Ephemeral Aftermath
What if Chat Noir gave serious thought to what happened at the Eiffel Tower when time went crazy? Spoilers for "Ephemeral".
Chapter 1: Luka on the Line
Chat Noir saw Ladybug on the top of the Eiffel Tower. He vaulted and landed on the railing near her, expecting to be chewed out for missing a major fight and not returning her calls.
"...rewind on my signal," Ladybug was saying, seemingly to herself.
(She was speaking softly, but his sharp cat ears picked it up.)
"I'm sorry, but I really couldn't make it—" said Chat.
Suddenly, lights were flashing all over the city.
Cars were honking and traffic was in a mess. The hands on a clock tower were spinning around.
"What on earth is happening?" asked Ladybug.
Chat spotted a dinosaur flashing in and out of existence on the street below. A zepplin flashed in the sky above them.
"It's like history's all jumbled up!" said Ladybug.
A woman in armor with a spotted tunic appeared on the platform with them. She turned around.
"Hark, what are those voices I hear?" said the woman in archaic but understandable French. "Bertrand? Gilles? What sorcery is this?"
She charged, raising her sword, but then she vanished before she could strike them.
"Time has gone crazy! Or maybe I have..." said Chat.
"I have a bad feeling about this," said Ladybug, touching her left ear. "Viperion! Viperion, can you hear me?"
She waited a moment, but there was no answer.
"Follow me!" said Ladybug, leaping from the tower and using her yo-yo to swing down.
Chat followed – they went straight to a sewer manhole and climbed down the ladder.
Viperion was there, with his back turned and a finger to his ear. "Ladybug, can you hear me?"
"Viperion! I've gotta talk to Sass!" said Ladybug, running up to him.
Viperion raised his hands and said, "Scales rest."
Sass floated away from Luka. "I'm so sorry, Ladybug, I had no choice!"
"What happened?" asked Ladybug.
"I'm not really sure. I just saw a photo of a lucky charm, a watch showing 1 AM," said Sass.
"Do you understand any of this?" asked Chat.
"When kwamis use their power without a holder, it always has magical and disastrous consequences. And Sass's power is to turn back time!" said Ladybug.
"So time has gotten all mixed up!" said Chat.
"Stay here, Luka!" said Ladybug.
When Ladybug and Chat Noir came back out of the manhole, there was chaos everywhere.
Captain Hardrock's ship was flying in the sky.
"Liberty, next stop: City Hall!" yelled the pirate.
Gorizilla was climbing Montparnasse Tower with helicopters buzzing around him. Gamer was running his giant mecha through the streets.
"Woah, I'm getting major déjà vu right now!" said Ladybug.
"It's time to have a genius idea, M'lady!" said Chat.
"Lucky Charm!" called Ladybug, receiving a spotted scale weight.
"Do you think this will be enough to tip the balance of time?" asked Chat.
"Oh, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures! This organization coordinates the hours of the whole world with its satellite! It's right near Paris!"
"Which means the satellite is just above our heads! We fix it, we fix all the connected devices that depend on time to function! How are we going to know the exact time to program into the satellite?"
Ladybug showed him a stopwatch counting down on her yo-yo.
"Thanks to this countdown, I still have a way to know what time it is for real. When it gets to the end, that'll mean that it's exactly 1:05 am. That's what we'll program into the satellite. Time to suit up!"
"Mmm. But, what's the plan with all the apparitions?"
"Leave them to my magical ladybugs."
Chat got out a piece of astro-cheese and ate it. It tasted awful.
"Power up!" he called, transforming into Astro Cat.
"Let's sync up our stopwatches," said Ladybug.
"Now I have exactly the same countdown as you," said Astro Cat.
Ladybug ate a magical macaron.
"Power up! Ready, Astro Cat?"
"Ready, Cosmobug?"
"Okay, take off!"
They flew up into space and located the malfunctioning satellite. They reset the time. That one action, suggested by the Lucky Charm, would count as acting against the "villain." Sass was already defeated, since he was on their side. The conditions for the cure were met.
"Miraculous Ladybug!"
A burst of magical ladybugs headed down to Earth, where they would rid of all the time anomalies and incidental damage.
"Pound it!"
As they flew back down, Chat Noir sang the opening notes of a musical piece that he remembered from an old science-fiction movie. "Meow, meow, meow... MEOW-MEOW!"
"That's a pretty tune, what is it?"
"A classical piece. 'Thus spoke Catathustra'. By the way, what did you wanna talk about earlier, up on the Eiffel Tower?"
"Oh, nothing important. Forget about it," said Ladybug.
"Hmm," said Chat Noir, only letting a small frown show. "Gotta blast!"
Chat took off fast for home. He was sure Ladybug was lying, but she had used her Lucky Charm and there was no time to talk it out. He needed time to think.
At home, Adrien got out a piece of paper for notes. At the top, he wrote, "Why did Ladybug lie?"
He wrote, "She doesn't trust me."
He listed:
1) Let Rena Rouge and Carapace know each other's identities, but kept me in the dark.
2) Let Scarabella use her Miraculous and know her identity, and left town without telling me.
3) Called in all the temporary heroes today when she couldn't reach me.
4) Had Viperion hidden with a communicator, ready for a reset right before talking to me.
He wrote, "Conclusion: she was going to tell me something that might make me react badly, and wanted to be prepared in case I did. Maybe she wanted the ring back, and only changed her mind because time went wrong. She'll need a while to sort that out."
Adrien muttered aloud, "I'm honestly tired of her hiding everything from me. I'm sick of this mistrust."