Alya feels close to crap the next morning- er, the rest of the morning- and her friends take notice.

"You look like shit."

Alya gives a very sarcastic sneer of a grin at Nino's too-amused face as the other two of her friends start laughing, her voice dripping with insincere glee. "Thanks,"

"No seriously," Marinette insists, albeit still giggling, as Alya takes a seat beside her, "What happened?"

Alya sighs. "I was up late filming the akuma attack- you know, the one you would know about by now if you actually read the Ladyblog. Then I was too wired to sleep, so I stayed up editing the footage. And then I took a shower, and after that I was already late for class."

"You've seriously got to get your priorities in order." Adrien comments with a hint of worry.

"Relax, it was one late-night akuma," Alya yawns as she opens her bookbag to root around for supplies, "It won't happen again."

"Sure," Nino drawls with a knowing smile. He leans back against his desk with his fingers folded behind his head, propping his feet up on the girls' desk. "What was the attack about, anyway? I heard some pretty trippy stuff about it."

Alya glances at the door with a fist in her cheek, wondering why their teacher is later than she is, and numbly slides Nino's ankles to the side towards Marinette, who promptly slides them back. "Turns out the studio running a popular sci-fi show decided to cancel it out of nowhere. A lot of people were upset, actually."

"Wait, are you talking about Battlegalaxy Celestia?"

Marinette, Alya, and Nino all give Adrien questioning looks.

"What?" Adrien looks away from them, rubbing the back of his neck bashfully. "I– a friend told me about it."

Alya rolls her eyes, completely unconvinced. "Right. Even if that is the show, I wouldn't know. All I know is the akumatized victim apparently had a thing for the 'Grigar Empire.'"

Adrien scowls. "He was an Empire sympathizer? No wonder he got akumatized."

Alya's eyebrows raise. "Strong words."

"No, seriously. The Grigar Empire is so obviously bad, but some people take their side just because they saved a solar system from worse people and distributed some resources to the poor in a political campaign–"

"They sound like the good guys to me." Alya says, just to bother him. It works.

"They're not!"

"Whatever you say," Alya replies, deciding she actually doesn't have the energy for too much banter.

Fortunately, their teacher enters the room shortly after and the class grows quiet. Though Adrien turns back around in his seat, Nino lingers. Alya shoots a tired glance at him from the corner of her eyes, intending to initiate a stare-off until he relents and moves them, like usual, only to catch him in a rare disarmed state instead- like, actually disarmed. He can space out in literally any environment and get caught up with a tune in his head that he doesn't want to lose, but he never actually checks out; it's actually kind of remarkable how much he pays attention to when he isn't paying attention.

But right now, he looks half-asleep.

Alya smirks; he'd talked a bunch of noise earlier, but he looks more tired than she is. In the end, she lets the teacher jolt him awake with a pointed verbal warning. He catches her smirk as he lowers his legs to turn around, and he sends her an eye roll.

Alya would laugh if she wasn't suddenly reminded of a certain green-clad hero.


Just a little over a week later and Carapace is already a recognized hero of Paris. Alya has watched the views on her video of him skyrocket this past week, he's the talk of the town right now. It'd been this way for Rena Rouge too (as difficult as it was to post any footage of her seeing as she is the heroine in question), but the extra hype had eventually calmed down as Rena became as commonplace as Ladybug and Chat Noir.

. . . Not that she really is. She doesn't have possession of the fox miraculous to respond to every akumatization, and she isn't being called on missions much recently. Like, at all.

But Alya digresses.

It's the beginning of fall, so the winds start to pick up in the afternoon and blow chilly life into the atmosphere until the late evening. It's early evening right now and the sun is beginning to set, which means the peak of cold and windy weather until it's just cold. Alya finds herself admiring the fall in France as each day goes by- the trees turn beautiful auburn shades and the sunsets seem to get nicer and nicer, perhaps because their increasingly ephemeral presence leaves the heart wanting- but she'll be damned if she ever gets used to the insanely cold weather the season is bringing.

It's just not in her DNA to deal with such low temperatures.

Which might actually be true, she muses while pulling her jacket tighter against her body with one hand and inspecting a colorful fruit stand with the other. She'd just come to the mainland recently after spending her entire life in the Caribbean islands, so this is her first encounter with anything below 40 degrees on a regular basis. Her ancestors had acclimated to the heat, and as evolution goes, she'd probably been born ready to take it. The cold, however, had been neglected in her genetic code completely.

The only reason she's in this unfamiliar climate to begin with is because of family matters of the business variety. Her mom's cooking career had really taken off after serving a few important guests on a few big cruises, and then one day she had been offered the chance of a lifetime: to move her family here, the Capital of Culinary, so that she could learn and do and earn so much more, and of course she'd taken it. And Alya is super proud of her mom for going after such large success. But this weather tho. . . it'll take an entire other lifetime to get used to it. Alya grimaces at the feeling of the joints in her fingers growing lethargic as she puts down the fruit in her hand, and she exhales onto them, hoping to bring some functionality back.

After a few minutes more of walking around the market without purchase, Alya frowns and growls under her scarf; she's managed to find actual plantains and even managed to snag some bonus chatrou (it's her mom's favorite, she'll be forgiven), why is it so hard to find taro? She begins to consider that they don't have it. Which would be shit. Weren't the French supposed to know everything about cooking? How could they not have an ingredient from a land they colonized? Alya huffs, she's just in a pissy mood because of the weather. She decides to just ask the clerk and hope they understand what she's asking for. It's better than proceeding aimlessly.

But before she can take more than a few steps toward the front of the market, the ground starts to shake. Violently. Like an earthquake has suddenly decided to hit. There's a pause after it starts, then shouts of surprise and an alarming moment of hysteria as people run around freaking out. Eventually someone (assumably someone of authority, though it's hard to say) shouts louder, and somehow convinces everyone to shut up and hit the ground. Alya follows suit, though she doesn't exactly make the conscious decision; she feels momentarily suspended from her body, and moreso watches herself duck down into emergency position. Interestingly enough, the quaking ends nearly as soon as she secures herself at the foot of a metal mango stand. Everything is eerily quiet for a few tense moments. Some people even begin to hesitantly rise from the floor, shuffling uneasily.

Then another quake hits. Everyone immediately goes back down (it'd be funny if this wasn't life-threatening).

The quake is bigger this time, and it rumbles longer than the first. Things tumble from shelves, refrigerators rattle, wooden stands vibrate so much Alya thinks they'll snap sooner or later. It isn't long before an enormous green mass breaks through the concrete ground with a roar and begins to slowly creep into the open air, overturning a large chunk of the marketplace ahead of where Alya is. Alya raises her forehead from the ground to see people exclaiming in fear, rushing away from the penetration site. Her eyes grow wide as she watches the mossy green thing slither toward the sky, putting another giant hole in the market roof, extending on and on eternally.

More of these things appear in the distance. Alya rolls onto the balls of her feet, moving to peer cautiously over the heads of the other market goers and what remains of the produce stalls to catch sight of the street. Overturned cars, cracked buildings– devastated buildings– crumbled road, frantic people, and dozens upon dozens of those. . . vines, everywhere. The vines crawl up whatever they can get ahold of. Weaving in and out of structures, they reach for the sky relentlessly.

Alya watches with fear in her heart as the vines seem to start converging way overhead. The atmosphere gets colder and colder, and then. . . the sun is gone. The vines create a dome-like structure over the city, the quaking stops, and everything goes dark.

Alya feels her rapid pulse throughout her body. Adrenaline is sent everywhere, from her core to the tips of her extremities, and still she doesn't feel warm enough; she can't. The cold is abrasive, and foreign, and its grip is merciless. She has her hands hold one another tightly to keep them from aching, grits her teeth to keep them from chattering. Breathing hurts– why does breathing hurt? How is she supposed to survive this insanity if she can't even breathe? It's bad enough that she can't see a damn thing.

The universe answers the question with an abrupt crash! and several more bouts of terrified screaming because things aren't crazy enough already.

Alya's gaze darts toward the direction of the sound, heart hammering an anxious rhythm against her ribs, her hands tightening around one another. She sees the thick silhouette of people swarming, scrambling away from the disturbance with urgency. In the wake of the masses someone is left alone, recovering from a stumble next to a toppled produce stand. The person colorfully expresses their discontent with recent developments under their breath- colorfully- and Alya watches as the. . . dude? continues moving around in spite of what just transpired. He's looking for something, most likely a way out of the market, but he only ever seems to find more terrified people and inconvenient produce stands if the disconcerted yelping is anything to go by.

This strangely continues until suddenly, there is light. First some of the shops down the avenue, then a few miscellaneous appliances in the market, the street lights, and then the overhead market lights that still work. Thank goodness; it appears the city still has power, which means no mind-numbing abyss and hopefully some respite from the mind-numbing cold. The lighting isn't perfect, and far from being as bright as the sun, but Alya still resurrects with its return.

And she's not the only one who's happy. Looking up, she notices the insistent produce-crasher pumping his fist before he begins navigating the crowd of nervous onlookers towards the exit. With the dim lights on, looking after him, she can make out a green skin tight suit, shaded goggles, a dark green mask that covers everything the goggles don't, and a green hoodie. Like most everyone else in the store, Alya freezes when she sees him.

If she wasn't positive this is an akuma attack already, she is now.

At first glance, one definitely mistakes this new arrival for an akumatized victim. Alya knows she did. He looks right psychotic. But after watching him walk around, and spotting the circular shield attached to his back, she realizes it's quite the opposite. Normally, she would smile at such a revelation, but the situation is a bit too much even for her; she feels like she's actually dying in this extreme absence of heat, and her humor was the first thing to go.

(Of course another random citizen of Paris gets akumatized today, in the early evening of a cold French fall, and decides to block out the sun with an enormous, tangled mass of vines that's spreading over the city for no apparent reason. Of course she's at the market market, out in the open with no one to huddle close to like she might have at school or at home, when it all happens. Of course on this day her mom wants to make her family a traditional dinner to bring them closer to home, because she's awesome like that, and they need certain ingredients they can't get at the regular grocery store so Alya had been sent out to fetch some. Of course the irony. What sadist is in charge of the universe?)

Unlike everyone else in the area who would rather stay put not to provoke the suspicious character, and wait for the heroes to deal with the problem, Alya is eager to follow after Carapace to satiate her now burning curiosity. As quickly as her half-frozen body will allow, she pushes herself onto her feet and hurries behind him. He doesn't seem to notice her following, at first.

Then they reach the corner of the avenue, duck behind a corner store wall. Carapace spies around the corner to the best of his ability, scoping out the street for sight of the akuma, and Alya decides to take this chance to talk to him before he bolts again. Carefully, she murmurs over his shoulder, "So, how much can you see out of those goggles?"

With a start, Carapace swiftly turns on her, and he looks just as creepy as she thought he would up close, in the low amber light, with strange shadows cast across his covered face.

"Hwha– Alya?" his shoulders fall as his nerves ease. "What are you doing all the way out here?"

Alya is almost surprised he remembers her name. Then she reckons that for the superheroes of Paris, her civilian identity ought to be hard to forget.

"I'm not out here by choice, really," Alya explains. She tries to give a relaxed shrug, but fails; it's far too cold out here to relax.

"That's new." the hero retorts– he almost sounds snide.

"You'd be surprised," Alya remarks, purposefully leaving Carapace wondering. "Anyway, I think it's hardly the most pressing concern right now," Despite her fingers' groans of protest, Alya digs her phone out of her pants pocket and directs the camera at him. She's fighting a grimace as she says, "What even are you wearing?"

Carapace looks down at himself in a manner similar to the first time she had asked him about his suit. The inspection seems fruitless. "It looks bad?" he asks.

Alya manages to huff out a frozen laugh. "Are you kidding? You look like a terrorist."

"Really?" says Carapace, and Alya decides that his urgent voice is cute. "I was thinking more of a– an assassin. . . y'know? Like. . . like quiet. The opposite of a terrorist." It's clear by his tone of voice that Carapace thinks this alternative is cooler. And perhaps it is– in a fictional story where real lives aren't on the line and a real superhero isn't in danger of being shot at while trying to save the day.

"And looking like one killer is better than looking like another?"

". . . There are good assassins out there." the hero defends weakly. Then he leaves it at that. "But if you think I look scary, you haven't seen Ladybug and Chat Noir."

Alya is amused by what her mind conjures up at the comment. "They look like psychos too?"

"Basically. We each have a thermo-regulated version of our suit for cold climates- because of superhero magic- and the two of them just. . . yikes." Shortly following the statement, Carapace raises an apprehensive eyebrow at her phone- well, Alya assumes; he tilts his head away from the device like he's scrutinizing it from the corner of his eye, and she fills in the blanks. This time she doesn't think he'd forgotten it's pointed at him though. "You'll cut that bit out, right?"

Alya musters enough warmth to smile at him. "Sure, Cap."

Carapace levels an unwell expression at her– again, she can't see it, she just knows that's what it looks like. "Don't call me that."

Alya smirks. "Now it's your nickname for life."

"Seriously?"

"Dead."

Carapace just shakes his head and pushes himself up, off the corner. Alya, still directing her camera at him, watches him meander down the street- but with purpose. Before long, she musters the strength to get up and trail after him before he can get too far. As they walk, she notices Carapace looking around pretty hard for something, and realizes she never did find out what he was doing in the market. Perhaps he was on the hunt for whatever has his attention now?

Curious, and feeling playful, she holds up one of her hands. She says, "Looking for this?"

Carapace whips his head to the side to see what she's talking about, only to find her hand empty. His shoulders fall in disappointment.

"That's not funny."

"Sorry," Alya deflates somewhat as she registers that perhaps that wasn't the right way to breach the topic. She's just so used to teasing her friends. . . "Just wanted to know what you're looking for. Maybe I can help?"

The sun is officially gone and night is here- she can feel it in her bones for real, maybe as some genetic sixth sense or something. A new wave of chill's washed over her body from head to toe, so as she knows whatever Carapace is doing must be a part of saving the day, she knows they've got no time to lose.

Carapace shoves the remnants of a crashed vehicle aside with a grunt. "I'm looking for the infected object. It fell off the akuma while we were fighting, and Ladybug sent me to get it."

Despite it all, Alya can't help herself. "Oo, a promotion!" she cheers.

"Please don't patronize me."

"Alright, alright," Alya promises, and he just sounds so subdued, she resolves to put a lid on the teasing. The grin she'd slowly fostered dims, her gaze cast down at her phone pensively. "But seriously, congrats. Ladybug's never trusted me to go after the object. . ."

"You're a civilian, Alya," another grunt and the sound of jostled debris, "Going after the object is too dangerous."

Alya blinks at that, wide-eyed. "Right. . ."

Right. Somehow, talking so casually with Carapace, she'd forgotten that she's a civilian right now, that he's a superhero, and that he doesn't know she's Rena Rouge. He's used her civilian name only a few times but it already sounds much less strange than it had the very first time; he feels like a friend, a teammate, and she's realizing that in his presence, the line between Alya Césaire and Rena Rouge gets convoluted. It doesn't make any sense.

"I know. I just. . . want to help."

Maybe Ladybug thinks she's too much of a civilian- too much of Alya- to handle superhero work? Maybe that's why she's replacing her with Carapace?

Carapace is kind, and comfortable, and follows directions.

Alya Césaire is a bit rough around the edges, and forward, and likes to try her luck challenging the directions.

Probably sensing her melancholic mood, Carapace says nothing else, just continues his search for the item in the nooks and crannies of the street. Bless his heart.

Alya is a little comforted to know that at least someone as cool and considerate as Carapace is the one replacing her.

With her desire to fraternize suddenly diminished, Alya pokes through the footage she's already collected from the night so far. It's nothing eventful. In fact, most of it is useless. Her blog might not take a hit if she posts it, but she decides it's not of a standard she's comfortable with sharing. Instead she just saves it. . . maybe it'll make a good memory one day.

The video ends, and Alya is easily distracted by the rest of her gallery. Just as she begins wandering through recent photos of her friends laughing and of the superheroes in action and of her sisters tame for once, a shockwave hits unexpectedly, knocking her off of her feet. In a few seconds so similar to another in the recent past, she is weightless and everything around her is moving. Then it all stops. So abruptly the wind is knocked out of her chest, and Alya groans.

Moments later, as she coughs and slowly rolls onto her side, the green hero crouches beside her to help her sit up. As soon as she's upright with her eyes focused, he turns toward the street, fingers splayed on the ground at his sides, to look around for a threat to follow up. He rises to his feet and tells Alya to stay low until he deems the area safe to traverse again.

Nothing else happens in the minutes he's gone, and soon Carapace returns to give her the all-clear. Alya stands. She comes out from behind the overturned car she'd chosen as shelter and follows close behind him at his behest.

"Things are getting worse," he says, glancing back at her to make sure she's keeping pace, "I need to find that item."

Alya doesn't have any commentary. She still feels a little light-headed, not really up to talk. She shuffles closely behind him and just focuses on getting her bearings back so she doesn't get dealt worse by something else unexpected.

Freezing cold, no yucca, earthquakes, awkward convo with your twice savior, getting your ribs knocked into your back. Alya doesn't know if she's broken anything, but wouldn't that just be the icing on the cake of this shitty rollercoaster of a night? She really hopes she's spared the injury, no one who knows her will ever let her live it down if they find out she's been hurt while filming.

As if her tired and now loopy mind hasn't had enough trial tonight, by fate her hand brushes gently against Carapace's, and at first it's nothing significant, but once her head catches up, Alya realizes that she'd felt relief when it happened. She hazards another small touch, hopes he doesn't notice. The relief is there again. It takes a moment for her to realize it's because his hand is warm.

He's warm.

"My god," Alya breathes out, dazed and euphoric. She is quickly met with a curious look from Carapace, who's on alert as soon Alya looks up from his gloved hand to stare into his eyes- well, into the black of his eyewear. She wonders, does his entire suit feel like this? It must! "Can I hug you?"

She can't see his face, but the hero sounds confused. His words come kind of slow. "I– I mean, you– I guess?"

Alya is quick to embrace him. Carapace is still at first, but slowly his arms come to wrap around her. They stay like that for an indefinite amount of time. All Alya knows is that however long they hold each other, it isn't for nearly long enough when the hero- reluctantly, it seems- removes his arms from around her back.

"Look, I hate to be the bearer of bad news," he says, laying his hands on her shoulders, and he sounds like he really does hate it, like every word is true. "But I have a job to do. And it's pretty important. I've got to go faster so. . . maybe you should sit this one out?"

As if the words are a spell, Alya is instantly experiencing everything with full clarity. Reality feels like a heavy, vengeful knife to the gut; did he just say that? She thinks he really said it.

Oof.

Alya groans bitterly, but releases Carapace without argument. A light flush steals over her cheeks when she does; she feels just the slightest bit abashed for being selfish at a time like this. Carapace is too nice to say so, but the truth is that she's wasted a lot of his time following him around, being distracting. Things are only getting worse, she can feel the temperature dropping- and another angry quake stirring, now that she's paying attention, as minute rumblings beneath their feet- and the hero has made no progress. Hopefully she didn't ruin anything, hopefully he'll make it in time; hopefully he'll believe her blush is just from the cold.

She looks up into Carapace's masked face, and interprets his sympathetic gaze. His warm hands are still on her shoulders. It doesn't feel real. The dim amber lighting casts malignant shadows across his criminal visage while she stands across from him, siphoning his warmth, but that's not even why. Alya is absorbing that she had been on the team, in a sense, and had finally gotten what she wanted out of one of the other three heroes of Paris, only to be benched before she even knew she was playing. And it hurts. Even though she's been benched as Alya Césaire a multitude of times, the fact that it's Carapace. . .

But the weirdest part of it is the fact itself. Alya's never done this before, she's never gotten caught up in the middle of an akuma attack, never recklessly put herself in harm's way, never had nothing to show for it but some bad footage. She's never gotten distracted. She doesn't know where the distraction came from. Is she losing her edge?

The line of disgruntled thought is disrupted by the sound of Carapace's voice.

"The item definitely fell on this street," he muses aloud, looking at the tops of buildings. "If it isn't down here, it's on one of the rooftops."

Alya nods mutely. Carapace gives the rest of the street a cursory glance before he pauses thoughtfully with his eyes, presumably, trained on her.

"Will you be okay?"

For a second– just one, heart-stopping second– Alya thinks he's talking about her pride. She quickly understands that it's her physical injuries he's worried about.

"Yeah," Alya clears her throat, "I'll be fine. Though if you can magically produce a blanket and some hot chocolate, I'll be great."

"Not my gifts, sorry. But I'm going to end all this soon, alright? Stay out of trouble till then."

Carapace finally removes his hands from her shoulders, and with the last bit of contact between them gone, Alya abruptly feels so cold. Like, that last bit of contact had just been on her shoulders, but it was keeping all the bitter cold from flowing in. With it gone she feels. . . dropped. Alone. But no matter how she knows its irrational, when Carapace steps back and silently turns away from her to face the troubled city, the feeling settles in like a stone buried in her chest. The hero gets a running start toward the only fully intact establishment on the street. Alya thinks she might see him wave at her, briefly, before he bounds onto the rooftops, never slowing. As he gets farther away, he only moves faster.

Even if she wasn't frozen and bruised, Alya doesn't think she'd have it in her to follow after him again.

Sure it's fucking cold, she can hardly feel her own body, and Carapace moves with the speed and grace of a superhero where she would move with the speed of a slug, but it's really because her enthusiasm is all gone. After that. . . after what Carapace said. . . she wouldn't want to be a hindrance. Even without her injuries, it would still be better for her to stay out of the way.

Ladybug tells her again and again. She doesn't know why it's taken Carapace telling her for it to finally have impact.

Well, that's not really true, Alya thinks as she sinks to the ground with a resigned pout on her face. Carapace is her replacement. All the evidence supports it. No one has to tell her, she's seen it for herself. And he's a great hero, if he says she should sit out, she believes him, but that means Rena should too, since they're the same person, even if he doesn't know that, and look, Ladybug hasn't called Rena to action since before Carapace was commissioned. It's blatant, in her face, one fact–

Alya gasps as she's swarmed all of a sudden by a cloud of dark creatures. There's panic first, but then a spark of joy as she realizes she is caressed by magic. Then the creatures, and the joy, is gone. In a split second, she's healed. Her vision clears of the dark bugs, and the next thing she knows, the entire avenue is returned to order. Ladybug has restored Paris again.

Which means Carapace found the object.

That quickly, huh?

He really is a better hero than she is.

Alya sighs softly. She rises to her feet and savors the lesser cold of the night for what little it is worth, a small smile tugging against her lips despite the disappointment in her heart.

Maybe Ladybug is right not to give her the Fox miraculous again.


I didn't mean to be mean, it just sort of happened that way. Also, this chapter came out longer than I expected and I'm not sure how the flow is, so I'd really appreciate hearing your thoughts on this part, even if you just say you liked it (though specific feedback is preferred).

PS: Ngl, I projected pretty hard in this chapter about the temp. I live in a subtropical area and I can't stand anything below 40 F, it drives me up the wall. Call me a wimp if you want, I have no shame. Anything below that is objectively cold and we all know it.