Chapter Text
Present
No longer panicking, the energy became a focused effort, the figure forming sporadic, flashing fists that they pelted against the crystal. If they could talk, if they could make any sound at all, Gabriel was sure he’d hear them screaming bloody murder.
This was the cold dump of water that broke whatever spell of madness had overtaken Gabriel. He sharply, desperately inhaled, a drowning man breaking the water’s surface just in time. Danger exploded in his heart, a newfound terror from this unknown figure finally kicking his fight-or-flight instincts into high gear and throwing his torso back into a running start.
This was a foreign land to him. The layout of his secret lair had been modified, of that he was sure, catching glimpses or fleeting touches of new walls, thick wiring snaked throughout the floor and overturned tables. All he knew was that forward, at the other end of the room, was the way out. He just had to hope the elevator was in working order.
He clamped his lips shut as he shambled blindly through the darkness, holding back the instinct to cry out or gasp, leaving his ears to tune into the dreadful synchronization of his pounding heartbeat and the violent pounding of the prisoner behind him. He knew from the rush of the river below that none of these new additions to the room removed the fall, just one wrong step and he would sink into the unknown, lost under the viscous waves.
There was no navigating this treacherous path, there was just the direction of the exit, forward. Forward until he either reached salvation or damnation.
With each careful step, the weight of the situation grew, threatening to upset his balance and knock him aside. He had to maintain focus on the path ahead, on pushing forward and ignoring the lingering distractions of the danger surrounding him. It was the only way he could get through the unknown without crumbling, but even Gabriel Agreste could admit that he didn’t have the willpower to cast aside the knowledge that the next step could very well be the step that cuts his second chance at life very short.
So, he distracted himself, let his body fall into autopilot while his mind lost itself in… Uncomfortable thoughts. His lair had been modified. Meaning someone had come down here. Meaning multiple people came down here, down in his most secret and sacred space, and cleared out it’s foundations to build upon. Someone had to have discovered Emilie, and there by unleashed the floodgates of questions.
Of course, he’d known that from the moment Marinette’s words had cut through his madness. He would die, his life as Paris’ greatest villain would come to light, and everyone would be clamouring to know why. The woman caged in a golden coffin in the basem*nt was quite the succinct and effective explanation.
The prisoner’s blows were quieter, he realized as he collided with a doorway and slammed his knee into an upturned table. That meant he’d at least put some distance between him and whatever it was, or the prisoner was figuring out the futility of their escape attempt and lost the vigour to keep punching.
Though he loath to admit it, he knew on some level that he, however foolish the thought, had hoped he’d find everything the same. Everything untouched. That his passing was but a footnote in the events of that year, something no more worthy than a statistic in a newspaper article – tragic, but nothing that affected those around him. Ladybug could undo all of the damage he inflicted upon the world in his pursuit of the wish, except the damage he’d done to his loved ones.
It was with that thought that it sunk in, that time had marched on without him, the world he knew had gone and left.
Slinking through the doorway, he felt rubble and glass crunch underneath his feet, the sound of his steps shifting becoming muffled. A carpet floor, perhaps. Soon enough he felt the surface of another table, saving himself from the collision by holding his arms out in front of him. His eyes would never adjust to the darkness enough to illuminate his surroundings, but when he was still enough, he could vaguely make out nearby shapes with fuzzy outlines standing like islands in the dark sea.
The table in front of him was sturdier than the others, a bulky oval shape that stretched passed what he could make out. It was made of metal, he could feel out intricate designs carved into the rim, with little dips in its shape where his fingers brushed over buttons and screens. Someone’s turned my lair into a base, and this... This must be the war room. I don’t know what unnerves me more, that someone went through the effort of building this facility, or that they saw the need to abandon it.
He shook his head and powered onwards.
How did Adrien find out, he wondered. Dark images of Adrien returning home just as somebody lugged Emilie’s casket out of the front door hit him in a flash of pain, gnawing on his brain like a nasty headache. He imagined Adrien stumbling over to her body, a cold and hollow feeling growing in Adrien as he realized how well preserved the body was. Why, it was like Emilie was simply sleeping. How long would Adrien be kept in the dark before Ladybug appeared to illuminate the sad truth? Enough time to come to the worst conclusions. Would Adrien wonder, for a moment, if his father had kidnapped his mother and locked her away in a dungeon for some unknown slight?
It wouldn’t be a stretch now, would it? After all, Gabriel had locked him away all his life. And Adrien would have just returned from… From… Something. Something Gabriel once more had trouble piecing together in his mind. The last time he saw Adrien was a distant picture, he couldn’t make out the details, but he could recognise that looking at it made him feel sick.
At least he could take comfort in knowing that Emilie probably had a proper burial this time around, not the prolonged, museum exhibit he’d made of her. Nathalie would have seen to it. And Nathalie would take good care of Adrien and finally have the life that his obsession had denied her of. He knew the last time he’d seen her that there had been yelling involved. They’d grown so far apart, so volatile. He’d hurt her. He couldn’t remember how, but he knew he hurt her.
The next doorway was closed, his face making a hard impact with the cold, rusted door within its frame. It was a collision that made the world around him rattle, knocking something inside of him out of place. He’d been so caught up in his thoughts that his body had all but charged headfirst into the door.
He bit back a cry of pain and lifted up his hands, pressing both of them flat against the door. If he was counting the distance correctly, then the elevator should be just behind this door. So close but so far.
Another thump. This one was loud. Vigour renewed, it seemed.
“This is the only way out.” He told himself, “I can’t afford to stop here. If I’m going to die again, I’d at least like to know what the hell is going on first.”
Gabriel knew that he was not the peak of physical strength. His time as Hawkmoth certainly kept him in shape, and he was strict about never indulging in any ‘dangerous’ eating habits, but his figure was a lean one, focusing more on height and stature than muscle. So, when he planted himself against the door, with a sharp wheeze escaping him at the exertion, and pushed with all had left, he expected it to take a while.
He did not expect the door to immediately give way and fall backwards with him atop it.
He tumbled in a chaotic descent, tangled with the very obstacle he sought to overcome. The metallic clang echoed through the chamber as Gabriel found himself sprawled on the floor, surrounded by the remnants of the once-standing barrier and feeling the aftershocks of the fall make his bones tremble.
To Gabriel’s relief, the elevator was indeed standing exactly where he left it. It’s interior flushed red with emergency lighting, flooding the area in front of it with its glow and breaking him free from the nauseous monotony of the darkness. So, some power is still flowing through this place. It was the first time Gabriel stopped to consider that, while the basem*nt had clearly been abandoned to time, the upstairs could still house life.
It could even be Ad- No, no. Gabriel grit his teeth and struggled to his feet, not daring to finish that thought.
Around him, the room unfolded into a straight hallway leading up to the elevator. He was flanked by two streams of water that ran from one end of the hall to the other. He imagined the water once shined with a clear, crystal quality, but now was flushed brown with mud, gravel and rubble. On the walls there hung tilted picture frames, their contents either too faded to make out whatever they were depicting or ripped apart. Many of them, and even some segments of the walls, were littered with holes – bullet holes. Adding to the theory that whoever dwelled in these lower levels had been forced, perhaps violently, to leave.
Before he could advance upon the elevator, he felt his foot kick something heavy aside. His gaze dipped low, finding another frame below his toes, this picture cracked, but legible. He crouched, brushing aside the shattered remains of the glass protector and took the thin paper in hand, pulling it up to his nose. It was a simple picture, one of Ladybug and Chat Noir standing atop the Eiffel Tower. This was just after they’d taken down Stoneheart, he was sure, the dawn of his and their miraculous feud.
Only Ladybug’s face had been torn apart, and not by time or degradation, but by a claw-like instrument judging by the marks left behind.
His eyes narrowed; as much as he loathed Ladybug throughout their war against one another, his anger never pushed him to defacing her merchandise or memorabilia. Not that he was above such pettiness. He didn’t even know why he cared about the picture, or why he folded it up and stuffed it in his pocket before moving on.
Reaching the elevator, he was dismayed to find that the interior’s upper half was ripped apart, including the button that would tell the elevator which way to go. All that remained was the long stretch of metal and glass disappearing into the ceiling above. The elevator wouldn’t be up and running any time soon, his only choice would be to attempt a daunting climb without the aid of any equipment.
His muscles screamed for mercy at the very prospect.
CRASH!
This sound was not muted, it was loud, bellowing like a violent storm. Something shattered under an overwhelming force, followed by something heavy, yet small, hitting the metal floor. Before his mind could catch up with the danger, a shriek from a throat tearing itself apart, a haunting wail that reverberated with a gut-wrenching intensity. It carried an eerie blend of agony and despair, echoing through the surroundings like a spectral lament. The sound seemed to linger, leaving an unsettling silence in its wake.
The prisoner was free.
Gabriel looked up at the vast, impossible climb before him with a dry throat.
Once again, there was just the direction of the exit, forward. Forward until he either reached salvation or damnation.
Past
Why did he say Milady?
That one little word dominated Ladybug’s every thought from the moment she transformed, following her even as she cast out her yoyo and took to the Paris rooftops. And it shouldn’t. She knew it shouldn’t. ‘Milady’ was a normal term of endearment even before Chat Noir popularized it, there was nothing suspicious about a boy stealing some of a popular superhero’s lines to use on his girlfriend. Adrien was trying to reassure her that he’d be back to save her, of course he’d try and mimic the hero she’d made no secret she was a fan of.
But why did he say Milady?
Below, the streets were overrun with a thick green slime, a tide of sludge that spread in every possible direction, sucking in everything it touched. From her elevated vantage point, Ladybug witnessed the relentless advance of the slime, a creeping menace that engulfed everything in its path. Cars, no matter how large or how resilient they appeared, were devoured by the emerald deluge. The vehicles vanished beneath the surface, their metallic frames disappearing into the abyss of goo. The streets echoed with the guttural slurping and bubbling sounds of the engulfed city, a macabre symphony of destruction.
In the midst of the chaos, terrified people scrambled in droves, a tide of bodies sweeping past with a tide of sludge not far behind. In a fit of mass hysteria, they tramped over each other to reach back-alley ladders, turned over vans and streetlamps – they swarmed around anything they could use to reach higher ground.
Taking a deep breath, Ladybug dived over the edge of the roof, dropping into a freefall. Once more, she cast her yoyo out, cracking it like a whip and wrapping it around her nearest anchor to turn her fall into an arc that propelled her through the streets from a safe distance.
She never knew exactly how much of the yoyo was her own skill. She never stopped to consider the trajectory of her throw, she just found whatever target her eyes lied upon and unleashed her line. It might have just been instinct, an instant calculation her mind had attuned to over the years, but part of her thought it might have been Tikki leaking through, guiding the yoyo to the perfect point to save her from a perilous drop. The lucky charms were already based in a universal knowledge of exactly what Marinette needed in that moment, why could the same perception not go for the rest of her toolset?
Ladybug barely even registered swooping in to pluck civilians off the street, carrying them up to the safety of the rooftops before diving back in for the rest. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, simply that it had become so routine, so engrained into her being. Swinging in to save lives had become an automated process.
The vicinity clear of civilians, Ladybug fell into a crouch atop a lamp post, carefully leaning over to inspect the crashing tides of slime below. The first thing that hit her wasn’t the putrid shades of green that gave it the complexion of sewage water, it wasn’t the thick layers of gunk that rolled on top of each other as if they were breathing, it wasn’t even the odour of a flooded bathroom overpowering her nose.
The first thing that hit her was the intense heat emanating from it. When she was swinging through, she’d felt it, but assumed it was just from her body exerting itself. On closer inspection, she could feel the confines of her suit strangle her limbs a touch tighter under duress, a burning sensation putting stain on her lungs, as if flames were licking at her legs.
Fighting off the uncomfortable heat, Ladybug prepared to jump to higher, cooler ground. However, a sharp foreboding sensation struck her mid-stride. Her lucky charm’s power was, in part, prophetic, knowing exactly what she needed for any situation, and many times that divination manifested as a warning. Over the years, she’d come to conclude that said recognition wasn’t just active when she used lucky charms, that her sixth sense, her danger sense, was subtly enhanced.
And that sense was telling her that someone was watching her, someone she needed to find. It wasn’t a cold, prickly chill dancing down her spine. No, it was a scolding sensation, one that burned harsher than even the slime. A gaze of fire glaring down at her, fuelled by something intense, something personal; something spiteful.
She did not find a trace of whoever that gaze belonged to before the feeling passed. Despite knowing nothing about the source, and knowing that it could simply be her own paranoia, Ladybug couldn’t help but feel like she missed something vital.
She shook her head. Ladybug flipped open her bug-phone, catching a glimpse of her A-Team being listed as online in her contacts, tracked near her location. As she signed into the group’s communication frequency, she held her arm over her nose, shielding her from the heat. “What is this stuff?” She asked, crinkling her nose in disgust.
Carapace’s voice crackled to life, along with the quieter sound of him putting someone down before jumping into a sprint. “Maybe the Ninja Turtles are visiting.”
I should take a closer look. Leaning forward, Ladybug let her body drop from her perch with one leg wrapping around the pole to keep her from turning this inspection into a deep dive. Upside down, the strange substance became her skyline, the buildings acted as the mountains framing it all and the rubble poking through the surface acted as stars blotting out a polluted sky.
Oozing was the word that came to mind. Something sickly that clings and scrapes as it moves past, like blood from a wound. The surface was a nauseating concoction of putrid greens and sickly yellows. It moved with a sluggish, repulsive rhythm that made Ladybug picture a puss-filled scrab growing on flesh and then deflating, almost as if it were breathing. The stench that emanated from its viscous depths assaulted the senses, a noxious blend of decay and filth that clung to the air like a toxic fog. Each ripple on its surface seemed to writhe with an unsettling life of its own, as if the very substance of disgust had found a home in the murky currents.
The current of the slime slowed to a sudden stop, the thinner, more translucent top layers hardening into thick sludge. At the spot under Ladybug, bubbles surfaced, each carrying with them an unsettling symphony of unpleasant sounds — a sickly gurgle, a viscous pop, a gut-churning squelch. The surface of the slime undulated with a grotesque dance, causing it to rise and writhe in a display of repugnant vitality.
And then, with a muffled, visceral wheeze; the slime surged upwards, lunging for Ladybug with clear aggressive intent. With a fraction to react, Ladybug’s body spun backwards, letting go of the pole with as much momentum as she could build up carrying her just out of reach. “Holy sh-” In her place, the sludge took hold of the lamp post, snapping it in half before pulling it down under the surface with nothing more than a burp. “It tried to grab me; this stuff’s alive!”
“That’s unsettling.” Hanging from a pipe running up a building’s side, sweat turning her pigtails ratty and her lungs battling to gasp without inhaling that rancid smell; Ladybug decided she could really do without Luka’s deadpan delivery at the moment. “How far do you think it reaches? It can’t fill the entirety of Paris, right?”
Chat Noir, a certain whine to his voice indicating he was clamping his nose shut, piped up “Let’s make sure it doesn’t stick around long enough to show us, yeah?”
“Anyone have eyes on the akuma behind this?” Ladybug asked as she kicked off the wall and took to the skies once more. “I really hope they’re not in the slime…”
Rena Rogue’s voice was muffled by crowds yelling back-and-forth in the background. “I’ve got a few people here saying all this came from that new shopping centre up north.”
Ladybug detached her line to drop into freefall, reorientating herself in mid-air, turning her back to the Eiffel Tower and latching onto a nearby store sign to launch herself in the right direction. For all the stress this mantle brought, she’d be lying if she said anything could match the rush and freedom that swinging through Paris brought. “Alright, head north everyone! Stay focused and stay alert for anybody in need.”
“You can bet on this cat’s senses, Milady.” Though Chat Noir’s terrible puns had a knack for interrupting that feeling. And not just because it brought Ladybug back to wondering why Adrien called her Milady.
But why did he call me Milady?
Was Adrien a Chat Noir fan? She’d never asked, and she always thought (and hoped) he was a Ladybug fan through and through, but that would explain it nicely. There wasn’t any other explanation, so why was she making such a big deal about it?
It was the way he said it, of course. The gentle care threaded between a teasing, mischievous nature, the way his eyes narrowed, and his lips curled as he said it, even the way he stood with his body slightly leaned towards her and his head dipped; it was all so perfectly Chat. Anyone else could mimic the performance and she wouldn’t bat an eye, but Adrien… It was almost like her partner was right there in the room with her, his passionate gaze worming its way into her heart and clearing her of any doubt.
It was almost like he was-
“Whoa, hold up.” Viperion’s voice pulled her back on track just as she landed into a roll on another rooftop. “Hey, Carapace, you seeing this?”
She checked their relative locations once again, turning towards their position just west of her. The slime hadn’t reached those streets yet, the roads rising to a steep ascent away from the heart of the city. Tall buildings and smoke-filled skies made it hard to see anything noteworthy from her position, but Ladybug just managed to catch large, bulky grey blurs through the gaps between buildings, driving towards the action at full speed.
“What is it?” She asked.
Carapace’s voice crackled to life just as she caught a glimpse of a green blob scaling the building across from her. “Guys, there’s some big military trucks heading towards the shopping centre as well. Got the Tsugi logo and some mean looking guys driving.”
Nothing in that sentence said anything but trouble.
However, she had no time to dwell on that. That familiar glutenous bubbling noise oozed into her ears, and this time it wasn’t alone. The arc of her swing taking her low through the streets, and with no time to pivot, she saw the stretch of slime vibrate aggressively below her. It was as if her presence was angering the slime, vomit yellow bubbles congregating to form noxious foam eyes glaring up at her, swelling up into bulbous pimples ready to burst.
And they did burst, exploding into thick, powerful streams that reached the sky. On all sides, repugnant pillars of slime – each with enough ferocity to tear off her skin if she got too close – caged her in, turning the wide-open street into a narrow corridor of danger.
Ladybug, the imminent danger kicking her adrenaline up to eleven, deftly adjusted the trajectory of her swing, narrowly evading the first eruption of slime that surged towards her. She weaved through the mid-air minefield of grotesque geysers with acrobatic finesse, battling not just the tiny gaps she had to thread the needle through, but the air’s thick putrid stench threatening to choke her out. But Ladybug pressed on, her focus unwavering.
The slime, seemingly agitated by her nimble evasion, launched another assault. Noxious foam eyes glared with a perverse intensity as additional bursts erupted, creating a chaotic symphony of bubbling and bursting. Ladybug, running on pure instinct and reflex, flipped and somersaulted through the onslaught.
With each swing, Ladybug's movements became a ballet of evasion, a dance of survival amidst the grotesque pillars closing in around her. The corridor seemed to tighten, walls closing in on her, blocking every exit one-by-one. While her focus remained unwavering, her every move a testament to the acrobatic prowess that had earned her the title of Paris's formidable defender – even Paris’ finest couldn’t beat a dead end.
She felt her line go limp, dropping in sync with her stomach, long before she heard the building the yoyo was clinging to collapse. With no anchor to pull herself away, she found her shoulder grazing one of the streams. That graze was all it took, burning through her suit and skin like daggers forged from steam digging into her flesh.
For a moment, her body was weightless, floating in a world that was spinning into the indecipherable around her. For a moment, she was Marinette again, helpless against the crushing weight of the Ladybug mantle. For a moment, she was afraid.
If Chat Noir had any such fear, he didn’t show it.
His dark form launched itself into view using his ever-extending staff as a pogo stick, his strong arms an instant source of relief as they protectively wrapped around her torso and took her with him far, far above. Soon enough, they stood atop his staff as one of the tallest vantage points in Paris, far past the barrier of smog created by the slime, looking down at the tide of scrambling, slimy hands. “Heads up, Bugaboo!”
As she clung tightly to her partner, Ladybug let out wretched, heaving gasps; the pressure of that thick, scorching atmosphere no longer wringing her lungs dry. Her need for clean air eclipsed even her pain sensors, leaving the throbbing of her shoulder muted ever as Chat gently massaged the corners of the burn mark. She couldn’t quite see his face, the glare of the sun masking his head.
She tried to speak between dry coughs. “What would I do without you, Kitty?”
His voice was tentative, slow even if it was a joke, as if he feared her never hearing him. “You know, if you keep falling for me like this, your boyfriend’s gonna get jealous.”
The mention of Adrien made her flinch. Not because she thought Adrien would disapprove of his girlfriend clinging to her platonic and not-at-all-attractive partner for safety, but because it made her think. It made her think how, without Chat’s face in clear and honest view, his voice almost sounded distinctive. That his touch felt more natural, more common to her muscles than it should. That if she had the energy to move her hands, she could imagine herself reaching out and pushing back his wild blond mane, straightening it to something more orderly. That she was waiting to hear how he’d say ‘milady’.
Her smile was a struggle, but it wasn’t forced. Letting him know she would survive, albeit with a better appreciating of Paris’ soft morning breeze. “If you have time to flirt, you have time to move, Kitty.” Pulling herself up by his shoulders, she adjusted his grip on her to be more flexible, hanging off his right arm so his left could direct his staff.
Wielding his staff like an olympic polearm, he launched them off the momentum of stabbing the staff into the ground, returned it to normal length in mid jump before extending it once more for a stable landing. His make-shift height advantage certainly gave him better traversal options here than swinging did, even if his air hopping was by far the slowest means of travel. Though that was entirely relying on the hope that the staff didn’t hit the ground at the wrong angle and bounce them off to their deaths.
From so high up, it was easy to see the full scale of their akuma’s attack, the bright neon glow of the slime perfectly outlining it’s boundaries. The green sea seemed to form a radius of roughly ten to fifteen blocks surrounding the shopping centre Alya had mentioned, swallowing people, cars and even entire buildings in its wake. Though whether this was because of a limited range or just the akuma not wanting to spread itself too far, Ladybug couldn’t tell.
What she did notice, as her and Chat got closer and closer to the ground, was how whatever the slime had caught in it’s maw seemed mostly unharmed – meaning the current pain in her shoulder was much more of a personal attack than she thought.
As much as she enjoyed Chat’s firm embrace, Ladybug had to free herself from it eventually, slipping from his grip to jump down onto the rooftops overlooking their akuma’s ground zero site. The district was flooded, a car park and storefront six feet under an ocean of putrid green. Fortunately, the district was led into from above, leaving many elevated streets and bridges ducking into it that stood high above the slime.
Chat landed just ahead of her, peering down into the streets with a concerned frown. “I thought Roger agreed to pull back and focus on evacuating civvies?”
Ladybug joined his side, following his gaze to where distant rumbling exploded throughout the city like approaching thunder. A convoy of trucks proudly bearing the Tsugi corporation logo, just as Luka and Nino had described, pulled up at concrete shores in droves.
Armoured tanks, their sleek surfaces gleaming in the harsh sunlight, led the procession like iron giants on treads. Behind them, colossal personnel carriers with mounted weaponry conveyed an unmistakable aura of firepower. The rhythmic thud of heavy treads echoed through the air, resonating with the stern discipline of a military march.
“I don’t think this is the police.” Ladybug said, “Great, that’s just what we need right now; complications.”
Despite their grand design, all Ladybug saw was more civilians running into trouble.
The rest of team miraculous stood not too far away from the trucks, huddled close together and talking amongst themselves. Carapace was the first one to spot Ladybug and Chat, pointing them out before waving them over, mouthing some joke about them being too slow that Ladybug couldn’t quite make out.
Chat shrugged. “Wouldn’t be an akuma attack without complications.”
After a sigh from Ladybug, the two shared a simple, but comforting nod before jumping down to the street below, landing just as the head of the convoy came a stop at the point where the bridge sunk. On the two’s approach, boots met hard concrete as multiple armoured men flooded out of the trucks in droves, their attention split between the shopping centre and the two heroes.
The armour was what struck Ladybug instantly. It was familiar.
The chrome metal torso over a layer of white leather infested with ring symbols, with a silver helmet that completely covered the head, leaving a solid white circle where the face should be.
For a moment, she was back in the bowels of the Agreste mansion, taking refuge in the cramped confines of a kitchen cupboard as the miraculized civilians of Monarch’s final desperate assault hunted her down. She remembered the helpless sensation flooding her as she was forced to detransform, forced to accept that Chat Noir wasn’t coming to back her up, that one sudden move would bring the brainwashed horde down upon her to tear her limb from limb.
The nightmare ended when one of the men met them halfway, removing his helmet and dispelling the fear that this was anything more than a suit, more than simple armour people equipped rather than a cursed replacement body forced upon them by a murderous mad man.
The man greeted them with a salute. “Lieutenant Weevil Geese!”
Chat Noir was the first to speak. When he rested a comforting hand on her back, combined with the concerned looks Rena was shooting her as the team formed around them, she knew her internal freak out was spilling out into her expression. “Alright, guys, I appreciate the dedication, but I’m gonna have to ask you all to vacate the premises and leave the akuma hunting to the professionals.”
Weevil’s gaze grew unsteady as it passed over them, like he was fearful of their reaction to whatever he’d have to say next. However, instead of talking, he held up his wrist, showing off what looked like an Alliance ring turned into a wrist band. It wasn’t too much of a surprise that they’d be bearing Tsugi products, but last time Ladybug checked, nobody was quite keen to wear anything alliance related after Monarch used the technology to enslave the populus, no matter how much damage control the company did.
The expected holographic menu flickered to life, and with a few quick swiped the menu dissolved and, in it’s place, stood a man. Even with the hologram shrinking him to a convenient size, the man clearly sported a towering frame under his faded yellow overcoat, built like a tank and dressed to kill. Ladybug could just glimpse a faded vest holding his pale dress shirt together, topped off with a bolo tie loosely hanging from his neck.
His face, which the hologram highlighted in excessive detail, was a tapestry of scars and stitches behind a bushy, white handlebar moustache. His lips seemed tightly drawn, the lit cigar hanging from his mouth acting as a pry bar to keep them open. When his lips rose to grin, it reverbed across his flesh, giving the image, for just a moment, that a simple smile would tear his face apart. “Well, I’ll be, the spotted lady herself.”
“Chalot F. Moth, Miraculous Task Force Commander.” The voice reminded Ladybug of a used car salesman making a pitch, civilised, but not comforting, as well as struggling against a slight accent at the same time. He smoothed back his stocky silver curls as he offered a respectful nod, but they proved too stiff. “We’re here to help.”
“Miraculous Task Force?” Ladybug repeated to herself, turning to Chat Noir to silently ask if he was hearing this too. They shared an incredulous look, the title sounding like a bad joke on their ears. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
To his credit, Chalot didn’t look like he took any offense to their doubt when Ladybug turned back. He did, however, look tired, as if he’d had this exact conversation too many times. “Couple years too late, but French officials have finally decided to get involved in Paris’ rampant super villain problem.”
His lips parted to give a toothy grin, but his eyes looked like they were flinching. “Turns out everyone’s a little bit uncomfortable leaving the protection of their capital in the hands of a band of unsupervised children. Who’d have thunk, am I right?”
The wording did not sit well with Ladybug. Children who routinely saved all your lives every week, thank you very much. She wanted to say with a bitter bite, not liking the implied insult towards her and her friends’ years of risking their lives for this city. Maybe it wouldn’t be advisable to give kids superpowers, and she’d express her doubts to Master Fu for his decision before, but acting like they were a problem, or even helpless, in of themselves was ridiculous. It was especially grating because Ladybug knew this was happening on Tomoe’s payroll, that this was probably apart of the company pitch for this task force even after the multiple times Ladybug had saved Kagami and her mother.
But she held her tongue, telling herself it was both pointless to protest and that Chalot was just the messenger here, and probably wasn’t intending any offense.
Chat Noir, on the other hand, crossed his arms with low growl simmering in his throat. “That’s a polite way of saying that they’re sick of us making ‘em look like chumps.”
“Not that we don’t appreciate the help, but there’s a reason police stand back and let us handle to fighting.” Ladybug slapped the back of her hand against his arm, sending him a warning scowl before turning back to Chalot. “Not much you can do against an akuma without a miraculous.”
“Your local traffic cops weren’t equipped to handle akumas.”
Ladybug raised a sceptical brow. “And you are?”
A sharp hiss at their backs made the heroes turn towards the nearest truck, watching as two men helped each other bear the load of a large device off the back of the vehicle. It was shaped like the head of a canon and let out a low hum of energy, almost like a growl. Three metal rings coiled around it, each glowing a dim, bleak red. Ladybug had no idea what it was, but she could practically feel her miraculous, feel Tikki, wince just standing near it. Turning her gaze to the others, she saw them sharing similarly uncomfortable looks at the tech.
Suddenly, she remembered just how many technical marvels Tsurugi Industries had orchestrated in recent years. The idea that they could make something capable of standing up to akumas wasn’t as outlandish as she initially assumed. Hesitantly, Ladybug even briefly thought about how having an army to back them up wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Though she didn’t trust them as far as she could thrown th- As far as non-superpowered Marinette could throw them.
Chalot was clasping his hands together by the time she looked back at him. “Look, like it or not, we’re here to help and we’re here to stay.” The hologram of him was moved to the side, making room for different screens to pop up, each showing a different camera feed zooming in on the ongoing chaos and destruction under the spread of the slime. “And there’s at least half a dozen people trapped in this mess who’d say we don’t have time to argue about if our stick’s big enough.”
Carapace stepped forward aggressively, reaching through the hologram to jab his forefinger into the Lieutenant’s chest. “Look, dude, we already said-”
Ladybug grabbed his shoulder, yanking him back. “The commander’s right.” Everyone, even Chat, looked at her through wide, disbelieving eyes. Sighing, she pushed on forward, putting herself behind Weevil and pointing to the camera feeds. “This akuma isn’t letting up. We don’t have time to mess about.”
There were a few murmurs of weak protest, but nobody had any argument confident enough to dispute the point. With that settled, Ladybug pulled Weevil’s arm up to give the ‘camera’ a more direct look at her face, narrowing her eyes down at the image of Chalot and speaking strictly. “As long as you’re here, you and your guys follow our lead, okay?”
He took a puff of his cigar, the smoke hiding his eyes, like a visual of his mind clouding with thought before disappearing in time for him to find clarity. He gave a firm nod. “It’ll be an honour, Mam.”
With that settled, Ladybug put on her war face, pulling her face tight and her stance strict. “Pegasus and Carapace; you’re on citizen recovery with me.” She belted out with a strong, disciplined voice she’d matured over the years. There was no backtalk from the heroes, they just nodded and accepted their duties, the two moving to stand by Ladybug.
She inclined her head towards Chat, jabbing her thumb upwards towards the rooftops as she spoke. “Chat, you take Viperion and Rena up high, spread out to find the akuma, or at least any potential weak points.” Chat added his own little mock salute before whipping out his staff and stabbing it into the ground, which got Rena rolling her eyes. Viperion, on the other hand, looked more than a little weary of Chat’s method of travel. Unfortunately for him, Chat wasn’t in the mood to wait for explain, looping his arm under Viperion’s shoulder as Rena held on tightly to his, moments before letting his staff rocket them skyward.
Watching the three safely land on the nearest roof, with Viperion looking utterly mortified, Ladybug returned to the horde of soldiers at her beck and call. She sighed to herself, briefly pondering if she’d really be able to handle the burden of having this many people involved. No time to waste, she reminded herself.
Sighing, she spread her arms out wide to gesture to the surrounding area. “Chalot, your men are on ground expansion. That slime is everywhere and limiting our options. Start throwing down debris, break down some walls, build some bridges; whatever you can do, we need more ground.”
The reaction was instant, the troops dispersing to an orchestra of boots scraping against asphalt. No questions, no quips, no antics, just action. Weevil yelled out to the soldiers some formation or tactical code that had soldiers splitting off to grab equipment from the trucks and other surrounds the nearest available buildings, a well-oiled machine going down a list of routines.
“And Vesperia-” Ladybug stopped herself, eyes refocusing on the surroundings activities, searching for a bright shade of yellow that would stick out like a sore thumb against the silver and white colour scheme of the troopers. Her memory doubled back to the moment she dropped down. She hadn’t head counted her team, hadn’t seen a need to, but now she was damn sure she hadn’t seen Vesperia amongst them when she and Chat landed.
She looked to the two remaining heroes. “Hey, where is Vesperia?”
Pegasus shrugged, “She said she was on her way.”
“She’s not been answering her phone.” Carapace added, opening up the communicator inside his shield to show a couple of missed calls dated to a minute before Ladybug arrived on the scene. His eyes widened as he lowered his shield, an uneasy emotion overtaking his gaze. “You don’t think she got caught, do you?”
Ladybug wanted to deny it with something optimistic, that maybe Zoey just couldn’t make it or couldn’t figure out an excuse; but she knew for sure that Vesperia had been on her way, she’d been looking at her position with the rest of the team just before the slime assault started piling up. Ladybug’s fingers curled into a tense fist, the worry and guilt blending together to create a toxic concoction that made her skin itch. Zoey could be out there, bound up and alone wondering where they are. She should send somebody, or she should go herself.
But they didn’t have time for that, did they?
A bitter sigh before Ladybug shook her head. “If she did, there’s nothing we can do but find the akuma and repair everything.” She reminded herself that the slime only attacked her because she was a threat, that she’d seen it capture people without hurting them. As long as they get the akuma in the end, everything will be fine.
Carapace and Pegasus shared uneasy looks, but in each other’s eyes their gazes hardened into acceptance. They nodded, and Ladybug nodded in return. “Everyone’s got their jobs. Let’s go!”
Once more, Ladybug launched herself forward and threw herself into the fray with her fellow heroes not far behind. Weighing her options, she’d decided that Carapace and Pegasus would be the most efficient for search and rescue.
Voyage was the quickest method of travel and didn’t have anything in the way of complications for extracting people. Pegasus used this power efficiently. He had his routine, spawning a portal ahead of him, scanning every nook and cranny for activity before jumping to a different angel with a new portal. In his regular life, Max was a thorough and diligent worker, you let him get a system in order and he will burn through his routines. As a hero, the miraculous only enhanced this.
Rescuing civilians would require putting themselves closest to the aggressive slime, so they’d need shelter’s protection to keep it all at bay. And no one was more perfect for that mantle of protection than Nino. The man was hard-headed, sometimes short-sighted and rather emotional, but that also made him the type of guy who’d stand in front of you when everything’s coming down on you. Carapace, just like his powers, was direct and blunt in his thinking. In this instance, he used his power as stepping stones, creating tiny barriers that wouldn’t drain his kwami too much and jumping across them.
Ladybug had enough experience ferrying people across long distances while hanging from her yoyo to feel confident in her ability to traverse the battlefield while saving people. She’d made a b-line for the side of the shopping centre, planting herself on the walls like a spider and crawling up to the nearest window. All normal entrances into the shopping centre were at slime level, so she had to find an alternative route inside. ‘Sides, she had to admit it felt good to stretch her legs like this.
She trusted the others, but neither second chance nor voyage lent themselves to this part of the operation. They were suited to testing solutions and creating distractions respectively, which Ladybug saw as better spent on the source of all this trouble, and she knew Chat was eager and more than capable for leading his own squad.
The real uneasy factor was their new military friends. Every minute, even as she was balancing atop light posts, or hanging off the walls of the centre’s eighty story build or ducking into windows, Ladybug took the time to turn back and watch the task force at work. As she instructed, they’d taken point at the base of the buildings outlining the perimeter, setting up charges and detonating explosives to collapse walls atop the slime. Some of the soldiers split off to take point on rooftops and bridges, overlooking the scene through binoculars and passing inaudible whispers through their alliance rings.
Turning back to her work, she found herself pulling her body up into the alcove of one of the big, giant windows that sat over the entrance. She never questioned how, against a flat surface, her ladybug gloves managed to find leverage to grip onto, just another one of those things to file under ‘magic nonsense’. But that didn’t stop it from feeling weird when flexing her fingertips against the concrete material, knowing she should at least feel some friction pulling her further as she moved, yet finding nothing; no sensation, no weight, just the acknowledgement that she was moving up.
Pressing herself up against the base of the window and wiping away at the condensation, she managed to spy a trembling family of three curled up inside. An old man in a patchwork coat nursing a younger woman, who clung to him like she feared she’d fall otherwise, while an old woman braced herself on her walking stick to help comfort the weeping woman. The interior of the shopping centre was devoid of lights, just a wide expanse of darkness, it was only with the help of the akuma alert flashing on multiple phones that she could spot the trio.
Knowing there was no way to ease them into this, Ladybug rapped her knuckles against the window, the soft tapping enough to shake the family to attention. A certain warmth washed over her watching their panicked faces melt into relief upon getting a good look at her, and briefly she wondered if her parents ever felt like that when she instantly felt safe under their gaze.
Beaming the biggest, brightest smile she could project, Ladybug waved at them, silently telling them to stay calm and that she was gonna get them out of there. The old lady patted the young woman on the shoulder. Ladybug couldn’t catch what the woman said, but she figured there was a ‘Look who it is!’ sort of comment by the way the woman jovially pointed at her. The weeping woman, their daughter she presumed, wiped away her tears and managed to pull herself to her feet, offering a hand to the old man.
Ladybug gestured for them to move back, mimicking her fist going into the glass to explain why. They took the message quick and shuffled away, giving Ladybug enough room to feel comfortable drawing her fist back and smashing her way through the window.
“Hope I didn’t scare you folks too much,” She dropped in through the new opening, kneeling and holding her hands up with an open gesture. She found this made her look more approachable in stressful situations, something soothing and open about it. “I’m gonna get you guys out of here. The akuma is land locked, so as long as we stick to my altitude, you all be just fine.”
“Oh, such a caring young girl.” The old woman cooed, excitedly pointing to her husband. “See, Albert? I told you, I told you; she’d be here in no time!”
Albert grunted with a small smile, his hand tightly clamping down on the young woman. “I wasn’t saying you were wrong, Ester. I was just hoping we’d get to see that Majesta girlie fly.”
Ester rolled her eyes, “That’s the New York heroes, Albie.”
“Have you seen anyone else around?”
“No, not really.” Ester said, “Everyone went straight out the doors when that young man started… Well, leaking. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I got locked in the bathroom during all the commotion and these two had to come back looking for me. Hehe.”
While Ladybug wanted to chuckle at the cute couple, she found her eyes trained on the young woman. The crying had stopped, but the girl was clinging tightly to her father, looking more than a little shaken. “Are you alright, Miss?”
Ladybug tried to get closer, but the moment she reached out for the girl, the girl yelped, jumping behind her father like a child hiding from a monster. “N-Nothing’s alright. It’s over, it’s all over.”
Marinette wanted to sigh, but Ladybug had to show a strong front. “I understand akuma attacks can be scary. Believe it or not, I’m scared too even on my best days. But there’s no need to worry. I’ve been doing this for years, everything’s gonna be okay.”
“Vanessa, dear. It’s all right. Listen to Ladybug, she knows what she’s talking about.” Ester took one arm while Albert took the other, both rubbing Vanessa’s back. “I’m sorry about all this, she’s been paranoid ever since she started see this fortune teller.”
Albert shook his head, grunting, “I’ll tell you what, that man peddles nothing but misery and doomsday prophies to freak out our poor girl here.”
“But everything he said came true!” Vanessa cried, trembling still. “All of my electronics died. We got stuck in the shopping centre. My stomach’s acting up.”
Ladybug tried to speak, but Vanessa’s arm shot out and practically wiped her voice, aggressively pointing an accusatory finger at Ladybug. “He said the hero of Paris will reveal her true face, he said. That she’ll betray everybody. And then… And then… The world’s gonna end.”
And cats and dogs will be living together. Mass hysteria. Ladybug rolled the thought around in the back of her mind, torn between her heart going out to the terrified woman and cursing the dollar store fraud who decided to take advantage of this woman’s paranoia to slander her. “Vanessa, I need you to forget the future for a minute and focus on the now. If we don’t get you and your family out of here, every bad omen you’ve seen will come true.” Slowly, she reached forward, holding out her hand, just asking Vanessa to trust her for a minute or two. “If something bad is gonna happen, it happens, but right now we can make something good happen. Will you work with me and help get your folks out of here?”
After a long enough pause that Ladybug couldn’t help but tune her ears to the sound of fighting outside, Vanessa’s cautiously let her hand move forward and slip into Ladybug’s palm. “I guess… For now…”
“You’re doing a great job, Vanessa.” Ladybug smiled at her, looking between the two old people with a slight furrowed brow. “Are you two gonna be okay on my back? I can carry you, but I don’t want you two bustin’ a hip because of me.”
Albert shook his head, “Don’t you worry ‘bout us, young’un. These old dogs got quite a pep in our step, I’ll tell ya.”
Suddenly, Ladybug whipped around, pushing past the three before her mind could even register what her body was up to. Her instincts pushed her forward, alerted once more. It was that sensation from earlier, of eyes upon her that she had to find, had to expose before they… Before something terrible happened, her thoughtless heart told her.
“You’re sure you haven’t seen anyone else?” Ladybug didn’t realize how breathless she sounded until she spoke, staring out into the vast emptiness of the centre’s interior. No figures to see, no clues to infer from, no sign of life, just a lot of rubble and collapsed pathways.
What are you trying to tell me, Tikki?
“We were the last ones out, I swear.” Ester said, the worry in her tone immediately making guilt take root in Ladybug’s stomach.
What am I doing? Ladybug growled to herself. This is no time to be chasing shadows. The real threat’s out there, and these people need to get to safety. The feeling did not fade fast this time, but Ladybug pushed it down, ignored it, denied it as she turned back to the civilians.
As her dad often told her, when it comes to anything, the hardest part is always getting out the door. Getting the three to calm down and trust her had been hard, but the moment Ladybug had the trio securely wrapped around her and her yoyo was tightly wrapped around the lamp post on the other side of the car park, it was smooth sailing.
However, that was the extent of convenience this day was willing to offer as, not even a minute after she saw the three civilians led away to an evacuation truck a roar ripped through her ear drums, cracking down on the area like thunder. Ladybug whipped around just in time to catch Carapace’s body, skipping across the car park like a stone across a pond and landing in her arms with a splatter of slime burning into his cheek.
Over the sea of slime, the viscous substance bubbled and surged, giving birth to a grotesque spectacle at its center. From the heart of the quivering mass, wave upon wave of gunk folded atop one another, merging until a bulbous shape rose to the surface. This shape grew bigger, colossal even, an oblong head sitting atop a thinner body; a sickly green, translucent squid-like creature with thick, wet tendrils bursting at the base.
What immediately drew Ladybug’s eye was the giant glowing eye that floated within the centre of the head, behind the see-through surface. An eye that had human arms and spindly legs sticking out of it, that the rushing current of the ‘squid’s’ skin seemed to revolve around. Every movement of the squid’s body followed the tugging of the eye.
Carapace, groaning as he slipped out of her arms and gazed up at their new friend, sheepishly said “I guess we found the akuma.”
Along its body it sported dark, yellow pods. These pods, with an almost veiny flesh-like texture, pulsated with golden energy, each spark briefly showcasing a human silhouette caged within.
Ladybug grit her teeth, “It has hostages.”
The tendrils thrashed about trying to slap down the constantly moving forms of Pegasus and Chat Noir – kicking up tidal waves of slime that crashed against the concrete shore Ladybug stood atop, splashing droplets of hissing, boiling sludge across her feet.
Each movement caused the pods to whip back and forth, jiggling like loose skin. Carapace cringed at the sight. “Ew, we’re gonna need a long shower after this.”
Ladybug caught Chat’s eye as he darted between fuming tentacles. Flushed skin glazed with sweat betrayed the aches of all the exertion he was putting himself through, but he still managed to grin through it all and send her back a thumbs up. She nodded and turned her attention over to Chalot’s men, finding them having paused their work to take in the new direct threat. A few of them looked to their weapons hanging from the open trucks, but they realized just as she did that physical attacks and ballistic trauma weren’t going to have much effect on such a squishy creature; especially when the squid had meat shields to hold over them.
For now, their priority needed to be rescuing those prisoners.
“Weevil, get a landing zone clear.” She called out to the lieutenant, snapping open her bug phone to get the team online. “Pegasus, we need to extract those pods from its back. Prepare to make some portals. Rena will help you carry the pods through the portal.”
The lieutenant made some quick gestures to the men across the way, causing them to double back to where their strange device sat. In Ladybug’s absence, the device had been outfitted with wires that led back into the truck, presumably to a power supply stored within, lighting up the rings around the base with a green hue. Despite the appearance of a canon’s barrel, they didn’t point it at the akuma to fire, instead two soldiers ducked under the tip and lifted it up, revealing the device to be split in three sections. The top two were pushed to aim skyward, leaving the bottom now opened to reveal a myriad of tiny screens and indicators in a circular base.
One crouched down by the device, yanking a ring down to the bottom and causing a lever to jump out of it. The other scrutinized whatever the small screens were telling him before looking back to Weevil and giving a thumbs up.
Weevil looked to Ladybug. “You might wanna get some distance, Mam. About twenty meters.”
Before she could ask why, that familiar, uncomfortable sensation radiated from her miraculous again. That sickly chill the device caused to her, and only her, like an unknown sickness taking root in her stomach. Whatever the device was, it clearly interfered with her miraculous connection. She didn’t want to imagine what that sensation would turn into when the device was fully online. So, she followed his suggestion and launched herself onto a nearby rooftop with Carapace holding onto her hips, meeting Viperon and Rena where she landed.
She turned around just in time to witness them pull the lever. A dissonant cacophony of unholy wails, pitched up and distorted into violent screeches, reverberated through the air with a malevolent intensity, stretching its discordant tendrils to every corner of the car park. It wasn’t just a harsh sound that stung her ear drums, it was a viscous shriek that shook her body ragged, leaving her to collide with Rena’s shoulder in the aftermath.
Carapace had ended up on the floor, softly groaning as he cupped his hands over his ears. “Talk about heavy metal. Ow.”
“Did you guys feel that?” Viperon gasped.
“That pain in our miraculous? I’m still feeling it.” Rena crouched down to help Carapace to his feet, hissing under her breath. “What do you think it is?”
The device now stood at it’s full height, the two sections splitting apart to extend its length and firing a constant beam of golden energy into the air. That energy split apart at a certain height, falling back to earth in a shower of yellow that covered a wide area, forming a shield.
“The akuma doesn’t like it either.” Ladybug pointed to the concrete shore, the slime shrinking away from the boundaries of the barrier like a shadow fleeing from the light.
Pegasus and Chat used the akuma’s distracted state to make their way to the group, landing just beside Rena and Carapace. Pegasus peered over the edge of the rooftop, his inquisitive gaze torn between being intrigued by the technology and horrified by the possibility. “My guess, strictly from the visuals and our reactions, is that they’ve managed to find a way of disrupting the unique energies of our miraculous.”
“Spooky.” Carapace said, sharing an uneasy look with Viperon. “How’d they managed that without a miraculous of their own?”
Chat idly picked his teeth with his claws, curious. “Is this what sentimonsters feel like when I cataclysm them?”
“Whatever it is, let’s just all make sure to stay out of it, huh?” Said Viperion.
Ladybug nodded, “Yeah, there’s no telling what that might do to us or our powers if we get caught in that field. Something tells me that these guys haven’t exactly had a chance to test it out on holders.”
She ripped her gaze away from the soldiers, returning her attention to the colossal akuma. While the creature was clearly shaken by the sudden presence of the device, it was quickly recovering it’s footing, the slime pulling back and stacking itself up the side of the buildings, rising until the squid had three small walls around it’s body.
Propping up her foot on the edge of the roof, Ladybug called back to Viperion. “Viperion, start second chance on my mark.” She signalled for the rest of the team to disperse across the rooftops, surrounding the creature on as many sides as they could find land. While she knew it was unlikely that charging in on the akuma was going to result in any damage, she hoped at least, with the help of second chance, they could pressure their foe into revealing any weaknesses or opportunities.
Chat vaulted himself over the akuma to place himself on the opposing building, Carapace and Rena took position on either side of the task force’s barrier, and Pegasus was situated on the shopping centre’s roof, giving him the highest vantage point over the battlefield. It made for the best position for him to jump in and portal people out in an emergency, covering all their bases.
As she prepared to start the attack, she noted Chalot’s forces spreading to the surrounding area as well, carrying bulky weapons that looked more like oversized megaphones than rifles. She caught snippets of conversation from the men who took position on the upper floors of the structure she stood upon, identifying their weapons as ‘Pulse Rifles’. Ladybug gestured to Viperion, not looking to see him give any reply, just hearing the soft reverb of him activating his miraculous watch as she launched herself off her perch.
Diving into the car park, the world turned into a jungle of concrete, thick with building-shaped trees that invaded her vision with thickets of branches. Lamp posts fallen from the upper layers, broken rebar sticking out of the ruins of destroyed buildings, advertisem*nts hanging from the walls – a world of possible anchors for her yoyo to grapple to. While the slime may try its damndest to spread, this was her domain.
Compared to before in the depths of the consumed, confined street, Ladybug was gifted a wide berth to swing through. No more did she feel limited as the tentacles on her side rose up and shot out at her, she was free to dive, duke and dance through the vicious onslaught that only came off as sluggish in comparison to the swift and decisive moves that carried her across the sky.
It helped that Carapace, who dived shield first into the make-shift walls and successfully smashed through them, held the lion’s share of the akuma’s attacks. For a turtle-based superhero whose abilities were based around tanking damage, Nino made for a surprisingly mobile and nimble fighter. She always wondered if Master Fu had shared those traits and skills before his body succumbed to age. But observing him relentlessly charge against the tide of slime with his barrier up, even knocking the main body back a little, Ladybug reminded herself that Nino’s greatest strength, and in some matters his greatest weakness, was his stubbornness.
Right now, the strategies were a process of elimination, and she was keen to get the obvious out of the way. Years of experience in the digital space of video games gave her one decisive action; try walloping the bugger in the obvious glowing weak spot. From that, they’d gauge if they could harm the creature, whether they could piss off the creature, and thus if the akuma could be lured.
Ladybug snagged her yoyo around two pillars holding up one of those overlook bridges that led into the shopping centre’s upper floors, pulling her yoyo until the near unbreakable string was tight enough to cut into the stone. She flipped herself over, grabbing hold of the taught wire and pulling it to it’s limits, the pillars her human sized bow and her acting as the arrow.
Letting go was a simple matter, but she was not prepared for the sheer force that slammed into her back as she stole the momentum from the apex of the string’s rebound. In a matter of seconds, she had turned from little girl into a canon ball shooting through the air. There was no course correcting, no time to think or prepare, just the big glowing target she was about to collide headfirst with.
Seconds before impact she caught sight of a black blur on the other side, shooting towards her on the end of his metal pole and a crackling green energy in hand. For a moment, just as her body felt the slime flap and rip itself apart upon impact, she caught Chat Noir’s eye and his cheeky wink – it was as if he knew that he’d just miss her by an inch and a second. He was right, of course, the two’s faces only briefly meeting before they separated and ended up on opposite sides, the slime monster having a new superhero shaped hole in it’s head.
Victory was short lived, and not just because she could feel whatever gunk had stuck to her burning through her suit. Her hand caught the end of some broken pipes leaning over the battlefield, leaving her enough leverage to reorientate herself and drop down to a balcony below. Turning around, she found the rest of the squid’s body dissolving before her very eyes, sinking back into the depths of its own mass like it was being sucked into the ground by an invisible vacuum.
“Ladybug, be careful, he can move through the slime.” Viperion yelled in her ear, “He’s gonna use it to ambush you from behind.”
Again, victory was short lived. And yet she couldn’t help but grin at the challenge, adrenaline surging through her body with a free dopamine hit.
She dived off the balcony mere seconds before a roar called out from below, turning herself in free fall to witness the squid’s reformed body smash into the balcony, chunks of the building ripping clean off and sticking to the slime like stone warts.
Chat Noir’s staff caught her before she could fall too far, pulling her onto a new island forged entirely from all the rubble the akuma had be thrashing about with every attack. “The nerve! This guy doesn’t banter with us, he doesn’t have a villain name and now he’s taking cheap shots.”
Rena tutted over the comms with a tone that suggested she was holding back a laugh. “The new Hawkmoth sure knows how to pick a lame akuma, huh?”
It took Chat pointing back towards where the akuma had originally disappeared for her to realize why Rena sounded so confident. While the akuma had protected its, for lack of a better word, heart by diving back into itself, the people pods had not been taken along for the ride, instead being left adrift in the middle of the park. And Rena Rogue had not hesitated to take advantage of this, jumping in and kicking the pods into Pegasus’ portals like it was a game of soccer, one goal after another until they were completely cleared from the field.
Rena joined Pegasus back on the roof, the two slapping their hands together and singing out in unison. “Hostages secure. Suck it, slime boy!”
There came a high pitch screech that echoed from every pour of the slime, the squid slamming it’s tentacles down on the ground, painful ripples turning into full blown waves of green charging at every living thing in it’s path.
Ladybug and Chat worked in sync, leaping into the air and kicking off each other’s feet, a physics defying impossibility only realized through the magic of the miraculous, to push each other higher and find new footing on the cracks wrapping around the destroyed structures.
Ladybug whistled, looking down at the angry tides crashing violently against where they were, the squid roaring at another missed shot. “Seems our little slime boy is making waves.”
“Bugaboo, that was terrible.” Chat said with the driest tone she’d ever heard from the man, “Leave the pun-menship to the pun-fessionals.”
She rolled her eyes, and his sombre scowl broke into a grin.
Soldiers propped their rifles up on window frames above the two heroes, a loud, electrical hum signalling some sort of charge at the rifles’ barrels lit up. A tight formation filling the outskirts of the perimeter, each letting off a charged shot accompanied by the sharp whine Ladybug likened to a police siren’s wail. The rounds weren’t bullets, they were sharp, jutting lines, like a visualisation of sound solidified in gold, that came out in bursts shaped just like the megaphone-looking cone they came from.
The golden waves proved effective, causing the slime to pucker and bubble upon impact, reminding Ladybug of the Wicked Witch melting. The squid reeled back, it’s screeches growing shorter and scratchier, as if it were panting between breaths. It was angry, it was desperate, practically feral; but it was also showing signs of fatigue. If wearing it out was a possibility, they had more of an advantage against it than she initially thought.
Suddenly, the creature lunged forward, dropping down and smacking against its own slime with a wet, slap that sounded and looked painful. A chunk of its mass rejoined the rest of it, yanked under the surface, thrusted forward, and then, with significantly more tension and momentum behind it, catapulted in a missile-like shape.
The slime artillery fire was too quick for the heroes or the soldiers to react right away, slamming into the building above them and feeding itself inside through every crack the pulsating slime could find. It was a rapid river rushing through the inside, ripping every soldier it met off their feet and viscously booting them out. Some soldiers didn’t even get the mercy of being thrown out the window, their bodies letting out an audible crack as they were slammed through the walls in an explosion of dust and splinters.
Chat reacted faster than her, propelling himself towards the falling soldiers, tackling them midair and slamming them down into the closest solid landmass he could find. They would be healing from this encounter in the days to come, but it saved them far a far more fatal fate. Honestly, not to insult her partner’s ability, but Ladybug immediate noted how easy the feat was made. No additional fire or tendrils trying to catch Chat with his back turned. Any other akuma would have seen that as a clear opportunity to take a cheap shot, but this desperate beast didn’t so much as attempt it.
Her eyes turned to the squid, expecting to see the rest of the heroes managing to distract it while Chat made the save. In a way, the creature was distracted. It wasn’t paying attention to the heroes scrambling to help evacuate their own side’s wounded soldiers. In fact, the slime was receding from those areas.
“I’ve got ‘em!” She could imagine Chat’s wide, co*cky grin as he called out to her. She also pictured it, in that moment, vanishing.
Chat Noir, at the same time as her, realized that the creature’s attention was entirely on her.
“Milady, look out!”
But it was too late, the attack was instant and overwhelming. The ground around her for at least twenty meters exploded, stream after stream of ooze bursting from the underground all around her, caging her in. She could do nothing but gape before the floor beneath her very feet quaked, trembled and then ripped itself apart to let the finale burst of sludge slammed into her.
Pain, an all-encompassing and merciless force, surged through her nerve endings like a tidal wave of torment. As far as she was concerned, her body was on fire and no manner of miraculous could protect her from the scalding, oppressive embrace tearing about her lungs. The raging inferno was such an overwhelming sensation that her brain simply short circuited, protecting itself from the acknowledgement of pain, protecting her from the question of it would end, or if it would be her end.
She blacked out.
When she woke up, there were no lasting scars, no visible damage, just the memory of it spreading dull aches throughout her body and the copper taste of dried blood on her lips.
It took her a moment to get her bearings, to note that she could still hear the fighting continuing outside, that she was indeed not outside herself. Getting up, she recognised the spot she’d found the three civilians hiding in, confirming it further when she looked to her right to find a familiar window now blocked off by debris and rubble brought down due to her smashing entrance.
The blast must have knocked her back into the shopping centre. She groaned, trying to find the simplest of comforts in the fact that she was still alive, even if that meant feeling how busted her internal organs were. “This day is never going to end, is it?”
Chat’s panicked cry came crackling over her phone. “Are you alright, Ladybug?”
I must have only been out for a few seconds. She sighed. A small relief.
“My prides completely shattered, but I’m intact.” She said in a low groan. “I’ll be right there.”
Her pace, she noted as she dragged herself back over to the window, was slow and plodding, her muscles resisting her every step of the way. The sudden blunt force trauma induced reboot has knocked her adrenaline boost right out of her system, leaving behind a numbing ache that weighed down on her lungs and joints like an anchor.
Over the rim of the wreckage blocking her path she could see glimpses of the outside shine through. The prospect of removing the wreckage manually was not a promising one, so she was all the more relieved when she caught the brief sight of Chat Noir passing by the window, a fresh cataclysm in hand.
He called to her, “Don’t worry, Bugaboo, I’ll have you out of there in no time.”
Sadly, that was when Tikki screamed the loudest. Look. Out.
An inch. The shot missed her head by an inch.
It only missed her because she tried to whip around, instead resigning her to simply having her ear drums blown out by the high-pitched metal screech of the bullet shredding the air in its path. Somehow, even before it hit anything solid, before it started glowing, before she could smell the smoke – she knew it would explode.
She heard Chat’s pained scream first.
Before her eyes, she witnessed that tiny bullet transform into a massive bomb, blasting her back with fire and shrapnel. It left her on her back again, black and blue all over, but she quickly found that it also saved her from being crushed to death. The shockwave tore down the wreckage, as well as the walls, the ceiling, everything around her was whittled to their weakest point and crumbled under the weight of the world they were supporting.
It wasn’t just a small, contained explosion. It was a detonation, a domino effect that knocked down a long chain that spread throughout the entire shopping centre. This building was no coincidence, it was a staging area for a greater design; the akuma was just the bait.
The dark abyss was gone, burned away and replaced with pillars of fire and brimstone that illuminated the soon-to-be-derelict shopping centre with a hellish red overhaul. Struggling to her feet, gasping for air, one hand pressed down against a rib she was sure had snapped during her rough landing, she found her eyes landing on the store in front of her.
She was convinced some cosmic force in the universe had a wretched sense of humour, that the universe was mocking her, when she found a cartoon devil in a chef’s hat with the slogan ‘Can you handle the heat?’ staring back at her.
She fell limp against the store front as she fumbled for her phone, flipping it open just to hear Rena’s voice, strained and shaking. “Holy cr- Chat! Control your cataclysm.”
Ladybug cringed; it must have looked like the explosion happened just as Chat went to cataclysm the wreckage. He’d never blown anything up before using it, but it wasn’t a stretch to think he could possibly set off an explosion indirectly.
“Hey, that wasn’t me!” Chat spat back, breathless. “Ladybug?”
Her throat ached trying to hold back a dry cough, unable to take her voice above a slow whisper. “He’s right, that wasn’t him. The blast came from…” For a moment, her voice just cut out, as if someone had reached down her throat and yanked it out of her. Tikki’s warning, her repeat warnings, came back to her at full force. “Inside.”
Someone had tried to shoot her, and they’d been waiting a long time to line up their shot. Her body felt jolted to life by this reminder, jumping to her feet and leaving the support of the wall to sweep her gaze over the immediate area. She found the energy to power forward, marching down the crumbling hallway, the fire – spreading through the walls like roots digging deep into the ground – flanking her on either side.
This time, the feeling didn’t fade, because this time she caught the one watching. They’d scurried away, diving around the corner with a dark coat hanging off their back, but she saw them, she confirmed they were real. They’d operated in the shadows, behind the cover of chaos, up to now, but their last stunt left nothing for them to hide behind but distance. I’ve got you now, you clown.
“Someone’s been following me since this all started.” She knew it in her bones, she was lured here, cut off from the rest of the group for a reason. Her mind wondered back to Slime Boy, how the squid had suddenly lost all interest in the people attacking it just to set her up, to ensure she, and she alone, ended up here. “And the akuma threw me in here on purpose.”
“The akuma victim is out here, who else would attack you?” Carapace said.
It was a trap.
Rena gasped, “You don’t think?”
There was a short list of candidates for who’d use an akuma to get a one-to-one meeting with Ladybug.
“The new butterfly user is finally getting in on the action.”
It was a trap, and she wanted to walk into it. The last loose end, the last complication and Nooroo were within arm’s reach. She could end it all here if she played her cards right, but was she willing to take that gamble? Gritting her teeth, the image of the akuma outside tossing around her teammates, the idea of what could unfold if that creature was left unattended, gave her pause. Was the trap set to get her alone, or was it to stop her from aiding her friends during a crucial moment where Ladybug’s powers were specifically suited?
Could she really afford to chase down this mystery stalker, even if it was for finishing this once and for all?
A piercing, high-pitched wail cut through the air. A call from the universe itself that silenced all internal debate.
“What was that?” said Viperion, the sound probably coming off as a low, static growl over their phones.
“That was a scream.” Chat’s voice interjected with a rare hardness. “A little girl’s scream.” Ladybug could picture his ears twitching, his enhanced wracking his body with tension. She knew what he was going to say, that he took the message loud and clear, before he said it. Yet, that one simple word felt heavy on her ears. “Go.”
“But Chat-” Her protests were weak. There was doubt to be sure, she’d always have that worry in the back of her mind that her absence would cost them, but that doubt couldn’t compare to the hope blooming in her heart. A special sort of hope, the anticipation of being stuck in a song’s looping, repetitive chorus just waiting for the beat to finally drop. Hope that the way out, that had been constantly obscured by complications and mystery, might finally be in sight.
Besides, that’s why she and Chat assembled a semi-permanent team in the first place, to have enough capable and trustworthy help on hand that they didn’t have to make everything an either-or choice. They weren’t alone anymore, they could delegate.
“We can handle to akuma just fine.” If it weren’t for Chat’s distinctive voice, minus the usual teasing charm, Ladybug would have thought she was just listening to her own defences out loud. “There’s a little girl’s life at stake, and you have the chance to end all this right now. Go after ‘em.”
She adopted a confident smile, brokered from the determination burning in her eyes. “Don’t have too much fun, Kitty.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Milady.”
Marinette was a girl of crippling doubt and anxiety. Even Ladybug’s self-of-esteem took a hit while under the immense pressure of the mantle. However, neither identity could talk themselves out of the confidence boost that Chat Noir gave them every day.
“Stay safe.”
If only she knew how big a mistake this was.
