Chapter Text
The battle had come to a close without Ladybug making an appearance. He stood in the middle of a pile of rubble, this Akuma had used an gigantic hammer and had spent the better part of an hour flinging concrete at Chat Noir. He hadn’t exactly enjoyed the experience and now he stood with a dazed construction worker at his feet and the remains of the new office building they had been putting out around them.
He held the Akuma itself in his hands while his miracle stone beeped at him to let him know he was running out of time to come up with a better option than wait for Ladybug. He pinched it by one wing and held it at arms length. It fluttered weakly against his hand. It was just a butterfly but something about it felt wrong. The evil of it was trying and failing to soak into him as it had soaked into its victim.
“Stay still,” he told it.
Across the wreckage, twisted metal and overturned earth, he caught sight of movement and his attention popped up. There was still dust in the air and he could hear the sound of a car horn blaring somewhere nearby. A long uninterrupted drone that he’d ignored until he’d looked in that direction. The person coming towards him was small, moving with purpose, they were walking not swinging but for a second he was still sure it was her.
It wasn’t.
A small, vaguely familiar woman picked her way through the rubble. Chat waved his hand at her, “No, madam, they say the earth moves for pretty ladies but it might actually fall for you,” he grinned as he scampered over a fallen girdle and skirted a hole in the ground. Even with one hand still holding the butterfly, he was far faster than she was. He managed to get to her and stand in her way before she got to the worst of the wreckage.
She was older than he’d thought. Probably in her early forties, and she had to tilt her head all the way back to look at him. Short hair, almond eyes, all rounded edges. Mrs. Cheng. Mrs. Cheng who was the mother of one of his classmates.
“My daughter won’t be needing this anymore,” she said holding out a plastic container with a green snap top lid. There was a single hole punched in the top. Something inside moved. A hamster? Why was this woman bringing him a hamster?
“Excellent, but this isn’t the place to leave it. And I’m not going to eat it if that’s what you were thinking. I only eat gourmet, not free range,” Chat told her.
“You need to choose someone else. She is fourteen, she is still a child. Pick someone else,” Mrs. Cheng said. He was attempting to turn her around and push her back out of the building site without letting the Akuma touch her. She was upset about something though why a fourteen year old with a hamster was so concerning was beyond him. He really just needed her out of the way until Ladybug arrived.
His miracle stone beeped again. He twisted his hand to see only two spots left.
“Please get out of here until Ladybug has had a chance to put it right,” Chat said. If flirting didn’t work and jokes didn’t work. He would try being polite. If that didn’t work, he could always pick her up and carry her back to the street so she didn’t fall in a pit.
“Ladybug will not be coming,” Mrs. Cheng said and then once more, with more strength and command in her voice than he might have expected from someone who had always been smiles and cookies she said, “Pick someone else.”
She pushed the baking container into his free hand and then turned and walked away. He stared after her, baffled and worried. Ladybug will not be coming. How could she know that? Was she an Akuma too? She’d looked so normal.
His miracle stone beeped again and he glared at it as though that could change anything. One more before he lost the transformation entirely. Minutes to figure out what was going on and what to do with the Akuma.
The container still had white powder on the lid and was labeled as baking soda. He held it balanced on one hand and it jerked. The thing inside slammed into the edge and knocked it out of his hand. He yelped and scrambled for it out of instinct but it hit the ground and the lid popped open.
Something small and red flew out. Spiraling up and then coming back to float in front of his face. It was all head. Big eyes, small body, alarm in every feature. Like Plagg. Plagg if he was red and adorable instead of black and infuriating.
Ladybug will not be coming.
Choose someone else.
My daughter is only fourteen.
Chat stared at the Kwami. She unhinged her jaw, opened her mouth grotesquely wide and snatched the Akuma out of his finger tips. She held it with her cheeks puffed out for a moment. Then she tilted her head back and breathed out the light that Ladybug could call down to put it all to rights. As the building site started to reassemble itself around him, Chat heard the last beep.
He changed back. There, in the middle of everything. The building site was empty but he’d never been so careless before. He had never been so dumbfounded before. Not once. Never in his life.
“Miracle stone!” Plagg snapped as soon as they were separate again. He zoomed towards the ground and into the other Kwami’s plastic prison. Adrien dropped down to his knees and picked out a pair of red earrings. They were dusted with the baking soda and stared up at him like little accusing eyes.
“You should never do that alone,” Plagg was saying and Adrien couldn’t figure out what he meant.
“Someone had to,” the other Kwami answered.
“You are not strong enough to do that alone, there is a reason we do not use the powers alone,” Plagg said. The two of them were floating in mid air. Plagg zooming back and forth in jerky little patterns like he did sometimes when he was angry at Adrien.
“We need to go,” Adrien said.
He didn’t pick up the baking soda bin. He hadn’t had enough time to think it through but he was struck by an irrational anger at the bit of plastic. He kicked it and it went skittering across the dirt. He tried to imagine if someone had taken Plagg and his ring and tossed them in an old kitchen bin and sealed it up. He almost went to go and kick it again.
Plagg landed on his shoulder and distracted him from his anger. Plagg was tired but compared to Ladybug’s Kwami, he was a bundle of energy. She drifted down with all the weight and energy of a soap bubble on a gust of air. Adrien caught her in one hand, she curled around the earrings on his palm and fell asleep.
“How dare they?” Adrien asked.
Neither of the little creatures answered him. He tucked Plagg into his pocket and shrugged out of his jacket so he could drape to over his arm and carry Ladybugs Kwami where she was. Plagg, for once did not complain about anything.
Marinette Dupain-Cheng, who sat behind him in homeroom every day, who sometimes stared at him like he had two heads when he tried to say anything to her, who was smart and pretty but awkward and utterly normal, that Marinette, was Ladybug. Her family had found out and done what Hawkmoth had been trying to do for ages.
They had taken her miracle stone from her.
He wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do about it.