Until We Meet Again

Chapter 8: Sorry

“Hello heroes.” Although she made her voice sound calm, Marinette was holding my hand tightly, telling me the opposite. “I’m very pleased to see you once again.”

“I wish I could say the same thing, Ladybug.” Alya was visibly red. In all my years of knowing her, I had never seen her so angry.

Nino wasn’t speaking though, which told me that he was angry with us, but he was thinking about something.

"I’m sorry you feel that way, Rena. I never meant to hurt anyone, but leaving the way I did was best for everyone. You would be in even more danger than you are right now fighting Hawkmoth. There are a lot of people who don't like me or my family, people who would hurt the ones I love. I couldn't allow my friends in France to get hurt. I understand that you're frustrated. I left without a trace, but it had to happen. For everyone's safety.”

“So that’s it.” Nino said, breaking from his trance. “You’re the princess.”

Marinette looked at me frantically, panic in her eyes.

“What are you talking about?” Marinette feigned confusion.

I let out a small gasp just as Marinette ended her sentence. “The GPS.”

“Ding ding ding, Chat gets a prize.” Nino said sarcastically, rolling his eyes “I hadn’t thought of it until you said it. The trackers that we all have. I could find out where you were. Where Ladybug was. Alya shooed me off to do it before you left wherever you were. I didn’t understand at first. I had a million theories running through my head as to why Ladybug would be at the palace. None really made sense. Until you said that thing about your family having people that wanted to hurt you. Who could possibly be a bigger threat to us than Hawkmoth. A real life super villain. Only someone really powerful could be in that much danger. The royal family of China. How else would you and Chat be in one of the most heavily guarded places in the world?”

“You’re quite the quick-thinker, detective. Only one plot hole. No one knows this princess’ name, or what she looks like. If there’s one thing more heavily guarded than that palace, it would be the royal family’s secrets.” Marinette said cockily, staring daggers at Nino.

“Well, that still doesn’t disprove my theory. In fact it just makes it stronger. No one knows what the princess looks like. Surely she could be you. You’re of Eastern Asian descent. You speak fluent mandarin, English, and French. I’m sure if we tested it out, you’d be able to speak other specific regional languages. Or you’d lie to us once again about not knowing. Clearly you’re no stranger to lying, huh Princess?”

“Don’t call me that.” Marinette muttered.

“I couldn’t hear you My Lady.” Nino said, mockingly.

“You can’t call me that!” Marinette shouted, physically pushing Nino’s chest.

Nino scoffed, and Alya moved forward to break them up, but I held my hand out to stop her. She gave me a quizzical look, but backed down. And that was it. Ladybug and Carapace were fighting. Alya looked at me frantically, but I just held out my hand, this wasn't the pair that I expected to fight, but I knew it needed to happen.

I watched as Nino attempted to block Marinette. He was on the defensive, while Marinette threw all the punches, effectively taking the offensive. She used her yo-yo tactfully to distract him while she swept under his legs and knocked him onto his back. He got up swiftly, but he still seemed to be a bit shaky. In the background I couldn't hear Alya say something, but I wasn't paying attention. I was watching my girlfriend and my best friend fighting. Not something you see everyday. 

It continued that for quite a bit. Marinette punching or kicking, and Nino blocking as much as he could. It was odd, not just the fact that Marinette was fighting with our friend, but the fact that we were all together again. This was rare and unique. And they didn't even know it. How could I be the only one who knew that it was all four of us back together again. It made me nostalgic for the past. where we weren't thousands of kilometers away from each other. Where the hardest thing our friendship went through was me and Marinette disappearing for a few hours during akuma attacks. Things were complicated back then, but nothing to this extent. Nothing that would have caused us to fight like this. This was a whole new level of insane. I'd never seen Marinette fight someone like this. I looked over at her and noticed something odd. She had tears streaming down her face. Why was she crying? Had she gotten hurt while I wasn't looking? No… she was tough, a singular blow wouldn't take her down like this. I'd known her long enough to know that she could take a hit. This had to be mental.

That's when Alya screamed. "Stop!" The two listened, and looked at Alya. "There's been an attack! Hawkmoth released an akuma. It's bad."

We all made our way over to Alya who was playing live footage of what was going on in Paris on her flute. It projected the footage above it, since her flute didn't open up with a screen. Projected above the flute was the most devastating video I’d ever seen. Buildings on fire, people running through the streets, and explosion after explosion bringing ruin to my city.

“No.” I breathed the words. “Why would he do this?”

“What do we do?” Alya asked “How can we save everybody when we’re on a different continent, 9,000 kilometers away from home?”

“I don’t know,” I responded, “but we’ll have to figure it out. People are dying. We can’t just sit here doing nothing.”

“I have an idea.” Marinette spoke up. “You’ll have to follow me.”

“Why should we listen to you after you just tried to fight me for actually figuring out who you are? And quit denying it. It’s obvious.” Nino growled, frustrated. He had a cut on his upper lip, and what looked like it would be a bruise on his left cheek. “I personally do not trust you. You acted sporadically, and fought me, your own team mate.”

“I did. But it wasn’t because I wanted to deny being the princess, it’s because of the things you called me. Princess and My lady.”

Nino chuckled. “Dude, aren’t those your titles or whatever? Why did that make you mad?”

“You used them mockingly. Those are the endearing names that Chat has always called me. So you mocking them, was like you were mocking our entire relationship. I’m not exactly sure why I got so ang-”

Alya cut Marinette off. “While I do think you should resolve this, let’s do it at a later date! People are going to die. It is our duty to save these people. Ladybug, lead the way. We need to get there as soon as possible."

"Of course, Rena. This way." Marinette grabbed my hand and we were off, running back towards the palace.

I'm proud of Alya for taking charge. She never ceases to amaze me when it comes to fighting Hawkmoth. She and Nino are truly irreplaceable allies in this fight.

We arrived at the palace once again. Marinette showed the other two in through her balcony, warning them not to look around too much. I made sure that anything that was distinctively Marinette was out of sight.

"Where does that leave to?" Alya, always the curious one, questioned.

"That's inconsequential." I responded quickly. Marinette nodded in approval.

"Right, I'm going to detransform, so I'll be in the closet." Marinette said quickly, ducking through the doorway to her closet.

"She really is sorry." I say as soon as the door closes. "She didn't want to leave. She was devastated."

"Yeah, well she should've warned us. We could have gotten some sort of heads up. The two of us were thrown into being full time heroes." Nino nodded in agreement with what Alya was saying.

"So were we. No explanation. No warning. We got our miraculous the day of the first Akuma attack. We went into it without training, or mentors. Our miraculouses just showed up in our rooms. We had no clue what was happening but we fought anyways. It was a good year before we even met the Guardian of the miraculous." I sighed, remembering Master Fu. "Ladybug is the Guardian now. She can do what she wishes with the miraculous. She made a very conscious decision to choose the two of you to stand in her place when she was gone. I appreciate the two of you. I have made it this far because of you. I truly hope that you will continue to work with me. When Ladybug left, I was in a really dark place. I didn't want to get out of bed, go to work, to school. Everything felt meaningless. Somehow I finally had her, but she was across the world. Working with you helped me cope with the idea of her not being around. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. It means the world to me.”

"I didn’t even know Chat.” Nino responded.

“I know. I usually hide that sort of thing. My dad doesn’t like emotions. Going to therapy wasn’t an option either, it would have, in his words, ‘ruined his reputation’. Good ol’ Gab-” I stopped myself. I was about to say his name. Then they would have known. “Sorry. I said too much.”

“It’s alright, I didn’t really catch what you said anyways, man.”

“Oh, cool. Sorry about that.”

I realized we had been talking for a while, so I went to check on Marinette.