personally i think superhero setting is the perfect backdrop for romance. secret identity shenanigans. ur in love w someone but they're in love w someone else (but the someone else is u and neither of u knows it). someone is always in danger to get rescued. someone is always getting carried bridal style. it's a film noir. it's a rom-com. mutual pining slowburn. fighting side by side trusting someone with ur life daily and they know u better than anyone and ur literally soulmates but u can never be together bc u have to keep ur identities a secret and ur afraid they won't love the "real" you. amnesia and death and evil versions of eachother are extremely common but never permanent so u get the drama without the consequences. timeline is constantly changing and being reset so every au can be canon at once. *slaps roof of superhero universe* this bad boy can fit so many fanfic tropes in it

I just realized hilarious Chloe is the greatest asset on any side she's on

First and only until s5 member of the team to not only almost win a fair 1v1 and almost take back one of the miraculous but did it against mayura in near peak health

The only original temp that didn't let personal feelings jeopardize the mission, heroes day part 2

Out of all of Gabriel's Akuma mayor Queen and Penalteam were literally the closest to bring him victory and both only lost in the end due to either Chloe giving up or the writers having to pull bullshit out of their asses

Speaking of Penalteam due to the writers running out of episodes unintentionally makes the akume the most dangerous one out of all of them as LB had to bring 99% of the miraculous box out to take her on and yet still almost lost

It's really weird because the show loves to act like she's some incompetent moron, yet most of the time, she gives Ladybug a challenge whenever she's akumatized.

The show just can't make up its mind if it wants Chloe to be seen as a legitimate threat or not.

Sneak peak of Lethe?

One 'Miraculous Ladybug!' later and everything was restored. By that time, Jean had already sung a quarter of the songs from Hamilton, leaving the poor demiboy nearly out of breath and dramatically gasping for water as Denise carried them out of the auditorium.

"Water! Please!" They let out a weak cough. "I need water!" Denise rolled their eyes.

"Jean, you're not dying," they simpered while tussling his hair. "I've seen you sing more songs from that show with no breaks, and besides, all that rapping is good practice for when you end up performing Hamilton or Starlight Express on Broadway."

Aurore smacked her forehead. "Damn! We should've sang AC/DC! That song is my fucking anthem!"

"Language, Aurore," Mendeleieve chastised, but she had just the faintest smile. Aurore sheepishly apologized.

"Now let's be real," Ismael started, sounding serious. "And I think we can all agree that I would make an amazing Elektra." Reshma smiled and tussled the shorter boy's hair, earning herself a pout. "What? I've certainly got the passion for it!"

"Yes, but I can change my voice's frequency," Marc retorted before clearing his voice and singing a line from the aforementioned character's introduction song in the same voice, "AC/DC, it's okay by me. I can switch and change my frequency." This earns him some applause (Reluctantly from Ismael) and a look of amazement from Nathaniel.

"Rainbow, why don't you sing around me like that?"

Marc grinned cheekily. "Because you never asked." Seeing the redhead was pouting, trying to look upset, the writer kissed him. This immediately broke Nathaniel's facade and caused a sweet smile to grace his face. "That's better," Marc crooned.

"God, that was close!"

The students and teacher turned to the front of the school, and making their way into the restored courtyard was none other than Mme. Bustier's students, followed by a few other students who were caught in the middle of the Akuma attack. By the sound of it, they were talking about the Akuma battle- How they nearly had gotten hit by the Akuma a number of times and what it was like helping Ladybug and Chat Noir during some moments. Alya seemed like she was going to faint when she mentioned how she got to hold Ladybug's yoyo.

'Seems like they didn't even notice you weren't there.'

"Nino, I might leave you for her!"

"I'm glad we all managed to stay together!" Rose cheered while pulling Juleka and Ivan in for hugs.

Kim chuckled. "Yeah, too bad we lost Mari and Adrien, though," he sighed. "Hope they're okay."

'Wow, they really didn't notice you were gone.'

Nathaniel honestly didn't know what he was expecting when he would run into his classmates after Ladybug's Miracle Cure. Maybe a short string of apologies for leaving him behind when they realized it during the Akuma attack, promising they would make it up to him or definitely them being clueless for a bit until he mentioned that they had left him and only noticed Marinette and Adrien were gone followed by some awkward apologies. He didn't think the second one would hurt as much, but the redhead could feel the happiness he felt just moments ago diminishing with each smile and laugh his friends shared with each other... Without him.

Marc pulled Nathaniel close to his chest and began stroking his hair, seeing as that would calm him down when he was having one of those days. "School's almost over. Do you wanna head home?" Nathaniel seems hesitant for a moment, but Mendeleieve reassures him that it's okay.

"I'll write you two notes." What that, the two bid the class goodbye and made their way through the small crowd of students making their way into the school, careful to avoid Nathaniel's classmates.

"Mari, there you are!" Alya cheered as the bluenette rushed over to her friends. "We've been looking all over for you, girl!"

Noticing that Nathaniel was slowing down a bit with each comment from his classmates, Marc took to carrying him the rest of the way out. "It's okay, we're almost there."

"Dude, I was worried as hell!"

"Yeah, we tried calling you."

"Good thing we all made it out."

'So they do call to check on each other. What does that say about you?'

'I'll tell you. You're nothing to them.'

"... You okay?"

'Why else would they leave your sorry self behind so many times?'

"Okay?... Nath?"

'It's so they don't have to put up with you, be forced to wait as you try to catch up with them.'

Nathaniel blinked a few times as he was brought out of his headspace. Slowly, he became aware that he was outside and in Marc's arms, causing his face to turn scarlet. "Are you okay, Nath?" Marc gently asked.

"Y-yeah. I'm fine, Rainbow," he said while Marc begins to set him down. "Just need to go home, n-now."

Marc frowned as he watched his boyfriend leave. He knows it's best on some occasions to give Nathaniel his space when he gets like this, but as rare as it is for Hawkmoth to strike twice in one day, it can still happen. So, pushing down any uncertainty, Marc runs after the redhead, taking his hand before saying, "Just in case Hawkmoth decides to try again." Nathaniel doesn't say anything, only giving him a kind smile before continuing his way home.

Buttercup and Bourbon

Multimouse has had too much to drink, and Chat Noir is just wanting to escort his Purrincess home!

Based on the Snippet Sprint:

Characters - Multichat Prompt - Buttercup & Bulletin Board

First posted on the Miraculous Discordance Server!

--------

The sound of giggling drifted down to the streets below. Passersby would glance up occasionally, curious what was causing the two heroes of Paris to cause such a ruckus. The people had become complacent when it came to heroes, butterflies, villains, and the destruction caused by all three. Seeing the shadow of a figure leaping across overhead was a typical sight, and would only lead to speculation as to whether it was a weekly patrol or a supervillain on the prowl. Akuma alerts had become a regular occurrence, and measures were in place to help evacuate highly populated areas should an Akuma appear. However, laughter from the rooftops was less common, and it was a bit unnerving to hear it filter down unrestrained.

"Chat!!" Multimouse laughed, spilling her drink slightly as it sloshed around in her cup. "It's not so easy being a hero. Late nights! Lost homework! Boy troubles!!"

Chat Noir was certain that joining Multimouse--Marinette--for a drink had been a bad idea, but he also was glad that she was with him and not roaming the streets like a drunk little mouse--or worse... mice!! "Mari-Multimouse! Maybe you've had enough to drink. It's time to get you home."

"Oh, Kitty!" She crowed, and he was hit by the strong, overly sweet smell of alcohol, "Home is where the heart is!"

"That may be the case," Chat said as he moved to help her to her feet--a failed maneuver as the moment she took his hand, he was pulled down next to her. "Oof!! ...b-but you still need to head back."

She gazed at him longways, staring intently as if deep in thought. "Has anyone ever told you that your eyes look like a cat."

He let out a laugh of his own, "Yes. Many times. It comes with the Miraculous." He rolled aside and got back to his feet. "Speaking of Miraculous, I'm sure Ladybug wouldn't want a drunk mouse running around the city. So please let me escort you home!"

"But I'm not done!" She took another drink, "And besides, once I'm home, I'm just going to be surrounded by all the things I hate the most."

"The things... what things?" His curiosity was peaked, and he had to remind himself that he shouldn't bait her into talking more than she already had. She would be angry if she spoke too many of her own personal secrets to him--no matter how much he wanted to know what was going on inside the mind of the most (second most?--he still wasn't sure) brilliant girl he'd ever met.

"Eyes. They stare at me. Eyes everywhere!" She said as if telling a ghost story, earning a raised brow from the cat hero.

"Eyes?"

"Yes!! The eyes of Buttercup!!" She said dramatically, . "He stares at me when I sleep. When I work. When I wake up, he's the first thing I see. Plastered all'ver my bull'tin board. Onm'walls.Onmy'puter." Her words were starting to slur together, but he was certain he understand enough to get the idea.

"Let's get you home, Mari." He whispered, finally getting a good enough grip on her to gently lift her into his arms without resistance. "You need food...and sleep."

"I can't sleep with the eyes." She replied, burying her face into his neck and breathing in too deeply, "You smell nice."

"Thank you, but again--that comes with the Miraculous."

"You smell like... Adrien."

He froze, waiting for her to continue, choosing not to stick his foot in his mouth with the drunk hero in his arms.

"I us'd to buy i' all the ti'e. Radiant...Carefree..." She sighed, and he let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "...Dreamy..."

His cheeks dusted pink with a blush, but she was too distracted to notice.

"I should throw 'way the botl's." She mused. "And get ri' of the eyes..."

"Don't make any rash decisions, Princess." He tucked her in closer as he began leaping across rooftops. She was relaxed in his arms, and he wasn't even sure she was awake when they arrived. Landing gently on the balcony, he maneuvered so that he could open the trap door without disturbing her.

Once inside, he gently laid her on her bed. She snuggled deeper. "Can you get rid of the eyes..." Chat's keen ears picked up her mumbled words.

"Sure, Princess, you'll be safe here." He looked up, ready to make up some sort of story to remove this fictional monster she insisted existed in her room...

...and all he saw was green. Green eyes. Staring at him from every direction. He looked down at the girl, then back at the walls, hoping that his imagination (and the little bit he'd had to drink) were to blame, but he was not so lucky.

Adrien Agreste stared back at him.

Adrien Agreste in everyday clothes, latest fashion, and group photos of friends. Hearts decorated many of the photos. Drawings of flowers surrounded others--buttercups.

Buttercups.

Buttercups!

...

... Adrien Agreste is Buttercup ...

Miraculous Descendent Chapter 52: A Loyal Canine of the Pack

Previous Chapter

Right now, Dark Owl is leading another group of students out of the school while Stormy Weather is scowling down at him from her spot in the sky. She quickly flies toward him and gets directly in his face to confront him, causing the students to run in a hurry.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" Stormy Weather asks him angrily while pointing toward the running students.

"I'm evacuating the civilians so they're out of danger when Ladybug and Cat Noir arrive." Dark Owl tells her without a hint of fear toward the young girl-turned-villain

"Why are you bothering to do that? They should be here to see my incredible victory over the heroes so they'll know who the best weather girl is." Stormy Weather snaps.

"They can watch from the safety of a distance. They shouldn't be put at risk because you want to show off when we claim the Miraculous." Dark Owl tells her with a scowl as he glares back at her.

Stormy Weather growls before Hawkmoth interrupts their argument.

"Enough, Stormy Weather. Allow Dark Owl to do as he likes. He is not getting in our way by evacuating the students." Hawkmoth chastises her.

"Thank you, Hawkmoth. Be ready to be defeated if you try anything villainous after you get the Miraculous. Hoo, hoo." Dark Owl says with a nod.

"Of course," Hawkmoth says in an amused tone as he stares at Dark Owl through the connection.

"You heard Hawkmoth, Aurore. Now, keep an eye out for the false heroes while I make sure your schoolmates get to safety." Dark Owl tells her in an authoritative tone.

"My name is Stormy Weather!" She shouts at him with a scowl that Dark Owl ignores.

"Don't take that tone with your principal, young lady. We may be in costume now, but I'm still in charge of you while you're on these grounds." Dark Owl tells her, his tone not changing from the authoritative one.

Stormy Weather scowls at him, and her umbrella starts to spark slightly, but Dark Owl isn't intimidated. He keeps staring at her with his arms crossed until she reluctantly flies into the air.

"Stupid principal. Stupid Hawkmoth." She mutters in annoyance as she flies away from him.

Dark Owl watches her fly for a few seconds before returning to evacuating his students.

Unknown to the two, lying on the roof of the school and peaking down at them is Sabrina in her hero costume.

Her Miraculous suit consists of a form-fitting, long-sleeve orange shirt under a black sleeveless vest with matching form-fitting orange pants that are white at the inner legs, black boots, and black gloves. On the left side of her vest's chest is a circular brownish-orange emblem with the symbol of a dog head on it, and around her right leg is a black pouch containing a small orange metallic ball with brown and white circular patterns. On the ends of her long-sleeve shirt are two grey lines with an orange one cutting between them. Unlike Ladybug and Cat Noir, she is not wearing a domino mask and instead wears a pair of orange-tinted hunting glasses with a black frame. On top of her head is an orange police cap with three white dots on the forehead, a black visor, and fake dog ears on the top of it.

"It looks like they're fighting. Why is Hawkmoth having Dark Owl evacuate the school? He's never done that before." Sabrina says as she stares at Dark Owl while he helps another class of students shift through the ice toward the school's exit.

She frowns in confusion before looking up toward Stormy Weather and seeing her scout around to see if Ladybug and Cat Noir are coming while impatiently tapping her new umbrella in her hand.

"It doesn't look like they're a happy team-up, like with Chloe and Pixelator." Sabrina realizes before looking around.

"Where are Ladybug and Cat Noir? They're usually on top of anything happening at this school." She asks worriedly as she looks around for the two more experienced heroes with growing nervousness, not wanting to have to fight these two on her own.

With Marinette. She's desperately trying to get her mom to let her go back to school. Or at least separate from her so she can transform.

"Mom, please. I promise I'll be careful." Marinette begs as she tries to get free.

"No. You need to leave it to the heroes, Marinette." Sabine tells her daughter.

"B-but Ladybug will be looking for me. She usually checks on me after the Akuma attack to make sure I'm okay and to check if I've seen anything suspicious." Marinette tells her nervously.

That causes Sabine to pause slightly before turning to her daughter with judging eyes. Marinette reels back slightly and clams up under her mother's gaze.

Finally, Sabine loosens her grip on Marinette but doesn't drop her gaze.

"Marinette... are you telling me the truth right now?" Sabine asks while gazing at Marinette.

"Yes. If you let me go back, I can prove that Nate and I aren't lying. Please." Marinette begs.

Sabine looks at her daughter uncertainly before steeling herself and reaffirming her grip on Marinette.

"I'm sorry, my Little Star, but no. It's too dangerous with two villains." Sabine tells her daughter.

"But-" Marinette starts before being cut off.

"No, Marinette. You'll get another chance later. But I want to make sure you stay safe." Sabine tells her daughter.

Marinette looks dissatisfied and worried at her mother's words but knows nothing she says will help her. Nate also looks anxious at this turn of events and looks around for something to help them.

Meanwhile, Adrien is going through a similar problem with Nathalie. The two are waiting around the corner across from the school for Mr. Garde to arrive with the car. Nathalie watches for either of the villains while they wait while Adrien looks for a way to escape.

"Are you sure we can't help the other students escape? They're in danger, too." Adrien tells Nathalie anxiously.

"They'll be fine, Adrien. The police are already on their way and will help everyone else. Besides, the Akuma that helped us might help them, too." Nathalie tries to comfort Adrien.

At the reminder of the strange new Akuma, Adrien pauses and looks back toward the school.

"Why do you think he helped us anyway? I mean, Hawkmoth didn't care who got hurt before." Adrien states as he looks toward the school with conflicting feelings.

"Who knows? The man is willing to terrorize all of Paris for two pieces of magic jewelry. It's hard to get into the mind of someone like that. It could be the Akuma himself, too, and not Hawkmoth." Nathalie states as she taps her foot impatiently.

However, she suddenly realizes something and starts tapping on her tablet at an alarming rate. Adrien looks at Nathalie in worry before he hears ringing from the tablet. Upon hearing this, he realizes Nathalie is calling his father. Or, at least, trying to.

"Come on, Gabriel. Pick up." Nathalie mutters as she anxiously taps the ground while waiting for her boss and friend to pick up.

Back with Sabrina, she realizes that she may have to fight these two alone for a while. That line of thinking causes her to cringe in worry.

"This is not how I thought my debut as a hero would go. I thought I'd be helping Ladybug and Cat Noir." Sabrina groans.

Unknown to her, Dark Owl grows suspicious about the heroes not showing up yet and decides to help Stormy Weather in her search.

"Albert, activate infrared." Dark Owl orders.

His eyes turn red, and he looks around the school with his new heat-seeking vision until he spots a heat signature lying on the roof.

"There you are. Albert, flight mode." Dark Owl orders and activates his wings again.

He quickly flies atop the roof and lands directly in front of where Sabrina is hiding, startling her greatly. She's not the only one surprised. Upon seeing her, Dark Owl and Hawkmoth are also shocked since she's not who they were expecting.

"What is this? Another Miraculous wielder? And they're young, too?" Hawkmoth questions in shock from his base as he looks at the slightly fearful and intimidated Sabrina.

"Who are you, young lady?" Dark Owl asks suspiciously.

Taking a moment to steel herself, Sabrina stands up and looks at Dark Owl before saying.

"I'm Canine," Sabrina says while getting into a fighting stance her dad taught her, where she keeps her hands open with the palms facing the ground while widening her stance.

"I see. It seems you came here to try and stop us in Ladybug and Cat Noir's place." Dark Owl says as he strokes his beard.

At the same time, Stormy Weather takes notice of Canine's presence and flies toward her and Dark Owl.

"Who's this? This isn't Ladybug!" Stormy Weather shouts in annoyance as she stares at Canine.

"Another young hero, it appears. What should we do, Hawkmoth? She has neither of the Miraculous you're after." Dark Owl asks as he looks at Canine inquisitively.

"It doesn't matter. I am after any Miraculous I can get my hands on. It doesn't have to be the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous. Just bring me one." Hawkmoth orders the two through his connection with them.

"In that case, it's time to cage the dog." Stormy Weather says with a wicked grin as she points her umbrella at Canine and fires an ice beam at her to try and freeze the rookie heroine.

Canine rolls out of the way of the attack and reaches into her leg pouch to pull out the ball inside. She then raises it behind her and prepares to throw it at one of the villains.

When the villains see Canine's weapon, Stormy Weather lets out a cackle, dropping her guard as she laughs at Canine.

"You have a dog toy as a weapon. And I thought Ladybug's yo-yo was lame. What do you plan to do with that, play fetch with me?" Stormy Weather asks between her cackles as tears start to well in her eyes.

Canine glares at the weather-themed villain for her mockery and throws the ball at her. The ball flies toward Stormy Weather at surprising speed and crashes into her. To the surprise of everyone, the ball has a lot of force behind it and sends Stormy Weather crashing into an empty classroom across the school from them before bouncing back into Canine's hand.

Canine and Dark Owl stare in shock at what she did before Dark Owl shakes it off and narrows his eyes at the new heroine.

"I see you're not to be underestimated. If you give me your Miraculous, I promise no harm will come to you." Dark Owl tells her as he holds his hand out for Canine to give him her Miraculous.

Canine glares at Dark Owl and shifts away from him slightly while readying for another throw.

"That's not going to happen. I'm going to stop you two or keep you here until Ladybug and Cat Noir show up." She tells him before throwing the ball at Dark Owl.

Unlike Stormy Weather, though. Dark Owl understands the danger of that throw and quickly side-steps out of the way before pulling out a few owl-themed boomerangs and throwing them at Sabrina. Sabrina quickly dives out of the boomerangs' attack paths before standing up again and glaring at Dark Owl.

As she dodges, her ball slams around various parts of the school before launching back toward her and hitting her in the chest.

"Oof." She grunts as she instinctively puts her hands where the ball hits her and holds the object.

"Hahaha, it seems you're not used to your abilities yet. That's unfortunate for you but lucky for me. Surrender, luck is always on the true hero's side, hoo, hoo." Dark Owl laughs as he realizes he has an advantage.

He quickly pulls out some more boomerangs and throws them toward Canine. Her eyes widen, and she quickly jumps off the roof to the second floor.

"Why is it only the villains get an instant how-to fight book with their powers?" Sabrina groans as she sees the boomerangs stick to the roof edge near where she jumped.

Her enhanced senses quickly warn her of danger, and she instinctively jumps to the ground. Just in time, too, since a lightning bolt hits the lockers. She quickly rolls to the side and stands on her hands and knees to see Stormy Weather angrily flying out of the empty classroom.

"You are going to pay for that, Dog Breath! Don't you know that dogs should stay inside during a storm!?" Stormy Weather asks as she aims her umbrella at Canine and fires another lightning bolt.

Sabrina's eyes widen, and she quickly jumps out of the way of the second lightning bolt before running. As she runs, she throws her ball at Stormy Weather. Stormy Weather holds her umbrella up and creates a shield through a continuous creation of snow and ice to block the throw. The ball bounces off the protective barrier, sending Stormy Weather back slightly, back into Canine's hand.

Stormy Weather lowers her umbrella to better look at the running heroine with her piercing glare before using it to fire another lightning bolt that Canine ducks behind a pillar to avoid. At the same time, Dark Owl dives off the roof to the second floor and chases after Canine. She sees this and decides to try something different with her throw. Instead of aiming directly for Dark Owl or Stormy Weather, Canine throws the ball into the pillar Dark Owl is about to pass.

The ball bounces off the pillar in front of Dark Owl's head, but he doesn't have time to say anything as it immediately ricochets off the windows across from the pillar and into Dark Owl's head, sending him crashing head-first into the metal of it. The ball then sharply bounces off the floor into Canine's waiting hand.

"Yes." Canine says with a grin when she sees her idea worked.

Her happiness is short-lived thanks to Stormy Weather almost hitting a part of her body not protected by the metal pillar. She quickly has to duck to avoid the attack.

"Hold still, you mutt. Hey, hero-wannabe, hurry up and help me here!" Stormy Weather snaps at her teammate while trying to hit Canine.

"Watch your tone, young lady." Dark Owl warns her with a glare as he shakes off the damage from Canine's attack.

Canine runs through the hall before jumping to an empty classroom to try and avoid Stormy Weather's attacks. Unfortunately, it doesn't last, as Stormy Weather shoots the door off as soon as Canine manages to close it.

Thinking quickly, Canine dives under one of the desks to try and avoid being seen.

"I need to figure out how to beat them. Where are you, Ladybug?" Canine thinks in a panic as she tries to remember how the heroes beat the Akumas while wondering where the heroes are.

Marinette is rushing back to the hotel, with Nate and Sabine running behind her.

"Marinette, why are you in such a rush all of a sudden?" Sabine asks her daughter in worry as she follows behind Marinette with Nate behind her.

"I just want to get home as quickly as possible if you're not going to let me help Ladybug," Marinette tells her mom as she seems to speed up toward the hotel.

"And to get you to stop worrying about me so I can transform and help Cat Noir with the villains." Marinette mentally adds as she runs.

"Is she mad at me?" Sabine asks her mind worriedly as she watches her daughter run.

"This is my fault. If I had captured the butterfly at the time, this wouldn't have happened." Marinette mentally berates herself.

What Sabine doesn't know, besides her daughter's secret identity, is that Marinette is feeling a heavy amount of guilt for today's events due to what happened during Simon Says' debut. Because of that, she's feeling extra anxious about wanting to help defeat the villains.

"How are these two in such good shape?" Nate wonders as he struggles to chase after the two.

The group eventually arrives at the hotel, and Marinette rushes past the lobby toward the elevators with her mom hot on her heels. The two enter the waiting elevator, with Marinette rapidly pressing the button toward her room's floor. It soon closes, leaving a tired Nate behind to lean on one of the lobby chairs.

"I'm just going to wait and see what happens from down here. Good luck." Nate wishes his cousin luck before he sits in the chair he's leaning on to catch his breath.

In the elevator, Sabine gives her daughter a worried expression as Marinette anxiously looks at the floor numbers on the elevator screen rise.

"Marinette... are you angry with me for not letting you stay?" Sabine asks her daughter worriedly.

Marinette jolts in surprise and looks at her mother in shock.

"No! Why would you think that? I know you're only worried about me. Of course, I'm not mad at you." Marinette immediately promises to her mother.

"Are you sure? You seem in a hurry to get away from me." Sabine tells her daughter.

"I just want to go to my room. I'm not mad at you." Marinette tells her anxiously, not liking that her mom thinks she's mad at her.

Sabine gives her own worried look toward Marinette and finally finds her words.

"I'm sorry if you think I don't trust you to get Ladybug to talk to us. But I didn't want you anywhere near such a dangerous villain." Sabine apologizes.

"It's fine, Mama. I know you love me and just want to look after my safety. Please stop worrying about me. I promise I'm not mad at you." Marinette says before enveloping her mom in a hug.

These words and the sudden hug finally ease Sabine's worries as she quickly hugs her daughter and feels her fears melt away.

"That's good. I'm glad to hear you're not mad at me." Sabine says as she caresses her daughter's hair while hugging her.

"Of course, Mama. I'd never be mad at you. I'll show you another time that I know Ladybug. I promise." Marinette promises before releasing her hold on her mother when the elevator door opens with a ding.

"Bye, Mama. I'll be working on something in my room until Ladybug takes care of the Akumas." Marinette tells her before running toward her room.

"Alright. Let me know if you need anything." Sabine tells her daughter as she watches her run to her room. Sabine doesn't have long to watch as the elevator is called down, but she can't help but still worry about her daughter's recent actions.

Marinette quickly closes the doors to her room, and Tikki appears out of her hiding place in Marinette's jacket.

"My, today is unfortunate for you? You haven't been able to help for some time. Hopefully, nothing terrible has happened while you were stuck with your mother." Tikki says as she looks at Marinette with a slightly worried expression.

"I know. We need to get to the school as soon as possible. Hopefully, Cat Noir is doing fine, holding the villains off alone. Tikki spots on." Marinette orders, causing Tikki to enter her earrings and for her to transform.

With that, she quickly rushes out of her room toward the stairwell to get on the roof. After getting there, she jumps off and uses her yo-yo to zip back toward the school. All while thinking.

"Please be okay, please be okay."

Back with Canine, Stormy Weather floats into the room to search for Canine, only to immediately get hit by a ball thrown by Canine in her hiding place and slammed into the wall. Canine quickly uses this chance to exit her hiding spot and tackle Stormy Weather.

"Gotcha. Now give me your umbrella!" Canine shouts as she tries to take the umbrella from Stormy Weather.

However, she doesn't have enough time to get it out of Stormy Weather's grip since her instincts warn her of the boomerangs Dark Owl throws at her, and she has to duck out of the way.

"Hoo, hoo. Impressive, young lady. You are quite talented. But you won't be able to defeat both of us." Dark Owl says as he jumps between Canine and Stormy Weather to protect his ally.

Canine glares at the two villains before deciding to try something else out.

"I was hoping to save my powers for when Ladybug and Cat Noir got here so I could tell them about what I can do, and we can develop a strategy. But it looks like I have no choice." Canine thinks as she glares at the villains.

"Command!" Canine shouts, causing her Miraculous to glow bright orange.

The villains tense when they see this, but nothing seems to happen after Canine activates these powers until she speaks to them.

"Go to sleep." Canine orders while glaring at the villains.

As she orders this, orange-tinted enchanted soundwaves emit from her mouth toward the villains. Suddenly, the two find their bodies heavy, and it's hard for them to focus as they hear Canine's words.

"Wh-what's going on?" Stormy Weather questions as she holds her head in one of her hands while trying to stay upright.

"Hypnosis." Dark Owl groans as he slouches slightly while glaring at Canine.

"Go to sleep." Canine repeats while glaring at the villains as she tries to get them to fall asleep.

Dark Owl grits his teeth as the two villains start dozing off. Deciding to act quickly, Dark Owl pulls some smoke bombs out and slams them into the ground. The smoke and sudden action causes Canine to stop using her power. Using that opportunity, Dark Owl grabs Stormy Weather before pulling out a grappling hook and using it to zip out of the room.

While he escapes, it takes Canine a little time to recover and for the smoke to disperse.

"*Cough**Cough**Cough* Where did they go?" Canine asks as she looks around the classroom to see the two already gone.

She quickly runs out of the room to look for the villains and notices a weakened Dark Owl holding Stormy Weather over his shoulder while climbing onto the school roof.

"Stop!" She shouts at them, but no soundwave comes from her mouth.

Dark Owl doesn't listen to her and runs toward the other side to escape.

"Albert, flight mode." Dark Owl says through his tiredness as he runs off the edge of the school roof and plummets toward the ground.

His cape quickly changes into wings, and he glides off, out of Canine's reach. Not knowing this, Canine quickly chases after the villains and gets atop the roof to find them.

"Where did they go?" Canine asks in a panic as she looks around the roof to try and figure out where they went.

"Ugh, what do I do? Should I use Fetch? No, I'll be out of powers to use and have my timer start if I do. I can't do that while there are still two of them running around. It's too much of a risk. Where are the heroes?" Canine asks as she begins to panic about what to do to get the villains back.

She doesn't have to panic for long, though. She soon hears something landing on the roof behind her and then.

"Who are you?" A feminine voice asks behind her.

Canine quickly turns around while positioning her arm to make another throw before seeing Ladybug, who is in her own fighting stance upon seeing Canine's arm raised, standing behind her. When she sees it's one of the heroes, all tension is released, and she lets out a relieved sigh.

"Oh, thank goodness." Canine says happily, and Ladybug drops her guard when she sees how relieved Canine is to see her.

"Are you the one who's been fighting the villains? Where is Cat Noir?" Ladybug asks in worry as she looks around for her partner.

"I'm sorry, I haven't seen him. I've been fighting them by myself. I'm Canine, by the way. It's great working with you again, Ladybug." Canine introduces herself with a kind smile as she looks at the hero.

Ladybug is surprised at the introduction before smiling happily when she realizes her, Cat Noir, and Nate's gamble paid off, and they got an ally out of it.

"It's nice to meet you, Canine. I'm sorry you had to fight on your own like that. I don't know about Cat Noir, but I couldn't get away to transform without anyone seeing for a while." Ladybug apologizes to the rookie.

"I'm just thankful that you're here now." Canine says in relief as she gives Ladybug a tired smile.

Ladybug nods before looking around for the villains.

"Where are the Akumas anyway? Did you beat them by yourself?" Ladybug asks her.

Canine drops her head sadly while saying.

"No, they managed to get away. I'm sorry." Canine apologizes.

This gets a quick and panicked response from Ladybug as she frantically waves her arms while trying to calm Canine down.

"You don't need to apologize. This whole situation is my fault because I let Stormy Weather's butterfly get away when I was fighting her. Besides, there's a new Akuma whose abilities we don't know about, and you're new to this. It's not your fault they got away. The fact they didn't take your Miraculous means you're doing amazing." Ladybug promises to the rookie heroine.

"I still feel bad, though." Canine apologizes again.

"I'm sure we'll be fine. First, we need to find the Akumas again." Ladybug tells her.

"I might have a way to bring them back. Or at least one of them. But I'll only have five minutes before I transform back after I use it." Canine explains while raising a hand.

Ladybug blinks in surprise for a second before smiling.

Here's a link to Canine's Costume Design

Next Chapter

MIRACULOUS FIC RECOMENDATIONS!! (Part 2)

You can find part 1 here.

The first one was really popular! So I decided to make a second part.

The rules are the same:

All of the fics will be rated Teen and up audiences or lower. Also if I don’t put the author’s tumblr is because they didn’t put it in the fic or/and I couldn’t find it.

The only thing that changes is that I would be putting the pairing in the description of the fic.

Without further ado...

Written in the Stars by Boogum (@botherkupo here on tumblr!)

Pairing: Marichat and Adrienette.

He was the god of destruction. She was a princess whose kingdom had been prophesied to fall. To save her people, she became his wife. To save him, she would have to do the impossible. The castle has secrets, the gods are watching, and time is running out.

Chapters: 37/37

TW for mild violence.

Arrange marriage, God AU. While I'm making this list, I still haven't finished the fic, but I had to recommend it because is THAT good. The way I gasped out loud while reading some of the plot twists. The worldbuilding is so good, and even if you aren't into AUs that deviate a lot from cannon like me, I 100% reccomend it.

Need a Lift? again by Boogum.

Pairing: DJWifi

Getting stranded on a foreign planet sucked. Luckily for Nino, his rival was willing to give him a lift home. Unluckily for Nino, she was beautiful and funny and he might just be in love with her.

Chapters: 1/1

Space Bounty Hunter AU! Really sweet and funny. If you are into flustered!Nino then this fic is for you.

hey, you by peachcitt (@peachcitt here on tumblr!)

Pairing: Adrienette

“Have you ever had a dream about someone that changes the way you think of them?”

or Adrien has a dream about Marinette.

Chapters: 1/1

Okay so, peachcitt is one of my favorite ml writers. Everything that they write is sooo good y'all, and i'm already a sucker for adrienette, so I cannot recommend this fic (or any of theirs) enough.

double dare again by peachcitt (I told ya!)

Pairing: Ladrien (with lots of sided ladynoir)

“Don’t ever do that again,” Marinette says, maybe a little too emphatically, and Adrien looks at her, his expression quiet. His cheeks, Marinette notices, are a little red.

“But I wanted to save you,” he says.

or Ladybug and Adrien can't seem to stop running into each other. (whether that is on accident or on purpose is nobody's business but their own, of course).

Chapters: 30/30

This was a ladrien june fic! Every chapter corresponds to the day's prompts but it also continues a story. If that doesn't make you want to read it then I don't know what it will. I fear fanfic writers, they're insane.

(not) so much by therentyoupay (@therentyoupayfanfiction here on tumblr!)

Pairing: Marichat and adrienette

(The claws are sharp, but the host of Destruction—for all of his loudmouth chaos and lack of reserve—is paradoxically careful.)

Chapters: 1/1

In which Chat Noir pays a visit not long after Marinette has made a pretty difficult decision, and they accidentally make a routine.

Prompt: Marinette gives Chat a hickey. Adrien has a suspiciously similar looking hickey the next day at school...

Gotta be honest with y'all, I did not expect this fic to be as good as it is. The adrienette has everything a stablished!Marichat should have. Marinette conflicted with her feelings? Check. Adrien being a hot mess bc That's My Girlfriend But She Doesn't Know That? Check. Them being absolute idiots? Check. It's good!

Doctor, Doctor, Give Me The News (Your Lips Is The Only Cure I Could Use) by BreG21.

Pairing: Adrienette

Rainwater sloshed up from the pools they had made on the sidewalk and coated his jean pants with every step he took. He couldn't bring himself to care.

He sniffed away some of the water that dribbled down his matted head. "Yeah?"

He paused as if to consider his words while Adrien stared down at him, so lost. "You weren't wrong when you thought you knew. A part of you wanted it to be her, but it was too perfect, you let the illusion fool you because how would you get that lucky. But trust me, Adrien. You weren't wrong."

He wasn't wrong? What was he not wrong about?

You weren't wrong. You want it to be her.

And it finally clicked as a small gasp wisped past his lips. He wasn't wrong.

In which, Plagg falls ill, and with Fu gone and Ladybug being the guardian now, has to go find her civilian self-even with the knowledge that she might not like that-is shocked to realize that even with having the kwami that was supposed to embodied the very being of bad luck, Adrien could conclude the very opposite of what he had thought for so long.

He was so very lucky.

Chapters: 1/1

I screamed so hard while reading this fic. It's just one of those who gets the characters right. Do you like a good reveal? Go read this now.

Operation Mega Sleepover by InTheWild (@smellerbeee here on tumblr!)

Pairing: Adrienette

When Alya and Nino drop out of their long awaited mega-sleepover at the last minute, it leaves Marinette and Adrien alone together for the night. An Adrinette one-shot with lots of fluff and sleepover shenanigans.

Chapters: 1/1

I just,,, I love adrienette fluff so much,,, I love them,,,

You, Me & A Little Bit Of The Future by joonapeach.

Pairing: this is a fortunate case of all lovesquare shenanigans™

Marinette expects some disaster on her first outing alone with Adrien.

She just doesn't expect that disaster to be her future self passing off a baby for her to take care of with Adrien.

(Alternatively... two idiots obliviously in love cooing over their daughter while acting like they have no idea whose kid this is.)

Chapters: 1/1

I think the description says anything that it needs to be said. It's really sweet and funny and I love how they just change their minds so quickly and get emo for literally nothing. Peak shakesperean dumbasery.

The entire Marry That Girl series by Miraculous_Max (Maximilian_Alexander).

Pairing: Adrienette

Let’s say Marinette has a special sketchbook. This sketchbook is filled with drawings of their future house, of Adrien as an adult in multiple occupational settings, of Marinette and Adrien’s wedding, and most importantly, their future children.

Let's say Adrien found this sketchbook.

Works: 8 (All are 1/1 chapters)

Just realized how this list exposes me as number 1 adrienette sucker... oh well. I love how Adrien doesn't feel weirded out by the intensity of Marinette's crush. He likes it! He's as weird and romantic as her! That's one of the reasons I love the lovesquare so much and it makes me happy to see that everyone is in the same boat with me.

Strenght by 11JJ11.

Pairing: Adrienette

Marinette knew she was much stronger than she looked thanks to being a hero. So when her class had an arm wrestling contest she knew that she could beat all of them with ease, but she wasn't expecting anyone else to come close.

Chapters: 1/1

Good ol' accidental reveal feat. the entire class shenanigans. I, once again, screamed for an adrienette fic. Who could've thought.

Super Fan by Taliax.

Pairing: Ladrien

It was a good thing Alya was holding the phone and not her, because it would have slipped from her fingers and shattered. How had she not noticed? She had been there, and somehow she’d missed her crush looking at her like she was an angel sent from heaven.

Forget the perfume ad. This picture was going to be her new desktop.

(In which Marinette realizes that she and Adrien might both be obsessive fans.)

Chapters: 1/1

Canon divergent from after Gorizilla. They're so dumb. That's my opinion on this fic.

How to Kiss Your Crush in Five Minutes or Less also by Taliax.

Pairing: Ladrien

He just needed to know if Ladybug needed Chat Noir. He didn't expect to learn just how much she wanted Adrien.

This would be the best five minutes of his life, if he didn't expect her to forget it.

Chapters: 1/1

CW for making out.

Set during Desperada. I promise there's a happy ending. Also Luka is there for some reason, felt really bad for him.

Laying Down the Rules: The Gabriel Agreste Clauses by LadyKae

Gen

Adrien leaves the manor on a dark and stormy night and seeks sanctuary at the only place he feels safe: The Home of the Dupain-Cheng Family. When Sabine learns why her dear boy is fleeing to her home in the middle of the night, she makes a personal visit to one Gabriel Agreste.

There's more rules in play, but not for Adrien and Marinette.

Chapters: 1/1

This is just Sabine going to beat the fuck out of Gabriel and it's really satifying ngl

4am. by hannieks

Pairing: post-reveal lovesquare

In which Adrien has the cat tendency to wake up their owners at stupid o'clock, and Marinette just wants to sleep. Cuteness ensues.

Chapters: 1/1

Really short but really sweet. If you like Adrien acting like a cat then you would like this.

Can I Date You(r Character)? by midnightstarlightwrites (@midnightstarlightwrites here on tumblr!)

Pairing: Adrienette

Adrien turned to her, something unreadable in his gaze. “Are you ok with this?” he asked.

And what a loaded question that was. Was she ok with it? Was she ok with the one guy she couldn’t seem to get over in real life kissing her in a game of Dungeons and Dragons? When she put it like that, it seemed a bit silly to get so worked up.

It was just a game...right?

She was ok with it, right?

“Sure,” she lied. “I’m ok with it.”

When Adrien's character falls in love with Marinette's, they decided to date in-game. What could go wrong?

Chapters: 7/?

THIS ONE IS SO CUTE. You want to scream??? Read this.

two idiots and a hamster by Boogum (again) and carpisuns (@carpisuns here on tumblr)

Pairing: Adrienette

How do you hide your superhero identity from your roommate? (spoiler alert: badly)

Chapters: 5/?

Once @anna-scribbles described this fic as "is literally the closest i’ve ever seen a fic come to matching the energy of canon", and I couldn't have described it better.

And that's all for now! Next time I will probably make an only DJWifi list since I've been treating them so dirty lol.

Miraculous Ladybug and the Valiant Annuler     by: Haphira

7. Lila Strikes Again - this time Lila goes to Marinette’s parents

“Marinette, can you come down please?” Sabine called up to her daughter. 

“Just a sec!” Marinette replied, a thump was heard and the pounding of feet down stairs. As Marinette entered the kitchen she saw Sabine comforting Lila who was apparently crying into her hands which covered her face. Marinette resisted the urge to run, she didn’t know what Lila had planned but surely her parents wouldn’t fall for it… right? 

Marinette swallowed hard, trying to calm her twisting stomach, before she met Sabine’s eyes. Sabine had confusion and sympathy in her gaze. Which was good, it means that Sabine hadn’t fallen for Lila’s lies right away. Marinette felt her hand shake and quickly clasped her hands behind her back to hide it. 

“What’s going on, maman?” Marinette questioned. Hoping she hid the tremor in her voice. 

“Oh, there you are, Lila was just trying to explain why she was upset. What’s wrong, dear?” Lila sniffled and peaked up from her hands. 

“I-I don’t mean to cause you any trouble it’s just-” Lila sniffled hard and wiped a tear from her eye. 

“I saw Marinette cheating in class today during our test. I mean I don’t think she meant any harm but she was copying off the boy in front of her.” Lila looked up to Sabine, lip trembling, a perfect picture of innocence. Sabine pursed her lips together and furrowed her brow.

“That doesn’t sound like my Marinette, are you sure Lila?” Lila nodded and gulped before answering.

“Yes, it was my good friend, Adrien, that sat in front of her.” At Lila’s words, Marinette’s blood ran cold. 

“Adrien, that nice blonde boy, right?” Sabine words had an edge to them that had chills run down Marinette’s spine. Her breath started to come quicker, vaguely realizing she was going into a panic attack. 

Lila nodded again and hid behind her hands again, “I just had to tell you to protect Adrien, I’m sure Marinette wasn’t trying to be harmful but I thought you should know.” 

“Thank you Lila, that was very courageous of you, please take something sweet before you go, Tom will lead you out.” Sure enough Tom stood in the doorway with a barely concealed stormy face. Lila bowed her head and followed him out of the bakery.

Marinette scrambled in her mind, trying to figure out how to tell her parents she didn’t do that and Lila was lying. Her mouth opened and closed repeatedly while her mind ran in circles.

Sabine took one look at her daughter and sighed. 

“Marinette.” She called, causing Marinette to shut her mouth and go stiff.

“I know you are… overly excited about your crush,” Sabine put a hand on Marinette’s shoulder and rubbed it in comfort.

“But you shouldn’t be using school time to-”

“Maman, I didn’t do anything like that!” Marinette jutted in, desperation colored her voice, her eyes big and pleading. Sabine gave the ‘mom’ look and Marinette felt dread fill her. 

“That’s enough, you are grounded for a week and you will apologize to Adrien as well.” Marinette felt tears well up and her throat close. Marinette nodded and hung her head as she headed back up to her room.

Her parents didn’t believe her. Her parents believed Lila. Marinette felt numb when she got back to her room. Tikki floated up with solemn eyes and watched Marinette stumble to her bed and flop down. 

“Tikki, I don’t know what to do anymore.” Tikki floated closer to Marinette and heard her speak again.

“They were supposed to support me, they were supposed to believe me.” Marinette faced her head away from Tikki to stare at her wall with Adrien pictures on it. 

Things haven't been going well for her and Marinette was starting to wonder if the universe was punishing her for something. She still needed to go talk to Master Fu about Chat Noir and hope that things will change on that front. Unfortunately the things with Lila are only getting worse. 

As Marinette stared at Adrien’s sunny smile it felt like he was mocking her for being upset, she knew that he would never do that but it seems even her mind was against her. 

“Marinette, why don’t you go to the balcony for some fresh air?” Tikki asked, already starting up toward the latch on the sky light. Marinette sighed and nodded, she needed space and out of her room, going to the balcony was the next best thing other than swinging around Paris as Ladybug. 

After dragging herself up to the balcony and into her lounge chair Marinette flopped down and watched the sun fade. Slowly her eyes closed and her body started to relax, breathing in the smell of her plants Marinette softly fell asleep. 

Chapter 8

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34663405/chapters/86661067 

Various Valentine's Kisses

Summary: Chloé and Alix's Valentine's Day kisses over the years.

MLB Femslash February Day 14: Kiss (Free Slot)

Prompt By: @mlbfemslashfebruary

~~~~When Chloé and Alix were six~~~~

With the help Bulter Jean, Chloé made Valentine's Day chocolates for Adrien, André, Audrey, and Alix.

When she gave Adrien his chocolate, he was so happy, he hugged her tightly. André did the same when he got his chocolate.

But when it came to give Audrey her chocolate, it didn't go well.

Audrey takes the chocolates from her, calls them "utterly fattening", and throws them in the trash right in front of Chloé.

She was so upset by this; she runs into her room and locks the door. She completely forgot that Alim and Dalia were bringing Alix over.

When Alix got there, Chloé she quickly went to knock on Chloé's door.

"Chloé! It's Alix! I got you something!"

When Chloé hears those words, she quickly wipes the tears from her face and goes to open the door.

But when Alix saw her, she could tell she's been crying.

"Are you okay?"

"No... Mommy didn't like the chocolate I made for her."

Alix had one mission at the moment. And that mission was to stop her friend from being sad with her gift.

Alix then pulls a necklace out of her pocket and gives it to Chloé.

When Chloé saw the necklace, she couldn't but smile.

"It's so pretty! Where'd you get it?!"

"My mom helped me make it for you! Dad and Jally have one too!"

Chloé quickly puts on the necklace and quickly remembers that she has the chocolate for Alix already wrapped up.

Chloé then quickly goes to her bed, grabs the chocolate and gives it to.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Ally-Kins!"

Chloé then gives Alix a quick peak on the forehead before running out the room to show Butler Jean and André her new necklace.

Alix is right behind her, eating her chocolate of course.

~~~~Queen Bee meeting Bunnix~~~~

Chloé was more than happy to be Queen Bee again. She was going to be sure to not mess this up.

After making up for the wrong things that she's done and becoming more mature, Chloé was made Co Welder of the Bee Miraculous, along with Zoé.

Today Ladybug and Chat Noir were introducing the team to another heroine that's been secretly helping out with Time Travel.

"Alright everyone, we'd like you all to meet Bunnix! The heroine of the last chance."

"How does it feel to be finally known by the other team members?"

"Took ya long enough to introduce me."

That comment made Queen Bee giggle a bit.

Most of Ladybug and Chat Noir's team had multiple questions for Bunnix. Most of said questions couldn't be answers though.

Queen Bee just stood back and stared at the rabbit heroine.

"I can't put my finger out it, but she seems REALLY similar. Short, sassy, cute- Whoa! Where did that come from?!"

The Bee Heroine's thoughts began to wander as she remembered that today was also Valentine's Day.

She even started thinking about if she and Bunnix were to kiss, would it be in magazines like Ladybug and Chat Noir's first kiss?!

Queen Bee was trying so hard to keep herself from blushing, she didn't even notice Bunnix walk up to her.

"It's nice to see you as Queen Bee again. I look forward to working with you! Hope you're able to keep up though."

Bunnix then holds her hand out for Queen Bee to shake.

Queen Bee then shakes the shorter heroine's hand.

"I look forward to working with you too, Bitty-Bun~"

Before realizing what she was doing, Queen Bee realized she was kissing Bunnix's hand.

This of course causes both of their faces to turn beet red and for the bee heroine to quickly let go of her hand.

"Well, see you around!"

She quickly uses her spinning top to swing away from the other heroes.

Bunnix watches her leave with a smirk.

"Chloé, you absolute dork."

~~~~Trouble in New York~~~~

It was Valentine's Day in New York city.

A civilian got their heart broken and decided to make everyone else's problem by becoming a super villain.

Chloé and Alix just so happen to be there, celebrating their first Valentine's Day as a couple.

Chloé quickly transforms into Queen Bee and gets Alix to safety.

The fight needed to be won with the help of all of the heroes of New York.

Alix wishes that she could help as she watched from in front of the hotel, they were staying in but using her Miraculous is too dangerous.

After a whole hour of fighting, Queen Bee lands in front of Alix, who immediately hugs her as tight as she could.

"Damnit Queen! Don't scare me like that!"

"It's okay, Ally-Kins, I'm alright-"

Before Queen Bee could say anything else, Alix gives her a long and passionate kiss.

Queen Bee melts into the kiss, completely forgetting some of the New York heroes and heroines were behind them.

"Should we say something?"

"No, let's just go."

"They remind me of how I was with Barb when we were younger!"

The next day, Chloé and Alix were getting ready to go back to Paris when Zoé rans up to them with her phone out.

"You two gotta see these!"

Chloé and Alix blush as they read the article on Zoé's phone.

"Queen Bee is also the Queen of Hearts as she was caught kissing her special lady!"

~~~~Bunnix's special surprise~~~~

Chloé's been waiting for all Bunnix to come back from a mission with Ladybug all day.

She was obviously both worried and scared. She knows Bunnix has been gone longer for certain missions, but that didn't stop her from worrying about and missing her.

Chloé was pacing back and forth when Bunnix's Burrow opens, and the rabbit heroine walked through it.

"Sorry if I worried you Chloé -"

Before Bunnix could say another word, Chloé tackled her into a tight hug and started kissing her face over and over again.

"Where have you been?! I've been worried! I actually thought you were hurt!!"

"Sorry, I just couldn't wait to give you your presents."

Chloé then realizes that Bunnix had a box in her hand. She knew it wasn't her birthday. Then she looked at the calendar and then the clock and wall.

She then realized that it was pass midnight and now Valentine's Day.

"You dork, you couldn't wait until the morning?"

"No, no I couldn't."

Bunnix then puts the gift on a table, picks Chloé up and gives her a kiss on the lips, which the blonde happily melts into.

The two then pull away from their kiss while giggling.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Queenie."

"Happy Valentine's Day, Bun-Bun."

Chloé then jumps out of Bunnix’s arms to open her gift.

When she opens the box, she sees a pretty necklace that looks like a small bunny’s head that was clearly made from different types of diamonds.

“Awww! It’s so cute!“

Bunnix then wraps her arm around Chloé’s waist and kisses her on the cheek.

“I knew you would.”

Hope you all enjoyed this!

Future Perfect

This is my @mlsecretsanta fic for @crispypata! Crispy asked for DJWifi and Bunnyx, so I delivered.

*

It’s been a long week, and Alya is grateful for some alone time. While it’s always nice to have the others around, there’s an unstated pleasure in being the only one of her friends awake this early. Nino and Marinette are always asleep until very shortly before class, and Adrien may be awake, but his driver won’t be here for at least another twenty minutes. That’s a precious twenty minutes away from her sisters, away from anybody else. A precious twenty minutes of quiet.

Normally she’d spend this time updating the Ladyblog, moderating comments, writing posts, but after last night’s battle she just… she needs some time. Time to herself.

She’s shaking, just a little. She’s not even touching her phone. For the first time in a while, she’s actually reading a physical comic book—specifically, The Mighty Majestia Issue #48. Her first comic. A gift from her father when she was a little girl. It used to make her feel better when things were going bad. She needs that, a little bit, today. The feel of the paper under her fingertips.

It wasn’t her first near-death experience—she’s had a lot of those since Hawkmoth appeared in Paris. But Ladybug almost hadn’t made it last night. Alya had gone running after the Akuma, like usual, and…

A body flops down next to her on the bench. The warmth and weight of it—she glances to the side, and meets the familiar warm eyes of Nino.

“You okay?” he asks, laying his hand on top of the comic. “You haven’t read this since before we met.”

Alya nods. “Last night was bad,” she says.

Nino nods. “Yeah,” he responds. “Yeah it was.”

He doesn’t say anything else.

Alya is rarely the most perceptive person—more passionate than perceptive, honestly, though not for lack of trying (she tries really hard, it’s just… hard to tell what other people aren’t saying sometimes)—but she cares, and Nino is at school forty minutes before he’s usually awake and he seems unusually tense. She closes her comic. “Babe?”

Nino sighs, looking down as he picks at a hangnail on his thumb. “I can’t keep watching you die, Als.”

Alya’s heart judders. “You’re not okay, then.”

He shakes his head. “I mean Rena Rouge is one thing. I know you can protect yourself, and Ladybug is right there if things go bad. But every time I see you chase after a giant baby with no protection but that sexy plaid shirt...”

“I have a responsibility, Nino!” she says.

“I know,” Nino says quietly. “I can’t really ask you to stop, either.”

Alya swallows. “Are you... breaking up with me?”

Nino looks at her for a moment, then snorts. “Hell no.” He reaches up to Alya’s cheek, brushing her hair away from her ear. “You ain’t getting away from me that easy, girl.”

Alya relaxes, leaning into his palm. “Attaboy,” she says.

Nino grimaces. “I might… need a day or two to process, though.” He swallows. “I’m sorry.”

Alya’s heart falls. “You’re sure.” It’s not a question—Nino doesn’t make decisions half-cocked the way she does. He thinks, and considers, and once his choice is made, he sticks to it. That surety—that stability—is one of the reasons she loves him. Even if right now it’s hurting her.

“I’m sure,” he says. “Just… I need a few days after. You know.” He hangs his head. “Seeing you die again.”

Oh, God, Alya wants to slap him. And maybe a year ago she would have. But today-Alya is not last-year-Alya, and, instead, she just drops her head a little. “It was a bad one, wasn’t it,” she says.

*

Alya trudges out of class, dragging her feet. It’s been a difficult day, to say the least, and Marinette—bless her—may be trying to help, but there’s not all that much to do.

“We could go to my place and stuff ourselves with Beignets,” Marinette offers, with her characteristic hyperenergetic movement. “I know you love the Majestia movie?”

Alya shakes her head. “I relax a bit better when I move,” she says. She looks at the basketball hoops. “Can you stick around for…” She catches a hint of green out of the corner of her eye—a familiar shade, one that she’s seen quite a lot. She blinks. “For a few…” She turns her head, and there—staring down at her from the roof of the school—is Carapace. “Uh.”

Marinette follows her gaze. “What are you—”

Carapace’s head jerks as he seems to realize that he’s been spotted, and he leaps down out of sight.

“What is he doing?” Alya murmurs.

Marinette’s iron fingers wrap around her bicep. “Alya,” she hisses, “that’s not Carapace.”

“What do you mean?” Alya says, turning her head, just in time to catch a glimpse of Nino—as Nino, not as Carapace—walking out of the locker room on the opposite side of the school from where Carapace disappeared. It’s too soon, too fast—there’s no way he could’ve come around the school that quickly.

“Excuse me,” she says, bolting towards her boyfriend. She grabs his arm and yanks him away from Adrien.

“Babe... what?” he says, looking at her like she just grew a second head.

“I just saw Carapace on the roof,” she hisses.

His eyes widen behind his glasses.

*

They didn’t really discuss it, at least not verbally, but they both pretty easily came to the decision that whoever this is, stealing their identities is not something this person gets to get away with. They don’t even talk it through before they’ve agreed to chase this imposter down.

“You’re sure he went this way?” Nino asks as they charge off down the street toward where Alya had last seen the false Carapace.

“Yes, I’m—!” Alya starts to snap, before she catches herself and—stopping her headlong charge by pressing a palm into a nearby wall—breathes in. “Sorry, sorry.” She glances at him. “Pretty sure, yeah.”

“God, I wish I had my shield,” Nino mutters. He grabs her hand and meets her eyes with his characteristic Nino Soft Look. “If this ends up being a bad one, please take cover?”

Alya grimaces. “The Akuma is using your face, Babe,” she says.

“Please.” His voice is calm and soft.

Alya thinks about how distraught he was this morning, how little she wants to do that to him again. “I’ll—I’ll try.”

Nino smiles. “That’s really all I can ask, isn’t it.”

Alya smiles, tugging him along. “You knew I was crazy when I asked you out,” she says, building carefully building back up to a run.

Nino snorts, vaulting over a street barrier. “That I did.”

*

It takes barely a minute before they reach the spot where the false Carapace must’ve gone, leaving them looking down wide avenues packed with people—none of whom are wearing a green hood.

“We lost him,” Nino says, puffing.

“I mean,” Alya gasps, “duh.” She leans onto her knees. “He’s got—powers, and we—we have, what—about eight—months of parkour training?”

A familiar whizz-crack comes from above, as a spotted red figure drops down in front of them. “Alya!” Ladybug says, glancing confusedly at Nino. “Did you see where Carapace went?”

“Nope,” Alya says. She leans in toward Ladybug, carefully eyeing the other people who are watching the exchange. “Definitely an Akuma, then?” she whispers, quietly enough that nobody else is alarmed.

“Maybe?” Ladybug whispers back. “Or a Sentimonster, or. Well. One other thing.”

Alya’s eyebrows narrow. “What other thing?”

Ladybug shakes her head. “Probably not important,” she says. She straightens and backs away, whipping her yo-yo in rapid circles. “Everyone stay calm and quietly evacuate the area,” she says in a clear, authoritative voice. “Calmly, please! Everything is under control.”

There’s a growing undercurrent of panic in the crowd at Ladybug’s words, but there’s a force behind her last sentence, a reassurance, that passes calm through the crowd like a ripple. Much to Alya’s surprise, there’s no stampede, no rush to flee. Everyone actually listens, beginning to carefully file away, emptying out the street.

“Any chance we could get our Miraculi?” Nino asks. “I don’t like this.”

Ladybug glances over her shoulder at him. “Not until Chat gets here,” she says. “I can’t just leave the Akuma without anyone containing it.”

A black blur drops out of the sky, rolling and springing to his feet next to Ladybug. “Good thing I’m here, then!” Chat says, leaning his elbow onto her shoulder.

Ladybug rolls her eyes. “Always so dramatic,” she says, turning to her partner. “Can you hold down the fort for a few while I grab backup?”

Chat eyes Alya and Nino. “So long as the Ladyblogger doesn’t get herself killed, yes.”

*

There’s still been no sighting of the fake Carapace by the time Ladybug returns carrying the bracelet and the necklace. Chat has been running across the rooftops, spying into alleyways, but hasn’t seen scale nor shell of him.

“Alya Césaire and Nino Lahiffe,” Ladybug intones, holding the two Miraculi aloft. “I’m trusting you with the Miraculous of the Fox and Turtle.” She purses her lip. “I’m going to ask you to switch, though. I don’t want us mixing up our Carapi.”

Alya grimaces, but Nino just nods. “Makes sense,” he says, taking the necklace and draping it around his neck. It sparks, and a tiny fox spirals out from it. “Trixx, Let’s Pounce!” Nino calls.

He flashes orange, sparks running across his whole body, and suddenly Nino is gone, replaced by an orange-clad superhero. He still has Carapace’s hood, peaked down over his forehead, with ears poking through holes in the top. Leggings are tucked into combat boots, black gloves cuffed over white-and-orange sleeves. He looks down at his arms, twisting his hands to look at both sides. “Hmm,” he says. “Pretty cool.”

“What should we call you?” Ladybug says.

Nino meets Alya’s eyes. “What about… Reynard?” he says.

“Reynard it is,” Ladybug says. She turns to Alya, handing her the jade bracelet. “You ready?”

“Always,” Alya says, sliding the bracelet onto her wrist. “Wayzz, Shell On!”

She feels her hair lift into a high ponytail as her glasses meld to her face into a domino mask. Unlike the Rena Rouge transformation, which slims her down, she feels herself bulking up. Armor plates slam into place around her chest, shoulders, and thighs. Everything feels heavier, but also stronger, more stable.

Reynard whistles. “Damn, babe,” he says. “Green looks good on you.”

Tortue Verte grins. “You expected anything else?” she ask. She absently lifts the shield. “Damn, this thing is heavy,” she says, looking at Reynard. “How do you even lift it?”

“Practice,” Reynard says, twirling the flute. “This is really light!”

“It’s basically bamboo,” Tortue replies, slinging the shield onto her back. “You ready?”

Reynard sheathes the flute on his own back. “Let’s take this guy down.”

*

Tortue Verte’s super jump is a lot like Rena Rouge’s—though, given the balance between her being slightly stronger with the Turtle and also being heavier, it’s a little weird to balance. She gets more distance but less height with each jump, and since her brain keeps expecting Rena’s jump arc, she keeps misjudging where she’s landing.

She lands hard on the side of her foot, twisting her ankle and stumbling shoulder-first into a chimney with a yelp. Her ankle is struck by stabbing pain, and she immediately collapses onto her side. She lies there on the roof, huffing, feeling desperate and foolish. This is not what she was hoping for.

She carefully drags herself up the chimney into a sitting position, carefully pulling the shield from her back and dialing Reynard.

“Hey babe,” he says, his orange-hooded face filling the screen. “You good?”

She shakes her head. “Landed bad,” she says. “I think I twisted my ankle.”

Reynard’s eyes widen behind his goggles. “Where are you?” he says. “I’ll be there in a—”

“Babe!” she interrupts. “Akuma. I’ll be fine up here.”

“Are you sure?”

She nods. “I’m sure,” she says. “Give that fake hell.” She hangs up, then collapses backward against the chimney with a gasp.

“Sorry I didn’t catch you,” a voice—a familiar one, but one she can’t quite place—says from behind her. “I think you’d have broken a few of my bones.”

She whips her head around to see a red-haired woman dressed in blue and white, bunny ears sprouting from her head, leaning on an umbrella as if it were a cane. Tortue tries to leap to her feet, shield up, but pain spikes through her ankle the second her foot meets shingle. “Augh!”

The woman immediately drops the umbrella, and her arms are around Tortue’s body. “Careful,” she says. “Don’t want to put too much weight on that.”

“Don’t touch me,” Tortue growls.

The woman laughs. “Relax, Foxy. I’m not an Akuma.”

Tortue blinks. Foxy? She’s wearing the Turtle, not the Fox, which means… “You—you know who I am.”

The woman smirks and throws up a peace sign. “The name’s Bunnyx,” she says. “Wielder of the Miraculous of Time, from ten years in the future.”

“Prove it,” Tortue says. “What’s Ladybug’s real name?”

Bunnyx snorts. “You’re not getting it that easily… Alya,” she says. “Also, Nino’s sort of downplaying how worried about you he is. You really should start being more careful before you give him a heart attack.”

Tortue stares at Bunnyx, then blinks. “...Okay, you’re for real,” she says. “What are you doing here? Are you warning us about something?”

Bunnyx shakes her head. “I brought Carapace and Rena back from my time for one reason,” she says. “Future Hawkmoth has discovered Ladybug’s identity, which has put her daughter in danger.”

“Daughter?” Tortue says.

Bunnyx continues as if she hasn’t heard. “Ladybug asked me to bring her back in time to protect her from Future Hawkmoth, but I needed backup just in case she followed us. You and your boyfriend were the obvious choice.”

“Where is she?” Tortue says, trying to work her way to her feet. She hisses as pain lances through her ankle again.

“Jeez, stay down, Tortue!” Bunnyx says, carefully easing her back into a sitting position. “You need to be careful. We need you for this one.”

“Don’t bother,” says a voice that sounds like Tortue’s own as an older, taller Rena Rouge lands in a crouch. “I had absolutely no self-preservation at that age.”

Carapace lands next to her, softer, gentler. “You nearly killed me like eight times,” he says, cradling a baby in his arms. He looks down at Tortue. “Hey, babe.”

Rena rolls her eyes, gently punching Carapace’s shoulder. “Don’t flirt with young me, you butt,” she says.

Tortue stares at the baby, wide-eyed. “Is that…” she murmurs.

Rena nods. “Our god-daughter,” she says.

Carapace smiles. “Do you want to hold her?”

*

“She’s… mine?” Ladybug says, gazing down into her daughter’s emerald-green eyes.

The baby laughs, reaching up toward her mother’s face and pressing her chubby palm into Ladybug’s cheek.

“Who’s the father?” Chat says to Bunnyx, hope shining in his eyes. (Tortue admits to herself that she’s just as interested in finding out.)

Bunnyx smirks. “Oh, Kitty Noir, you know I can’t tell you.”

Chat looks crestfallen. “Not even a hint?”

“She’s so small,” Ladybug whispers, pointing a finger at her daughter’s face. The baby laughs again, gripping her mother’s finger in between her hands.

“You said she’s my—our god-daughter?” Tortue says.

Rena laughs. “My boyfriend has spent more time pampering this little terror than he has me lately,” she says. She turns and pokes Reynard in the chest. “You’ve got some growing to do, babe.”

Carapace rolls his eyes. “Please don’t flirt with the babies, babe,” he says with a smirk.

The laughter that follows seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, and Tortue looks around, unsettled.

“...Wasn’t that funny,” Carapace mutters.

Bunnyx walks toward the edge of the roof, looking down. “Missing the point again, Shelly?” she says, pointing down. “It’s starting.”

“What is?” Chat says.

“ATTENTION PARIS!” a booming, feminine voice echoes deeply through the sky as if it’s rebounding off the very atmosphere, followed by a sudden eruption of Wagnerian opera. “YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED TO JOIN THE RANKS OF ODIN’S MIGHTY WARRIORS IN VALHALLA!”

“Ah,” Chat says, nodding. “Akuma time.”

“Bad one,” Bunnyx agrees, nodding. “We picked today for a reason. Two illusionists needed at minimum.”

Tortue gingerly attempts to stand, only for the pain in her ankle to spike like a jagged piece of bone. “Ah!” she yelps, collapsing backward.

Immediately, two sets of hands are holding her up—Reynard’s and Carapace’s. “You okay?” Reynard says, his eyes soft and concerned.

Carapace swallows. “I’m sorry, babe, but I—” He glances at Rena. “We are going to need you to stay out of this fight. You’re injured.”

“I can help!” Tortue protests.

Carapace shakes his head. “I know how much it means to you to be out there with us, but A—um, sweetie, I need you alive, okay?” He smiles, glancing back at Ladybug. “Besides, um. Someone needs to keep the baby safe.”

Reynard raises an eyebrow. “You are a braver man than I,” he says.

Rena laughs. “Oh, it’s just ‘cause she’s a baby,” she says. “He knows I’d rip his throat out if he tried that.”

“You are also much less suicidally reckless than she is,” Carapace shoots back.

Rena shrugs. “Fair point.”

Ladybug approaches, carefully laying the baby into Tortue’s arms with a look of regret. “Stay safe, okay?” she says. She looks down and presses a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “And keep her safe.”

Tortue swallows, overwhelmed by the—the everything. The trust Ladybug is showing her, the softness of the moment, the sadness in the child’s eyes as her mother goes back off to battle… it’s too much.

“I’ll do my best,” she croaks, trying not to tear up.

*

Carapace had carried her away from the battle. Vilekyrie controlled the sky, making it difficult to keep the baby out of her reach, but he’d found her a little out-of-the-way cubbyhole that nobody would come looking in during the attack. Or, well. Not a cubbyhole, really. More of a luxury suite at the Hotel Gran Paris.

“How did you know nobody would be here?” Tortue had asked him.

He’d only smiled in reply. “Spoilers,” he’d said. “Love you forever, but I gotta get back there.”

“Good luck!”

Now, about forty minutes into the battle, she can hear the clash of swords, the clanking of armor, the screaming of horses as they flew past her shaded window. She’d looked outside earlier, caught a glimpse of the copies of Vilekyrie flashing across the sky—copies of her that kept growing by the moment—and the marching of ghostly Viking soldiers on the ground: the Einherjar she’d selected from Paris’ citizens, transformed into undying warrior spirits. It doesn’t seem to be going well, but then, she doesn’t really have the best vantage point.

The baby is fussy, fussier than she was when Ladybug was around—Tortue can only guess that it’s because she wants her mother. The room has been stocked with formula and fresh diapers, and, thanks to her experience with the twins, Tortue has plenty of experience with taking care of a baby, but the girl just won’t settle down.

There’s a quiet footfall on the balcony—not a Vilekyrie, and the Einherjar can’t seem to climb. Tortue turns around to see the balcony door creek open, followed by a pair of large orange ears. “Hey. Mini-me,” Rena says. “You hanging in there?”

Tortue smiles, rocking the baby gently in her arms. “You didn’t tell me her name,” she says. “Feel weird just calling her ‘baby’.”

Rena ducks around the door, shutting it behind her, then bends down, cooing over the child’s delighted face. “HellooOOOooo!” She tickles the baby’s nose with her finger, and the girl laughs.

Rena looks back up at Tortue with a sheepish smile. “Sorry,” she says. “No names. Spoilers.”

Tortue rolls her eyes. “Am I always this aggravating?”

Rena gently wraps her arms underneath the baby’s back, lifting her from Tortue’s arms. “Pretty much!” She turns back to the baby and blows a raspberry.

“What’s up?” Tortue says. “Why aren’t you with the others?” As if to punctuate her point, an explosion sounds in the distance, and Tortue raises an eyebrow.

“Needed to talk to you,” Rena says, sitting down on the plush velvet bedspread across from her. “Also, I told them you were planning on running into the combat zone, so…”

“I was not!” Tortue yelps, leaping from her desk chair. The baby immediately squeals in distress.

Rena grins. “I know,” she says, gently tickling the child’s nose. “But they believed me when I said it, and by the time they figure it out…”

Tortue sighs. Gods, her older self is annoying. “What do you want, Alya?”

The animation in Rena’s face slackens, and she looks down at her own stomach. “I… want to show you something.” Keeping one hand under the baby, she reaches behind her and unslings the flute, opening the space within. “Take a look.”

Tortue reaches inside the extradimensional storage space inside Rena’s weapon, confused—and then her fingers close around something small, round, and metal, and she understands. “You’re going to propose,” she says, fishing the ring out of the flute. She stares at it, entranced.

“Yep,” Rena agrees with a nod, gently bouncing the baby. “Bought the ring last week.”

Tortue doesn’t even know what to say in this situation. Is it… weird to congratulate herself? Some situations, there aren’t just good responses for.

Rena sees her face and laughs. “Don’t look so shocked, Mini-me,” she says. She carefully rocks Ladybug’s baby, staring into her green eyes. “I mean, you always knew we were gonna do this eventually.”

“Yeah, but… kinda young?” Tortue says, handing the ring back to Rena.

“Ladybug’s younger.” Rena absently places the ring back inside her flute, still bouncing the baby in her other arm. “About a year younger than you, actually.”

Tortue blinks. She’s—well, she figured out a while back that Ladybug wasn’t actually 5,000 years old, but she’d always assumed she was, maybe, Anansi’s age? The thought that Ladybug is younger than she is... “Yikes.”

“Yikes is right,” Rena says. “And she has anxiety. So every time you go running face-first into danger like you’re never gonna die…”

“Is this a lecture?” Tortue says.

“Little bit,” Rena responds.

Oh, great. The last thing she needs right now is a lecture from herself of all people.

Rena rolls her eyes. “Listen, Kit, sometimes—sometimes Ladybug isn’t gonna be there. She doesn’t always show up, you know.”

Tortue narrows her eyebrows. “Yes she does?” That’s, like, the big consistency. Aside from that one time where the Akuma and the Sentimonster were in different cities, Ladybug has shown up for every single Akuma battle.

Rena shakes her head. “She has a life, Alya. And, well, sometimes she needs Chat to cover for her.” She looks toward the curtained window, toward the sounds of the battle still filtering in from outside. “And sometimes, Chat and Viperion get taken out early, and the only person who can use the Ladybug is you.”

A chill runs down Tortue’s entire body. The responsibility of using the Ladybug Miraculous—it’s terrifying. It hadn’t even occurred to her that it might pass down to her, that—oh, no. This is… this is what Ladybug feels all the time, isn’t it?

“Listen, however you feel about Nino now?” Rena says. “It’s nothing compared to what it’s going to be. He and I, we’d do anything for each other.” She breathes in, stroking the baby’s head. “Which means that, well, you and I need to stay alive.”

“The Miraculous Cure—”

Rena shakes her head. “It’s good, but it’s not… 100% reliable. Sometimes, Ladybug can’t be there.”

Tortue’s mouth opens, closes. Opens again. “Oh.”

Rena stands and places a hand on her younger self’s shoulder. “Alya, someday, you’re gonna get hurt. You’re gonna get hurt in a way that Ladybug can’t fix, and you’re going to wonder if you even deserve this Miraculous. If you even deserve Nino.” She looks down at the baby with naked fondness in her eyes. “I’m telling you now—you deserve way more than you realize. But if you want to make it to see our wedding...” She trails off.

Tortue waits for her to finish, but Rena doesn’t say anything else. The implications in Rena’s words are disconcerting, and Tortue asks the question that’s burning inside her chest. “Am I going to die?”

“Of course you are,” Rena replies. “You’re going to die a lot. But some of them are going to be harder to come back from, and Alya.” Rena’s eyes bore into hers. “You need to come back. Okay?”

“Okay,” Tortue whispers.

“Miraculous LADYBUG!” Ladybug calls from outside, and pink insects swarm across the room. There’s a brief moment of pain as Tortue’s ankle snaps back into place, immediately replaced by cool relief as the pressure vanishes.

Rena puts a finger to her lips. “Don’t tell Reynard, okay?” she says. “About the ring.”

Tortue mimes zipping her lip.

Rena nods. “Thanks,” she says. “Oh, and one more thing—you’re also gonna need to be more careful if you want to get into a good journalism school. Nobody wants to be the professor that killed the Ladyblogger.”

Tortue blinks. She… hadn’t even thought of that. “That makes sense, I think?” she says.

The balcony door creaks open and Carapace peeks through. “Hey, guys,” he says. “How’s everything going in here?”

“Really great!” Tortue says. She eyes her older self. Rena is fidgeting, looking away from her boyfriend’s face, and Tortue realizes—if she doesn’t make the push, Rena isn’t going to do it. “I think Rena has something to tell you.”

Rena glares at Tortue. “Betrayal!” she hisses.

Tortue laughs. “You’ll thank me later.”

Carapace glanced between them, confusion written across his face. “Um, what’s going on?”

Rena takes a deep breath, then carefully hands the baby to Tortue. “Hold her for a moment?”

“Of course.”

Rena looks at her boyfriend, then drops to one knee, fishing the ring out of her flute. “Nino Lahiffe. Will—will you, um…”

Carapace gasps and covers his mouth with both hands, his eyes shining wetly. “Alya?” he whispers.

Both of them sit in shocked silence, staring at each other, frozen, and after a moment, Tortue gets fed up. “Babe,” she says. “Say yes.”

Carapace glances at her, then back and his girlfriend... then lifts his fiancée bodily into the air in a crushing, spinning hug.

“Yes, yes, yes!” he crows in delight.

*

The portal closes, leaving just the four of them behind.

Ladybug huffs in relief. “You know, I love Bunnyx, but… every time I see her, it’s a brand new disaster.”

Chat looks at her in confusion. “Every? Isn’t this only the second time?”

Reynard sidles up to Tortue Verte. “So, how was meeting your future self?” he says, as Ladybug and Chat quietly discuss something else off to the side. “Mine was a lot more confident than I expected.”

Tortue snorts. “Kind of a butt,” she says. “But then again, that’s not much of a surprise, is it.”

Reynard coughs. “I invoke my right to not incriminate myself,” he says.

Tortue smacks his shoulder. “You’re such a dork.”

Reynard smiles. “Your dork.” He looks at where the portal vanished. “For quite a while, apparently.” He turns back to Tortue. “She tell you anything interesting?”

Tortue smiles, thinking about the proposal, about how happy she and her Nino were. About all the advice her future self gave. She has a lot of work to do.

“Sorry, babe,” she says. “Spoilers.”

Soulmarks, Part 11

First part

Previous

~~~

She let her pleasant smile drop as the door closed behind the most recent akuma. Her grip tightened on her yoyo.

She and Adrien had missed the akuma’s appearance. Again.

“There’s just not enough time,” she hissed.

Adrien flopped onto the pavement with a groan. “Christ, Nette, why is working in two cities so hard?”

Marinette shrugged and tossed her lucky charm with a mumbled “miraculous ladybug”. Ladybugs swirled around them both and she felt the bones in her leg repair themselves. Perfect. Now that she could, she kicked the nearest lamppost as hard as she could and grinned at the tiny dent that it made.

“Property damage isn’t a good look on you, M’lady,” said Adrien.

She scoffed. “Fuck it! We save this city once a day, we get a little bit of property damage!”

“Fair enough.”

They ducked into an alley and detransformed, bitter expressions stuck on their faces.

They slipped out into the dark of the night. There was no one out, they’d been surprised to even find an akuma at this hour. Hawkmoth must have kept an alarm for three so he could catch people out when their emotions peaked due to exhaustion.

“School’s starting soon and there’s been no progress on Joker or Hawkmoth,” she whined. “There’s no way we can keep going back and forth like this.”

“Can’t you just do your creepy stalker-y thing and find this guy?”

Her face reddened and she sent him a glare. “The bats can hear us, y’know!”

She heard a click in her ear to indicate someone had turned on their comm and her face burned even hotter as she heard Barbara’s laughter.

“Of all the things for you two lovebirds to have in common, the stalking would not have been my first guess.”

There was a silence as this sunk in…

Then Adrien started cackling. “OH MY GOD HE DOES THAT TOO?!”

“Yeah! It’s how he found out our identities!”

He grinned. “It’s how she found out mine, too! Oh this is so good.”

“Shut up!” Said Tim and Marinette at the same time, which only made the others laugh harder.

“I only stalked you to figure out if you were my soulmate,” she tried to defend herself. “You were hot and nice to me! Those were my main two requirements!”

He snorted. “And Kagami?”

“She was hot and nice to me. I literally just said that was all it took.”

She heard the bats gasp. Shoot. Time to rush past that!

“Besides, you should be thanking me! I figured out she was your soulmate for you!”

He rolled his eyes and laughed.

“You shouldn’t be laughing, guys, stalking is serious,” said Dick.

Marinette blinked. She hadn’t realized he was on.

Adrien’s eyes widened in surprise as well. When he spoke next, he’d sobered a little.  “It’s creepy, Nette… but it’ll be useful. So, I’m hereby giving you permission to stalk Hawkmoth.”

“I don’t need your permission.” She hesitated, pulling a yoyo from the pocket of her hoodie and messing with it. “I’ll do it, though. School is starting soon, and since our class is so good for akumas, I guess it’s the best time for me to do my thing.”

“I’ll help,” said Tim. “If we work together we’ll be able to do this way faster.”

She blinked. “You’re going to help from America?”

“Nope, I have an idea.”

She and Adrien gave each other confused looks.

~

The three of them stood at the base of the steps, eyeing the unfamiliar building warily. They were all new students there, and none of them looked eager to begin their first day of high school.

Tim shuffled awkwardly in his uniform. He hadn’t attended school in years. His parents hadn’t noticed, and it gave him a lot of time to do what he actually enjoyed. It felt odd going back, especially since he’d be in a group with people who were two years younger than him and French and oh god he was going to be the new kid oh fuck.

Marinette and Adrien also looked like they wanted to run as far in the opposite direction as they could. When Tim had asked, they’d both instantly said that it was just ‘first day nerves’. It obviously wasn’t but they weren’t going to fess up and it wasn’t like he was going to interrogate them.

Even if he wanted to, getting them to talk about something that stressed them out was a dangerous thing in Paris. Especially for Marinette and Adrien.

The bell rang, pulling the three of them from their thoughts and they quickly joined the throng of kids struggling to find their classes.

In true Marinette fashion, she stumbled into class five minutes late with a shouted apology. However, this wasn’t at all normal for the two boys that rushed in after her. The class giggled a little and went back to what they were doing.

He was told to remain at the front of the class and both Marinette and Adrien sent him pitying looks as they took two out of three of the empty seats at the back of the classroom. They fastened tiny nametags to their chests, probably mandated because he was new, and Marinette flashed him a thumbs up.

He gave her a tiny smile and shoved his hands in his pockets.

Tim cringed internally as he looked up at everyone. Fifteen students when you included Marinette and Adrien. At least they didn’t seem all that interested, listening to a girl in orange talk about some prince she apparently knew. Maybe he could just coast through the school year without drawing attention --.

The teacher gave a pleasant smile and clapped her hands for attention. It didn’t work, so she raised her voice slightly to speak: “Welcome back to school, everyone! Before we go over our syllabus, I’d like you to welcome our newest student. Would you please introduce yourself?”

So much for that idea.

He jutted his chin out. “Hello. I’m Tim Drake-Wayne.”

Everyone’s eyes snapped to him instantly.

“Yes, that one. Great, we’re done here.”

Their gazes never left him as he made his way up to Marinette and Adrien. He tried to brush it off, but he just couldn’t seem to ignore the pair of eyes boreing into the back of his head. He turned slightly and looked at where the girl in orange sat.

She smiled and batted her eyelashes at him.

He rolled his eyes. He’d gotten used to people like her long ago. People always did that when they heard his name.

To her credit, she didn’t look at all phased by his blatant annoyance by her.

His eyes flicked down to her nametag and he clenched his fists in his pockets.

Lila Rossi.

He shook his head slightly and kept walking, taking his seat beside Marinette.

The teacher was trying desperately to pull everyone’s attention back to her as she practically shouted her syllabus, but it was useless. They were all whispering among themselves, not even bothering to hide the fact that they were staring, and he was thrown a few pitying looks.

He didn’t know why he was getting the pitying looks, he doubted it was because of all the attention, but it wasn’t like he could just ask.

The only people who were actually paying attention to the teacher were Marinette and Adrien, who were copying down everything she said diligently.

Tim looked back at Lila and narrowed his eyes slightly. She was a bit two-faced, but he didn’t quite get why she was so important that she had a spot by Hawkmoth. He supposed even superheroines have personal problems but, damn, that was definitely some skewed priorities.

Still…

He glanced at Marinette’s free hand resting on the table and laced his fingers with hers.

He watched Lila’s flirtatious smile morph into an ugly scowl and tried not to smirk too much.

Tim’s gaze found its way to Marinette again and his smirk softened into a smile. She was a brighter red than her costume and her already ghastly penmanship was now, somehow, even worse.

He reached into his bag with his free hand and pulled out a pen and some paper. As cute as Marinette was, he doubted that he could glean anything from her notes and asking Adrien for his would work but likely include a lecture on how he should pay more attention.

He could feel Lila’s glare the whole time he copied down notes.

~~~

Next part

Taglist

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A change in fate

a maribat fanfic

Chapter 02

Along with the changes to her room, Marinette had also changed her wardrobe. She now wore a cropped baby blue hoodie over a grey-purple shirt, that matched her leggings. Over her leggings she wore a high waisted demin coloured skirt with matching heeled ankle boots. A new larger purse, more a satchel really, hung from her shoulder. It allowed her to carry her sketchbook and other tools more easily. Her hair now mostly hung lose over her shoulders with two braids coming from the sides and connecting at the back of her head.

Once she was ready Marinette walked at an easy pace to the agreed meeting spot. Duusu Had taken to hiding within her hood, so that they could drink in all of the sights. Being both not used for a hundred or so years and being broken, made this a real treat for the little peafowl. Marinette could practically feel the little god vibrating with joy, to be outside in the world again. 

The sun was shining through the clouds and a soft breeze made the early autumn leaves rustle in the trees, as the two reached the park. Marinette could already spot the red-haired omega sitting on a bench close to the pond in the shade of a willow tree. He was fidgeting with a pencil and his sketch book lay on his lap. His posture looked tense.

By the look of it he too had a wardrobe change. Marinette was gonna bet that Marc had helped with the ensemble. Those two were inseparable. He wore a white long-sleeved turtleneck shirt with grey stripes on his chest. Faded navy pants and a jacked tied around his waist. A black and white backpack with rainbow details sat beside him.

“Hey, Nathaniel,” Marinette called out, gaining said boy’s attention as she neared.

“Hey, Marinette,” Nathaniel greeted, his shoulders losing the smallest amount of tension. “Glad you could come. I hope you weren’t too busy.”

“Circumstances made it so that I had nothing scheduled today. But I do hope you were not lying about it being important. Otherwise I will send the Fury’s of art upon thee,” The blue-eyed girl exclaimed in a posh voice. Marinette hoped that it would lighten some of the tension that was flowing through the air and it seemed to work. There was no need for an Akuma today.

“Oh, I beg mercy of thee. Do not condemn me to such a fate, for I would not dare to break my vow,” Nathaniel exclaimed in kind, placing his hand on his heart. It made both of the omegas chuckle and the hidden kwami purr softly.

“So, what is it you wanted to talk about?” Marinette asked, as nonchalant as possible. As she sat down on the bench and pulled out a thermos from her satchel. Which held the gods elixir, coffee. “It sounded quite urgent from your text.”

“Yeah, it is,” Nathaniel said sheepishly, scratching his neck. “But it is not an easy subject to start a conversation with. Or to talk about in general, I believe. So, let me first ask you how you are feeling. I know you have probably had this question asked to many times already. But I know what it is like to be akumatized and of the nightmares that follow so don’t try to say that all is just hunky-dory great.”

Marinette hummed at his words, raising an amused eyebrow at the last bit. Before turning her gaze away from the redhead. Her sharp eyes scanning the surroundings for any uninvited guests. While she knew Nathaniel would keep to his word the scent anxiety kept her slightly on edge. Paranoia had settled deep into her over the past few years. Only the little hidden kwami’s presence was what kept her calm. For Duusu would inform her if someone with bad intentions was to come close.

After a moment of thought Marinette answered. “I was a bit shaken after the whole event, who wouldn’t? All considered though, I think I am doing pretty good.”

After the whole reveal of her being a true soul, Duusu had helped sort out her emotions. They had given her a few suggestions on how to more healthily coupe with the more negative ones. Who knew writing your problems down on a slip of paper and then watching it burn could be so therapeutic.

She turned her gaze back to Nathaniel. “As for the subject of our meeting. Just be blunt about and we will go from there. Keeping it bottled up and it will only stress you out over time and I really don’t wanna deal with an akuma right now,” She accentuated the last part of her statement.

“Yeah, that would really kill the mood wouldn’t it,” Nathaniel sighed. He took a small breath to collect his courage as Marinette took another sip of her coffee. Then Nathaniel bluntly stated: “I know that you are the original ladybug.”

Cue spit-take from Marinette. Mental panic has reached its peak! Abort!! ABORT!!!

“Uhm…I don’t know wha-”

“Don’t even try Marinette. The amount of times I saw ladybug land on your balcony only for you to leave through the front door and vice versa. Was a big enough give away. After that your physiques just matched up,” Nathaniel boldly interrupted. Leaving Marinette in a stunned wide-eyed stare. “Hey, I might not be a fashion designer, but I am an artist and have an eye for these details just like you.” He said quickly with a small stutter. Since he was feeling a little unnerved at her wide-eyed stare. It was as if she was staring into his soul.

“How long have you known?” The female omega asked tentively, her scent spiked with anxiety. Her body language screamed that she was ready to bolt.

“For maybe seven months now,” Nathaniel replied carefully.

“Did you tell anyone?” Marinette asked further, the tension not leaving her.

“I told no one, not even Marc. I know of the importance and reasons behind a hero’s secret identity,” Nathaniel told her sincerely, allowing Marinette to breathe a small sigh of relief. The redhead then let out a small growl of annoyance. “Unlike a certain tabloid reporter and two-faced liar.” Now that that really got the noir haired girl’s attention even more than him knowing her secret.

“The spell broke,” Marinette whispered as his words settled into her brain as her eyes widened even more, if that was even possible, in surprise. While she had been frightened at the fact of him knowing her secret, but he had not told anyone. She could tell that he was honest in the fact that he had not told anyone.  Since otherwise her identity would have probably been public news by now. Secrets like this would spread around like wildfire with the slightest slip off the tongue.

So, she was now more interested in the fact that he called Rossi a liar. It meant that he had broken through her spell and she wanted to know how he came to this revelation. Had it come after he had fond out about her hidden I.D. or was it something else. She was practically vibrating with a curious need to know and asked him about it.

Nathaniel turned his eyes to the sky, several emotions running trough them. Most prominent was the look of shame and pain. “It did weaken her hold over me, but what really made me realise she was a liar was when she promised to introduce me to one of my idols. One I know to have passed away. I won’t say their name, but that really broke the illusion for me,” He spoke bitterly.

Marinette let out a pained hiss at that. Knowing how painful it is to have someone disrespect your inspirational idols in that manner. She softly rubbed his shoulder in comfort and gave a small apology. Nathaniel let out a gloomy laugh and turned his eyes to the ground.  “You have nothing to apologize for Marinette. I should be the one to apologize. For never mastering up the courage to stand up for you even after I realized Lie-la’s grandeur was nothing more than empty words. And I am truly sorry for that. Because after everything you have helped me with, I really should have.”

Marinette felt her heart flutter at his apology and then he just kept on rambling about how he should have stood up for her. How he should have trusted her. Making her feel hot tears gather in her eyes. She had waited so long to have one of her friends back and here was one. Trying his best to make amends and unlike the rest of her class, he had never hurt her in the same way the others had. He always remained kind to her even before he knew of her secret. He may have been afraid to stand up but did not try to ruin her life like the others. So, she had no trouble pulling him into a hug. At first it shocked the boy, but he gratefully returned the gesture.

“Don’t blame yourself. You did not do anything wrong. You did not turn your back to me like the others did. I don’t blame you for not standing up against Rossi. You would have only painted a target on your back, and she would have made you feel miserable. Like with me,” Marinette whispered. “And I need to thank you for keeping my secret all this time. It means the world to me.” Nathaniel tightened his hold on the girl as a few tears of relief and gratitude fell from his eyes, as the words left her mouth. Duusu nuzzled against her neck in comfort. A feeling of pride washing over the kwami of emotion at his little bird.

_____________________________________________________________________

After they let go of each other they settled back into more comfortable sitting positions. The atmosphere feeling lighter than it had been around them for a long while.

“If it is okay to ask,” Nathaniel spoke carefully. “Is the new ladybug permanent? Because if I am being honest, I don’t really trust her.”

Marinette let outa pained sigh. “I made a grave mistake and because of that this new ladybug has the ladybug miraculous. I don’t know how to rectify this mistake, but I will find a way. That is a promise.”

“You always find a way,” Nathaniel assured. “I’ll keep my eyes open as well. I might not be the bravest, but I want to help. After everything I need to help. Even the tiniest bit.” Marinette wanted to say he did not have to. He did not let her say it. “You have forgiven me, but now I need to forgive myself. So let me help. Paris is my home to.”

It made Marinette smile as she felt the sincere emotion and determination flood of her fellow omega. “Now if only I knew how Lie-la is capable of keeping our classmates and others at her bag and call. That might help take bit of stress of my back,” She sighed. Her eyes scanning the sky, hoping it held the answers.

This made Nathaniel scratch his neck again sheepishly. “Marc and I may have a theory on how she keeps everyone under her spell, actually,” He mumbled off.

Marinette whipped around so fast it was a wonder she did not get any whiplash. She grabbed the redhead’s shoulders and looked straight into his turquoise eyes. Her own silvery blue crystal eyes were ablaze with a cold fire. “Please explain how that two-faced bitch is killing all the fucking braincells of the people around us and turning them into fucking sheep,” Her voice had an icy chill to it that sent shivers up the Nathaniel’s spine.

“I didn’t know you could curse,” Nathaniel said trying to curl away from the internally raging female omega.

It resulted in Marinette raising an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Trust me when I say Chloe can swear like a bloody sailor. So, I learned a few things from her,” She huffed a small smirk on her face. She then let go of his shoulders, giving the redhead some room to breath, as a curios gaze replaced the once cold fire. “Please share. My curiosity is going to kill me.”

Before Nathaniel could start telling her about the theory however, a loud explosion penetrated the air. Both omegas turned to the source of the sound. A good distance away they saw a person a top a glider. They cackled madly as they threw loud explosives around.

Really Hawkmoth, can’t they have one day of peace? 

The answer: Nope.

“How about we continue this conversation tomorrow over lunch. Chloe and Marc can join in on the theory. I do believe Chloe will be thrilled to know how Lie-la is capable of maintaining the utterly ridiculous situation at school,” Marinette proposed. Her eyes never leaving the new akuma.

“You are going to investigate, aren’t you?” Nathaniel asked nervously. Marinette simply nodded not looking at him. He sighed, “I won’t be able to change your mind, will I? How can I help?”

“It would be best for you to get to safety,” Marinette advised. Turning to look him directly in the eye and stopping him from objecting. “You have no need to worry about me. I still have an ace up my sleeve. So, trust me,” She assured with a mischievous look in her eyes.

Nathaniel stared uneasily at his fellow omega before nodding. “Alright but be careful, okay, I better see you at school tomorrow.” Was the last thing he said before grabbing his stuff and turning away to go to one of the akuma shelters. Leaving Marinette alone.

Taking a quick survey of her surroundings, to make sure the coast was clear, she asked Duusu to come out. “Are you ready?” the little god asked. Marinette smirked in reply. Let’s see what they were capable of.

“Duusu, Spread my Feathers”

Authors note: hey i hope you enjoyed reading this chapter. a few people have been asking me about adding them to my taglist and being honest i am not sure of how to do that. i am still very new with tumblr, but once i finally stop being dumb i'll be sure to do that. i hope you will stick around to the rest of the story. stay save.

p2 of old ML meta I wrote that I don’t necessarily agree 100% with any more.  I know I’m really late to the party on these, but I thought I’d release them into the wild anyway.

Awright, here we go. (under a cut because holy shit this is long)

I think Chloe is a complex character whose failed redemption arc was actually in character, whether the writers intended it or not. I acknowledge that she's done some really awful things, bullied people, been hurtful and mean because she wants to, and has no illusions about hurting people.  But she actually has a reason for doing this that goes beyond just enjoying bullying.  Again, this does not excuse her actions, and a redemption arc would require her to accept that she has done bad things and apologize for them, which is not something she does in the show.

As we can see in the show, Chloe's mother does not care for her.  At all.  Even to the extent that she doesn't even remember Chloe's name.  I don't know about you, but if my mom constantly chose not to remember my name, I would be devastated.  She constantly tells Chloe ("The only thing exceptional about you is your mother") that she is worthless and has no skill, talent, or anything special about her at all.  Chloe responds by mimicking the things she sees her mother does approve of, e.g. bullying, spitefulness, selfishness, etc.  It's made painfully obvious that all of Chloe's iconic, unique snobbishness actually belongs to her mother, whom she is imitating in a desperate attempt to get her mother's approval.  All Audrey cares about is herself, and Chloe knows that and tries to make herself a copy of her mother so her mother will want her.  Audrey only accepts and begins to value her when Marinette tells Audrey straight up how mean and awful Chloe is, and Audrey reevaluates her daughter.  She sees how much of herself Chloe has become, and decides that she wants a mini-her hanging around.  I don't know why she does this, but it's clear that she only began valuing Chloe once she saw the appropriate traits in her.  This means that Chloe has based her entire self-worth around her mother's opinion of her.  It's actually compared to Adrien's opinion of her in Despair Bear, when he tells her that if she isn't nice, he won't be her friend anymore.  She changes for a few hours because SHE ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT HIM AND HIS FRIENDSHIP MEANS A LOT TO HER, but reverts to her old ways because her mother's opinion matters to her more.  This is probably how she acted for her whole childhood, but changed when Hawk Moth attacks.  Why?  Because of Ladybug.  Chloe idolizes Ladybug, who gradually (unknowingly) gets more and more of an influence of her during the show. (Ladybug asking Chloe to stop causing akumatizations vs. Chloe giving up her miraculous) to the point where Ladybug is now a bigger idol than her mom.  Example: Style Queen, where Chloe FAKES working with her mother-WHO APPROVES OF HER FOR THE FIRST TIME-to HELP LADYBUG.  Ladybug is THAT important to her that she will give up the person she's been idolizing for her ENTIRE LIFE for her.  (Side note: Chloe is not a wimp.  She faked helping Style Queen-FOR ADRIEN-convincingly.  Persuaded her to change her plans without getting punished.  If that's not superhero material, then I don't know what is)  So now Ladybug is the most important person in Chloe's life.  What does this mean?  Well, Queen Bee happened.  When Chloe found her miraculous, she thought that she could be a superhero like Ladybug.  Remember, Chloe imitates the people she idolizes.  So she saw her miraculous as a way to get closer to the person she idolized-closer in character and closer relationship-wise.  Chloe values Ladybug partly because she is a superhero, so she thinks, "if I can be a superhero too, then I will have value in the same way as Ladybug!", hence her stunt with the train.  But this backfires on her when she only gets reprimanded and BOTH of her idols tear her self-esteem apart-Audrey purposefully, Ladybug unknowingly.  She's been rejected by the two people whose opinions matter most to her. (Note: Chloe has a tendency to forget about Adrien, but if your heart wasn't destroyed enough, he technically rejected her too as Chat Noir.)  She has no one to look up to now, so she clings to her miraculous-which is a symbol of worth-and guess what? Gets akumatized.  Hawk Moth says that she'll be his queen.  He'll value her when her world has come crashing down around her shoulders.  Can you blame her for becoming Queen Wasp?  She was akumatized after she displayed one of her first moments of vulnerability in the show, even showing it physically (nearly crying). That episode ends, and she begs for a second chance.  Audrey again dismisses her as worthless (Note: both times she did this, she did it on LIVE TELEVISION.) Ladybug and Chat Noir tell her that she can be a hero (equated with value in her head) and gives it back.  This is especially interesting.  Bee Miraculous = Hero. But Ladybug says No Bee Miraculous = Hero.  She amends her previous belief (GROWTH!) and trusts Ladybug, giving the Bee back.  In Malediktator, Chloe has her mother on her side and thinks all is well.  She continues to imitate her mother to keep her favor, taking it to the extreme with Audrey's encouragement and demanding the school shut down with an ultimatum: Do it or we leave.  They leave.  Marinette shows her humanity by celebrating Chloe's departure (which is FINE, she shouldn't be required to reconcile with everyone who's ever hurt her) and Adrien says this (BECAUSE HE CARES ABOUT CHLOE AND KNOWS WHAT A TOXIC ENVIRONMENT SHE'LL BE LIVING IN because he lives in a similar one): "Nobody's useless.  Not even Chloe." We'll come back to the uselessness issue later.  Chloe sneaks away from her akuma'd parents (again, quick and rational thinking in the face of danger, superheroine!!! Actually, it was probably learned from all the akumas she's been attacked by) and: "You're a hero! You....can....do....this!"   When Ladybug grabs the Bee, she realizes that she needs someone tough who defies authority, and gives Chloe a second chance. (It wasn't just because she knew the powers, people!)  Even Fu has misgivings, but Ladybug looks past her personal grievances and chooses Chloe.  Meanwhile, Chloe is SUCCESSFULLY ESCAPING AND HIDING FROM AN AKUMA (must be all that practice, say what you want, but being attacked by so many akumas was some rigorous crisis training) and runs into Ladybug.  When she meets LB, she isn't expecting to get her miraculous, unlike later.   She knows Ladybug probably won't give it to her, and SHE'S FINE WITH THAT.  SHE RESPECTS LADYBUG'S DECISION.  ACCEPTS THAT SHE CAN'T BE A SUPERHERO, BECAUSE WHEN SHE GAVE UP THE BEE MIRACULOUS, SHE BECAME A HERO.  Then, she opens up to Ladybug.  She tells her what everyone else thinks she doesn't know, that she's a bully.  And she's not targeting Marinette on purpose, Marinette just happens to be the most convenient target.  She grows and understands that her documentary was ridiculous.  She tells Ladybug how she knows that her bullying ways have just pushed her farther from her goal of being valued.  She thinks that because she has no friends (girl, you have Adrien) she has no use, and notice she says "useless".  Not "worthless", or "a horrible person".  Useless.  Because those things equal each other in Chloe's mind. Use = Value. She tells Ladybug how useless she feels because compared to Ladybug who is, notice, not "useful", but "serves a purpose".  Chloe's purpose has been to satisfy her mom, but now she knows how empty that is and feels purposeless, useless, and worthless.  Then Ladybug gives her the Bee Miraculous.  Now, I don't think LB understands how much the Bee means to her.  (Pollen calls Chloe her queen. Just thought I'd throw that in there)  I'd be surprised if she did, because if she knew that the Bee was so intricately tied to Chloe's self-worth, then it was a cruel move she pulled keeping the Bee away from Chloe without any follow-up involvement, even with a good reason.  Away from the tangent, Chloe gets the miraculous, transforms, and works one-on-one with Ladybug.  And kills it.  Like, Chloe makes an amazing superhero. She even says she's been practicing, which is played for comic relief, but shows just how much she idolizes Ladybug.  She says, "I've always dreamed of doing this-with you!".  She's achieved her dream.  Ladybug thinks she's useful, and this is really important.  She is now useful as Queen Bee.  This is her use.  This. Is. Her. Purpose.  She's not empty anymore, she's full.  She's doing good for people, being a superhero, Ladybug values her as a teammate, and friend.  Ladybug (barring Adrien possibly) is now thought of as a close friend from Chloe, who looked past her personal annoyances and cares for Chloe regardless, a new experience for her.  Let me reiterate: Queen Bee has become her purpose in life.  (which is why she fails, incidentally, because she can't balance it with a civilian life, but more on that later.)   After she and Ladybug defeat Malediktator (GIRL POWER!) she says this, which reveals how much more she's grown since the beginning of the episode: "Being a superhero isn't only about fixing messes."  She became Queen Bee in this episode to fix her mess. Now she realizes that superheroing is not only a way to make up for the wrong she has done, it's also a way to make things better than they were.  Being Queen Bee makes Chloe better.  Marinette even says so, revealing why SHE is a better guardian than Fu, because she can see the potential in people.  Chloe tries to be Queen Bee without her superhero costume immediately afterward, helping Jean with bags because she knows this is part of becoming a better person and a better superhero.  Marinette then throws her a party to show her how useful and wanted she is, understanding how much Chloe needs that from their conversation.  sniff....beautiful. This is Chloe's peak.  The best she's ever been.  She's reveling in her new-found identity of a superhero, doing good and resolving confict in her civilian life.  In multiple episodes (Startrain, Heroes' Day) she is an everyday superhero by not getting akumatized (controlling her emotions and not letting fear take her over), and keeping others calm.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Chloe is incredible at crisis response.  She doesn't panic, while the adults who have already experienced akuma attacks freak out.  She takes charge when she sees akumas (Startrain) and does her best to fix the situation. She stopped an akumatization in that episode. (Seriously, if she hadn't done that, someone would have been akumatized.)  She prioritized her response: First, eliminate the immediate threat. She did that when she evacuated the compartment. Second, eliminate the future threat.  Find Ladybug and Chat Noir.  (They need a hotline. Like, really badly.)  It doesn't bother her that she doesn't have the Bee Miraculous, because she can be a hero in her normal life too.  However, everyday heroics is still second to Miraculous heroics, and she expects Ladybug to still give her her Miraculous, because she still considers herself Queen Bee.  She trusts Ladybug so much that she FRIGGIN' SUCCESSFULLY FIGHTS OFF AN AKUMA, THE ONLY PERSON TO HAVE DONE THAT TO DATE (yes, not even Marinette did, she took off her her earrings because she expected to be overtaken), deflecting her negative worry about the current lack of miraculous with her deep trust in Ladybug.  When Miraculeur happened, she got the Bee because it was a last resort.  It appears that LB and CN use Queen Bee only when there is no other option, revealing two things.  One, they apparently didn't bother to tell Chloe that (or she didn't listen, although I'm inclined to believe that this new Chloe would have) and that they pick her despite having other, safer holders with miraculous experience, revealing that they know how well Chloe and the Bee fit together.  She got the Bee (after defying Hawk Moth and Mayura without powers, this girl is INSANELY AWESOME) and went after Mayura, failing to capture her miraculous.  She apologizes to Ladybug without making excuses for something that wasn't even her fault, showing how much Ladybug's approval matters to her.  LB responds by telling her that there can be no more Queen Bee, not even as a reserve, because Hawk Moth knows her identity. Chloe accepts that without a fuss, showing how much she's grown so far. But if she's grown so much, you ask, why did she rip that picture of Ladybug? Well, this ties in to the position of use.  Chloe was useful to Ladybug as Queen Bee and (so she thought) as a friend.  But LB took the miraculous away.  Chloe is probably getting the sneaky suspicion that Ladybug only wanted her because she was useful, which Chloe has now realized was not all she wanted out of her relationship with Ladybug.  Chloe valued being useful to LB, but she also valued LB's friendship.  Chloe continues in her superhero activities, but muted. So how did this go wrong?  How did we go from this awesome superhero Chloe to Miracle Queen?  The answer is in Battle Of The Miraculous.  Marinette's narration reveals that Chloe lost hope, showing her turning off her Bee signal. I think Chloe still unconsiously thought she could still be Queen Bee.  Ladybug went back on her withholding before, she could again, right?  But then she finally gets it through her head that she's not going to be Queen Bee again, and abandons that hope in despair.  Is that it?  Is that why she turns to the dark side?  Well, her fall was caused by a lot of things.  One was the aforementioned despair.  Another that contributed to her fragile emotional state is the fight between her parents.  It feels awful to have your parents fight, and while Chloe is probably not a stranger to it, it's always painful.  Then her parents get akumatized.  That was what made her fall in Heroes' Day.  She says to Heart Hunter: "I don't love anyone." Heart Hunter responds that Chloe loves herself (which, wow, you guys are the worst parents ever.  You really don't pay attention.) Ladybug takes the dragon and goes to Kagami for help.  She goes to Kagami, who also had her identity revealed, and gives her a miraculous, saying it's because of Kagami's "exceptional talent".  Ryoko defeats Heart Hunter.  Queen Bee does not.  Dragon-Chloe does not.  And Chloe feels this. First, Chloe wanted to save her parents herself, which is a completely normal thing to want.  She loves her parents (despite their failings) and wants to help them.  If if was me, I'd want the same thing.  Second, she sees Ryoko active, whom she knows (somehow) was decomissioned for the same reason as her. This is where theseed of doubt planted in Miraculeur blooms.  To Chloe, this confirms that Ladybug was only using her for her availablility and wasn't actually her friend.  She thinks Ladybug was pretending that she was significant and still resented Chloe for getting in her way so many times.  She thought her idol was her best friend, but now it seems like her idol was lying to her the whole time. With Ladybug's perceived rejection and broken promise, Chloe now feels useless and purposeless again.  And Hawk Moth shows up at just the right time to sway her to his side with his impressive emotional manipulation by making essentially the same argument he made in Queen Wasp: Ladybug rejected you, but I still want you.  You are useful and valued with me.  Chloe, thinking Ladybug cares nothing for her, ("She couldn't care less about me!") accepts his offer and becomes Miracle Queen. (But not without asking for her parents' release first, because that is so important to her.) Miracle Queen's dialogue and actions line up with this.  She exposes everyone's identities (so they can't be chosen over her again) and says to LB: "How many times have I asked to fight alongside you? [how many times have I asked to belong?] And how many times have you refused to give me my miraculous? [how many times have you denied me your friendship?]"  She tries to take all the Miraculous and use their power to lash out at Ladybug, declaring that she'll be the most powerful miraculous wearer there ever was.  This foolish action is a result of Chloe's fragile emotional state that has been controlled and manipulated by Hawk Moth to work as his pawn, and her raw pain and anger at Ladybug.  She then takes only the Bee after Master Fu whiz-bang-pops the Miracle Box and says that she's going to New York to be a superhero, grasping at straws to regain her worth by clinging to the Bee, the miraculous that started it all.  After Ladybug takes it, Chloe declares that she doesn't love Ladybug anymore, which could be taken as "I'm no longer your fan" but seems more like she did once love Ladybug as a friend, making her previous statement in Heart Hunter a lie.  She finds her parents and demands to leave with her mother, who has reconciled with her father and refuses Chloe her demand, likely the first time they've done that (because they're too wrapped up in each other to even ask her why she's so upset).  To sum it up, at the end of the current season, Chloe has hit rock bottom.

Okay, after this analysis of Chloe, let's take a look at the person mostly responsible for her fall: Hawk Moth.  More than anywhere else in the show Hawk Moth is shown to be a master manipulator in Chloe's arc.  He planned to weaken Chloe's trust in Ladybug, and succeeded.  A lot of her actions in Miracle Queen can be attributed to Hawk Moth playing her like a queen on the chessboard, which is exactly what he compares her to and an excellent metaphor.  He wasn't reactively trying to get the Bee in Miraculeur, he was proactively using it as a way to manipulate Chloe into losing trust in Ladybug through the Bee Miraculous.  He understood Chloe's identity crisis (he was RIGHT THERE in Style Queen) and used it to his advantage.  She surprised him with throwing off his akuma, but that just meant her love for Ladybug was more powerful than he thought.  He akumatized Heart Hunter on purpose to affect her (an interesting change from the let's-throw-everything-and-see-what-works Hawk Moth of the earlier seasons) and carefully orchestrated the whole thing to sway Chloe to his side.  He caused and took advantage of a child's distress coming from a bad home life and parental issues, giving us yet another example of how little he cares about what he has to do as long as he gets what he wants. (He beats his son in Chat Blanc.  Fully knowing it's Adrien.  Physically beats him up.)  A lot of Chloe's mistakes can be put on Hawk Moth for manipulating her (seriously, this guy is a fucking asshole).

Yet another extra onto the end of this: Adrien.  Both Chloe and Adrien are very iffy about their friendship, both saying that the other is their only friend and that they had/have no friends.  And yet Adrien is probably the person who understands Chloe's conflict the most.  Parent who thinks you're worthless unless you're doing what they approve of?  He understands.  He's probably seen how her mom treats her and understands why Chloe acts the way she does (gives a whole new perspective to all that standing up for her he was doing, hUh), but until his mother disappeared and his father went silent he wasn't able to personally understand just how painful it was for her and how hard it was to fill those expectations.  And when that calamity happened he was grieving with no support system (I have no doubt Chloe tried to help in her own way, she does care about him even if she doesn't know how to express it) and was certainly not in a place to help her.  Then he found new friends at school and increasingly chose them over her, adding more to her "everyone always chooses someone else over me" complex.  To be clear, I'm not blaming Adrien for Chloe's problems.  Her issues are her fault, her mother's fault, her father's fault and (later) Hawk Moth's fault.  Adrien did the best he could as a child with no social skills. But if he ever catches up and realizes how much Chloe needs him, he would definitely feature in a prime spot in her redemption arc.  

So a lot of this was my high hopes for Chloe and the show’s consistency, both of which have been disappointed.  I was also caught up in a lot of Chloe love while writing this, which is why I didn’t focus on how nasty she is and has been or how she needed to make amends for it, because she very much does need to.  This is just my analysis of her ‘arc’ in season 3.  also sorry for the big block of text.

A Series of Reveals Ch. 2 - Black Cats and Green Eyes

Fridays were Adrien’s second favorite day of the week because, after school and a short fencing lesson, he was sometimes allowed to meet with his friends.

But this Friday was not one of them.

So Adrien instead read Alya’s latest post on the Ladyblog, practiced piano, and tried to top his high score on Ultima Mecha Strike (which would still fall fifty thousand short of Marinette’s).  He even gave Plagg the extra controller to try and challenge himself a bit more, but his Kwami only complained that he couldn’t reach both joysticks.

Evening came and Adrien laid in his bed, flipping between texting Nino and reviewing past Chinese lessons. Nino would usually take Alya out on Fridays, be it a movie or the park. However, like Adrien, he was stuck at home having to watch his brother. With the light fading away into the night, Nino went to bed with Chris early, leaving Adrien to stare at his ceiling.

If my room only had one floor, he wondered, would it feel more constricting or would it feel more comfortable?

Adrien’s head flopped to his left where Plagg was already curled up asleep on the pillow. Adrien sighed. It was late enough to sleep but he wasn’t tired yet. He’d hoped to hold a conversation with someone until his eyes grew heavy – but who to text? Maybe Luka had practice scheduled soon for Kitty Section; he was always up late.

As he picked up his phone to ask about rehearsals, it buzzed in his hand. He held the screen above his face and read the banner.

Alya:1 video

Curious, he swiped the message, pulling open a group chat where Alya’s face was frozen behind a play button. Adrien tapped it and ensured the volume wouldn’t wake Plagg.

“Hey, girls! I’m happy to announce that after a unanimous vote from you all in my last message, Marinette and I went shopping and got something super cute for her to wear for girls’ night! Ready, girl? Strike a pose,” she sang.

The moment the camera flipped, Adrien knew the video wasn’t supposed to be sent to him. Marinette sat on her knees with her wrists pressed together under her chin, hands framing her face. She grinned brightly and her eyes were squeezed shut. He’d run into Marinette in her pajamas before but these were not the same. Instead, Marinette wore light grey shorts with black polka dots and pink lace around the bottom. She wore no shirt but instead a black bralette with a pink knit sweater hanging unbuttoned.

What happens at girls’ night? He pondered, dismissing the intrusive thought before it could settle.

“So what do you think?” Alya asked her friends. “Marinette’s a total hottie, right?”

“Alya!” she protested in return.

Overall, the colors she wore reminded him of her time as Multimouse – as short lived as it had been. Maybe he could convince Ladybug to give her the miraculous again. Marinette had seemed to be following Ladybug’s plan, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she came up with part of it herself. Marinette was quick and resourceful like that. Plus, she wasn’t revealed to Hawkmoth.

Adrien caught himself staring at his friend - her wide eyes, the sweater that had dropped off her shoulder, and the full line of her collarbone which normally only peaked from behind her blazer. He quickly scrolled away from the video to read the previous messages – he didn’t remember seeing any texts from Alya. In fact, the last few messages read backwards as such:

Marinette: Haha thanks!

Adrien: It WAS fun and I’m glad I could help! Especially with Marinette’s awesome designs.

Juleka: Thanks again for doing this with me. It was fun.

Rose: So excited to see how they turned out!

Alya: These. Pictures. Are. Awesome! Almost done editing them. Great job today, all!

He realized Alya had sent the video to the wrong group chat and was about to correct her when he began receiving responses from the rest of the girls.

Juleka: Finally.

Mylene: You always look so good in polka dots!

Alix: Adrien doesn’t know what he’s missing.

Rose: The sweater is super cute! But what was that thing moving in the background?

Over and over Adrien read Alix’s message. He was fairly certain she hadn’t called him out to try and usher a response from him ... no. No, they didn’t realize he was in the chat. If he responded now, he would definitely embarrass Marinette. He’d just pretend he never saw the video – it would be simple enough.

Then another text came through.

Alya: Marinette found a kitten!

Rose: I want to see!

Alya: 1 video

Well ... Adrien didn’t see anything wrong about watching a video of the kitten. He glanced over to Plagg first before clicking play – he was still asleep. Alya’s voice came through the speaker once more.

“Alright, Marinette, we have the consensus. The girls totally agree that you look amazing and Adrien’s a fool for not asking you out yet.” Marinette’s cheeks visibly reddened and she delicately placed her hands over them in an effort to hide it. Adrien paused the video, studying how Marinette bit her lip in the slightest manner while refusing to look toward the camera as though she were stuck in a daydream.

Did Marinette like him? She had called him her “friend” many times over and he always took it at face value. After all, his father was always forward when he was displeased with Adrien and, sometimes, when he was satisfied with Adrien’s work. Was everyone like that though? He still had a lot to learn about how people behaved in the world, but Marinette’s reaction reminded him of the lovesick girls from the shows he watched. This observation, along with Alix’s comment, forced him to consider the possibility but he wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

Marinette was an amazing girl and a very good friend. When she confessed her love for Chat Noir, it hurt him to tell her he didn’t feel the same. It would be even harder to do so as Adrien. But he had already mentioned the girl he was in love with to Marinette and she didn’t say anything about it. She just . . .

She just completely shut herself off from me, he realized. But she had so easily confessed her love to Chat Noir, so she would’ve done the same for him, right?

__________________________________________

Keep reading on Ao3!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27371830/chapters/91847542

All That Matters  (Pt 2: They’re Multiplyin’ and I’m Losing Control)

Part 2 of All That Matters. Part 1 here

Find this on AO3 here!

⁂

Ladybug convinced a newly transformed Dragon Noir to use Water form and launch himself into the sky. He'd be able to get a look at what was happening from a bird's eye view and find Queen Wasp and the other Miraculous holders. Dragon Noir was hovering above Paris in a large water bubble at the peak of his arc when he contacted her. "Hey 'Bug, she's at the Trocadero, and… you're right," Dragon Noir sighed. "She's got the other heroes all brainwashed and suited up. Except Ka--uh, the fencer girl is just… standing there."

"Is she okay? M-Master Fu isn't with them, is he?" Ladybug asked nervously.

"I think she's fine, just… non-responsive. I don't see him. Am I supposed to see him?" Dragon Noir asked, concerned.

"No! No." Ladybug breathed out a sigh of relief. "Just… just that Queen Wasp doesn't have access to all of the Miraculous then," Ladybug said. Okay. Master Fu was still safe, to a degree. Even though he wasn't really the Guardian anymore.

"Master Fu" was, in fact, not even a real person anymore.

There had been one too many close calls with Master Fu being nearly discovered by Mayura and Hawkmoth, and with Marinette being as hyper-competent as she was, Fu made the decision to retire earlier in the late summer. After all, the Order had been restored and he was no longer the last of his kind. Marinette had proven herself worthy of Guardianship time and time again. He was just too old, too weak, too slow to react and adapt.

Fu had handed over the Miracle Box to Ladybug at the end of summer. His penultimate act as Guardian was to tell her who King Monkey was after handing out the Monkey Miraculous to Kim. Ladybug became the new Guardian of the Miraculous in secret, and the person that was "Master Fu, Guardian of the Miraculous" was no more after he lost all of his memories.

There was one final "gift" that Master Fu had left Ladybug before his memories were erased. Fu had given her his blessing to use him as a decoy. Better to have Hawkmoth track down and find a dead end in a broken old man than wreak more havoc with more Miraculous under his command.

The knowledge of whoever Chat Noir was underneath the mask got lost along with Fu's memories. But that was fine to Ladybug. Chat Noir was simply her partner, and that was enough.

Though losing Master Fu as her mentor and confidante had been such a huge blow to Marinette. She had spent a week crying in secret until Luka had surprised her one day, visiting her in her room. "Thought I'd join you here if that's alright," Luka had said, and Marinette let him stay with her. He'd just smiled and held out his hands to her. He hadn't even asked what was wrong. He was just present, letting her cry in his arms until she couldn't anymore. "If there's anything I can do to help, let me know."

It had been a good long time until she was able to speak again. "You're already helping me," Marinette had said quietly, pressing herself into the hug. "This is all that I need."

Ladybug shook her head to get back to the present. She stuck her head out of the water and took a quick scan of her surroundings, making sure she wasn't spotted by anything. She got out of the river, drying out the Lucky Charm scarf as best she could. "Tikki, Mullo, Unify!" This was another Big Secret Marinette kept to herself: that she'd been keeping Mullo's Miraculous on her. It had changed a bit recently, now representing itself as a necklace with a pendant shaped like a guitar pick that she hid under her shirt. Marinette was paranoid enough that she couldn't let anyone see her wear the necklace. Multimouse had detransformed in front of Chat Noir, after all.

Sometimes she transformed into Multimouse without any akumas to deal with - breaking her own rule of not using the Miraculous for personal reasons - to be as small as she felt sometimes and hide away from the world. She and Tikki had a lot of heart to heart conversations tucked into a hatbox in one corner of her room.

This time, she was using it to just be stealthy. She used Multitude to split into several smaller versions of herself, fanning across a large area and running down different streets and alleyways toward the Trocadero.

"She's calling herself Miracle Queen," Dragon Noir mused. "The… the others are surrounding her to defend her. I'd say we're in quite a pickle, my Lady."

Multibug didn't stop running. "How do you feel about trying to draw the honor guard away?" one of her asked.

Dragon Noir snorted. "On it. Easy as pie." Over the comms Ladybug heard her partner shout "Hey there demons, it's me, ya boi Chat Noir! I'm standing right here. You brain-dead zombies want my miraculous? Come and get it!"

…

Okay…

One of the Multibugs pulled out her yoyo and took a look at the screen. Dragon Noir's spot on her map kept jumping around, pulling the group of the other heroes away as they all chased after him. Pegasus was using Voyage to keep trying to intercept but Dragon Noir bounced off in a different direction as fast as lightning. She had to give props to Chat, he sure knew how to play that cat-and-mouse game well.

But Dragon Noir wouldn't be able to keep this up forever if Viperion was working against them. She needed to take down Viperion and this Miracle Queen, and she needed to do that as soon as possible. She kept moving forward, scurrying across as fast as she could to get to cover or hide behind or underneath things, trying to close in and surround Miracle Queen from as many angles as she could get at the Trocadero.

One of her got close, so close. Miracle Queen was standing in front of a line of golden statues, and a Multibug was hiding behind one of the statue plinths when she got grabbed from behind. "Aahhh!" she squeaked out loud.

"Not ssso fassst, little moussse," Viperion said as he turned her toward his face, stressing his s's in what was probably a mockery of Sass. "You'll never get the drop on me, can't you see?" He turned toward Miracle Queen and bowed to her with Multibug firm in his grip. "I've found a pest, My Queen."

Multibug held back another squeak. "Lu--Viperion! Viperion, don't do this, don't listen to her! Don't let her control you!" She had been so sure that Dragon Noir had led them all away, how did Viperion surprise her?! She realized he must have used Second Chance and timed it so he knew just when to turn back and stop her. The other heroes must have coordinated to trick Dragon Noir!

Miracle Queen turned her head lazily, examining her nails with a sour look after giving a quick glance at Viperion presenting her the Multibug in his left hand. "Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. A rat? That's the best you could do, Ladybug?" Miracle Queen leaned in and looked closer at Multibug. "Hmm. Although you do have your Miraculous, but they're so tiny. I don't know how much more useless you could possibly be, but…" A wasp manifested above the Queen's hand, hovering and ready to strike.

There was a lightning fast zzzip and a yoyo snatched up the wasp from right in front of Miracle Queen before she realized what happened. Miracle Queen cried out, looking up only to have a pair of Multibugs drop down from above and wrap the scarf tight around her face, blocking her vision entirely. "What the-- Aaaah!" Miracle Queen screamed as she stumbled backward.

Viperion started reaching for his bracelet but the Multibug in his hand reached out as fast as she could and held back the serpent's head to prevent the reset. The two Multibugs that dropped merged together, and another larger Multibug emerged from the shadows. The 2 larger Multibugs lassoed Viperion's left and right wrists with their jump ropes and pulled away from each other, forcing Viperion's arms apart. They coordinated and pulled their ropes backward, unbalancing Viperion and dragging him off his feet to slam his back up against a statue plinth, knocking the breath out of him. This allowed the Multibug in his hand to wriggle free and pull off his bracelet as he struggled against his bindings.

Miracle Queen pulled off the scarf and threw it on the ground just as a detransformed Luka fell to his knees, the jump ropes untying smoothly from his wrists as the Multibugs pulled away and sprinted off in different directions. "DISGUSTING! Ugh!" She stomped toward Luka and grabbed the collar of his shirt and forced him to look up at her. "You're so useless!"

"Hey! Leave him alone!"

Miracle Queen looked to her side, where a fully sized Multibug was glaring at her. "What, this piece of trash?" Miracle Queen mocked, picking a struggling Luka up by the throat until he was hanging a few inches off the ground. "He belongs with the rest of the filthy garbage!" She threw him at Multibug.

"Luka! No!" Multibug rushed in to catch him and they collided, sending them both tumbling to the ground. She sat up with Luka cradled in her arms, he was still dazed from the impact and mind control but it seemed like he was slowly recovering. Her face was set in rage when she looked up at Miracle Queen. "How could you?!"

Instead of responding Miracle Queen summoned a new swarm of wasps. Miracle Queen commanded her wasps to "Get her!" just as Multibug's earrings beeped, starting the countdown to her powers running out.

Multibug growled, trying to decide between letting Luka down to deal with the threat or getting them both out of there as fast as possible. She made her decision, throwing out her yoyo and hooking it onto a railing, pulling her and Luka away from the Trocadero as fast as she could manage trying to outpace the wasps. But even after a few swings the wasps were still pursuing and inching in closer, much too close for comfort. Multibug wasn't sure where she could go that would be safe so she gritted her teeth and dove both her and Luka into the Seine.

⁂

Luka's head was swimming in black and white static. It felt like he was floating in a sea of quicksand, getting swallowed up and drowning in grainy noise. He couldn't have any thoughts of his own last longer than a second, they'd all been drowned out by this stupid buzzing. He must have gone crazy.

"--bzzzkrrzzzzkstshshhbzzzshzzzLuka!bzzzsrrkzstzz--" Wait, that was… that sounded like-- "--rrrbkzzzzshshkstbzzzssskchssshbrLuka!rssshkzzzbzkrrrrbzzz--" Marinette! For one split second he saw her. She'd been panicked, looking up at him with worry. He hated that he made her feel this way.

He felt his legs being forced to move. Something was tugging at his hand, something warm, something small, but the sensation of it kept slipping away unless he fought hard to concentrate on it. Then it let go, letting him fully sink back into the static. He could sense that he'd been walking for some time, and then he stopped. There was this… grating noise on top of the static that must have been someone's voice tell him something… something about… the Miraculous?

Hissing sounds started overlying the buzzing in the background. He felt something tightly coil at his wrist, and when he could stop and focus against the pressure wave of sound that pressed into him from all sides, he noticed that a lot of that hissing came from… that coil? It was shapeless, the definition of its boundaries lost in the black and white grainy spots that covered his vision.

He felt that thing that was hissing bite into his wrist, and man, ouch, what the heck was that-- He started seeing distinct outlines and colors, forms and shapes, could hear silence beyond the buzzing… He could faintly see Sass? That little guy was sinking his fangs into Luka's wrist… He almost got back in control of his senses with the pain from Sass' bite when it felt like his head got yanked back by an invisible hand and it slammed his head forward into the static, sending him back into confusion.

Wait, could he… he couldn't tell if he was breathing, but he could still feel his heartbeat. He needed to focus on that, maybe try to feel the pattern, feel the pulse, meditate on that constant rhythm like a metronome. Could he break free from the static with that?

Sass bit him again. Luka was hoping it was the kwami trying to help more than hurt Luka. He trusted Sass, didn't he? Yeah. Yeah, why did he question that? There was a blinding flash that forced Luka to blink and he forgot about both his meditation and Sass trying to get his attention. What might have been an eternity or a few seconds later, there was another flash, but Luka tried to keep his eyes open. He could swear he saw Sass more clearly in that flash, but what did that mean?

There was another flash. Followed by two more. He'd grabbed something in his left hand. Mouse, he suddenly thought. "--zzzzzzbzzzzhssssssssshshshchtchssszzzzViperion!brrsssszzzzzrrzzz--" Viperion? Was that who he was? Were the blinding flashes his use of Second Chance? Wait… who was calling him? He had the faintest impression of red, or pink maybe, or blue-- Marinette's eyes were staring back up in fear, in pleading -- why couldn't he help her? He wanted to make her happy but he'd just been so--

"You're so useless!"

Yeah. He knew that.

The static noise abruptly stopped and he was looking up at yellow and black, the masked face of Miracle Queen. Her magenta eyes were narrowed and mocking and full of derision. She lifted him by the throat and he was struggling against her, but then he got flung aside. Marinette's voice cut through the lingering thick fog in his mind. "Luka! No!" He landed on something softer than the concrete ground. "How could you?!" Marinette yelled at Miracle Queen, sounding the most angry he'd ever heard her.

Wait, this wasn't Marinette… was it? Luka had tried to get a better look at the girl who was holding him up but then she sent them both soaring through the sky, pulled along by her… magic yoyo. Ladybug? She didn't look like Ladybug… or no he saw some red and black along with the pink and gray of the rest of her suit.

His face was right next to hers. He heard the beeping of her earrings get faster. He also heard Chat Noir's voice coming through Ladybug(?)'s earrings. "Sorry 'Bug, I'm out -- I gotta recharge!"

"Me too!" Ladybug replied, yelling over the wind. "Sorry Luka, we're going in," she said more quietly, pulling him in closer and cradling his head against her chest. Then they both plunged into the Seine.

⁂

To be continued...

Oh boy what a pickle >_>

Taking Care of You Ch. 2

Find it on AO3 or down below the cut!

@marichatmay

The black leather clad superhero stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the sea of pinks and whites of Marinette’s room. From the walls and the bedding and the furniture down to the sweats and fluffy socks she was wearing, a swirl of pinks and whites that was just so very Marinette, and if he wasn’t feeling as cagey as he was, he would have commented something. Instead of a pun however, he busied himself by fidgeting with his tail, the leather a comfortable weight in his palms as he watched Marinette. The horrible itch from earlier had subsided somewhat, but it was still very much there, preventing him from standing still as he watched Marinette make her way around her room, hands grasping at various items. A closer look confirmed that the pile materials his classmate was in the middle of picking up seemed like assorted fabrics and discarded sheets with notes and designs scribbled onto them.

“Sorry about the mess, Chat,” Marinette broke the silence, a soft upturn of her lips accentuating the smattering of red across her cheeks. She fiddled with her fingers, the action so familiar to Chat from their shared time in the classroom. He’d always found it endearing, the movements bringing a small smile onto his own face.

“There’s nothing to apologize for, Princess,” he cocked his head to the side, green eyes sweeping over the fabrics and papers, and a small puddle of shame pooled in his stomach, “Were you in the middle of working on something?”

Marinette waved a hand, “Not really, nothing was coming together anyways,” she shrugged, “you just so happened to drop by at the perfect time, I could use a break.”

He blushed, an apology on the tip of his tongue, but the light huff of her laughter cut him off before he could say anything.

“Before you ask, no Ki-Chat, you aren’t bothering me, and no I’m not lying,” she crossed her arms loosely, “I really could use a break from designing, and what better way to do that than with the best cat in Paris?”

“Aww, Purrincess, do you really think I’m the best cat in Paris?” He grinned, the compliment, as silly as it was, making his heart swell, the butterflies in his stomach fluttering. Just as quickly had the feeling come however, it was dampened by a reminder of the mess he’d made outside and the time he was taking away from his friend. No doubt she had much better ways of spending her time than with a stray cat, but the promise of help with his…problem kept his curiosity peaked, and he would be lying to say that he wasn’t eager to feel normal again.

“Don’t let it get to your head,” Marinette grinned before moving to her chaise, legs curling up on the cushions before she patted the spot next to her, “Come.”

Chat couldn’t help but raise a masked eyebrow at the request, but he obliged after a moment’s hesitation and an encouraging smile from the girl clad in pink. The confidence and authority she radiated, even in worn sweats and a t-shirt was new, at least towards him. Well, Adrien him. He was well aware of Marinette’s leadership and quick thinking capabilities spurred on by her undying resolve for justice, but he was hardly on the receiving end of such confidence. In fact, in most cases, it seemed like the midnight haired girl wanted nothing more than to scurry away from him at every given opportunity.

Shaking his head minutely to dispel the sidetracked thoughts, he focused on making his way over to the (once again, pink) chaise, sinking slowly into the soft cushions below. The sunlight from her window spilled into the room, warming up the seat just so, the temperature soothing his nerves and his muscles as he wiggled on the spot. The itch was back, simmering and swirling underneath his skin, but this time, it was accompanied by the almost instant drooping of his eyelids.

Everything was so deliciously warm, and cozy. The cushion was just the right amount of bounce and firmness, and had he been alone, he wouldn’t hesitate to sprawl himself all over the chaise, relishing in the space and the comfort. But, as much as he wished to, he forced himself to stay upright, blinking the haze away harshly in order to focus on his friend so she could fix whatever was wrong with him.

“So, what’s the plan?” He turned to face Marinette, surprised to see her giggling softly. He frowned, not following the reason for her laughter. Not that he minded hearing it, and the realization made him blink with a start. Before he had time to dwell on the revelation however, she reached out to place a warm palm against his shoulder.

“You’re such a cat,” she snorted softly before her expression settled into something more serious, “I think that’s the problem actually.”

He felt his nose scrunch up, trying and failing to keep his mind off the tingling sensation from where her skin was making contact with his suit.

“I’m sorry, Princess, but I’m not sure I quite follow?”

Her lips pursed, the thumb and pointer finger of her free hand curling around her chin. The action sparked a vague feeling of familiarity, and he was reminded fondly of a similar pose his Lady would don as she was coming up with a plan or thinking over new information.

“Well, and I’m only speculating here again, of course, because you know Alya, my friend, I’m sure you and Ladybug have seen her around a lot, she runs the Ladyblog you know so we talk a lot about this stuff so it’s not weird or anything-“

Chat blinked as her palm slipped away from his shoulder, her rambling and the gestures so characteristic, borderline comical, that he couldn’t help but splutter out a chuckle.

“You’re rambling, Marinette,” he patted her knee, offering a quick smile to placate the blush that stole her cheeks, “I know you’re only trying to help, so don’t worry okay?”

After a second of staring at him, wide-eyed like a deer caught in the headlights, she nodded slowly, the pink receding from her face and once again replaced with firm determination.

With a steady breath, she continued.

“I think that there are some spillover effects from the Miraculous. We know that the Miraculous are in some way representative of certain animals, Ladybug being well…a ladybug and yours being the black cat. Your powers are reflective of certain qualities related to those animals- kind of like instincts or behaviours? So what’s to say that the effects of the Black Cat Miraculous don't just pertain to agility or night vision?” Marinette paused to shrug, “It could be very possible that you’re experiencing the less uh…pronounced behaviours that have just been building up over time?”

Chat was taken aback, feline eyes wide as he processed what his friend was saying. The fact that Marinette was able to figure out something so quickly, much quicker than he himself could, from so little information was both astounding and terrifying. Marinette was smart and resourceful, he knew that, but if she had managed to figure out this much, it made him wonder what other information was out there waiting to be analyzed and figured out.

Hawkmoth had to have internet access after all.

The thought made him twitch, tail settling between his clawed fingers once more as he worried his bottom lip. The original reason for his presence in Marinette’s room was forgotten for a moment, he couldn’t but worry about the implications of this revelation.

“Chat...?”

Marinette’s voice was quiet as she looked at him with worried eyes, and he mentally smacked himself for letting a civilian worry. He boxed away his worries, making a note to bring it up to Ladybug at some point; maybe the two heroes would have to have a talk with Alya and other news reporters on the dangers of speculation and posting information online where villains could no doubt use to their advantage.

“Ah, my a-paw-logies Purriness, I was just blown away by your deductions. Tell me, have you ever considered forensics or law, Mademoiselle Sherlock?”

He grinned when she rolled her eyes, reaching out to flick his bell. The sound sent a wonderful shiver down his spine.

“That depends. Are you willing to be my Dr. Watson?”

“Well if you’re paw-sitive you can handle the galaxies inside this brain,” he winked.

Marinette pressed a flattened palm to her chest with a drawn out gasp, “However will we all cope? Imagine the headlines!”

Chat swiped a hand through the air, “I can see it now, ‘Local Cat Discovered to Have Infinite Braincells’.”

Marinette copied the gesture, barely suppressing her smirk, “‘Scientists Discover that None of Them Are Actually Functional After Testing’.”

“Hey!”

“I’m teasing,” she laughed, reaching up to scratch a spot behind his ears in apology. The change was almost instantaneous, surprising Marinette with just how fast his body froze for a moment before his eyes fluttered close. He leaned into her hand, and from this close, the young designer could see the ripple of his muscles relaxing underneath his suit, slumping against her.

Not that she minded too much.

Her earlier deductions, while not explicitly sourced from the internet, seemed to be right as a familiar low rumble filled the room, causing her lips to twitch fondly. Chat Noir had begun to purr again, the vibrations echoing in her own chest. She thanked Lady Luck that her Kitty’s eyes were still closed, because at the moment she was absolutely certain her poor cheeks were burning.

But this wasn’t about her, she sighed internally, carding her fingers through silken gold. The sunlight reflected against his hair, highlighting the gold of his eyelashes against the deep black of the domino mask. She traced patterns through the stray strands atop his head, discovering with suppressed delight that the spots behind both Chat’s human and cat ears had the same effect, and the longer the scratching and rhythmic movements went on, the louder the rumbling got.

Her eyes softened at the innocence of it all, recalling how he had purred earlier when he was caught red-handed on her balcony, no doubt in an effort to self-soothe. The initial sound had been quiet, hesitant and tinged with low notes, giving away the boy’s embarrassment at what occurred and Marinette marveled at the reminder of how sensitive Chat Noir could be. Now however, the vibrations were loud and light, and with a uncontrollable flutter of her heart, she couldn’t help but be proud that she was the cause of such a blatant display of relief and trust from her partner (despite him not knowing that she was his beloved Lady, but she’ll count it nonetheless).

Gently guiding Chat’s head to her lap, she realized with another powerful thud of her heart that the poor kitty had fallen asleep, she relaxed back against the pillows on her chaise. She’d doubted for a moment if leading Chat to her room and exposing so much was a good idea, knowing that with every encounter with the black cat, she ran the risk of compromising their identities. The familiar twinge of anxiety made her frown, and she knew that she would no doubt be hearing from Tikki later on about the unexpected development between her civilian identity and Chat Noir, and Marinette couldn’t help but dread the coming conversation. However, with a glance down at the serene expression on her partner’s porcelain complexion, she pushed her worries aside, saving them to card over later. For now, her kitty needed her, and she wouldn’t let him down.

In or out of the mask.

Soulmate AU

I was inspired by the Soulmate Nickname mark AU originally by @chatalyst and couldnt help but write something for the love square.

~~~

Marinette had spent her whole life with the cursive script behind her right ear ‘Bugaboo.’ It was cute, she supposed. For most of her life she didn’t understand why anybody would give her that nickname; but she’d seen people with worse nicknames in more obvious places. Hers was at least discrete, most people didn’t even know it was there unless they saw her from a certain angle. She appreciated the subtly of her soul mark’s placement the most, specifically now that she’d gotten the ladybug miraculous. Once she’d began saving Paris and became the hero known as Ladybug, she had understood as to where her nickname came from. But the idea that her nickname would have to do with her secret identity made her stomach twist in knots, whoever her soulmate was would know she was Ladybug. She hoped maybe they’d only know her as Ladybug, at least until Hawkmoth was dealt with. But a part of her did worry they’d also know her real identity.

Adrien, just as Marinette and everyone else, had a soul mark as well. His was small cursive script around his right ring finger saying ‘kitty.’ It wasn’t an absurd nickname, he’d grown fond of the idea of being called kitty by his soul mate. And once he’d gotten his miraculous, the nickname made much more sense to him. Though part of him did worry on the ties his soul mate had to his secret identity, he was more excited at the premise of the freedom being Chat Noir gave him. He was also grateful for the fact the ring made it easier to hide his soul mark, covering it nearly perfectly. He at least didn’t have to worry about someone seeing it and trying to make a connection between the mark and his super hero self.

For the most part neither of the teens worried about their soul mate though. Both being too busy catching akumas’, doing well in school, and trying not to look a fool in front of their crushes. Neither particularly cared to find their soul mate either, but thanks to luck and fate the nicknames practically smacked them both in the face one day during patrol.

“This night is purrfect, don’t you think, Bugaboo?” Chat Noir purred, a satisfied smirk on his face; green eyes practically glowing in the moonlight as he bowed in front of her, taking her hand and pressing a gentle kiss to the back of it as he looked up towards Ladybug. Marinette stiffened at the nickname, her stomach twisting into knots as her face became a light pink,

“D-Don’t call me that.” She said nervously, pulling her hand back and rolling her shoulders in an attempt to shake off the feeling that had settled in her. Chat Noir? Chat Noir was her soul mate? He couldn’t be. That’d be some horrible irony. She thought to herself. Chat of course was not oblivious to the soft pink that dusted his lady’s face at the nickname. He’d thought the name was cute but hadn’t expected such a response from her.

“My lady? Blushing and stuttering?” he teased, grinning as he stood up straight, “Don’t you think it’s cute… Bugaboo?” he continued to tease, only making the blush on Ladybug’s face grow more. Her right hand instinctively going to cover her right ear, looking away shyly,

           “Oh, hush kitty.” She muttered, stepping back awkwardly. Now it was Chat Noir’s turn to blush. His heart raced at the nickname, his smirk growing into a smile. His mind racing with the beat of his heart. Ladybug. My soulmate. The thought had him purring. Before he could say more though, Ladybug looked over the skyline wanting to get out of here before he called her Bugaboo again. “It looks like there’s nothing happening tonight. I should get home. Goodnight.” She said softly, tossing her yo-yo and swinging away. Leaving Adrien a mess as he watched her red figure disappear in the night. He went home feeling like he was floating on clouds, while Marinette was confused. Both in shock at what had occurred in the night. Adrien’s hand spinning the ring on his finger and Marinette’s caressing behind her ear as they were lost in thought.

           Both Adrien and Marinette got used to being called by their nicknames over time. Still feeling a flutter of butterflies in their stomachs when they heard their nick name but not showing how it affected them.

~ ~ ~

Marinette raised a brow at the familiar thud on her balcony, telling her Chat was visiting tonight. She’d grown to appreciate her visits with Chat Noir. As Marinette, he didn’t call her Bugaboo, so it helped her relax around him. It also let her appreciate his goofy humor more, not being stressed to solve an akuma problem like she usually had to do. She had just gotten out of the shower, her hair still wrapped up in a towel and recently changed into her pajama’s. She peaked her head out from the trap door that led to her balcony and smiled sweetly,

“I wasn’t expecting you tonight?” she said, raising a brow as he leaned against his staff with a shrug.

“This cat felt a little stuffy staying home. Thought I’d visit my favorite princess.” He said with a smile. Marinette rolled her eyes and giggled softly, beaconing him inside as she ducked back into her room. Chat followed her into the room and looked at the latest sewing project Marinette had laid out on her desk, “I like the new do, Princess. Really stunning. Reminds me of your movie date with Adrien Agreste.” He teased, unable to not be reminded of the day running around with Marinette in those silly sunglasses and a towel on her head. He sat down on her chaise as he smiled up at her.

Marinette roller her eyes, a faint blush going over her face at the mention of her moment in the tabloids with Adrien. Slowly undoing the towel on her head and tossing it to her laundry basket before using her fingers to comb through her hair,

“It wasn’t a date, silly cat.” She said with a scoff, grabbing her comb and hair ties from her desk. “I was just helping him get away from some fans.” She explained as she used her brush to comb out her hair. Her explanation wasn’t fully listened to though. The sight of Marinette combing her hair made him think back to his childhood. Memories of laughing with his mother as she taught him to comb and braid her hair. Fond memories. He smiled softly. The sweet memory made his chest bloom in warmth at the thought if his mother, his hands twitching as he tilted his head shyly.

“Hey. Could I put your hair up?” he asked curiously. Marinette raised a brow at him and he shrugged awkwardly, “My mom used to let me play with her hair and she taught me to braid it and stuff….It’s been a long time since I got to do anything with long hair.” He explained, flicking at his own short locks with a shrug, “I won’t hurt you, I promise.” He added, the kind smile on his face making Marinette’s heart warm. He’d mentioned his mother on few occasions, and Marinette had figured that she wasn’t in his life anymore. This was something she felt good that she could at least do for him to remind him of her,

“I know you wouldn’t, Kitty.” she cooed, sitting down on the floor in front of him and holding up the brush and hair ties to him. The sound of his nick name had sent a shiver down Adrien’s spine and thrown him off. He’d only been called that by Ladybug before. Now Marinette? He shook his head, trying his best to ignore the pounding of his heart. He reached out and gently took the hair supplies held up to him. Sighing shakily as he began to brush out her hair smoothly, separating her hair at her part. Marinette wasn’t shocked at his gentle hands as he brushed out her hair and put her left pig tail in.

As Chat began combing out the right side of her hair, he was quick to notice the black script behind her ear. He continued to comb her hair out, his hands nimbly twisting the hair tie around her hair as his eyes couldn’t help but read over the soul mark. He had never noticed it before when hanging out with her. As he read the script, ‘Bugaboo’ he felt his breath catch. Marinette noticed how Chat Noir’s movements had faltered on the second pigtail, and right as she was about to say something, she felt his thumb graze gently over her soul mark. Her back stiffened as she realized he’d seen it, he’d read it.

“Bugaboo?” he asked softly, making Marinette’s face go bright red. His hand continued to wander along her ear to notice the black earrings she wore. The earrings she always wore. Instinctively Marinette’s hand shot up to her right ear, pushing Chat’s hand away and covering the soul mark. The movement was familiar to him. The same movement he’d seen Ladybug do when he first called her Bugaboo, and one she did occasionally at being called the nickname the past few months.

“Chat.. I-“ she tried to think of what she could say,

“Ladybug?” he asked, his heart was pounding in his chest. A grin grew on his face as he began to connect the dots, the hair, the eyes, the kindness, why Marinette was always late or running off alone during akuma attacks.

“N-No. No I’m not.” she said in panic, not wanting to look up at him. She was trying to lie, but the red blush on her face was giving her away. Chat chuckled,

“You’re definitely my lady.” He purred, his hand pushing hers out of the way gently to caress the soul mark again, “Claws in.” he said softly. His mask falling and Plagg flying out to land on the chaise beside him. The kwami was about to complain about needing cheese, but the scene in front of him had even him quiet.

           Adrien moved his hands in front of Marinette, the back of her head pressing into his chest. He used his left hand to shift his ring down his finger, revealing his own soul mark. Marinette blushed more as she read the cursive word, the nickname she’d given Chat and had been calling him for months now.

           “Y-You shouldn’t have detransformed Chat.” She said shakily, her heart was pounding, her palms were sweaty, and her stomach was turning. Chat Noir, or really whoever he was under the mask was her soul mate. He had to be. Adrien only chuckled,

           “You’ve always been such a stickler for the rules Marinette.” He said with a grin, slipping his ring back onto his hand properly and using his hand to tilt Marinette’s chin to turn and look at him. She closed her eyes tight, knowing she shouldn’t see his civilian form, but wanting so desperately to. It didn’t even take Adrien any coaxing for her to open one eye for a peak, too curious for her own good.

           The sight of Adrien smiling down at her made Marinette’s face go redder than before.

           “A-Adrien?” she stuttered in shock, her brain could barely process the idea that Chat Noir was actually her soul mate. Adrien being Chat Noir, and therefore being her soul mate was enough to fry her brain. Adrien only shrugged awkwardly, gently pulling Marinette up to join him on the chaise, sitting between his legs.

           “In the flesh, Bugaboo.” He said with a shy smile, setting one hand gently on her thigh. Marinette stared, wide eyed and blushing up at Adrien; the sight of which made a blush form on Adrien’s face as well. With his other hand he cupped Marinette’s face, running his thumb across her cheek as he leaned his face down to hers slowly. Giving her a chance to stop him as he leaned into her, his stomach filling butterflies as their eyes closed and their breath mingled.

Marinette was certain that Adrien could feel her heart thumping in her chest; and Adrien lost himself in the scent of buttery croissants, macaroons, and other baked goods that clung to Marinette. Slowly, their lips met in a shy kiss. Marinette’s hands slid to wrap around Adrien’s torso, fingers curling into his shirt as she leaned into him, hungry for more she kissed him harder. She’d been a mess internally for months, in love with Adrien but torn at the idea that Chat Noir could be her soulmate. Now all the puzzle pieces that didn’t seem to fit had found their place. It made sense.

They parted, shaky breaths still clinging to one another as their faces still lingered close. A soft wave of pink dusting both their faces as Adrien smiled gently, placing a small kiss to the tip of Marinette’s nose.

“Whoever that mystery guy you liked can’t beat a soul mate can it?” he purred, pride filling his chest. No matter who the guy Marinette had liked was, they were soul mates. They were meant to be. Marinette couldn’t help but giggle softly, she was at a loss for words at everything - not knowing what to say at Adrien’s obliviousness. Marinette’s silence had Arien raise a brow, “Cat’s got your tongue?” he teased. Marinette roller her eyes and pushed his face away from hers as she laughed at his silly pun,

“I’m just shocked at how dumb my kitty is.” She said giggling, enjoying the confusion on Adrien’s face as he scratched at the back of his head in thought. She leaned in close to him, hooking her finger in the collar of his shirt, “I was denying Chat Noir for Adrien.” As she explained herself a light went off in Adrien’s eyes, finally connecting the dots he chuckled. Resting his head on Marinette’s shoulder,

“This is why you’re the brains of our duo.” He mumbled. Both sighed gently as they enjoyed the embrace, their faces still pink, stomachs fluttering with butterflies, and hearts pounding.