Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir

Stranger in Town

The Madness of Love's Flame, Chapter 30: The Blasted Worlds

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Chloe's wish might have had more results than even Morax could foresee. But "results" are a door that swings both ways...

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"Someone's coming," Morax announced, suddenly, looking up. The two shadonai had been preparing to leave, to join the others, when he'd made his announcement. Luan looked at him.

"Where?" she asked, scanning the skies, as he was, "I sense no one."

"Nor do I, exactly. Rather, what I sense is…an area of difference…whatever, whoever is approaching," he trailed off, thoughtfully, "has come a very long way."

"Perhaps it's the wish," Chloe clapped her hands excitedly. "Maybe it worked after all!"

"Perhaps," he said, glancing at her, "but that does not mean that what is approaching is of peaceful intent." Both he and Luan unlimbered their tridents, charging them with hellfire, just in case.

"There!" said Luan, pointing towards the heavens, "Do you not see them, beloved?" Ladybug and the others were scanning the darkened skies, trying to see some indication of what the pair were sensing…and failing.

"Be ready, people," Ladybug directed. The others, Chloe, Sabrina, Rena Rouge, and Cat Noir took up positions around her. I meant, get ready to run, she thought, but knew from her own experience how demoralizing that would sound. Well, we'll do our best, no matter what it is. Then, to the two shadonai, "Could it be Akane, sir?"

Morax shook his head. "No, I do not think so. These wayfarers have come from a place that is, if anything, stranger than Hell." He paused, squinting upward. "I do not, however, think they come in anything other than peace."

"Hello, down there!" said a girl's voice, coming from the sky. "Permission to come aboard?" But before she even fully voiced the request, two humanoid forms dropped out of the blackness of the sky. One was a girl, a blond girl, who'd spoken, seemingly human, with blond hair and blue eyes visible even in the darkness of the night. She was dressed as if for camping, in a button-down plaid shirt and blue jeans, blue jeans that were tight enough to get Cat Noir's attention.

She was being carried by a humanoid being dressed in a black-and-silver uniform of some sort, whose skin and hair was the color of fresh milk. His features were such as to attract both Rena Rouge's and Red Wasp's, and not because of the color of his skin, either.

He landed the two of them down outside the area where Morax had drawn his pentagrams. "We are sorry to intrude," he said, "but I detected this to be a localized area of stabilized reality. I thought it might be better for my friend, Kyrie, here," he gestured to the girl, "to remain here while I see what I can do to rectify what is obviously a disaster in the making. That is, if you don't mind?"

"We certainly don't mind," replied Morax. "But may I ask who you are, and how you came to be here? It's fairly obvious you are, as the current vernacular goes, not from around here."

"You got that right," said the girl, speaking up before her companion could. "But answering your question could be difficult." Ladybug's troops moved around to where they were standing with Morax and Luan. "I'm Kyrie Watson, and this," she took the arm of the other, stranger being, somewhat possessively, Ladybug thought, "is Zeta." She leaned her head against his shoulder; he looked at her, a smile of affection on his face. "We don't quite know where we were, and we aren't sure where we are, so…answering everything between those two poles could prove problematical."

"Kyrie's people suffered an accident involving what I believe you would call 'wormhole technology,'" said the one identified as Zeta, "and found themselves stranded on an alien world, in another universe. While they were able to reverse-engineer the wormhole, and return-at least, so I suppose, I have no proof-through yet another miscalculation, Kyrie herself was left behind. I promised her that I would see to it that she got home. When we first found ourselves here, through some unknown means, I thought this was her home, but I see now that it is not."

"I see," said Morax, rubbing his chin in thought. "And you? I can tell you are quite clearly not of the same universe as your…friend, here."

Zeta's face literally closed up. His expression seemed to harden, somehow; this was clearly not a topic he liked to discuss. "My universe is no more. My people are no more. That is really all there is to be said about that."

Morax examined him closely, as though looking for something. Kyrie drew back a bit and looked at her comrade, concernedly. "This is all fascinating," Morax finally said, "but as you say, there is no more to be said about that.

"I believe you two were brought here by accident, by means of an altered reality modification process. But, if that is so, then you are not here totally by accident. Perhaps you were brought here to help us in our most dire straits." He gestured at the skyline, where the fire still raged.

"Yes," said Zeta, clearly glad to be discussing something else. Anything else. "The interuniversal encroachment I sensed. I gather this is not the way you want things to be. Tell me, what is currently being done about it? And how might I help?"

…..

Leaving the Immortals-and Z-on the roof to discuss matters, Ladybug and the others took Kyrie down into Damien's apartment. After all, reasoned Ladybug, to herself, the girl's come from about as far away as anyone could imagine, and perhaps more so. Maybe a little R & R was in order, at least, as much as they could manage under these circumstances.

Besides, she was curious. They all were. "So, uh, Kyrie, is it? Are you and Z an item?" asked Chloe incautiously. Her question earned her a stern look from Ladybug, who, frankly, had been trying to formulate the same or similar question without going overboard. Though it seemed as if it might be so; it had not been lost on any of them the rather possessive way the blond girl had clung onto Z's arm, upstairs.

Kyrie's blush answered the question fairly well. However…"Well, perhaps not exactly. We're uh good friends. I owe him my life, several times over." Chloe nudged Sabrina ever so subtly: Yeah, right, good friends. Shuuuure.

"How did you two meet?"

Kyrie sat in the windowsill, glancing out of it every now and then. "Like he said. A stargate-that's what we called 'em-malfunctioned, and stranded me on some nameless, tropical world." She shivered slightly, looking out the window, but seeing nothing. "One thing about tropical worlds: everything wants to eat you. And with the stargate gone, there was no real escape. So things were not going well for me, that is, until Z showed up. Apparently, his people had developed similar tech…with similar problems. His people's gate stranded him there, but together we were able to cobble together enough disparate parts to make a working gate-field generator. And…we started doing some exploring."

Ladybug nodded. "You were awfully lucky he showed up when he did, and with the skill set to build a gate generator."

Kyrie's reaction was interesting. She lowered her head and blushed even deeper, her voice barely more than a whisper. "Yeah…lucky…good way of putting it…"

Reduce the tension. Rena Rouge jumped in. "Well, I mean, you haven't found your Earth yet, but have you found any other interesting worlds? I mean, from what I've read, a stargate or wormhole like you've just described could go anywhere! Even through time, if I heard right, that is."

"Oh, we've found a few," said Kyrie, a bit evasively, they thought. "But you know the old saying: 'There's no place like home.'" She turned away from the window. "You guys even have that old movie over here?" And Ladybug and Rena Rouge couldn't shake the feeling that talking about their adventures was, at this point, wasn't something Kyrie really wanted to do, right then. Why?

But then, Kyrie sighed. "But one world… Maybe you should know. It was…disturbing. You might need to know about it."

The Blasted Worlds: The ruins stretched out to the horizon, and, as they both knew from aerial recon, far beyond that. There was evidence of the technology Z's people used, but he kept saying it was not conclusive; there were a mixture of technologies, as well as architectural styles, which were not the norm on any of the worlds his people had conquered. For some reason, what he sensed seemed to bother him, though when she asked him about it, he simply shook his head and said he wasn't sure. But she noticed he never let go of her, or, if he absolutely had to, he stayed very close by.

That seemed a little ominous to her.

There were no life forms anywhere on the planet. None. At all.

Between them, they'd managed to construct another crude wormhole generator, which could be programmed to take them back to the world they'd left. Fortunately, Z, with the perfect memory such as all warriors of his series possessed, had those coordinates memorized. All the array needed now was charging.

The stars looked very strange.

While the device was charging, they lay on their backs near it. Although the sun was up, and it was (presumably) daytime, there was no visible indication of an atmosphere: no blue or blue-green filter enclosing the world. There was an oxygen / nitrogen atmosphere, one that would support human life, such as Kyrie's, but there was no visible sign of an atmosphere. It was as if they were on the surface of the moon.

It gave Kyrie the creeps.

They lay there, side by side, looking up at the stars. There didn't seem to be all that many, actually; could they be on the edge of the galaxy? But no, they'd seen no indication of any greater mass of stars in any direction. The middle of a gas cloud, maybe? But Z said no.

He was oddly uncommunicative, and this, far more than the ruins around them, or the lack of stars above, disturbed Kyrie more than anything else.

Perceptive as she was, and knowing him like she did, she could tell that something was bothering her…friend. Something on a level they'd never encountered before. "Penny for 'em," she said, intertwining her fingers through his. Please, God, let him get the hint this time!

But he just shook his head. "I am not sure they are worth that, Kyrie. It is not what I am thinking at the moment, so much as what I am feeling.

"And what I am feeling is…disturbing."

"What are you feeling, Z?" Pleaseplease, oh please…!

He was silent for a long moment, and she was afraid he wasn't going to answer. Then he said the absolute last words she would ever have expected to hear from him. "Kyrie, I am…afraid."

She half-rolled towards him, propped her head on her elbow, and just looked him in the face for about a second. Then, she hitched herself closer to him, to his side. "Here, Z," she said, moving his arm out from his body a little, "Do that thing where you make your arm not so hard."

"You mean the impulsion sheath?"

"Yeah, that." More hitching closer to him.

"Very well, but why?"

"Because I wanna lie here close to you, and lying on something harder than steel is uncomfortable. Yeah, thaaaat's the way," she moaned slightly, settling in, drawing in as close to him as she could. They were practically cheek-to-cheek: the initial phase of a fantasy that had been running through her mind lately. But this was only the initial phase. The more, erhm, advanced phases…she found herself hoping he couldn't translate a face-wide blush, at least, not in humans. "Now. Tell me what's got you-especially you-afraid."

Another brief pause while he gathered his thoughts. Then, "You know I have senses humans do not. Some of those senses involve information transfer at what, to you, would be translight velocities.

"Kyrie, this is a world of my people. Perhaps not totally, but I recognize the architecture and some of the technology. My people have been here. Now they are not here.

"Now, nothing is here.

"And my senses are telling me…that there is no life within range of them." He looked at her, lying there on his shoulder. Unconsciously, it seemed, his arm pulled her a little closer. She wasn't concerned; ever since she'd known him, Zeta, or "Z," as she'd come to call him, had been the very embodiment of gentleness, at least with her. "Nor here. There is no animal life, no plant life, not even microbial or viral life. There is nothing.

"And this is the truth for all the worlds I can sense. They are as barren of life as if they had passed through the thermosphere of a star.

"And I am very much afraid I know why."

And something about the way he said that, sent…

"...chills down my spine," finished Kyrie, in the here and now. The others were grouped in a semicircle around her, some kneeling on the floor, some sitting on the bed. Kyrie paused a moment, as though lost in thought. "I tried and tried to get him to tell me what it was, what had frightened him so. I mean, he's an invulnerable warrior of a galaxy-spanning empire! But he never would. He still won't." Another pause. Then, "He's never said, never even implied it, but I get the distinct impression that it would be dangerous for me to know." Another pause, and she looked up, up towards the ceiling…and the stars beyond. The neutral stars… "Dangerous in the sense that if I did know, whatever that had, had sterilized that universe…

"...might follow us here."

The room grew very quiet as everyone pondered the significance of what she'd just said.

To be continued…