To GuenZhenXuan2020: Exactly! Reinterpreting the Hare Miraculous will change what Bunnyx can do when Alix actually receives the Miraculous, making her less of a "time cop," but this eliminates a lot of inconsistencies.
To The Keeper of Worlds: Yeah… it's gotten pretty hardcore suddenly! The next couple chapters take a bit of a breath before everything hits the fan…
To Speckleflower: I'm not sure if the "Reflectdoll" episode answered that question; there are some pictures of Mister Bug online, but none showing where he put the miraculous. It's a kid's show, so I assume they can be used as clip-ons or something, but… Cat Bug Noir's too mad with grief to be bothered by that!
Marinette snuck a glance at Adrien. They had followed Old Chloe into the back room of the coffee shop, where she pulled the Hare and Snake Miraculous from a hidden pouch on the shoulder harness she wore under her suit coat. Adrien was still staring at Old Chloe in confusion, still struggling like Marinette to come to terms with the bombshell revelations this Chloe had thrown at them.
Chloe sat down and placed the Snake Miraculous bracelet on her wrist. "We've had the Box of the Miraculous for a while, but was only last month that Max figured out the precise combination of miraculous necessary to make this work. The Hare Miraculous opens a portal through time and dimensions, but the Snake Miraculous is the most important of all: it freezes your dimension in time for the duration of your mission," she explained.
"Wait, what–?"
Before Marinette could finish the question, Chloe grabbed Adrien and Marinette by the hand as the three of them were sucked downward through the portal that opened beneath their feet.
Marinette shut her eyes against the brightness of the portal. As she dropped through the floor, Marinette instinctively reached out for anything solid she could hold onto. Her free hand found a shirt, and pulled herself close to it. An arm wrapped itself around her, and she buried her face in the shirt, taking in the familiar scent: Adrien. Marinette put her arm around him, and she felt him squeeze her reassuringly.
Marinette sighed just before the portal dropped them to the ground. She let go of Chloe's hand, but hesitated to let go of Adrien; he felt familiar, comforting. She opened her eyes to look around. They were standing on a floor of broken tiles, piles of debris scattered everywhere she could see. The overhead light flickered, casting uneven shadows across the large open space. Expanding her view, Marinette saw sleeping bags clustered together in little groups. Against one wall a few crates were pushed together to form a makeshift table, with camp stoves set on one side of it. A little further along the wall she found a group of ratty-looking chairs grouped together in a circle. Her eyes followed the colored lines dividing the room and found them ending at a platform edge.
She didn't have time to comment on their location, however; motion on the far end of the repurposed metro station drew their attention. Marinette felt Adrien tense as he released his hold on her and stepped forward, putting himself between her and the newcomers. He immediately relaxed, and looking around him Marinette recognized Max and Sabrina walking toward them, followed by a crowd of other people.
Chloe walked toward the approaching crowd, nodding to Max as she did so. "Any trouble while I was gone?" she asked sharply, pulling the Horse Miraculous from her pouch and passing it to Max.
Max shook his head. "Cat Bug's troops stayed up above, and we stayed down here. A couple stopped on the steps, but the lookout spotted them coming, and they didn't find us."
"Good," Chloe acknowledged. She looked around through the crowd. "But where is–?"
"Ana?" Max asked. "Went up top on lookout duty."
"I told you I didn't want her leaving headquarters!"
"She's 14, Chlo," Max replied, putting a hand on her shoulder. "We weren't much older when we received our miraculous. You can't protect her forever. This is as much her fight as ours. Maybe even more."
"I know. I just – I wanted to keep her safe a little longer."
Max nodded to one of the others standing behind him, who immediately jogged over to the exit stairs and whistled. Marinette heard a faint answering whistle from above, at which point the man ran up the stairs two at a time. A minute later, a girl descended the stairs and walked over to their group.
The girl – Ana – looked to be only a couple years younger than Marinette herself, but already the same height as her. Her long reddish brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She had brown eyes and a dark complexion. She wore combat pants and a brown T-shirt; a glance at the rest of the crowd showed that everyone was dressed similarly. For jewelry Ana wore a simple pair of earrings and an old charm bracelet that looked handmade.
"This is your daughter?" Adrien asked as Ana approached them.
"Yes, she is," Chloe replied proudly, pulling her girl in for a tight hug and kissing her on the forehead.
"Who's her father?" Marinette asked.
"Nino." Chloe laughed gently at the confusion on both their faces. "I never said I gave birth to her. She was orphaned at 2 years old, when I saved her and adopted her."
"What about godparents?" Marinette asked, her heart pounding in her chest on looking at the girl who could almost have been Alya's twin.
"We were at my godmother's funeral," Ana said, giving Marinette an assessing look before turning to glare at Adrien, "when my godfather murdered my parents."
Ana turned around and stormed off toward the stairs. Chloe made a move to follow her, but Max put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. Sabrina transformed and released an Akuma toward Ana's receding form. The Akuma merged into her charm bracelet and she gave a resigned nod before vanishing from view in a puff of violet smoke.
On an impulse, Marinette squeezed Adrien's hand and ran toward where Ana had disappeared. "Ana! Where are you? Wait up!" she called when she reached the spot. She looked around in confusion before feeling a hand grab her shoulder. She looked behind her and saw Ana. "What–?"
"Aunt Sabrina," Ana explained, taking Marinette's hand and leading the way up the stairs. "We can't be sure where Cat Bug Noir's spies are or when his shock troopers might show up, so Aunt Sabrina gives us invisibility when we go up past the lookout post." She raised their joined hands. "We can also extend that invisibility to others by contact. This way, no one can see us or hear us. Aunt Sabrina can still keep track of us telepathically, though." She was quiet for a moment. Marinette looked over to see that her eyes had lost focus. The moment passed, and Ana turned back to her and continued, "Aunt Sabrina says she won't listen to our conversation, but to let her know if we get in trouble."
Marinette smiled. "Your mother could do something similar with Mirage," she said in answer to Ana's questioning look. "She created a Mirage of nothing around us so that we could go to Master Fu's dojo without being seen. But she said the first time she used it she thought her opponent could hear her. This… this is very clever. I'll have to tell our Sabrina about it… when I get home."
The two of them walked side by side up the stairs, past a lookout crouching behind a sheet of metal. From the front, Marinette could see that the lookout post was disguised as a loose pile of debris that had fallen when the ceiling caved in.
"What happened here?" Marinette asked as they climbed the steps, past partially-decomposed trash strewn over piles of loose stones.
"There was an earthquake," Ana told her, leading her through a virtually-undetectable pathway between the debris. "It was at… your… funeral. When Taureau Dechaine's body landed, or so my Mom tells me, it shook the ground in this part of Paris, and then the Cataclysm that – that he used – that merged in with the ground shake and caused a quake. The metro lines were cut off, so people stopped coming down here. Everything changed that day, so the trash and refuse here is all I've ever known.
"I don't really remember much from that day." Ana kicked a loose pebble to one side, studiously avoiding looking at Marinette. "I was only 2 at the time. One minute I was holding my mother's hand and crying, and the next minute Mom was picking me up and holding me to her chest so I couldn't see anything, covering my ears to muffle the screams."
"Were you close with – with them?" Marinette asked, studying the girl's face.
"Mom tells me that I always begged to go over to their house when we were in Paris," Ana answered. "She says that the few times all five of you were together, I would light up when he held me, and he would have the biggest smile on his face.
"I don't remember any of it. All I've seen of him in the last 12 years are the billboards and posters of his face. The reminders of everything we lost."
"Billboards?"
"Take a look."
Marinette looked around as they reached ground level and gasped as she saw what surrounded them. She recognized where they were immediately: they were only a block away from the Seine, looking over what had once been a park. However, the river itself was flowing sluggishly, clogged up as it was with debris. To the left, Marinette could see where a bridge had fallen into the river; that accounted for some of its stagnation. Logs from a dozen trees had caught on the fallen blocks from the bridge, creating a makeshift dam. Closer to them, the park had become overgrown with weeds. The bushes were unkempt. The grass looked as though it had not been cut in the 12 years since her counterpart's death. A large tree had fallen over onto the playground equipment in the middle of the park, crushing a jungle gym underneath.
Marinette's jaw dropped open as she stepped forward. Her feet crunched on broken glass and discarded soda cans. Ana followed her, a grim set to her jaw. The park was surrounded by old brick buildings, all of which were in a state of disrepair. One of the buildings had a gaping hole in its side, about two floors above the ground. Marinette walked closer to the river, dragging Ana behind her, to look into the building through the hole. When they were closer to the river, standing in front of a deep indentation in the ground, Marinette looked back and saw that the hole went straight through the building; through it she could just make out a pillar that looked like the remains of the Arc du Triomphe. To either side of the hole were pictures of an older man Marinette still recognized as Adrien, his face covered by a black mask with red polka-dots, staring down at them with a scowl under a caption reading "Cat Bug Noir Sees All."
Opposite those posters Marinette saw another poster, this one depicting a line of soldiers dressed all in black with red polka-dotted armbands. This one bore the caption "Cat Bug Noir Maintains Order."
Marinette's mouth felt dry. She couldn't bring herself to look away. "I-I don't believe it," she whispered.
"Believe it," Ana told her harshly. "This is what happened to my world, to my family."
Marinette looked at Ana, tears in her eyes. "Adrien wasn't always like this," she said, putting her free hand on Ana's shoulder. "The Adrien I know is sweet and kind and gentle. He is selfless and noble. The Adrien I know – the Adrien who came here with me – would never do something like this."
"I know." Ana let out a bark of laughter. "Believe me, I know all about how Cat Bug Noir used to be. That was one of Mom's favorite subjects growing up: poor, sweet Adrien, the son of a sociopath who grew up to become a mass murdering psychopath." She turned away to stare at a bush. "She told me all about Adrien, but she never said anything about the rest of you, at least not before you were 16.
"I don't know anything about my parents when they were my age."
Marinette let out a breath and led Ana over to a bench. "Chloe wasn't really friends with me or your parents before we were all 16," she explained as they sat side-by-side. "She was actually more of a bully in those days: always mean to me, putting me down. But she idolized Ladybug." Marinette smiled as she gazed out over the bracken Seine. "Imagine her shock to find out – just a couple months ago for me – that poor, klutzy Marinette Dupain-Cheng, the girl she mocked and teased mercilessly, was actually her idol, Ladybug!"
"How did you and my parents get to be friends?" Ana asked eagerly. "What were they like growing up? Were they always planning on getting married and having a family? How many siblings did they want me to have?"
"Slow down, girl!" Marinette said, smiling and holding her free hand out. "I can't answer all your questions at once. But as for how we met…"