A HAND LANDED ROUGHLY OVER Plagg's body.

He awoke with an indignant yell, but the noise shrivelled in his mouth when he saw Adrien in the bed, curled into a ball. His holder had beads of cold sweat on his brow, and his eyes were struggling to focus themselves.

"Plagg," he said in a weak voice, "help."

"Adrien. What's happened? What's happening?"

"Duusu," Adrien gasped, pushing his knuckles against his temple. He curled into a ball on the mattress, trembling. "He's inside my head. I can't— Ladybug. Go tell Ladybug."

In the corner of the room, a blue haze of ether materialised. Plagg looked at the forming sentimonster and thought he saw a white claw, a lock of pale hair. Usually wielders of the Peacock Miraculous needed agreement to form a sentimonster, but Duusu was the kwami of Emotion. It was wildly impressive that Adrien had suppressed the manifestation this long, but it wouldn't last. He couldn't fight a force as strong as Duusu.

But if Plagg went to get Ladybug's help, and she saw Adrien like this...

"She'll figure out your secret identity," Plagg whispered.

"I know but— ow," he seethed in pain, eyebrows furrowing sharply. "Go!"

Plagg didn't need telling twice. In the dead of morning, he zipped across Paris to the Dupain-Cheng bakery faster than he had ever travelled. He found Marinette and the kwamis sleeping and started pulling at Marinette's hair. "Wake up, wake up. Ladybug, my holder needs your help."

"What?" she mumbled, pushing herself to sit up. The electronic clock on her headboard shelf read 12:13AM. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes while yawning, "Is Chat Noir okay?"

"No," Plagg said bluntly, "he's not. You need to come quickly. He needs you."

That did it. Ladybug was awake and transformed in the blink of an eye.

She followed Plagg out of her skylight and across Paris, slinging her yo-yo expertly around lamp posts and balconies—

"Oh," she gasped. Ladybug made a faint whining sound and stumbled to a stop on a rooftop. Her legs gave out beneath her and she put a hand to her chest, breathing laboured. "I'm sorry, Plagg."

"No, no, no." Plagg grabbed one pigtail with his paws and tugged with all his might. She didn't budge.

"I feel— I feel so exhausted," she admitted. "I want to rest."

"That's not you! It's because Duusu has used his powers without a holder!" Plagg remembered the dinosaurs and his own adolescent mistake and winced. "Now you're feeling the effects. I don't know what the emotional aftermath will feel like for everyone, but you need to push through it."

"Haven't I done enough?" Ladybug said. Her face was blank like a statue, but tears started to flow. "I gave up years, dreams, people. I've done everything for this city. I let go of Adrien to prioritise the investigation," she admitted, the first splinter of pain cleaving her face in half. "I'll have to let go of Chat Noir to put our jobs first." She looked mournfully up at Plagg. "What more do I have to do?"

"Chat Noir needs you," Plagg said. "Please."

Ladybug shut her eyes, forcing another bout of tears down her masked cheeks. She nodded her head exhaustedly, pushing herself to stand. "Fine. Lead."

They arrived at Le Grand Paris. On the rooftop sat the sentimonster, a version of Chat Noir clad entirely in white. He hadn't seen them arrive; he was sitting with his back turned, feet dangling off the ledge, tail curled on the stone behind him.

Ladybug halted at the sight of him, expression slackening with fear. "Chat Blanc."

"Can you fix him?" Plagg asked.

"I don't— understand—" Ladybug breathed. In a panic, she opened her yo-yo and dipped her hand through. A magical portal must have linked the interior to the interior of the Miracle Box, because she drew out the Butterfly Miraculous clutched tightly in her fingers, lilac metal glinting. "But... what..."

"He's a sentimonster," Plagg explained. He drifted to Adrien's balcony and pointed his paw at the window. "My holder is in here."

Ladybug dropped the Butterfly Miraculous into the Miracle Box and shut her yo-yo. She glanced at the rooftop and dropped two floors lower to land on Adrien's balcony. As she registered Plagg's words, saw the direction he was pointing, understanding dawned on her face. "If Chat Blanc is a sentimonster manifested from someone's emotions... and if... is your holder Adrien Agreste?"

Plagg nodded.

Ladybug's eyes widened. She shook her head. "He can't be."

"He needs you, Ladybug."

She put her fingers over her mouth.

Plagg watched as Ladybug inhaled deeply. Her eyes cleared, her shoulders settled and squared themselves. It was the hero in her coming to the fore, taking the reins and shoving all the emotional hurdles to the side. She used the yo-yo once more to retrieve another Miraculous: this time, the Turtle.

Ladybug rattled off an address across the Seine. "Go find Alya Cesairé. Talk only to her. Tell her there's a new sentimonster in the city, and they are extremely dangerous. She needs to give Carapace his Miraculous. I need Carapace to protect people, and I need Rena Rouge's Mirage to stop anyone from seeing this sentimonster and they damage they do. Do you understand?"

He took the string of the bracelet in his paws and felt the hexagonal jade pendant's weight transfer to him, pulling him down slightly. Plagg nodded, fur bristling with the responsibility of these new tasks. "I understand."

For Adrien, he would do anything.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Fine strands of golden hair sweeping across a pale, elegant brow.

Green eyes. Innocently large pupils, morphing into dark feline slits.

She saw a kind smile. Then a dangerous smirk flashed in her brain, superimposing itself.

Ladybug pictured soft hands, unmarred by a single day's hard labour.

No, black talons clothed in leather and metal.

Those green eyes.

Adrien. Chat Noir. Adrien is Chat Noir.

On a mid-level balcony, Ladybug shook her hands out, willing the surging panic to leave her body. She didn't have time to crumble right now, no matter the shock to her system. Adrien—Chat Noir! Holy shit! What the fuck!—needed her.

What even happens when the kwami of Emotion amokizes a human being?

There were always catastrophic consequences whenever a kwami used their powers with a holder, without a magical conduit to channel their raw energy. She still felt the lingering emotional burdens that Duusu's powers put on her shoulders, like an invisible hand had reached into her soul and dragged up all her worst feelings. Was everyone else in Paris feeling something similar? What about Alya and Nino, who still hadn't arrived?

Her yo-yo pulled her onto the rooftop of Le Grand Paris. The open-air pool was covered in January, there being near-zero interest in outdoor swimming in winter. The poolside chairs, recliners and tables had been folded up and leaned against each other. On the adjoining ledge, Chat Blanc (a sentimonster, Ladybug reminded herself, just a sentimonster—this was no fault of hers, no fault of Adrien's) sat swinging his legs and singing a mournful little tune.

"...little kitty on the roof, all alone without his Lady..."

"Chat Blanc," she said, breaking the silence. He didn't flinch, which suggested he'd always been aware of her presence. But he also didn't answer, or turn around. "What do you want? Do you want my Miraculous?"

Chat Blanc swung his legs back onto the rooftop and lithely unfolded himself to stand. "No."

Without a conventional amokised object, would Chat Blanc be under Adrien's control? Would he be under Duusu's? Would he try to hurt Ladybug? How would they even get Duusu to leave Adrien's body? Ladybug couldn't remember reading anything on the matter in the grimoire, and she'd decoded and digested nearly every line in that old tome.

"Then what? Let me help you." Those dead glacial eyes haunted her nightmares. Now they were made real, and it took everything not to sink back into fear and confusion. Adrien was Chat Noir. So many seemingly disparate pieces clicked into place.

Information that Ladybug knew but had never linked.

Adrien's eighteenth birthday, when Hawk Moth was unmasked, and then Chat Noir's unexplained two month absence immediately following, when she'd needed him most. I'm sorry that I didn't let you know before I disappeared, but I couldn't do more, Chat Noir had said. I couldn't call you or return your voicemails.

"I don't need help, my Lady," Chat Blanc said. "I need to rest."

He glanced over his shoulder, jawline angling to a cutting point in profile, before falling backward off the rooftop, no resistance at all in his body. "What are you doing? Stop!"

Ladybug made it to edge in time to see his slack arm grab a lamppost in the nick of time, redirecting his momentum into an upward path. Chat Blanc landed four buildings away, across the road, and she gave chase.

"Aren't you tired, Ladybug?" Chat Blanc purred over his shoulder, too fast to catch. At least he hadn't used those casually cataclysmic powers of his, assuming he had them in this timeline. "Aren't you spread thin all over the streets of this city? I feel like I've worn so many masks that the real me doesn't exist anymore, and I'd like to stop."

Masks? Which masks? Oh— Cat Walker? He'd said Chat Noir was out of town, and so on his behalf delivered the grimoire from the Agreste mansion to Ladybug. The Familiar, apparently another 'friend'—it was all Adrien, Ladybug realised breathlessly—who inexplicably knew what to say to get Gabriel to give a statement.

Gabriel. Hawk Moth. His father.

Oh, God, the investigation. His bitterness since returning, his rough edges and refusal to stay within the lines, even the 'personal business' that currently kept him from coming to the trial. Of course they couldn't be in the same place at the same time. She'd had Chat Noir running around digging at his own monsters. How had he kept it up for so long? Better yet, why? Why would he put himself through such bullshit if he didn't have to? He could have taken a break, could have left this mess behind instead of wading deep into it.

They reached the Eiffel Tower. The dark row of trees in the garden of the Eiffel Tower swayed in the distance. The moon was ripe like a peach tonight. With effortless agility, Chat Blanc slipped between the archwork and ornate frame of the tower, ascending higher and higher. The Champs was lit with lamps from the ground, and as Ladybug pursued fiercely, their long, silky shadows flickered all over the oxidised metal. It was past midnight, so hopefully no-one would see Ladybug and the wrong Chat Noir fighting. If it came to fighting.

Reaching the uppermost platform, Chat Blanc walked up to the railing, facing a dense cluster of buildings across the park. He put his fingers to his white mask and started to lift it off his face—

"I understand," Ladybug said frantically, tackling the sentimonster to the ground. Still, he hadn't tried to destroy anything. He hadn't cried, or smiled. He felt nothing at all. "But revealing our identities to the whole of Paris isn't going to help."

Was Alya on her way? Had she used her Mirage to wipe this encounter from anyone else's perception?

Chat Blanc writhed out of Ladybug's hold and leaped onto the roof of the watchtower, crouching down low so all ten fingers daintily touched the metal. "Why not?"

Ladybug looked up; it was a cloudless night. Pitch-black and millions of stars, faint given the light pollution. "It wouldn't be safe or productive. We'd have no privacy, no space or time to just be ourselves. "

"I never had those things to begin with," he said neutrally, and another spike of guilt drove into her heart. Adrien had never had those things to begin with.

She was desperate. "You're right, but if you let me help—we can make things— better together." But she didn't even know what she was asking for. She just needed to ascertain the sentimonster situation was stable before she returned to Adrien. Chat Blanc was a pretty distraction, but he was only a symptom, not the cause of the problem.

"That's what the last one said," Chat Blanc observed. "Pavona." Who? Who was Pavona? The new Peacock Miraculous holder? "It seems like I was mistaken. You can't help me," he decided. "No-one can."

He held his middle finger and thumb together, as if to flick away a speck of dirt, and a pinpoint of white light starting crackling, glowing bright. No. Ladybug knew the destruction he could do with his powers. If not to the world, then to himself.

Chat Blanc put the white spark of magic to his neck—

—and a green orb of magic encased his hand before the Cataclysm could grow larger, smothering the charge like a fire deprived of oxygen.

Ladybug glanced backwards over the railing, where Carapace was slowly but steadily climbing up the metal frame. "Sorry we're late!" he called. "We both had really weird emotional meltdowns, like, half an hour ago, nearly broke up, but everything's chill now. Everything is fine."

Ladybug had never been so glad to see her friends. "Lucky Charm!"

It was a spray bottle labelled SLEEP. The meaning was clear. Thank goodness it didn't require a convoluted plan this time.

Chat Blanc, intrigued by the new player, crept closer to search for Carapace further below. His white hair ruffled on the breeze. He didn't notice Rena Rouge behind him somersaulting—voluminous hair whipping like a flag, landing with impressively inaudible footsteps—onto the watchtower rooftop, until she wrapped her arms around his torso and wrestled him onto the balcony with a crash of bodies and limbs.

Ladybug approached Chat Blanc, thrashing in Rena's unbreakable hold, and spritzed his face. He fought the elixir for a moment or two, before his eyelids drooped, head lolled, and he finally drifted off.

"Thanks so much guys," Ladybug said, throwing her hands around Rena. "It's not Chat Noir's fault. He doesn't mean any of this."

When Carapace reached the balcony and hauled himself over it with a grunt, his brown eyes were wide and alert behind the lenses of his goggles. "We know. We'll look after the sentimonster while you go help him. Tell him I hope he's okay."

Oh. Nino and Adrien. Carapace and Chat Noir, all those hours spent researching and investigating in each other's company. Best friends in everything.

Her arms underneath his armpits, Rena positioned Chat Blanc to lean against the wall of the watchtower. Ladybug briefly moved a lock of white hair off of his forehead, smiling sadly to herself. His skin was ice cold to the touch. Chat Blanc wasn't as scary as her nightmares had been. Not now, when she understood him. This whole time, he had just wanted relief. Hopefully she could finally give it to him, to this cold, lost kitty. Her kitty.

"I'll be back soon," she said gratefully. "I'll fix everything."

"We know," both her friends said.