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Chat Noir     NOT QUITE FIVE MINUTES AGO...

"We need to go, /now/!"

Chat Noir had not paid much attention to what happened in the wake of the Witch's defeat. He had been pleased to see that the Lucky Charm had worked out, but perhaps not paid enough attention to the complete scope of how much it had worked out. He'd taken the time to ring in to the local radio frequency, and then he'd grabbed Ladybug by the wrist and started pulling.

They were on a time limit. He's not the responsible one, strictly speaking, but...

But even he's aware that it's bad news to be caught on the wrong side of the gate with a tired kwami. That wasn't the /only/ reason though.

    2:32 REMAINING TO TRANSFORMATION FAILURE

Today was different than the other times. They always end up racing the clock to hide before their transformation terminates, but usually they're running in opposite directions from one another. But when they'd broken through the gate, Chat Noir had not let go of Ladybug's arm.

"We need to find someplace to detransform where we can be separate but still talk." He had explained, before carrying on.

    0:30 SECONDS REMAINING / NOW

Chat Noir leaps down the back of a furniture store, long since closed for the night, and kicks open its dumpster. It's full of old cardboard boxes, most partially broken down. He pulls several of them rapid-fire out of the dumpster, pops them as /far/ open as he can, and jams one over himself like an enormously oversized hat. It falls down to his feet, punctuated immediately afterwards by a great flash of green light that briefly illuminates the box and its surroundings with its glow.

Adrien Agreste slumps to the ground inside his box, leaning back against the dumpster it's standing up next to, and sighs heavily. Plagg drifting through the air nearby catches his attention, but only just. He rifles around in his shoulder bag -- stored during transformation -- and fetches some cheese for the little ghost cat.

Little does he know that he is encouraging the misconception that he's homeless.

"Not that I am complaining with the speedy service," Plagg's voice drifts faintly through the dark, "but why are we in a smelly old box?"

"It's only smelly because you only eat camembert." Adrien complains in turn, more audible by far than his tiny guardian. This is not strictly true, but the boxes don't smell /terrible/. Just like dust and old cardboard.
Ladybug Ladybug is subject to a rather interesting reversal. Normally, it's her dragging Chat Noir by the hand (or leather belt-tail) around. Normally, she has the plans.

This is not Normal. This is not Standard, Sassy, Confident Ladybug. That Ladybub has checked out, and requires a Cat Nerd to help her.

There's a light that's gone out, as she's dragged around. She's there, but the wind is out of her sails. When they get back to Paris, though, instead of splitting off like normal, they... go to an alley. A dirty alley with cardboard boxes. And then Chat Noir starts using Hobo Science. "What are you...?" She asks, but she doesn't have time. Instead, she finds a box, and sort of drapes it over herself as she flops against the wall, hidden behind cardboard. Her tired Kwami pops out of her outfit, which is actually some paint-flecked jeans and a long-sleeved jacket with a hood with a zipper. Reaching in her bag, she withdraws a shitty ski mask and pulls it down over her head, before Tikki takes its place, with her Cookie Stash.

"... It didn't work right, Chat. The power, after the weird akuma got defeated. It didn't work right."
Chat Noir The voice that answers is more subdued than Chat Noir normally is, but it's fairly easy to chalk that up to everything that just happened. There's a vague thumping 'next door' as he repositions himself within his box. He gestures in a circular motion towards Plagg, to indicate that he needs to hurry up. Then he turns his attention towards Ladybug, the emotional exhaustion of the night catching up to him.

But not nearly as much as it's caught up to her, he realizes.

"What? Are you sure?" He asks, the sound of his voice muffled by the surrounding cardboard. Not enough that he's not audible, but enough to give him an odd sort of really vague echo. "I didn't have time to look around very much... why wouldn't it have? Did you see something that didn't get reversed?"

Adrien might have noticed, but Chat Noir definitely wouldn't. Unlike his much more thoughtful partner, he actually doesn't have anything to change into as a disguise. He thought about a /blanket/ like he'd suggested, but just decided against it. He's going to have to wait to detransform.

Gratuitous eating sounds issue from his box.
Ladybug "I... They remembered being dead. Buried. Everyoe was brought back, I think, but that whole place felt /wrong/. They were crying and confused and hurt. It didn't... work. It wasn't good enough."

Her voice is muffled and quaking, her breath coming in short, ragged sighs that sound exactly like someone trying to control their breathing and not doing that good of a job about it.

"People were still hurt, too. Nothing went right, all night. And people put up with that every day? We're..."

Marinette, now, sits under smelly cardboard in a dirty Parisian alley with her alleycat partner, and hugs her knees to her chest, somewhat for warmth, somewhat for comfort. "What if it gets worse? What if I damaged the Miraculous trying to... purify that weird stone?"
Chat Noir Adrien shuffles his box around, and tries to figure out a solution to the fact that he's very identifiable right now. He considers the button-down shirt he's wearing as an outer layer, and wrapping it around his head to cover up. But... well, he smells like awful from getting nearly cooked, and even he doesn't want to risk that. After a little while of silence he decides that he's just going to have to wait for Plagg to be ready to transform again.

Again making a 'hurry up' motion to his partner, he slides Plagg some more cheese. The eating sounds get louder.

"Okay. Alright. Things... got really messed up, and I'm not okay with them either. But if that's the only thing that didn't go right, we're really lucky." This isn't Chat Noir, so he speaks a lot more deliberately and carefully, picking his words more precisely and not speaking with the familiar aloof confidence. "Or more accurately, they're really lucky. Akuma usually forget what happened to them, and victims do too sometimes, but I am certain that Mylene and the Mayor's daughter have had to deal with things the hard way too."

"Unless your kwami thinks so too, I don't think we can assume that anything is wrong with you. And look, even if something was broken you were the difference between those people having that as their last ever experience and just having it as something horrible that they can try to work through." He sighs heavily, leaning back against his box again and running his hands through his hair.

Whoever she is over there, he can't expect her to be ok. He's not ok. If he /was/, he wouldn't have insisted on sticking together through their countdown. Adrien needed to be able to talk about this, he just hadn't expected to be the one on steadier footing between them. Inside, he's really not. And in a little while he's going to let that out. Right now, he's got to... he doesn't even know.
Ladybug Tikki is quiet, stuffing her face with cookies with a sort of deliberate scarfing that underlies the situation. Even Plagg is probably being 90% less of a shit than usual. Maybe.

It is Plagg.

"Lucky? It's..." Ladybug - Marinette - rolls this around in her head. "All the luck in the world, and it doesn't feel like it's enough. We defeated the monster - horrible, awful, filled with pain... Worse than ours. Worlds like that can exist? Places?" Marinette sighs, bumping her head against the alley wall behind her. "It's like a bad dream. The kind you think is so terrifyingly real, that you wake up right after and look around, and you know it's fake. A part of me wants to just... wake up. Wants today to have been some sick joke."

She lets an idle hand, released from the death grip around her legs, rub her kwami's odd, squishy head. "But that's reality. Bad things happen. Paris doesn't expect me to sweep in and stop a car accident. They don't blame us for not raising the dead or fighting fires. We're superheroes. We do... super... things."

Marinette falters. "I tried to give my Miraculous away, right after we first met. I didn't think I was a good hero, that I couldn't do it. That whatever chose me, chose wrong." She sighs, staring into the darkness around her, covered by makeshift cardboard shield. "You never thought that, did you?"
Chat Noir "Plagg, transform me."

Adrien delivers the phrase lifelessly, as if by routine alone. There's a shuffling sound as he lifts the cardboard box off of himself, and sets it aside to get up and reposition himself. From within her box, Marinette can feel some pressure as Chat Noir seats himself against it on the opposite side of the wall. His back is to her, pressing the box a little towards the wall. Just like that, the shields come back down.

"You're right, My Lady, I never thought something like that. But it isn't because I think that I'm the best Chat Noir that I could possibly be. It's because..." Chat Noir hesitates with a little noise of frustration, weighing the odds of speaking too freely against the needs of the situation. She'd insisted on their identities staying separate, so even if his shields are down he isn't going to throw that away in a fit of emotional vulnerability.

Still, the needs of the situation by far outweigh a small window into his real life that might betray a fragment of who is really behind the mask. How, exactly, to convey this springs to mind soon after.

"Did you know you're only the second friend I ever had? My life, sometimes it makes me feel like I'm drowning even though there are so many problems out there bigger than me. I never thought that maybe people deserved a better Chat Noir, because /I/ need Chat Noir, for me."

Chat Noir bites back the temptation to add that, in fact, he is so purrrfectly exceptional as to already be the best Chat Noir there could be.

"I don't think your kwami /or/ Paris can do better than you, and it's because you think like this that I believe so."

Chat Noir sniffs a little, thinking back to the thing itself. To the realization that had settled in from Enya's statements, and the thing that had crawled out of the earth at her command. The /smell/ of it was awful by itself, but the circumstances stacked atop what the Witch had tried to do to them was...

His stomach churns uncomfortably. Were they /cooked/ alive, before they were buried, he wonders.
Ladybug Marinette felt like she was waiting for something - a sign - that would make everything better. She looked down, to her Kwami, who gave her a solemn little nod, and a supportive pat on the leg. She took a deep breath.

"Tikki, transform me." She murmurs, and the power of the Miraculous - and the suit - refills her. Tiredness washes away, little aches and pains disappeared.

As Ladybug, she lets one leg slide forward, kicking away the box over her, leaning her back into Chat's. "Am I wearing a ski mask?" She asks, out of the blue, before touching her face.

"Nope. Good. I'd look so dumb in a ski mask." She jokes helplessly, as Chat reveals SAD CHAT FACTS. "I didn't have many friend either, to be honest. I had classmates, but... I didn't really have someone specific until recently. Didn't even have a boy I liked until this year. Well, didn't have a magic pair of earrings, either." She gives a little smirk, staring down the alley. "Does it make you feel better if I say... that I need you? Ladybug needs Chat Noir, sure, and I'm sure our Kwami would say something like that... But I need you. Even if Paris seems to think they need only me, I need you. One of the reasons I decided to finally keep the Miraculous, was because... I thought you needed me, too."

    Ladybug moves to look up at the sky. "Do you live in a place like this? I could..." She couldn't. She wasn't rich, or had extra room, or thought she could convince her mother and father to take in a stray, never mind the whole 'don't reveal your identities!!!' speech she said. She falls silent.

"Sorry. Nevermind. Just... don't lie to yourself, okay? For all you say you need Chat Noir for you, you sure think of me first in every situation."
Chat Noir "Why would you be wearing a ski mask?"

The question is chatter, almost irrelevant. Chat Noir supposes she's implementing his blanket idea a lot more effectively than he'd dreamed it up. Even if she had though, the suit would absorb it like everything else they wear before they transform. When she seats herself with her back to his, he leans his head back and shuts his eyes, listening to her in silence for a little while.

His tail-belt, normally only a little bit animate at best, flicks with what could /only/ be annoyance, but at what it's hard to tell.

"It feels good to have somebody actually say it, but you don't have to say it for me to know that it's true, Buginette. There are a lot of things that I like about being Chat Noir, but our purrrtnership is without a doubt my favorite." He replies.

Then she asks him a very odd question. Eyes flickering open, he looks about into their surroundings, trying to comprehend whether or not he understood correctly. The second half of her not-quite-finished thought slides into place, and Chat Noir actually passes a perception check to wrap his head around what is going on.

Chat Noir gets up, moving on all fours to circle around the front of Ladybug and fix her with a brilliant smile that can only be described as three quarters glowingly appreciative and a quarter teasing. He says, "I apurr-eciate My Lady's implied concern and generosity, but no parent will take kindly to their daughter dragging a raggedy tomcat in from the streets. If you efur decide you can't keep your paws off me and want to cross that bridge, I'm up for it."

He considers headbutting Ladybug, but brushes the impulse off as invasive kitty thoughts. Instead, he answers the impulse by raising a fist towards Ladybug. It's been a long night, and it didn't go perfectly, and he's pretty sure that he's going to have nightmares of dead people rising out of the ground. But he thinks it's probably about time for that.

"Not lying," he retorts, "I /like/ helping people, too. But it's not why I became Chat Noir, or why I don't think about giving it up."
Ladybug "Because I wore old painting pants and a winter hoodie and bought a ski mask from a supplies shop so if I detransformed I'd have a disguise." Ladybug replies lightly, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

Chat Noir you are talking to someone who made all their own clothes and bag. Reason has nothing to do with Marinette Dupain-Cheng's ability to just have clothes as a teenaged girl she made herself that look designer. They are designer! She designed them.

"You mean it wasn't the cat puns or the superpowers? I thought for sure it was the cat puns." She relates, trying to think positively, confidently, Ladybug-y. With her back to him, she can feel the rumble in his chest at the 'Purrr-tnership', though that contact is broken as he stalks around before her like a very odd prowling tom. "I don't know, if I promised to feed and take care of you they'd probably come around. Though, you know, I'm pretty sure my dad would insist on getting you fixed." She teases back, the light mostly-back in her eyes. There's still that pain, and lingering doubt, but... It's slipping to the background.

She looks to the fist, and remembers that they did, in fact, defeat Evil and save lives. "Not a perfect night, but..." She bumps her fist against his. "Good job." She murmurs, before sweeping herself up to her feet slowly.

"I'm just a normal girl, same as any other, Chat. I'm sure there's someone better for the job... But I'm not going to abandon you just because I don't like it. That'd make me an awful partner."
Chat Noir "Do a lot of painting?" It's a side-tangent, but Chat Noir sounds interested.

"Well the first time it was all about the freedom which really wouldn't be possible without all of those other things except the cat puns." Chat Noir rattles off, ticking off benefits that he doesn't list on his fingers as he seriously considers the question. He winds up pointing at Ladybug, "You have very strong competition but these days I would say number one is You, and then number two is freedom and all the rest cascades down from there."

He issues a great exaggerated sigh in answer to Ladybug's counter teasing, putting a little effort into flattening out his ears like you might expect from an actual cat. "Most fathers would insist upon the same and alas, it defeats the purrrpose of dragging a very pretty cat home with you if you're just going to de-claw him straight away. Feed me like you did the other day though, and I might come sing at your window instead."

He mirrors her, "Good job." Perhaps a little more enthusiastically than she does, rising from his crouch as she stands.

"Normal girls are not this thoughtful, intelligent, or as good at banter so I think you're very over-meowdest which really just makes me think you are much better than a normal girl even more." He re-positions himself alongside Ladybug, draping an arm over her shoulder lightly, "But that's okay, I'm thankful for all of those things anyway even if My Lady can't appreciate them so much in herself."

"There are a few videos on the internet of that time you dressed down Papillon and purified that big flock of akuma. Go watch one, you'll feel better about yourself." Chat Noir takes up his baton in his free hand, twirling it casually. "Now we should both probably go get some rest. I don't really want to be too far out of touch for a little while though because I can't talk to anybody else about this and what happened tonight was really messed up, so let's make some throw-away email accounts to chat with while we're not transformed. Sound good?"
Ladybug "I do a lot of everything, Chat." Ladybug replies, with a slight shrug. "And if you come sing at my window, don't bring the rest of the alleycats along to croon with you. Ugh, and /don't/ teach cats to pun. They'd be im-paw-sible to tolerate." She continues to tease.

"Thoughtful I may be convinced to give you, but intelligent? You shoud see my grades in physics." She replies, though the arm around her shoulder isn't peeled off. For a moment, she raises her hand to pluck his fingers from her shoulder, and then thinks better of it.

Just this once, she can let Chat have it. "Don't get any wild ideas, alleychat." She murmurs with a thin grin, before nodding at the suggestion of rest. "I'm going to go home and sleep forever. If I don't show up to the next akuma, it's because I'm just sleeping. All the sleeping. In the shower. Shower and also sleeping."

    She draws her yo-yo, flipping it down idly, though she'll wait for Chat to release her shoulder.

Unless he doesn't.

"Goodnight, Chat Noir."
Chat Noir "More intelligent than me! Your purr-actical solutions to Akuma attacks are fantastic." This is all that Chat Noir seems to feel inclined to correct or push on. Standing this close and with his arm draped over her though, she gets another dose of that rumbling motor in his chest as he actually starts purring a little bit. He stops twirling his baton, offering a curt nod in answer to her dire need for both sleep and a shower.

Ohhh, he's going to take a long shower after this. A really long one.

"Sweet dreams, Ladybug." Chat Noir offers in parting, disentangling himself from her and vanishing into the night with an extended pole vault that carries him over the surrounding rooftops and into the distance.