Adrien

"So you finally decide to show your cowardly face," I said, quickly slipping back into Chat Noir Mode. "Well, part of your cowardly face, anyways."

Hawkmoth sneered. "It would be extremely satisfying to make sure you never talk again, with that attitude of yours," he said. "But we're all here for one specific purpose."

"You want our miraculous," Marinette said.

"Correct," he said. "Before anything else, I'll ask you civilly. Give them to me, now."

"Nope," Marinette said.

"Not a chance," I added.

"As was expected," Hawkmoth said. His mouth stretched into a grin. "So... how about we make this more interesting?"

I held up my staff, eyes narrowing as my guard went up. Marinette began swinging her yo-yo.

This was it. The final battle we both knew would come. I would never had guessed that it would happen now, though. Especially after all the madness I'd gone though.

Nice pun, Chaos laughed.

He's gonna fight dirty, so keep your eyes open, Plagg warned.

"Banshee, perhaps you would like to do the honour?" he asked, and the akuma smiled, reaching out to take his hand.

I wasn't sure what happened right after that. It felt like after you hit your head on something and your mind goes blank and it feels like an eternity passes in a millisecond.

And then the pain comes.

I found myself on the ground, limbs aching as if my bones were knocking against each other. It took me a while to realize that the floor was shaking, though shaking was a bit of an understatement. The entire room was reverberating violently, and I understood why my limbs ached.

Chaos, I called.

On it, boss. He took control of my limbs, and once the pain had ebbed away I stood up, pulling Marinette up with me. Once we were both in control of our limbs, we looked up, and promptly gaped.

Okay, that's just horrible, Chaos said.

And it was. Though, I wasn't really sure what exactly was happening, but I knew that it wasn't good.

On the other side of the hall stood a horrible humanoid figure, half Hawkmoth, half Banshee. The Banshee's hair was coiled around them and sort of merged into their bodies. The point at which they were joined was a mass of veins and tautly stretched skin that throbbed and quaked, and their—its—eyes were black as pitch.

The two of them fused somehow, Plagg said.

Ohhh...kay, so we're dealing with a Hawkbanshee now, Chaos whispered, very disturbed at the massive eyesore in front of us. This is a wonderful day.

"What the heck is that?" Marinette whispered breathlessly.

I blinked. "The Hawkbanshee, I'd say."

Oi, I'm copyrighting that.

Shut the hell up, Chaos, Plagg hissed.This is serious and you know it.

"Ladybug, Chat Noir." Its voice was doubled, a mixture of the voices of both of its hosts. It boomed and made my ears ring. "Liberate yourselves. Obey, or face the consequences."

"Lemme guess," I said. "That's the Banshee talking?"

It smirked. "You will never learn." And then the ground began to rumble again, and the Hawkbanshee raised its arms high in the air and shouted, "Arise, creatures of the dark, and feast upon the madness before you!"

The floor suddenly gave a powerful lurch, and the butterflies in the room exploded in all directions. They latched everywhere; on the walls and ceiling, all over the Hawkbanshee, all over me and Marinette. I tried to shake them off but they held fast. And then I froze.

They were all turning black.

Get them off, Plagg protested suddenly. Get them off, now!

"Ladybug, get them off of you, quick!" I shouted. She jumped, and then began kicking and picking off the corrupted butterflies with reckless abandon.

As I frantically threw them away from them, I noticed that if one blackened butterfly fell on another, they fused into a weird black blob. I knew something was very wrong, but there was nothing I could do but get them off me as fast as possible.

Uh, boss...? Chaos began.

"Chat, behind you!"

I turned around just in time to get slammed in the chest with a crushing force. I crashed into the ground, groaning, looked up at my attacker, and recoiled.

A huge misshapen mountain of black butterflies towered above me. Two bright yellow lights somewhere at the top seemed to glare down at me. And then, in a second, it had morphed into something else.

Something worse.

I staggered to my feet as the now winged, bony humanoid thing with sagging black skin launched for me. I sprung out of the way a second too late, and it smashed against my and crushed me against the wall.

"Chat!" Marinette screamed. Through my hazy, doubling vision I saw her being backed into a corner by the Hawkbanshee.

"D-damn it... Get off, you pile of—ugh," I cut off with a nauseated retch as I smelled it. It smelled like everything that could possibly be rotten, along with the horrid stench of piss, shit and pretty much every other bodily waste ever. Bile rose in my throat. "Oh, god, ugh..."

Uh... Adrien...

I didn't answer. The creature suddenly grabbed my throat with a fetid, rotting hand, and squeezed, lifting me up in the air. I choked, grabbing the skeletal hand and kicking at the creature with all the might I could muster, which wasn't much. I was already losing strength.

"Well, I must say," I heard the Hawkbanshee say. "You two aren't putting up much of a fight. I thought this would be a lot more interesting."

My vision began to cloud. The creature only squeezed harder. My head felt like it was going to explode. My lungs hurt. Everything hurt.

Adrien, we have a problem!

Shut...the fuck up...Chaos...

I gurgled in agony as my body exploded with pain, reacting jarringly to the unexpected lack of oxygen. I was fading. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't breathe—I couldn't—

"P-Plea-se—" I forced out, and then suddenly everything was calm. The pain was gone. No pressure threatening to burst my head, no agony in my body. There was only nothingness. I felt my arm go limp and my vision faded to black.

Kid! Plagg's voice was so far away that it didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore. The pain was gone. I was at peace.

Peace.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marinette

I caught sight of Chat's body going limp, and panic flared in my chest. The fused figure of the Hawkbanshee staggered towards me, its body contorting in positions that human bodies could never go. What the heck had Hawkmoth created?

I couldn't think of that yet. Before I could overthink it, I jumped into the air and sent a spinning kick to the creature's face. It's head snapped all the way backward and it let out a hideous sound. The sight of its broken neck had me holding back vomit. It didn't help that it smelled like a decaying corpse.

Practically holding my breath, I sped off in the direction of Chat and the creature before him. The floor vibrated violently as  more and more putrid figures rose from it, growling and shrieking until my ears rang.

"Look alive!" I shouted, and slammed my fist into the creatures chin just as it looked in my direction. It staggered back, and with a deafening keen, it melted into a horrid, writhing mass of goo. I retched. It smelled even worse now.

Chat collapsed on the floor, hacking and wheezing. His eyes were bloodshot, though it was hard to see through the haze of green. "You okay?" I asked.

"Could be better," he rasped, and then his eyes focused on nothing in particular, his eyebrows furrowed. It was as if he was listening to something.

Listening to something...?

"It'll take more than just one hit to get rid of us," the Hawkbanshee's voice echoed in my ringing ears and ricocheted inside my head. I winced and looked up.

It was walking towards us, flanked on either side by a legion of black shadows. I moved back, only to bump against a wall. There weren't any openings.

We were surrounded.

"Liberate yourselves," it said, and with a sickening crack its shattered neck snapped back into place. It's lips stretched into a wide grin, black eyes glinting in the dim light of the window. "You now have no other options."

"Tch. Really now?" Chat said, getting to his feet. "I'd say we have one more advantage."

"And what might that be?"

With a smug grin, he pointed at the pile of goo a few feet away from me. "When your icky minions go down, they don't come back up." He slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand. "And trust me, Bug-a-boo and I have a lot of punches to spare."

He was right. If one uppercut was enough to take one of the creatures out, we could easily take out the rest. But there were way too many of them in here. We were vastly outnumbered. And the Hawkbanshee didn't seem like one to stand and watch as we destroyed its minions. Even if we managed to take out all of them, we'd be exhausted. And Chat was already out of it; he was still fighting to catch his breath.

Was he bluffing, then?

We still have to do it, I thought.

His eyes went vacant again. He was listening to something. Dread rose in my chest.

Was he...?

"Well then, we'd like to see you try." It raised a twitching hand, its grin widening. "Creatures of the dark..."

I braced myself.

"Attack!"

They all lurched forward with piercing cries, their rancid bodies all but falling apart.

"This is it, LB," Chat said.

"Yeah."

This is all we can do.

The Hawkbanshee gave a screech and launched for us. My hands clenched into fists. Bluffing or not, we had to do this. For our friends. Our families. For everyone.

For Paris.

And it's something only we can do.

"Let's go."

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Word Count: 1682.

The Hawkbanshee. A nocturnal cryptid native to the darkest parts of cities, most probably large darkened rooms. Extremely dangerous to humans. Fugly as heck. And appears to have an obsession with black cats and ladybugs. It's existence is vastly questioned.

Happy day of spoopiness, people! I know I've been AWOL for a while, but I couldn't miss Halloween, man! Especially not with a chapter like this. I'm feeling super motivated today because I binge-read the first five volumes of BNHA and then watched some of the anime.

PLUS ULTRA, BEECHES.

Also, my birthday is next week (November 9th) so I'mma treat y'all to like two chapters or whatever.

Seeya!