who are we (if not who they've made us to be)?

Five

"It's impossible!" She shouted, frantically. "I never told you anything!"

I'm trying to kill her, Adrien thought blankly. She's my partner and I'm trying to kill her. Why...? How did it come to this?

Ladybug skidded to a stop, facing Chat Blanc cautiously. He sneered.

"Give me your Miraculous so I can make everything go back to way it was!" He demanded. Pulling back his hands, he started pulling sparks from the air and moulding them into a ball.

"Mega-cataclysm!" He shouted, throwing it at her. She just barely dodged, jumping onto a nearby roof. As she hit the gravel, she could see a power wave of destruction burst in every direction. The last remaining skyscraper crumbled under its power, shaking the whole city. She jumped for the Eiffel Tower, leading Chat Blanc to equal grounds.

Rose gasped, tears in her eyes.

"Things were purr-felt until Hawkmoth found out about everything," Chat Blanc lamented. "You know how it is; once the cat is out of the bag, it's only a matter of time until everyone knows!"

Ladybug hid behind a support beam as Chat Blanc scoured the first level of the tower. Her heart was beating so loud, she barely heard his next words.

"It was our love that did this to the world, m'lady!" Chat Blanc laughed cruelly. Ladybug stared out at the destruction. Homes underwater, people dead, civilization completely destroyed. Because of her. Because of Chat Noir and her. How could she claim to be a hero and yet cause the destruction of her own city?

"No," Rose breathed. "No, love conquers all but... not like this."

Chat Blanc swung up onto the beam she was hiding on, back to her. "I'll find you, m'lady, and when I do, you'll give me your Miraculous!"

Barely thinking, she tackled him, sending them both flying. They smacked into another beam and she stole his baton before racing off again. She broke it over her knee.

"Time to de- uh?" No akuma made its escape. She frantically turned the baton around but nothing came out. Chat Blanc chuckled.

"The bell, Ladybug! The bell!" Alya shouted, too invested to realize that Ladybug couldn't actually hear her.

"Looking for my akuma, m'lady?" Without a second thought, he threw another charged up cataclysm at her. Making an escape, Ladybug dodged cataclysm after cataclysm, flipping onto the leg of the Eiffel Tower.

"There's a faster way to make this end, you know," Chat Blanc commented casually. "You just need to hand over your Miraculous!"

Ladybug risked a glance back at the water that surrounded them. "Never! Lucky Charm!"

Calling on her power, Ladybug caught a ladybug themed eraser as it fell to her. Chat Blanc eyed it skeptically.

"An eraser?" He shook his head. "I'd like to erase the past too, but there's only one way to do that."

He pressed his middle finger and his thumb together, charging up a cataclysm ready to be thrown at any moment. Slowly, he started to walk towards her.

"You know that by merging our Miraculous together, we'd be granted one wish, right? Any wish we wanted?"

The class gasped.

"I-Is that true?" Sabrina stuttered, staring Marinette with wide eyes. Marinette flinched.

"Yes, but you don't understand! The Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous are two sides of a coin. They maintain balance and function on terms of an equal exchange. Your wish would be the same. If you wished to bring someone close to you back from the dead, someone else you care for would have to die. If you wished for the cure to a disease, a new disease would ravage the world! It's playing with fire," she insisted.