You Will Never be a God

You and Me against the World

"Awesome! Well done, you did what needed to be done on your first try!" Ladybug exclaimed. "I knew you were the one I needed! You really are the best A- I- I mean..."

"Flairmidable. Call me Flairmidable."

"Flairmidable, it really suits you." Ladybug said with a giddy tone in her voice. "Pound it?"

"Pound it."

Ladybug tossed her yo-yo towards a tall building and launched herself off the roof, the new hero, Flairmidable, following suit. And just like that, she was gone.

And Chat? Chat Noir didn't know what he did wrong. He couldn't understand what had happened between Ladybug and him to make their partnership so severed.

He'd been replaced yet again. Where did he go astray? What had he done to possibly hurt the heroine in red? Why was he suddenly so useless to her now?

What happened to being partners?

Chat Noir followed loosely behind the two other heroes as they found the previously craftily disguised akumatized child. A large group of other heroes met them there in the street while Ladybug and the brand new hero, Flairmidable, approached the kid and gifted him with a charm to protect him from the will of Shadowmoth from there on.

"Let's go recharge before dealing with these sentimonsters!" Ladybug said with a confident smile on her face. The heroes around Chat agreed to this and hurried off, scattering in all directions. Chat was alone, though he really had felt alone all day even when surrounded by these people.

It suddenly seemed as if he mattered little to nothing in the world anymore. Paris accepted the new heroes with open arms, all the while Chat Noir staggered back, hesitant to the touch of a warm encouraging crowd.

It had been this way for a while. The past few months, Chat had noticed it more and more. The feeling that he didn't necessarily need praise, nor want it, but couldn't help but notice he was never the favored anyways. Parisians adored Ladybug, she was their hero, their roll model, their idol. And Chat? Chat Noir was just her shadow.

It didn't bother him much at first. Everyone loved Ladybug from the moment they became heroes together. He always knew she was the more popular of the two, and he honestly did not care much about it at all. He loved her, he wanted her to feel special. He didn't need that for himself.

But then the other heroes came. At first it was just Rena Rouge, Carapace, and even Queen Bee. He was content with that. They only showed up when Chat Noir and Ladybug were desperate, or when one of them couldn't make it to the fight. But those small three soon became four, then five, then six, then... Chat couldn't even remember all their names anymore.

With Ladybug in charge of the miracle box, it seemed she dished the miraculous jewels out like free candy. Chat had told her several times that she was trusting people too easily. And to that, she'd snap at him angrily for daring to question her or suggest that her friends weren't trustworthy. So he just backed off and let her do whatever she wanted.

That's when he started to care. All of Paris loved the knew heroes. They were now popular, and people wanted to see them in action more and more. But Chat Noir remained a lonely distant figure in the background, standing in a cemetery of his desires.

Chat didn't need to recharge—he hadn't used his abilities yet since his last transformation. But nonetheless, he found a place secret to himself where he could release Plagg and catch his breath. And that place... was a dirty rafter under a canal bridge.

"Ugh finally, I was waiting for- hey! Why aren't we home yet?!" Plagg said the second he was released from Adrien's ring.

"The fights not over yet Plagg." Adrien said.