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Ladybug stumbled over the rubble, catching herself on a broken support pillar of some sort. The entire building was in shambles, stone and concrete, broken metal scaffolding, glass shards all over the remains of the marble floor.
It wasn’t any major landmark, for once, nor an important piece of infrastructure or anything most people would have a personal attachment to. A large office building, eight stories, an anonymous rectangle on the skyline, now half-crumbled to oblivion.
“She really did a number on this one, huh,” Ladybug muttered aloud, nudging a large chunk of ceiling with her foot.
“Well,” said Chat Noir, peering at the damage where the stairs had once been, “More like she did a number on me , and then I did a number on this one.”
She glanced over to him, her hand clenching unconsciously at her side. “It’s not your fault, Chat Noir,” she said quietly.
“I know,” he said, and turned to join her in the rubble. He sighed heavily, rubbing his temple. He smiled - though it was more of a grimace - at her. “Just bad luck.”
--
Misfortune didn’t seem that powerful on her own. She could fight with similar speed and power to most other akumas, but didn’t have much in the way of technique or offensive magic. Not even a weapon. It should have been easy to finish off the fight and go home.
But “bad luck”, as it turned out, was exactly the kind of power that was difficult to combat. Ladybug’s power was good luck, after all, and the kiss on her cheek that still felt cold and numb on her skin had canceled it all out.
Her Lucky Charm summoned nothing, even after she changed back to Marinette, recharged, and returned. It was still possible to defeat her, she was sure, but without the Charm there was no Cure. They’d have to purify the akuma before any other action could be taken.
The trouble was finding all the copies made by the transferred power of Multiplication.
Bad luck spread throughout the city, in bits and pieces. Traffic jams, computer crashes, cracks in the sidewalk - small things that were adding up to big things, slowing down their pursuit, allowing the akuma more and more time to duplicate and reform and duplicate again, always slipping out of their grasp with a tweak of fate.
They split up to cover more ground. With Alya and Nino’s team of “comrades” also doing their best to locate and capture the duplicates, Ladybug hoped it would be enough. Surely, eventually, all the copies of the akuma would be found and her akumatized object would be broken, and Ladybug could fix the damage.
But bad luck could extend to the weather, and the rain and lightning slowed them down. And according to Max, who had mentioned it to Alya, who passed it on to Ladybug, there was only a 10% chance of an earthquake strong enough to cause property damage happening in France within the next 50 years. He’d mentioned this not long after the streets had risen in waves, and they’d watched their school sink into the ground as it split in two.
Ladybug had cornered the mostly-whole-again Misfortune at the Eiffel tower, which had sparked with static electricity, metal supports partly melted from the lightning strikes.
Chat Noir had pursued the remaining duplicate over rooftops, into and through crumbling offices, his speed and experience giving him the edge as she tired, until finally he caught her around the middle and tackled her to the floor. And instead of trying to stop him as he reached to crush her lucky charm - one of Ladybug’s lucky charms, actually, that she had created for someone else, another akumatized victim - in his claws, she reached up with both hands and pulled him down to kiss him on the forehead.
Chat Noir’s power was bad luck, after all, and the kiss on his forehead that still felt cold and numb on his skin had multiplied it.
--
“I don’t suppose it’s worn off yet?” asked Chat.
Ladybug rubbed her cheek with her free hand. It was still cold and tingly, like anesthetic at the dentist, and that strange feeling that cut her off from the Lucky Charm lingered in the back of her head.
“No,” she said. “We don’t know if it wears off at all. We have to assume that purifying the akuma is the only way to stop it.”
She looked up, through the broken ceiling, to the sky. The cross-section of the higher floors were partially visible, though it was mostly more broken stone and metal from her angle.
“This takes priority, though,” said Ladybug. “You were on the top floor?”
“I started on the top floor,” said Chat Noir, his tail lashing behind him. “I got knocked down a few. So maybe the fifth or sixth. Hard to say.”
“Okay,” she said, and unhooked her yo-yo, rapidly spinning it as she looked for somewhere to hook it to climb up.
“My lady-” started Chat, before he was interrupted by the whoosh of her weapon and subsequent ascension. He sighed before trying again, joining her at the edge of the broken ground. “My lady, if you get a chance to go after the akuma, you have to take it. You need your Lucky Charm.”
She glanced at him only briefly before turning away to explore the area. “That hasn’t been working so far. I’m tired of this wild goose chase.”
“Still,” he said, following her. “Promise me.”
Ladybug didn’t answer, her eyes glued to the rubble as she cleared a path through it.
“I’ll be fine,” Chat Noir assured her, and she finally looked up at him, a fierce light in her blue eyes. He faltered, his crooked smile becoming slightly more forced as he struggled to keep eye contact. “...Probably.”
--
Bad luck and surprise made him slip. Even as he crushed one lucky charm, Misfortune multiplied again, creating a duplicate of it along with herself, and the new copy dodged away. Bad luck meant that as he pursued her, a flock of terrified pigeons blocked his way, flown in through the open space that used to be a wall but too panicked to find a way out, and trying to shoo them out of his face might have worked if only the immense amount of down flying through the air didn’t send him into a sneezing fit, forcing his eyes closed and making him lose track of the akuma in a matter of seconds.
Bad luck, or maybe, careful planning and watching from behind the scenes, meant Chat Noir wasn’t alone.
The strike to his stomach knocked the wind out of him, and knocked him through a wall into the next room. He stumbled to his feet, clutching his ribcage and praying none of his ribs were broken (again), staff ready to meet the next attack as it came down in an overhead strike, metal clashing against metal.
Chat Noir twisted and shoved the cane away, leaping back and away from the second Tiger-powered punch aimed at his side. He dodged again, and again, backflipping to land crouched on one of the few desks that remained standing, staff out in front of him, ready to block another strike.
“Wow, the old man himself came out to play?” Chat teased, and hoped it wasn’t too obvious he was stalling to catch his breath. “I guess it is my lucky day, in spite of it all.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Monarch said calmly. He stepped forward, sending another frantic pigeon into flight.
Chat ignored the bird, aside from a brief rush of relief as it flapped past his head and he didn’t sneeze. His hands tightened around his staff.
Monarch held out his hand in a mockery of a peace offering, the mutilated Miraculous glittering on his fingers. “I suggest you surrender, before your luck runs out.”
--
Ladybug stared at the Cataclysm dust for a long time, until her eyes started to water and she realized they had glazed over. She blinked a few times, hard, to clear her vision and snap herself back to the present. She stepped back, whirling her yo-yo again, prepared to go up another floor.
Behind her, Chat Noir sighed.
“I had to activate the Cataclysm to protect my ring,” he continued, still summarizing the fight even though Ladybug had spaced out. “I thought maybe, if I didn’t actually use it to destroy anything, I’d still have time. Or I could use it to create a distraction and escape. Didn’t really get an opening though.”
Ladybug landed on the floor above, and her breath hitched. Feathers scattered among the rubble and black dust, and a large, dark puddle, slowly drying, dripping into the area where it had suddenly cut off in a perfect circle.
“Bad luck,” she said, nearly a whisper, when Chat Noir’s voice didn’t continue.
“...Bad luck,” he repeated, behind her. “Everything that can go wrong…”
He sighed heavily, stepping up next to her, his arms wrapped around himself. “Another earthquake. My hand managed to hit a pillar that supports that entire half of the building. And I guess Misfortune’s power also amplified it. Between the quake and the Cataclysm…”
He trailed off.
Ladybug’s hand clenched harder, round stone edges digging into her palm.
“What happened then?”
“...I was cornered,” said Chat, reluctantly. “And desperate. And all Monarch had to do was wait out five minutes. I couldn’t reach you and I couldn’t escape. I knew I couldn’t let him get the ring, that was all.”
She stepped forward, and the angle of light changed just enough that the dark puddle glinted a rusty red. There were no footprints. Just the sudden cut off where the floor was nearly clean.
“It looks like he used Voyage,” said Ladybug. “In the floor, to teleport away. Where did you go?”
“I don’t know, my lady.”
“ Where , Chat? Did he take you with him? Did you escape?”
“Ladybug-”
“Are you okay , Chat Noir?” she sobbed, and this time she couldn’t stop the tears from bursting out in an explosion of worry and desperation. “Are you even still alive?! ”
“I refuse to answer that question,” he said, and stood in front of her with his hands hovering as if to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. His voice softened, ears drooped, and he looked away, wrapping his arms around himself to grab his own shoulders again. “On the grounds that I don't know the answer.”
She sniffed, wiping tears and snot from her face. She knew that. She had hoped they would find something here, some clue, Chat Noir himself, in jeans and a t-shirt, hiding his face with a cardboard box or paper bag or something, laughing when she appeared and admitting he’d maybe overreacted and panicked, but he knew she would figure something out.
Instead, Chat Noir walked through the rubble into the puddle of his own blood, making no ripple as he knelt down, nor footprints, part of his leg passing straight through the chunks of broken concrete. He held his hand out to a piece of rebar that stuck out of the debris, sharply cut off along with the rest of the Voyage’s circle.
“I did the only thing I could think of,” he said, and his fingers passed through the sharp metal. “My identity doesn’t matter if I don’t have the Miraculous. I just had to get it to you.”
--
The pain was excruciating. It felt like fire, burning him from the inside out, lava oozing across his leg and back, and he couldn’t move . The muscles didn’t respond, and he lacked both the strength and the angle to pull himself free, only causing more waves of pain as he tried to force his thigh back up with his hands, off the rod of metal impaling it.
“I wouldn’t try that, if I were you,” came Monarch’s voice. He seemed entirely unruffled, dropping the Shell-ter that had protected him as the office came down around them both. “That bar’s the only thing stopping the wound from bleeding even more.”
Chat Noir grit his teeth and tried to ignore him, mind racing. Yes, he knew how stab wounds worked, thanks , and how fast had he been falling that the rebar could penetrate the magic of his costume? - but if he could survive just a little longer, long enough that he could find a way to get the ring away from Monarch and back to Ladybug…
“If that’s hit an artery, you could bleed out in less than three minutes,” Monarch continued, staring down at him. “Of course, your Miraculous may help prevent that, while it’s still activated. How long has it been since you used your Cataclysm? One minute? Two?”
“ Shut. Up,” said Chat, through grit teeth. The rebar wasn’t moving. His leg wasn’t moving. The only things moving were the now-red feathers the pigeons left behind, his own desperate hands grasping at nothing helpful, and Monarch’s calm stride coming ever closer.
“I like to think I’m a reasonable person,” Monarch continued. He was still keeping a cautious distance, away from the reach of Chat’s claws. If he still had his staff, maybe he could get in a hit, but…
Monarch held out a hand again. “If you give me your ring, I can help you,” he said. He turned his hand so the knuckles faced Chat, and pointed at the ring with the Rooster’s mark on it. “I can use the Rooster Miraculous to give myself the power to heal wounds. It should work, since this isn’t caused directly by a Miraculous… unlike the Cataclysm you gave me.”
A harsh laugh pushed its way out of Chat’s chest. “You mean the Cataclysm you gave yourself,” he said, glaring upwards to meet Monarch’s gaze. He concentrated hard on Plagg’s powers, twisted as they were by Misfortune’s kiss, and felt a responding twinge, a gathering of something at his fingertips, even as the ring beeped the five-minute countdown and blood seeped through his fingers. He clutched harder at his leg, wincing at the pressure as he tried to look like he was staunching the bleeding.
“I wonder if you would have, had I not made the move first,” Monarch countered. His voice was calm, but there was a steely anger behind it, and mocking amusement at his cornered prey. “I am willing to do anything to achieve my goals,” he said. “Can you say the same, or was it simply an empty threat? What parts of yourself are you willing to sacrifice, hero ?”
The side of his cane struck the top of the rebar, sending painful reverberations through Chat Noir’s leg, all the way up his spine. The heat spread, blood puddling on the floor at the jostling of the wound, and he slipped, gasping in agony, gripping his hands together as he felt Plagg’s gift manifest between them.
“There must be only a minute left now, maybe two,” said Monarch. “Are you going to accept my offer? Or shall I wait it out, and take it from your finger as you bleed out at my feet.”
Chat Noir didn’t answer. Curled in over himself, he glanced through the gap between his arm and chest, beyond the broken building and out into the open air.
“Hoping for a last minute rescue?” The light shifted, tinted slightly purple and pink, as Monarch reached out to Misfortune through the Butterfly’s power. “Your ‘lady’ is still caught up with my akuma. I can promise, she won’t make it here in time to save you.”
Chat pushed himself partly upright, arms straining under the weight of his own upper body. He met Monarch’s mocking smirk with a glare, twisting around despite the pain to look him in the eye.
“You asked what I’m willing to sacrifice,” he spat, through the congestion in his chest and labored breaths. Between his clenched fingers, his ring beeped. He kept his mind focused on Plagg, repeating the same thought over and over again, the magic slowly draining away. “It’s not other people. It’s not my partner’s trust, and it’s definitely not my Miraculous.”
He pulled himself up, ignoring the pain that ripped through him as he pivoted around the piercing metal, never dropping eye contact with the villain before him.
“My leg? Sure. My life? Maybe. But I promise you, you will never take my Miraculous.”
Chat Noir heaved himself upwards, in one jerky, lightning-fast movement, all his supernatural strength gathered at once.
Monarch stepped back, his cane up to block any attack, Shell-ter halfway called up as Chat Noir lunged.
Chat Noir’s hands separated, the ring slipping easily off in the mess of blood that coated his fingers. Adrien hurled the ring as far from himself as possible, out into the world, a flash of green alongside it before they were both swept up by the black blur that was his kwami, disappearing down and out before the words could escape his mouth.
“ Plagg, go!”
--
“He can only know what happened up until he took off the ring,” Plagg said quietly from Ladybug’s shoulder. He was still nibbling without enthusiasm on the remnants of the macaron she’d provided.
“...I know,” she said softly, glancing down as she opened her hand. Chat’s ring seemed stark against the red of her costume, the green kwagatama practically glowing in her palm.
Plagg had found her, detransformed, and dropped both jewels in her hand as he explained. It had been surprisingly easy to summon Chat’s memory to her - she might have kludged the ceremony of it all a bit, but she was the Guardian, she could do that, and she needed her partner at her side.
“Wherever I am, it isn’t here, Marinette,” said Chat, and it was weird to hear him call her that, but as long as she wore the ring, nobody else could hear him. The real Chat still didn’t know. It was fine. “You have to pass the ring to someone else.”
Ladybug looked up, closing her hand again around the kwagatama.
“At least temporarily,” he said, holding his hands up again. “Though… I don’t see how Monarch wouldn’t know my identity now.”
“You can’t use both Miraculous,” Plagg agreed. “It’s too dangerous. Even just holding it - if you were ambushed, he could get both of them off you.”
“I know,” said Ladybug, and shut her eyes. Her mind had been racing this whole time, trying to think of who she trusted, who she knew could fight, who could take Chat Noir’s place to help rescue him…
…but there was nobody else she wanted at her side, and even with just a memory, she wasn’t willing to give that up.
“It’s not your fault, Marinette,” Chat said, and she opened her eyes to meet his, inches away without making a sound, his hand against her cheek without ever making contact. “I know you’ll find me. I know you’ll beat Misfortune and use your Cure to fix everything. You don’t need luck for that.”
“It’s not your fault either,” said Ladybug, and her hand passed through his to rest on her own cheek. “That I have to do this without you is just…”
His smile was crooked and familiar and sad as he finished her sentence.
“...Bad luck.”
--
--
--
The Voyage had dropped them in a dark room, moving without moving, keeping Adrien from jostling his wound and opening it further. If the blood loss hadn’t made him lose consciousness, he’d have had to use Venom to keep him still. And perhaps had to explain why he hadn’t pursued the ring, why the person who - from Chat Noir’s point of view - hated him had instead nearly panicked when he turned around to see the boy’s true identity, desperately taking him home and dressing his wounds.
Monarch couldn’t - he couldn’t do as he’d said, and used the Rooster to fully heal him. Chat Noir hadn’t surrendered his ring, and had proven in the past to be competent and conniving enough to still be a threat even without his powers, and the fact that he turned out to be his own son didn’t change that threat. If anything, it made it worse.
He stared blankly at the wall between them. A room with no doors, created by the destructive power of Clout and creative power of Genesis, complete with a comfortable bed and a bottle of water and painkillers for when he woke up. Because he couldn’t let his enemy escape, and he couldn’t leave his son in pain, and he couldn’t…
Gabriel forced himself away, hand clenched around his arm where the Cataclysm lingered and ate away at his nerves.
To think. After all this time, trapped in endless battle. His opponent, chosen by some stranger who had no knowledge of Gabriel’s identity, no reason to try and use their relationship to his advantage, finally brought down, captured and helpless. His own son.
There was no reason or logic to the irony.
It was just bad luck.