She stared blankly at the wall.

She didn't know what else to do.

She knew why she'd been created; to seize Chat Noir's and Ladybug's Miraculous, as well as recover the Butterfly Miraculous. But that purpose, that compulsion, vanished as soon as Chat's hand brushed against her amok.

At that moment something inside her twisted, shifted. Her fundamental mission, the one she'd been born for, vanished into the aether, replaced by a new goal: take down Mayura. Something she'd been far more successful in than her previous mission. For a moment she'd felt happy, satisfied. She was finally doing what she was meant to do!

And then her soul was nearly ripped out of her.

A shudder ran through her body, causing her to grit her teeth to keep from crying out. Even the memory of that experience… that clawing emptiness, as everything she was, everything she could be, was being torn out of her… it'd haunt her to the end of her days.

An end that was a lot more delayed than she'd originally thought it would be.

Tentatively, she snuck a peek at the other girl, the one who currently held her soul. "Alya", Mayura had called her. She didn't know a lot about her, only the knowledge her creator had managed to create her with - which wasn't much. She loved superheroes - ran a highly successful blog dedicated to Paris' heroes, in fact - and was too nosy for her own good.

She had a feeling that the last descriptor wasn't intentionally added. In a way, it was comforting. She may have been created as a puppet, but even her puppeteer didn't know everything she'd imbued her creation with.

Her puppeteer was gone, taken away by the police shortly after the battle had ended. For awhile, officers had swarmed around, taking pictures of everything, questioning Alya, even attempting to question her. Not that it got far. Once Alya'd informed them that she was a sentimonster, they'd backed off, only acknowledging her through wary glances.

She didn't like it.

None of the police asked her to come. No one asked her to do anything at all, except for a few particularly skittish reporters telling her not to come any closer.

They needn't have asked. She had no reason to move.

"Phew!" Alya collapsed onto a nearby chair. "Thought they'd never leave." She checked her phone. Her eyebrows drew together, her frown growing more pronounced as she fiddled with it. "Huh. Still no word from mom or dad or Nora. Guess they took the movie theaters 'silence your cell phones' warning seriously. Man, the looks on their faces when they find out how much they've missed-!"

She glanced up.

Ladybug- Sentibug- whatever she was- blinked back at her.

"...Oh."

She'd been so busy dealing with Nathalie and the press, she hadn't given the sentimonster much mind.

But now they were gone, and Sentibug was still here.

"Do you want a snack?" she asked, for lack of a better idea. Her mom had always told her that a good host should make sure their guests are well-fed. Secretly she suspected that her mom just wanted a chance to impress any newcomers with her culinary skills, but she wasn't exactly going to complain when it meant her mom breaking out some of her fancier meals.

"I…" the sentimonster - no, the girl - glanced around, looking lost. "Maybe?"

Come to think of it… "Can sentimonsters eat?" Alya asked curiously.

"I don't know," the girl replied.

To not even know that much about yourself- what would that be like? To be created to be a puppet, and then have the puppeteer wrenched away, and yet still be around?

But this girl. She wasn't just a puppet. She didn't collapse when she wasn't being controlled.

Frowning, Alya brushed her hand against the girl's amok. She went rigid as Alya touched it, shuddering at the contact.

That sealed it. Maybe it was dangerous and risky, but she didn't like the idea of controlling another living, thinking being, even if she had originally been created by a villain.

Walking over to her, she dropped the keychain into the girl's hands. Her eyes widened as she looked at Alya in disbelief.

"This is yours, isn't it?" she said, giving her a small smile. "It's your soul. You should have it. Make sure no one controls you but yourself."

Slowly, the girl curled her hand around the keychain, hugging it tightly to her chest. "Thank you," she whispered softly.

She waved her off. "Seriously, it's-" Huh. Come to think of it… "Uh… do you have any idea what you want to be called? I mean, 'Sentibug' sounds kinda impersonal."

The girl shook her head. "I don't know a lot of names, and the ones I do know are taken." The side of her mouth twitched upwards. "I mean, I could call myself 'Alya', but I think that would get awkward."

Alya snorted. "It'd give us a great excuse to ignore people though. Don't feel like answering someone? Just say you thought they were trying to talk to the other Alya!"

"Why do I get the feeling you've done that already?"

She laughed. "Only been alive for a few hours, and you can already read people like a pro." She frowned "But that still leaves you without a name."

The girl shrugged. "You have any ideas?"

Alya blinked. "Are you sure? It's your name"

She nodded.

Alya sat down. Man, when this day began she hadn't expected to have the responsibility of naming a newly-created sentient being.

Or breaking into Hawkmoth's lair.

Or stealing the Butterfly Miraculous.

Today had been weird.

Hm… What name to suggest…

Alya scrutinized the girl. She just looked like Ladybug, which didn't really help. Not like she knew Ladybug's actual name, and even if she did, that wouldn't exactly scream "I'm my own person!"

Maybe focus on something more specific?

Her hair - heh. Kinda funny how Ladybug and Marinette had the same hairstyle. Slightly different shades, but aside from that, they were identical. If she hadn't met Marinette before Ladybug hit the scene, she'd have assumed that she'd copied Ladybug's hairstyle.

Hm… Marinette…

"You know…" she said slowly. "I've got this great friend of mine, Marinette? I'll have to introduce you, I'm sure she'd love you. Anyway, I was just thinking - she told me that before her parents settle on 'Marinette', they'd been considering 'Bridgette'. How does that sound?"

"Bridgette, huh?" the girl hummed for a moment. Then smiled. "I like it!"

"Well then, Bridgette," Alya said, "how'd you feel about testing out your eating capability with a delicious walnut chocolate chip cookie?"

Bridgette glanced nervously at Alya - at her adopted sister.

The Cesaire family had greeted her with open arms, setting up one of the side rooms for her to stay in, as no one had known what to do with her. She had no parents (unless you count Nathalie. Who was in prison anyway, so it was a moot point), no relatives, and no home.

Otis and Marlene had promptly said "screw that!" and badgered the mayor into getting Bridgette registered as a French citizen and their adopted daughter. No one was sure whether he actually had that authority, but Bridgette got an ID and they didn't have any government agencies pestering about their new daughter's legal status, so they'd both decided to not ask too many questions about the matter.

(They suspected that Ladybug and Chat Noir announcing on the Ladyblog very firmly that Bridgette needed to be granted full legal rights had something to do with it as well. No one wanted to be on the wrong side of Paris' favorite superheroes.)

"Don't worry, everyone will love you!" Alya told her soothingly. "The whole class has been dying to meet you. Well- mostly." She wrinkled her nose, like she'd just found a dead cockroach on top of her phone again. Why Ella and Etta had decided that would be a fun prank to play, she'd never know. "Chloe's probably gonna be a pain, but she's like that with everyone."

"I thought she'd been nicer lately?" Bridgette asked. Not that she'd met Chloe in person, but Alya had kept her up-to-date on everything going on with her friends for… okay it was her entire life, but her entire life was only the past month.

She shrugged. "Chloe's been nice to Adrien, she's still a jerk to everyone else. After what happened to his family…" she winced. "All of us have been trying to make things easier on Adrien any way we can. But for Chloe it hits closer to home. Sometimes I forget, but… well… she's known Adrien - known his family - longer than anyone else has. She's actually been to dinner parties with Gabriel and Emilie. Sitting at the kid's table, but she was there. We only know Gabriel as 'that asshole who makes Adrien miserable' and Emilie as 'the dead mom Adrien misses'. Chloe knew both of them as people outside of that."

Bridgette winced. "It's got to be even harder on Adrien himself…"

Alya nodded. "I can't imagine what he's going through, finding out your dad's a supervillain and your mom's been in some creepy cold storage underneath your house the entire time. Still… is it weird that I think he's doing better than he normally is?"

"Considering that this all started because you got akumatized over Adrien being touch-starved? No."

Alya laughed. "Somehow I don't think that'll be a problem anymore. Marinette's parents aren't exactly stingy with their hugs."

She snorted. "No kidding. I thought Tom was going to break me in half with his hug."

They'd visited the bakery a few times over the past month. Alya was right, she and Marinette did look weirdly similar.

At least she didn't look like a copy of Ladybug anymore. It took a week, but Ladybug had figured out a way to allow her to use her amok to alter her appearance. Nothing drastic, but she could ditch the suit. She'd breathed a sigh of relief when she'd first looked in the mirror afterwards. She could wear normal outfits over her superhero suit, but concealing the mask? That'd taken makeup.

"So, you ready to head in?" her sister asked, hand on the doorknob to their first class.

Bridgette let out a breath. It'd been a rollercoaster this past month, getting settled with the Cesaires, seeing her creator carted off to prison, and figuring out who she herself was, as a person. She'd never expected to live this long - to survive past the end of the day - and now here she was, with her new sister, about to start her first day of school.

"Yeah, I'm ready."

Alya opened the door.

I didn't want to just reiterate the standard spiel for a post-Hawkmoth ending, so I decided to focus in on Alya and Bridgette instead of Adrien and Marinette. In case you were wondering, Ladybug and Chat Noir had a reveal shortly after taking Hawkmoth down, Marinette took Adrien home, and he's currently staying with the Dupain-Chengs. Technically his aunt should adopt him, but he'd been very insistent on staying with his friends, and she wasn't prepared to move to Paris.

Also, Ladybug and Chat Noir were quite firm about Adrien not being taken anywhere unless he'd agreed to it.