Chapter 9:

Ladybug could feel Tikki's fear as she swung through the streets of Paris, looking for Adrien. She understood her kwami's unease: Paris was not a city where one could safely nurse a broken heart. With Hawkmoth looming, preying upon any negative emotion that emerged, Adrien's distress made him a target. And it was all her fault.

"How could I have been so blind?" Ladybug spoke into the wind as it buffeted her face, uncertain if her kwami could hear her words in her transformed state.

"He told me he loved me, and I pushed him away. I basically called him a liar for loving me as both Marinette and Ladybug, the very same love that I offered him, that made him so happy. How could I have been so stupid!" Ladybug threw her yo-yo again and again, unaware of the soreness that had developed in her overworked muscles. Her sole focus was on finding Adrien, her actions driven by her love for her lost kitty, her fear for his safety, and by her own guilt. She had no idea how long she had been racing through Paris on her search, but she knew she would not stop until she found him.

"It's my fault… He's hurt and it's my fault. I'm coming Chaton, please hold on!" The night, passing by in colorful blurs of light as she arced through the air again, stole her tears as soon as she produced them.

Suddenly, there he was. In the fuzzy yellow glow of a streetlamp, leaning lazily on his staff with his usual air of confidence, stood her Chat Noir. Ladybug's heart leapt. He was waiting for her! She would have a chance to apologize, to tell him how much she loved him, to hold him tightly and never let him go again.

She was out of breath from exertion when she dropped to the ground in front of him. Even before she found her voice to speak, she felt that something was…different, off. Normally Chat's presence calmed her, reassured her, and made her feel safe. Now, there was something cold and empty emanating from the figure standing before her. When he lifted his eyes to meet hers, her feather-light heart turned to lead. The man standing before her was definitely not her Chat. His face, attractive features curled into a snicker, looked like her Chat, but his grin held none of Chat's mirth or humor. It was a harsh expression, more of a sneer that suggested darkness hiding underneath. Furthermore, the eyes were not his. Lime-green sclera were familiar, but the pupils were miniscule inky slits, not the slightly elongated pupils of her Chat Noir.

"C-Chat?" her question was hopeful, but her voice was tainted by fear.

The laugh that escaped his lips was nothing she had ever heard before. Dark and deep, the ragged sound cut into her soul, destroying any hope she held that her Adrien was standing in front of her. Her eyes widened with a mixture of terror and confusion.

"Try again, Princess." Chat growled more than spoke, the last word dripping with resentment.

Ladybug reflexively took a step backward. "I… I don't understand." The words that left her lips minimized the war that had erupted inside of her. Part of her yearned for him, to tackle him to the ground and run her fingers through his hair, to let kisses take the place of words in her declarations of her love for him. Another part, the part that was closer to the surface, was screaming at her to run, that there was danger here that she was not prepared to face. And deep down, the part of her that could always sense Tikki held a third emotion: concern, a desire to protect the very person who her instincts told her to escape.

Chat shook his head, the smirk falling from his face. "No, you wouldn't understand, would you?" In a flash, he grabbed her chin, pulling her face close to his with enough strength to nearly take her off her feet. In any other instance the gesture might have been romantic, but his forceful touch held no affection for her. He glared into her eyes, and she felt herself begin to tremble.

"Ladybug is only concerned with the safety of Paris." He spat the words as if they left a foul taste in his mouth. "She doesn't understand that her partner loves her with such devotion, with all of his being, that he defines himself as a part of her, that he dedicated his life to protecting her. She doesn't understand what love is, does she?"

Ladybug's eyes filled with tears. She did know what love was, and the man she loved was in terrible pain. And it was all her fault. Now he was lost, buried somewhere in this spiteful look-alike. She was too late, he had been broken. Chat released her with a dismissive toss, knocking her backward. Off-balance and drained in every sense of the word, she collapsed to the ground.

Ladybug made no move to stand. "Chat… Adrien…" her voice broke as she addressed him, her eyes locked on the ground. "I am so sorry. Please…"

The laugh came again, joyless and utterly foreign to her. "Your precious Adrien is gone, Ladybug. Don't you see? You destroyed him. Ironic that the wielder of the power of creation can render devastation with such prowess."

Forcing herself to look up, she knew the instant that she met his eyes that he was telling the truth. No trace of Adrien could be seen in this Chat. This Chat was cold, dark and foreboding.

"No, I am not Adrien," the dark figure continued, almost to himself. "I am not your Chat Noir. I am the embodiment of destruction. I am the power of eradication, of annihilation, of undoing. I am… Ruin." The figure of Chat Noir grinned, satisfied with his chosen moniker.

"Now then, shall we? Destruction or creation… which will overcome?" Ruin stood tall, holding his staff in front of him, challenging her.

Ladybug pulled herself to her feet slowly, carefully. "Chat, I am not going to fight you," she stated without as much conviction as she had hoped to project. She made no move to attack, nor did she take up a defensive stance, despite the fact that every instinct told her to run, that this was an enemy she could not defeat.

"Then you will perish," Ruin stated matter-of-factly, with no emotion. His whole being pulsed with a familiar black energy, swirling around him. The whirl of black dots surrounding him reminded her of Chat's cataclysm power, but rather then enveloping his right hand, they radiated from his entire person.

Regaining herself, Ladybug dove out of the way of his attack at the last second, feeling the wind produced by the crushing blow of his staff as it passed within inches of her face. The attack crashed into the ground, fracturing the pale cement sidewalk with an explosive burst. The pieces of pavement that had been propelled into the air disintegrated as they came into contact with the miasma surrounding her adversary.

Without hesitation, Ruin lifted his staff again and spun, turning his weapon in an arc above his head and pummeling her from the side. Ladybug raised her arms to block the attack, but the force of it knocked her off her feet, sending her sprawling to the ground. Blackness filled her vision as the sudden intense pain overwhelmed her, and suddenly there was a crushing weight on her chest as Ruin pinned her to the ground with a knee.

"Pitiful and weak, just like him," he taunted.

Ladybug blinked her eyes into focus. Still exuding a dark power, he was reaching a gloved hand for her face, the other hand planted on the ground beside the opposite ear where it was slowly eating a hole into the ground.

"The suit doesn't protect all of you," he threatened. Stopping his hand mere fractions of an inch from her chin, which she had turned away from his deadly grasp, he bent his body toward hers. His face close enough to hers that she could feel his breath on her cheek, he purred: "I can remove the earrings for you, but as that will most certainly end your existence, perhaps you would prefer to do it yourself?"

Despite the fact that the man pinning her to the ground was almost identical to her seductive partner, that his facial features belonged to her long-time fantasy crush, that she knew his hair would feel like silk between her fingers and his black leather hid a perfectly chiseled body, the feeling erupting from Marinette was not one of longing or desire. The feeling that possessed her in that moment was pure, unadulterated fear. She was suddenly certain that he would kill her without hesitation, and she was completely at his mercy.

So, despite her earlier promise, she did the only thing she could. Summoning all her strength, she brought a fist into Chat's side, hard, knocking him off balance enough that she could force him off of her with powerful kick of her legs, and sat up. She immediately swung her yoyo, anchoring to the nearby lamppost, and pulled hard, propelling herself into the air.

Recovering quickly, Ruin smashed an open palm into the lamppost, destroying her anchorpoint and sending her plummeting to the ground.

Ladybug tucked and rolled, predicting the impending blow from the staff and hoping she had been quick enough to dodge. Thankfully, Ruin's attack from the now-extended staff went wide, smashing into the ground a few feet behind her.

Leaping out of her tucked position, Ladybug threw her yoyo again, this time latching onto a nearby building, and yanked herself up. Glancing back, she saw that the area around Chat—no, around Ruin, resembled a crater in the ground. The energy of his presence was rotting away everything around him.

Running toward the building with impressive speed, Ruin extended the staff vertically into the ground, carrying himself upward in chase. He landed on the roof moments after Ladybug had, and he traipsed toward her with unnerving calm.

"Why prolong the inevitable, Ladybug? You could end this in a moment. Just give me your miraculous, and nobody else has to get hurt." Ruin cooed at her as if she was a lost child: innocent, frightened, and fragile.

In truth, Ladybug was beginning to feel the part. "You know I can't do that!" she called defiantly, although her voice wavered.

Ruin shrugged. "Have it your way," he replied. Still several feet from her, he dropped to a knee, placing both palms on the ground—or rather, on the roof upon which they were standing. A loud, long groan erupted from the building as the supports began to give way. The structure shifted beneath her feet, and Ladybug's eyes widened with the realization of what was happening.

The whole building is coming down.

She leapt free of the crumbling structure, sending her yoyo in front of her to attach to the next building and launch her through the night. She was briefly enveloped in a cloud of dust and debris as the building crumbled before swinging clear of the devastation. Coughing and sputtering, she landed on the street below in an awkward half run, hitching forward as she fought for breath. Ladybug felt like she would vomit. How many people had been caught in the demolition? How many innocent lives were lost because she had run for her life? The bile rose in her throat as she glanced back at the pile of rubble that had been a building. Ruin was walking toward her, seemingly unaffected by the cloud of debris from which he emerged.

However, his steps were uneven, unsure. He slowed further as he neared her, and much to her surprise, stumbled to all fours as he drew close. He was breathing heavily, not coughing the dust from his lungs as she was, but from sheer exhaustion.

"Mari… Marinette…" his voice came to her quiet as whisper, as if from a dream. Laced with affection, with worry, with love.

Adrien!

She ran to the crumpled figure, ignoring her own fatigue. The black aura had dissipated, and she dropped to the ground in front of him, hoping against hope.

When he lifted his face to her, the green eyes that met hers were not malachite sclera with viper-like dark slits, but the untainted, emerald-green irises of Adrien. Still clad as Chat Noir, the eyes were out of place, but she had never seen anything more beautiful in her life.

He winced in pain, and closed his perfect eyes against an unseen force.

"Ladybug, I-… I'm fighting but, I can't keep him down much longer." Adrien's voice had a pleading quality to it, and edge of desperation, a knowledge of his imminent failure.

"Adrien, I-" Marinette began to apologize, to declare her devotion to him, to ask for forgiveness and promise her undying love, but he cut her off.

"It's Plagg, Mari. The akuma took my miraculous, it has Plagg." Adrien gasped as a new invisible assault hit him, but he steeled himself and continued, a shuddering hand reaching for his ring. "He's exhausted, used too much power, but… he's so strong. He'll be more cautious now. You—"

Adrien cried out in pain as the god of destruction continued to assail him in the fight for control, and he fell to the pavement. Ladybug loosed a scream of her own as she dove for him, holding him close while his body convulsed once, twice. Tears were streaming down her face as his eyes flashed open, determined to meet her gaze again. He had to warn her.

"You must destroy my miraculous. Destroy Chat, destroy me. He will not stop with the miraculous Mari. He will kill you. He will annihilate everything. I can feel it."

Adrien's eyes flashed a plethora of emotions at once: fear, loss, pain, regret, yearning, love, as he used the last of his strength to push himself free of her.

She reached for him again, unwilling to let him go, but stopped when she noticed the black dots beginning to ooze from his hands.

The figure of Chat was pushing himself up to his hands and knees, shaking his head while he let out a sinister chuckle. Ladybug could just make out his expression, his face still angled to the ground. The malevolent smile spoke as clearly as any word: victory.

Ladybug scrambled to her feet, backing away from the figure who she knew to be Ruin, her voice strengthened by love and covering the fear that had begun to take possession of her.

"What did you do to him?! What did you do to Adrien!" she demanded, shaking tears from her eyes and trembling with an overwhelming combination of rage and terror. How was she going to defeat destruction itself?

The chuckling grew louder, and its ominous tone told her the answer before the dreaded words reached her.

"His pathetic resistance was aggravating me. Your beloved Adrien is dead."