During season 5 at least.

Ladynoir July 2023

Day #11: Don't Let Go

If there was one thing Monarch was sure of; sadness was powerful.

It was one of the best emotions to exploit to turn people into akumas and get them to do his bedding in exchange for some manor of retribution. That, and anger.

Strong negative emotions like that could drive people to do things they might not ordinarily do. But it could also break them. Cripple them and take away their drive to fight.

Maybe sadness could cripple his enemies as well.

~*LB+CN*~

Dr. Anne-Jeanne Theoxanne du Bocquale loved Paleontology. But after cloning several T-rexes back to life and having them run wild, she decided to shift her focus of study to another interesting subject. Like Astronomy.

Her friends Max and Markov were telling her all about Max's mother's work as an astronaut so she thought she could use her brain to help there.

Weeks of study later, she thought there was something in black holes that could use more exploring. Sadly, the company declined her research, partly because they thought she was 'a bit too young' to have scientific breakthroughs yet.

Furious and determined to prove those stuffy older scientists wrong, an akuma flew into her left work glove.

She was more then willing to help Monarch with a very special experiment.

~*LB+CN*~

When Ladybug and Chat Noir arrived on the scene, they didn't want to believe that it was possible. The akuma; Subspace, was opening and closing black holes with her left hand, sucking up anything. She also carried a gun that blasted a pink polymer goo that stuck people to the ground, preventing them from being sucked up. Everything else; cars, chairs, tables, trees, hats, bags, benches, and even parts of buildings got sucked up. After some damage was done, she closed it and moved on to another part of Paris.

The duo were at least relieved to see that she didn't intend to suck up any people. Where everything else went, they weren't sure. And maybe they didn't want to know.

But Ladybug was sure that, no matter where it all went, it would come back after her miraculous cure.

As they fought Subspace, Ladybug found an oven mit, which was perfect for covering Subspace's left hand so she couldn't open any more black holes.

She and Chat were able to dodge her goo blasts from her gun with ease. Chat cataclysmed it, thinking that it was where the akuma was, but no butterfly flew out.

In their distraction, Subspace was able to remove the mit and open another black hole.

The great, dark, terrifying portal to God-knows-where opened in the middle of the road, sucking in everything with the force a million vacuum cleaners.

Subspace didn't have to worry. Even if her gun was gone, the bottoms of her boots were made of a similar polymer so she could stay stuck to the ground. But she could turn the affects off and on again so she could move normally afterwards.

Stuck safely to her spot on the sidewalk, she watched as Ladybug lassoed her yoyo to a lamp post to stop herself from being sucked in. Chat Noir was holding onto the same lamp post, holding on for dear life.

Ladybug held onto her yoyo string. She only had a few feet of length between her hand and the lamp post. The force from the black hole was so strong, she was stuck flying in the air.

She wasn't worried about her yoyo string snapping. But, even with her super strength, she doubted she could hold herself back against such a powerful force for too long. And then there was the lamp post. Every couple of seconds, it jerked forward a bit, bending at the pressure, being slowly yanked from the ground.

Chat wanted to do something but he wasn't sure he could if he couldn't move. If he loosened his grip even slightly, he feared the black hole's force pulling him in.

Maybe he could at least pull Ladybug up closer to him so she wasn't dangling in the air, holding on by just her arm.

Sadly, as soon as he removed one arm to reach down to her, he lost his grip.

"Chat!" Ladybug yelled. Before her partner could be pulled away any further, Ladybug grabbed onto his wrist. "Hold on!"

There, the two dangled in midair. They both locked their hands around the other's wrists. Chat was terrified. Now Ladybug had to support both their weights with just her one arm against the pull of a black hole.

The lamp post bent again, jerking they a bit closer to the vortex.

"It's not gonna hold!" Chat yelled to her. The sound of the air whooshing passed their ears made everything else hard to hear.

"Yes, it will!" she tried to reassure him, despite that she didn't know it for sure.

Once again, Chat could feel his grip loosening.

"I-I'm slipping," he said fearfully.

"Don't let go!" she yelled to him. More like begged.

They could do this. As long as he didn't leave her, they could figure this out together.

"I-" Chat started to say but the next second, his hand slipped out of his lady's.

"CHAT!" Ladybug screamed as she watched her beloved partner fly into the void.

Gone.

Tear fell from her eyes but they were sucked right off her cheeks and went in after him.

Moments later, Subspace closed the black hole.

Everything that had been about to fly into the hole automatically stopped and natural gravity allowed it all to fall, including Ladybug.

She fell onto the ground, her yoyo still around the busted lamp post. There she knelt, her head down, her eyes wide with more tears coming out.

Chat was gone. Sucked into a black hole.

One thought raced though her mind; was he gone for good?

Subspace smirked as she deactivated her boots so she could walk over to the fallen hero.

Just as Monarch had hypothesized, Ladybug appeared to be in utter sorrow upon loosing her partner. This in itself was a fascinating experiment as well.

Confident but still cautious, Subspace walked over to the still motionless hero. Maybe she was so stricken with grief, she wouldn't even notice her earrings being removed.

Unfortunately for her and Monarch, Ladybug did recognize the danger. She might be grieving, but she at least had enough wits to know when she was being approached by an enemy.

She might have just lost her partner. She wasn't about to lose her miraculous to Monarch.

Ladybug turned and struck Subspace, sending her flying across the street and crashing into a wall.

There she stood, breathing heavily with tears streaming down her face.

She didn't know how she could defeat her. Her heart hurt and she couldn't think straight.

She needed a minute.

Before the akuma could regain her footing, Ladybug recalled her yoyo and swung off.

~*LB+CN*~

Finally a reasonably safe distance away, and because her eyes were stinging too much for her to see where she was going by then, Ladybug stopped in an empty alleyway.

Landing on her feet, the bluenette hero leaned her back against the hard brick wall then slid down to sit. She brought her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around herself, buried her face in them, and cried horrible gasping sobs.

Chat Noir. Her goofy, annoyingly charming partner, who she had just started to fall for, was gone.

She didn't know where exactly black holes went—science hadn't proven that for sure yet—but it was most likely not some place one could return from.

Maybe she could bring him back using her miraculous cure. But what if nothing living could survive where he and everything else went? Would she just be bringing back a corpse? Could her cure bring people back to life?

The thought of seeing her kitty's dead body brought a new wave of sobs out of her.

Her miraculous cure was her best bet. But how was she supposed to defeat her alone?

Without any of her other allies or her kitty?

She was alone. For real this time. She was all alone.

"Milady?"

Ladybug's head snapped up upon hearing that voice. That unmistakable, beautiful voice.

When her head came up, the first thing she saw was a pair of black boots with metal toes. Her widened eyes trailed further up to see legs, a muscular torso, then a head of wild blonde hair with feline green eyes.

"C-Chat?" she stuttered, wiping her eyes and springing to her feet.

"Are you alright?" he asked, concernedly reaching a hand out to her.

"No!" she screamed, taking a fighting stance and drawing her yoyo out to defend herself. She saw him disappear in the black hole. He couldn't just be back. She didn't even use her miraculous cure or anything. "You-you're an illusion! Monarch can give the power of illusion to akumas!"

"I'm not an illusion. See?" Chat gently reached forward and grasped her hand closest to him. Ladybug looked down at her hand encased in both of his. She felt them. They were real. "I'm real, bugaboo. It's really me," he told her tenderly.

Ladybug's yoyo clattered to the ground before the heroine launched herself forward, wrapping her arms around her partner.

She could hug him. Definitely real.

Fresh tears came out of her eyes.

After a minute, she pulled away to look at him. "But…how?" she asked.

"Well, first off, that wasn't an actual black hole," Chat stated. "That thing dumped me into the stadium, surrounded by all the other stuff that got sucked in. Monarch must have given her the power of teleportation to make portals, then also illusion to make them look like black holes. I also think she casted an illusion over the stadium roof so no one could see everything that was pilling up in there every time she opened a portal," he explained. After he had gotten outside, he had looked down into the stadium from the edge of the roof and it looked like the rain roof was open and the place and empty. "Anyways, after I got out of there, I started making my way back to you, but then I saw you were on the move so I followed you here." By the time he was finished, Chat was puzzled by how quiet his partner was. Her arms were wrapped around herself and her head was tilted downward. "Milady?" he asked.

When Ladybug raised her head up, there were two little rivers of tears flowing down her cheeks.

Before he could offer her any more reassurances, she spang at him again.

"I-I-I thought y-you were gone!" she sobbed, lightly punching his chest. "Damn you, you stupid cat!"

Chat knew she didn't actually blame him for anything and didn't mean what she said. She was just upset. He wrapped his arms around her, letting her bury her face in his chest and cry.

"I'm sorry, milady. I tried to hold on," he said, rubbing circles around her back.

He tried not to let go of her hand but the force was too strong. And he was also fairly certain that Subspace wasn't going to close it until at least one of them fell in.

Maybe that was the point of her akumatization. Make one of them think the other was gone for good so they'd be too sad to go on fighting.

"I-I didn't mean to let go," Ladybug apologized.

"It wasn't you're fault," Chat reassured her. He then pulled away just enough to look at her but still kept her close. "I'm sorry for scaring you like that," he apologized, wiping away a tear from her cheek. Ladybug sobbed again before burying her face in his chest. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere. Ever," Chat promised.

He kissed the top of her head and continued to hold her close.

He was never gonna let go of her again.

Next one tomorrow ;D