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"Chat," Marinette says, laughing even as she swats at her partner, even as he leaps backwards with his grin seeming to linger longer than the rest of him as he fades into the shadows. "We can't, we have a-" She snickers, forcing the words out past her own bubbling laughter. "We have a, a reputation to uphold, we are meant to be role models, we definitely cannot-"
Chat fades back in, grin growing larger. Larger and maybe a little bit fanged.
She was doomed before she started.
The city is too hot. The world is too hot. The temperature had started climbing a week ago, and it feels like it hasn't dropped since. It's a little cooler at night, at least, which is probably why Alya is seeing so many other people outside even as it edges later and later into the evening.
Alya's way too hot to go home and they haven't been able to get hold of Marinette, and Nino and Adrien have both been busy, so Alya's amusing themself by seeing how far back they can tip the metal chair outside a café without falling over entirely.
Pretty far.
Pretty far up until Chat Noir springs between buildings overhead, scrambling from one to another with a stiff-legged leap that has Alya lurching upright from their now-overturned chair, wondering why he's not using his staff.
He's clutching something, but Alya only realises that when Ladybug comes swinging through the space that they're standing in instead of staying to the roofs herself. Ladybug laughs wickedly and brings up her own weapon one-handed to fire on Chat Noir.
She hits.
Chat Noir whips around, shakes his dripping hair out of his eyes and hisses, both ears flat and his pupils contracted, and Ladybug hits him with the super soaker again as she completes her swing and vanishes back in between the buildings.
Alya stands for a moment, baffled and then delighted, blinking at Chat Noir's drenched form in the seconds before he vanishes.
Well, now Alya's got a reason to make a stop at home.
Alix deeply resents being kicked outside this time.
Sure, she doesn't care about it normally, but that's because normally she wants to be outside. She doesn't like staying still and there's not enough space indoors and people have some stupid objection to wearing Heelys inside just because they're in a museum, people suck, but right now it's way too hot to be outside.
Alix isn't sure what instinct makes her duck.
Ladybug's laughter trails the hero as she jams one foot against the side of a building, halfway up a facade, and uses it like a pivot point to launch herself across the street at Chat Noir.
Alix hadn't even seen Chat Noir before now, but he's right there, crouched on the edge of someone's balcony with one hand behind his back, and Alix is deeply and genuinely afraid for one long moment before he whips a super soaker into view.
It takes Ladybug full in the stomach.
Unfortunately for Chat Noir, she doesn't flinch. She barrels into him at speed, knocking him over and aiming her own super soaker right back at him.
Even from four stories down, Alix hears her breathless shout. "Forfeit!"
An indignant yowl drifts out over the street. "My lady, water you-"
Alix doesn't hear the rest of Chat Noir's question.
She's too distracted by a familiar whirring sound, louder than she's ever heard it before.
Markov's had waterproof casing from the start, because rain is a thing that happens and Max isn't about to lose his best friend that way, but Alix has seen a lot of Max's constant tinkering and heard a lot of the discussions and sometimes arguments he gets into with Markov about what else he should and shouldn't try out next. Alix likes to hang out at Kim's, and so do Max and Markov (and so do half a dozen of the rest of their friends, who's counting). Alix has heard about a lot of Markov's upgrades.
So she knows for sure this is new. This is new as recently as either this morning or last night.
Max had not so much handed Markov his own water pistol as he had given him a water pistol for a hand.
Both heroes get soaked.
Alya doesn't even have to ask Trixx, they just pick up the water pistol and look at their kwami and find themselves transformed.
Alya takes to the rooftops with a grin that doesn't fade for days.
(Markov is the first to take them out. It takes days).
Max has been at Kim's collection of water guns.
Kim now has a water cannon.
No one is happy about this but Kim.
The Liberty's not where she was docked this morning.
Juleka looks down at the edge of the river, studying it, but this is definitely the same spot. She recognises the abandoned construction equipment, the ugly cables of the nearest bridge. The Liberty was here a few hours ago.
Juleka looks back up. Still no ship.
"Anarka didn't... say anything about moving today, did she?" Rose's voice is steady enough, but Juleka can feel her girlfriend shaking slightly against her side. "Do you think she just forgot to tell us?"
Juleka sighs, blowing a bit of hair out of her face and then wishing she hadn't. It makes the heat more noticeable. "She forgot to tell us. It's okay, Rose, she's done this before."
Juleka hears Luka's bike tires clicking and the even fainter sound of wind brushing past his guitar strings before she sees him. "What's she done bef- oh. Mom left? Moved," Luka amends immediately, just as Rose flinches. "I would ask what got her so distracted, but I have a guess."
Luka swings himself off his bike and knocks the kickstand down. Moving up beside Juleka, he raises one hand over his eyes and squints across the river. "Oh, good timing."
Juleka's about to give up and ask her brother what the hell he means, when she finds she doesn't have to.
There's a flash of red and black on the nearby bridge.
Ladybug slides past, using her yo-yo and a bridge cable as a makeshift zipline, a slightly wild look in her eyes and a totally wild grin on her face. Chat Noir is just behind her, running down the railings on all fours.
Rena Rouge is following him, cackling and trying to dual-wield water pistols without falling into the Seine.
There's a very familiar foghorn, an even more familiar wordless yell, and the Liberty reappears from further down the river. Mom jumps from the wheelhouse to the deck, hopefully after she's made sure the ship's not going to hit anything, and uses a tennis racket to start hurling water balloons at the heroes.
"She's back," Luka says. Unnecessarily.
But Rose giggles and Juleka gives her brother a discreet thumbs up.
Rena tries to deflect a balloon with one of their pistols and falls into the Seine.
The first thing Carapace does is sneak up on Rena Rouge with a hose he'd politely asked to borrow for a minute.
The second thing Carapace does is get Kim's water cannon away from Rena Rouge.
"Has.... anyone seen an akuma recently?" Mylene wonders, laying back against the park bench and watching as Chat Noir, Markov, Carapace and someone she thinks might be Adrien's bodyguard have a stand-off for the high ground in the playground.
Ivan grunts as a water balloon lands on his chest but doesn't burst. "Not since they started." He picks up the balloon and hurls it back, where it splashes against Carapace's hastily-deployed shield instead of taking Chat out at the knees.
Chat and Carapace give each other a weird look, then turn to advance together on Ivan as Mylene squeaks and decides to wonder about it somewhere else.
Kim has a second water cannon.
No one is happy about this but Kim and Ondine.
"It's team building," Alya reasons, a deliriously happy glint in their eyes that Nino has learned the hard way he shouldn't trust. He still does because he doesn't learn, apparently. "Right, Trixx?"
"We're winning!" Trixx sounds just as gleeful as Alya looks.
"There's no- there shouldn't be winning happening if it's team building." Nino rubs his forehead. "We're all on the same team."
"Hawkmoth isn't." Alya leans against the alley wall, an even worse grin playing around the edges of their expression.
"Hawkmoth isn't play-" Nino stops. Forgets to breathe for a second.
Feels a grin of his own starting to spread, as he looks back at his partner and their kwami.
Alya pushes back off the wall, heel digging at the street for a moment before they tilt their head at him. The mischievous flicker to their eyes is an exact copy of the one that overtakes the whole of Trixx's tiny body.
"Wayzz?" Nino turns to his own kwami, still hidden in his shirt collar, still far less comfortable with visibility than Trixx and Alya. Even as sheltered a spot as they've chosen before talking about this, Wayzz isn't comfortable coming out. "Wayzz, Hawkmoth isn't playing."
Wayzz blinks, then reluctantly edges up past the safety of Nino's shirt. "Then... maybe we should be after all."
"Heeeeere kitty kitty kitty," Ladybug's voice calls, friendly and teasing, and Carapace's palm against Chat's chest slams him back against the wall. Adrien almost leaps out of his skin, but he trusts Carapace, so he only eyes him instead.
"Do not fall for that again," Carapace hisses, eyes darting sideways behind his goggles as he swallows, hard. "You know she has backup. You know this."
Ladybug's tone changes, turns sad. "Aw, I don't get to see my kitty today? I'm being deprived of a lap cat these days, it's cruel."
Carapace chokes. Beside him, Alix has slapped a hand over her mouth to hold back her snorts of laughter while Viperion's shoulders shake silently. The Gorilla just looks faintly amused.
Adrien doesn't realise he's tried to go to her until Carapace gently increases the pressure holding him in place.
"I hate," Carapace pants, shoulders hunching as Alix and Viperion both start to lose the battle against giggling and giving them away, "Your stupid hearing. Chat, she's not even here!"
It's Carapace's frustrated shout that ends up giving their location away.
They do not let him forget this. For days.
Kim has a third water cannon.
Anarka asks if he and Ondine would like to move in. No one seems to know whether or not she's serious.
They can't seem to find any of her own kids to ask.
"Alix," Nino tries, and immediately gives up, because he recognises the manic light in her eyes by now. He squares his shoulders and makes an attempt at following through anyway. "When Chat said bring whatever you can to the fight, I don't think this is what he meant."
"Yes it is," Chat Noir says instantly, both ears swivelling alertly as his tail gives a happy flick. "It absolutely is."
Alix leans around Alix's shoulder and grins wickedly at Carapace. "You should have been more specific."
"ALIX YOU CANNOT BRING YOURSELF TO A FIGHT-"
Everyone else has learned to scatter when Nino starts shouting. Anarka and Rena's carefully constructed water balloon net catches only him.
"Hey, are we winning?" Rose wonders, wandering over to the edge of the Eiffel Tower and peering down. She doesn't seem concerned about the height, which means she and Juleka have been up here either way too long or not long enough.
Either in spite of or because of Rose's apparent indifference to the drop Juleka catches her around the waist and hauls her closer to their little huddle.
Marinette appreciates their desire to stay out of the fight, at least for now, but Anarka having gone all in from the word go has made that a little more difficult in reality. Marinette still doesn't know where Luka is, although since Viperion's caught her with a balloon twice now Chat Noir might know.
She doesn't know if finding out that these two have been hiding out on the Eiffel Tower is a relief or not. They're too deep into the structure and too low to be in a tourist area, someone is bringing them up here. Marinette deliberately does not ask.
Juleka hauling Rose back in is a little unfortunate, in that Marinette doesn't have a real answer for her. "I... guess so?" Marinette's starting to wish they weren't, though. Marinette's been missing spending her patrols with Chat for... a while now. She's not sure how long.
She's not sure how long it's been since there's been an akuma.
She doesn't know what Hawkmoth's waiting for.
"Mercy," Tom wheezes through his laughter, holding up both hands in a show of surrender as his daughter's classmates surround him. "What is this?"
Carapace steps forward, past where Alix and Ivan fall aside for him. "We're losing, so we're looking for allies."
Tom eyes Ivan and then the Gorilla with some amusement. "Is this what you have instead of a plan?"
Carapace flushes darker, and Tom fights back laughter again. "Um, actually... We were sorta hoping to ask Mme. Cheng?"
Sabine is thrilled to be asked to join.
Chat's team stops losing.
Then they start winning.
Tom goes to see if he can join Ladybug just to start evening the odds again.
Kim has a fourth water cannon.
"Seriously, Max?!"
Adrien scrambles for his communicator when it rings early enough that he's still by himself.
"Are you alone, Chat?" Ladybug asks as soon as he's answered.
"Yeah," Adrien says, slightly out of breath from how fast he'd dived for privacy. "For now. Why, truce?"
His partner groans, oddly tinny through the speakers. He's not sure when the last time they spoke without trying to soak each other was. It can't be as long ago as it feels like. "I've been trying, they won't let me call one!"
Adrien sags into his hidden space, wedged between a railing and an overturned flowerpot on some abandoned balcony. He's had to get a lot more creative with his hiding spots. "You too?"
His heart does something funny at her sigh of relief. "This has been fun, kitty, but I miss you. I don't want to make everyone stop playing when they're all enjoying themselves so much, but I miss it being just us."
"I miss that so much." Adrien leans back, carefully, tugging at his tail to make sure it's wrapped tight around his leg and not about to give away his position. He knows the game hasn't started again yet, but it sort of feels like it never really ends, now. "At this point I'm even starting to miss the akuma. What do you think is going on with Hawkface?"
Ladybug's silent for several seconds. "I think... I think he's having trouble finding people to akumatise."
Adrien makes a face down at his communicator, even though they aren't using a video feature. "In a city this size? I don't care how much of a mood boost we've got going on, that's just, not realistic."
"People can fight off or turn down akuma, though," Ladybug points out. He's starting to hear distant shouting on her end; her next words are rushed. "Tikki thinks that's what's happening. She thinks when he can find someone they're not unhappy enough for long enough- shit, I gotta go!"
Adrien sighs and lets his head thud back against the balcony railing.
The thing about Ladybug's plans is that Alya trusts Ladybug's plans.
They don't realise what she's trying to do until it's way too late.
Because the thing that none of them have truly stopped to consider, and that they should have, is that Ladybug and Chat Noir are still partners.
Kim's all but vanished since Alix and Alix had gotten his last water cannon away from him. Alya thinks it's possible Anarka's hiding him and Ondine on the Liberty, because Kim hasn't turned up on Chat's team, but Anarka's on their team and Kim hasn't turned up for them either. Alya doesn't really worry about it, because Kim's never really picked a side. Kim's a chaotic enough player that it had never made a difference.
And then Roi Singe turns up.
With a fifth water cannon.
Roi Singe is a chaotic enough player that it makes a very large difference.
"Everyone make it?" Carapace calls (quietly, as quietly as he can and still get a response). "Hey, guys-"
"We're not sounding off, we'll figure it out," Alix grumbles, materialising next to him. She wrings out a sleeve. "I think everyone made it, though. Mme. Cheng is already checking."
Mme. Cheng is already heading Nino's way, a frown marring her laugh lines. She doesn't try to cushion the blow. "We're missing Chat."
"Everyone back?" Anarka asks, surveying her crew. A chorus of groans answers her.
She narrows her eyes, sweeping over the deck, but Luka's still not back. She hasn't seen him yet, but she's sure by now that he'd run off to join Chat Noir's team.
Anarka's proud of him. She's also starting to think she should be concerned. She's gotten so caught up in joining this fight that she's only recently realised she isn't sure where her son is sleeping. Rose and Juleka have been conspicuously absent, too, but not to the same degree.
And then Anarka notices that Luka's not the only face she's missing.
She waves Markov down for a closer look, but she has a sinking feeling he's going to come up just as empty as her.
"Has anyone seen Ladybug?"
Marinette falls against Chat's shoulder, giggling wildly as they burrow further into each other. "How long do you think it's gonna take them?"
He groans, and the way it reverberates through her side feels more like coming home than anything has in days. "Don't make me think about it, please? I think Carapace was tracking me for a while." He thinks about it. His mouth curves down at the edge. "I don't know if he's stopped."
Marinette's gotten very used to seizing her wild ideas and running with them since she'd first met Tikki. She's only gotten more acclimated to it while they've been staging their city-wide water fight. "I know how we can stop him."
"Really?" Chat grumbles. "Because I know he's got the turtle Miraculous and all, but did you know that Carapace is a freaking mother hen?"
"Hey, kitty?" Marinette waits for him to look at her. She meets his eyes, smiles so hard it hurts, and says, "Spots off."
Tikki has to convince him he really can open his eyes and look, but the expression of gobsmacked wonder Marinette had caught on his face before he'd first shut his eyes made it worth it.
"You're the one who was getting tracked, minou," she reminds him after almost a full minute of his dazed rambling. She'd listened, up until she'd realised he's mostly just repeating the words 'I'm so lucky' over and over in a way that does more for her self-esteem than she'd thought possible. "Which is a definite hazard, by the way, we need to be like. Sure that can't be seriously used against us."
"It probably only worked because it's Carapace," Tikki reassures. "You know how he worries. Wayzz is probably helping him."
"He used his shield, I don't think it's something most people can do." Chat Noir shakes himself, closing his eyes in a direct contrast to Marinette. "Claws in."
His dazed rambling doesn't seem like much held against Marinette's own babbling response. Tikki has to remind her to stop and breathe twice. Plagg won't stop snickering.
The fight starts to peter out without them, despite Alya and Kim's best attempts, but they don't know that then.
"Wait," Marinette says, catching Chat's hand- Adrien's hand- as he gets up to slip back out into the city with her. "Wait, we still actually can't, I didn't think-" She winces, a guilty look crossing her face. "We're both in the class, they're going to want us both to join again."
Adrien's hand convulses and then tightens around hers and Marinette's heart rate abruptly doubles.
"We could at least join on the same side?" Adrien suggests, tentatively, as though his father won't somehow magically know the instant Adrien tries to join any side at all.
"You'd have to retransform anyway." She still considers it. This has been fun, and rejoining on Chat's side would be even better. But. "And I miss our normal patrols. Eventually the heat wave's going to end and Hawkmoth's going to find someone he can convince for longer than twenty seconds."
"So..." He doesn't let go of her hand. "So now what?"
Marinette tugs him back beside her, her heart fluttering as she does until she steadies it by reminding herself firmly that this is still Chat.
Even if he is Adrien.
Even if the idea that he's Adrien makes her want to spend hours ranting her joy at Tikki. She probably will, later. He's still Chat Noir. He's still her partner.
He's always been her partner.
Plagg brushes against the side of Marinette's neck as he flits down to Adrien's free hand. "So now you hide out and drink until both your units forget they're missing a commander."
"Plagg!" Tikki's scandalised voice might have been more believable if it weren't laced with so much laughter.
"What? That was hilarious and you know it."
"That was one time."
"It could be a second time right now, just saying."
"Plagg, they're sixteen!"
Plagg squints at Tikki, then turns and squints at Adrien and Marinette. "No they're not."
"Yes, we are," Marinette says, amused, as she and Adrien find a comfortable way to sit against the wall together. It's not a hard thing to do, as comfortable as they've gotten in each other's space as Ladybug and Chat Noir.
"No," Plagg decides, settling back against them both as soon as they've stopped moving. Tikki finally climbs all the way out of Marinette's purse. "They were fourteen when we got them so they're fourteen now."
Adrien's laugh is so completely Chat's laugh that Marinette's stunned she's never recognised him. "Plagg, you know it doesn't work that way."
"Sure it does, you're not allowed to do the aging thing." Plagg points at Adrien. "Banned. Banished. Not allowed. Stop that."
"I don't think you know what banished means," Tikki tells him. Plagg ignores her.
"I'll go get Fluff's chosen to help me. And if I can't get her I'll go get Fluff's chosen."
Marinette narrows her eyes at Adrien. "I knew you had two of her."
Adrien smiles sheepishly. "We tried to stop her."
"Uh-huh. Does we mean Carapace?" Marinette can't stop leaning into him, breathing in the feeling of having him back at her side after too many days spent apart. She's not missing Tikki's worried looks, she just can't really seem to bring herself to care.
She understands it's only been a few weeks at most.
For her and Chat Noir, that is too many days.
"All the clever decisions were Carapace, I think he was in charge more than I was," Adrien admits, shifting and finally releasing her hand, but only so he can curl an arm around her. "I think they stopped trusting my decisions after the first couple times your 'here kitty' routine worked."
"... that worked once."
Plagg snorts. "That worked every time, Carapace just got quicker at catching him."
"It wasn't a real strategy, I just really missed you." Marinette presses into his arms, closing her eyes to enjoy the familiar feeling. Her eyes creep back open quickly, though, brow furrowing. "Wait, was Plagg encouraging the drink-to-forget thing while thinking we're fourteen."
"You are fourteen. You're gonna be fourteen when you're old and grey, which you're not gonna be, because you are fourteen."
Tikki actually divebombs Plagg, knocking him off Adrien's hand, but he only lands on Marinette's knee. Not a whole lot was accomplished. "Please just ignore him."
"I can't, I've tried." Adrien's got one hand curled around Plagg already in a way that makes this an obvious lie. "Obviously no one is expecting us anywhere, and we can't risk our friends right now, so what now?"
"I have an idea but you don't like my ideas."
"Because that's not an idea, Plagg, it's alcoholism." Tikki sounds like she's had to say this before.
Plagg sniffs. "Not if they only do it once." His eyes gain another gleam to them, which going by Adrien's expression might be something to worry about. "The kid learned a game he never got to play. They could play Never Have I Ever."
Tikki eyes Marinette's purse like she regrets leaving it. "That is a drinking game."
Marinette clears her throat and three sets of eyes snap to her. "It... doesn't have to be."
By the time they finally deem it safe enough to leave (transformed in Adrien's case, not in Marinette's), the war has sputtered to a damp close. Anarka can't figure out where Luka's staying for another day and a half (it turns out to be with Nino), and Rena has to be begged to give up their stolen water cannon, and no one's entirely sure now if Roi Singe knows what was going on towards the end and it's only just occurred to anyone to wonder whose team Max has been on this whole time (Kim's), but the fight itself has sputtered out. By two nights later, Ladybug and Chat Noir are able to patrol normally again.
Four nights later, Hawkmoth manages an akuma for the first time in weeks.
The akuma's set upon by a bristling variety of teenagers and superheroes and teenage superheroes and a handful of adults that the heroes trust. They're not armed with much beyond water weaponry.
The akuma goes down in minutes.
Hawkmoth has a very bad summer.