"This is not an Akuma, Ladybug, this is an invasion!" the general that the mayor had called in was shouting at Marinette. "A beachhead."
Marinette looked up at the sound of rotors, to see two helicopters fly over the buildings and start firing into Echidna. The girl on top of the monster screamed in fury, and suddenly another clone tore free, a nude woman—
"Oh fuck, another Alexandria!" a hero in a damaged suit, clocks adorning it, said.
Moments later, the clone flew into one of the helicopters, bullets bouncing from her form, and smashed through the canopy, pulping the pilot, before throwing the copter into its mate, both hulls falling onto the buildings below, adding to the chaos.
"Your helicopters won't help!" Marinette shouted. "This isn't an invasion it's an… Akuma from another world and their heroes are fighting it, please let us stop it." Marinette had a nightmare vision of the army showing up and shooting not just at Echidna, but the heroes fighting the monster.
"I… For now. We are evacuating the areas of the city nearest this event. If it appears you cannot stop this creature, we will be forced to use extreme methods." The line went dead.
Marinette didn't scream, and she didn't throw her yoyo at the wall.
However much she wanted to. She spun it up, using it to move quickly, to help the heroes who were trying to get people out of the way of the monster. Chat was already moving, even if his face was still tear streaked, attacking clones, helping injured heroes.
And then she heard a rumbling, roaring sound. Portals opened in the air, dozens.
And from them…
The horde emerged. Marinette dodged one clone, a malformed hero with no skin over his wetly gleaming muscles, and dodged back spinning her yoyo, preparing for a shot—And then the clone gave one strangled scream as it vanished under a horde of insects. Others were doing the same. Moment's later, the swarm dispersed, revealing a skeletal form under it.
I can't puke, Marinette reminded herself. The naked Alexandria flew down to attack the heroes who were redoubling their strikes on Echidna, and suddenly she was just encased in a huge ball of bugs. Marinette didn't know what they were planning on doing, since she seemed to be bullet proof, but whatever it was, she didn't like it as the clone slammed her way into a building, swirls of insects following her. Spiders, carried by bees and wasps were laying loops and lines of silk around where Enchidna was. She saw one clone, a twisted female form, struggling as she was entrapped in silk, venomous spiders going for her eyes, her mouth.
And… Is the sun going down? We haven't been—oh. No. It isn't. It's just that Skitter's bugs are blotting out the sun.
Even the power of the Akuma was limited it seemed. I could only open portals to a radius of about twenty miles. But every flying bug, every spider that I could carry, came here at my summons, funneling through the portals. I unleashed them on the clones. Before I'd come to this world, I had tried to use bugs on Noelle and it hadn't worked. But I could go after her minions and I knew where they all were. In one apartment building, a woman screamed, sheltered her children as a clone advanced over the crumpled, bleeding body of her husband.
Her screams got louder as I poured my insects into the room through the ventilation shaft, devouring its eyes, cramming down its windpipe, a million mouths tearing its skin off and burrowing in. The I pulled back, leaving a note on the wall in French.
Firefighters coming. Stay here.
Noelle shrieked even louder, the bellow from a hundred misshapen mouths shattering windows. Every clone down meant more heroes to go after her, and even if I couldn't touch her, I could use my spider webs to enshroud her, contain her. The Alexandria clone was flailing, unable to see, smashing into parts of the buildings that slowed her, while every breath introduced more bugs into her lungs.
I couldn't do anything about the one Legend was fighting. They were moving too fast, to—
And there was an eruption of air, tossing my bugs away from some of the remaining clones as the clone of Eidolon arose from his hiding place.
For a moment, the battlefield stopped. He wasn't attacking, and he didn't resume driving my bugs away.
He wanted an audience.
"I hoped you'd fight. I hoped you'd be a worthy opponent," his voice echoed over the battlefield, the rumble of bugs, of sirens, backdrop to his voice.
"But maybe I need to make you angrier… Shall I tell you a story?"
Chloe was not always a nice person. Pretty, intelligent, courageous, yes. But not always nice. She'd been working on it.
But one thing she could read was other people. And Skitter, even under the exoskeleton didn't look like she minded talking to that weird clone. From her position on the ledge of a building, she could see nearly everyone. It looked like that even the fight between the lightshow guy and the other clone had paused.
Maybe it'd give them a chance to get everyone out of the way of the monster, since it was slowing up, with the bugpocaclypse's swarm enshrouding it in spiderwebs, while other capes raised up shields of energy, ice, and other things.
The naked woman wasn't back, although something had thrashed a factory into rubble and wasn't moving anymore.
Ryuko jumped up to the ledge by her. "The evacuation is moving. The longer he talks, the more people we can get out."
Chloe didn't know if that was why Skitter was waiting. Maybe she wanted the clone to talk.
"We founded Cauldron. The Triumvirate. The Number Man. William Manton. The Doctor. We sold people powers."
"What the hell is he talking about?" Chloe asked.
"I don't know," Ryuko said. "But look."
Chloe stared. People were looking up at the clone, exclamations lost in the buzzing from the carpet of bugs over them. But she could read expressions. Disbelief. Horror.
"It meant more people with powers to fight the Endbringers, that was the lie we told ourselves. But we created the Siberian and Shatterbird, in a roundabout way. We created the Grey Boy, selling him powers, finding ourselves unable to stop him when he went out of bounds. There were countless others. Echidna is just the latest in a long series of grave mistakes.
"We made the PRT, pretended to let ourselves be run by the unpowered, but we put Alexandria in charge. We manipulated media, manipulated nations, in the interest of power. We ventured into alternate worlds to kidnap people, experimented on them to refine our formulas. And the failed tests? The people who turned out wrong? We cast them out, tossed them out as a bonus to anyone willing to pay a little more for an enemy that was guaranteed to lose against them."
Wait. Grey Boy? The Siberian? Chloe blinked. They'd never been allowed to see everything Ladybug had, but they were…
"The Slaughterhouse Nine?" Ryuko stared at Chloe. "But those were… Monsters, criminals…"
The clone kept talking. Powers, sales, experiments. There were shouts, cries of disbelief, but…
"Fuck," Chloe said. The clone was turning to a kid—someone who looked younger than any of them, for all that he had horns and red skin, telling him that he was a monster, a toy, something tossed away.
Chloe had done that. She was trying to get better, but she had done that, and she realized that the kid, up until that point, had seen Eidolon, seen all of them, as heroes, the people who would save the day. The good guys. Like some of Chloe's victims had looked to her.
"That's all you were, monsters. Little more than the cheap towels that are on offer for a few extra dollars when you buy something on a shopping channel."
Now the kid was backing up, shaking his head, acting like every word the clone was saying was a stab into his body.
"It's all been a ploy from the start," the Eidolon-clone said, "Every single one of you were deceived. For every one of you that bought your powers, there were innocents who died or became monsters for the sake of that formula's research. No matter what good you might do, it will never make up for that. And the rest of you? Conned, brought in with promises of ideals and saving the world. You're fools."
And with that, Chloe knew, he'd turned the fight around. Even with Skitter, they needed to be organized, and for some reason Skitter wasn't attacking the monster with her bugs.
Marinette stared up at the clone. She didn't know if the words were true. It didn't matter. Enough believed them to be true. She gripped her yoyo it was time. Show me what I need to do to save everyone.
"Lucky Charm," she said. In the beginning, she'd used it all the time, ending battles quickly. Then Hawkmoth had almost brought them down by having more than one Akuma ready to go. She'd stopped using it as a crutch… But right now she needed that crutch. The longer this went on, the worse things would be.
The yoyo morphed into a tiny statue of a cityscape.
"That's the Bay," Clockblocker said. Marinette stared at it like it was a bomb. Then she looked around.
And saw. Chat, helping an injured hero up, her mind focused on what he could do.
And Echidna with the same influence, the same premonition that she had once described as "things glowing red" to Chat came to her. The thing she needed to do.
Oh God. She moved, swinging to Chat.
"Chat… I… I think we may have a way to stop Echidna."
"What is it?" Chat asked.
"Cataclysm her."
"Cat—you used the term, but what type of attack is it?" Chevalier asked.
"Directed entropy."
"We have people still in there," the hero said.
"No, it's not just a field effect. It's… Conceptu-fuck that hurts." Tattletale was staring at Chat, who was looking at the bulking monster. "You won't hurt the trapped heroes."
"What about the clones?"
"I—I don't know," Chat said. "But… Some people called her Noelle. She's…"
"Well, she used to be a teen like us, but her power—it's overwriting her. She doesn't have any control over it. But it's gotten into her so completely…" Tattletale stared. "It might be a merc—"
"Will you shut UP!" Marinette screamed. "Chat…"
"I—You can't bring people back if I've cataclysmed them. I was warned. Remember? I was warned. Never use a full power cataclysm on a person… I—She's sick. Like Mom. We can find another…"
"She knows most of her clones are vulnerable to my swarm. So she'll go for heavy hitters and send them where I can't follow." Skitter. In person, and not being a nightmare bugswarm. "We know she can create more than one clone of the same person. What if she churns out more Eidolons or Alexandrias? Nobody here can keep up with Alexandria—if she just sends them all over Europe or beyond…"
Tattletale opened her mouth, then closed it as Chevalier turned and stared down at her.
"I can get you near her," Skitter said. "She hates me. She'll focus on me."
"I—" Chat sounded like he was out of breath. "I… Yes. For Paris."
"I'll go with you," Marinette said. "My… It was my decision."
They walked towards the vast, rotten bulk, already starting to tear itself free of Skitter's webs.
"Noelle!" Skitter shouted.
Marinette watched as Chat shuddered at the name. Call her Echidna. Please. Don't call her Noelle. Not right now. Not when Chat is going to have to kill her.
"You…" the girl said, her voiced joined by roars and snarls. Everyone, even the surviving clones were just watching. "You. The one who kept Coil from helping us. Helping me. Helping me to get better…"
"Is the deal still on? Me and the Undersiders for your captives?"
"You have a plot. You always do."
"Maybe." Skitter raised her hand and the bugs above parted, bathing Marinette, Chat, and Skitter in sunlight. "But is the deal still here?"
"Yes—you. Bug girl, always skulking around. Ruining things. Keeping me… Yes."
Skitter came to a halt. "Then let Eidolon go."
"Yes… And then they'll see you die. Are these friends willing to die as well?"
"Let Eidolon go." Moments later, he emerged, his uniform covered with slime. He stared down at the glares from the assembled heroes, then nodded, turning to watch the three.
Marinette could hear the sound of jets in the air. "Skitter," she whispered. "If they've finished the evacuation…"
"I know. Get ready."
Marinette heard Chat. He half-whispered, half-sobbed a single word. "Cataclysm." At the same time, Noelle roared, charging Skitter, flinging out a misshapen limb…
And Chat touched it. Just touched it. And suddenly, black lightning was running up over her form. Noelle started to thrash and scream. She spat out half completed clones, their forms already falling into dust.
"No!" she screamed, and this time her voice wasn't joined by a thousand other voices. It was her, a teenaged girl like any of the ones Marinette had met at school. "You can't murder me now! You can't! I haven't gotten revenge for—How's it feel to be a murderer!" The words trailed off into a shriek that vanished as the Cataclysm devoured her body, her enraged, contorted face the last thing Marinette saw. There there were shouts of shock from the other parahumans. Marinette looked over and saw that the clones, even those not touching Noelle, were falling, even as her victims were getting up, looking around in shock, the dust of their captor staining their heads and bodies.
"The clones were feeding off of her," Tattletale said as she walked up. "They died when she died."
Marinette didn't say anything, just looked down to where Chat had fallen to his knees, cradling his ring hand to his chest, the dust of his victim falling around him.
She didn't know what to say.