Twenty: The Calvary?

Forced for the moment to set aside how Miss Mendeleiev was able to re-create her akumatized alter-ego, Ladybug and Spiderman attempt to rescue Chat Noir and undo whatever damage she caused in her attempt to forcefully separate him from his kwami.

Humor was about the only thing I had left as a defense against the excruciating pain the separation process was causing. While Mendeleiev had said it had been mere minutes that I had been paralyzed in the middle of her classroom-slash-laboratory, every fiber of my feline being felt as though I had been forced to run four full marathons through the scorching desert at noontime – and was about to embark on a fifth. What I could see of my form, though, made me laugh internally; the way my arms were stretched out – frozen in the act of having tossed Ladybug through the plate glass window of the classroom – reminded me of the statue that had been erected of Ladybug and I in the park close to her family's bakery. In turn, that made me wonder how many pigeons could line up end-to-end from my shoulder to the tip of a claw, which shifted to curiosity on whether I could sneeze at all should one happen to land on me just then.

Sweet kwami, how I suddenly wanted the simple freedom to be able to sneeze.

I'd given up on trying follow whatever Mendeleiev was saying; she continued to scribble on her tablet from time to time, noting everything she was seeing; my feline vision had completely shifted to something closer to the normal human range, so I'd similarly lost track of what I'd originally hoped had been my rescue squad. Still, I could see enough to determine that my costume was still intact; I presumed that would be the last thing to go if and when my teacher succeeded in removing Plagg from the ring.

Damn, I thought. I was so certain I'd seen Spidey out there. Whatever Mendeleiev is doing to me is totally messing me up.

Blinking – the only movement besides breathing I appeared to have left to me – my vision swam again; for a brief moment, though, my enhanced eyesight kicked in, and my feline eyes latched onto a very familiar masked face that was at the lower edge of the shattered window. Blinking again, the world went completely fuzzy, but with a greenish glow.

There it goes, I groaned inwardly. That's the beginning of the de-transformation cycle.

Resigned that I was about to lose more than just my kwami, I steeled myself for the wave to roll over me, wondering what Mendeleiev would think once my true identity was revealed. Just as the tingling sensation appeared, overriding the pain for a moment, my feline ear caught the thwhip sound of webbing being shot across the room; given the rather abrupt shocked exclamation from Mendeleiev, I presumed Spidey had scored a direct hit of some kind.

There were some sounds evocative of a struggle, but the hiss of additional webbing filled the air and ultimately quelled it. Unable to turn, I had no way to confirm that my friend had cocooned my teacher to keep her at bay long enough to figure out the next step; when he appeared, fuzzily, in my line of sight I suspected I was right.

"Hey," he said, his masked head bobbing around me as he examined my form. "Can you move anything?"

All I could do was roll my eyes, and Spidey got the point.

"Ah, dumb question, given how you look like you've just thrown a discuss."

There was a whisper of the yo-yo and a fuzzy shape that looked like it might be Ladybug appeared. "Can we turn off this thing?" she asked.

"Maybe," Spidey replied, leaping to the computer console. I heard him tap away for a few seconds. "Damn. Whatever she's running against him is at ninety percent." He paused, the quiet emphasizing the predicament. "I can pull the plug but I'm not sure what that will do to him."

"Can you reverse it?"

"I don't know," he replied quickly. "Maybe?"

There was a muffled exclamation from behind me, and I watched the fuzzy form of Ladybug go out of view.

"Can this be reversed?" she asked after a moment, presumably needed to remove enough webbing that Mendeleiev could speak.

"I don't know," was the slow response. "I never intended for it to be reversable."

"Spidey?" Ladybug asked. My heartrate picked up at the obvious desperation in her voice.

"One second, I'm trying to slow down what's happening right now."

The green glow at the edge of my vision grew darker, and I heard Ladybug urging Spidey to hurry; it became difficult for me to continue to pay attention to what was going on, for I had an overwhelming desire to simply drift away to someplace more comfortable. A part of me knew it wasn't sleep that was calling out to me, but something far, far more permanent. And yet I felt this warm sense of grace enveloping me, so deeply perfect that it was hard to ignore.

Closing my eyes, I found myself a little sad that it was ending this way; at the very least, I'd hoped for a houseful of kittens that Ladybug and I would have eagerly watched over, though the cost of food might have been—

A deafening crackle of energy assaulted what was left of my feline senses, followed by the feeling of a massive wave of magical electricity washing over my form. My feline eyes snapped open, and I felt myself taking a gasping breath, followed by one a bit deeper; slowly, my vision resolved itself back into something fairly close to what Chat Noir normally enjoyed. Despite every muscle feeling like they had been stretched well beyond their breaking point, I was able to wriggle my fingers, then move my arm, then slowly, albeit painfully, turn my head toward the computer console where Ladybug and Spidey were standing.

"Am I…?" I asked haltingly, for even my vocal cords appeared to be at the edge of strain.

"Alive?" Ladybug said as she moved toward me, her masked face grave. "Very much so. How do you feel?"

"I don't… know," I said, my voice slowly coming back. "Everything… and I mean everything… hurts."

Turning, I could see the wrapped package of Mendeleiev where she was attached to a support beam at the edge of the classroom. She looked at me dispassionately, almost as if this was yet one more stage in her experiment. "Why…?" was all I managed to get out.

"I need answers," she said simply. "Only science can find them."

"By running an experiment on one of us?" Ladybug asked, the anger in her voice barely controlled.

"There are risks to any investigation," Mendeleiev replied. "I had to know."

"How did you manage to generate your akuma?" I asked, my tail finally starting to act like a tail again, slashing angrily as I spoke. "Without Hawkmoth, there's no way to do it."

Mendeleiev smiled. "There are times when science and magic are nearly indistinguishable," she said. "Study the patterns enough, determine the right kind of energy required and one can re-create almost anything." She looked to Spidey. "He should know. His findings were critical to my work."

"My what?" he exclaimed.

"Come now, you don't really think a mask can hide who you are, Mister Parker?" she asked coldly. "You took rather detailed scans for Directory Fury of each Miraculous jewel you came into contact with, did you not?"

Ladybug and I both turned our heads toward Spidey in unison – and disbelief – as a flash of memory reminded me of the many gizmos Spidey had been using during the final stages of our battle with Hawkmoth and Mayura, along with the items he'd been building with Pegasus' assistance. My eyes widened at my naivete, for I had foolishly assumed he'd been working on our behalf. I was starting to fully understand what my agreement with Directory Fury had cost me – cost us.

"Spidey?" my partner asked.

His shoulders slumped. "I did more than that," he sighed. "I was working on replicating the technology. Purely as a scientific endeavor."

Ladybug's masked eyes went wide. "You… you were replicating a Miraculous?"

"Not entirely," he sighed again. "Without the, uh, power source you normally rely on, I had to get creative in order to power it. But the fundamentals were in place." He looked to Mendeleiev. "The devices were in beta, though. How did you get access to them?"

"Wait," I interrupted. "Devices? Plural?"

Spidey slumped against the wall. "I made two. But they weren't ready?"

"They were closer to complete that you realized," Mendeleiev said. "And your mentor held the final answer for the power issue," she added. "Stark's miniaturized arc reactor is capable of producing enough power to trigger the device, though at the moment it's a one-time shot."

Ladybug looked at me. "I know what you're thinking," she said softly as she moved to my side.

I nodded. "This is my fault. I trusted that Fury would do the right thing." My eyes flicked to Spidey. "And that my friend would have my back."

"I did! We all did!" Spidey held up his gloved hands. "Look, I get that you're angry-"

"You haven't yet begun to see me angry," I replied coolly, narrowing my eyes. "First the quantic energy scanners, then this? How much other 'research' are you involved in surround our powers?"

"Guys—"

I held up a paw, then turned to Ladybug. "Do we take her back to Paris?"

"And do what with her?" Ladybug replied. "It's not like we can turn her in to the authorities there for stuff she did here in New York." She looked to Spidey. "You'll take care of this, I think."

He nodded. "I'll fix it. I'll fix everything."

"I hope to kwami you do," I breathed before turning and snatching the gun from the lab bench. Before Ladybug could stop me, I held up my ring hand. "Cataclysm!" I cried a fraction of a second before running my fingers along the bench, the ridge of the computer and the desk it was on.

As everything turned to ash, the gasp from a struggling Mendeleiev behind me was marginally satisfactory. "My work!" she cried. "You've destroyed all of it!"

"Yes, I have," I said tartly. "And I'll do it again if I find out you've restarted any portion of your research."

Standing back, I turned to the stunned expression on Ladybug. "Chat—"

"Let's go home," I said abruptly as I shifted the gun. "Please."

I saw she wanted to say something but thought better of it. She turned and leapt out of the broken window, and I followed her, the ache in my muscles still there but less pronounced. I followed my partner back to the rooftop across the street from the school and waited patiently beside her as she donned the Horse Miraculous, combined it with Tikki, and then opened the portal to Paris.

Mere moments after that, we were standing on the rooftop patio of her parent's bakery; whatever boost of adrenaline my anger had provided disappeared quickly, and I sagged against the wrought iron of the railing, dropping Mendeleiev's kwami gun to the tile with a loud clatter. Ladybug quickly de-transformed and moved to my side as Marinette. "I knew you were hiding how bad you were feeling," she said as she started to look me over anew.

I tried to wave her off. "I'm okay, I just need to catch my breath for a moment."

"Chat, we have zero idea what Mendeleiev's process did to you and Plagg, and even less of an idea if Spidey's reversal injured you further. Drop your transformation and let me take a look at both you and your kwami."

"I'm fine—"

"Chat."

My masked eyes widened at the Ladybug-esque command. "Yes, Milady."

She stepped back and folded her arms.

"Plagg – claws in."

I closed my eyes and waited for the tingling sensation that never came; after another moment, my eyes snapped open. "Plagg – claws in!" I said again.

Three more times I uttered the magic phrase, to no avail. Looking at Marinette, I could see her slowly nodding. "Look at your ring," she said simply.

"Well, I guess I could wait for the timer—" I started before catching that the entire pawprint was present. Except, it shouldn't have been, given I had used my Cataclysm on Mendeleiev's research.

My masked eyes went immediately to Marinette. "Oh, shit," I breathed. "What the hell happened to me?"

Folding her arms, Marinette arched an eyebrow. "I have no idea. If only we had access to the research Mendeleiev had been doing," she added pointedly.

I felt my face flame. "Aw, hell. I screwed up there, didn't I?"

She sighed. "Yes, Chat, you did."