Prompt by @sillysiluriforme , full list here: 🦋
(Mod Ladybug here! Thank you all so much for checking out these mini fics! I had a lot of fun writing them out, and thank you so much to @sillysiluriforme for making these prompts! We thought these prompts were be the perfect opportunity to share some blurbs about life in the Metamorphosis AU, and we hope you all enjoyed them! Stay tuned to the blog for more content from our story, and there will be a master post soon linking to all of them (also indicating the chronological order they happen in the timeline!) We hope you enjoy this last one too!)
One brisk spring night, Ladybug stood upon the Arc de Triomphe. Below her the city of love still had its stragglers, finding their ways back to their homes and hotels. Some stick around however, trying to find the few places still remaining open this late in the night. However, as Ladybug watched the citizens… something had changed within them. Looking down, there was no way of guessing the fact that just earlier today, Paris was burning. Not in any metaphorical way, literally burning. That fireman who got metamorphosed because of those kids pulling the fire alarm to get out of comparatively menial tasks really set it off in many parts of the city. And yet, they’re still walking, like it was an ordinary Friday night……
Ladybug yelped and nearly bonked her partner with the yo-yo. “AH-!” After finally seeing it was Chat she hunched over, her hand on her heart, “Chat- you- you scared me!”
“Sorry about that, it comes with the territory of disappearing into the night!” Chat replies, proving his point by going toward a more shadowed part of the arc.
Ladybug looks up and down and snarks, “Sure you would… if it wasn’t for your bright hair, those eyes, and the gleam on your leg.”
“Close enough!” The two laugh for a bit before Ladybug’s fades into a sigh, looking back out onto the street. Chat Noir tilted his head as he leaned on the staff. “Are you okay, Ladybug?”
Ladybug slightly nods. “I um… I… guess.”
Confused, yet still concerned, he goes to line up with her eyesight to see what she sees out there.
“In a way, yeah,” Ladybug replies, sitting down over the edge of the arc. “I don’t know, Chat, I’m just… getting concerned.”
“About Monarch?” He immediately asks, his mode changes.
“Well… that’s definitely part of it.”
“I know that was kinda an obvious part, my bad. What are you concerned about, then?”
Ladybug points down to the crowd below. “About… them.”
Chat Noir observes for a second, then frowns. “For all anybody else could know… no one is acting like just a few hours ago, the fire captain was burning up a lot of Paris, huh?”
“Exactly…” Ladybug takes out her yo-yo and Chat unclips his bell.
“I… haven’t really followed a lot of comics and I know you do so uh… do the heroes you read about have any magical cure-all that makes everything back to the way it was?”
“It’s not common at all,” Ladybug replies, “sometimes they… go into discussions about how… responsible they are for the damage as much as the villains are but most times, it’s just… ignored, and by the time the next issue comes, everything just… goes back to normal. I think writers do it that way to not overly complicate their fun hero stories unless they want to focus on it.” She pauses. “But as for real life…am I crazy to think that… everyone is acting too…normally for something that catastrophic?”
Knowing that feeling on a general level, Chat slightly swings his metal leg with his other one. “I’m… pretty sure everyone deep down is afraid down there. You can’t forget something like that. Or any other time a scélérat does something catastrophic. But you can’t lock yourself away behind fear either. Life’s gotta continue. I… um… know some people who I hope can understand that one day.”
Ladybug looks out. “Yeah… you… got a point. Sometimes, against the people who want you to be afraid of them… the big protest you can do against them is… to say ‘you know what, I’ll do this today- I will go to the grocery store that was literally ashes a few hours ago!’ …that was dark, I’m so sorry…”
“It’s fine, it’s… kinda true,” Chat Noir chuckles, “And yet at the same time… I… hope that they still take what happens here seriously. Especially with Miraculous always reversing it every time…”
“We can’t trust that it’s going to work every time though,” Ladybug grimly replies. “So far it has but there might be a day… especially if Monarch becomes more powerful.”
“That’s um…” Chat looks aside, “yeah... Too bad for them, they got the ultimate crime-stopping duo of superhero to deal with! Eh?” He slightly nudges her arm.
“Chaaaaat, we’re the ONLY crime-stopping duo of superheroes in Paris,” Ladybug slightly smiles.
“…And as much as I think that Miraculous is something not to be taken lightly, I can think of one specific, unequivocally good thing about it.” Chat realizes.
“What’s that?” Ladybug asks.
Instead of looking at at the citizens going about their night, Chat Noir turns Ladybug’s attention to a bunch of bushes and flowers. .
“A…. Garden?” Ladybug inquires, jokingly.
“Ha, noooo, it’s what’s in the garden! Do you see those purple azaleas there? Just… right above that. Take a closer look.”
Ladybug slightly leans closer to where Chat directed her until… “..! Oh!”
Pollinating the azaleas is a distinctive, glowing white butterfly, fluttering about the bushes from petal to petal. Its supernatural glow illuminates the flowers around it, revealing their shades even in the darkness of night.
“When we purify the scélérat… the victim returns to their normal self… and then when we use Miraculous…. It… takes away everything that they ‘did’… that was not their fault. It might not get rid of everyone’s memories of what happened, mentally… but the physical consequences are… cleansed out. It wasn’t supposed to happen, so it physically didn’t anymore.”
Ladybug stares at the butterfly… it seems so, huh? When people are scélérats, they become a plaything of Monarch. President Endat’s Mauve Act made it legally decreed that scélérat victims are not legally responsible for the actions they had done while the butterfly was still in their systems. Miraculous made it so that they were no longer physically responsible too.
“So… no matter what people may.., do or think… they… have every right to continue their lives…” Ladybug ponders. “Because at the end of the day… when we beat Monarch… that’s what we gotta do afterward anyway.”
“I’m so glad you said ‘when’, Ladybug,” Chat smiles, “at least I know that both of our heads are in the game.”
Ladybug smiles back, “Thanks, Chat.”
The two get up and nod- it’s time they move to another part of Paris to continue their patrol. Ladybug grapples out her yo-yo, and Chat Noir launches himself off with the staff. The power of purification, even if it gives off as many nerves as it does relief, is such an amazing one to have, and it is up to the two of their powers, together, to free Paris from all the ailments the scélérat brings. As long as these two have each other, Paris is going to be okay. As long as these two stay strong, they can be the force that helps the people victim to Monarch’s whims. As long as they have each other, Paris can restart before the attack.
As long as they have each other
As long as they have each other..
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