Faceless

Chapter 6: Who am I supposed to be?

She landed in the middle of the school yard, her gaze darting where she had left Viperion and Rena, looking for reassurance. Rena gave her a thumbs up.

Ladybug breathed to calm herself down. Then, she looked around, slowly taking in the eerie scene that was unfolding in front of her: Mylène was talking with Ivan's voice and trying to catch another Mylène who was curling on the floor as if trying to protect herself. There was a second copy of Nathaniel too, running after an exact copy of himself. There was a copy of Alya, too, and was running around desperately; probably Nino looking for his girlfriend.

"Ladybug! DUCK!" she heard someone's voice shout, and instinctively jerked down, avoiding by millimetres something that looked like a long, shiny whip, almost like a ray of light. The whip instead hit Max (the one who had shouted), who became a salt statue with no face. Ladybug looked at her schoolmate in horror until she heard the sound of someone landing on the ground to her left.

"There you are; you've finally shown yourself, Ladybug."

The heroine turned to her left, very slowly, dreading the sight that she was going to see, but the akuma's appearance went beyond her worst nightmares.

Adrien was all covered in white, his face hidden behind (or maybe changed into) a faceless mask that, as Luka had said, had clear similarities to the one he wore when he practised fencing. It was so weird not being able to see his eyes or his expression, but practically sensing his seething gaze on her. She quickly scanned him and saw what looked like...her lucky charm? The one she had given him the time they had faced Gamer? He held it in one hand, and rolled it around like she would do with her yoyo; the whip-like ray of light was coming out of it, like an extension of it.

"Adrien! Please, don't force me to fight you."

He cackled—the sound didn't suit him at all. "I'm not Adrien anymore. I'm Faceless." He cackled some more. "Besides, it's a bit too late for that. If you don't want to fight me, give me your Miraculous!"

She worriedly focused her gaze to his right hand, and noticed that the Miraculous wasn't on his ring finger anymore. She gulped at the catastrophic scenarios coming to her head from the observation. No, she wanted to believe that he hadn't given his Miraculous to Papillombre. Maybe the situation was different. Maybe, she hoped, he had been able to take the ring off before being akumatised, and Plagg was now safe. Please, make it be the case!

"I'm sorry, Adrien. I didn't want to hurt you," she started.

He stiffened. "How do you..." he whispered, but loud enough for Ladybug to hear. The shock made him stop for a moment, but he soon got himself together again, noticing that Ladybug was looking at him with tears in her eyes. "How much Camembert did you give him to make him spill the beans? He's never wanted to tell me who you are!"

Now that took her worries away. Well, at least the ones about Papillombre having gotten the ring. She tried to approach him, but he moved his hand holding the whip in a way that didn't leave Ladybug any doubts about his intentions.

"Please, Adrien. I really didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'm so sor—"

"But you DID!" he snapped, interrupting her. "Apologising isn't enough! I want to see the face of your true love. I want to see who I'm against. I'll see it for myself, since you won't tell me. You never tell me anything! I'm fed up with the silence. I'm fed up with the lies! Everyone lies to me. Everyone leaves me. Nobody loves me. Everybody loves my face, but they don't love me. Nobody does. Nobody even knows me. I don't even know who I am. Who am I supposed to be, Ladybug? Do you know?" As he said that, he threw his light whip towards the polka-dotted superheroine, who used her yoyo to duck it and zip away.