Summary: Ladybug and Ryuuko have a little competition going on. The aim? To rescue Alya during akuma attacks. And naturally, Alya is Done with her girlfriends' shenanigans, while Chat Noir is just oblivious to the three-way tension.
Slot: 1-2.5k fic
Written for an anonymous donor for the @mlbforblm drive! Thank you so much for commissioning me and I hope you enjoy the sweet wlw disasters! The drive ends in just a few days so if you haven’t already, please consider coming over and commissioning me or another of the amazing contributors!
This assumes that Kagami didn’t reveal herself in ‘Ikari Gozen’ and that ‘Miracle Queen’ never happened, so none of the heroes had their identities outed.
AO3 link
“I got her!”
If anyone had told Alya that she’d be annoyed at a superhero rescue, she’d have looked at them funny and wondered if they’d hit their heads. But that was before…this.
“Don’t worry, Alya,” Ladybug says with a winning smile. “I’ll keep you safe. Ryuuko and Chat Noir can hold off Jess Tear –”
“Césaire!” howls the akuma as if on cue. With her snow-white face, jet-black lips and tear-streak eyeliner, and asymmetrically patterned black and purple jumpsuit and pigtails, she resembles a bargain bin version of Harley Quinn more than anything. Not that Alya would say that to her face…but Hawkmoth is a different story altogether. Is he drunk or something when he akumatises people?
“Why is she even mad at you?” Ladybug says as she deftly leaps and swings through the city, still holding Alya close.
“She tried to insult the Ladyblog, I told her to stop clowning, everyone laughed at her,” Alya says as though Ladybug doesn’t know exactly why Jess Tear is angry. If Alya could slap her oblivious fourteen-year-old self around the head, she so would, because how the hell hasn’t anyone else figured out that Ladybug is her dorky best friend slash girlfriend Marinette? Hmm. Maybe that’s why only Alya has figured it out. That and being Ladybug’s number one fan.
“You’re a good friend, Alya,” Ladybug says. “I – uh, you sound like a good friend!”
“Thanks,” Alya says dryly, wondering if facepalming will give the game away.
“Incoming!” Chat Noir cries from somewhere to the right, and that’s the only warning Alya and Ladybug have before a gigantic purple mass shoots up and snags both of them in its rubbery, shrieking coils. Jess Tear’s mad laughter provides the accompanying soundtrack as she perches on the purple head of a balloon snake nearby.
“You seem to be a little tied up, Césaire!” Jess Tear says. Alya rolls her eyes.
“Right, because I’ve never heard that one before,” she says. “I’ve been akuma bait for, like, three years and that’s the best you can come up with?”
“Who’s the clown now?” Jess Tear cries as though Alya hadn’t said anything. “Now I’ll strangle the life out of you and collect Ladybug’s Miraculous from her dead –”
With an explosive pop, Alya’s bonds vanish and she plummets towards the ground, screaming. But she’s caught in a pair of red arms before she can splatter like a cracked egg and whisked out of danger, held close to another scarlet-clad, black-haired superhero whose eyes are cinnamon brown instead of bubble-gum blue.
“I’ve got you, Alya,” says Ryuuko, aka Kagami, aka Alya’s other girlfriend, aka the whole damn reason for Alya’s constant headache because she and Ladybug can’t seem to stop themselves from turning “rescue Alya” into a goddamn competition.
(Ryuuko’s winning seventeen to thirteen, but there’s no way Alya will admit that she actually keeps count of how many times her girlfriends rescue her).
“Hey! I was saving her!” Ladybug shouts as she untangles herself from the deflated corpse of the balloon snake with Chat Noir’s help. Kagami lands on top of a nearby blue car, turns back to Ladybug, and has the audacity to wink at her. Alya feels the sudden urge to yeet herself out of Ryuuko’s arms and beg Jess Tear to end her suffering already. She’s, like, ninety percent sure that Ladybug and Ryuuko know each other’s identities, which is so not fair because what is she? Chopped fox liver?
If she was Rena Rouge right now, none of this would even be happening in the first place. There’s no justice in this world, honestly.
“Strategically, I’m the better choice to save Alya, while you and Chat Noir close in on Jess Tear!” Ryuuko calls back.
“Like hell!” Jess Tear yanks a purple handkerchief out of her sleeve and keeps pulling, revealing hanky after hanky tied in a long chain. She hefts this chain and cracks it at Chat Noir, causing him to yelp and jump away from Ladybug, who only just manages to leap out of the tangled mess of deflated balloon before it collapses on her. “Who’s the clown now, huh?”
“Lucky Charm!” Ladybug catches a tiny clothes peg. “Seriously? Why am I always the one getting trolled?”
“And that’s why I’m the better knight in red spandex.” Ryuuko unsheathes her sword and crouches in front of Alya. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”
“At least you’re a cute damsel in distress!” Chat Noir calls from his hiding place behind a lamppost. Yeah. Alya doesn’t even know how that’s supposed to work, but Chat Noir’s always been two filaments short of a lightbulb. She rolls her eyes and flips him off.
“Just do your job and save me already!” she retorts.
“I believe that’s my job,” Ryuuko says. She throws herself at Alya and cradles her as they roll off the car and across the rocky road, just in time to avoid Jess Tear’s next hanky crack. “What’s the plan, Ladybug?”
A grumpy Ladybug swings over with Chat Noir in tow, who provides cover for the girls to dart behind the car. Once they’re safe and joined by Chat Noir, Ladybug frowns down at the peg and hums.
“I think it’s time for Jess Tear to find out what happens to clothes on a windy day,” she says, smiling slowly. Chat Noir and Ryuuko also grin. “Chat, give us some cover again?”
“But of course, milady. Cataclysm!” Chat Noir leaps out from behind the car. Alya peeks around just in time to witness a nearby building crumbling, dousing Jess Tear in dust and rubble, before Ladybug and Ryuuko pull her back.
“Stay here,” they say together, then narrow their eyes at each other.
“Oh my god, you can give it up already,” Alya mutters. “I know it’s you two. And I know you two know.”
“Uh…of course it’s us two!” Ladybug says quickly, while Ryuuko’s cheeks flush pink and her eyes dart away. “Who else would we be?”
Alya facepalms. “You know, a relationship is supposed to be nice. Happy. Beneficial. I’ve had more headaches since your silly little competition started than I’ve had my whole life. How the heck did you not expect me to notice after, like, the seventh time you two went at it to save me? I mean, sure, I love being the pretty damsel in distress, but honestly.”
Ladybug and Ryuuko just blink at her. It’s not until Chat Noir bellows, “Any day now!” that they’re snapped back into action.
“Um…Ryuuko!” Ladybug says in a higher voice than usual. Ryuuko jumps and almost drops her sword.
“Right! Wind Dragon!” Ryuuko dissipates into a burst of cool, fresh air that whooshes out towards Jess Tear. Right before the clown akuma can separate Chat Noir’s head from his body with one crack of her whip, Ryuuko hits her and howls around her in a whirlwind.
“Oh my god! Go away!” Jess Tear shrieks as she’s buffeted by wind on all sides. She tries to aim her hanky whip, but the chain of cloth seems to have a life of its own under Ryuuko’s guiding wind-hand, slapping Jess Tear around the head and coiling around her in a twisted imitation of her previous balloon snake. Once Jess Tear is nothing but a purple hanky mummy, Ryuuko lets her plummet and lands on the ground just in time to solidify and catch a wriggling Jess Tear, whose screams are muffled by her new face mask.
“Okay but how are we gonna find the akuma now?” Chat Noir says as he bounds over, followed by Ladybug, who pegs the ends of the hanky rope to hold Jess Tear’s bonds together.
“That’s your problem, not mine!” Alya calls from her car shelter. “I’m outta here now that she’s toast! I gotta have a good, long talk with my girls!”
She takes a moment to revel in the way Ladybug and Ryuuko blanch, then she turns and heads off, whistling. Ha. And her girlfriends thought they had it over her. Now she’s got the upper hand. Let them sweat while they deakumatise Jess Tear and do the whole post-akuma comfort thing with Jessica Terrence, who’s more than likely going to cuss them out, considering what she’d said about the Ladyblog.
“Gami seventeen, Mari thirteen, and Alya one million,” Alya snickers to herself.
