Ok, this story was supposed to be a oneshot, but someone suggested I include another perspective, so here it is. Enjoy~
Alya's day started quite normally. It was the sort of slow, lazy day where you expected nothing to happen.
And then the chaos began.
At first, Alya was thrilled when the akuma alert went off. She whipped out her phone excitedly. Turned out the day wasn't going to be so boring after all!
The Ladyblog had been slow for ages, and she was dying for some action. She ran out of the classroom with her phone camera already pulled up.
The string of a yo-yo zipped past overhead, immediately followed by the one and only superheroine of Paris, Ladybug, swinging towards the newest akuma.
Alya quickly gave chase, grinning like a madman.
When she finally arrived at the battle scene, she was panting and out of breath—who knew yo-yos moved so fast—but she was nevertheless still as eager as ever to get her exclusive footage for the latest fight.
Scanning the skies for Ladybug, she caught sight of today's villain instead.
Whoa, she thought. This is different.
Unlike past akuma victims, who seemed to favor colorful outfits and bright accessories, this one wore a mask of bone white, splatter-painted with blood red.
And instead of using weapons like bubbles or pigeons, this one sported an actual freakin' chainsaw roughly the size of a small tree.
Fascinated, she lifted her phone and started to record herself. "Hey, Paris! Alya here, on the scene with a horror movie-lookin' dude." She flipped the camera so that it showed the villain. "He looks like he stepped right out of an American horror film, amirite?
"Now, the only thing missing from this movie is our favorite superheroes, Ladybug and Chat Noir! I actually followed Ladybug to the scene, but I seem to have lost her. She's nowhere in sight. But don't you worry—with the villain right there—she's bound to show up soon. I'll keep you poste—"
A hand clamped over her mouth and she was dragged backwards.
"Mmmpphh!" she protested.
She was released a few steps back into a small hidden alley between two apartment buildings. She swiveled to see her idol, Ladybug.
"Ladybug!" she screeched, and another hand was clamped over her mouth. She turned to see the electric green eyes of Chat Noir.
"Shhh," he warned.
Alya nodded fervently, and Chat Noir dropped his hand.
"Alya," said Ladybug, turning Alya's attention back to her. Her blue gaze was unusually distant. "We need you to stay out of this fight, please. I know you're a reporter, and you're doing a great job on the Ladyblog, but Chat Noir and I just have a really bad feeling about this particular akuma."
Alya was shocked. "But I've always been on scene, filming—"
"And you've gotten in direct danger multiple times," Ladybug said.
"But it's always turned out fine!"
"Look," said Chat Noir. "We're asking for this just once. We need citizens to be safe, and we can't have you so close to the battle."
"Please, Alya," said Ladybug. "The villain today is strange. Different from the others. Chat Noir felt it, too. He's dangerous."
"But—" Alya started again. Then she saw their faces. Expressions of grim determination. They needed her to cooperate, she knew. She also noticed the absence of puns from Chat Noir. That alone was enough to give her chills. Perhaps this was more serious than she'd thought.
"Alright," she agreed at last. And so she let them take her back to her house. She let them lock her in her room along with her three siblings. She let them barricade her windows.
She opened up her laptop and turned on the news. Ladybug had asked the TV station to spread her request of citizens going into lockdown. Alya wondered why the superheroes had asked her personally, then realized she'd been ignoring the safety rules for so long that they probably knew she already considered herself the exception.
For the next few hours, she sat curled up on the floor, rocking back and forth, waiting for news. Her older sister Nora paced around the room silently. The twins had fallen asleep on her bed. She tried to call Marinette, but her friend wasn't answering.
Every now and then she would hear an explosion or loud chainsaw noises from outside.
She hated it. She hated not knowing what was happening. She hated being in the dark. She was a reporter, for goodness's sake. Reporters don't hide in the shadows waiting for news. They're the ones who give the news. But Ladybug and Chat Noir had asked specifically for her to stay safe inside. She couldn't disobey them, no matter who she was.
Suddenly, an especially loud explosion sounded from outside. It was followed by a scream. The scream, oh god, that scream—it sent shivers down her spine, sent her stomach clenching.
It was full of desperation, shock, and rage. It embodied only the despair and fury of one who just saw a loved one hurt.
Alya leapt to her feet and ran to the window. It was boarded up with wood—courtesy of her dad—but there was a tiny sliver between two boards.
"What is it?" her sister Nora whispered.
Alya squinted through the sliver, shifted her angle, then tried to pry the boards off with her fingers, but to no avail.
"I can't see," said Alya, shaking her head.
Nora tried to peel off the boards too, but even with her considerable strength, the boards didn't budge.
The fighting sounded more violent now. The twins stirred in discomfort, mumbling in their sleep. Nora quickly went to soothe them back into slumber. Alya stayed by the window.
About an hour later, her parents opened the door.
"Is it over?" she asked immediately.
Her mom nodded. "It's gone quiet. There are people out already, so it must be safe. But I heard... I heard the superheroes are nowhere to be found..."
In a split second, Alya had grabbed her phone and dashed out the door.
"Alya!" she heard her dad call after her.
She ignored it. She knew it probably wasn't safe enough outside yet, but she just had to know what was happening.
She scrambled around town, taking in the crumbled buildings and the frightened wails coming from the windows.
The sky was a dull gray, a seeming fit for the mood. Alya walked all over the city, looking for any clues that would show her what happened during the fight, and why the superheroes had disappeared without using the Miraculous Cure to restore the city.
At one point she saw a group of paramedics crowding around someone. Though unconscious, their hand was still clamped around the handle of a saw—a regular one, not a chainsaw. She assumed it was the akuma victim. She kept going.
She studied the trunk of a chopped tree. The top of the stump was smooth, the neat cut of a chainsaw. She was about to leave when she glimpsed a light splatter of red liquid against the wood. It couldn't be...? No, never before had there ever been blood in an akuma fight.
Looking around, she saw another thin spray of red a little off to the side, and then another. She realized it was a trail. Maybe one of the superheroes had gotten cut. She worried a bit, but was more focused on the fact that she could now find them!
Alya began to follow the trail. Sometimes it circled backwards, sometimes it skipped a few yards before appearing again. As she went on, the blood seemed to thicken, more of a spill than a splatter.
At last she saw a yo-yo dangling over the edge of a roof. She quickly ran into the empty, deserted building and climbed the stairs the entire way up, since the elevator was blocked with rubble.
She stumbled out of the roof door, looking around desperately. The first thing she noticed was the blood. Why was there was so much blood? And then she noticed the two bodies laying side by side.
She stifled a scream and rushed over. Lying lifeless on the roof were Ladybug and Chat Noir, their hands still linked.
"No!" she choked. She dropped down onto her knees beside their corpses, not even noticing their blood soaking her jeans. She only saw their faces, their brutalized and bloody faces, still tilted towards each other even in death.
This time she couldn't keep down the scream.
The superheroes of Paris were gone.
Thanks for reading and please leave a review! This story went a lot differently than I'd expected, but I'm okay with that. And thank you, Rose7Mellark, for suggesting that I add to this story.