Chapter Text
First day of school. Ten thought, pausing a moment to take in the face of the building.
Well, the last first day of school he'd have here. It felt strange to be a senior— the title put a weight on his shoulders, like a heavy cloak, which, while not unpleasant, felt a little bit suffocating.
"Well, Tikki, this is it." Ten murmured quietly into the hood of his jacket, where Tikki was hidden. "I'm officially a senior now. God, I'm old now."
"Don't worry, Ten, you'll be fine!" reassured the red blob from where she was snuggled up inside his hood. "I'm thousands of years old and you don't hear me complaining about it. You're still young! You have plenty of time to make your dreams a reality!"
Ten smiled. "Thanks, Tikki."
He was a bit early, and when he entered his classroom, he saw that only a few other people were there. Taeyong and Doyoung had already arrived, with Doyoung sitting in the first row and Taeyong in the seat directly behind him. Ten fought the urge to roll his eyes a little. Of course Doyoung would be here bright and early to snag a front row seat. The two of them were bickering over something or other, as they always were, but they looked up as he made his way to claim the seat next to Taeyong.
"Ten!" Taeyong exclaimed, standing up to give him a tight hug. "I haven't seen you in so long!"
Ten laughed as he returned the hug. "It's good to get back to seeing you on a regular basis too, even if it has to be through school."
"You two literally video call all the time." Doyoung interjected.
Ten stuck his tongue out at Doyoung. "Guess I'm just his favorite best friend."
Doyoung was about to say something back before Taeyong interrupted. "It's not that! It's just that Doyoung and I hung out a lot over the summer, but Ten was always busy with his fancy fashion internship!"
Ten laughed. "It's not that fancy, Taeyong, but whatever. Besides, Doyoung, don't act like you didn't miss me too!"
Doyoung scoffed. "You? Never. Taeyong and I managed just fine with you. It would've been nice to see Johnny, though."
"Oh yeah, why isn't he here yet?" Taeyong asked, craning his neck to look through the doorway. "He's usually here by now. I haven't seen him in a while either!"
"Speak of the devil," quipped Ten as he spotted Johnny approaching from down the hallway. "Johnny!"
"Hey!" Johnny waved, breaking into a big smile as he jogged over and dumped his bag on the seat next to Doyoung.
Ten hadn't seen Johnny in person all summer, although they had video called several times. Both of them had been busy: Ten with his competitive fashion design internship and secret superhero-ing, and Johnny with his photography internship and modeling gigs. Finding times where the both of them were available and not dead tired had been difficult, and Ten was glad that he was back to seeing Johnny five days a week again.
Johnny laughed as Taeyong attacked him with a hug. "Hi, Taeyong, nice to see you too. Yes, I'm doing great, thanks for asking." He then turned to Ten, opening his arms for a hug.
Ten shuffled over and wrapped his arms around Johnny for a quick hug. In his opinion, Johnny gave the best hugs, but perhaps he was biased.
He pulled back and looked Johnny over. "You asshole, did you get taller?"
Johnny chuckled sheepishly. "I don't know? I didn't check?"
Doyoung stood up to eye Johnny for a moment, then gave him a quick hug. "I think you did," he concluded as he sat back down.
"Ugh, I can't stand you." Ten huffed, plopping back down in his seat. Still, hearing Johnny's warm laughter for the first time in months, it was hard for him to keep pretending to be annoyed. Seeing that smile in real life was ten times brighter than seeing it plastered on billboards all across Paris.
"So, guys. How are you all feeling about senior year?"
Taeyong groaned, head thunking onto his desk. "Don't even get me started."
Ten was in the bathroom during lunch when the akuma alarm rang. He groaned as he fished his phone out of his pocket to silence the blaring alert.
"Seriously? On the first day of school?"
Tikki shrugged as she phased out of his backpack. "You know Hawkmoth waits for no one!"
"Yeah, yeah. Well, at least I don't have to come up with some ridiculous reason to slip away right now." He took a deep breath. "Okay. Tikki, spots on!"
Now clad in magical red spandex with black spots, he shimmied open the bathroom window, aimed his yoyo at the nearest chimney, and swung his way up onto the rooftops.
Seconds later, he was joined by a blur of black spandex and cat ears— his partner, Chat Noir.
"Hello, my darling bugaboo," he drawled. "How are you on this fine morning?"
Ten laughed, shaking his head at Chat's antics. "It was going to be a nice day until the akuma came. Come on, let's wrap this up fast! I was in the middle of lunch and I want to finish it before my food gets cold." He aimed his yoyo in the direction of the rampaging akuma and took off, not sparing a glance behind him. He knew Chat would be following him.
Chat laughed. "Your wish is my command," he said with a wink, vaulting himself so that he was running parallel to her on the rooftops. They were starting to approach the circle of destruction and could see the culprit standing in the middle of it all, hands on her hips as she waited for their approach.
"Ladybug! Chat Noir! Give me your Miraculous!"
The two of them ducked behind a chimney to hide for a moment and assess the situation. "Any idea what happened so far?" Ten asked.
Chat shook his head. "Nope. Hold on, I'm checking the news broadcast to see if they've said anything."
Ten nodded and turned to survey the wreckage. Something seemed off about it, but he wasn't sure what. Smoking heaps of cars were all piled up on top of each other, and many of the buildings had chunks taken out of them from explosions. Some of them looked like they shouldn't even be standing—
"News broadcasts haven't totally figured it out, but they said it's making things behave weirdly. And people, too. Check out this clip of people running away from the akuma after being hit." Chat turned his baton screen around to show Ten a video of people running, but it looked like their legs were strangely blurred, like they were moving so fast that their legs appeared in multiple places at the same time.
Ten squinted at the video. "Huh. That is... so weird. What even is that?"
Chat shrugged. "Beats me." He flipped the cover closed so that it went back to being a regular baton again.
"Hellooooo! I know you're out there somewhere!" The girl stomped her foot and fired up something from her arm, which hit a nearby building. The resulting shrapnel was blown hundreds of feet in the air, and the nearby pile of cars jumped a few feet off the ground from the impact.
Chat whistled. "Shit. That's powerful. I really don't wanna get hit by that." He stood up, stretching his arms over his head in preparation. "Well, bugaboo, what do you think? Usual plan?"
Ten nodded. "Yeah, go ahead. Be careful, though. Those blasts look nasty."
Chat nodded, giving a smirk and a salute before vaulting himself into the air and bringing his baton down to attack the akumatized girl.
Ten moved out of hiding and swung around the perimeter of the area, trying to swing close enough to catch a glimpse of something that might be the akumatized object. After almost three years of fighting akuma together, he and Chat Noir had developed a fairly effective system for dealing with unknown threats. Chat was good at distracting the akuma, through a combination of his fighting skills and quips, while Ten was better at hanging back and analyzing the situation.
"So, what's got you all worked up today, hm?" Chat asked from his perch up on another rooftop.
"GIVE ME YOUR MIRACULOUS!"
"Come on, man, that's not very nice. You could've just told me you didn't want to talk." He said as he went in for another strike. The girl counterattacked with a blast that forced Chat to duck out of the way.
"Hah! You won't be able to sneak up on the Cartooninator that easily!"
"Cartooninator, huh? Interesting name you got there. Mind telling me where it came from?"
The Cartooninator opened her mouth to answer, but stopped as she seemed to notice something.
Ten followed the Cartooninator's line of sight and swore under his breath when he saw the person hiding behind the rubble. Donghyuck, runner of the Ladyblog, was crouched behind a hunk of concrete with his phone out— no doubt to record footage of the fight so he could post on the Ladyblog later. Chat seemed to have noticed too, because he started yelling to distract the Cartooninator from the civilian. "Hey! Eyes over here!" he called, as the Cartooninator prepared to launch a blast at Donghyuck. Chat swung his baton to land a direct hit on her head, forcing her to stumble and misdirect her aim to hit another building. At the same time, Ten swung in with his yoyo to grab the pesky civilian and pull him to safety.
"That was awesome!" Donghyuck exclaimed the moment Ten set him down.
"No! It was not awesome! You—" Ten paused a moment to wonder if he was allowed to swear in front of freshmen. "You freaking idiot! You could've gotten seriously hurt! How many times do I need to tell you to stay away from the akuma attacks!"
Donghyuck rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, okay. Jeez, you're like my mom. You already know I'm not going to stop, so you might as well just skip the lecture."
There was a crunch of footsteps on broken glass, and Ten turned to see Jeno, one of Donghyuck's friends, jogging up to them. "Come on, Hyuck, let's go!" he called. "You've gotten enough footage for today, c'mon."
Ten sighed and offered Jeno a half smile before turning back to Donghyuck. "Well, now that your responsible half is here, I can finally go back to the fight. Bug out!"
Ten swung his way back to where the fight was taking place. While Chat looked like he was doing a decent job battling the akuma, Ten was sure that he was getting tired. But as he swung closer, he realized something seemed... off about Chat's movements.
First of all, he was battling her from the ground. Although this wasn't totally unusual, he didn't seem to be jumping up to attack her from above or to be using his baton to vault himself places. His movement seemed slower, too— not molasses slow, but regular person speed instead of the superhuman speed they usually moved with. His normally brown hair was now black with soot. Without superspeed, he was clearly on the defensive, using the baton to block the Cartooninator's attacks and attempts to grab his ring.
Ten swung in and wrapped his yoyo around the Cartooninator's arm just as she was about to make another grab for Chat's hand. Chat looked up with a relieved grin. "Nice save, LB!" He darted backwards, and Ten let go of the Cartooninator's arm so he could grab Chat and swing the both of them up onto the nearest rooftop.
"Any more info on her powers? Also, what happened to you?" Ten asked worriedly.
Chat smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, I got hit by one of her blasts. Knocked me back a bunch and blew up a ton of shit around me, but the blast didn't actually hurt at all? I feel totally fine. I got hit by a lot of the shrapnel that blew up, but my suit protected me from most of it." He paused, thinking. "Also, nothing caught on fire but somehow I have a ton of soot in my hair?"
Ten brushed his fingers through Chat's hair (which, wow, was very soft), rubbing some of the soot between his fingers. "Huh. I mean, it looks like real soot to me."
"Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with that. But I think I kinda figured out what her powers are— it has something to do with manipulating physics, I think. And it kind of overrode my magical suit physics, which is why I can't jump super high anymore. And also, with all those dramatic explosions? Did you notice that each time something explodes, all of the cars that get thrown into the air somehow land in a stack on top of each other?"
Ten paused. "Wait, what? No, I didn't notice that. That is so weird."
"Also, I think I might know where the akuma is? I think it's in her sweatshirt, since she called herself the Cartooninator and the shirt has some cartoon characters on it. But I have no idea what that has to do with the physics manipulation thing."
"Oh! I've got it!" Ten grinned. "Cartoon physics!"
Chat frowned. "What's that?"
"Don't worry about it." Ten dismissed. "We don't have time. Lucky Charm!" he called, throwing his yoyo up to cast the magic power. In his arms landed a large, polka-dotted trampoline.
"What the hell am I supposed to do with this?"
After they'd successfully carried out Ten's plan (which involved the trampoline, a movie poster from the theater across the street, a pair of scissors, and Chat running off of rooftops with his eyes closed so he wouldn't fall) and comforted the akumatized victim (a freshman who had been bullied about liking the cartoon on her sweater), the two of them finally stopped to catch a breath on another rooftop.
"Well," Chat finally said. "I think your lunch break is probably over by now. Sorry, LB."
Chat looked genuinely apologetic about it. Ten shook his head and rolled his eyes with a smile. "It's fine, you stupid cat. Don't worry about it. My teacher will probably let me eat in class."
Chat hummed. "Well, that's good." He said, cracking a grin. "Wouldn't want you to starve. What would Paris do without its stunning, intelligent, charismatic Ladybug?"
Ten laughed. "Shut up, you flirt." A warning beep from his earrings alerted him that his transformation was about to time out. "Well, I gotta get going soon. Pound it?" He asked, offering his fist for a fist bump.
"Pound it!" Chat replied, knocking his knuckles gently against Ten's. "Until we meet again, my favorite bugaboy."
Ten laughed, the endearment familiar to him by now. "See you around, kittycat. Bug out!"