Archive of Our Own

There’s been a bug going around recently. And by bug, she means sickness, it’s not a pun, even if saying the phrase ‘there’s a bug going around’ would definitely be enough to make Chat unveil his usual sly smile and wink at her dramatically.

She wishes it were still just a pun, though, because it’s certainly a sickness, and it’s certainly a monster. Marinette’s been lying on her chaise all day, having been too worn down the night previous to make it up to her loft. Tikki and all the other kwamis have been flitting about her anxiously, hoping to assist her in some way, but there’s a chance that Marinette could get one of them sick, too, and that’s a lot more dangerous than her having a cold. Her parents have been doing their best to help, too, but they have to run the bakery which means dodging germs, so it’s mostly just her mom occasionally checking in on her while her father hollers so he can participate in the conversation from downstairs. They’re not actually sharing a room with her like the kwamis are, anyways.

It’s lucky enough that there’s no akuma or sentimonster sent out the day she goes home sick, with a building headache and an aching throat. Especially considering how close her class is to the danger zone for akumas, and how many of them were coming down with the same thing already, not to mention the fact that they’re all her usual backup. It’s even luckier that there’s no attack that night, because Marinette had, for once in a blue moon, fell asleep, on a bed-like surface, practically the moment she’d sat down.

But she’s Ladybug, the avatar of good luck. What dictates that she should have good luck that holds? Absolutely nothing.

The alarm starts blaring through her phone speakers without warning, causing her to startle back, then wince and clutch her forehead as her head swims. The kwamis know the sound of the akuma alarm app by now (and a good portion can probably hear the actual alarms, wherever they’ve been activated so far for this akuma) and start flitting about even more anxiously. Tikki flies down from the loft, stopping just a few paces from Marinette.

Marinette leans against the back of her chaise, asking, “I’m going to have to go out there and fight, aren’t I?”

Tikki’s frown becomes more prominent, and she glances briefly out Marinette’s window. “We could always hand the earrings off to someone else, if it’s that much of an issue. The transformation will give you a bit of a boost, but if you have to detransform during the fight, that’ll leave you vulnerable, and it’s not always a perfect boost.”

Marinette frowns, too. The option to hand off her earrings is there, but she doesn’t feel comfortable leaving them behind unsupervised. But she detransforms a lot during fights, even if it’s less than Chat Noir does, and she doesn’t want to wind up stranded in some back-alley sick out of her mind. Chat, though. She trusts Chat. Chat can handle the earrings, he already handles the black cat. But– but– but something.

“I’ll go out there and figure out what the fight looks like,” Tikki decides. “Remember to keep of your phone, Marinette. I know you want to know what’s happening as it happens, but it’s not good for you to look at screens right now.”

“Why is Chat using the earrings without me there a bad idea?” Marinette responds, trying her hardest to remember.

Tikki sighs. “It’s no– don’t worry about it, Marinette. Just give me a few minutes.”

Trixx zooms forward, effectively stopping Tikki’s path. “Can I look around as well?”

“No, Trixx,” Tikki scolds. “You know you can’t get far from the miracle box without a holder.”

Trixx sulks. “I do have a holder, y’know. And a great one, at that.”

“Well, I don’t see her right now!” Mullo calls.

⠀

⠀

Tikki’s grimace doesn’t lessen when she makes it to the battle grounds.

Not only because she knows Marinette might stop listening or forget her warnings, but because the fight is clearly going badly. The akuma, an older looking woman with bright green hair and tentacles for legs, has so far been unchallenged. She’s sending chaos throughout the city (as akumas tend to do, but still), turning any bit of foliage or flower she finds into a raging beast, chasing down civilians. The sound of screaming fills the streets, making Tikki shudder.

The people of Paris have been through a lot, Tikki can respect that. But being chased down by a raging monster will always be being chased down by a raging monster.

Chat Noir is, so far, nowhere to be seen. That doesn’t mean he’s not arrived yet, of course, since despite how he presents himself as impulsive, Tikki knows that he’s capable of reconnaissance. But her insider information is a step above Marinette’s, and she knows that Adrien had gone home sick with the same cold Marinette had the day before. Plagg’s kittens also tend to take sicknesses harder, as well.

She already knows that having the usual duo by themselves is not going to do much. And since most of the other holders are used to following Ladybug, who’s currently tired, slightly forgetful, and definitely not in a state to fight, that’s not going to last them much longer. They need fighters who can come up with ideas for themselves.

Maybe Trixx was right.

Right on time, Alya dashes up, weaving through the streets with her phone stretched out. She’s, luckily, one of very few classmates who haven’t come down with a cold quite yet.

Marinette might be mad at her for this, later, but Tikki knows that she has to get Alya’s attention, before one of the akuma’s plant monsters catch up to her. They can’t lose too many holders this early on.

Tikki flies down, floating right in front of Alya’s camera, with her eyes barely peeking over the edge of the device. She knows the effect that her large, near-iris-less eyes tend to have on humans, and predictably Alya yelps, stumbling backward.

“Turn off the video,” she whispers. Not every device can pick up kwami voices, but the longer tech is exposed to magic, the more consistently it can respond to it. Markov’s akumitisation is a prime example of that rule. Sure, they’d only found out about that after decades with Fu, but at least she’d known it in advance.

Alya stares, wide-eyed, for a long moment before shaking herself and obeying. She shoves her phone in her pocket, before the barrage of questions start. “You’re Ladybug’s kwami, right? Why are you coming after me? Is Ladybug okay? Does she need my help? Why’d you go in the view of a camera? Now people are going to be wondering what you are! Is Trixx—”

“I can’t answer everything right now, Alya,” Tikki interrupts. “But I’d rather that you and your boyfriend are out of danger for now, just in case we need to go find you.”

Somehow not registering how dangerous this has the chance to be, Alya squeals excitedly. “You mean that Rena Rouge and Carapace might be making an appearance today!?”

Probably, considering the state of Tikki’s holder. But confirming things to children may often feel like a promise to them, and it’s a bad idea to let Alya down. She doesn’t want to cause bad blood between Alya and Ladybug, not when this is a conversation born purely out of Tikki’s ideas. “It’s not guaranteed. But I– we want to keep the option open, and that’s not going to happen if you film this fight.”

Alya sighs, sounding disappointed. Tikki worries for a second that she’s messed up somehow, but then Alya says, “I was really looking forward to getting some footage of this one. I have a few cameras I can mount once I transform, but it’s just not the same.”

“That’s not a terrible option, though,” Tikki says quickly. “If you have your own footage of Rena Rouge in action, then less people will make the link between you and your secret identity. Even if you’re already compromised to Shadowmoth, your identity being publicised can have plenty of problems on its own.”

“You make a good point,” Alya decides. “I’ll be at home if you or Ladybug need me, er…”

“Tikki.”

“Tikki! I’ll be waiting.”

⠀

⠀

“I don’t like this, kid.”

“Plagg, I will just suck you into this ring.”

Plagg scoffs, glaring down at his holder with crossed paws. The kid, frankly, looks terrible, so it’s no wonder why his father hasn’t come to check on him at all. (A terrible jump in logic, unfortunately, but definitely not out of character for the shitty cards Adrien’s been dealt.) Half of his bed is a pile of sticky tissues at this point, and even Plagg can’t stand the smell that’s coming out of his trash right now.

If there’s one thing that he hates, it’s sickness. Tikki’s chosens are usually healers and creators and all that other junk that makes them unfairly good at pushing through illnesses. Plagg’s holders, on the other hand, just get slammed into by their sicknesses and are down for a few days, but luckily the trade-off of that is a swifter than average recovery.

And the worst part is that Plagg actually has to think about this, because not only is his kid sick, but Tikki’s is, too. The Guardian is. That spells all kinds of trouble.

“You can do that without my permission, kid,” Plagg reminds him. The kid usually does that, and in his earliest transformations sometimes it even felt like the kid forgot he was there entirely, and while he can admit that the asking for permission part is nice, this is the one time where Plagg would rather send in backup instead of his kid.

“Oh yeah,” Adrien responds.

Eurgh.

“Transforming sounds like a bad idea right now, though.”

“THANK YOU.”

Adrien frowns as though this is the incorrect response, and if Plagg weren’t fond of the kid this would probably be the point where he sighs and neglects the conversation in favour of cheese. “Is there something that you can do to help?”

Yes, but if he tells the kid that, then his habit of transforming to feel better will increase, likely with some sort of poorly-explained excuse about how there’s proof it works, and being a superhero is not a real coping mechanism, not in the long run.

“If you’re sick, you’re sick,” Plagg states. “You’ll burn it off in a day or two, kid, but for now you need to rest.”

“PLAGG.”

Oh, kwamis. Tikki.

Plagg spins around, rushing towards the window that Tikki had just phased through. “Sugarcube~” he calls, glaring at her. “What brings you over here?”

“My holder’s sick, too,” Tikki whispers. She glances past him, towards Adrien, and grimaces. “When I go back, she’s going to ask me to transform.”

“She hasn’t been doing that already?” Plagg asks. “Because as soon as the kid remembers he doesn’t need permission to transform, he’s going to be out there.”

Her frown only becomes more prominent, at that. But then it shifts into her thinking face, and Plagg is content enough to let her do the planning.

“I’ve got Rena Rouge on standby already,” Tikki announces. “Do you know where Nino would be right now?”

“No?”

Tikki glares at him for absolutely no reason at that. It’s not like Plagg’s ever talked to the kid! He has enough trouble keeping up with his actual holder’s schedule.

“I’m going to go back to the Guardian now,” Tikki decides.

⠀

⠀

Alya mounts a camera on the balcony outside her room, then remembers that she doesn’t want to get Ladybug visiting her and Rena appearing out of nowhere on tape, so she quickly takes it down and sets the camera back in the box.

She’d saved up forever for these, only to not wind up using them that much. She doesn’t always have the cameras on hand, and it’s much easier to keep her phone steady. If she’s lucky, she’ll have time to set up one on her usual balcony spot, but that can get knocked down during fights for hundreds of different reasons, and even if the miraculous cure will restore the camera, it won’t miraculously create footage of the rest of that fight.

It’s not worth dwelling on right now, anyways. She just talked to Ladybug's actual kwami, and apparently there’s a chance she might get to see Trixx again today. A chance, the kwami had been very particular about that, but really, why even talk to her at all if it’s not secretly a guarantee?

Ladybug flies past her window and Alya gasps, rushing forward and leaning against the railing of her balcony, watching Ladybug swing until she’s entirely out of sight.

Well, Tikki had said that getting her miraculous isn’t a guarantee. She’ll just have to wait, and Ladybug will probably circle around later.

⠀

⠀

The Ladyblog stream had gone down early.

He’s trying really, really hard not to let this bother him, because this is far from the first time that this has happened. It’s pretty common, in fact and even if she manages to outlast tougher akumas than even this one, that’s really just her luck getting her that extra few minutes of footage.

That doesn’t change the fact that Nino’s girlfriend had run into a battle zone yet again, and had likely gotten hurt because of it. No matter how many times that happens, it doesn’t get less harder to face.

There’s a sudden tapping at his window and he jolts, stumbling backwards. He knows that this akuma has been creating monsters to chase people down, but he didn’t think that they’d manage to get to him, considering he’s several floors up.

However, on the other end of the glass is not a plant-made monster, but rather a girl in a tight red and black spotted costume, waiting patiently for him to open the window.

Nino clutches at his chest as he sighs out a relieved breath. Ladybug winces, waves a little, and then points to the lock on his door.

He jumps out of his chair, quickly unlocking the window. Ladybug grunts as she swings herself through the small gap, and then fumbles the roll on landing in what must be the single most ungraceful move Nino’s ever seen from the heroine.

“Nino!” She exclaims, before jumping to her feet. Her face is oddly pale and her voice slightly stuffy, and despite her being the hero of Paris he takes a careful step backward.

There’s been a bug going around, recently. And it seems that she’s come right for him.

“Do you need me?” He asks carefully.

“Yeah!” Ladybug exclaims, before shaking herself. “Woah, okay, I think I’ve been sleeping a bit too much, now. Carapace, we’re going to need your help in the battle today. I’m, erm… not exactly battle ready.”

On one hand, she still managed to swing all the way here. On the other hand, he doubts that Ladybug would say that she’s not battle ready if she were actually capable of handling herself in a fight. And this akuma’s already spread her control pretty far, anyways.

“Well, I’m definitely willing to help,” he tells her.

She grabs her yo-yo off her hip, flipping the compartment open and reaching in. Nino’s brows furrow in confusion as he sees her arm go deeper and deeper into the tiny yo-yo, then finally emerge with a box that’s almost as big as the yo-yo itself.

He grabs the box from her outstretched hand awkwardly, feeling around for the seam in the round box. This is a different box from the one that his miraculous usually comes in, and it’s clearly more tricked out.

“I’ll see you out there,” Ladybug says, voice growing horace near the end, before she abruptly dashes back out of his window. She leans on the outside of the building, and then coughs loudly, and the force of it is enough that her grip on the window sill falls and she’s sent screeching downward.

Yeesh. Definitely sick, then.

Finally, he manages to get the box open, and flinches when Wayzz flashes into existence.

He looks sadder than normal. Nino hasn’t seen his kwami a lot, yet, but the droop to his eyes and soft frown is evident, even on a creature so clearly not human.

“She’s really sick, isn’t she?” Nino asks, watching Ladybug swoop back up into the air then swing off.

“Some of us tried to tell her that fighting in her current condition wasn’t advisable,” Wayzz says, and he sounds tired, too. “She could cause harm to herself or to her kwami. You must protect her and Chat Noir to guarantee that their illness doesn’t cause an error in the fight.”

Nino slides the bracelet onto his wrist and frowns. “No pressure, huh?”

⠀

⠀

It’s a lot of pressure.

Ladybug’s not just sick, but she also seems to be toeing the line between chronically sleep deprived and well-rested (he’s friends with Marinette, he knows what this looks like firsthand) and has slipped well out of her confident persona. And as fun as it is to hear Ladybug’s voice hurling insults at an akuma, it is a lot less fun to get chased down by said akuma’s raging, carnivorous plant monsters.

Where the hell is Rena when he needs her? Or, even better, Chat Noir?

Carapace has learned a lot about akuma fights. He knows how they normally go when Ladybug and Chat Noir don’t need him, and knows how unfortunately out of hand they can get when Ladybug and Chat Noir do. But what he can’t do is strategize. What he can’t do is figure out what the akumatised object is.

“I think it might be time for a lucky charm,” Ladybug announces, throwing her yo-yo out and swinging. Carapace freezes when light flashes on the end of her yo-yo, wincing as he imagines the fall she might be about to take, then realise that a lucky charm has just appeared where she’s thrown out her yo-yo.

Honestly, he’d thought that only works when she throws the yo-yo up in the air.

Ladybug, miraculously, manages to stick the landing on the next rooftop, and so Carapace hurries to bridge the sudden gap. She’s holding the lucky charm, a seam ripper, while squinting at it, confused. She then breaks off into another round of coughing, which is cut off by her gripping her head in pain.

“Wow, okay, that’s what she meant when she said that’s going to wear off,” Ladybug groans. “Okay, Carapace! We have a seam ripper, no Chat Noir, and no Rena Rouge. If it’s a seam ripper, the akuma has to be somewhere on her outfit, right? Unless… wait, maybe it doesn’t have to be on her outfit.” Ladybug lets out a sudden offended gasp, looking up to the sky and offendedly shouting, “Tikki!”

Her earrings give their first beep, then.

Carapace really, really hopes that this is just Ladybug thinking aloud. Either way, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to have the same enthusiasm for Alya’s excited rambles about how cool Ladybug is.

“Dudette?” He prompts. “Did you figure out the lucky charm?”

“Well, yes,” Ladybug says. “But it’s telling me to go home, and I am going to stay in this fight goddangit!”

He has no idea how she got to that particular conclusion, but sure, he can roll with that. “If you need to go home, then go home. Just… hurry back?” He requests. He glances briefly down at the streets, where the plant zombies are beginning to swarm underneath them. He has a terrifying flashback to Zombizou, but it’s gone in a blink. “I can’t hoard these guys forever.”

“But if I go home, the kwamis are going to make me get back in bed, and I’m still in fighting condition!” She sounds way too upset about getting a day off, yeesh. She breathes out a heavy sigh, then decides, “You know what? A lucky charm is a lucky charm. Maybe I just need to pull another hero.”

Maybe, she just needs to pull out some freakin’ Dayquil, but unfortunately Carapace has to put his limit somewhere, and that’s the wrong thing to say to the woman giving him magical powers.

“I’m going to see how hard it is to take down one of the plant zombies,” Carapace declares, like an idiot unaware of his own safety. AKA: a superhero. “I don’t want them to be a problem when we find the akuma.”

“Good idea,” Ladybug says, before swinging off.

Carapace sighs once he’s alone, glancing back down at the plant zombies. They’re trying to climb up towards him, but it doesn’t seem like they have the presence of mind to actually climb, and they aren’t heavy enough to climb on top of one another. Small victories.

“Okay…” he mumbles. “How do we want to do this?”

He grabs his shield off his back, holding it by the ridge over the zombies. They don’t seem to have actual eyes (thank goodness, that’d be a level of gross he doesn’t think he’s mentally prepared to handle) but somehow they’re still able to notice the change, as they start jumping towards him with slightly more vigour.

Freaking magic. Why did Ladybug pull him instead of, like, Juleka? She would totally be chill with this. Heck, she’s probably watched enough zombie stuff to know what to do in this situation.

Actually, Alya probably has, too, but she’s not actually into horror stuff.

Back to the point– these are just plants. Real life overgrown Groots, at best. And you can cut down plants pretty well, right?

Carapace twists his wrist, then flings his shield like a sideways frisbee. It goes down with surprising speed, and like he’d predicted, slices through the zombies, but then gets lost within the hoard.

And now he’s down a shield. Whoops.

“Okay, great.” He says to himself, figuring that he’s probably alone out here at this point. After all, these zombies are carnivorous.

He should stop thinking about that, actually.

“So I’m down a weapon, but I know that weapons do stuff. Wait– of course weapons work. Shoot.”

There’s got to be a way to get his shield back, right? It always appears with his transformation, after all. That can’t change just because he misplaced it, right?

A louder than normal groan sounds down below, and Nino glances back down to find one of the plant zombies, shield still embedded in its chest, twisting the shield slowly around, until it forms body armour inside its torso.

He’s definitely not getting that back until the miracle cure is cast.

So where the heck does he go from here?

⠀

⠀

“Trixx, just use pens, she said!” Trixx grumbles. They attempt to slash another small line across the page, but instead it slices up the entire page. The sharp thing on the top of the pen keeps messing them up, it’s such a weird angle! “It’s not that hard, she said! Well look at this!’

Trixx spins around, glaring at the massive pile of discarded papers. When they’d started, there was an entire, empty notebook for them to learn with. Now, half of the papers have been piled together in a shredded, unartistic mess at the bottom of the ladder.

They’d just wanted to do some image making in their downtime! Why did humans have to make that so hard?

“Keep ‘em coming!” Ziggy calls happily, flying through the pile and making the papers rustle. “This is fun.”

“Speak for yourself,” Pollen says judgmentally. “Keep those little ridges away from my fur or else!”

Mullo rolls her eyes. “I still think that you could stand to get a little dirtier, Pollen. Imagine how much honey you could get if you got dirty for it!”

Orikko sneers. “I think you and Plagg could stand to be a little cleaner. You two are what humans seem to call a public health hazard.”

“Hey!”

Daizzi flies into the pile of papers, sending the tip flying and the rest of it rustling. She pops up a moment later, beaming. “You’re right! This is great!”

“Hey!” Xuppu calls grumpily, sticking his head out of the side of the pile. “Why are you guys invading my swimming pool?”

Mullo flicks a paper ball at him. In response, he sticks out his tongue.

Then, suddenly, there’s a crash on the balcony, and before any of the kwamis can think to move, their great Guardian comes from the skylight, leaping down the ladder and landing clumsily on the pile of papers, making the kwamis inside it screech and scatter.

A second later, an exhausted Tikki falls into the pile of papers, groaning.

Xuppu floats up, sticking out his tongue even further and blowing a raspberry. “Fun-killer!”

“You’re not sick, are you?” Stompp asks, floating above the fallen Tikki.

Marinette picks up one of the papers from the pile, not questioning its presence, and uses it to blow her nose.

Trixx picks up the remains of their notebook and floats further out of range. They do not want their final attempts at drawing ruined by a wild snot-rocket.

“I’m not sick,” Tikki says, though the slight nasal quality to her voice says otherwise. “That transformation just took a lot out of me.”

Marinette flops against the ladder. “Ugh, I feel awful. Tikki, are you okay?”

“Could do with a cookie.”

“Why can kwamis even get sick, anyways?” Daizzi asks. She hasn’t bothered to roll back off of the ground quite yet. “We don’t have much in the way of organs, or anything.”

“It’s more ssssspiritual,” Sass explains.

Trixx opens their mouth to snark about how is his lisp spiritual, too? Because, seriously, they know he can talk without him, and as a kwami unafraid to show their animal traits, Sass totally takes it a little far. Trixx is pretty sure that if he had the power of illusion, he’d jumpscare all his holders by pretending he is the bracelet.

But, apparently, the serious kwamis are providing information, because they never get the chance to throw out their own bit of sass.

“Being sick weakens the holders,” Longg explains. “But the draining of their physical and mental energy is often made up for by the kwami, and in our physical forms this may result in something resembling a human sickness, though it has much more immediate treatments.”

“And the rest of us?” Ziggy asks, tilting her head.

“Germs.”

Trixx really, really wishes sometimes that the Guardians would have let the kwamis in on all they’d learned about the miraculous. This is just getting sad.

Deciding to end that conversation, Trixx flies down to Marinette, holding up the pen that they’d been using. “Hey, Ladybug? How the heck do you use this thing to draw?”

Marinette looks up at them tiredly, before holding out a hand for Trixx to drop the utensil in. Marinette looks at it for a second before sighing. “This isn’t a pen, Trixx, it’s a seam ripper, for clothes.”

“Oh,” they reply dumbly. “Well, in that case, maybe all my failed art attempts aren’t so bad after all!”

This seems to remind the guardian of the pile of paper, and she runs a hand through the pile, grimacing. “Maybe I’ll make you a kit, Trixx.”

They wrinkle their nose. “As fun as it’ll be to see you try and make me a child, I don’t really—”

“A utensil kit, Trixx,” Stompp says exasperatedly. “Even I knew that one.”

“Well—”

“SEAM RIPPER,” Marinette suddenly screeches, shooting to her feet. She stumbles one hand going to clutch her likely still aching head.

A brief pause.

“Uhm, that’s what you said?” Trixx informs her.

“The lucky charm!” Marinette exclaims. She walks over to the miracle box, opening it up and grabbing something out of one of the compartments.

Trixx screeches as the world around them glows bright, and then abruptly fades to black.

⠀

⠀

Alya’s scrolling through brand new submitted footage on the Ladyblog when Carapace hurdles through her still-open window.

He scrambles to his feet, shoving it closed behind him. It doesn’t do much to silence the sound of the plant zombies below shuffling, and attempting to make it up to the window.

Carapace locks eyes with her and seems to sag with relief. “Oh thank god, you just went home.”

Inviting.

“Okay, so,” Alya says conversationally. “I should probably reexamine the threat level I gave this one.”

“We don’t even know her name yet, Als,” Carapace complains, flopping into her desk chair. Despite how exhausted he looks, it doesn’t take even a few seconds before he starts spinning. The marvels of a spinny chair. “And Ladybug is way too sick to be out there and just ditched me when she got a lucky charm and I lost my shield and oh my god I forgot how stressful this could be.”

Seems like somebody needs a break.

“Y’know, I talked to Ladybug’s kwami earlier today.”

“Oh, that’s interestin– wait what!?”

Alya rolls her eyes. “You’re a great listener, shellboy. Anyways, she literally just showed up earlier and demanded that I turn off my live stream. And there’s even a chance I might get to join this battle as Rena!”

“I don’t think anyone would mind, if you did,” Carapace says. “Ladybug isn’t getting far on her own, I don’t even know where Chat Noir is, and getting chased down by plant zombies really isn’t a good time.”

“It sounds like a great time,” Alya argues.

“And you sound like Kim.”

Okay, maybe he has a bit of a point.

“So, Ladybug’s sick?” Alya asks, leaning forward subconsciously with intrigue. “Is she just, like, drowsy as hell, or is she one of those unfairly functional folks. Wait–” Alya gasps. “Does this mean that Ladybug caught the bug that’s been—”

Carapace waves a dismissive hand. “I already thought of that, like, five times, babe.”

She pouts at him. “Let me have my moment, babe.”

There’s a clatter from the window, and both teens jump. Carapace readies his fists, but his usual pose looks unfortunately awful without his shield on one arm. Alya’s not going to be the one to tell him, though, because a view of her boyfriend in a skintight costume is a view of her boyfriend in a skintight costume, and it’s even better when he’s confident.

Maybe not the time, but still.

Trixx is hovering outside the window, attempting to push through the window seemingly by sheer force of will. Impossibly enough, they seem to be getting some progress, but the necklace clenched in their mouth is refusing to follow suit.

Alya quickly walks over, unlatching the window. Trixx flies up, a wide grin stretching on their face. The necklace falls into Alya’s hands. “Rena! The guardian said that I’d get to fight with you today after all!”

She whoops, extending a hand for a high five. Being much smaller than Alya, Trixx opts to headbut her palm before doing a spin in the air. “I know this is going to be great, especially with both of you!”

“Thanks, lil’ dude,” Carapace says. He sounds oddly embarrassed by the praise, which just means that Alya needs to give him more of it. He’s her favourite hero, after all, tied right up there with Ladybug.

She really, really wants to say that he’s above Ladybug in her eyes. But she already has him placed above Majestia, which was hard enough to accept on its own, and she’s not ready to go from tough realisations to full-on lying to herself.

Alya slides the necklace on. “So, where’s the akuma right now? We might as well get started now, even if Ladybug isn’t here yet.”

“Speaking of,” Carapace cuts in, “Where is she? I’ve never seen a miraculous be delivered without her before. Or, uh. Heard of it.”

“Oh, she and Tikki are pretty tired,” Trixx says casually. “Getting her the strength to function as Ladybug is kind of like injecting her with every useful human medicine there is, without any of the deadlier side-effects. It usually knocks out bugs for ages. I think that Plagg’s kittens are better at it, but then I’m just adding to Plagg’s pile of lies and cheese, so.”

Carapace shoots a questioning look at her, and she can only respond with a shrug. “I think it’s time to transform,” Alya observes.”

“Oh, great!” Trixx says. “I was beginning to wonder. Nooroo’s magic is everywhere right now, I was getting a bit worried.”

Alya really, really wants to interrogate her kwami, but she’ll just have to wait until after the fight, or possibly another one. She can’t put off saving the city, not if she wants to get the opportunity again, and anyways, leaving people to get eaten alive by carnivorous plant monsters doesn’t sound very fun..

Wanting to be Rena Rouge again is a close second, anyways.

⠀

⠀

“This was a mistake,” Rena gasps.

She’s not exactly short for breath, but she and Carapace have been running for so long it certainly feels like she should be at this point.

Realistically, they know that the plant zombies probably can’t get up to them. Carapace has watched the monsters attempt to scale a building, and he knows that they’d failed. But they're all gross, mossy, and most have a faint brown tinge that Rena’s trying really, really hard not to focus on too hard. And while their rustling steps are fine enough on their own, some of them are beginning to acquire the more well-known zombie groaning, and that is beyond unsettling.

Hawkmoth– Shadowmoth– whateverthefuckMoth– Cockmoth (holy shit, Cockmoth) totally made a mistake on this one. After all, if Ladybug and Chat Noir are stuck saving people from being eaten alive, then it’s totally going to backfire into their usual strong determination, and then the akuma will be taken out almost immediately.

Speaking of: “Rena, do you know where the actual akuma is?”

“Well, yeah. I’ve been trying to lead us toward her this whole time. I thought you knew, you’ve been following me.”

“I’ve been following you because I don’t want to lose you, Rena,” Carapace says. “Y’know, in the city currently full of carnivorous plant monsters?”

“I’d totally survive in a zombie apocalypse on my own,” Rena grumbles. “But I do appreciate the company, I guess.”

She puts force behind her next jump, but not enough, since she just barely makes it to the higher rooftop. She extends a hand in case Carapace makes the same small fumble, but instead he catches himself on the roof ledge next to her. He looks up at her and raises a brow. “‘I guess?’ Really, babe? After all we’ve been through together.”

“I’m just joking,” Rena dismisses. She squints out a flash of bright green in the distance, then grins. “C’mon, I think that I see the akuma.”

⠀

⠀

So.

“That went poorly,” Nino observes.

Rena groans, flopping backwards and splaying out like a shitty, fleshy starfish. She seems to have momentarily forgotten that they’re in a rooftop greenhouse.

Maybe a bit of a mistake, considering the akuma’s powers, but they’re pretty out of the way, and he’d only had seconds remaining on his transformation. The akuma’s far enough away that it’ll be fine.

Probably.

Possibly.

How long does it take Wayzz to eat some leaves?

“Ladybug said that the akuma might be some part of her outfit, because of her lucky charm earlier, which was a seam ripper,” Nino recalls. “But then she also used that to decide to go home and send Trixx to you, so I don’t really know.”

“Yeah, but that can be, like, a trillion things,” Rena grumbles. “Gloves, dress, the belt.”

“That’s only three things,” Nino informs her. “And honestly, only two, because I’m going to call ripping of the old lady’s dress a definite last resort.”

“Oh, yeah, gross.”

Wayzz flies back over from the other side of the green house, still chewing and with a few more leaves still gripped between his hands. Or– paws? Nubs? What are kwami hands called?

“Speaking of gross,” Nino says. “Are you comfortable there?”

She waves a dismissive hand. “For sure.”

“You know you’re getting dirt in your hair, right?”

Rena shoots up, frantically running her hands through her hair and trying to brush all of the dirt off. Nino tries his best, but he can’t help but laugh a little at his girlfriend’s expense.

She glares at him, and then slowly grabs another clump of dirt. Nino knows what’s coming too late.

“Wayzz—”

“Eat dirt, BITCH—”

He calls his transformation too late to be shielded.

Carapace grimaces, wiping the dirt off the front of his costume. “On that note, should we head back to the fight?”

“That note,” Rena responds. “That’s the note you want to end this interaction on.”

Carapace shrugs. “I don’t like dirt.”

“So you’re a sea turtle, then?” Rena teases, leaning towards him. Leaning in close.

“Not that I don’t find it hot to kiss as heroes,” Carapace starts, and Rena’s face flames as she jumps backward. “But can we go defeat the akuma? Please?”

⠀

⠀

Through a convoluted plan involving a smoke screen and a shellter catapult (don’t ask, don’t think about it, it was a nightmare to make), Rena gets her hands on the akuma’s belt.

She grins with a little too much malice as she tears the thing in two, and stares down as she waits for the akuma to fly free.

Except, it doesn’t.

She hears Carapace’s comm buzz back to life in her ear, ready to catch the akuma in an impenetrable shield, but it seems that they’ve gotten the location wrong, this time around.

Flower Crown, the akuma, only laughs at their expense, before raising herself up into the air using her tentacles, and wedges herself into an alleyway. Her gloves glow a bright green, and before Rena’s eyes, even the smallest weeds weave themselves out of the ground, building themselves into yet another plant zombie.

“Oh my god,” Rena gasps. “Shit– Carapace, it’s the gloves.”

Carapace mutters a string of words that definitely don’t fly in school.

“How are we meant to get those off her?” He asks, as Rena begins running for her life. The zombies give chase, and while they’re not particularly fast, she now knows just how easily they can multiply, so that doesn’t mean much.

“I don’t know!” Rena responds, before pushing into a leap. She catches a roof’s edge and hauls herself the rest of the way up. Her miraculous beeps its third warning. She really needs to get out of the battle zone. “Secret handshake? Freakin’ chopsticks? Luck?”

She glances down the side of the building, where the hoard is starting to gather, then starts running off in the other direction.

Carapace, sounding stressed out of his mind (ha, mood), says, “We really need to talk to Ladybug right now.”

“You’re right, we’re not strategists,” Rena agrees. “But we have no idea how to find Ladybug right now, right? So there’s gotta be someone else who can help us out. Someone who we know how to find.”

There’s a long silence over the comms, both of them trailing off in thought.

Rena just barely makes it back to her apartment before detransforming, both she and her kwami falling to the ground in tired heaps. Trixx gets up first, and Alya watches as they seem to phase through their bedroom door, and that’s when the panic sets in.

Alya rushes out her bedroom door, watching Trixx make their way into the kitchen. The kitchen which is definitely not empty, because Anasi is home and is making one of her monstrously big lunches right now.

“Trixx,” Alya hisses, grabbing her kwami by the tail and yanking them back. Trixx yelps, and Alya just barely manages to muffle it with the sound of her slamming bedroom door.

“What was that for?” Trixx hisses.

“Alya!?” Her dad calls, and Alya winces.

Trixx sags, letting out a faint ohhhh.

“Yeah!?” Alya responds.

“What was that about?” Her father demands.

“Just, uh–” Alya panics, looking around her room for ideas but not thinking of anything. “Blowing of some steam! Just a little annoyed right now, is all.”

“Don’t slam the door, please!”

“Got it!”

When nothing follows, Alya sighs, leaning on her door until she’s fallen to the floor. “You can’t just go out there, Trixx. I have parents! And sisters. Like, a lot of sisters!”

Maybe not as many as they’d been during the Sapodis incident when she’d first met Trixx, but still.

“I need food to recharge, Rena,” Trixx informs her. “It helps me create more energy. Without it, even a transformation without a mirage will only last a short time.”

“Well, if that’s the case, you should have just said so,” Alya grumbles. She pushes herself back to her feet, walking over to her desk and tugging open the bottom drawer. She pulls out an old jewellery box, clearly made sometime in her childhood from the poor craftsmanship. She lifts it open, and proudly shows off her massive snack stash to Trixx. “I’ve got plenty of food to spare.”

Trixx gasps, rushing forward. They stop just in front of the lid, looking at everything that Alya has stashed inside. Then, they pry out a bag of pretzels from the pile. “Not fresh, but it’ll do.”

“Let’s hurry, though,” Alya requests. “Carapace is probably waiting for us.”

⠀

⠀

“Max is a pretty good strategist,” Carapace says to himself. “Even if he might list off some slightly threatening statistics. But Juleka knows a metric shit ton about avoiding zombies. But does that even matter if it’s not the right type of zombies? Walking around with misinformation would screw us over. But Max isn’t a fighter, and Juleka isn’t either, but still—”

Carapace groans. This is getting him nowhere.

It’s taking Alya longer than he expected to come back. He knows about the time limit, of course, but he doesn’t know how Ladybug and Chat Noir reset the time limit. It’s always seemed quick, though, and this is anything but quick.

Her kwami can just tell her how to recharge, right? Unless the kwamis get, like, knocked out by the use of their powers, or something?

Whatever the case, he really hopes that she hurries up.

Suddenly, there’s a thud behind him.

“Right on time, Rena,” he says, twisting around, then flinching backward.

Chat Noir is standing behind him instead of Rena Rouge, arms crossed. “For the record? My kwami is a major ass.”

Before he can stop himself, Carapace laughs.

⠀

⠀

“Is this a three on one or three on, like, a thousand?” Rena asks.

“It’s like an video game,” Chat Noir says confidently. He’s glad that the other two are listening to him, because he’s pretty sure his sickness is still evident, but apparently Chat Noir has more respect than he’d thought. “We don’t have to take out all the NPC’s to get to the final boss, but if we don’t, there’s a chance that they might come up from behind us.”

Carapace hums, leaning forward and squinting at Flower Crown. “We just have to get the gloves, right?”

“And then I can cataclysm to dust,” Chat confirms.

“Wait–” Rena blurts. “Guys, I think I have an idea.”

⠀

⠀

Rena’s idea goes… sort of okay.

She sends illusions of the heroes in front of the akuma, and she charges after them, calling for their miraculous. Meanwhile, Chat follows her on foot, and swings up and onto her back.

He gets chucked halfway down a block for his troubles, but he gets the gloves. Before Flower Crown can catch up to him, he calls for his cataclysm, and crushes the gloves into dust.

Carapace swoops down after that, trapping the akuma inside his shellter, since they can’t purify it.

But, because they can’t purify it, they also can’t cast the miracle cure, and now they have a hoard of zombies on their tail.

“C’mon, Ladybug, pick up!” Chat Noir is hissing at his baton, frantically tapping away at its small, hidden screen. He groans in annoyance when his call yet again goes to voicemail. They’re headed towards the Eiffel Tower, but there’s a good chance that they’re all going to have to detransform behind different support beams, because their timers are wearing down fast.

Chat plants his baton into the ground, and using it to shoot himself into the air with the shellter tucked under one arm. Behind him, Carapace and Rena take off in the biggest leaps they can manage, landing on the base of the tower then beginning to scale it.

Carapace has barely a minute left on his timer when he makes it to the top, but at least they’re out of the way of civilian view. He and Rena detransform side by side, leaning against one another.

A moment after both of their kwamis form, a black blur appears and tackles Trixx out of the air.

“I said I was sorry!” Trixx shrieks, shoving the black kwami (it has to be a kwami) off. “Plagg, you stubborn—”

“No, no, not about that,” the other kwami, Plagg, objects. “This is because I have to give up some of my cheese to you in order to get back down this stupid thing!”

Wayzz seems to sulk, while Trixx’s eyes sparkle with mischief. “Well, then I guess that I should spoil myself while I can. Hey, kitten!”

“Don’t you dare,” Plagg snaps, before zooming out of the area, presumably back in the direction of his holder.

“I have no idea what I was expecting from the black cat kwami,” Alya admits.

“But that fits,” Nino finishes.

“Uh, guys?” the currently detransformed Chat Noir calls from the other side of the tower. “Something’s happening with the shellter.”

They tense, sharing a brief look. The kwamis seem to do the same.

“Pass it over!” Alya requests.

There’s a long pause. Long enough that both of them begin to shuffle in place, and Trixx and Wayzz start talking in inaudible murmurs.

Then, finally, the cat kwami flies back over, carrying an oddly familiar-looking overshirt by the arms. Tucked on top of the shirt is the shellter, which is no longer holding just one akuma.

“Oh yeah,” Nino says as Plagg lands. She prods at the shellter, but so far it seems to be holding. “I forgot that those did that.”

“We’re just going to have to cram the entire shellter in the yo-yo, aren’t we?” Alya sighs.

“There’s no way that’d fit, babe.”

“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”

Wayzz flies over to the shellter, spinning around the whole thing a couple of times. “While that may be possible with other objects,” he says, “They won’t be purified unless we break the shellter, and we can’t break the shellter while it’s inside the ladybug’s weapon.”

“So what the heck are we supposed to do?” Alya demands. “One version of Flower Garden was hard enough to fight, are you telling me we might have to take down, like, thirty!?”

Wayzz’s frown deepens.

“I have an idea,” Trixx says tentatively. “But I feel like nobody’s gonna like it.”

“Let’s hear it,” Chat yells from the other side of the tower. “Also, can you guys please speak up? I can’t hear any of you.”

“I’m not playing telephone!” Plagg shouts angrily in his holder’s direction.

“Okay, so,” Trixx starts. “We have Plagg cataclysm the shellter—”

There's a harsh clang, a few poorly muttered curses, and then Chat calls, “BAD IDEA.”

“I know, I know. But then we have Ladybug restore all the damage he did to the rest of the city, and then everything will be fine!”

“Woah woah woah,” Nino interrupts, because, like. Woah woah woah. “What do you mean the rest of the city?”

Plagg rolls his eyes as if this isn’t somehow the most concerning thing of the day. “Kwamis can’t use their powers safely, which is why we need holders. If I called for my power, it’d crush… at least a couple blocks. But it’d get rid of the akumas!”

Tense.

Fucking.

Silence.

“I’m getting Tikki,” Wayzz declares. Before he goes, he dives into the overshirt and pulls out a piece of cheese, which causes Plagg to hiss at him while he flies off.

Once he’s gone, Alya gasps, “Oh my god. I fed a god my week-old pretzel stash.”

Trixx cackles.

⠀

⠀

In the end, it goes something like this:

Chat Noir, once again transformed, cataclysms the shellter.

Tikki, instead of asking for another holder, calls on her power without a holder, compelled by Trixx’s insistence that it’ll be fine.

It is not, in fact, fine.

Alya and Nino watch as, before their eyes, hundreds of copies of the Eiffel Tower appear across the skyline, only for the miraculous ladybugs to swarm by a second later and sweep them out of existence. The cure is faster than the towers, but there are a lot of towers.

“Well,” Tikki says, looking down at the ground, sounding mostly relaxed but still a little bit on edge. “At least it got rid of the akuma remnants?”

“This is crazy,” Rena manages to gasp out.

“Welcome to being a miraculous holder,” Chat says, reaching out to wrap an arm over Rena’s shoulders.

Then he breaks out into a coughing fit.