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jinx-jade · 4 years ago

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Secret Dreams Chapter 10: A court meeting.

Marinette, Penny, and Jagged entered her hotel room, quickly closing and locking everything that could let them be seen from the outside world.

“Are you gonna tell us how you know Bruce’s kid?” Jagged questions as they finished locking up.

“But that would ruin all my fun!” Marinette wines as she handed Kaalki’s miraculous to Penny and Roarr’s miraculous to Jagged.

“I think Plagg has been rubbing off on you too much,” Penny says with amusement, causing Marinette to huff in protest, quickly opening a portal and going through it. Penny did the same thing for herself and Jagged. Not even bothering to transform since she didn’t need to do so, due to the fact she was already an adult.

Penny’s portal had brought Jagged and herself to a large conference room. After a few moments, a portal appeared letting Tomoe, Kagami, and Adrien enter the room. Once that portal shut, a new one opened, Anarka, Alix, Juleka, and Luka stepped through it. The third portal opened with Tom, Sabine, and Chloe stepping out. A fourth portal opened letting Kim, Ondine, Nathaniel, and Marc through. The final portal opened with Max and Marinette exiting it.

All those who exited a portal are members of the 魔盾 Co. (Mó dùn Co.). Some had been members longer than others, although none of the court members kept their miraculi on them anymore. They had come to a unanimous decision that the Grand Guardian, Marinette, was to hold onto all the miraculi. The only reason a court member would hold their miraculi was if they had an important meeting, an emergency, or if their kwami wished to visit. Seeing that each court member had been given their respective miraculous as they were sent through a portal, they could only assume this meeting was very important.

Each court member took their seats as they started the meet.

“The bat family broke through quite a few of our firewalls,” Marinette informs them.

“Max, Start to rebuild them and upgrade them if possible. Your second chance should help you outrun them if they decide to double back.” Max gives a sharp nod.

“Alix, give Max a hand. Your protection shields should be a big help to Max’s programming.” Alix gave a mock salute as she started manipulating her raw energy into a protection algorithm.

“What do you mean the bat family broke through our firewall!” Kim exclaims.

“About that,” Marinette starts. “I may have gotten caught up in a rogue attack and taken down most of the goons, catching the bat-fam’s attention in the process,” Marinette says as she spins the black cat miraculous on her hand.

Tom let out a resigned sigh, “Of course you did,” he states under his breath.

Sabine simply chuckling in amusement, “Oh, I was already aware of your involvement in the attack. Although I’m more interested in your meeting with the Waynes today.” Sabine lazily informs them with a smirk.

“Stupid time travel mother, always knowing everything.” Marinette huffs under her breath.

“What’s this about the Wayne’s? Oh, and don’t even try to lie. Luka and I will be able to tell based on how your emotions move.” Chloe smirks, causing Marinette to groan.

“You’re all trying to ruin my fun!” Marinette hisses back. Her hiss didn’t have any bite, so the others joined in on the teasing.

“The little rocker knows Wayne’s youngest. They seemed rather chummy too.” Jagged was so ‘kind’ to inform them. The meeting got off-topic as they asked question after question.

Tomoe was the one to get the meeting back on track.“How much information were they able to retrieve?” The dragon wielder inquired.

Marinette cleared her throat as she let a wide grin make its way onto her features. “They didn’t get anything that hadn’t been approved by myself. I also may have got onto a call with them. So..” she trailed off.

“You're joking.” Nathaniel states as a grin of his own appeared. His k-9s are showing just a little bit. Seeming a little too sharp to be normal.

“Nope! I got onto a call with them, so the amount of knowledge they got was controlled by myself,” Marinette replied.

“Nice,” the fox wielder shot back in appreciation.

“And that information was?” Juleka asked with a raised brow

“Let our chaotic cats have their fun. After all, Nathaniel usually only plays with his little mouse.” Kim states teasingly, causing Marc to go red at the implication.

“Exactly, Mari will get there eventually. No need to bee so impatient Queenie.” The goat wielder cackles at his puns. The rest of the court is a mix between chuckle, groans, and glares.

“Adrien, what have we said about the puns!” Chloe groans as she throws her hands into the air.

Not even missing a beat, Adrien replies, “That there not punny.”

“As much fun this chaos is, we should get back on topic,” Anarka interjects.

“Says the chaos monkey herself.” Marinette cheers before a serious look fell in place.

“The information I gave them was from my official 魔盾 Co. (Mó dùn Co.) court file. Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Codename شبح (Shabh). Currently staying in Gotham, New Jersey, America. Court member of eight years. Court rank classified. Runs the company MDC, a front for 魔盾 Co. (Mó dùn Co.). The general stuff.” she informs them.

“They will most likely visit my civilian identity at some point. I also want some of you in Gotham. The amount of curses, hexes, and charms littered around the place is insane. On that note, how do all of you feel about going to a charity gala tomorrow night?” Marinette questions.

The meet continued as normal after they decided that anyone who wouldn’t be seen as out of place will attend the gala with Jagged, Penny, and Marinette. All the court members had a general feeling that Marinette was planning something but couldn’t figure out what it was.

They looked to Sabine only to see that she wasn’t really worried about anything. The calmness of the rabbit wielder helped soothe their nerves.

It wasn’t until everyone had gone home that they all seemed to collectively remember that Sabine always lets Marinette have her chaotic fun.

In case you’re confused:

Marinette is the black cat wielder

Alix is the turtle wielder

Juleka is the bee wielder

Chloe is the butterfly wielder

Nathaniel is the fox wielder

Marc is the mouse wielder

Kagami is the Ox wielder

Luka is the peacock wielder

Adrien is the goat wielder

Kim is the rooster wielder

Ondine is the pig wielder

Max is the snake wielder

Tom is the dog wielder

Sabine is the rabbit wielder

Jagged is the tiger wielder

Penny is the horse wielder

Anarka is the monkey wielder

Tomoe is the dragon wielder

tag list: @little-bluestar @redbullgivescaswings @stackofrandomstuff @meismu @maskedpainter @nyx-in-line @iamabrownfox @m0chik0furan @jjmjjktth @icerosecrystal @machichannx @a4-machete @our-preciousss @justafanwarrior @animegirlweeb @loopingtangent @buginetye @blueslushgueen @solangelo252 @officiallydarkgreek @toodaloo-kangaroo @melicmusicmagic @alysrose-starchild @lunathealphafemale @frieddonutsweets @marvel--unsolved @user00000003 @henie04 @anonymously-odd @jayjayspixiepop @eggadoodle @demonicbusiness @laurcad123 @how-to-fuction-properly @stormfox2411 @legends-live-in-memories @moon5608 @insane-fangirl-of-everything @yin-390 @daughterofnyxandhell @theymakeupfairies

#maribat #secret soulmate #secret relationship #soulmate marinette #soulmate damian #secret soulmates #romantic soulmates #secret dreams

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s-and-n-writes · 4 years ago

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the perfect blend

summary: marinette dupain-cheng is just another barista working at a cafe when a familiar, handsome man by the name of adrien decides to walk in. what follows is a conversation full of laughter, puns, and just a little bit of romance.

all this time, she can’t quite remember why he’s so recognizable...until alya lets her know who he really is.

or: some lovey-dovey adrinette coffee-shop fluff for your soul :)

a/n: what am i doing, you ask? funny that you think i know.

warnings: none <3

quick links: | miraculous masterlist |

The first time she meets him, it’s at the cafe.

It’s commonly known that every day, from early in the morning to late in the evening, Marinette spends her time working at The Purrfect Fix, a quiet cafe known for its wonderful drinks and bustling atmosphere.

What Marinette likes most is the feeling of working there. There are so many memories, but nothing is quite as prominent as making an order just right.

It’s not her dream job, but she’s always loved every second of it.

That’s not the only reason she chose it, though. It’s convenient. She’s taking a year off after university to build up her portfolio, but with no income, her thoughts drifted to a temporary working space. Not long after, she found this place.

The rest of it was fate. Or, that’s what she liked to think anyway.

It’s been hours since opening, and Marinette is operating on autopilot. She takes the orders of different customers as they walk into the cafe, and waits as Alya makes them. Occasionally, she wipes down a couple of tables when customers leave, but other than that, the day is slow.

But then he walks in, and she’s a goner. She watches as he takes off his jacket, rolls up the edges of his sleeves, and pats down his hair. He smiles as he walks up to the counter, and even though Marinette can tell that it’s been practically painted onto his face, she feels her heart leap into her chest.

Blinding. That’s how she’d describe his smile.

Still, she holds out from going into a full-blown, blushing mess in front of him. Plenty of good-looking people have turned out to be complete jerks, and Marinette’s seen that too many times before.

(She feels like there’s something different there—she knows it, but she won’t let herself get swept away in the excitement. Not again. Not after Luka.)

There’s a pause as he walks to the counter because Marinette notices how blond his hair is, and how well it goes with the stark green of his eyes and the same, accentuated green stripes that line his shirt.

She sees the golden ‘Gabriel’ logo on the corner of his collar. Agreste handiwork, she’d know that anywhere. He must be well-off, to afford something like that.

“Hello,” he smiles. The tone is nice, edging on polite, but the sparkle of his eyes says something else. “Can I get a small soy milk latte… and an eclair? Both to-go, please,”

Their eyes meet, and it seems like there’s something electric that happens, even just for a second. Marinette tries to avoid his gaze as she punches the order in. “Is that all?”

He tilts his head, thinking. “Actually, can I also get a croissant?”

“O-of course. Your name, please?”

“Adrien.”

The name is familiar, but she pays no mind to it. He pulls out a credit card from his wallet, sliding it through the register as Marinette rushes to package the pastries. Alya makes his drink, waggling her eyebrows when Marinette turns to look at her.

Alya had a knack for figuring out who Marinette had an eye on, sometimes even before Marinette knew herself, and this time was no different.

She gives her best friend a glare, and slips his food into a bag, emblazoned with the cafe’s logo. “W-we’ll call out your name once the drink is done,”

He smiles softly. “Yes, thank you.”

He takes two steps back, just enough for her to start a conversation, but she doesn’t. The silence is awkward when there are no other customers for Marinette to tend to.

Alya gives her a swift kick under the counter, her intentions clear.

“Talk to him!” she hisses. “It’s your move, girl!”

Marinette narrows her eyes at her, but calls to him nonetheless.

“S-so!” she exclaims. “H-how...are you?”

Adrien takes a step back to the counter, and visibly cheers up at her asking. He grins, showing teeth. “I’m doing awesome! I have a meeting this afternoon, which…I’m not excited about it, but I think it’ll be ok. And you?”

“Um, ok, I-I guess. I mean, a little tired, t-that’s all.”

He nods. “I know how that feels. I hope the rest of your day is paw-some, though!”

She blinks. Paw-some? What kind of weeb person made a pun while talking to someone?

“T-thanks,” she nods. It is kind of funny though, if she doesn’t think about it too hard. She giggles under her breath.

“Hey, you did like it! I was worried you thought I was an idiot for a second.”

She laughs a little louder this time, and eyes him once. A sudden burst of confidence fills her when she says, “You, a guy that worked a pun into a conversation? Never,”

He laughs, truly genuine this time, and she can’t help but chuckle with him.

Wiping a tear from his eye, he grins. “Ok, but with a name like The Purrfect Fix, I couldn’t not say it!”

She rolls her eyes teasingly. “Y-You have a point, but it was still kind of lame,”

He gasps, pouting and putting a hand over his heart. “I’m devastated! Just when I thought a brew-tiful girl like you liked me!”

Marinette sighs at the pun, and her cheeks redden against her will. “You're a flirt, but takes a lot more than bad puns for that.”

Adrien laughs good-naturedly, and tucks his hands into the pockets of his pants. “You know what? You’re pretty cool...Marinette!”

She startles when he says her name, which smoothly rolls off his tongue, and glances at her name tag.

Oh. Right.

“Thanks, but I don’t think my friends wouldn’t agree with you,” she sighs, thinking of Alya and Chloe.

“You’re not alone, my best friend thinks I’m pretty lame too,” He laughs under his breath. “But that’s all friends for you, isn’t it?”

She nods and laughs with him as Alya calls for her. She passes on a to-go cup, and Marinette hands it to Adrien.

“Thank you!” he smiles. “It was nice meeting you,”

“You too!” She nods back as he shrugs his coat back on.

With a final wave, he grins cheekily. “Have a nice day, remember to stay paw-sitive!”

She lets a groan before she can stop herself, and Adrien chuckles all the way out the front door.

(She changes her mind. He’s a pretty nice guy after all.)

“Girl! I’m proud of you,” Alya grins from next to her. “I can’t believe you managed to flirt—as bad as it may be—with the Adrien Agreste!”

Wait.

What?

“You’re kidding me!” Marinette gasps. “That was Adrien Agreste?!’

“Holy—” Alya snorts, grinning wide. “You didn’t know?”

“Oh my god, I’m so stuuuupiddd,” Marinette groans pitifully and restrains herself from melting into the floor like a pile of goo. “I stuttered like a fool in front of Adrien Agreste!”

Alya snickers. “Wait until I tell Chloe, she’s gonna have a blast with this,”

a/n: personally, i kinda liked this! lmk if you did too <3

#miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #marinette x adrien #alya cesaire #adrienette #adrinette #chloe bourgeois #coffee shop au #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #ladybug #chat noir

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gamajun · 4 years ago

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this or that

🐞miraculous edition😺

1. have adventures with fei in shanghai or patrol with aeon and jess in new york?

2. be a muse to kagami or let nathaniel and marc make a comic about you?

3. have a gaming match with adrien or marinette?

4. wear all the miraculouses at once or make a risky wish with ladybug and black cat's miraculous?

5. have an honor to name the hamster or travel to future with bunnix to meet adult adrienette?

6. help marinette design her best dress for a date with adrien or do her make-up for luka's concert?

7. be the lead in nino's movie or write the script with alya?

8. have a fancy sleepover with chloe and sabrina or parent all the kwamis for one whole day?

9. have a pun competition with chat noir or figure out ladybug's lucky charm without her help?

10. if you had a chance, would you give adrien a better father or bring back his mother?

reblog with your answers or put them in the tags, whatever is easier for you!

let's have fun!

#miraculous ladybug #ask games #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #if this does well i'll make another one

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spooky-z · 6 years ago

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The Soulmate AU

Maribat by @ozmav

Part 2

In this au, soulmates are common knowledge, but not ordinary.

The link between the two people is literally soul sharing, which makes the couple feel, think, be like the other person at the end of the link.

There are "levels" of depth between two soulmates that get hit as the pair grows.

Not everyone has a soulmate. It is more normal not to have one than to have one.

Having a soulmate means (at least that's what the myth said) that you have been touched and blessed by the gods. A descendant of them.

Here Marinette and Damian share the same soul; just like Adrien and Jonathan.

The signs of having a soulmate or not were obvious. The first and the best known: the color of the eyes.

As Marinette and Adrien first opened their eyes at birth, their parents noticed the different colors of each eye.

Marinette's right eye was a brilliant jade while the left was a charming blueberry shade.

Adrien had the left a vivid emerald and the right a radioactive baby blue. An interesting tone, Gabriel said. Emilie responds by saying that this meant his soulmate was even more special.

As time went on, the two growing well and healthy, the characteristics of their soul mates became more evident.

At 5, Marinette was able to speak French, English, Chinese, Russian and Urdu fluently; Apart from French, Adrien spoke English and another language that no one could figure out what it was because no one knew the dialect.

Adrien showed no other characteristics about his soulmate, at least none as obvious as Marinette's.

She, despite her age, was aware of such things as hand-to-hand combat (martial arts), how to handle weapons (bow, swords). She was frankly annoyed by the action movies she watched because she said it was all wrong.

Sabine and Tom were really worried, not only for their daughter, but for her soulmate. A child of that age should not know of such things.

At the age of 7, the first "Swap" happens.

Marinette was in the classroom. The teacher had given everyone free time and she was having to deal with Chloe's nonsense; Adrien was in a photo shoot accompanied by Gabriel and Emilie.

It had been the most fascinating and frightening experience Adrien's parents and Mari's class had ever witnessed.

The changes were obvious, especially in Adrien, who had half (from root to tip) of blond hair, stained midnight black and the green of his right eye warmed to a cyan. The bubbly personality didn't change much.

Marinette's hair just changed from a bluish black to a glossy black and her left eye a glowing cyan. The shocking difference had been in behavior and posture from Persephone directly to Hades.

Chloe had fled school after that, on the excuse of being sick.

Let's go to the dynamics and explain a bit about this au.

When I had this idea, I was sleep deprived and bored. I scribbled some things on paper until I found myself thinking about our beloved soulmate cliché.

I wanted to write something with the theme, but I didn't want to write something that had already been written millions of times. I thought about the types of soul mates and how they were usually written, and that idea came to mind.

What I think now was not that original and just my subconscious merging things.

Eye color + skills + thought sharing + magic + and the Sense8 cluster concept. I put it all together and it came out.

So, this au is supposed to be something like: two bodies, one soul divided for each one.

The "Swap", for example, is not exactly a swap. It's more like (I'm going to put Jon in Adrien's body as an example) Jonathan taking the wheel and Adrien sitting in the passenger seat, enjoying the ride. Fully aware, being able to take over his body at any time if he wanted to.

You ask: “but what about ladybug? And chat noir?”

I answer: "magic."

Transformation protects their identity. Marinette's eyes turn gray (like Sabine's) and Adrien's eyes look like canon's, so neither they (nor Paris) know their secret identities. What we can't say the same about the soulmates.

Just as Damian and Jon know about Chat Noir and Ladybug, Marinette and Adrien know about Superboy and Robin. You cannot hide something from a person who lives in you and with you.

You ask: "But if they share the soul, does that means Adrien has Jonathan’s powers and Marinette died with Damian?"

I answer: "yes and no."

Adrien (untransformed) has greater stamina than a normal human, just as strength and kryptonite are bad for him, not as a Kryptonian, but still make him sick.

About Damian's death: Marinette was in a coma for two months until he was resurrected. She watched, felt and suffered his death before the pain was too much for her to endure and faint.

(What Damian learned the hard way after Aspik failed to save Ladybug against Desperada and lived in the loop for three months straight. Bruce and Alfred had to leave Damian sedated and intubated after he passed out for the sixth time.)

You ask: "What changes in their personality in this au?"

I answer: "As they are one soul, yet divided into two bodies, the personalities are balanced."

It's like the yin & yang theory of chat with ladybug. The personality of one mirrors the other.

Marinette: She can be confident, cold and downright scary if the situation calls for it.

Damian: Doesn't show much emotion around people (before the League, now Batfam), but if he's on a mission that requires him to be sunshine and rainbows... Well, Bruce is positively surprised. Damian smiled as if it was something he did every day, without pain and without killing anyone.

Jonathan: Playful, puns beyond count and impulsive. He tries not to be, but his soulmate is strong.

Adrien: With one goal in mind, he goes, no matter who is in the way. Demanding and serious, he has no time for silly nonsense. (You know what I'm talking about)

I will expand this universe further. I have some things already written and I will post soon!

[tag list]

@sassydepression @emjrabbitwolf

#soulmate au #maribat #jondrien #damian x marinette #damian #daminette #adrien agreste #jonathan #ml salt #miraculous ladybug

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alexseanchai · 4 years ago

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Fanfic 2020 in Review

I got tagged by @kasienda @noirshitsuji and @marvelousmsmol and I am tagging whoever wants to play!

1) List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

*filters own works to complete and updated in 2020*

1 - 20 of 57 Works by AlexSeanchai

nope. *adds filter to include only works of at least 1000 words*

unless otherwise indicated, these are all Miraculous Ladybug:

“don’t bake it lying down”, post-reveal Marichat vs Felix Graham de Vanily

“veracity”, canon divergence from “Ladybug” featuring Mister Bug and Verity Queen (so also Marichat, I guess)

“(no request is too extreme, if) your heart is in your dream”, in which Hawkmoth wins, for the thirty seconds or so before Emilie saves Ladybug and Chat Noir’s lives

“tell me you love me and make me believe it”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire ropes Ladybug into helping plan her civilian self’s escape slash social transition

“kingmaker, oathbreaker”, in which Hawkmoth wins and Emilie watches her son remove himself from the family

“stay and let me watch you break it down” (Twelve Dancing Princesses), a modern setting

“set a course for winds of fortune”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire has already escaped and Gabriel and Nathalie are trying to bring Gabriel’s son home

“we ground love in a hopeless place”, in which post-reveal Marinette’s attempt to remain resolutely not in love with her partner dissolves like sugar in coffee when they start a pun war

“ring the bells that still can ring”, in which Alya is deeply confused about why Adrien and Marinette are planning a wedding when last night both were single

“burning wishes at both ends (the cold wind and long loud wail remix)”, in which Gabriel made a monkey’s paw wish and Emilie makes another

“words cannot espresso”, in which Marinette’s OC roommate is justifiably worried for Marinette’s safety, and meanwhile Adrien takes care of Marinette

“the compromise of truth” (the chronologically second-earliest part posted to date of nine lives, snake’s eyes), in which Adrien tells his friends how he won some freedom and respect from his father

“At The Present Time”, the Ladrien/Ladynoir marriage proposal follow-up to @art-deco-shrimp‘s “Your Presents Required”

“j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”, in which the events of canon must just have been a series of dream sequences, Marinette and Adrien both think, until they both arrive at Chloe’s Halloween masquerade dressed as themselves from the dreams

2) Number of words written:

ahahaha no. I am not counting all my scattered fic drafts and trying to figure out what I did and didn’t write in 2020. I refuse.

AO3 says I posted 162K in 2020. it is counting all of keeps you guessing (like any real love), which (a) I started posting in 2019 (b) is co-written by @galahadwilder; it is counting all of my meta snippets collection, much of which was written in 2019; it is counting the Vimeo passwords for my vids. but I probably cleared 150K by a safe margin.

3) Your most popular fic:

“veracity” has a four-digit kudos count, wow, when’d that happen? this is also the 2020 work with the most hits and the most bookmarks, but “tell me you love me” has four-thirds as many comments as its nearest competitor.

4) Your personal fav:

“cannot break us, not with a thousand swords”, no question about it. this is the one in which Ladybug proposes marriage to Chat Noir via Princess Bride meme on Tumblr. (if you intend to download the work or otherwise to consume it with creator style off, you want the accessible version instead of the primary version.)

5) Your fav scene:

aaaaaaaaa

—okay so this is cheating and I know it, since Uncertain Humors (the one where Marinette/Adrien is both Orpheus/Eurydice and Theseus/Ariadne) is nowhere near finished, never mind posted (maybe I'll get “Sanguine” done to post on my birthday?)

but it is still my favorite of the year. as you might guess from that description of the story, this scene has content notes for character death:

Hell is a maze. Marinette walks.

This acrid passage has little to see but damp stone, seeming blood-stained in the dim carmine light. At about the height of her heart, the faintly glowing thread cuts through the not-clammy air; it ought to be pulsing at the same rate as the heart it's bound to. She might be able to see her own reflection if she looked down at the open sewage pipe, or at one of the puddles that now and again she splashes through, dampening the canvas of her shoes. She might see reflected what's behind her.

She remembers Mme. Mendeleiev lecturing on human physiology. In healthy humans old enough to have learned how, urination is a voluntary action: one may not know which muscles one tenses and relaxes in order to do so, and probably isn't paying attention to those details when one is doing, but one has conscious control over whether one does. Usually. Stress and anxiety mean some people are unable to relax the relevant sphincter muscle and others are unable to stop themselves. It's voluntary for cats, too: it's one way they mark their territories. Cat-boys have other ways.

There is a moment in every human life when all one's muscles relax at once. Some Parisians have had several such moments.

The thread is braided with itself around her left fourth finger, rows of tiny red half-hitch knots, and falls loosely over the back of her hand to loop twice around her wrist. She holds it wrapped between the fingers of her right hand to keep it at a constant tension, as though knitting with this insubstantial thread, so fragile for something two (two dozen, two million) lives hang from—too thin to sew with, no thicker than one strand of his hair. As she walks, she winds it around and around and around her wrist.

Between her ring finger and her right hand, it loops twice.

Marinette's shoe lands in a puddle she didn't see. The rainwater splashes soundlessly onto her bare ankle and on the stone.

(With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal— It's a very loud song.)

She walks on.

6) A fic or scene that challenged you:

where the firelight fades, no contest. this is the second story I’ve ever been able to stick with more than a couple hundred words past the 20K mark, but it’s easily the twentieth novel-length I’ve begun. (though also, you know that kedreeva post? well, 90K later, I’m less than 15K from completing this 10K fic! I think.) and I have been learning so much about long-form fiction.

there has also been a lot of weeping and tearing my hair. case in point: I just trashed the chapter 15 draft because I figured out the reason it wasn’t going anywhere! I can probably keep the first few hundred words of that draft without any editing, and another few hundred with some revision...

7) A line of writing you’re proud of:

from “j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”:

Everything about their partnership is fragments of sentences in the dream diary Adrien writes in ultraviolet pen. Disjointed flickers of thought even when examined under the black light he hides in the snack cabinet under packets of Super Yoyo sandwich cookies and bags of cheesy Monster Munch potato chips and boxes of petit écolier butter cookies (chocolat noir)—none of which explains the gym-socks smell. All fleeting incoherent flashes, invisible between the mundane lines of La Modification shelved at his bedside between Leroux and Dumas. None of it is solid. Adrien has more proof his room's haunted.

okay let me break this down for you!

* Adrien started a dream diary to make sense of the memories

* in invisible ink, in a book that (according to Wikipedia) is thematically appropriate and won’t (if Gabriel sees it) look like anything other than Adrien developing an interest in French literature

* shelved between Phantom of the Opera and The Three Musketeers

* look I didn’t come up with the name “black light”

* or “chocolat noir” for what English speakers call “dark chocolate”, or “petit écolier” (that is, “little schoolboy”) for that sort of butter cookie

* also not my fault that “chocolat noir” sounds remarkably like “Chat Noir”, which, attentive readers may have noticed, is not a name that appears in the story after the header and before Miraculous Cure

* I found the website of a store in Boston, Massachusetts that caters to French expats, and the yo-yo cookies and the monster chips were right there in the photos, y’all

* the snack stash and the black light live in the cabinet where, in canon, the Camembert lives; yes, that cheese smells in the real world like gym socks

* this story’s akuma was not able to affect anything but squishy human memory: nobody affected remembers anything about Ladybug or Chat Noir or Hawkmoth, not in any solid way, not even when they read news articles about the subject, and this includes Marinette and Adrien not being able to see or hear or remember their own kwamis—but you know what Adrien’s Insta post about his poltergeist and Adrien’s Insta post with the floating sock don’t show and don’t explicitly refer to?

* I love this paragraph so much (my housemates may have been lovingly mocking me over it)

8) A comment that touched you:

there are people (y’all know who you are) who said y’all are studying my style. I ded of blush.

9) Something that inspired your writing:

by volume of fic drafts that can be blamed on any particular person, the winner is probably @norakwami

10) Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

so that longest-story-ever-written record I set in 2007 with the 89.5K story that, till where the firelight fades, was the only story I’d gotten much past 20K?

I broke that fucking record!

and then I deleted the draft of firelight chapter 15 😭

11) Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I’m starting work on a fantasy novel, a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which I explore (among other things) the economic consequences of the king’s ordering all the spinning wheels burned, and I want to make significant progress on that. and I want to not make my hands any worse; I kind of need those!

(breaking news alert: bodies fucking suck. so does giving yourself repetitive stress injuries in doing one and a half to two people’s worth of work for an organization that was never ever going to pay you more than one person’s worth of pay.)

#by alexseanchai #miraculous ladybug #tag game

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ao3feed-ladynoir · 2 years ago

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Doxxed 😂

Doxxed 😂 by Inexperienced 128

Their friends know. Nadja. Chloe. Mari's parents. The Government. The Internet. Most importantly, Cat Noir's father knows.

Words: 3838, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Miraculous Ladybug

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M

Characters: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Nino Lahiffe, Alya Césaire, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug's Parents, Gabriel Agreste, Sabine Cheng, Tom Dupain, Nadja Chamack, Nathalie Sancoeur

Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alya Césaire/Nino Lahiffe

Additional Tags: Superheroes, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Comforts Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, snuggles, Digital Art, identities revealed to the world, mid-season 4 setting, Exposed, News, Winter, Cold, puns, Soulmate AU, Ladynoir | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng as Ladybug, Marichat | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Ladrien | Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng as Ladybug, adrienette, Multi-chapter Fics, Fluff, Aged Up, Older teenagers, read each other thoughts, artwork, Parent Issues, Secret dating, andre ice cream, supportive friends

Read Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45684724

#AO3 Feed #FanFiction #AO3 Ladynoir #🐞#❤️#🐱#Ladynoir #DJWifi #Miraculous Ladybug #♥#R:T #A:Inexperienced

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maxdark158 · 6 years ago

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HEAR ME OUT - I’VE GOT AN AU IDEA

Okay, so I have too much on my plate with Demon in Gotham, the sequel, and my and @slytherinsheashire ‘s baby so I can’t write this au out as a story but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head so if any of you write this PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tag me

Daminette endgame (through really can work with any ship in the maribat fandom)

So I know in most Daminette AUs we hate on Adrien because of his flaws in canon (which I am not against)

BUUUUT au where there was no love interest for Adrien/Chat Noir and Ladybug/Marinette to begin with, so they were Best Friends, and still are when Damian comes in

Like he is protective because That's My BFF but he's reasonable and not in love with her

He also actually has her back with Lila. He can't stand up stand up to her (because abusive father) but he hangs out with Marinette whenever he can and they make fun of Lila together when she can't hear them and he is passive-aggressive with her a lot

He likes Damian but by Rule of Best Friends he does threaten him if he hurts his BFF

Alya is still a jerk but Adrien is passive (agreste)sive with her too about fact-checking

Also, Alya totally thinks Mari liked Adrien and doesn’t listen to Mari saying no

CN completely hates Lila btw because not only is she lying about Red Best Friend but she's bullying Pink Best Friend and while Adrien has to be nice CN doesn't!

A mental image: Adrien telling Lila she looks pretty, "today," before running off before she picks up on the insult

He also as CN takes his job more seriously and only banters on patrol and such. He didn't at first but LB took him aside and explained why she was annoyed and he stopped – because that’s what you do when your BFF asks you to!!

When the reveal happens Adrien is like, "you are my mega ultra best friend now"

Because I don't really ship Adrien with anyone but Mari I HC that in this au he's aro ace. If you ship him with someone he can just not be interested in Mari (gaydrien is also an option) but the rest of this will continue as if he is aro ace, change as needed if you write differently

He and Mari are the closest two BFFs can be but she and Damian are the ones with romantic feelings and such

Adrien is actually the one who suggests giving the Fox to Damian when Alya shows no signs on improving

He’s just the bestest of best friends and he never feels like Mari owes him anything and he gives terrible dating advice and they’re just! Best Friends!!

He also recognizes his dad as abusive and is trying to better himself while being under his father’s thumb. He’s essentially counting down the days to freedom at this point

Gabriel is Adrien-phobic, sexuality included. Adrien hasn’t come out to him and he never plans to

A quick list of episode fixes in random order--

Stoneheart – is the same up until they ‘fall in love’ CN is just super excited to have someone as awesome as LB as a friend. Mari doesn’t fall in love but she is a bit awkward with her new BFF at first

Stormy Weather – Alya, Manon, and Marinette all went to the park to bring Adrien a snack in stormy weather because he complained about his diet

CN banters, doesn’t flirt, stops bantering around Copycat when LB asks if he can focus on work when there is an akuma

Horrificator – Adrien was anti kiss no matter who the actress was. Nino, realizing he was making his bro uncomfortable, forgoes the kiss completely, despite Alya suddenly pushing for it once Marinette was volunteered as the lead girl

Animan – Adrien asked Mari if she had a crush on anyone first, because he didn’t want to put her in a situation where she was accidentally leading Nino on. All four of them end up going to the zoo together as planned but Mari locked Alya and Nino in the cage because Alya was annoying her about a ‘crush’ on Adrien

Dark Cupid – LB was venting about Alya trying to get her to confess her nonexistent crush and CN was ranting about ppl sending him letters without even knowing him or his sexuality. He teared up in his rant (when mentioning his father probs) and she hugged him and he saw Dark Cupid and shielded her. She kissed his cheek to break the spell

Prime Queen – Chamack was pushy with them being a couple but they both outright denied it and declared themselves best friends and only that. Mari, resident Bi, came out as lesbian as LB to throw ppl off her trail and make pushy shippers stop. CN hesitated about coming out as ace and, in private, told him he didn’t have to

Volpina – Adrien realized Lila was flirting and shut her down right away, saying he wasn’t interested. Marinette happened to be in the library at the time and she and Tikki saw her steal the book. As LB she confronted Lila about stealing and asked for it back. LB calmly and politely told her not to lie – Lila still gets akumatized. Because Adrien shut Lila down pre-superhero lie CN isn’t suspicious, LB is

Collector – When LB says Gabriel is HM, CN takes a moment to breathe before getting ready to fight. After the akuma he asks if HM can akumatize himself, and they both decide to start tracking akuma when they can

Gamer – lucky charm scene still happens, no romantic connotations to anything. Same with Befana

Bubbler – LB changes the music because Adrien looked so uncomfortable – not out of jealousy. Adrien sees her stitched name in the fabric and asks her privately. This is what starts him on the road of growing independent from his father’s abuse and lack of care

Rogercop – Adrien doesn’t even call his father. He doesn’t want him there and he wouldn’t come anyway, so he doesn’t try. However, he does use the ‘gotta call my father’ excuse to try and help Plagg out of the bracelet

Simon Says – Adrien accepts the hug from his father bug tells Plagg that it would have been warmer to hug a statue after, and he almost wishes his father hadn’t tainted the memory of hugs as a child. The ‘she looks like you’ scene still happens but it’s platonic. Adrien is bouncing and excited in all the Ladrien scenes because BEST FRIEND! RIGHT THERE!!!

Gigantian – the girls don’t do the date thing and are just doing each others’ hair for fun. Alya keeps insisting that Mari do something about her ‘crush’ but the other girls take Marinette’s side and she quits arguing while she’s ahead. Adrien wanders off which is how the akuma glances off Gorilla, then Mari pretends to be sick in the bathroom while going out to become LB

Glaciator – Marinette is upset because her BFF can’t go but she doesn’t get mad so no akuma

Gorilla – Marinette doesn’t really like the commercial because it doesn’t really fit the pun-loving dork that is her BFF but she still manages to be late to the pool then runs around with her BFF in her PJs which she isn’t embarrassed about. She gets mad on Adrien’s behalf when ppl call her his gf

Captain Hardrock – Mari gets a bit of a crush on Luka, Adrien 100% teases her and gives her bad dating advice

Syren – Adrien is upset that he’s out of the loop, but LB told him that she CAN’T tell him and it isn’t her choice to so he doesn’t throw a fit. He does detransform to talk out his feelings with Plagg but he doesn’t threaten to remove the ring or anything

Troublemaker, she has photos of all her classmates on her wall (she actually has the most of Juleka as proof of her picture curse being broken) and she has all her classmates’ schedules because class pres

Reverser – Nathaniel actually apologizes. Like that’s my only change tbh. I ship them but the writers should have included an apology scene, that’s on them (I fully believe Nathaniel apologized but the writers didn’t care enough to include it so f them)

Frozer – they all go to the rink as friends. Adrien invited Kagami for fun and they’re both trying to help Mari with Luka. Kagaminette friendship from that episode onward

Catalyst and Mayura – Alya’s headstrong-ness and Nino’s willingness to do what she says is what brings them down, to show their flaws beforehand. Chloe’s redemption isn’t thrown away like in canon so she has gotten better. CN recognizes his father’s voice but doesn’t react to it because he doesn’t want to expose himself. After Hero’s Day, he tells LB he knows who HM is and accidentally spills his identity – but she doesn't care at the moment because her BFF needs a hug. He doesn’t know LB’s identity but she knows his

Timebreaker, Evillustrator, Mr. Pidgeon, Darkblade, Princess Fragrance, The Mime, Pixelator, Guitar Villain, Reflecta, Kung Food, The Puppeteer, Antibug, Riposte, Robostus, Dark Owl, Sapotis, Gorilla, Frightningale, Zombizou, Queen Wasp, Maledictator, Anansi, Style Queen, and Despair Bear are the same just no lovesquare romance

Chameleon – Adrien doesn’t say the bull about the High Road, because he reconizes Lila is hurting Marinette. “But look at it this way – Ladybug calmly asked her to stop lying. I calmly asked her to stop lying. She gets akumatized no matter what. I think exposing her would just get us more trouble. We should stand up for ourselves, of course, but let the others realize for themselves that she’s a liar. Or at least wait until Hawkmoth is defeated before you expose her. Then she won’t get any superpowers out of it.”

At some point after that Mari says smth that LB said and he realizes who she is but that’s up to the writer to decide because then Damian Wayne enters the scene!

So Mari knows who HM is but she doesn’t know where to begin with that information so she asks Tikki for help. Tikki says one of her previous LBs are still alive and Mari contacts Hippolyta with magic

Hippolyta contacts Wonder Woman and WW realizes this may be better suited to someone who knows humans better so she passes the message along to Bruce

Bruce sighs and rubs his temple. He decides to send Damian

BTW time is actually passing through these episodes so everyone is about a month-ish apart so Mari is 15 almost 16 and Adrien is 16 now

Bruce sends Damian to help them with the final takedown of HM and Mayura

Now, some funny convos with BFF Adrienette

oooOOOooo

Alya: Marinette is being such a jerk to Lila!

Adrien: Huh. Marinette is almost never a jerk unless it's someone like Chloe.

Alya: W-Well she clearly changed!

Adrien: If you say so. I'm assuming you saw this yourself?

Later

Adrien: UGH! Alya has like become Lila's most loyal follower I swear, this is so annoying

Marinette, patting his back: you're being a brave soldier, facing that every day

Adrien: I just wish she'd stop putting her hands on me. I'm literally wearing the aromantic and asexual flags! I'm not interested!

Marinette; I think Kim noticed. He was looking at the situation and went to talk to Miss Bustier.

Adrien: Oh thank the kwami. Enough about me though. Tell me about this cutie from Gotham you like?

oooOOOooo

Adrien: UGHH I have to take Lila to this gala AGAIN!!

Marinette; I'm going too, Damian invited me.

Adrien: THANK THE KWAMI I'll ditch Lila as soon as possible. Your boyfriend is fully willing to roast without his dad disowning him, right?

Marinette: one, we aren't dating yet, and two, yes

Adrien: YES!! Also, Mari don't kid you two will date soon I know these things

oooOOOooo

Adrien's love advice is almost always, "just tell him you love him," because he doesn't understand how nerve-wracking it is. Or he steals a confession scene idea from an anime or fanfic, depends on the situation

Marinette: How should I confess to Damian??

Adrien: Just do it?? Walk right up to him and say you love him. Easy peasy!

Marinette: you do not understand how much I Can Not do that

Adrien: ... alright, plan B is you start working at a coffee shop-

#marinette x damian #daminette #maribat #maridami #damimari #adrien #bff adrien #platonic adrienette #only platonic tho #lila salt

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dizzying-waves · 5 years ago

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My own Rant on Mari//bat

Originally this was going to be part of the Controversial Ship Asks game, but after what happened, this rant is going to be its own thing.

Out of all the ml ships that pisses me off, one in particular is mari//bat or Damin//ette.

I just can’t see Marinette be with someone like Damian. I’m not knowledgeable about DC outside of the cartoons, but from what his fans told me about the character Damian is not what the shippers portray him. He’s pretty much Chloe/Felix levels of characterization. Does he have a soft side? Yeah. But even then this is not a character i can't see Marinette tolerate.

I’m kinda picky when it comes to shipping my favs, Especially in Marinette’s case considering her history with characters like him. Chloe and Lila, for obvious reasons, and Felix, whether it’s the PV or the canon version, is too much of a jerk for her to tolerate (The canon one especially since he tried to forcefully kiss her). And Damien is no exception.

I know I’m looking too hard at a crossover ship, which I wouldn’t mind, if its fandom wasn’t so full of salters.

And that leads to the second reason I hate this ship, the salt.

Most of the content is just salt stuff, especially related to Chameleon. Heck, it’s basically the same stuff I’ve seen in non-mari//bat related stuff (Adrien salt, Alya salt, Lila salt, Saltinette, class salt, spite shipping, etc.), just with the batman characters added. It doesn’t help that they have to warp the characters around, especially the batman ones, just to justify the ship happening and for people to live out their salt fantasies. Like giving Damian, Adrien’s personality and making Adrien pretty much a harasser/abuser.

If you don't know me I HATE the "Die for our Ship' mentality, where people would bash characters/ships to prop up their preferred ship. That right there is what gets me to not want to ship your ship. I hated it when luka//nette shippers do this, I hated it when mari//gami shippers d this, and I sure as heck don't like it when mari//bat shippers do this either.

And these guys would go off about how it is better than canon. When like, most of it has barely to do with ML nor DC at this point that you can just replace them with OCs and nothing will change. And as me and others have said before, they make it clear by cluttering tags with this ship and annoying us with their salt pairings. Sure, block the tags, but I did and even then they wanna get angry how were not allowed to express their opinion on it, yet they can do the same.

And inbf someone thinks I’m hating it for it because it’s not the Love Square, I’m not. I actually don’t ship it myself, not out of salt but for different reasons. And I’ll admit, I’m all for some crossover/crack ships. Heck, I even ship Marinette with Josuke from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. But even I’m not a fan of mari//bat.

Sure, opposites attract, but it needs to be in ways that fit the characters. Marinette is a good person who is surrounded by friends and family who care for her, regardless of how much salters want to deny it. She has her own issues, but it’s not in the way these salters portray them. She doesn’t need to be saved let alone be with a jerk like Damian.

Canon Marinette is too nice for Damian and I can imagine if she ever met him it would probably end the same way with what she did to Felix, a big punch to the face.

It’s kinda sad that a ship like this is popular, because it’s basically just nothing more than a pairing built on salt. I may not ship it but at least the Love Square, whether they like it or not, Adrien is a good person that treats Marinette well and it does bring out the goodness in both of them, regardless of what side you ship. It's not flawless, mind you, but it has its merits. Even Lukanette and Marigami, ships I loathe because of toxic salt shippers, have their merits outside of salt as well. Mari//bat has none of that. It’s popular because of salt. It gained its wings (no pun intended) because of salt. And honestly, if ml salt wasn’t as big as it was today it probably would have been a forgettable crossover ship.

I’m not here to say stop shipping mari//bat or put down people who like the ship. I know some who do genuinely ship them outside of salt and they are allowed to ship and be happy their ship made it to the top 100. People can do what they want. I just don’t feel like this ship deserves the praise it gets between how unfitting both the characters are, the salt, the OOC-ness, etc.

I can think of way better crossover ships that would fit Marinette better. Like my aforementioned ship with Josuke, Steven Universe, or even with Miles Morales.

Like I just wish there were more ML crossovers that weren’t done for the sake of salting on the show, especially as someone who genuinely likes crossovers and crossover ships.

#c's thoughts #ml fandom salt #fandom salt #anti maribat #anti daminette

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ali-kitkat · 6 years ago

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Audacity Ch 3

Start Previous Next

Adrien followed the boy who sabotaged his plans to Chloe’s hotel. He assumed that he just left Marinette’s home before leaving for the night. His newest strategy was to show Marinette the error of her ways by hurting her friend, before he re-did the wish. She should have told him about her new friend, he should’ve met him before they were even alone together. She made her choice. She’s going to live with it now, he mused. When he re-does the wish, she’s going to remember her friend was injured, but only because she was going to have inkling of his actions, she should know that he wasn’t going to put up with insubordination. Altering her memories wouldn’t be difficult, she’s going to believe her friend was beaten because he was dangerous, which he is. That her friend was going to hurt her, Damian did, he took her away. He was going to be her hero again. Damian, he recalled, was checking in and headed upstairs to sleep for the night.

Having all the information he needed he headed to the bakery to get the ring. He loved her but she wasn’t exactly the smartest, hiding the ring in her diary box was a huge mistake on her end. He remembered that box very well as she had to unlock Sabrina’s hand from it. Since she wouldn’t open the box for him, he needed to delay her. Knocking her out was the smartest option, she wasn’t going to remember he hit her either.

*~*~*~*

Damian wasn’t surprised that the blond idiot couldn’t even hide on the roof tops very well. He spotted Adrien, pun intended, instantaneously. His was in a bright, obnoxious red suit, and he was sitting on the edge of a roof top watching the street, only moving when he had walked into his line of sight. He was easy to divert as well, all Damian had to do was walk into the Grand Paris hotel and Adrien left as feigned checking in. He left as quickly as he entered.

*~*~*~*

Adrien stared at his room in bewilderment, it was a mess. Marinette had destroyed it searching for the earrings.

“Spots off.” He muttered. Tikki flew out of the earrings and floated in front of him.

“What’s your plan now? Marinette has the ring and her memories; you can’t win her back and you can’t beat her either.”

“That’s where you’re wrong Teeks. I’ve got the ring right here,” Adrien taunted, holding out the diary box in his hand. “and you’re going to open it for me.”

She phased through the box and barely contained her giggles at the ring inside. She recognized Mari’s craftsmanship. A fake, she gave him a fake ring. Adrien snatched the ring out of the box. Slipping on the ring, he stood waiting for Plagg to appear and when he didn’t, he glanced down at the ring to see it hadn’t changed.

“Marinette gave me a fake.” He sighed infuriated, he ripped the ring off and threw it across the room.

“I’m going to show her the error of her ways, starting with her friend. Spots on Tikki.” He shouted as he leapt out the window.

*~*~*~*

His family didn’t worry about where he was all day, they did wonder why he was going out in his suit when all they were supposed to be doing was research on the botched timeline.

“Why are you going out as Robin? You know we’re not supposed to be seen, right?” Tim questioned, not looking up from his laptop.

“I have a friend who knows why the timeline was changed.” He replied, putting the ring in a false wall. He hoped his brothers wouldn’t question him about it.

“Wait what?” Dick asked, shock written on his face. Bruce looked up from the document he was reading and raised an eyebrow in question.

“You have a friend!” Jason and Tim yelled; the shock on their faces was quite amusing to him.

“Focus idiots, the timeline. You know why we’re actually here. Magic users and speedsters felt the change and my friend knows why. I’m going to check up on her because the person responsible happens to be obsessed with her.” He snarked exasperated, at the rate they were going to make him late and he was worried about Marinette. Damian had left immediately after.

He knocked on the balcony window waiting for a response. The interval of silence was too long for it to be normal, sure she could be asleep, but she knew he was coming back after he hid the ring. Carefully climbing in through the window he could see her on the ground, unconscious. She was still breathing, that much he could see. When her side he was enraged, her jaw was starting to bruise. Adrien knocked her out, and Damian was going to skin him alive. Lifting her into his arms, she shifted closer to him. He slipped out the window back to where he and family were staying.

When he got back, his family was waiting for him, Bruce and Drake sat while Todd and Grayson stood. They were all wearing shocked expressions.

“Damian, what the hell? Did you kidnap her?”

“What? No! Fucking Adrien Agreste knocked her out.” He defended, his rage rising. He attempted to set Marinette down on one of the sofas, but she wouldn’t let go much to his family’s amusement. The snickers behind him were setting him off further.

“Come on angel, you have to let go.” He muttered; she didn’t let go much to his annoyance and relief. He shifted her around enough that he had eventually woken her up. She froze in his arms before letting out an unholy screech.

“Who in the hell are you?” She yelled, flailing out of his arms. His family let out snorts and chortles at her bewildered expression.

“It’s me, Damian. Did I forget to mention that I’m a vigilante?” He replied dryly. She shot him a glare while rubbing a hand across her cheek. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just peachy. My ex-partner punched me in the face after he got what he wanted. Add that on top of the fact that he’s been manipulating me for the past year and that he caused my mother’s death. Yeah, I’m doing fucking swell; I’m going to tear him into pieces Damian.”

He could hear his family making noise behind them, fairly certain he heard Todd mutter Holy shit there’s two of them and decided to bite the bullet and introduce them motioning Marinette in the direction of his family.

“Marinette this is my family, unfortunately.” Damian presented, waving a hand in the general direction of his family.

“That’s rude baby bird.” One of the men standing spoke in a teasing voice.

Marinette didn’t bother to muffle her laughter at Damian’s disgruntled expression. He glared down at her and she stuck her tongue out at him in return.

“I’m Jason Todd, the old man in the chair over there is Bruce Wayne. He’s Demon Spawn’s father.” A man with the white streak in his hair introduced himself.

“I’m Dick Grayson. How did baby bird meet you, because you are too cute to have just made friends with him?” The shorter man beside Jason spoke. “The one on the laptop is Tim Drake, don’t take his silence for rudeness though.”

“Right, Damian said you know why the timeline is screwed up. Can you tell us?” Tim interrupted, turning to face Marinette and Damian. Marinette raised an eyebrow in question. “Magic users and speedsters have experienced the backlash. They’re saying it originated from Paris, but they can’t place why or how.”

“A year ago, Paris was under attack by a magical terrorist named Hawkmoth and his accomplice Mayura. He wanted the miraculous from the local heroes Ladybug and Chat Noir. A set of earrings and a ring, together those two miraculous can make any wish true. Adrien Agreste the son of Hawkmoth, Gabriel Agreste, took the earrings and wished his mother never fell into a magical coma.”

“There’s no evidence of anything like that anywhere. How do you know that?” Tim questioned; wariness etched onto his face.

“I was Ladybug. Adrien betrayed me. He used them to wish for his mother back and magic comes with a price.” Marinette responded. She paused a moment. “That price was my mother.”

“Isn’t Agreste your boyfriend? Why would he betray you? Or knock you out?” Dick inquired.

“That asshole is not my boyfriend.” She snarled. “he’s the bastard who wished for me to love him and made me lose my memories of the last year.”

Dick stared at her in shock. “He made more than one wish?”

“Yes. He wished for me to love him and manipulated me into being his.” She sneered. “Not long after my mother died either.”

“What happens when you get the earrings back? Are you going to wish the timeline back to what it was?” Jason asked, curiosity taking over the shock. “Do you have the ring to do so?”

“No, I’m not going to wish for the previous timeline. I’m not stupid enough to abuse magic like that. Damian hid the ring for me, speaking of which. Could I get that back? I want to go rip Agreste a new asshole.”

*~*~*~*

Tag List: Let me know if want to be removed or added.

@bluerosette23 @thepeacetea @noirdots @tv-zombie-blog @2sunchild2 @vivilakitty @northernbluetongue @kurogaya913 @xxmadamjinxx @ayuchan07 @asianfrustration13 @poshplumcot @saltier-than-the-dead-sea @ladylb @littleredrobinhoodlum @mewwitch @winter-gardenflower @sonif50 @mooshoon @crazylittlemunchkin @captainmac6 @wookiestephen @octoberscorn @eliza-bich @dani-ari @theatreandcomicfreak @rikku052 @lysslovsanime @creator-josie @segajr @my-name-is-michell @luciferge @friedchickening @graduatedmelon @nomiegnome @kitten-rouge @beaversuenightly

#maribat #maridami #damian x marinette #marinette x damian #daminette #slow burn #ali-kitkat's writing #my writing

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dakotacrisis · 5 years ago

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Deal’s End (4)

Operation: Get Marinette a Boyfriend Through YA Novel Shenanigans is a go!

(Read on AO3)

---

It took Marinette a whole of five minutes to start regretting making her deal. After the contract was signed and they shook on it Felix went into planning mode. He was rambling off a bunch of ideas on how to get Adrien to notice Marinette more and get them alone together. That itself wouldn’t have been bad, in fact she was actually impressed with his forethought to the situation.

No. It was when the ideas came into practice that she started to panic. She was sitting in her seat waiting for class to start and Felix was standing next to Adrien talking. Felix had said he would talk her up to Adrien and to not worry about it.

She had entrusted her love life with a demon. It felt like there was plenty to worry about!

The two continued talking and a couple of glances got sent Marinette’s way before class started.

Her leg was bouncing the entire class period. She couldn’t wait to know what it was her demonic wingman had said about her to her crush.

At long last the bell rang and Marinette shot from her seat to ask Felix what he had told Adrien.

“Cool down, love.” He assured her, “I didn’t say anything weird. All I did was spin a tale about a funny moment we had back at your place.” “What funny tale? How is that supposed to help?”

“The story was a subtle way of conveying that you are fun and funny. Therefore you sound like an entertaining person to be around.” he tapped her nose.

“That’s…” Marinette thought it over a moment, “not totally dumb.” “Oh why thank you.” Felix rolled his eyes.

“Can you blame me for being worried? Whether or not Adrien becomes my boyfriend is in your hands.” She dropped her head to the desk, “Oh god, why did I make this deal? This is a disaster.”

“God isn’t here, love.” Felix tilted her head back up, “Will you trust me? If you have forgotten I have lived a long time. I know how and when to be serious about something. Especially when it concerns one of my deals. I’m not gonna blow this. If you two don’t end up together then I’ll be unable to fulfill the deal and Hell help me if that happens.”

“Does something bad happen if you’re not able to fulfill it?”

“To me, not you. Don’t worry about it.”

“Wait, Felix, what is gonna happen if for some reason you can’t deliver on my wish?”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“But I…” Marinette caught herself. She shouldn’t go around saying foolish things.

“But what?” Felix leaned closer with his mischievous smile. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about a spiteful entity like me?”

“I’m not!” Marinette said but she knew it was useless. Felix could see through her lies like glass.

“You humans are so strange.” Felix shook his head. “You find sympathy for everything and anything. Is it humanity that causes this kind of naivete?”

“Not wanting others to hurt is not naive.”

“It is very human though.”

“And what of you, mister demon? Have you never felt a need to spare someone some pain?”

“No. It’s in the job description.”

“Then what of me? You worked to find a middle ground with me and spare me some pain with my fate instead of using your powers to tempt me into a deal. It couldn’t have been just because you were bored.”

“Says you.”

“And it’s true.” “Stop smiling.” he grabbed her and pulled her along to the next class. “What are you doing talking to me anyway? You should be spending this time talking to mister perfect. Remember?”

Marinette didn’t argue with him more. He obviously wasn’t going to hear about him not being ruthless. They continued on to class and by lunch time Felix had come up with another idea. Not that he told Marinette any of this. For some reason this demon found it funny to jump into action without letting her know what the plan was.

Marinette trailed close behind as Felix approached Adrien and threw an arm around him. “Adrien, lad,” Felix said, “I was talking to Marinette earlier and she recommended that the three of us have lunch.”

“Oh really?” Adrien looked back at her with a surprised smile. “Just the three of us?”

“That was the plan. If you’d rather not tag along that’s fine. Marinette and I can have our own fun, can’t we love?” Felix glanced back at her with a wink. “But you are her friend and she talks about you often enough I have to admit I’m curious to get to know you better.”

“I’m looking forward to get to know you better too.” Adrien nodded. “I’d love to come to lunch with you.”

“Perfect, there is the sweetest little cafe Marinette was talking to me about earlier that sounded like it would be perfect.” Felix reached for Marinette and pulled her up alongside the two boys so she was sandwiched in the middle of them. “You can take the lead, love.”

“Thanks.” Marinette was trying her best to not freak out. But Felix was keeping a close but subtle push on her left side so that her right side bumped into Adrien as they walked. She hadn’t mentioned any cafe to Felix but now that she was out she was gonna have to find one.

After a couple minutes of walking they came to a cafe Marinette loved and the three sat down to eat. They had just ordered their drinks when Felix’s phone began to ring. Wait, since when did Felix have a phone?

“Well darn,” Felix sighed dramatically, “I gotta take this. You two order without me, I don’t know how long this is gonna take.” And with that Felix was out of his chair and around the corner out of sight.

This was his plan! To force them out on a pseudo lunch date by taking a fake phone call? What kind of romantic comedy shenanigans was he playing? This is what she gets for letting him read her YA novels. At least this was better than him suggesting they fake date in some dumb reverse psychology way of making Adrien jealous.

“That’s a shame.” Adrien shrugged after Felix had gone. “I hope he won’t be too long.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.” Marinette concentrated on her breathing.

The pair sat in silence for what felt like a lifetime. Shouldn’t she say something? It was Adrien, he was her crush but he was also her friend. She should be able to come up with some form of conversation.

“So,” she started in hopes that something charming or funny would spring forth in the moment. It didn’t. “Nice weather today.”

“Yeah, I guess it is nice out.” Adrien leaned back soaking in the sun of the afternoon. “Summer is right around the corner.”

“I can’t wait for it to be warm enough to break out the sundresses.” Marinette thought of the good chunk of her closet reserved for the light flowy dresses. “They’ve been locked up for too long.”

“Right, you and the girls have that sundress day, don’t you? Every year you pick a warm day and everyone comes in wearing a sundress. Even Chloe does it.”

“Yeah. It’s a lot of fun.” Marinette relaxed as the conversation eased into more topics. She was pleasantly surprised to realize how easy it was to talk to him once she got over her fright. He really was like any of her other friends. Why had she been so scared before?

Neither of them particularly noticed Felix’s absence until Marinette found herself telling an edited version of the time Felix almost threw her game controller into the screen after she won again and had to quell him with chocolate.

“Did someone say chocolate?” A waiter different from the first one approached the table with a plate and set it down between them. “Good thing I’m here then.”

“Oh, we didn’t order any dessert.” Adrien said.

“It’s on the house. For such an adorable couple.”

“Oh we’re not…” Marinette trailed off as she caught sight of the waiter’s eyes. Silver.

He caught her gaze and gave her a wink before walking away. Marinette looked back at the plate of dessert and had to resist a bark of laughter. It was a single slice of devil’s food cake.

“Well I’m not gonna say no to free cake.” Adrien beamed. “How should we split this?”

“I say we just eat our fill.” Marinette stabbed a fork into the cake taking a sizeable chunk off it. She popped it into her mouth and almost moaned at how moist and rich the flavor was. “Wow, that is good.”

Adrien took a bite as well. “You were right, that is delicious.”

“Someone might say downright sinful.” Marinette chuckled at her own joke.

“It is devil’s food cake. I guess if we were having angel’s food cake it’d be heavenly.”

“I guess it would.” They polished off the cake as they continued making bad food based puns. Felix came back just as they were wiping the crumbs from their mouths and sat down.

“Sorry for missing lunch, call took longer than I thought and then I got put on hold. It was a whole big thing.” He waved it off, “Hope you two weren’t bored without me.”

“No. Marinette is always excellent company.” Adrien said causing a wave of warmth to wash through her. “Sucks that you missed lunch though.”

“I wasn’t that hungry anyways. I have a bag of crisps in my locker I’ll nibble on before class.” Felix shrugged. “Looks like you two were rather peckish though. Order dessert without me?”

“We didn’t actually. A waiter came over saying it was on the house.” Adrien swiped a bit of frosting left on the plate. “Accidentally took us for a couple but it was rather fortuitous in the end. I think that was some of the best cake I’ve ever had.”

“Now I’m really sorry I missed it.”

“Don’t be. It was indeed great but everyone knows the best cake comes from Marinette’s parent’s bakery.” Adrien waved for the check. “I’ll get this one guys.”

“But we invited you. I’ll pay for what I got.” Marinette pulled out her wallet.

“Seriously, it’s okay.” Adrien said.

“I insist.” Marinette handed over her own money to the waiter.

“Alright, but next one is on me though.” Adrien put away his own wallet. “Should we be heading back?”

The three stood up. Felix stayed behind as Marinette and Adrien took the lead. Their conversation from the cafe continuing into their stroll back to the school. There were scraps of an attempt to include Felix but he was giving little response to them. Marinette knew what he was playing at but she couldn’t help but feel bad of his exclusion. She never wanted anyone to feel like they weren’t a part of the conversation.

After classes wrapped up Marinette and Felix returned home. Marinette flung herself onto the couch with a squeal of delight. “It worked! I cannot believe that actually worked!”

“And to think you doubted me.” Felix stood triumphant, “I told you, love, I know what I’m doing.”

“Sure, it was incredibly cheesy but it worked out in the end.” Marinette sat up. “Also, wasn’t the cake a little much? Don’t want to be too on the nose do we?”

“You loved it. I say next time I can have you two feeding each other.” Felix flopped down next to her. “See what happens when you actually put in some effort? The boy was practically mooning over you the entire time.”

“We’re you watching us?”

“Duh. I needed to make sure you weren’t going to drop the ball on the conversation. Had me worried there at first what with that remark about the weather. Was that really the best you could come up with?”

“I panicked! And you,” she smacked his arm, “You need to tell me what the plan is before you go about starting it! You threw me into the deep end without any warning!”

“It was the only way to get you to stop overthinking and embrace the moment. That is a huge problem I’ve come to realize about you. You think about everything! Did you know that?”

“I do not!”

“Yes, love, you do.” He flicked his wrist and a calendar appeared in his hand. “Every second of every day you have planned. I mean, look at this mess. Not to mention you take half a lifetime to pick out what you’re going to wear the day before.”

“Lots of people choose their outfits the day before.”

“They don’t spend that much time on it. I mean, look at me.” He gestured to his dark jeans, red shirt and black vest. “Took me a whole of ten seconds to put this together and I look great. You on the other hand spend half an hour picking out a cardigan.”

“Well I’m sorry if I don’t have your demonic good looks. I need to put in a little more effort.”

“You don’t though. You’re beautiful enough already.” He made the calendar disappear again.

Marinette felt herself blush slightly at the compliment. Her friends called her cute and pretty all day long but no one had ever looked at her and said beautiful before. No one outside of her parents that is. It hit different hearing it from someone not her family.

“Thanks.” She caught his eye and she immediately turned away. “I um, I don’t have any homework today so I thought I’d get some work done on my designs. Were you okay to chill down here?”

“Go on,” Felix looked at her with a knowing expression. “I have some work of my own to do.” He pulled a notebook out of thin air.

“More brilliant date ideas I’m assuming?”

“If you want this boy pulling you into a brooms closet for some hot and heavy makeout sessions then I need to get these right.” Felix tsked as he looked over his notes. “You are a lot of work, love. I hope you appreciate the effort I’m putting in for you.”

“I do.” Marinette smiled. “I know you didn’t have to do any of this middle of the ground work but I am glad you did. I’d almost go as far as to say it was rather nice of you.”

“Don’t let down below hear that. I’m not supposed to be nice.” Felix scoffed.

“You’re not supposed to but you are.” Marinette pointed at the fridge. “And since you missed lunch you can help yourself to anything in the fridge.”

“I don’t need to eat.”

“But you still like to.” Marinette called back from her room. She sat down on her chaise with her sketch book in hand. She had a million other designs to start and finish but her creativity was flowing as she put pencil to paper. She didn’t know what she was going to make but she was certain that it was going to be silver.

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(1) (2) (3) (5)

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(tagged)

@sannsibarr @miss-mysterys-blog @maribug-adrienoir @mermaidreject @corabeth11 @goblinwhoships @symwinter

#miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #felix #felinette #demon au #writing

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kittinoir · 5 years ago

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Echoes of You Ch. 8

Read on Ao3

Adrien needed a break.

His head slipped off the palm of his hand for the third time that morning, nearly smacking off the desk, and it hadn’t even been an hour since the bell rang. A glance down at his tablet revealed that he hadn’t written anything since the teacher had started her lecture, and the date had scribbled off into one long line as he’d dozed off.

“Dude,” he heard Nino mutter, “Mme. Mendeleiv is about to rip you a new one.”

“Sorry,” Adrien whispered, straightening. “Late night. Early morning.”

“The life of a super model,” Nino teased.

Adrien gave him a half-hearted grin. His friend didn’t know the half of it.

He hadn’t been able to sleep for days now, not since Red had shown up. Hawkmoth hadn’t attacked since that last monstrous akuma and everyone was on edge. If Adrien had had to guess, he’d think Hawkmoth was angry, and that had sunk a stone of worry so deep in his gut he’d been unable to dislodge it, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been just a little too late that day, the last time he’d seen her…

Adrien turned his thoughts away from that fight and back to the matter at hand. He and Red had been patrolling, and as much as he hated to admit it, when he wasn’t resenting her, he was grateful for the companionship. She seemed to understand he was hurting and didn’t push him when he grew quiet. She appeared to defer to his experience, but she also seemed to want to prove herself, jumping headfirst into battle, totally relentless. More importantly she seemed incredibly adept; he didn’t need to guide her often, almost as though she’d wielded a Miraculous before - a dangerous thought he didn’t let himself pursue, not since all the identities of the holders had been revealed months ago. Besides, he knew his Lady; it was unlikely she’d entrust one of them with the Ladybug Miraculous when their identity was compromised.

He’d pumped Red for more information, but she’d come up drier than a well. All she knew, she insisted, was what the new guardian had told her.

He’d come up empty on that front as well. Over the days frustration had begun to eat away at his concentration, but no new leads had presented themselves. He felt trapped, and while it was something he was used to, the chains still stung.

Then there was the matter of his Lady.

At the very least, he comforted himself with the knowledge that she was alive and well and waiting for him. Doubt snuck in from time to time - what if her plan had gone wrong and she was in Hawkmoth’s clutches? What if he was being lied to? What if he wasn’t smart enough to find her? - but he quashed it without a second thought. He would do this, if for no other reason than he refused to fail her. None of the rest mattered.

But his memories had yielded very little. He’d spent so much time trying follow their rules, trying not to know her, that now that he needed to, the memories were fuzzy and out of reach. He knew they were there, just barely beyond his grasp, but he hadn’t been able to bring any of them into focus.

And a small, scared part of him wondered what he’d do when he did find her. He knew someone that amazing wouldn’t just stop stunning him because she’d lost her memories. She’d be who she was with or without them.

But the part of her that had been his friend, his partner, would that all be gone? Would she believe him? Would she not want anything to do with him, with the Miraculous? And how was he supposed to get her memories back? Was it even possible? Or worse, even part of the plan? Maybe all he was supposed to do was find her and give the earrings back. Maybe getting her memories back wasn’t part of the deal at all.

“Mr. Agreste?”

Adrien nearly fell out of his seat, his stylus dropping to the floor with a clatter.

“Yes, Ms. Mendeleiv?”

She gestured to the board where a wicked chemical problem was glaring down at him. “Perhaps you’d like to solve?”

“Um, sure,” Adrien said, sliding out from behind his desk. He’d taken two steps when the bell ring, instantly turning the equations he’d been trying to do in his head to smoke. Ms. Mendeleiv scowled but didn’t insist on the problem. Her warning glare, though, came through loud and clear: she better not catch him slacking off again.

“Man, how do you do it?” Nino asked with a grin, shaking his head. “I wish I had your luck.”

“Trust me,” Adrien said as he turned back to the desk. “No, you don’t.”

“That was a monster of a question,” Alya chimed in, slinging an arm around Marinette’s shoulders as she leaned in. “I never would have been able to figure it out without Marinette’s help.”

Marinette blushed, ducking out from her friends’ arm. “It was no biggie.”

“I don’t know, Marinette,” Adrien said with a smile. “I would have looked pretty dumb up there trying to do it on the fly.”

Adrien hid a wince as he began to pack up his bag. He’d meant to check on his friend, but everything had been so chaotic. Once or twice he’d thought of the way she’d jumped in front of him at the set of his shoot, taking the blow for him. It’d been horrifying to watch, and it had made him wonder about the times he’d done the same for Ladybug. He’d always chalked it up to a necessary sacrifice; she was required to save the day, he wasn’t, and that was that. It didn’t matter how they won, as long as they did.

Except he was now painfully aware that it did matter. The pressure, the fear, the panic. Had he put his Lady through all that? He’d chalked it up to strategy, but what if he’d only really succeeded in giving her nightmares?

“You dropped this.”

Adrien’s friends’ chatter died down as he looked up into Chloe’s face. She was holding out his tablet stylus, her bag slung over her shoulder as she headed for the door. Her face was a careful mask, completely devoid of her usual haughtiness - or any other emotion for that matter, like, say, desperation, fear, regret. The emotions that had been there the last time they’d spoken.

Adrien took the stylus without a word. He slipped it into his bag with his tablet and made for the door, leaving his former friend staring after him.

He didn’t know what hurt more: Chloe’s betrayal, or the fact that everyone had been right about her. He knew she was spoiled and selfish, but he also knew that was all she had to protect herself from parents that weren’t always there for her. He could understand that, probably better than anyone - because if she let herself be real, she’d have to face some hard truths she clearly wasn’t ready for. And he’d been willing to let that go, because underneath all that was his first friend, a girl who’d let him in despite all that, who’d made him laugh and stood up for him when he’d needed it most.

But siding with Hawkmoth, stealing the Miracle Box? It had been a step too far. They’d almost lost that day, and it would have been her fault. Ladybug had been right about her. She’d finally done something he couldn’t forgive.

The conversation resumed around him as Alya complained about the lack of footage for her blog and pretty soon exhaustion set back in, plaguing him through the rest of the day right up until he set foot in his room after school.

“You should sleep, kid,” Plagg said as the bedroom door closed behind them. “You need it.”

“Can’t,” Adrien said, dropping his school bag on the floor. “Patrol time. Besides, that’s when I do my best thinking.”

“It’s not thinking if your brain’s turned to mush,” Plagg argued. “You won’t be able to find anyone if Hawkmoth takes advantage of your weakened state.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” Adrien admitted. “I hate just sitting around.”

“I know,” Plagg said, “But she wouldn’t want you doing this to yourself.”

“Well I guess we’ll never know,” Adrien snapped, scowling at the open sky beyond his window. “It’s not like she left a note. Claws out!”

Ok. So maybe his resentment wasn’t just reserved for Red or this new guardian. Maybe he couldn’t help but resent his Lady a little, too.

But she’d left him without so much as an inkling that something was wrong. Without letting him in on the plan.

Without saying goodbye.

It was just like… well, it was just like when she’d found Fu, learned about the other Miraculous, and kept it from him, leaving him to play tag with akuma’s while she chose other heroes to help them. And he’d let it happen, because he trusted her, and he’d trusted the process, but it had hurt more than it helped, and he had a painful suspicion this was more of the same.

But then…his claws weren’t exactly clean, either. The jokes, the puns, the flirting; she probably hadn’t thought he’d take it seriously. Why else would she give the Miracle box to someone else?

But he knew why. In his heart of hearts, he knew why: because he’d try to stop her. And clearly she believed this was something she needed to do. Then again, that was his Lady. Always carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Hours passed before Chat Noir finally stopped to rest. He’d been avoiding the Eiffel Tower ever since Ladybug’s disappearance, but that was where he found himself when he missed her so much he couldn’t stand it any more. He prowled the structure as memories of them racing to the landmark and chasing each other to the top swirled around him. This had been where it all began. Now, this was one of the few places he still felt like she might be real, like he could turn a corner and she’d be there, grinning at him, ‘I win again!’

He stopped at the very top, at what he and Ladybug had called their personal observation deck - a place only they and gutsy maintenance workers could get to. He sank down on the metal grate, legs dangling over the side as he observed the twinkling lights of the city.

This was it. This was where he’d fallen in love with her. He’d said it on that day, the first day, but he’d never known how true it would be. He’d admired the way she thought, her bravery, her unstoppable drive to see justice done. She'd never tired. She’d truly believed they could have won.

He smiled a little to himself. Marinette was like that, too. Maybe that was what had drawn his lady to her, convinced her to give Marinette the mouse Miraculous.

Marinette. Alya. Nino. Max. Kim. Even him at one point.

She was probably someone that went to his school. Someone he’d passed a million times, someone seen in the hall or the locker room, someone he might have shared a table with at lunch. Someone, he had to admit, he’d never noticed.

Part of him felt terrible about that, but another part of him was relieved he at least had some course of action to pursue. It was a large pool of candidates, but at least it was something he could narrow down. And, he realized, he could start with people who had been akumatized.

“You’re a lot harder to track down than I thought you’d be.”

Chat Noir spun, lashing out with his baton, but quicker than he could see his assailant stopped it, seizing the end of the pole in his fist. A moment later he recognized the new guardian, Venetian mask and all.

“How did you get up here?” Chat Noir asked, glancing around. No civilian could make the climb, but then, this guy wasn’t just some civilian.

“You finally get me alone without a time limit and that’s the question you ask me?” He dropped down onto the grate beside the hero.

Chat Noir bit back a sarcastic remark. This was for his Lady. He could do this. He might be frustrated, but he needed answers. “Who are you?”

The Venetian mask tilted to one side. “Next.”

“Wait, what?”

“I said, ‘next’,” the guardian said.

“You can’t just not answer!” Chat Noir yelled, nearly shoving him off the platform.

“Actually, I can.” The guardian adjusted his jacket, which Chat Noir now saw was a black, over-sized sweater with a large hood that covered his hair and and deep red scrolling designs along the edges. “I follow someone else’s orders. But for now you can call me Salem.”

“Ladybug.” The guardian nodded almost imperceptibly. “So does that mean - I mean, is there a chance then, that she still has her memories? Is she - is she just in hiding?”

The guardian was silent for so long Chat Noir almost thought he wasn’t going to answer.

“I don’t know the extent of her plan,” Salem finally admitted. “There were guidelines when the box was relinquished, rules. I never saw her. I didn’t know she would lose her memory, and I don’t know the extent of the damage done.”

Hope died in Chat Noir’s chest, but he shoved it away. All it meant was that he was back to square one. That was fine. He could work with that.

“She didn’t tell you anything else?” he asked. “Any other message for me? A clue? Anything?”

The guardian shrugged. “Just what I told you.”

Chat Noir ran his claws through his hair, trying not to rip it out. “She didn’t tell you anything?! Did she at least say why?”

“Yes, actually,” Salem said. “You remember that akuma, the one from Montparnasse last week?”

“Veritas.” The name still sent chills down Chat Noir’s spine.

“Word on the street is one touch made you spill your guts,” Salem said. “Just blurt out whatever dirty little secrets you might be hiding. Not the most physically adept akuma, but just imagine what a win that would be for Hawkmoth. If not the Miraculous, the names of the ones who held them.”

“We stopped them,” Chat Noir said, but he dread crept along his skin, stole into his heart. “Nothing happened.”

“Did it?” Salem mused. “I hear differently. I hear you came late.”

“It…it happens,” Chat Noir stammered. “She knows that, sometimes it takes some time to get away, to get to the attack - ”

“And you never would have known,” Salem interrupted, “That you didn’t just come late, you came too late. That Veritas had already struck her, and she’d given up one of her most closely-guarded secrets. That Hawkmoth later hunted her down, intent on wringing the rest of the truth from her, and she gave up the Miracle box to protect that secret the only way she knew how - by forgetting it altogether.”

Chat Noir’s chest pounded painfully in his chest. The city spun below him, and he gripped the cold iron grate for all her was worth. “Her identity?”

“Not her identity, Chat Noir,” Salem said, leaning in. “Yours.”

#echoes #echoes of you #miraculous ladybug #fic #writing

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quicksilversquared · 6 years ago

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Quicker than a Hare

After finding out that she's destined to become a superhero, Alix decides that there's absolutely no way that she's just going to sit around, twiddle her thumbs, and wait. No, to become fully kickass, she needs to step things up.

Some people get thrust into the role of superhero. Others...well, others train the entire way there.

links in the reblog

All her life, Alix had been short. Like, really short. All-of-her-classmates-were-taller-than-her short. That short.

It was frustrating. Her dad was tall, her brother was tall, and her mom was- well, her mom was normal-sized, at least. Add in the fact that all of her classmates were taller and bigger than she was, and her parents soon ended up with a little ball of fire on their hands.

Alix might be small, but she was going to be fierce. Even if the other kids were taller, she was going to be faster. Even if they were bigger, she was going to be stronger. And if they tried to tease her, well...

One very nice thing about being as short and petite as she was was that whenever she got her revenge for a mean comment (or a push, or any other teasing) and the other kid went crying to their mommies, their moms took one look at her, looked at their kid, and almost immediately decided that their child was exaggerating or just straight-up not telling the truth, because there was no way that their oversized kid could get tripped up by a tiny slip of a girl. So while it was maybe a little insulting- she could totally trip them up, after all- Alix (almost) never got in trouble. And she liked that.

...it didn't entirely make up for her distinct lack of height, but it was better than being short and in trouble.

As she got older, Alix pestered her parents into letting her do some proper training. Dashes up and down the hallway outside of her daddy's office and lifting heavy boxes turned into running laps at a gym and even doing some proper weights there, plus doing sprints on her roller blades, some serious lap-swimming during the summer, and even some self-defense classes when she had time, just to get some actual fighting practice in. She was going to be tiny but mighty, darn it, even if it was hard work.

People had stopped underestimating her. It had taken a while and a whole lot of work, but now the only people who teased Alix were her friends and it was all done in good fun.

Still, her training wasn't exactly serious (and it wasn't so much training as just keeping in shape and learning what to do in case she was ever in a bad situation, really). The self-defense classes were useful and practical, sure, but Alix had mostly been pushing herself to the top so that no one could push her around.

And then Hawkmoth appeared, and they were dealing with supervillains in the streets every few days.

Alix got a bit more serious with her self-defense classes then. Not that it would do any good against a superpowered akuma victim, exactly, but, well... Alix hated feeling helpless. She hated feeling like she couldn't do anything. So she trained.

As it turned out, her training was very useful against civilians who had been hit by an akuma villain's powers and were trying to attack random (or not-random) passerbys. She could flip those people out of her way and actually have a decent chance of escape, and it was a hell of a lot better than sitting and screaming like Chloe did whenever an akuma (rightfully) went after her.

And then. And then.

One akuma attacked, and Alix's mind was blown. At some point, she was going to become a Miraculous holder. She was going to become cool. She was going to become badass.

(She was going to become tall. Well. Taller. No longer ridiculously short. An acceptable adult height instead of being so short that she could pass under the noses of most adults unnoticed.)

To get there, she had to up her training and become properly serious about it. She had a purpose now. A goal.

And so Alix planned.

She had taken most of the basic self-defense classes now, ones that were just a handful of sessions, so maybe she should take up some kind of martial art or something. Adrien had once offered to teach people the basics of fencing, if they were interested; considering that her weapon-to-be was an umbrella, maybe it was time she took him up on that. And Alix had overheard Nino and Alya talking about their parkour dates, so maybe they could teach her, too. It would be useful training for a superhero-to-be, probably, and she wanted to be ready when Ladybug came around to give her the Rabbit Miraculous.

And so she did.

Karate started too slow for Alix's tastes, starting from the very baby basics. Fencing with Adrien was- well, she picked up a couple moves, but there were far too many rules for Alix to remember, let alone remember in time to not break them. And as for the parkour...

Well. Alix was sure that in their heads, Nino and Alya probably thought that they looked super-cool. It did not translate to real life.

(Barrel rolls across tables and not-quite-completed cartwheels did not parkour make, no matter how many time Nino and Alya referred to it as such.)

That kind of left Alix- well, not exactly on square one, considering that she was still taking karate and surely it would get to the interesting bits soon, plus Adrien seemed fine with teaching her fencing moves even with the understanding that she wasn't actually ever going to become a fencer. But it left her feeling restless still, trying her best to be ready for the responsibility that she was going to get.

At some point. She hadn't managed to interrogate her future self about when she would get the Miraculous. But given how good of a fighter she had been (facing off with a dinosaur! Only Ladybug had been able to do that before, and hers hadn't even been a real dinosaur, just an akuma), she had had the Miraculous for at least a few years. And considering how tall she was and all...

Well, the akuma had probably come from a good ten years out, Alix figured. So sometime between now and when she was 25...

That was a very long way away, and Alix had never been a very patient person.

Out of ideas for the time being, Alix went to Ladybug and Chat Noir. They were the established superheroes, after all, so they probably had training or something that they did in their spare time. They probably couldn't share too much because of the whole secret identity thing, but maybe they could point her in the right direction.

"Actually...I don't train."

Alix's jaw was on the ground, she was sure of it. "You don't?"

Ladybug shook her head, glancing over at Chat Noir. "It's a good idea, I admit, but I already don't have any free time and I end up missing stuff with my friends, or at school, and then I have to make stuff up to keep up. Maybe I'd try during the summer, but, well..."

"It's just one more thing," Chat Noir agreed. "Plus the suits definitely give a boost, both in just baseline abilities and fighting ability. Like, look at Queen Bee, and then look at Chloe-"

Alix wrinkled her nose. Now that she thought about it- yeah, that was weird, now that she thought about it. Chloe definitely didn't do any sort of fight training (cosplaying running around the Grand Paris aside), and yet she wasn't completely terrible at it when she was involved in akuma attacks. "So you're saying that there's no point?"

"I'm sure that it helps," Ladybug said quickly. "Like I said, a Miraculous enhances your abilities. So since you have the time to train, it definitely wouldn't hurt. Then you'll be ready to jump right in when it's time."

Alix narrowed her eyes. Had that been a rabbit joke that she had just heard? Already?

"And eat lots of carrots, so that you'll grow tall," Chat Noir chimed in, and this time Alix did glare. Ladybug stomped on his foot with a reproachful look, and Chat Noir actually had the audacity to look confused.

"They say that in Russia!" Chat Noir claimed, dancing out of the way of Ladybug's hit. "It has nothing to do with that Miraculous, I swear!"

"Uh-huh, because that sounds really likely," Alix shot back, smirking when Ladybug's yo-yo, tossed into the air, came down right on top of Chat Noir's head. He yelped and whined. "Just admit it, you're already working on storing up a whole boatload of puns for once I do get the Miraculous."

"Well, not a boatload, maybe, but a bushelful, perhaps?"

"Chat Noir!"

Alix was looking forward to their team-up already.

Several years later

Alix wiped the sweat off of her forehead as she watched Kim start his run through the demanding obstacle course. It hadn't been super difficult- sure, her arms felt a little wobbly right now, but that was fine- which meant that all of her years of training were paying off.

Which meant that she was going to kick major butt once she became Bunnyx. Which- well, she was eighteen now. So that meant that surely it would be happening soon, right?

"Nice run, Alix," Adrien told her, appearing suddenly at her side. He grinned at her scowl. He knew that she hated it when he popped up like that, but he insisted on doing it anyway. If it weren't for the fact that Gabriel Agreste would actually have her shipped off and killed for doing it, Alix would have practiced some of her self-defense techniques on his sneaky ass. "You looked like it was barely any work at all!"

"Are you doing a run?" Alix asked, already anticipating the answer. Some of her former classmates (and even some new university friends) sometimes tagged along to her gym to watch her run the course, but only Kim had ever joined her. "It's loads of fun."

"You just want to see me fall on my butt," Adrien said with a laugh, but his look had turned considering as he watched Kim struggle up the salmon ladder. Alix smirked at how red Kim's face was. She had the advantage there, with not having anywhere near as much mass as Kim did.

Kim might have bulging muscles- he certainly flaunted them enough- but they were more of the showy kind instead of the useful sort that Alix had built up. Besides, that ladder took some serious core strength, which...

Yeah, Kim definitely went for show over usefulness.

"I might try it," Adrien said, pulling Alix out of her thoughts. "I mean, I'll probably fail spectacularly, but it looked super cool when you were doing it."

"Yeah, after several dozen run-throughs when I looked distinctly less cool." Alix winced as she remembered her first few months at the gym that Jalil had found for her. It had been a fantastic challenge, if perhaps a little frustrating. "It helps that I can actually reach stuff now."

A small smile played along the corners of Adrien's mouth. "So you had been doing a lot of jumping before that, then?"

"I- yes, a bit," Alix said suspiciously, narrowing her eyes at Adrien's emphasis. "If that's another short joke, Adrien- just because you're ridiculously tall doesn't mean that I can't kick your butt. I'm perfectly normal-sized. I'm taller than Nathaniel, for goodness' sake. And Max is the same height as I am."

"No, no, not at all!" Adrien claimed, his wide grin absolutely full of trouble. "I would never!"

"I'm going to tell Marinette."

Adrien's grin vanished at once. "No, no, there's no need for that!"

Alix snorted. Ever since Adrien and Marinette had started dating several months prior, all she needed to do to get Adrien to straighten up when he decided to go jokester and tease her about her height was to mention his girlfriend. Why it worked so well, Alix didn't know- after all, Marinette wouldn't hurt a fly, and she certainly wouldn't hurt Adrien- but Alix appreciated it.

Now that Adrien was more relaxed around them, he could get to be a little too energetic for her at times. Not normally- normally Alix could take him on, no problem- but she was a little tired after two obstacle course run-throughs, and she still had at least one more to go before she could call it a day.

Across the gym, Kim yelped as he missed his next hook and he tumbled back down to the floor. Adrien winced as he watched. Alix smirked.

"Rethinking trying out the course?"

"No, I wanna try," Adrien insisted. "I might need some coaching to get across some of these, but it looks like good training, and potentially fun, too."

"It's fun in the same way that any workout that isn't boring is fun," Alix said with a shrug. "You sweat, you ache, you get to feel a sense of accomplishment for getting over stuff- that bit's the best part, actually."

"Like I said: fun." Adrien watched Kim attempting the ladder again. "Better than the workouts that my personal trainer insists on. That's all weight-lifting and treadmill."

Alix made a face. "Ugh. No fun at all. D'you get to get out of that stuff when you do other workouts?"

Adrien shrugged. "I mean, if I log it and present it, yeah. If I do a bunch of basketball or fencing one week, I don't have to do treadmill."

"And all to get that pretty-pretty body to go with that pretty-pretty face," Alix teased, even as she started jogging in place so that she wouldn't get cold and stiff before she could properly finish her workout. She had made that mistake before, and she was not going to let it happen again. "I'm sure Marinette appreciates your efforts, though."

Adrien laughed at that. "You say that as though Marinette doesn't work out next to me all the time. I'm sure she would appreciate mixing it up a bit."

Alix hadn't known that. She hadn't pegged Marinette as the kind of person who would do serious workouts like the kind that Adrien had to do for modeling. "Cool. Okay, so, for this course, there are a couple different routes that you can take to get from one side to the other, all in varying levels of difficulty and working on different strengths. I like hitting as many things as I can, just for difficulty's sake and to make my route a little longer, but to start I would recommend not doing that." She glanced over at Kim struggling again and snorted. "And yet no matter how many times I tell Kim that, he insists on trying to keep up with me by doing the full route."

"I kinda want to try, just to see how far I can get before my arms are too weak to continue," Adrien commented, eyes narrowing thoughtfully at the course. "Do we have to wait for Kim to get past the ladder?"

Alix snorted. "If we waited, we would be here all day. It's his arch-nemesis, I swear. We can just skip it this time. If we wait any longer, I'll be all cooled off and I'd rather not have that happen." She started bouncing up and down, arms swinging as she warmed them back up and considered how they were going to tackle the course. "Okay, normally I time myself just for an extra challenge and to see how much improvement I've made, but maybe this time I'll do an obstacle so you can see how to do it, and then you follow."

"Sounds good."

"All right, model boy. Let's see how you do."

Alix led the way to the start of the course, a rock-climbing wall. The gym staff changed up the handholds pretty much every day, so she had the additional challenge of figuring out a new path every day. Still, it wasn't hard to scramble up, reaching and stretching as she went. She reached the top and glanced down, startling when she spotted Adrien literally right behind her.

"I have a climbing wall at home," Adrien said with a cheeky grin as he pulled himself over the upper lip. "Easy as pie."

Alix narrowed her eyes.

Adrien didn't even break a sweat as they headed across the next several obstacles, keeping up with Alix easily. He nearly tipped off on the wobbling platforms, but caught himself and continued with a cheeky grin.

He had good balance and upper body strength, Alix had to give him that. She hadn't thought that typical gym floor workouts would help that much- like Kim's, they were usually geared more for getting muscles that were for show than for use- but maybe the fencing and everything else helped branch out from that.

Alix dove into the rope maze next, her compact body giving her an advantage as she wove and duck over Adrien's longer limbs. She heard a grunt and a grumble from behind her as Adrien tried to trace her path and failed, and a competitive grin spread over Alix's face.

Model boy had gotten cocky, and now he actually had to struggle.

By the time they reached the end, Adrien was just as out of breath as she was- maybe a little more- and he had had to repeat a couple stages when he fell off an obstacle, and there had been a few obstacles that he had really struggled across, taking far longer than Alix had. But he had completed the course. The entire thing. On the first time.

(So. Annoying. Alix had worked really hard to get to that level, and now Agreste was managing it just fine? Ugh.)

(At least it wasn't completely out of nowhere. Adrien had to work out a fair bit to keep up with the other professional male models, and he had focused on more lean muscle than bulk, which- well, apparently that translated to more useful muscle. And at least he had only been able to manage it through the one time, whereas Alix had gone through four times before being done for the day. And he had had to repeat some stuff after falling off, whereas she had been pretty much flawless.)

"I am going to be so sore tomorrow," Adrien said cheerfully as he and Alix finally headed away from the course, towards the locker rooms. "Worth it, though. I think I'll be coming back for sure. I gotta get to your level."

"You can try," Alix tossed back, grinning. "What you see is years of practice, dude."

Adrien grinned eagerly. "I look forward to it."

Alix smirked as she headed into the women's locker room. Adrien had said that he was going to be sore tomorrow, but if her suspicions were correct- and largely based on how she had felt after both her first time and the times when she had been on vacation for a week or two and then came back and resumed training- he was going to be stiffer than a board. He had no idea what he was in for.

She could feel some soreness coming on, too, but Alix didn't let that bother her as she showered and quickly changed into clothes that weren't soaked in sweat. She couldn't let it bother her. After all, while her superhero-prep workout was an important part of her day, it wasn't the only thing that she had to worry about.

Sighing, Alix left the gym and headed across the city towards her university library to study, hair still wet from her quick shower. She didn't exactly enjoy studying- she never had- but she had to get her degree, and it was a necessary evil while she waited to get her Miraculous.

...And Alix supposed that even superheroes had to have paying jobs, too.

Alix was in the middle of taking care of the newest part of her sleeve tattoo when the news of Hawkmoth's defeat broke. She stopped what she was doing right away and turned to the TV in her family's living room, frowning at the rolling announcement at the bottoms of the screen.

Gabriel Agreste was Hawkmoth. Nathalie Sancoeur was Mayura. The top dome of the mansion plus part of the upper story had been destroyed in the battle of supervillains vs. superheroes. No other staff or family members were hurt, though Mr. Agreste was in critical condition and Mrs. Agreste had been found in what looked like a magical coma and had been brought to an expert. The supervillains were defeated by a team of superheroes, though Ladybug and Chat Noir were responsible for taking down the main supervillain. No one else knew about Mr. Agreste and Ms. Sancoeur's supervillain activities.

Thankfully. Alix would have questioned her entire life if Adrien had known about his father being a supervillain and hadn't done anything about it.

Even though it was obviously great news for Paris, Alix couldn't help but be disappointed. She had never gotten her Miraculous, the Miraculous that she had been looking forward to so much- that she had been anticipating so much. Maybe the future wasn't set in stone after all, and she got her hopes up for nothing.

She didn't fully understand how the timeline was meant to work out with the whole Timetagger battle now, but maybe it was just one of those strange time things. Something that she might have understood if she had gotten Fluff and the Miraculous, but now...

It was just a dream.

At least she was still cool and taller than she had been, Alix told herself as she returned her attention to her tattoo. She could probably enter some TV contests with courses like she was training on and make some use of her training, or maybe she would dabble in being a stunt double for movies. She didn't need a Miraculous to be awesome.

(But she had really looked forward to seeing dinosaurs, just for historical interest reasons. And general curiosity reasons. And because she felt like it reasons.)

Alix couldn't help being downcast for the entirety of the next day, though. She had been so close...

But at least there wouldn't be any more akuma attacks in Paris. Alix had to remember that.

And then Ladybug and Chat Noir showed up at Alix's window thirty-one hours after Hawkmoth's defeat, stress written across their faces.

"You two have long faces for people who just defeated their arch-enemy," Alix commented, letting them in. Was it a little weird that they knew where she lived, right down to the window? Yes. But she wasn't going to question it. "What's up?"

"We defeated Hawkmoth, but we made a mistake," Ladybug said, her lips twisting in displeasure. "When we were fighting, his Miraculous was knocked across the lair and he- well, he was knocked in the opposite direction and was really badly injured. Since Mayura was distracted with her own fight, we got him down and on his way to the hospital before trying to locate his Miraculous."

"And then we helped the others finish up their fight," Chat Noir chimed in. "We figured that it would be fine, since we were pretty heavily in a battle zone and it was dangerous, but then we came back after the fight and- it wasn't there. It wasn't anywhere."

"We've picked through all of the rubble, and today our mentor told us that his kwami felt more negative vibes around the Butterfly kwami," Ladybug said, picking up from her partner seamlessly. "Someone came into the mansion while we were fighting, slipped by us, and stole the Butterfly. We don't doubt that we're going to be dealing with a copycat soon enough, and we've let the police know so that we can come up with an official statement before another akuma hits."

"But we want to be prepared," Chat Noir told Alix. "We need to be able to slap back as fast as possible and deal with this new Butterfly before they get a hang of using the Miraculous. So we've brought you a certain pocket watch."

It was happening. It was actually happening.

"Am I going to be a temporary superhero, like the others?" Alix asked, practically trembling with the effort of not just grabbing the Miraculous, slipping it into a pocket, and transforming. She wanted to know what that power felt like, but- well, she had to behave. She had to be patient.

She had already established more than once that she was not good at being patient.

"No, you're different," Ladybug told her. "We've decided that we need one more Miraculous out, even if you don't need to come to every fight. And, well- we've known for years that you would be getting a Miraculous. You've known that for years, and haven't told a soul. So between that and the Miraculous that you've been paired with, it makes the most sense for you to be the one to get the Miraculous to keep."

Alix blinked, even as she accepted the Miraculous. "Okay, so I know that Chloe gave away her identity literally right away, but Rena Rouge and Carapace?"

"They used to date and figured each other out pretty fast," Ladybug said wryly. "Or, rather, Rena figured Carapace out and then on the Heroes Day attack- oh, gosh, how many years ago was that?- when Scarlet Moth came out, there wasn't time to catch them separately and Carapace found out about Rena. So they know about each other, which wasn't ideal to start with, and now that they've broken up..."

Alix winced. To have exs on the same superhero team...yeah, not ideal. And if one got to keep their Miraculous full-time and the other didn't- well, that just screamed possible akumatization opportunity.

"At least it wasn't a super nasty breakup, but they had been dating for so long, it was always going to be awkward," Chat Noir added. "So they were a no. And Chloe was obviously a no." He grinned. "And our mentor happened to mention that with the Rabbit out, if we had particularly long fights that made us miss really important stuff, we could just hop through the rabbit hole and be able to make out job or class or- whatever. As long as we don't abuse it too much and stay out of our past selves' way, it'll be fine."

Ladybug let out a long-suffering sigh at the mention of rabbit holes. Clearly she had already heard all of Chat Noir's bunny jokes already. Alix rolled her eyes.

She would whack him over the head with her umbrella later.

"So, new teammate, d'you want to transform and come do a lap of the city with us?" Ladybug asked, grinning as Fluff appeared next to Alix. "Get a feel for things before an akuma shows up and you have to fight?"

"Do I? Hell yeah!" Alix said excitedly, grinning at Fluff. "I've been looking forward to this for years, I can't wait. Fluff, clockwise!"

The feel of power was subtle, but amazing. Alix transformed in a flash, grinning as her suit settled over her. "That is so cool! Just as awesome as I thought it would be."

"Yeah, it's pretty sweet," Chat Noir said with a grin, taking a step towards her window. "And it's even better when you start running across the rooftops. So enough talking- let's hop to it!"

This time, she really did hit him with her umbrella.

#Miraculous Ladybug #My writing #alix kubdel #another alphabet story #alix appreciation

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