, willing her pocket dimension to open. And surprisingly, it opened, and Alya quickly pulled out the manilla envelope that was given to her by a hooded person at the festival.
"Uh, Alya...?"
The opening closed, and Alya cleared her throat and refocused on Adrian. "Sorry, had to check something. At the festival, some guy gave me an envelope and asked me to open it in private, that something dangerous was going to happen and that he explained everything in the envelope."
"Sounds strange."
"Yeah, but I suppose there's no harm in checking."
"Sorry, I gotta go. Nathalie's coming, probably to lecture me about not sneaking out."
"Hope you won't get in too much trouble."
"Eh, I've been at this so long, she can't get to me. See you at school."
"See ya." Alya hung up the phone and walked into the apartment building. She climbed the stairs until she reached her family's apartment and opened the door, only to see it was strangely absent of her sisters. She saw a note on the table, and picked it up.
Alya,
Taking the girls out for some ice cream!
Would've taken you too, just figured you were busy with the Ladyblog and all that.
Mom should be off of work soon, depending on when you get home.
See you soon!
Dad
Alya folded up the note and tucked it in her pocket on the way to her room. Once the door was shut, she made her way over to her desk to check out the envelope.
Opening it, the first thing she saw was a hand-written note in what seemed to be vaguely familiar handwriting.
"Volpina," Alya read aloud. "I'm sorry to bother you with this, but I think it's a sign of something evil to come. These past two nights, I've been having strange dreams. I've read somewhere that people you dream about are people you've seen before, but I know with certainty I've never seen this girl before. And unlike other dreams, this one was... Unsettling, to say the least. Also, instead of like other dreams where you forget about it a few minutes after, this one stuck in my head, and then I decided to start to sketch out who and what I saw in the dream. The more I drew, the more scared I got of what I've seen. And so I decided to bring it to someone who might know what I've seen." Alya finished. "Sincerely..." There was a signature at the bottom that looked almost familiar, but still, she couldn't think of who it belonged to.
Alya, feeling slightly ominous from reading the letter, slowly reached into the envelope and pulled out the rest of what was inside.
There were three sketches.
The first depicted a red pentagram, looming ominously over a sort of blue feather, red splatters and night-black shadowy figures surrounding the feather.
The second sketch was a close-up of some kind of choker-style necklace. The choker itself was held together by a black ribbon, and had a single silver charm on it. This charm, again, depicted a pentagram.
The third was perhaps the most unsettling of them all. It was a girl in some sort of costume, no, that was the Volpina costume! But instead of orange, it was a rich blood-red, and this girl had no flute or necklace. And the girl herself, she looked so familiar, but at the same time... not. She seemed to be holding up some kind of large book.
Needless to say, Alya realized why whoever drew these gave them to her. Every detail about the red suit was exact, from the toned zigzag pattern on the sash across the waist. It was surreal and freaky.
------------------------------------------
It was late. How late, Marinette didn't know. Too late.
She was in bed, trying to go to sleep. But she couldn't sleep. Couldn't stop thinking.
Marinette rolled over in her bed and groaned quietly. Why can't I just fall asleep? I have school tomorrow...
But she couldn't stop thinking about how close she'd been to getting an arrow through her back. An arrow that would have shattered a portion of her thoracic vertebrae, and possibly punctured several key internal organs, an arrow that maybe could've even been fatal. But the arrow was stopped, her life was saved, by the very person she couldn't stop thinking about.
Why couldn't she stop thinking about Chat Noir?