Miraculous Ladybug One-Shots

All In

Little collab by my friend Retro and I.

***

All in. He is all in—no questions asked.

Chat's brow furrows in concentration, his forehead slick with sweat, and his mask sticky against his skin as he works at the tight knots binding Ladybug.

'All in,' he chants internally. 'No take-backs, no jokes, and no more lies or deception. Everything is on the table; the stakes cannot possibly be any higher.'

Ladybug tries her best to be patient and not struggle against the tight bonds that bind her to her surely unfathomable fate. Mere minutes. She has but mere minutes before it all comes falling down before her.

What better way to be revealed than being dangled from the Eiffel Tower by her own yo-yo for all of Paris to see?

The rodent-like akuma she and Chat had been fighting off for the past half-hour had moved like nothing Ladybug has ever seen before.

'A good superhero is never taken by surprise,' she had once told herself.

So then why had she faltered, surprised, long enough to give the akuma the chance to take complete advantage of the situation at hand? And just when she had gotten the marbles to summon a Lucky Charm, too! But, alas, she wasn't as unwavering as she should have been, as on guard as she should have been. It had attacked, and she had lost her luck along with her charm as it fell from the tower to the city below, ending up tied to the beam she had been standing on not moments before with her own magical yo-yo.

A situation Marinette never could have conjured up on her own even if she was high.

'That blasted cat,' thinks Ladybug, refraining herself from head-butting him in frustration. 'He just had to rile up that mouse-kid on purpose, didn't he? But... this isn't his fault,' she admits internally, sighing as her wrists don't loosen any more than they have in the past three minutes.

He'd been a couple of minutes late in his arrival, but as soon as the mouse/rat-themed akuma had caught wind of Chat Noir and all of his... cattiness (for lack of a better word), the akuma had quite literally squeaked and had scurried down the back of the tower. Even so, Ladybug is more than a little willing to bet that Hawk Moth will end up forcing that pussy of a mouse—Ladybug internally groans as she realizes she just cracked a pun—back up and at them despite his obvious fear of cats.

But for now, they have bigger issues... Like Ladybug revealing her identity to the whole of Paris.

"All in," Chat mutters.

It's his fault. Ladybug has less than a minute, and he has no more than two. His cataclysm had proven useless against the magical string, and he knows he can't get the knots undone in time.

His claws fumble with the taught wire, desperately searching for a weak spot to yank at.

Ladybug, LB, Buggaboo, his Lady... is about to be revealed to the entire city of Paris, hell, maybe even the world! Chat is more than a little aware of the helicopters circling them on standby, and all of the cameras currently trained on himself and his partner.

And it's all his fault.

"Chat." Ladybug catches his gaze, eyes sparkling with tears of dread. "I don't blame you."

Chat shakes his head, not accepting her answer. No, this is his fault. Of course she doesn't blame him; she would never. She's too good for that.

But he knows that he's the real reason behind the akuma this time. Him and his own stupidity.