So Long Ago

Prologue

  Debris flew like crashing planes. Smoke and dust billowed up and out like a mighty dust storm, a wall of smoke and ash, consuming all in its path.

People screamed in terror and confusion, their eyes wide with a newfound fear for life as they ran blindly in any and all directions.

Any direction that was away from the destruction.

It was chaos. Just absolute...chaos.

A fifteen year old girl watched this all happen, suddenly feeling naked and exposed in her red and black suit. Agonizing, soul eating terror filled her entire being as she watched the tallest skyscraper of Paris crumble and break apart like a stack of wooden toy blocks.

She was a hero. The sole purpose of being gifted powers was to help...but she was helpless as the building supports gave one last agonizing groan, before finally giving way.

She was helpless as the building at last collapsed...snuffing out the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of innocent lives.

The "heroine"...if she could even still be called that...was still standing there, even as the dust had begun to settle, the site of catastrophe as silent as the ghost of Death who reaped there through the wreckage.

But she was not the only one still living among the dead...

Ladybug stared...no longer at the debris of the building...but rather at the black cat who stood not so far away, staring in shock at the palm of his own hand

***

"Ladybug...? Are...Are you alright...?"

The scarlet heroine jumped, pulling away as a hand touched her shoulder, ripping her from the realm of memories. Ladybug...that was her name...she really needed to get better at recognizing it as such. She only had her powers for a few months now... but still. It was something she needed to get used to being called.

Ladybug glanced over to the person standing at her side, giving a soft nod as she was shifting a bit nervously on her feet. She kept her gaze averted from the cat's, his hand still half way extended in the air from when he had tried to get her attention. He clears his throat awkwardly, letting his clawed hand fall back at his side. His emerald, cat like eyes glance out over the city the pair stood above. The lights of Paris twinkle and sparkle beautifully, the stars and moon their only rival that cold night. A bitter breeze nipped the bare parts of Ladybug's skin as she stood on the beam of the Eiffel Tower. When the duo had first been given their miraculouses, they had designated this spot as a meeting place for nightly patrols. But at the moment, neither really felt like a patrol around the city.

Sadly...it hadn't taken all that long for the public to find their meeting spot. In the awkwardness on the tower beam, the cat glanced down at the ground far below. He instantly regretted it, seeing the mob below.

Ladybug wasn't the only one who had begun to treat her fellow hero Chat Noir a bit differently. Since the catastrophe, even the people had begun to react more negatively towards the rookie hero. Only much more severely than Ladybug had. Quite often mobs would form around their patrol meeting spot, or even at akuma battle sites just to protest the boy in leather garb. Mobs waving protest signs covered with black paw prints slashed out in red, the word "Murderer" or "Monster" beneath it. The people themselves were shouting and screaming at the black cat with offensive language and names. They wanted the cat out of their city. And who could blame them, really...? The threat of Hawkmoth caused enough fear in the people. But knowing that their only line of defense was a teenage boy, completely new and inexperienced with his power that could destroy anything, from a random rock on the side of the road to say...the tallest building of Paris? Who could blame them? Certainly no the cat himself...