The morning at the bakery was organized chaos.
That was what Lio noticed when he came downstairs.
Sabine was baking while singing in French at the same time, Tom was arranging the tables while loudly talking to an old customer near the door, and the smell of freshly baked bread filled the entire place in a way that made waking up easier than it should have been.
Lio walked downstairs slowly.
Then he sat in the same chair he had sat in yesterday.
His chair from yesterday.
He noticed that he had thought of it that way.
And decided to ignore the matter.
“Good morning!”
Marinette appeared from the kitchen carrying a small plate and placed it in front of him before he could even respond.
Bread, butter, and a cup of coffee.
Lio looked at the food.
Then at her.
“Thanks.”
Marinette sat across from him, holding her own cup.
“Mom said you came downstairs late.”
“Looks like I wasn’t ready to face the morning.”
She laughed softly.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“I eventually fell asleep,” Lio said.
“But getting there took a while.”
She looked at him with a bored expression before thinking, Okay, that’s way too philosophical.
In the corner of the bakery, there was a small television showing the morning news.
Lio ate while watching it with one eye.
News in French that he could barely understand, pictures of politicians he didn’t know, and reports about a city whose streets he had only just begun to recognize.
He wasn’t interested.
Until the image changed.
A woman appeared standing in front of a damaged building on one of the streets of Paris.
She was speaking seriously in front of the camera, while workers behind her cleared away the remains of the destruction.
Then the footage changed.
Something red and black moved at incredible speed between the buildings.
Behind it was something black.
Then a third figure appeared…
His body transformed before the camera into something huge and strange.
Then the footage ended.
The news anchor returned to the screen.
She spoke in French for a few seconds.
Lio lifted his eyes from his food.
“What did she say?”
Marinette didn’t seem particularly interested.
“She said Ladybug and Chat Noir stopped another attack last night.”
She paused for a moment.
“The damage was minor this time.”
Lio raised an eyebrow.
“This time?”
“It happens a lot.”
She took a sip from her cup as if she had just said something completely ordinary.
“Ladybug and Chat Noir stop him almost every time.”
Lio stopped eating.
“Who?”
“Hawk Moth.”
“What does he want?”
Marinette looked at him.
“The Miraculouses belonging to Ladybug and Chat Noir.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“And he sends transformed people to attack them?”
“Yes.”
“Over and over again?”
“Yes.”
Lio fell silent.
He looked at the television.
Then at Marinette.
Then at his plate.
He took another piece of bread.
“That’s completely normal.”
Several seconds passed.
Then Lio thought to himself:
It can’t get any worse than this, right?
Damn it.
Me and my cursed mouth…
Five minutes later, Lio set his empty plate aside and walked out into the side street behind the bakery.
The air was slightly cold.
He stood there alone.
He looked at the sky.
Then at the broken watch on his wrist.
Then back at the sky.
“Okay.”
He breathed slowly.
“Looks like what I saw yesterday wasn’t a hallucination.”
He looked at the watch.
“And that means…”
He fell silent.
He went back over everything that had happened.
The buildings.
The streets.
The people.
The technology.
The language.
Then the superheroes.
Everything seemed normal for this world.
Too normal.
He frowned for a moment.
“Wait.”
He raised his hand in front of his face.
“Where are the superheroes in my world?”
There weren’t any.
There had never been anything like this.
At least not anywhere he knew.
He lowered his hand.
“Okay…
let’s assume I’m no longer in my world.”
He shook his head.
“But that doesn’t explain anything.”
His mind began working rapidly.
Spatial travel?
Theoretically possible.
Interdimensional travel?
He had never proven that it was possible.
Time travel?
Even worse.
But traveling to another reality that resembled his own to an astonishing degree, while having specific differences…
That was a possibility he didn’t even like thinking about.
“No.”
He said it quietly.
“Something is wrong.”
He looked at the watch.
The rings were motionless.
The energy was depleted.
The armor was shattered.
Everything had happened after the experiment.
“If the mistake was only in the equations…”
“It shouldn’t have produced a result like this.”
He slowly raised his eyes.
For the first time since waking up in that alley, there was no sarcasm on Lio’s face.
His facial expression turned cold.
“Then there’s another possibility.”
“Someone interfered.”
Lio fixed his gaze on the street ahead. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
A thought he didn’t like began to take shape.
What if his arrival hadn’t been an accident?
What if this place wasn’t the result of an error?
What if someone had sent him here?
Someone who knew about his experiment.
Someone who knew about the watch.
Someone who knew about his abilities.
And perhaps even someone who knew where the result would lead him.
Leo smiled faintly, without the slightest hint of amusement.
“So…”
He lowered his hand.
“Some idiot dragged me into his stupid little game.”
Then he looked at the watch.
“But if he thinks I’m going to be just a pawn in his game…”
His smile widened slightly, becoming colder.
“Then he doesn’t know me very well.”
Somewhere else in Paris…
The room was dark.
All the windows were closed.
Not even the sunlight could enter.
There was a small lamp on a wooden table, illuminating a chessboard.
A man sat in front of it.
Only part of his face was visible, while the rest remained buried in the shadows.
Several pieces stood on the board.
He slowly moved one of them.
Then stopped.
He looked at another piece.
A black knight.
A predator’s smile appeared on his face.
“So…”
He moved the piece.
“It has begun.”
Leo returned to the bakery.
His expression had returned to normal.
Marinette was still sitting in the same place, but now she was staring intently at a sheet of paper.
A design.
Lines.
Numbers.
And small notes written in a hurry.
She raised her head when she saw him.
“Everything okay?”
Leo sat down.
“Perfectly.”
“Are you sure?”
“Just the morning air.”
She looked at him for a second.
Then returned to her paper.
As for Leo…
He began arranging his priorities.
First: Money.
Second: Repair the watch.
Third: Learn about this world.
And fourth…
The person who brought him here.
Then he smiled to himself.
“One step at a time.”
He whispered it.
Then he began thinking about how to make some money.
Legally.
In a city whose language he couldn’t speak.
And with the body of a fifteen-year-old.
As for the idiot who had decided to drag him into this mess…
Lio would play along with him slowly.
Until he reached the moment when he could repair his watch.
And only then…
The real game would begin.
End of Chapter Ten
Author’s Note: I’ll include pictures of Lio’s watch from before and after the “Final Trial” chapter, for anyone who wants to see what it looks like in both stages.