In your La Chata AU, how can Adrien still see Plagg without wearing his Miraculous?
Because whatever magic turned adrien into a cat worked on adrien, not chat noir. I never drew a comic covering it, and Iâm not sure I will, so I may as well spill the juicy details:
some kind of magical hit landed on chat noir during an akuma fight, and knocked him back a ways - they had been fighting a little recklessly, having just used both lucky charm and catacylsm, and trying to wrap up the fight quickly so they didnât have to recharge mid-battle. Sometimes that works and sometimes they get hit.
This particular akuma made the hit a little annoying especially with so little time to waste - the effects of the akuma were randomized. Most of them hadnât been harmful, and just inconvenient, but over the last half an hour theyâd seen people freeze in place (worrying), turn green (not too bad), melt (horrifying), float off the ground (kind of fun), and grow multiple pairs of arms (arguably useful? no, still bad) and have all their teeth fall out (also horrifying).
Ladybug, seeing chat noir knocked down and knowing they donât have time for whatever stupid shenanigans will happen if he starts tap dancing or sneezing flames or god forbid losing his dentures, cranks it up a notch and takes a risky dodge past the akumaâs fist to grab his necklace and break it. Chat noir is winded on the pavement while she finishes the ladybug cure and fixes things up.
Heâs still winded when she comes over to get him moving, theyâre down to about a minute on their timers and she is not interested in turning into a pumpkin. She gets worried when he says heâs not feeling well, and moreso when she canât get him to stand up with 30 seconds left on the clock. She picks him up and dashes a couple streets over until she can find somewhere quiet - he detransforms before she can even put him down, and she looks before she can help herself.
She yells a little, this is a LOT to take in, but heâs still distracted by whatever is wrong with him. He doesnât react particularly to the reveal, he just seems to be focusing on breathing, which worries ladybug. âMaking sure heâs okayâ leapfrogs over âhave a meltdown because i spent way more time with adrien agreste than i thought i didâ in her list of priorities, and she holds up three fingers and says âHow many fingers am I holding up?â
Adrien looks at her, works his jaw a little, doesnât answer, turns into a cat. in that order.
To answer your original question - at this point, plagg isnât in the ring anymore. Heâs hovering around, waiting for tikki, to see if she knows if this was the akuma, and if so why the miraculous cure didnât work.
When adrien turns into a cat, his clothes donât go with him, and the ring falls off of his shrinking hand. Ladybug picks it up, looking at it in her fingers as her costume melts off of them in a soft light. She pockets it as soon as she has pockets, and turns back to the black cat sitting next to her.
She says, âChat noirâŚ?â a little tentatively. She doesnât want to say âadrienâ because she is Busy With This Crisis and Not Ready To Address that.
The black cat says, âMarinette?????â Which does not help her resolution to Not Address that.
She ignores the identity crisis and says âAre you okay? Chat noir. Do you - feel okay?? What happened?â
and he says, âYouâre Ladybug??? Wh- Oh, wow, you are⌠wowâŚâ
âFocus!â Marinette says, a little snappy because sheâs stressed out, âBigger fish, chat! How do you feel?â
Adrien says, âYou look really tall. I feel okay. Kind of weird. Ooohhhhh my god.â (that last part is immediately after realizing he has paws)
She says, âYouâre a cat,â and he says, âIâm a CATâ at the same time.
They run over a few quick talking points such as âwhy are you a catâ (they donât know), âDo the kwamis know why you are a catâ (they donât know), âCan you⌠turn back?â (He canât, although heâs also not sure how to try), and, âLetâs not stay in the street, you should come stay with me. My parents like catsâ (itâs true, they do).
Marinette picks him up (he doesnât fight her on it, heâs understandably a little worried and could use the comfort) and takes him home. They donât talk much on the way and marinette unfortunately thinks a LOT about how sheâs carrying both chat noir AND adrien agreste. she tries not to lose her shit about it but doesnt do a great job.
and then you start from here:
https://ladybeug.tumblr.com/post/175563179016/part-one-of-an-anonymous-commission-it-was-a