Akumatizations don't typically happen in the middle of the night, let alone at 1:25 in the morning when Alya just so happens to briefly come out of a peaceful sleep. She fully intends to return to sleep regardless of recent news, too, but the sound of tires screeching on asphalt and the outrageous sensation of flickering street lights over her eyelids convince her that the fates must hath willed it; Alya gets out of bed, throws on a hoodie and some jeans, and grabs her phone before creeping out of her bedroom.
She uses the fire escape near the balcony to get down to street level. Because it's night time, it's harder to make heads or tails of anything, even with the (albeit dying) powerful streetlights, so the way into the fray is slower and more methodical than she would normally prefer. Once she's touched down on the street, Alya starts to come awake as excitement lights up her nerves, and then fear joins the excitement, pumping more adrenaline through her system than is perhaps necessary.
She squints through the darkness with furrowed eyebrows to try and find the cause for all the chaos. She sees plenty of crashed, abandoned, and bent out of shape cars all along the avenue, as well as warped street lamps, potholes, and ominous humanoid shadows running like mad. Some of the aforementioned things are even on fire, and it's just about the wildest thing Alya has ever seen. She'd think she was dreaming if she couldn't feel and smell so clearly. Especially when she watches what looks like some sort of cheesy sci-fi spacecraft fly through the air over a nearby building, spinning on its axis and every bit the threatening, alien presence that this environment was missing. In the same moment that it appears, someone Alya can't see screams and it's so loud they have to be right next to her. Alya nearly jumps out of her skin. On edge now, she ducks behind a metro totalled against a lamppost and pulls her hood over head, then waits until she feels relatively alone to turn on her phone and start recording.
Just as her camera light beams on to capture the scene, the UFO swivels in a wide arc and heads back toward her street. There's sounds of people shouting in the background, probably the authorities trying to organize everyone on the avenue, and the flickering streetlights aren't helping her get a visual on the distant spacecraft. Alya growls in frustration, feeling like a live wire with no outlet. She wants to pursue, but even she understands the greater danger of doing so at night versus during the day is not worth it-- and most certainly not in this atmosphere. So she waits.
A majority of the video, at this point, is just a capture video of the havock wreaked on her street presumably after the ship had come through before she'd gotten up. Now, the unidentified ship swoops over the apartment buildings again with a comical whoosh, some invisible force it radiates shaking the ground, and Alya stares wide-eyed at her screen as she sees a blazing white bulb of light materialize at the ship's front lip. Quicker than she really has time to process, whoever is in the ship (sounds like an almost middle-aged dude with some insecurities) broadcasts a complaint into the night, whips the ship around to pass over the street again, and then that bulb of light at the head of the craft transforms into a blazing line that shoots out too fast for the human eye to see. Before Alya knows it, the asphalt a few meters ahead of her erupts into red, then orange, melted bits that rise high into the air before sinking into the ground. The space lazer razes the entire street this way, turning it all to lava. Any vehicles that are too close immediately explode into nothing.
"The Grigar Empire will be forever!" declares the alien invader, and Alya is certain this is the akumatized victim.
Ominous declaration aside, the heat is sweltering. Alya's hands manage to remain steady as her screen erupts in white-orange light from too much exposure from the lazer, but she has to squint severely to see anything beyond the smashed hood of the metro. All this light is insufferable! She needs a better vantage point.
Alya pauses the video. Then, skillfully, she ambles over to the other side of the metro in a crouch. She scans the area for a suitable place to film, one that's darker but also not a straight-up hazard. The search is not very fruitful.
Well, looks like she's going to have to take a few more risks this evening-- morning? Whatever, it's an ungodly hour either way.
The heat only gets worse, so Alya slips her hoodie off and ties it around her waist, leaving her in a loose-fitting tank top. A cursory glance at the skies reveals the absence of the UFO, but Alya doesn't think it'll be for long; it's obvious the victim is targeting this area, maybe even her very avenue, and she's pretty sure she'd heard something like, "You can't cancel the Empire, Beauchamp!" from the spaceship. Looks like the akumatized person is out to get someone in particular, which definitely means persistence. No doubt the heroes have already gotten this person to safety, but depending on where safety is, she may still be in harm's way.
With this in mind, Alya doesn't waste time beginning her charge across the street. She's aiming for the fire escape stairwell tucked into an alleyway on the other side. There's a large detour to avoid the cooling-but-still-intensely-hot molten asphalt, and by the time she's ready to finally make her way over, she passes by an older model Audi that explodes out of nowhere.
The world is silent but for a piercing ringing in her head. Alya feels hot, and her right side in particular feels like it's nearly been seared. Everything tumbles roughly, she's confined, she can't see anything. Everything hurts.
When the tumbling stops, her first reaction is to blink owlishly and try to search around for her phone or something familiar. The latter isn't really achieved, her arms are pinned to her chest by something. She can feel herself breathing heavily, afraid, but mostly exhilarated beyond her own understanding. Even though she should be freaking out, wondering if she's deaf or blind or dead, Alya feels safe. She just needs a moment to slow down and figure out what the fuck had happened.
". . . you okay?"
Suddenly, the turbulent world snaps into focus. She's not seeing black anymore, she's seeing. . . green. A lot of green. Green shapes, green body. What? Alya slowly relaxes her muscles to try to uncurl herself.
"Hey," the voice repeats, it's a guy's voice. It sounds soft despite the rough tenor to it, the obvious urgency. "Talk to me."
Alya lifts her head. She looks up into a face she can't recognize sporting goggles and a green hood. Her eyebrows furrow as more of her senses return. This guy still has her held to his chest protectively, his back to the solid ground. His sandy eyes look really concerned. Had he saved her?
"I'm. . . I'm fine," she answers, and though her skin hurts and her muscles are upset, she really is okay. The mysterious guy drops his head with a relieved sigh, and then he lets her go. Alya lifts herself off of him and then offers to help him up. Her back and neck protest to supporting his weight, but it's nothing she can't ignore.
"Thanks for saving me." she grinds out.
"Not a problem," he smiles, "it's my job."
He stands tall and proud with his fists on his hips, seeming more alright than her despite taking the full brunt of the explosion and the subsequent tumble, and Alya's mind immediately begins whirring. She gets a good look at him. Skintight green outfit, shield-like item on his forearm, costume-y detail, the pose. Not to mention he's completely unharmed after all that. Alya's blood pressure jumps as she does, literally, excitement building up rapidly inside her.
"Are you a superhero?" she asks, eyes bright and wide.
The hero's smile falters, just a little. "That I am." he confirms.
Alya stifles a squeal by biting her lip. She moves to whip out her phone to record this, only to find it's not in her pocket anymore. She pivots around hastily to search for it and asks more questions all the while, unable to contain them. "I've never seen you before, are you new? Am I the first one to ask!? You must be here to fight the akuma, do you know Ladybug and Chat Noir? Are they here now?"
Her questions are avoided with another. "Looking for this?"
Alya halts her search to look over at the green hero (ha, 'green', good one). His hand is held out to her and in it is her nice new phone-- or rather, her used-to-be-nice new phone. Alya's heart sinks when she sees it. Her parents had paid well for it, and she'd gotten it not even a month ago. Hopeful, she turns it on anyway. Thankfully, it seems the worst of the damage is a cracked screen which she may be able to persuade her parents to replace--
"Get down!"
The new hero puts his forearm with the shield behind her shoulders and pushes her down into a crouch as rubble from the roof of a nearby building comes tumbling down on them. He swiftly raises the large, circular shield above their heads and takes the brunt of this destruction as well. Alya suddenly feels like a burden, though the feeling pales in comparison to how psyched she is that she'd started filming on time. This is going to make excellent footage for the blog, especially since she's fairly certain that she's the first person to get this kind of coverage in the middle of this nightmare of an akumatization.
Once the moment has passed, the hero drops his shield unceremoniously. He seems fatigued now, probably because he'd supported a literal ton of material without using some sort of power up, and Alya takes the chance to ask him why not, camera trained on his stoic face.
"Why didn't you use a special ability just now? Do you have one?"
"I do," says the hero, "but if I use my special power now I'll only have five minutes left to help out, and something tells me this akuma is going to take a little longer than that to beat."
He stands up tall again, in the end still seeming as if nothing had happened, and helps her up this time. Unlike the first time they'd gotten up, he promptly takes ahold of Alya's arm, just above the elbow, and leads her out of harm's way-- for the most part, anyway, the entire avenue is a war zone. The hairs on the back of Alya's neck stand on end as the two of them duck behind an alleyway corner; she senses a heavy presence in the air uncannily similar to the feeling of the spacecraft hovering close. But when she looks up at the sky for it, there's nothing there.
"It's invisible," says the hero from beside her, his own eyes trained on the tops of the buildings. He must have noticed her looking. Alya peers over his shoulder curiously to gaze down the avenue.
"Really?"
"Yeah. Sci-fi stuff," he shrugs, "Defying the laws of reality."
"Mad cool."
"It's a fuckin' headache." he grumbles.
"Whoa, superhero," Alya smirks, "isn't language supposed to be child friendly?"
Said hero glances at Alya a bit apprehensively, seemingly haven forgotten that she's recording everything. Alya just laughs.
"Don't worry, I'll cut it out. Okay, so what's next? How are we gonna get up to that thing if we can't see it?"
There's a moment of pause where the hero just looks at her.
"Okay, suspicions confirmed," he says. "You are definitely Alya Césaire." A bewildered shake of his head punctuates the end of the statement, and Alya bristles a bit at his tone of voice.
"Wha--? Who--? How do you know my name?"
"Ladybug assigned me to be your babysitter for tonight," he explains, arms crossing over his chest. "To be honest, I thought it was a little much, but now I see where she's coming from."
"Ladybug told you to watch me?"
"Well, technically. I'm doing damage control and rescue while she and Chat Noir fight the akuma, but she said to keep an eye out for you because you always find your way into trouble."
"That's not true! I can usually handle myself."
"Yeah, well, tonight's akumatization isn't something even Ladybug can handle on her own, so I'm gonna need you to go home."
"Yeah, right. Like I'm going to give up the awesome opportunity to interview you first." Alya rolls her eyes at him. "Speaking of which, is the difficulty of the fight why you showed up? Do you only appear when things get really bad, or are you going to fight with Ladybug all the time now?"
Her inquiries are ignored, and with a pointed look. "You're alright, but what about your family? You should be more worried about their safety." says the hero, almost as if he is berating her.
Alya doesn't sweat it. "Trust me, my little sisters are the scariest things this side of the Seine and my older sister's the strongest. And my parents gave birth to them. They're safer than I am right now, I bet."
"Don't you want them to know you're okay, then?"
"I do feel bad about worrying them, but I always make it back. This time will be the same, and I'm sure they have faith in me by now."
The hero looks conflicted, but not very. Alya imagines he's got his mind made up to get to work, but as a responsible defender of the people he's also reluctant to just leave her, knowing she'll undoubtedly find her way closer to the akuma without someone to keep her away. She imagines his moral compass is stricter than Chat Noir's or even Ladybug's, seeing as he's still here worrying about his actions putting a single citizen in danger when he has an entire city to look after. Alya admires it, even if it's pretty counterproductive.
"Look," she says, "if I go home, I'm just going to wait until you're not around and then chase after the akuma anyway. You might as well let me go."
"No," the hero answers, and this is not entirely unexpected, but then he follows it up with, "I'll make you a deal," and Alya is intrigued. "I have a job to do and you need a story, right? So you stay with me and don't chase the akuma, and I'll give you an exclusive first interview while I go around."
Alya grins, no hesitation. "Deal."
Even though he isn't battling with the akuma, Alya has a lot of respect for the green hero. He's razor focused and untiring (somewhat to her eventual exasperation), driving himself to the max every moment to make sure as many people as possible are safe. He takes the time to dig people out of rubble and other lethal situations while still preventing the akuma's wayward attacks from making anything worse. His shield isn't just his weapon of choice, Alya realizes as she follows him around, it's a part of his persona. He's a protector, a savior, and very serious about it.
There are times where he must forget that no one knows who he is yet, or perhaps he just doesn't care; he takes charge in more than a few situations and only focuses on organizing people to help more people. In a few intense moments, he barks orders at the local authorities dispersed to also help with rescue, urgent, in the zone, not thinking about how said authorities don't know what they owe to him, and his efforts are impeded. But after seeing him in action (and an excited vouch for him as a hero from an observing citizen) they let him guide them in the right direction.
With all of this going on for the full duration of the akuma attack, they don't talk much, and Alya only gets to ask a question when she's not winded and he's not busy. Which is virtually never. But it's still worth it in the end, because she has a ton of valuable footage and the new hero is true to his word.
The battle ends with a swift bang. The new hero is called upon when the UFO suddenly crashes to the ground, revealing itself, and Ladybug and Chat Noir emerge from the enormous vessel to fight with the Grigar Emperor, then nearly be incinerated by his ship's still-intact lazer. The power of the new hero's special ability is the only thing that can stop it, a power Alya cannot capture over the brilliant light of the lazer weapon but can hear being shouted into the night by the hero it belongs to.
"Shellter!"
Luckily (purposefully?) Ladybug's lucky charm is a pair of shades that protect her when everyone else is being blinded by the intense light magnified by the 'Shelter' power. While everyone is still recovering, Ladybug darts in close to the Emperor, disarms him, and breaks the infected item.
The swarm of ladybug magic (which looks a little eerie in the dark if Alya is being honest) that is released by Ladybug's lucky charm once the victim is returned to normal comes to wash away all the devastation that the evil alien emperor has caused. Everything grows still and silent again, peace returned to the night. It's the verge of 4:30 am when the day is officially declared saved.
The resolution rubs Alya the wrong way a little, for a reason she can't identify, but she soon forgets about that. Ladybug's earrings chime and she's got to go before Alya can get a word out to her, Chat Noir is already gone, and the newbie is walking toward her with his shield now poised onto his back. Alya watches the hero approach curiously. She's disappointed that Ladybug had gotten away without any commentary, but she finds herself perfectly interested in something else now: the shield on his back instead of his forearm, it changes something. . .
Hold on, Ladybug and Chat Noir are animal-inspired heroes. So is Rena Rouge. Could he be too? There's something familiar about his costume, it has to be something like that. He's covered in green, there's a hexagonal pattern on his chest, there's the hood, he's got a circular shield that, on his back, kind of looks like a shell-- wait, Shellter!-- oh -- is he a turtle? That's actually kind of. . . cute. And obvious, in retrospect.
The new hero stops in front of Alya under a revived streetlight and smiles tiredly at her, allowing his exhaust from the battle to set in now that the threat is gone, and it makes sense. She even notices little streaks of color on the sides of his hood that look like what certain turtles have by their eyes. How had she not noticed before?
A beeping noise, and the hero sluggishly raises his wrist to his eyes to check the time.
"Three minutes," he mumbles. He looks at her. "We still doing this interview?"
Alya gives a sober affirmative, her own fatigue setting in, and stops recording for now.
After some persuasion, Alya manages to convince the hero to do the interview back at her house. Maybe it's the time of day or just how bad the shadows over his face from his hood look in the yellow streetlight, but her balcony seems like the best place to talk. Good ambiance, nice city view. She thinks about these kinds of things when she films.
The way back is exhilaratingly fast. With no time to waste, the hero carries her on his back and practically scales a wall, then leaps across the rooftops back to her family's home. He carefully deposits her on the balcony then drops down himself, quiet as a cat. Alya readies her phone quickly and shoots him a gracious smile as she begins a new video, feeling just a little guilty now that she's got him here.
He has less than three minutes left, and he's spending these precious seconds on her balcony answering questions. Not even Ladybug would do that, not that she should.
But a deal is a deal, and he's honoring that.
"So, green hero of Paris," Alya begins, "we should start with your name. What do we call you?"
His proud grin brightens up his face and hides his fatigue as he points a thumb at his chest. "The name's Carapace." he replies.
There's a light beep immediately after he answers; two minutes left. They go as quickly as they can without rushing, Alya keeping her questions short.
"You worked with Ladybug and Chat Noir today, but are you guys actually partners?"
"For now, it seems like it."
"Will you regularly fight with them against akumas?"
Carapace crosses his arms over his chest. "I dunno. Whenever Ladybug needs me to help, I'll be there."
"Okay," Alya says, not really satisfied with the response. "What about your special ability? I didn't get it on camera because of all the exposure, can you describe it for us?"
Another beep. "Don't have the time, got a quick question?"
"Are you a turtle?"
A brief pause. "What?"
"Your suit. Is it based on a turtle?"
"Ah, yeah I guess so," the hero says, looking down at himself like it's the first time he's seeing his own suit. Alya supposes she doesn't blame him. With an akuma like tonight's as his first mission, he probably hadn't had any time to think about his suit, just wear it.
"Anyways, I really gotta go," Carapace says with clear urgency. He hops onto the balcony rail, gives a little two-fingered salute. "See ya."
Alya records him jumping off the rail into the darkness below, then when he completely disappears from view, she cuts it. Shortly after, a green glow lights up the night down the street. Looking at it, she doesn't catch even a faint hint of his identity, but that's probably for the best.
It occurs to her, after Carapace is gone and the stars start to fade from the night sky, why the way the fight ended had bothered her. Carapace is a great hero. He'd been there for everyone tonight, including the veteran heroes of Paris, and his power and skills can clearly play their part in a fight. Ladybug cleaned everything up anyways, healing and correcting the damage. Why had Carapace been assigned such a role, then? Why would Ladybug give him a miraculous to help fight and then not use him? Alya gets the feeling that if Carapace had been taken along onto the UFO, things might have concluded way sooner. There wouldn't have been any need to relegate him to damage control and rescue if he'd helped defeat the Grigar Emperor in half the time.
The thoughts eventually make her wonder why Ladybug hasn't come back for her yet. She wonders why Rena Rouge wasn't good enough for today's battle, or the last five battles for that matter. And when she wonders that, she wonders why she's doubting Ladybug's judgement; it's never been wrong before.
"Agh," she combs a few fingers through her hair-- then cringes when she feels her scalp is damp. "I need to go edit this footage. And take a shower."