Not Alone: A Miraculous Ladybug Story

Chapter 26

An explosion sounded, reverberating inside Marinette's head as she dodged some debris sailing in the air in the middle of an akuma attack. She looked around, assessing the situation quickly and looking for her partner. Where is he? she thought with agitation. She couldn't wait any longer and ran towards the source of the destruction; he would just have to catch up.

Finally reaching what seemed to be the epicenter, she choked on a gasp, all the air and feeling leaving her body. There, strung up to the Eiffel tower, were Chat, Volpina and Honu.

"No!" she screamed, but it came out as no more than a hoarse whisper. Her eyes scanned upward and she saw Hawkmoth. A red hot fire of betrayal shot through her veins.

"You, " she sobbed. "You were supposed to help us. I thought you were on our side!"

"Little bug," he looked down on her, "How naive are you?"

Ladybug had been inching closer and closer, and now she started to notice something was different about Hawkmoth. She heard a groan from behind her, and flicked her eyes in that direction to see Gabriel Agreste, semi-conscious on the ground, Adela tied up and unmoving next to him.

"No," she gasped, and ran over to untie Adela, but she couldn't find a pulse. "No, no, no , no, no." She was weeping now, and she could vaguely hear Chat calling her name in the distance.

"No, Chat, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Little bug, so easily crushed. Bugs who fly so close to the light get burned. I am fire, Marinette. Did you and your little friends really think you had a chance?" he cackled loudly, and Chat was now shouting her name, except he was calling her Marinette, and his voice was coming from behind her.

"Chat?" she turned, and suddenly the scene dissolved into blackness as she came to.

Opening her eyes slowly, she looked up and saw Adrien looking down at her worriedly.

"Are you okay? I think you were having a nightmare."

"Nightmare, yeah." It felt more like a warning or a vision, but she wasn't even going to get into that. She refused to believe that there was a possibility that led them down that road.

"Bugaboo?" Adrien looked worried again.

"No, no, I'm alright," she said sitting up and immediately missing his warmth. She looked around and noticed how much the sky had darkened.

"What?"

"Yeah," Adrien rubbed the back of his head with his hand, "Guess we should have set an alarm or something?"

"At least we didn't have a test or project. Just add it to my list of absences," she sighed, envious of his modeling job that gave him cover for missing class so often.

"You are racking those up, aren't you?" He smiled and chuckled at her glare.

"Not all of us have a convenient alibi for our extra-curricular superhero-ing."

"I'll be your alibi. I can tell them you're my personal stylist. It'll even look good on your applications to design school. 'Personal stylist to famous model Adrien Agrest'." He held his hands up as if framing the headline news.

"Famous model, huh?" She quirked and eyebrow.

"Kinda famous?" She just looked at him. "Well-known?" He tried again, but she kept her face straight.

"My girlfriend thinks I'm hot?" He said at last. She smirked, and then laughed outright.

"Well, there's no denying that one, is there?" She continued to laugh at him. A chat-like grin graced his face, and he leaned over to catch her laughing lips with his.

Just then, Alya picked the perfect moment to stretch and wake up from where she had been curled up on Nino's chest.

"Get a room, you two," she said mid-yawn, reaching her hands above her head in a feline stretch. "What?" She looked around, noticing as Marinette did, the lateness of the hour. "Guess we missed the rest of school," she sighed, nudging Nino to wake up.

They all started to pack up their belongings, when and unmistakeable crash sounded in the distance and they all froze.

"I guess it's good that we're all well-rested?" Marinette tried to put a positive spin on it, but they knew now was the time, and Adrien felt adrenaline start to course through his body.

Stashing their stuff in some bushes, they all hid and transformed. Chat hesitated, and they all looked to him for their cue. This was his life after all. He couldn't stay in this stasis of inaction forever, but there was no promise that everything wouldn't be irrevocably changed after what they were planning to do. Ladybug turned and placed both her hand on his cheeks, forcing him to look at her.

"It's going to be okay. You can do this." She kissed him briefly. When she pulled back, his eyes were still closed, as if he were gathering courage or trying to absorb some of her luck as his own. When his eyes did open, they were determined.

He gave her a signature wink, kissed her on the cheek and then nodded to Honu. Honu turned to Volpina, gave her a brief hug and fist pumped Ladybug before they ran their separate directions, each their own kind of dangerous.

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Ladybug kept glancing back over her shoulder, even though the boys were long out of sight, having run in the opposite direction of them. Absentmindedly, she realized this was not ideal. If they were able to subdue the akuma quickly, this still meant that there was going to be a substantial distance between them and the Agreste mansion.

"Stop looking," Volpina shouted from next to her as they ran across a rooftop nearing the area the sounds had come from. "We can't help them right now. We just have to trust them and do what we need to."

"You're right. I know you're right." She looked over at her friend, who seemed completely comfortable in this new skin that she inhabited, as if she were born for it. "Who's the veteran superhero here?" She asked with a smirk.

Volpina laughed throwing her head back in a carefree moment. Then they rounded a tall building and reality set back in. Ducking under the ledge of an adjacent building, they peered over at the akuma victim. They looked down at what can only be described as a hippie on steroids. Clad in hemp and organic cotton digs and more than a little tie-dye, she was reigning terror against litterers and causing trees to break through pavement and overtake buildings, creating a wild canopy in the middle of the Parisian streets. It was a chaotic kind of beautiful. Ladybug almost didn't want to stop her.

"I like her," Volpina reflected her thoughts. "I guess we can't let her continue though." She sighed.

"No, if nothing else, she's still being controlled; so we have to give her her free will back." Ladybug cocked her head and looked closer at the mayhem below them. "And...is she turning the litterers into the trees?"

Volpina giggled from next to her, and Ladybug couldn't stop the smile from flickering over her face. Remembering that on the other side of the city, Chat and Honu were facing a less than amusing opponent, she re-focused.

"Okay, ready, Volpina?"

"Always, Ladybug."

And they jumped.