Part three of Bleached White. This takes place directly after the first two chapters.
A flash of green light heralded a force field, and Chat hit the surface with a painful smack. The crackle of green energy repelled him, and Marinette watched him land in the street just outside the alley.
All his white fur from head to tail was bristling, his claws digging gouges into the concrete. The rumbling growl coming from his chest could have been mistaken for a roll of thunder.
"Looks like I found you just in time." Carapace held out his hand to her.
Her own hand was shaking when she accepted his assistance, letting him haul her back onto her feet.
"Your parents called Alya when you went missing tonight, and we investigated the alley behind your house. Luckily Rena was able to sniff out his smell," Carapace jabbed a thumb in the direction of Chat. "We had a feeling we might find you with him," he explained while keeping a close eye on the terrifying akuma pacing the mouth of the alley on all fours. "We haven't been able to locate his hideout like you asked, but we've collected lots of reported sightings in this area and figured it was a good place to start looking for you."
"Good call." Marinette attempted and failed to brush off the wet dirt from her clothes, only managing to smear mud around. "I think I can tell you where his hideout is."
Carapace nodded, and it was left unsaid that they would discuss how she came about that information later.
Seeming to grow impatient, Chat launched himself at the force-field. His claws gouged into the green energy, causing sparks of magic to pop, then sank his fangs in and began uselessly biting.
"You got a plan, so we can purify him?" he asked, still watching the snarling akuma. Chat continued to mouth the force-field. He was completely unconcerned with the magic attempting to repel him and sparking angrily with every contact of tooth and claw.
"I don't think we can right now. I've already purified one butterfly that came out of him and he's still like this. Tikki thinks he must have been eating all of Hawk Moth's butterflies for the past month."
"That would explain a lot."
"Hey bubble-buddies!" a familiar new voice broke in. "Are you two going to sit there and twiddle your thumbs?"
Carapace and Marinette jerked their attention up to see the fox heroine peering down at them from over the edge of a building.
"We were kinda cozy down here," Carapace sassed back, "thought we might spend the night."
Chat ceased chewing on the force field to hiss up at Rena Rouge.
"Hey there, pretty kitty," she winked, and fluttered her fingers. "Digging your new look. It screams 'I'm such a bad boy,' with those over-sized lapels."
Another hiss, this one even more angry than the previous, and Chat dug his claws deeper into the force field causing the magic to flicker and pop violently.
"Can you not taunt him while he's trying to kill us?" Carapace called up to her.
"I could try," Rena mused, "but it'll be really hard."
The barrier suddenly made a loud cracking noise, drawing the attention of Marinette and the two heroes.
Bubbling black and purple energy oozed out of the palms of Chat's hands. Tendrils of black crawled along the surface of the field. There were hundreds of them, looking like tiny black hands on the ends of long thin boneless arms. Each finger tip of the tiny demonic-like hands seemed to have their own little mouths full of teeth, the teeth no larger than the tip of a sewing needle.
The tendrils slithered and pulled themselves further along the surface, greedily eating away at Carapace's Miraculous magic. The bubbling hands even crawled up Chat's own arms, digging into his suit like he was a corpse being infested with worms.
"Is th-that cataclysm?" Carapace choked, stepping to put himself between Marinette and the writhing black mass. "He didn't even say it! How can he use it if he didn't even call for it?"
"That force field isn't going to hold out for much longer," Marinette pointed out. "As soon as it gives, can you get me some place out of his eye-line?"
"Maybe?" he squeaked, watching a crack ripple through the flickering green magic. "Rena, we could really use a hand here! Think you could create a diversion for us so Marinette can do her thing?"
"Sh-sure~" Rena called down, but she sounded sick to her stomach and a little horrified with the scene below.
They watched her raise the flute to her mouth, her hands trembling, but readying to cast her illusion magic the moment the force field gave way.
Another crack, and everyone's breath caught. Carapace readied himself, wrapping his arm around Marinette's waist.
Chat's sinister black magic continued to voraciously eat away at the barrier, and his eyes had completely lost their pupils, becoming nothing more than empty pits of burning magenta.
One last crack sounded off, like a pane of glass finally giving out, and the whole side of the forcefield shattered like the tempered windshield of a car. Popping green magic rained down on Carapace and Marinette, and Chat fell to the ground on all fours, a terrifying wild cat about to go for the kill. The bubbling black magic that had been spilling from his hands began retreating back into his palms.
"Now!" The turtle hero screamed. He pushed off the ground with Marinette clinging to him, and plunged further into the alley.
"Mirage!" Rena called out, and her flute whistled it's high pitched notes.
Chat pounced, mouth ripping open, and claws bared.
But the two disappeared into a burst of dazzling orange magic.
Instead of making contact with Carapace and Marinette, Chat crashed painfully into the concrete snarling and swiping at a sudden onslaught of blues, and pinks, and cream colored shapes.
When he finally righted himself, the turtle hero was gone, and he was lost in a sea of more than a thousand scattering Marinettes.