Miraculous Ladybug Fanfic: Spirit-Touched

Her scales are a vibrant red like rubies, hide spotted black in sharp contrast.  Insectoid wings lay flat against her back, shimmering iridescent in the moonlight. They buzz like a hummingbird when she flies, little more than blurs as she darts and dodges. For the moment, though, she is at rest. Her claws scrape quietly against the metal of the Eiffel Tower, shifting as she arches her neck to look out across the city.

Beautiful, Chat thinks, because that is what she is. Beautiful. Ladybug is elegance and grace combined with a sort of ethereal splendor all rolled into one, and nothing will ever convince him otherwise.

He sighs, a faint cloud of smoke issuing from the back of his throat at the movement. Ladybug is amazing, far more well-liked by the people than him. For a good reason, too- she's kind, and wonderful, and far better of a hero than he is. All Chat can do is break things, maybe set them on fire if the situation calls for it. He is chaos and destruction and bad luck, the polar opposite to Ladybug.

"Chat."

He startles, train of thought derailing as she turns to look at him. "Yes, My Lady?"

"You're unusually quiet," she says, concern obvious in her tone. "Are you alright?" Her tail flicks as she shifts closer, blue eyes trained on his.

"I'm fine," he replies, giving himself a mental shake. "Just thinking about how beautiful and amazing you are, My Lady."

Ladybug rolls her eyes at that, something that apparently dragons can do just as well as humans.

"You're such a flirt," she laughs, and rises to her feet. Her outstretched wings are like stained glass against the city lights, shimmering golden in the night. "Come on, Chat. We should finish our patrol."

Without another word, she takes two running steps and leaps over the edge of the tower, wings buzzing as she soars away. Chat doesn't hesitate to follow, his own batlike wings snapping out to catch the wind as he takes to the sky.

Freedom is a heady rush of exhilaration in his blood, the pounding of his heart as he dips and rolls and lets the air itself be his playground. He could never be like this as Adrien, species shift aside. That's why he savors this, drinks it all in as much as he can. Chat Noir can be wild and playful, take risks and pull daring stunts that give his Lady heart attacks. Chat Noir can be free.

Ahead of him, Ladybug glances back over her shoulder, antennae waving in the wind. He grins, pulling up beside her as he flattens himself out for more speed.

"Race you to the Louvre?" he offers, as the top of the museum grows visible in the distance. Excess energy from the day, his fencing lesson having been cancelled due to a sick instructor, makes his body nearly vibrate with the desire to do something. A race, perhaps, could be just what he needs.

Ladybug grins back, eyes narrowing in challenge. "You're on!"

Wind shrieks against his ears, blocking out the sounds of the city. Lights blur into one continuous mass of yellow and white. The two of them become little more than red and black streaks against the sky, arrowing towards a pyramid of glass.

(It's a tie, in the end. But as they land, adrenaline fading to wobbly limbs and breathless grins, he looks at her and thinks-

Beautiful.)

Everything starts with a ring. Then there's a strange little cat-like sprite creature, an ancient battle that's been waging for millennia upon millennia, and somewhere along the way Adrien gets turned into a dragon.

Yeah. The experience was just as weird as it sounds.

Things certainly take some adjusting, at first. Adrien's become an entirely different species with an entirely different set of limbs that he's got to figure out how to work with. Nothing is at all like he's used to. His center of balance is completely off. He's nearly twice his former height and is longer than a limousine from nose to tail. Figuring out how to move around on four clawed limbs without falling on his face was certainly an adventure, as was learning not to knock things over with his tail every time he turned around.

Then, there was the flying. That was an entirely different kettle of fish, and not altogether a pleasant one, either. Sure, flying was probably the greatest experience of his life once he got the hang of it, but before that? Flying was crash landings and furiously flapping wings and bruises all over. His entire back ached for weeks.

Perhaps the best part of it all, though, was that he wasn't doing it alone. Ladybug had been with him every step of the way, fumbling through her own attempts at flight alongside his. Her technique was different, certainly, but simply the fact that he wasn't alone made it that much better.

It took them a month, perhaps, before their kwami finally deemed their abilities "passable". Just in time, too, as barely a week went by before they had to fight their first akuma. During that battle, they probably caused as much accidental collateral damage as the supervillain himself, but Ladybug's Lucky Charm fixed it back up afterwards. Cataclysm, too, was introduced during that battle. With devastating effect.

Chat shudders a bit as he remembers how it felt, holding that much power between his claws. Knowing full well that one wrong move would be all it took to cause potential disaster. He saw what it did to solid steel. What kind of damage would it do, he wondered, on something more fragile? Like, for example, a living creature?

Thinking it through, he desperately hopes that he never has to find out.

"...Chat," Ladybug begins, soft and hesitant one night. "I've been having… some really, really, weird dreams. Are you-?"

She doesn't finish, but she doesn't have to. He already knows exactly what she's talking about. Flashes of sapphire eyes and navy scales, a contrast to light jade and wings of pale gold. Dragons everywhere, filling the skies. Kwami of all different shapes and sizes their constant companions, tiny in comparison but powerful mages nonetheless. Magic running rampant across the world, saturating the Earth itself.

Spirit-touched, he thinks, and remembers cliff faces turned to dust as otherworldly power bubbles between his claws. Remembers fear and awe in equal measure, whispers and rumors that never quite went away.

Remembers another, the order to his chaos, the creation to his destruction, the blessing to his curse.

Spirit-touched, they said, but for her, those words had an entirely different meaning. And how could he resist, when she was the only other one who ever understood?

(We'll always have each other's backs. No matter what, we spirit-touched have to stick together, eh?

Of course, My Lady. I'll be with you to the end.)

"Yeah," Chat says aloud. "I know what you mean."

He's… relieved, almost, that it isn't just him. Yet, at the same time, it only makes him more unsettled. If they are both having these strange dreams, these strange visions that feel almost like memories, then… well, what if they're more than just dreams? Everything about them is impossibly familiar. The dreams all feel like deja vu, like rewatching a movie he hasn't seen since he was a child. It sounds crazy, but it's true.

Then again, everything about them is kind of crazy. They're teenagers who can turn into dragons that fight supervillains on a regular basis, after all. None of that is even remotely normal.

Ladybug's wings buzz once against her back. "What do you think they mean?"

"Honestly? No idea," he tells her. "But, if it helps… they kinda feel like memories. Almost. It's really weird."

Yes. It is weird, because just yesterday when he'd looked at Nino, he'd had the strangest glimpse of a cave filled to the brim with instruments of every type and shape. Somehow, despite the fact that none of them even actually existed (he'd tried to look them up, and found nothing) Adrien had still managed to recognize them for what they were.

Between one heartbeat and the next, however, the image was gone.

"...Memories, huh?" Ladybug sighs, blowing out a cloud of smoke. "Same here." Her eyes are distant, her expression inscrutable.

Chat Noir wonders what she saw.

Do you think they'll be the ones, Plagg? Do you think they'll be the ones to finally end this cycle of eternal war?

...I think so, Tikki. I think they will.

Spirit-touched don't reincarnate for nothing, after all.