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runawaycatwalker · 2 years

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Part 13. Going Unrecognized

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Officer Roger Raincomprix points at an Official document while talking to Anarka Couffaine.

Roger: Look, I've got this letter from the mayor himself saying I can look for Adrien Agreste anywhere I think he might have gone. And I think he might have gone on your boat, so—

Anarka throws up her hands in vexation.

Anarka: And I told you that no one steps a foot on my boat without my permission!

Roger: This is Adrien Agreste we're talking about here! We have to find him and send him home!

Catwalker jumps down to join the two squabblers. Anarka stands on the walkway to her boat with her hands on her hips. Roger stands in front of his police car and shirks back from the superhero dropping out of nowhere right next to him.

Catwalker: It looks like you two might need some superheroic assistance?

Catwalker points his hands towards his chest and gives a nonthreatening smile.

Catwalker: If it's okay with you both, I could act as a neutral party for you? I'll search for Adrien on this boat and let the good officer know if I find him here?

Anarka: Not a chance on yer life!

Roger: Absolutely not!

Anarka points an accusatory finger at Catwalker, her braid flailing in the air from the force of her personality. Catwalker leans away from her and plasters a fake smile on his face.

Anarka: Maybe I'd let you aboard if you were Chat Noir—he understood the need for a little anarchy in your life. But you? You strike me as someone who’s only ever followed the orders of someone in a position of authority over you!

Roger looms over Catwalker and waves his Official document. Catwalker shrinks down into himself as his smile begins to falter.

Roger: And I'd never turn such a high-profile investigation over to a brand new superhero! For all I know, you're a blind idiot who'd overlook important clues staring you in the face! I'm not gambling Adrien Agreste on you!

Cut to an overhead shot of the three individuals as an akuma descends towards them. Catwalker is the only one who looks up to notice the incoming danger.

Anarka: Even if I was harboring Adrien, my right to privacy—

Roger: A minor is in danger! Privacy doesn't matter—

Catwalker leaps to catch the butterfly as his ring pulses with destructive energy.

Catwalker: Cataclysm!

Catwalker lands in a kneeling pose with the remnants of the destroyed akuma crumbling in his fist. His eyes are closed and his expression is resigned.

Catwalker: I see that my presence is not wanted here. Best of luck in finding Adrien. Please excuse me.

Cut to Catwalker transforming back into Adrien behind a chimney on a random rooftop.

Adrien holds out his cheese container. Plagg takes a piece of a piece of cheese and looks up worriedly at Adrien.

Plagg: Kid, you can't spend all day living as Catwalker. You need a break. A real break.

Adrien: I know, I know! And I know it's not fair to you to make you sustain the transformation for so long.

Adrien points up at a billboard. The billboard features the painting of Gabriel and Adrien in mourning (Gabriel’s face mostly obscured) with the phrase “Find Adrien” on one side and findadrien @ agreste .mode on the other.

Adrien: I just wish I didn't have such a stupid, recognizable face! I can't even walk past complete strangers while untransformed because they'll instantly know I'm "that missing model Adrien Agreste"!

Plagg looks upwards with his arms spread wide. Adrien places a finger on his chin thoughtfully.

Plagg: Come on, Paris has millions of people living in it. There's got to be at least one person who doesn't know you exist!

Cut to Adrien knocking repeatedly on the door of a small, old house belonging to Rolland Dupain.

Rolland Dupain opens the door and points an angry finger.

Rolland: There is a bell! You're supposed to ring it! Knocking on the door is clearly not how it's done!

Adrien touches the back of his neck and gives an uneasy smile.

Adrien: I don't suppose you recognize me, do you?

Rolland squints and adjusts his glasses.

Rolland: Never seen you before in my life. What do you want?

Adrien poses theatrically, hands raised in a flourish and a sparkling smile on his face. Even the ears on his Chat Noir beanie look perky.

Adrien: I have crumb to you, Rolland Dupain, since I have oven heard that you are the grain-est maker of breads in Paris. [Non-pun translation: I have come to you, Rolland Dupain, since I have often heard that you are the greatest maker of breads in Paris.]

Rolland puts his hands on his hips, unimpressed.

Adrien: And as someone who believes in the roll bread plays in helping lives to flour-ish, I would loaf to become your apprentice. [Non-pun translation: And as someone who believes in the role bread plays in helping lives to flourish, I would love to become your apprentice.]

Rolland: I already had an apprentice. My son runs a boulangerie patisserie with his wife in the 21st arrondissement. Go bother them.

Adrien clasps his hands together and looks up dreamily as he is surrounded by imaginary breadstuffs.

Adrien: I doughnut want the mold ways to die out! I oat to in-grain-iate myself with a baker who is at yeast as crusty as you are. So you, Mr. Dupain, are the only one who can truly help my baking skills to rise! [Non-pun translation: I do not want the old ways to die out! I ought to ingratiate myself with a baker who is at least as crusty as you are. So you, Mr. Dupain, are the only one who can truly help my baking skills to rise!]

Rolland folds his arms in annoyance.

Rolland: How many years have you been making bread?

A sweat drop hovers by Adrien’s head as he sheepishly touches the tips of his pointer fingers together.

Adrien: I guess I knead to say... naan? [Non-pun translation: I guess I need to say... none?]

Rolland throws up his hands in exasperation.

Rolland: Pfah! You probably aren’t even qualified to purchase a loaf of rye at the market! Leave!

Adrien scrambles on hand and foot up the stairs, reaching up with a desperate hand before Rolland closes the door on him.

Adrien: W-wait! I really don’t have anywhere else to go! Can I at least stay here for the night?

A close-up of Rolland’s angry eyes.

A close up of Rolland’s gritting mouth.

Rolland: Care to tell me...

Rolland points at a straight purple bruise cutting across Adrien’s neck. Adrien’s expression freezes.

Rolland: ...where you got that bruise?

Adrien: …

Cut to a flashback of Mayura gleefully holding Chat Noir’s staff above a distressed Adrien.

Rolland (voiceover): Maybe your old man got drunk? Or an evil stepmother decided to take her wrath out on you? Something like that?

Adrien looks haunted as he covers his neck and looks away.

Adrien: S-something like that.

Rolland turns around and reenters his home, his hand waving at Adrien to follow him inside. Adrien places a hand on the open door and looks after Rolland with deep relief.

Rolland: Hmph. Come on, you can sleep on the loveseat.

Adrien: I can stay?

Rolland: Your lessons about flour start in the morning.

Below is the same image as above, only without text:

#runaway catwalker #catwalker #adrien agreste #anarka couffaine #roger raincomprix #plagg #rolland dupain #miraculous ladybug #cw implied domestic violence #i know rolland usually is more upfront about everything #but he's from a generation where domestic violence is one of those things that you DO NOT talk about #so he'll be more apt to beat around the bush in this case #regardless rolland would never be the type of person to leave a child in a dangerous situation #not that adrien isn't still in a dangerous situation #but at least he usually has a supersuit protecting him #except for that split second when it ceased to exist before the staff vanished #yes the bruise has been there since page 2 #so have the ears on adrien's chat noir beanie #they're just usually covered up somehow up until now #also i have no idea how long it takes to set up a billboard #but i'm willing to be gabe would expedite the process #just as he'd be willing to throw around his weight with the mayor to get the entire police force looking for his kid without a warrant #also fun fact this page was going to start with a scene where catwalker orders milk at the hotel bar #and he realizes that even though chat would get it for free #catwalker hasn't been around long enough to get that kind of good will from paris #alas the scene wasn't coming together and the page is already comfortably full without it #so on the chopping block it goes

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ckret2 · 11 months

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Would Bill like

1. ABBA

2. Grateful dead

3. Mitski

4. Vocaloid (things like Kikou, Echo by Creeper-p, and Again also by Creeper-p

5. Kate Bush

Idk these were things I thought he'd like

For those of y'all just getting here, I'm using this list here as my guidelines for What Music I Believe Bill Cipher Would Like, Loosely Based On Canon.

1. Yeah I think he'd like ABBA (or, y'know, BABBA, as the case may be). He likes party music and that's like, party music of the 70s—though I imagine he lost interest in them as they stopped being contemporary.

But more importantly, it gives me the mental image of Dipper singing Disco Girl and Bill Fucking Cipher joins in like "I LOVE THIS SONG!" He'd be mortified.

Now I'm just thinking of parody song titles for BABBA. "Hand Me! Hand Me! Hand Me! (A Guy Late At Night)." "Mommy Mama." "The Loser Takes Nothing." "Dollars, Dollars, Dollars." "Superb Soldier."

2. Now, I've said I think Bill is all over well-known psychedelic music, so you'd think Grateful Dead would be top of the list; but when I sit and listen to their top hits, it makes me think less In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida or Jefferson Airplane, and more John Denver, so thus far I've passed over them. But digging a bit deeper I'm finding more stuff that gives me Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds vibes, so this is probably just a sign that I need to finally fill in the Grateful Dead-shaped hole in my mental musical library like I've been meaning to do for years. I'm gonna tentatively say "yes" just due to the fact that it's the Grateful Dead, but I haven't listened to them enough to say WHAT he'd enjoy.

3. I will grant that it's very funny to imagine Bill laying on a bed staring at the ceiling while "NOBODY, NOBODY, NOBODY—" blasts at top volume. However I think the main reason it's funny is because it's jarringly incongruous. Most of Mitski's music is dreamy-sounding, deeply introspective, and carried not by simple pop-friendly melodies but by the the complexity & poetry of the lyrics—and I think all of those are things Bill tends to steer away from. "Can you take psychedelics to it in the back of a van with tie-dye tapestries on the wall?" or "Can you rave to it?" covers most of his casual music listening.

(However, I do think he's got an ex girlfriend who did beat poetry that sounds kinda like Mitski lyrics as performed by a screaming death metal band. Someday I'll get around to drawing some of his exes.)

4. I say this as somebody who loves "Again" and "Echo"—I think he'd hate them, & probably most of Kikuo's music. There's a vast breadth of Vocaloid music—it's not really a genre so much as it is an instrument—and while I don't necessarily think he'd outright reject anything made with Vocaloid, I do think he'd steer away from the lyrically darker music. Like I said, I don't think he likes deeply introspective music. This triangle hasn't acknowledged or explored a negative emotion in a bajillion years and he's not about to start now. I mean, come on:

Cause I am on fire; a crying, burning liar; seeing nothing, nothing, but myself; and I'm the one with the lighter!

Is that about Bill? Sure, that's about Bill!!! You could insert it into the middle of the axolotl poem and hardly even notice.

(Making this was a mistake, in my head I started singing "if he wants to shirk the blame, he'll have to invoke my name" to the tune of "Again". Unplanned new headcanon voice for the Axolotl.)

However, "this describes Bill well" doesn't mean "Bill would like this." In fact, I think "this describes Bill well" almost guarantees that Bill would dislike a particular song. The fact that "Again" has such an apt description of him is exactly why he'd despise it. If you try to play this in his hearing, he's blowing up the speaker, burning down the house, turning your head into an ice cream cone and biting it off, and then telling his stunned silent friends that he got tired of this whiny boring music now let's go destroy something fun. Assuming he doesn't simply show no reaction to it at all so that he can avoid showing weakness.

Just about any songs about doubt, remorse, or bad feelings are gonna get the same reaction out of him. He doesn't wanna touch them with a ten foot pole. Music is for partying, music is for escapism. I can see him enjoying a darker song if it's framed in a way that invites the listener to derive voyeuristic schadenfreude from the singer's suffering—but if it's meant to confront you or discomfort you, or if listeners are expected in any way to personally identify with the lyrics, he's not touching it.

I could potentially see him listening to some of Kikuo's music if he can engage it STRICTLY as a party song. For instance, Gomenne Gomenne has sections that make it a solid dubstep song—with frenetic wordless singing on top, I think that'd appeal to Bill—so he might could put it on at a party... as long as the party is loud enough that he doesn't have to pay any attention to the lyrics about horrific child abuse and the resultant trauma. Maybe find a remix that leaves out all the lyrics about low self-esteem, brokenness, and worthlessness—but leave in the bits about rib soup, he thinks that part's funny once the context is removed. Violence is great, he just doesn't wanna be expected to pity someone.

It's a big stretch, though. If I had to pick Vocaloid songs for him, I'd look for either party-ready EDM with relatively bland lyrics or the really experimental pieces that do ear-hurting insane discordant things by pushing the Vocaloid program to the limits of the sounds it can generate; but I probably wouldn't pick Vocaloid for him at all.

5. I don't have anything special to say about Kate Bush, I just don't think anything about her music would intrigue him but there's nothing about it that would specifically deeply rub him the wrong way. Since I assume he's passingly familiar with most notable popular/mainstream artists, I'm sure he's heard her hits, he could probably sarcastically bang out a few bars of "Running Up That Hill" on the piano if he ever somehow found himself in a situation where sarcastic "Running Up That Hill" would be fitting; but the same could be said of any other chart-topping musician.

#anonymous #ask #music #bill cipher

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