37. The Final Battle

A/N: Hello everybody! Well, I forgot to thank you all for the CRAZY 900 REVIEWS! When I began writing this I was just a really insecure author who thought maybe, just maybe, a few people would find her story interesting. I can't believe how far we've all come since then! So thank you very much!

Well, here it is. The chapter most of you have been waiting for. I really hope it fulfills your expectations. I really tried on this one. It's also about a page and a half longer than normal chapters. Ignore typos, I stayed up REALLY late to bring you this. Anyways, enjoy!

Chapter 37: The Final Battle

"Give me the miraculous, Gabe," Emily said again, more forcefully. She took a step forward. He cackled as his fist clenched around the miraculous.

"No."

"Why are you doing this?" Emily hissed. "Why are you hurting people? Why were you mistreating Nooroo? Why are you torturing Plagg? What happened to my loving husband?" The tears pooled in her green eyes. "WHY WOULD YOU HURT MY SON?" she screamed, pointing at Adrien. Gabriel's fist clenched tighter.

"HE'S MY SON JUST AS MUCH AS HE IS YOURS!" he screamed back. "This was all for you! All to bring you back! Do you realize the LIVING HELL I went through when you died! Why are you here now? How did you come back to life?"

"I never died, Gabriel. You were in a great danger! They were going to kill you. They were going to KILL Adrien! I needed to fake my own death, I HAD to do it! There was no other way!" Emily cried out. "And I knew that it would hurt you greatly, but you would be alive! Adrien would be alive! Our baby boy could have grown up and made something of himself! He could have a happy life! And at least he would have one parent to care for him."

"WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST TELL ME?" Gabriel roared.

"It wasn't that simple!" Emily protested. "But we can fix this. Give me those miraculous. They belong to their rightful owners. You don't have to do this. I'm alive. I can hide! I can be a part of your life. Adrien," she nearly choked over her tears, "Adrien can heal. But he won't be able to if we give him too much longer."

Gabriel (underneath his black mask as Chat Noir) glanced back and forth from his wife, tearful yet as strong and poised as ever, and his beloved, very injured son. He was pale and soaked with sweat, yet he was cold and clammy. His hand shook as he tried to open it and drop the miraculous. But he wouldn't let himself. The little voices whispered tempting offers in his ears. False promises of a perfect life.

"Don't you see, Emily?" he whispered. "We could have Euphoria. We could have everything. There would be no more tears, no more hurting, no more maiming, and no more killing. No more wars, no more bloodshed. We could create the perfect universe, and we could rule it. Our son could be raised as a god! Kings and queens will worship our names! You can join me! We can fix this broken world!"

"No we can't," she said firmly. "There is no way to prevent cruelty without cruelty. You cannot prevent war without shedding blood. You cannot stop crime without punishing criminals. There is no such thing as a perfect world."

"You don't understand!" Gabriel yelled back, getting angrier and more frustrated as the argument went on. His face was red and his fists were shaking. "I have to do this!"

"No you DON'T! You have a choice, Gabriel. You've ALWAYS had a choice! Let it go, come back to us! Please," she begged. "Please don't let the evil overtake you! Don't let the power take over your mind!"

Suddenly, a dark voice that certainly was not Gabriel's poured out of his mouth. "It's too late!"

A cyclone of blackness swirled around Gabriel as he slipped the earrings next to the ring, melding them into one single entity. Darkness bubbled around him and mutilated him. His form twisted and stretched, morphing him from a person into some sort of hideous monster.

It stood over 30 feet tall. It was hard to tell whether it was a person, a ghost, or a demon. The features of a person were barely recognizable, except for two red hot eyes. Lava seemed to bubble and boil inside of them, churning around and piercing the soul of whoever he glared at.

His body was a mixture of liquid, gas, and solid. It was a dark energy in every form possible, and it was hideous. The smell of burning sulphur penetrated the air as it melted the grass, dirt, and rock it was standing on. The undead standing close to him disintegrated in the heat pouring off of him.

At the same time, inside of the dark shell, a bright light shone from inside of the crature. It was blinding, but slightly covered. It was like a hot sun stuck behind storm clouds, there and visible but just out of reach. It contributed to the warmth rolling off of... Gabriel. If it even was Gabriel anymore.

Emily gasped in horror as she was forced to back away. Queen Bee dashed around the monster as it was forming, scooping up Adrien. Volpino followed and grabbed Marinette's hand, just barely getting the two to safety before they would have burned to death.

"No," Emily whispered. "NOOOOO!" She watched in despair as her husband completed the transformation, rolling his great beastly head around on his neck experimentally. He cackled as he looked down at the frightened teenagers.

"Aw, do the mere mortals think that they can beat me?" he asked in a voice that sounded like a combination of nails on a chalkboard and a horrible scream of pain. Its sent shivers down their spine and made every single one of them want to run, to get away as fast as possible and save themselves.

Emily snatched the Peacock pin off of Adrien's chest. He detransformed, gasping in pain in his unconscious state as his pain tolerance immediately decreased. Pavvo slammed herself into her old wielder's side. "Emily!" she shrieked happily. "He absorbed too much evil before the ultimate transformation! He's-"

"Unbalanced, I know! The evil in his soul has tipped the scale of creation and destruction. The destruction is destroying the creation! The yin is being eaten alive by the yang! Soon, it will be too late and the world will perish! Pavvo, feathers out!"

Her transformation flashed blue, and before them stood a brilliant bird superhero. She wore a royal blue jumpsuit, and a beautiful tail fanned out behind her. She had peacock fabric wrapped around her ankles and wrists, flowing behind her slightly. On her belt were two giant metal fans, which she pulled out and swirled around impressively. Her blonde hair was pulled partly on top of her head, and a royal blue mask covered her eyes.

Marinette warily eyed the undead circling them. Never before had she felt such terror. Every akuma scared her, and every time she had managed to be brave and confident. Now all confidence was lost. Before her was the epitome of evil, and the end of the world as she knew it. Defeat reeked off of it, filling her soul with the knowledge that there was no way to win this fight.

"There's nothing you can do, puny heroes!" the monster laughed mockingly. He uprooted a tree with a flick of his hand, flinging it at them. They screamed and jumped out of the way. Peacock scooped Adrien up as Jade curled himself around Papillon and Volpino shoved Queen Bee out of the way. He barely managed to escape the tree as it left a twenty foot trench in what used to be the ground. Marinette shrieked as she tumbled out of the way, tree branches scraping her severely. But at least she had escaped an early death.

Jade pulled himself off of Papillon and grabbed Adrien out of Peacock's arms, cradling his best friend bridal style. "We have to get Adrien out of here!"

"We have to get out of here!" Volpino squeaked, pulling up Queen Bee who quickly thanked him for pushing her out of the way. He had earned a rather large scrape across his cheek, whereas she was fine. To their surprise, it was Marinette who spoke up.

"We can't, she said resolutely as she snap-kicked an undead person who had come to close. Its head toppled to the ground. More undead crowded in from all sides. The others stared in shock.

"Yes, go play with them, my pets," the monster chuckled. "I could kill them quickly, but where's the fun in that?" His wicked red eyes seemed to belong to the devil himself. "They must suffer." The light inside of the dark hull seemed to be diminishing quickly.

"We can't run," Marinette repeated. "We're the world's final hope, like it or not. We can't be afraid to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good. I know Adrien is unconscious right now, but he would say the same thing. The first day I became a super hero, I was ready to give up. And that was just fighting an akuma. I didn't have any confidence. And right now I don't have confidence. Every bone in my body is screaming at me to run. My every thought is filled with the thought that we're not going to walk away from this."

She paused and continued. "But on that first day, Chat Noir gave me hope. He had confidence in me, even at my worse. He made me want to fight. He showed me how good it felt to save people. I was lost without him, and he showed me how to follow my heart. Unfortunately, he, Adrien suffered the price for it."

"But if we're going to die here," she said firmly. "It will be in his honor. Because he wouldn't run away from this fight. He would fight until every bone in his body had shattered and every drop of blood had run out of his veins. And I refuse to give up, because then his love would go to waste. I don't deserve it," she paused. "But I'm sure as hell going to make sure he didn't waste it."

There was a few seconds of silence. All of the teens (and Emily Agreste) had been listening to her while frantically picking off the undead that crowded them. They were quickly becoming overwhelmed. Finally, Emily spoke as she sliced off several undead limbs.

"I couldn't have said anything more inspiring, and there is no greater hero than you, Marinette. I ran from my problems, and they escalated. I am at fault for what has happened here. And I'm not going to run away and watch the world burn, living out my last days knowing that I did this. I'll fight until the end."

"Count me in," Alya said firmly. "I dreamed of making the world a better place. I admired super heroes so much because they were able to do so. I can live my dream now. I might die, but I can die happily knowing I made a difference."

"All my life, I lived without being able to do anything," Nino added. "I watched the world go by. I didn't stop Chloe from hurting people, I couldn't help my best friend. I wasn't doing anything. My life was kind of pointless. I was one person among a billion doing nothing to help this world. I'm glad I can make my last few hours count."

Chloe cleared her throat. "I'm worse than Nino. I didn't just sit around, I made people suffer. I created akumas that probably gave Hawkmoth more power, and a fighting chance. I was a complete bitch, and all of this is partly my fault. It's my duty to go down making a difference." Her eye narrowed dangerously. "And that's what I'm gonna do."

"You all gave me courage," Nathan added, swiping his flute at an undead person and twisting his way out of the hands of several more. "I was hiding in the shadows, like a rat afraid of the light. But I can stand bravely now. I can face my fears, and I can face other's fears. I'm going to make sure that every person in the world has less to fear, and I will keep them safe."

"Then we're decided," Marinette said, punching another head off of an undead soldier. "We will probably die here, but we'll die fighting." She took a deep breath. Everything was instinct at this point. She heard Tikki's words ringing through her head, "YOU are Ladybug, with or without the mask!" It didn't matter that she wasn't covered in magical spotted spandex. It didn't matter that she didn't have a mask to hide her insecurities, and it didn't matter that she didn't have a yoyo to escape the danger with.

"Queen Bee, Volpino, and Jade, hold off as many undead as you can and keep Adrien safe. If you get them close to Gabri-the monster, they'll disintegrate, but if you get too close, then so will you. Papillon, I need you to declare me a champion. Peacock, you and I are going for the root of the problem. If we take his miraculous-"

"Then it will essentially be like unplugging his power," Emily continued. "He'll destransform-"

"And he'll be defeated," Marinette finished. "But how do we get that close without burning up?"

Suddenly, a butterfly flew into her chest and lodged itself there. Instead of a dark, unsettling feeling. She felt powerful and light. "Marinette, I am Papillon. I'd like to give you the power to defeat this monster... Err, try to defeat it, anyway. Do you accept my offer?"

"I accept," Marinette answered immediately. "Can you give me my Ladybug suit and powers?"

"I can give you a suit and a magical yoyo. It won't be able to purify anything, and there's no Lucky Charm. But I can make the yoyo's attack much more damaging," Papillon offered. Marinette nodded and she felt white light bubble over her body.

When she opened her eyes, she was back in her familiar Ladybug suit. She pulled out her yoyo and flipped it around experimentally. "Perfect!" she said. She could hear Papillon's voice in her head.

"I made your suit fireproof too. I don't think he can burn you unless you get devoured by him and end up in a festering pit of evil..." Both girls shuddered.

"Then let's finish this," Ladybug growled. She nodded at Peacock and the two took off, leaping over the heads of the undead that were crowding her friends. Then Ladybug slashed at the monster's arm with her yoyo. He bellowed with rage and swatted at her. She dodged, only to be flung backwards by negative energy, slamming her back against the park fence. She woozily flipped to her feet and went in to attack again.

Peacock took a different approach. She could not get close, so she opted for flinging her metal fans at his back like boomerangs. They spun around, slicing through the darkness and leaving ragged red cuts that seemed to pour lava. The cuts re-constructed themselves almost immediately.

"It's growing stronger!" Peacock shrieked at Ladybug as she zipped around, dodging attacks. At one point a ribbon on her ankle caught on fire and she sliced it off, leaving it burning on the ground. It caught on of the bushes on fire, and the flames began to grow.

Ladybug lassoed the demon's arm and tried to drag him backwards, but he tossed her carelessly over his head. "Cataclysm!" it bellowed as it pressed the magic to her yoyo string. It snapped immediately. Ladybug gasped in horror.

"It's not supposed to break! It can't break!" The monster flung her into a rooftop, leaving a pile of bricks and dust. She clambered to her feet in time to see Peacock being thrown against Volpino, knocking the boy over.

"I think I can fix it!" Papillon shrieked in Ladybug's head. Ladybug glanced over to see her best friend trying to keep Ladybug's power flowing while jumping around, avoiding the flames that nipped at her feet and he undead that tried to grab, punch, and stab her. She ended up back to back with Jade, who was having a hell of a time defending himself and Adrien.

A new yoyo appeared on Ladybug's hip and she jumped up, charging at the demon as he made his way towards Peacock. He was forced to spin around and counter attack as she leapt at him with a vengeance, spinning, flipping, and cartwheeling away from his attacks. You might think it would be a disadvantage for Ladybug to be about 50 times smaller than him, but it allowed her more room to evade him.

Meanwhile, Volpino began to create illusions of himself, Jade, Papillon, Queen Bee, Ladybug, and Peacock. He sent them scattering everywhere, confusing the hell out of the undead minions. Of course, each time an illusion was touched it dissolved, but Volpino kept firmly playing his flute. Queen Bee circled around him, taking out undead like crazy. She would stun some, destroy them, and move onto the next few. The problem was that they kept rebuilding.

One of them sliced a broken bottle it had found across her leg, and it sent pain throughout her nervous system. Gritting her teeth, she continued to dance around Volpino. Her knuckles were badly bruised and her entire body was so bruised and beaten that it was begging her to stop, but she persevered on.

Volpino already had blood running down his face and a few deep scratches on his side from the tree branch. His lungs wanted air, but he refused to stop playing his flute. The plan was working. The illusion were drawing large numbers of undead towards the monster, where they would disintegrate. Plus, it distracted quite a few others, leaving his team mates more free to move around.

Finally, Ladybug could evade the monster no more. The light had completely diminished from inside of it. It roared with laughter, a sound that nearly ruptured all of their eardrums. He grew a few feet, and the air around him began to gather, swirling around to create winds almost as strong as an F5 tornado.

He grabbed Ladybug's leg, and his burning hand melted through her suit just a slight bit. He reared back and flung her into the ground. She screamed in agony as her body connected with the ground in such force that she left a crater at least twenty feet deep. She could hear several of her ribs cracking and she already knew she had the worst concussion.

The world was spinning and she hadn't even opened her eyes. She fought the urge to throw up, but the nausea overwhelmed her. She emptied her guts, choking on the stinging in her throat. She coughed, sucking in dusty air that only made her cough more. She was lying in a pit, unable to move as the monster moved closer and closer.

Suddenly, she had a strange memory. A flashback of sorts. She didn't know how her broken mind had dragged it to her attention, but it played back in front of her eyes, a little warped and inaccurate. It was a conversation she had had with Tikki several months ago.

"So, I guess you can wield two miraculous, right? Otherwise why would Hawkmoth want our miraculous if his plan wouldn't even work?"

"Well, I suppose you could," Tikki looked very apprehensive. "But the strain on a human's physical body would be... far too great. You would die almost instantly. Unless, something...else leant you power."

"Something else?"

"There is evil in this world that can do things incomprehensible to the human mind," Tikki said quietly. She looked like she was psuhing down old memories of horrible mistakes.

"So... You have to use evil to wield two miraculous?"

"Yes, you have to exchange a part of your soul. Of course, Hawkmoth already did that if he was able to misuse his kwami. He must know the limitations of wielding double miraculous though. It may not kill him, but it will weaken him to the point of death."

Marinette was curious. "What happens if you try to wield three miraculous?"

"The world can never come to that," Tikki whispered. "It would be far too late to save."

Ladybug gathered her strength and lifted her head to see Peacock running over, dodging fires that threatened to cling to her tail. "Peacock!" Ladybug yelled weakly. The woman's head snapped up. "Give him your miraculous!"

Peacock's jaw dropped. "WHAT? No way! It would destroy him!"

"Please, Emily. Your husband is already gone! He has been consumed by evil! It's too late for him. But you can stop him from taking away other people's family members. You can stop him from destroying the world. You can protect your son! Please, don't make the world suffer what you suffered!"

A single tear slipped down Peacock's cheek. Suddenly, she nodded resolutely. "Of course, Ladybug." She glanced sorrowfully at the monster before she ripped the pin off of her chest. Pavvo came tumbling out. "HEY GABRIEL!"

"GABRIEL IS GONE!" The monster roared. "AND SO YOU SHALL GO AS WELL!" He turned from Ladybug and stomped over to her, disintegrating his own army as he ran. The super heroes scattered. Emily stood her ground.

"I give up. I want to help you create a new world. I offer you my miraculous in return!"

The devil eyes lit up with a red hot joy and passion. "Yes," it chuckled. "You are a wise one." He reached down, momentarily taking away his body heat as he plucked the pin from her hand and fastened it on his own chest proudly.

Emily had only a second to leap out of the way before there was an explosion and everything flashed white. Then she was falling, falling, falling into a darkness that never ended.

A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing! Have a great day!