Alright, this resolves the akuma from the last chapter. Not much emphasis on it though, the story is mainly about the heroes and their team dynamics.
Carapace isn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it certainly wasn't this.
Before them, tucked into the furthest shadows of the alleyway, is a really rough looking dude. He's hunched over on the concrete floor, his body supported on his elbows and knees, writhing in a real strange way. Low sounds of pain escape him, but they are overshadowed by his irregular breathing, which, Carapace notes, is more quick and scared than labored. He manages to oddly crawl towards the heroes with an outstretched hand, presumably in a plea for help. When the slim beams of moonlight slipping into the space between the buildings touch his hand and face, Carapace immediately puts distance between them.
As they land some meters away on the sidewalk, Rena turns on him.
"What are you doing?"
"Rena, you saw that guy."
"Yes, he's suffering, how could you–"
"No, he's dangerous–"
"Are you serious–"
"Rena, look!"
Perhaps it's a little too harsh of him, but Carapace doesn't have time to spare on more words; he grabs Rena's shoulders, turns her forcibly around, and points into the alleyway where the troubled man slowly emerges from the dark into the moonlight. It's a full moon on a clear night– a beautiful happenstance, but also more than that; it reveals something ugly.
Carapace has yet to see the whites of this man's eyes, and it's looking like he'll keep waiting; if he squints, he can see the man's iris has bled into his sclera, washing his entire eyes in black. His gaze is beady in the direct light, unfocused. Deep stress lines carve paths from the bridge of his nose to the space under them, his eyes bulging slightly from the bags framing them. He looks downright ill, and the grimace over his features is just a little too carnal to only be from some unseen source of pain. This isn't even taking into account that his hands have turned a dark gray color that is letting into every inch of skin newly revealed to the moon's light, long claw-like nails protruding from his fingers, or that his cries are getting increasingly louder, more frenzied and manic and angry.
He stalks toward them slowly, like every small movement hurts but he can't stop. Like he's possessed.
Rena tenses under Carapace's hands at the sight. The heroes can only watch, horrified, as the victim continues crawling numbly toward them. Eventually, once he's completely in the light, he collapses, and the heroes remember themselves. They approach him, not sure what they can do but ready and willing to help.
By the time they reach him, he's begun scratching erratically all over his arms and shoulders, and on the top of his head, like he has the pox everywhere. Neither Rena or Carapace is particularly inclined to interfere with what little they know about what's going on. But when they see he's harming himself, scratching at the itch with his razor sharp fingernails and splitting his skin open, they pin his arms to his sides to at least stop that. His immediate response is to thrash under their hold like a rabid animal. This would be their main concern, but things just get even stranger before they can find a way to stop it; he stops his thrashing and bares his teeth at them, revealing an awkwardly structured jaw that looks like it must hurt and four over-sized incisors that dig into the corners of his mouth. They notice two tall, greyish-brown dog ears stand folded back at a menacing angle atop his head.
Beside Carapace, Rena twitches nervously. He sees her intense gaze zeroed in on the man's visage and her body wound tight with apprehension; something about this encounter, as disturbing as it is, is particularly harrowing for her. Carapace himself feels something crawl along his spine ominously, a sensation akin to how anxious Rena looks, but isn't under the impression that their levels of discomfort are the same. He imagines, with her superior eyesight, she can see everything he's seeing but in startling detail. He doesn't envy her.
Rena takes a deep breath to try and calm herself down, and though it doesn't entirely work, Carapace can see some of the tension melting off of her shoulders.
"What do we do now?" she asks tersely, looking to solve things.
Carapace takes a breath of his own, analyzing the situation. "I– I don't know. Knock him out?"
"I think he already is knocked out."
"Then. . ?"
They are startled by an abrupt show of force from their captive, who throws his arms up forcefully enough to toss the heroes aside through their grips. Rena is the first of the two heroes to recover, and she rushes to her partner's side. They create distance as the afflicted citizen rises to his feet, body swaying as his mass ripples eerily under his skin, a dreadful vaticination. Carapace puts himself in front of his partner to defend if necessary, trying to determine whether or not they should attack.
"What the hell is going on?" he mutters, not liking the way things are going at all.
"I don't know," Rena Rouge answers over his shoulder. "You don't think he'd tell us if we asked, do you?"
"I would not count on it."
The man is clearly out of it. His face is completely devoid of anything like consciousness, ruled instead by raw ferocity. He's gone crazy.
Quickly, Carapace decides to raise his shield and angle it towards the moon to catch the light. The smooth scales amplify the moonlight as he flashes a reflection of it several times at constant intervals, to the north; he hopes Chat Noir sees the signal. He does this until the enemy closes in too much for comfort, lowering his arm to be ready to defend once more.
Behind him, he hears Rena talking.
"Why don't our weapons double as communication devices again?"
Carapace shrugs, eyeing the zombie-like gait of their charge– or adversary? "Insufficient magical prowess?"
"Bullshit. It's a design flaw."
Carapace doesn't argue with that.
The man continues his slow pace until he suddenly stops, his body grotesquely shifting under his increasingly hairy skin again. The visual is frightening.
"Watch my six," Carapace tells his teammate, "I'm going to signal Chat again."
"Got it."
Carapace swiftly pivots around Rena to face the south as the heroine takes up a defensive stance with her flute, her shoulders now pressing against his back. Above their heads, Carapace flashes the signal agreed upon. He tries not to worry about Chat Noir not seeing it, instead commiting his energy toward contriving some sort of plan for the meantime. How to handle this. . .
"What?" Rena's hushed confusion sounds just behind him. "Hey, Carapace!"
Just as said hero whirls around to see what's wrong, the few aspects of a human being that had thus far remained for the troubled man are suddenly gone. In the man's place is a humanoid wolf-like creature which gnashes its teeth at the duo with a snarl, it's towering stature nearly eclipsing the moon from where they stand.
Carapace instantly reaches to snatch Rena away from the beast. And just as well; it swipes one of its large paws out in a wide arc right as he does, missing her by a hair.
The wolf prepares to lung at them, and saliva drips past its massive incisors onto the asphalt in carnal anticipation. Carapace can sense it. He doesn't hesitate to pull Rena behind himself with one arm and raise his shield with the other, his entire body bracing as the creature's shoulders tighten backwards, its chest expands, its arms flex, and–
Suddenly, a low howl sounds in the distance.
The beast freezes. Completely. Everything becomes like stone, even its breath, heavy in its lungs and trapped in its chest by whatever spell has fallen over it. The wolf simply watches them intensely. . . with blood red eyes devoid of any higher intelligence-- any thought.
When the mysterious howl sounds again from elsewhere in the city, the last of the beast's interest in the heroes diminishes. Without any explanation, it decompresses, turns around and bounds away into the city, leaving them untouched.
Rena immediately tries to follow it.
"Oh naw," Carapace says, grabbing ahold of her just before she can leap off in pursuit, "You're not going after that thing."
Rena whirls on him with her teeth bared in a vicious manner he's never seen before. "Are you serious? We can't just let it go! Who knows who it could hurt, or worse!"
Carapace had been slightly shocked by her temper, but he is fine now. "I get it," he tells her calmly, "but I already signaled Chat Noir and Ladybug, so we need to stay where they can find us. Besides, Ladybug will heal all the damage with her powers before the night is over."
"Ladybug's powers can't heal everything." Rena pulls her arm out of Carapace's hold with a little too much force, folding it over her chest with the other. "Akumas may forget, but other victims never do."
Carapace winces with a sigh. "Look, you're right, but there's no guarantee we'll even be able to keep that thing contained on our own– if we even find it. At this point, it's smarter to just stay here."
Rena groans. Her ears fall folded back at an uncomfortable angle, and there's a flash of something in her eyes, a click of her sharp teeth, a tap of a single claw before she begrudgingly concedes to him.
"I don't like this."
"I don't either," Carapace admits, "but I think it's the right move."
"If you really think so,"
Rena gazes out into the city with a deep furrow in her brow; she can hear faint sounds of distress along the city's streets. Though he doesn't know it, Carapace has already proven to her that he knows what he's doing, that he has good judgement. If he says they should wait. . . she'll wait.
Ladybug and Chat Noir land on their side of the Seine just after midnight, and Rena's restless energy is palpable.
"Where's the akuma?" Ladybug doesn't waste any time getting to the point, questioning them as soon as her feet touch cement. "Chat Noir said he saw your signal, what happened?"
"We're not entirely sure. But I think. . . I think it was a werewolf." Carapace answers.
"A werewolf?" Chat Noir echoes, aghast. His eyes dart around nervously, pupils blown wide. Alya imagines if he had fur, it'd be standing on end.
"I think," Carapace reinforces. "We caught him– it– transforming. First it was a guy, then it was a huge beast creature. There's not much to go on and I'm not even sure if I saw everything right."
Ladybug is also visibly troubled, but unlike her suddenly skittish partner, she uses the energy to start thinking.
"Werewolf or not, before we attempt to capture the akuma, I need you to tell me everything you know about it."
"That's another thing," adds Rena, ear twitching, "I watched the transformation from early on all the way to the end, and I never saw a purple moth or any black smoke. I. . . don't think this is an akuma."
"You mean it's just. . . werewolves are real?" asks Chat Noir.
"I'm not saying that, I'm just saying there's a chance this is something or someone else."
"Who or what else could it be?"
"I don't know!" Rena snaps. She growls a bit under her breath, dissatisfied with her own outburst. Ladybug and Chat Noir trade looks as she takes a few steps away to pace anxiously.
"Forgive her," Carapace insists on her behalf, "she's just really concerned for the civilians. We let the werewolf go and she's been upset ever since."
Ladybug nods, sparing Rena a knowing glance. "I understand. How long ago did the werewolf leave? Did you notice anything noteworthy about it before it went?" She is back to work without missing a beat.
Carapace thinks back on the encounter.
"There is one thing," he says, and all the other heroes come closer. "Well, besides the creepy hypnotized eyes. Just as it was about to attack us, this howl–"
The hero is interrupted by a distant, haunting sound that sends visible shivers down Chat's back.
"Just like that!" Carapace exclaims, pointing aimlessly at the sky, "A howl just like that sounded, and the werewolf stopped attacking us. Then it came again, and the wolf ran away."
Ladybug hums. "Sounds like someone else is in charge."
Chat Noir steps forward. "Which way did you say it went again?"
"Oh right– it went that way," Carapace points toward city lights up the Seine.
"Okay, first order of business is finding out what's going on. Let's head over to assess the situation. Once we've learned more about the enemy, we can come up with a plan to fix everything."
"Sounds like a purrfect plan! Only," Chat expresses, "I don't do well with. . . dogs."
"You'll be fine, Chaton," Ladybug assures him with a knowing smile, "You always are."
"I've never fought giant werewolves."
"Don't worry, man," Carapace says, clapping Chat on the back hard enough to make him stumble, "I got your back."
Chat coughs and when he speaks, he is audibly winded. "I guess it's. . . it's a little more reassuring coming from the guy with the shield,"
Ladybug rolls her eyes. "Oh, whatever,"
Alya won't lie, she's irritated.
The other heroes are wonderful, but they worry just a little too much. The wolf should have been handled already. They should be flitting across the city freely or finding places to de-transform, but instead they're running around town trying to track it down, unable to prevent or fix any damage, totally useless. The people deserve better than this, she thinks to herself. Or maybe that's her frustration talking.
Ladybug and Chat Noir take lead of the charge. They're the fastest; Chat vaults over entire blocks at a time with his staff, and Ladybug flies from one monument to the next with her yo-yo. Time is short, so they don't bother to pace themselves. They scout ahead with Chat's eyes and ears as their guide.
Rena takes it considerably slower. She's far from out of breath, but she finds she hasn't completely recovered from her earlier hijinks with Carapace-- who, by the way, runs at her side, on the roofs across the street from her. Rena takes comfort in his presence as she watches Ladybug's distant frame move further away in the darkness; steadfast, he keeps pace with her rather than bounding ahead to match the others' haste. There is power in his stride where quickness is absent, more than compensating for the speed she has on him, and they match each other's paces without intention, moving in tandem.
It seems unofficially, they will be partners for this crusade; it feels like a mutual understanding.
Fortunately for Alya's nerves, it doesn't take long at all for their squad to locate the werewolf. Unfortunately, it's not alone.
Like, at all.
Rena lands in a crouch on a tall building's edge beside the other heroes, and feels her stomach drop; down below, a swarm of werewolves crawls along half the length of the Champs-Élysées. There's so many, she can't even see the asphalt.
Only Chat's distressed mewl at the inconvenience could properly put her feelings into words.
Ladybug glances at Chat sympathetically, then turns back to the pack of wolves. She sighs. "This changes things,"
"What do we do?"
"I need context before I can call upon my Lucky Charm," Ladybug says while she bites her lip. "I know no one wants to hear it, but we still don't know enough to fix anything. We need more information before going down there."
Rena peers over the edge and gulps; she hates it, but it's the truth. Usually, they would engage the akuma and learn along the way, when they had numbers and power range on their side. But running blind into this mass of enemies? It would only waste valuable time at best. At worst. . .
"Okay," she agrees slowly, her unruly emotions calming down. Even the fox was sobering, she could feel it pulling back as soothed itches on her face, where something like whiskers may have quivered on her cheeks if the magic gave her any.
"Dudes, check this," Carapace gathers their attention as he points, squinting, near the center of the pack where a bigger, burlier wolf than the others stands atop some stacked cars, "That big wolf over there looks like it has. . . 3-D glasses on,"
Rena and the other heroes look the wolf over, and confirm there is indeed a large pair of 3-D glasses poised precariously over its snout. The image is strangely radical, and it makes Alya wonder about the nature of the akumatization.
"Looks like it's the only one. . . " Rena notes.
"Maybe it's the alpha?" Carapace proposes.
"The alpha. . ?" Ladybug considers, then her face lights up with understanding. "Of course!" She shoots Carapace a proud smile. "Alphas are the strongest and control the pack. If there's an akuma involved here, it's got to be the one akumatized. And it's glasses must be the akumatized object! Nice going, Carapace."
Carapace smiles brightly. "Sha!"
His joy is contagious. In spite of having a foul mood recently, Rena can't help feeling compelled to smile herself.
"So in that case," Ladybug continues while visibly mulling the idea over with a knuckle under her chin. She turns to the green hero with dazzle in her eyes. "Carapace, how big can you make your Shellter?"
Carapace is put on the spot, but he doesn't sweat it long. He shrugs his broad shoulders. "Not sure, I've never tried pushing it before. I just think of what I want to protect, and it appears big enough to make sure that happens."
"How long can you hold it for?"
"Just until the danger passes."
Ladybug nods, like this will do, "We have to separate the Alpha from pack. Rena can use an illusion to get the wolves' attentions and draw them away, then Carapace can use his shelter to trap them."
"Trap them?" Carapace inquires.
"I bet your power is as good at keeping things in as it is at keeping them out." Ladybug explains. "Besides, it's all about intent, right?"
"Last time I checked your lucky charm gives you what you need, not what you want," Chat cuts in, filing his nails against each other in an unimpressed manner.
"Exactly," Ladybug rises to her feet victoriously. "The magic behind Carapace's Shellter power should give us what we need to help us against the akuma, even if it's not exactly as we planned."
"I always thought your plans had more logic and reasoning than this." Carapace remarks up at her.
"Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't," Chat chimes, no longer shivering by the edge of the building, instead standing by Ladybug's side with a sassy jut of his hip. "It depends. Sometimes her plans are so convoluted and reliant on chance that it's hard to believe she ever had a plan at all."
"Really?" Rena prods, intrigued.
Chat shrugs. "Oh yeah. Some might even say she always gets lucky," he quirks his eyebrows up. "You know what I mean?" When he gets nothing but unamused looks, he deflates. "It's just the way things work, okay. M'lady's plans don't always make sense, but they do always get the job done."
"Gee, thanks for relieving their worries." Ladybug glowers at her partner.
Chat Noir lends her a wink like he's always got her back. "Of course,"
"Alright, well how am I going to lure the pack away without also attracting the Alpha?" Rena poses. "If they all move at the same time, the distraction will have been for nothing."
"Oh, that shouldn't be a problem. I'm pretty sure the Alpha is blind."
Rena furrows her brow at Ladybug now. ". . . And how do you figure that?"
Ladybug shrugs in a way that is not reassuring at all. "It's a hunch. Every wolf on the block has been looking and moving around except for the Alpha, who just sniffs and raises an ear every once in a while. And it's glasses are so tinted, I'm surprised we can even tell that they're for 3-D viewing."
"That's a pretty big 'if.'"
"No need to get your whiskers in a twist, fox," Chat Noir nearly sneers. "As long as your illusions don't have any smells or sounds, we'll be able to pull this off. Don't you trust your teammates?"
"Well yeah, but. . ." Rena starts, but then she sighs and shakes her head. She knows Ladybug has quick plans and even quicker conclusions, and the day is always saved in the end, so. . . she just chooses to let it go. "So what do we do once Carapace has the pack in the pound?" she asks instead.
Chat narrows his luminous eyes at her wordplay over Ladybug's shoulder. "Carapace will hold them for as long as he can while Chat and I go after the Alpha. We'll have to defeat it in less than five minutes because of the time-out on our powers, so if you're free, we could really use the help."
"Okay," Rena breathes, taking her flute into her hand. "I guess that's all there is to it," assuming the alpha really is blind, the words she doesn't say, "Are we ready to do this?"
The other heroes follow suit with their own weapons. A line of affirmations follow, and then they are off.
Rena takes the first step. She hurries over the rooftops to the Arc de Triomphe and descends just behind it with an especially soft foot, careful to be absolutely silent. With a few subtle notes on her flute, she summons a mirage for the wolves to flock toward up the Seine.
Almost instantly, there is change in the flow of the wolves' prowling, and suddenly, they are scrambling en mass to the other end of the avenue, where the heroine stands behind her illusion somewhat anxiously, gripping her flute. Rena instantly ducks down behind the false image she'd formed with her powers and waits for the wolves to arrive.
Once she's sure that they are close enough, Rena plays a tune on her flute as a signal to Carapace to commence the next step of the plan. She watches his form above rise from a crouch and drop down from the Arc, right in front of her. He lands with enough force to crack the pavement, drawing all the wolves to him like a beacon as he takes a deep breath, and calls for his special ability to manifest.
Alya admires his tenacity. He likely can't be afraid of the wolves or the magic will form a shield around him to keep the wolves out, rather than form one large enough to trap them all in. That it all goes according to plan, with the canines just feet away from him before the bright green dome materializes around all the beasts, attests to his bravery and trust.
As the light dome settles around the pack, Alya realizes this is the first time she's actually seen Carapace's special ability. She's heard about it, and seen it obstructed by whatever force he's summoned it to protect against, but she's never actually had the chance to catch its details.
The dome is luminescent and almost corporeal in appearance, it's only grounding attribute the fact that it branches into the floor to completely seal his opponents in. A neon green hexagonal pattern, much harder than the dome's hazy surface, lines the inside of the haze with details of very fine size emblazoned along the borders of its lines, the only tangible thing about the magic. On such a large scale, it looks magnificent.
With the werewolves successfully captured, Rena lets her mirage fall. She looks around the positively massive glowing shell Carapace has an arm raised high to maintain to see how Ladybug and Chat Noir are faring.
Their battle with Alpha, not too far behind the pack, is intense, but it seems Ladybug's hunch about it being blind was right; Chat taunts the beast to the best of his ability, but it only ever responds to his voice, loud noises, or connecting attacks; it can't follow him in real time. She sees this giving Ladybug an advantage with the Lucky Charm, which, to no one's surprise, manifests as some wild object that is perfectly convenient and requires a complex plan for it to do its job.
She figures she ought to help them out, just to be safe.
"Can you hold them?" She asks Carapace first, running up to stand at his shoulder.
A disgruntled sound slips past his tightly pressed lips and all the muscles in his body, especially around the arms, swell, revealing the intricate contours of his form, before relaxing collectively and lessening the detail. "For now," he manages to grind out afterwards, "But I've never dealt with so much force at once. Y'all better hurry."
"Oh, I dunno," Rena purrs, the words coming out before she can stop them, gaze fixated on his muscles flexing and relaxing again under the stress, "I'm sure I could watch you do that all day,"
"Ah–" Carapace stalls, exasperated. He spares a second to glance at her in disbelief. "Rena," he growls.
She laughs. Even if unamused, his exasperation is still cute to her. "I got it, I got it!" she assures him, darting over to the final stretch of the fight with a wave of her hand.
With Ladybug and Chat Noir pulling the alpha's chain, using her guile to swipe the glasses off of the distracted dog is easy. Not exactly the plan Ladybug was scheming, but she owed it to Carapace to finish things quickly. Flipping forward onto the roof of a distant car, Rena quickly hands off the dual-colored accessory to Chat, who simply tears it in half.
The akuma flutters out, Ladybug catches it in her yo-yo, and the day is saved. In the distance, a thoroughly worked Carapace falls to his knees and breaths deeply to catch his breath as the wolves up the avenue shrink down in to regular human beings. Rena stalks over to check on him, worry set in the back of her mind; as far as she knows, none of them have ever pushed their powers like Carapace had. She hopes there aren't any drawbacks.
When she reaches him, he looks fine enough, but she has to ask. "You okay, handsome?"
"I'll be fine," Carapace sighs. He pushes himself up off of his hands and takes in another deep breath while still on his knees. A high pitched beep sounds, and he sluggishly raises his wrist to glance at it. "Fuck,"
Rena glances at her own wrist. "Damn,"
She only has a minute left. A quick glance behind her reveals Ladybug and Chat Noir bumping fists and checking their own miraculous jewels. Likely they aren't as short on time as her and Carapace, but they are bound to not take chances anyway. She calls out to them, "Gotta run!" before taking off.
She isn't worried about Ladybug being able to retrieve the miraculous, she knows where she lives. What she is a little worried about is whether she'll make it back home before her alternate persona times out. It would majorly suck to get caught de-transforming in public, or worse, de-transforming mid-bound between avenues. So she books it and doesn't look back.
Though in a rush, on her way home, she is still able to appreciate the absence of wrongness hovering over the city like it's wont to do whenever akumatizations happen, breathing in deep the aftermath of Ladybug's magical cure. Everything is calm and orderly again and the distant screams have stopped all at once.
It's rewarding. The resolution is what they fight for, why Alya likes being a hero. Yes, there are the cool abilities and the power that comes from being super, but helping people feel safe again is what being a hero is all about, and it's what she likes most about the miraculous-- that it gives her the power to help those in need, to keep them safe.
The moment Alya drops down onto her balcony, starting at her toes, her superhero guise whisks away. Trixx emerges in a dizzying spin as always, a clever grin on his face. Alya can't resist grinning back when she sees him.
"Hey, little guy! Good work out there,"
"Right back at ya," Trixx replies earnestly, with a sly chuckle trailing at the end, and he settles on her shoulder.
"So it looks like we've got a little more time than usual," Alya begins. Her eyes flicker up and around the area, trying to spy Ladybug but seeing her nowhere (a small part of her hopes Ladybug will forget to come visit her, but she knows that will never happen). She tips her head in the direction of her balcony door, gesturing to the space beyond it. "Wanna come in for a snack?"
Trixx is elated. His face lights up and he bears his teeth in a voracious grin that almost-- almost-- startles her. "Oh yeah! I'm starving," he hooks his fore paws on his toes and leans forward, into her view. "What have ya got?"
"We'll see," Alya murmurs as she pulls her door open as quietly as she can (and thanks the gods that her father has been procrastinating on getting an alarm system, she has no idea what she's going to do when he finally gets around to installing one). She puts a finger to her mouth even as a mischievous smirk curls on her lips and her eyes reflect Trixx's ever-present daring twinkle. "But you have to be quiet, okay?"
Trixx nods eagerly. So eagerly, Alya is nearly thrown by his response, "We'll see."
I have fun writing Trixx. I want to do more, but I'm afraid I'll do too much and get out of character (even though there's limited character to stay within the bounds of anyway). Hope you guys enjoyed this, I'll try to get the next chapter up sooner.
Also, I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but Chat Noir is like always unimpressed with Ladybug's lucky charms. I mean seriously, he has a catty remark for every one, watch the show again, you'll see.
