To Butterfly: They aren't all going to be that sad, but there's at least 1 more really sad chapter. Not this one, though.
To yellow 14: This is definitely a darker take on the history post-"Mind Games."
The next afternoon, Cat Noir climbed to the top of the old collège building, perching on the edge of the roof to look down on the street below. Civilians walked along the sidewalk, heads down, paying attention to their own affairs. Since CBN's defeat, Paris had fallen into absolute chaos as the remaining citizens attempted to find food and shelter in the power vacuum. Groups of homeless people displaced over the past decade had begun to move around the city, away from the "temporary" camps where they had been living, looking for housing and food. As these groups began bumping into each other, fighting had broken out, with riots in three arrondissements and looting in the rest. At the moment, Ladybug and Carasus were working to quell the rioting in the 14th Arrondissement, and Chloe's lieutenant, Richard, had called a meeting in the 1st Arrondissement to recruit a city watch as a supplement to the Resistance fighters who had transitioned in the last two weeks into an ad hoc peacekeeping force. Impératrice Pourpre was interviewing CBN's surviving troopers, looking for any they could trust to help them. Chloe herself was meeting with a group of community leaders to make plans for new citywide elections in order to form a new government.
But what was he supposed to do?
"Test your powers," Chloe had told him at breakfast. "Help people. Paris needs to trust its Cat Noir."
Cat Noir extended his baton to reach the ground and swung across the street, landing on the next roof and racing across, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, running parallel to Rue Gotlib. Growing up, he and Ana had heard all the stories about the miraculous – how could they not? Pollen and Mullo and Nooroo especially had loved to speak about their Kwami brothers and sisters. His mother and Chloe had spent hours at a stretch telling about Taureau Dechaine and Rena Rouge and Ryuko and the rest. And afterward, he and Ana would stay up half the night, talking about the miraculous they could have had. Ana had always talked about wanting her mother's miraculous – either the Bee or the Fox, though the Fox had been destroyed by CBN. But Alex? His mother had talked so lovingly about the Ox miraculous, how perfectly-suited his father had been for it. Perhaps when he was older, he could have received his father's miraculous, lost though it had been when his mother died. Or perhaps Uncle Max would have given him the damaged Turtle Miraculous, though Chloe had warned regularly against using damaged miraculous. But never in his life had he considered the Cat Miraculous. Never the Cat Miraculous.
Cat Noir jogged toward the river, the sun warming him through his suit. Again he ran his fingers through his dark hair, pausing to feel the two cat ears on the top of his head. He had asked Plagg about them last night, after Chloe showed him to a room and got him a blanket, and Plagg had just explained that the ears came with the miraculous: "What're you looking at me for, kid? Cats have ears." Alex had pointed at his own human ears, and Plagg had scoffed. "Those things? You can't hear squat with those tiny little 'ears'!"
Cat Noir jumped across the gap to the next building, his miraculous ears attuned to any sounds of distress from the people wandering the street below him. Chloe had mentioned that they had organized a soup kitchen near the river, that she had contacted a group of farmers just upriver from the city and arranged for them to send some food down the Seine in a boat. He could see a break in the skyline near the river, and he turned in that direction, extending his staff across the avenue between two buildings as a bridge. He was midway across when someone spotted him.
"It's Cat Bug Noir! He's back!"
Cat Noir flinched and almost lost his balance. Another person picked up the cry. He held his hands out in a placating gesture. "No, wait–" People fled in all directions away from him. Out of the crowd, someone fired an energy pistol at him, missing wildly. Cat Noir fell backward off his staff and just barely grabbed onto it, hanging suspended in midair as the intersection below him cleared out. He let out a frustrated groan as he hauled himself back up and carefully jogged to the other side of the staff. "I told you this was a stupid idea, A," he grumbled to himself, retracting his staff and securing it on his belt, turning to continue toward the river.
His miraculous ears swiveled on top of his head, picking up a sound from several blocks away, and he paused. Closing his eyes in concentration, Cat Noir focused on the sound, tracing it back to its source… there. A cry for help, at least three blocks away, parallel to the river. Without another thought, Cat Noir sprinted in that direction, leaping from one building to the next. The cries became clearer as he approached – two distinct voices, a woman and a man. He reached the alleyway from which the cries originated and dropped down catlike, landing in a crouch on the far end of the alley. At the other end was a woman hunched over, her hands over her head, a larger man standing over her with a knife in his hand.
"Hey!" shouted Cat Noir, striding down the alleyway toward them, flexing his arms and tightening his grip on his staff. "Leave her alone!"
The man spun around, eyes narrowed, searching for his assailant. Suddenly his eyes widened on catching sight of Cat Noir. "Wait – no! Please!" The man fell to the ground, clasping his hands. The knife clattered to the pavement. "Don't kill me!"
Cat Noir stared at him in confusion, lowering his staff. "What? No–I'm not going to kill you. Just–don't hurt people anymore."
The robber spun around and ran out of the alley. Cat Noir stared after him in bewilderment for a moment before turning back to the victim. He held a hand out to help the woman to her feet. "It's okay; he's gone. You're safe now," he told her.
She looked up at him in relief that instantly turned to terror. Scrambling away from him, the woman screamed. She backed into a building's wall, froze in horror, and pulled herself up, stumbling as she bolted down the alleyway, trying to catch her balance as she ran pell-mell away from him.
Cat Noir's shoulders sagged. Maybe criminals being afraid of him wasn't such a bad thing… but their victims? But perhaps he should have expected this. After all, after the last twelve years, who would be comforted by the sight of someone with the Cat Miraculous? "Why did I agree to this?" he muttered, climbing to the top of the building and making his way down another block to the edge of the river, where he could look down on the Seine. Off to the right was the soup kitchen, set up on a long row of tables under a couple tarps, with hundreds – maybe thousands – of people waiting in line to eat. He was about to make his way in that direction when he hesitated. What would happen if his appearance caused another stampede, and with that many people?
They were better off without him.
His eye was drawn to movement along the Seine. Cat Noir furrowed his brows: he had never seen traffic on the river before now, but a boat was making its way slowly up the river. However, it had run into a mess of logs blocking the water and become fouled. An older woman with dark hair stood on the deck, staring down at the water, her hands on her hips. She yelled something below the deck, and a boy a couple years younger than Cat Noir stuck his head out the door and said something in response.
Cat Noir jumped from his roof, catching himself with his staff and riding it to the ground. He jogged down to the riverfront and leapt out onto the barrier of logs, carefully walking across them to stop right beside the boat. "Can I help, Madame?" he asked the woman nervously.
She cocked her head, staring at him carefully. "Oh, we are simply returning home," she told him. "We've been away for a while, but I heard some rumors recently. I'd hoped they might be true."
"I think I might be able to help you here," he told her, looking down at the pile of logs clogging the river. "Cataclysm!" He brushed his hand along the log on which he stood, and all the logs turned to dust. He grabbed onto the boat's gunwale just as the log disappeared from under him, and his ring beeped once. "Hopefully you won't have any more trouble," he commented as the water started to flow freely, climbing up onto the boat.
The woman hummed. "You know," she began, watching him carefully, "I still remember the old Cat Noir."
His heart sunk. "I'm sorry," he apologized. "I promise I'm not another Cat Bug–"
"Oh, not him," the woman interrupted, waving a hand dismissively. "I mean Cat Noir. Before he lost his heart." She gave him an evaluating look and nodded. "I am glad to see that some of that heart now lives in you."