#both just sort of making fun of how terrible adrien's life is

[anna-scribbles]

“Look who finally showed up.” Ladybug’s voice was the quiet kind of rage, an animal she was just barely keeping penned up. “I was starting to wonder.” She looked at him like he was a dead thing.

good morning and happy call it even chapter 6 day to me and @sha-nwa and all those who celebrate<3

#listen the chapter title selection on this one was a doozy. let me tell you. #so many good options #stiffest competition was between this one and 'a simple complication' from the story of us #but ten thousand bad moments from vicious won out. #both just sort of making fun of how terrible adrien's life is #but! well! #adrien sort of does have a terrible life. I feel that writing him this way is true to his character #anyway #HAPPY CHAPTER SIX DAY #im posting this so early bc otherwise it would be at literally like 5pm and I dont have the patience for that #ml #call it even #miraculous ladybug #mlb #ml fic #ml fic rec #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #adrinette #ladynoir

[peterparkers-bad-youtube-apology]

The Drawdown

Wipeout - Chapter 9

Pairing: Surfer!Tom Holland x Reader

A/N: Okay so I decided to cut this chapter in half so I could get it out a little faster and keep it from getting really long. Next chapter should hopefully also be coming shortly

Warnings: Fighting, angst

Summary: You have a terrible time at the beach

Taglist

Masterlist

Series Masterlist

❀  ゜.・゜-: ✧ :-　　-: ✧ :-゜・．゜❀

You twisted the small beads of your necklace while you read over the email on your phone. You’d been studying it religiously since it arrived, every word was now deeply ingrained in your memory. You wanted to say yes so badly, you’d even begun searching for apartments. It was such an amazing opportunity, if things were any different you would have said yes in a heartbeat. There was just one thing holding you back.

Tom Holland. Your sweet, funny, flirty little surfer boy. You just couldn’t imagine life without him. One week apart had left you totally miserable, how would you handle multiple months? An entire year? It seemed impossible.

If you could go back in time you would have listened to Grace and backed off way sooner. You thought you could fight your own feelings, and for a long time you had, but it became overwhelming. You weren’t sure exactly when things changed, but when he’d handed you that necklace you became totally overwhelmed with a warm fuzzy feeling. Everything had crashed over you and all at once you realized that the way you wanted Tom had moved far beyond friendship or lust. You didn’t know how to handle the sudden rush of emotions so you jumped to sex so you could feel as close to him as possible.

You debated talking to him about it, but you already knew your feelings wouldn’t be reciprocated, and you didn’t want them to ruin a friendship that you valued so deeply. Leaving was a perfect out though, the distance would make it easier to move on. Plus you’d be totally focused on your career and future, there’d be no time for you to worry about dating. You two could call and text, even FaceTime on occasion, but by the time you came back you’d be totally over him. You’d probably laugh about it together later in life.

“Boo,” a set of hands grabbed your shoulders. You were brought out of your trance so suddenly you jumped and let out a startled cry. Adrien laughed as he walked around to face you, “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t think I’d actually scare you.”

“That’s okay, I totally zoned out,” you set your phone in your lap and flashed him a smile, “Getting tired?”

You’d gone out to the beach with Grace, Harrison, and Adrien. Adrien and Grace had both tried to get you to come into the water already but you’d told them you weren’t feeling well. Really you were just waiting for Tom to get off work. He was set to come join you once he got off, you were hoping you could tell him you were planning on moving once you were out on the water. It was easier to have that sort of talk on the water.

“Nah, I’ve just got to leave in a few minutes, I’m meeting some friends for dinner,” he explained, “I don’t suppose you’re feeling any better yet?”

You shook your head, “No, not really.”

“That sucks, I’m sorry, I wish you could be out there with us,” he leaned back on his hands while he spoke, “I’m kind of glad we have a minute alone though, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”

You knit your brows, “You can always text me.”

“I know, I just think it’s better to do this stuff in person,” his cheeks took a bit of color as he continued, “I’m not the smoothest person in the world so forgive me if I stumble a bit. I want to start by saying I think you’re really pretty and really cool…”

Oh no, you could already tell where he was going.

“And I had a lot of fun hanging out and helping you with your internship stuff. So I was just wondering if you’d want to go on a date sometime?”

You were frozen in time, your mind rushing between a million thoughts. Adrien was cute, sure, but you’d never thought about him that way, and you had no clue he’d been thinking about you that way.

“Sorry, I’m just a little surprised,” you justified your silence and cleared your throat, “I didn’t realize you were into me that way…” you trailed off as you considered your options.

Adrien was cute, and a good match for you on paper. He was the opposite of Tom in many ways, more quiet and shy. He was sweet and smart and your careers fit nicely together. Plus a date would help you move on. If you could move on then you wouldn’t have to move away from him. You could stay in the sweet little town that you loved, with the sweet boy that you loved. Everything would be perfect, you and Tom could just be best friends and Adrien would be your boyfriend. A boyfriend gave you another reason to deny leaving too, to stay here and stay near him.

“Um, yeah, I think we should do that,” you nodded as you finally answered him, “Just something super casual though, you know what I mean?”

He nodded quickly, “Yeah, of course, we could just grab dinner or something, nothing crazy.”

This was good. Tom and Adrien were friends, all three of you could hang out together. Plus Tom and your other friends would definitely approve of Adrien, and that was important to you. Nothing had to change at all.

“Cool, did you have somewhere in mind?” you turned your attention to your hands, dipping your fingers into the warm sand nervously.

“Have you been to the Thai place that just opened? They have a cute little outside area right on the beach.”

“No, I haven’t, that sounds good though,” you agreed, “When did you want to go? I’m off on Friday.”

“Friday is perfect, around 6 if that works?”

You nodded again, “6 is good for me too. I can pick you up if you want?”

“That’s perfect, I can’t wait,” he flashed a big warm smile and leaned forward again, “I’ve got to get going, but I’m really excited.”

Your smile was smaller but you tried not to seem unsure, “Me too. Have fun at dinner.”

“I will,” he bounced to his feet quickly and waved to you, “I’ll see you Friday.”

“You too,” you waved as he left.

As he disappeared down the beach you drew your legs up to your chest and wrapped your arms around them. You set your head on your knees with a sigh and turned your eyes to Grace and Harrison. You watch Harrison cut into Grace’s wave and start teasing her while she yelled at him. They were having so much fun, it was annoying to be caught up in your own feelings instead of out there having fun with them.

You had no idea how long you’d been sitting there just watching when you heard footsteps behind you. You turned to find Tom, who must have just walked down the beach from work. He flashed you a smile, and then a pout when he noticed the look on your face.

“What’s wrong? Did you get hurt or something?” he hummed.

“No, I’m fine,” you stretched your legs out as he tossed his shirt and shoes off, “How was work?”

“Good, slow,” he glanced out at your friends, “You’re not gonna make me paddle out there alone are you?” he grabbed the pink board you liked and pushed it out towards you.

“No, I’ll go, just, um,” you took a deep breath, “Could you sit for a minute? I need to talk to you.”

His lips tugged to a small frown but he nodded and stuck the board back in the sand, “Of course, what’s on your mind?” he fell down into the sand beside you.

“Adrien asked me out,” you blurted it out because you didn’t know how to tell him.

You’d hoped he’d be excited, tell you right away that he hoped you said yes and he thought you’d be a great couple. It would be so much easier if he was excited.

His lips tugged upwards to a playful smirk, “Well I hope you let him down gentle Flower.”

Your cheeks tinted pink. He’d expected you to say no.

“Well actually I said yes,” you mumbled it out, like you’d done something wrong. Somehow it felt shameful, like something you needed to hide.

“Oh,” his little smirk dropped and he crossed his legs, “I didn’t realize you were into him.”

“I don’t really know if I am yet, that’s kind of the point of the date,” you tried to joke but Tom’s face contorted to a frown and his voice held an edge you weren’t used to hearing, “I don’t think you should be leading him on like that. If you’re not interested just tell him, all this is going to do is cause drama.”

“Why would it cause drama?” you frowned back at him, “It’s super casual, and he knows that. It’s just to see if there’s a spark or anything.”

“How could it not cause drama? He knows you and I have been hooking up, you think he’s just going to be cool with that?” he snapped at you.

You were taken back, you’d expected Tom to be shocked at most, not angry. He seemed totally pissed though, you hadn’t seen him that angry since the incident with Riley.

“He’s going to have to be cool with it Tom. If things got serious or anything I’d make it very clear with him that you and I are always going to be friends. Plus I doubt he would have asked me out if he wasn’t okay with it,” you pointed out, “I am perfectly capable of drawing those boundaries with any future partner I might have. You don’t need to worry about someone pushing you out of my life or getting jealous or something, I wouldn’t let that happen.”

You were being honest, you’d never let anyone push Tom out of your life, he meant too much. It was easy to promise that too when you couldn’t imagine being with anyone but him. Eventually you’d have to get over that, you’d have to move on, but he’d still always be an important part of your life.

“It’s not about that (y/n) I-” he cut himself off with a heavy sigh, shaking his head before he continued, “He’s not right for you.”

You knit your brows, “What do you mean? I thought you liked Adrien.”

“I do like Adrien,” he sighed again, “Adrien is a good guy, but you two barely know each other.”

“Again, that’s the point of the date.”

“Okay well I do know both of you, and I know you aren’t a good match.”

“What do you mean?” you asked again, you were starting to get annoyed now, “He’s sweet, and you know on paper we-”

“On paper doesn’t mean anything (y/n),” he sounded harsh and scolding, boardline parental, “You can make anyone seem good for anyone on paper.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child Tom, I’m capable of deciding who I do and don’t want to go out with,” you snapped back at him.

“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” he groaned and ran his hands through his hair, “Look if you want my opinion I think it’s a bad idea. I won’t lie to make you feel better.”

“I don’t want you to lie Tom, I appreciate that you’re being honest here,” you dipped your fingers into the warm sand and grabbed a fistful of it, “I just thought we should talk about it because, you know…” you trailed off, letting the sand stream out between your fingers while you searched for the right words, “We’ve got out thing and our terms were-”

“Oh for fucks sake (y/n) don’t talk about it like it’s some sort of contract,” he snapped bitterly at you. Your eyes widened in shock and you fell silent. He was so venomous and angry, you’d never heard him speak like that. He glanced over at you and took a deep breath before he spoke again, “Sorry, I’m sorry, that came out really mean. I just don’t think this is a good idea okay? I mean he’s my roommate, he knows about our whole deal. It’s gonna get weird and he’ll inevitably end up jealous.”

“It’s just a super casual thing right now, if things got more serious I’d make it clear with him that he’d have to be okay with us staying friends.”

“If it’s just a super casual thing then why are we even talking about it? I mean what we talked about was doing our thing until you found someone you actually want to be with. So I don’t see why this matters unless you actually want to be with him.”

“Well I just don’t know that right now, I might want to be with him or something in the future. I wanted to talk to you about it because I don’t want things to get weird,” you pursed your lips. Really you wanted to bring up cooling things off between you two, you just thought this was a good way to bring that up without admitting your feelings, “Why are you getting mad at me? I’m just trying to communicate.”

“I’m not getting mad at you,” he clarified, “I’m not mad. I just think this is a bad idea, and I don’t think you two are a good match. I don’t get why you want to have this conversation either. If you don’t want to be with him, why do we need to talk about this? Obviously you’re not looking for my opinion.”

“Because I think it’s probably best for us to cool things off while I’m figuring this shit out,” you bit back at him. His mood was starting to sour yours too, “I’m trying to have this conversation with you so things don’t get weird or tense. I am not asking for your permission or approval. If you have an actual reason for thinking it’s a bad idea then I’d love to hear it, but if your reasoning is just that you don’t think we’re a good match, then I can decide that for myself. Obviously I’m going to talk to you about this because what else am I going to do? Just not tell you?”

His whole face flushed, “No I-” he paused, “I-If that’s what you think is best then obviously…” he fell silent, you waited for him to speak again, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to come off controlling or something because that’s not it at all. Obviously if you don’t want to stop sleeping together for any reason that’s your call, I’m not gonna question you on that. I just think that you going out with my roommate is a bad idea. I think it’ll make things weird no matter how hard we try to avoid it.”

“If it feels weird then I won’t go out with him again, but I’m trying to talk this out now so we’re on the same page. I don’t want to fight with you.”

“Yeah, me either,” he nodded, “I’m sorry for being pissy. I guess you’ll just go on the date or whatever and see how you feel or something…”

“Yeah…” your eyes left him in favor of the beach, “I’m sorry too, I wasn’t trying to start a fight.”

“I know.”

Silence fell between you two, neither of you knew what else to say. You were hoping for a much more positive talk.

“We could hit the water if you want,” you suggested in an attempt to lighten the mood, “I was sort of waiting for you to head out there.”

“Actually I think I’m gonna head home,” Tom rubbed the back of his neck, “I, uh, I don’t really feel like surfing right now. Work was really long, I’d like to just get to bed.”

“Right totally,” you nodded and watched him stand up.

He pulled his shirt back on and gave you an awkward wave as he left. You sighed and pulled your legs back up to your chest. Your head felt heavy on your knees and your eyes started burning. You tried to convince yourself it was just the salty air but you knew better.

next chapter

❀  ゜.・゜-: ✧ :-　　-: ✧ :-゜・．゜❀

Taglist:

@spideyssunshine​ @spideyspeaches​ @niallsvirgosun​ @roseke​ @outshineallthestars​ @namoreno​ @thevery-firstpage​ @collywobbl​ @zspideyy​ @emistrash​ @tomsirishgirlx​ @andreagf956​ @peachyafshawn​ @agbspidey​ @sleepybesson​ @nj01​ @misshale21​ @prancerrparkerr​ @raajali3​ @ellabellabus07​ @xoxomaterialgirl​ @mayal0pez​ @belovedholland​ @minjix​ @blankspaceblankday​ @inthegetawaycarwithtaylah @graciexmarvel​ @secretsthathauntus​ @lnmp89​ @negasonic-teenage-asshole​ @gloomynigvts​ @phobiics​ @t-hollanderr​ @cest-la-vieve​ @itscaminow​ @katiaw2​ @afro-hispwriter​ @chrissybang @hem-lemon @book-lover20 @plshie @zoeaudrey2 @princesssria127 @hollandweather

#tom holland #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland x reader #tom holland imagine #tom holland angst #tom holland x reader fluff #tom holland x reader angst #tom holland x reader smut #tom x reader #tom holland blurb #tom x y/n #tom and haz #tom and harrison #tom holland x fem #tom holland x y/n #wipeout #peter parker #peter parker fanfiction #spiderman #spiderman x reader #spiderman fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #surfer!tom holland #surfer au #tom holland smut #tom holland series #tom holland fluff #tom holland fic #tom holland fandom #peter parker x reader

[imthepunchlord]

Do you have any thoughts on how the guardian role is handled lore wise? Would you change much about being the guardian?

Oh yes I do and there's so much that I would change up.

The more we see of the Guardians, the dumber they are and the more pointless they are. To a point it's a wonder if they were worth the inclusion as they don't amount to much and are just useless. I'm putting this undercut as I just go off.

- Lore wise, they set it up that adults are naturally more powerful, so why did Fu pick two kids to fight his battles for him? Why not adults? Why did he leave them on their own instead of offering them some means to have an edge over HM?

- Of the Ladybug and Cat, we have yet to see anything unique that the Cat brings to these fights that the other 15 miraculi that Fu has with him couldn't do. You need a distraction that's going to mess up the akuma? Monkey and Fox. You need a protector/aggressor? Bee, Turtle, or Dragon. Ladybug is a must as its the only cleanser so far and has ML to boot, but Cat doesn't need to be out there, and as soon as HM had quite publicly stated that he wants LB and Cat, Fu should've reclaimed the Cat immediately to secure its safety and that HM won't get both. Another or two could go out to replace it.

- Why was picking Adrien a good idea? If Fu had just arrived in Paris, ok, but Backwarder reveals he's been living in Paris for a while. And with that, he's seen Adrien's face everywhere.s Adrien is potentially the most well known kid in Pari. Technically, for Fu's want of secrecy, why pick the most iconic face in Paris to get a miraculous? That sets up one of your heroes to always have attention on him. Fu picking Adrien doesn't make any logical sense.

- Why is Fu ok with endangering one kid but not the other? Why does Marinette get a test set up that risks her life and Fu's if it hadn't gone well and Adrien just helps an old man up, a common decency that most would do. It's like two extreme differences that don't work well in comparison as Marinette gets the risky test and Adrien it looks like he got his miraculous on a silver platter as he got the far easier one that takes the least effort to be a decent human being.

- Fu being a terrible mentor and hero picker in general and the whole shebang with Syren. If Adrien is not meeting his standards or if he doesn't trust Adrien at all, why is Adrien being allowed to continue as a hero? Or if he really wants Adrien to stay, why isn't he doing anything about Adrien? Why isn't he telling Plagg to encourage Adrien to step up and get serious? If he can take on the role of being Adrien's Chinese teacher, why not do that to try and guide Adrien to improvement so he can also be trusted with Guardian secrets too and truly help Marinette out. He's got two options when he doesn't trust Adrien or finds that he's meeting his standards: he takes the miraculous back or he addresses this issue himself.

- I also call big BS about him not doing anything at all when he comes upon Adrien detransformed on the roof with Plagg. Cause he's risking himself going out to find Chat Noir only to find him detransformed. That realistically should raise some brows and concern him. Adrien at least should've gotten a lecture or warning.

- Also the reveal that kwamis aren't allowed to know about their own power. that to me is off putting. It really stresses that kwamis are beneath them, these very ancient and powerful beings that have probably seen a lot. And canon validates it by making them children (which to me is the writers being lazy so they don't have to do complex characters).

- The whole thing with Fu's backstory. Dumbest backstory I've ever heard and it just paints Guardians in a really bad light, and by extension, real life monks. Monks didn't go to people's homes to take children. If they did take kids with them, those kids had nowhere else to go and offered them a place to stay until old enough to be on their own. And that test, omg, wtf. Ok, I can get the idea of a test of temptation, but there are other ways to perform it without starving a kid. Especially leaving said kid alone unsupervised with 19 powerful miraculi two of which have wish granting abilities. How would the Guardians even know if Fu used a miraculous as they left him alone with mriaculi. If Fu wanted to, he could've made a wish to never be picked.

- Fu didn't even do shit when he finally had a chance to face off against HM. He just sat in his damb ball and allowed himself to get knocked around. At least try and roll over him! Be a ping-pong ball! DO SOMETHING. Like, why did you even pick Turtle??? Turtle wasn't able to do anything against Butterfly! I thought it could as Fu had been ready to go in Origins, plus the 5 are based off Wu Xing, by set up, Fox and Turtle should have some sort of an edge over the Butterfly. But I guess that means there could be other options aside form LB and we can't have that, Marinette's miraculous needs to be the only thing to take on the Butterfly to really stress on the fact that it comes down to only her.

- The memory wipe thing that's an apparently must when you retire from being the Guardian. Honestly I think that should've been saved as a last resort if you're ever captured and could be forced to leak info, not when you retire. Doing so removes a valid source of advisement that a new Guardian can rely on. History is there to learn from it and this tradition removes a source of history to learn from, either from having guidance or seeing what the old did and how you want to change things. This also makes me concerned as I see Adrien taking advantage of an amnesiac Marinette.

- I went off about the NY Special revealing there's more Orders here.

- And lastly, Su-Han, the other Guardian to see aside from Fu. And with him, it solidifies how stupid they all are. When the Butterfly is being misused in Paris, why is someone aggressive and judgmental coming to Paris? Why is this guy even working with kids when he doesn't like kids? And the reveal that Guardians don't use miraculi at all. That just makes that test all the dumber with testers being unsupervised. And for Guardians not meant to use miraculi, how come Marinette gets a nice perk as LB that she can pull a miraculous out of her yo-yo? They're probably playing that she's "the first" to do so but realistically, I'm pressing x to doubt. In the long history of miraculi and when Guardians were around, you expect me to believe that Guardians never used miraculi themselves? What if there was no one to turn to, do they just the disaster happen? ...Well, based on how terrible canon is setting them up, I wouldn't be surprised.

SO.

There is a lot I would change up about the Guardians and for this, I'll adjust canon.

- Adrien gets the ring another way, maybe a gift from his mom or aunt or grandparents. Realistically, there's no logical reason for Fu to pick Adrien. He just has too much attention on him and Chat being an unexpected miraculous user can make him wary, adding to him only trusting Marinette.

- I'd have Fu be more present in Marinette's life, a customer who comes in a lot. This way he can offer advise when needed but not take away from Tikki. And this has him more closely keeping an eye on things.

- I'd change up Fu's backstory. He got separated from his family in a flood, the previous Turtle saved him, tried to help him find his family and with no luck, took him to the Temple, but only the section where other orphans are where they work to help take care of it, oblivious to the miraculous near them. After a year, Fu is one of the few selected to be entrusted with miraculous knowledge. He's surprised but not all that for it as he'd rather go find his family still. Idk how Temple falls but its not that. That was just dumb and avoidable.

- I wouldn't have Adrien meet Fu at all. In truth, it actually could've been cut out entirely as Adrien meeting Fu didn't amount to anything. He doesn't help with Guardian duties, doesn't help pick heroes, hasn't stepped up at all in his role as a partner. And he's not as torn up about Fu's loss as Marinette is. Adrien meeting Fu was pointless in the grand scheme of things. Nothing was progressed or changed from Adrien meeting Fu.

- I'd have HM ONLY getting an edge on Fu because Mayura was there to help him, catching Fu off guard. I want to see the Turtle truly in action, to see what else it can do cause sitting there to be smacked around was just unimpressive. And if Asstruck even did as much research as he could, he'd know that in Chinese mythology, the Turtle is a boss. It's the keeper of history and symbol of immortality, and it's up there with Tiger as an animal that can go toe to toe with the Dragon. And of the Four Symbols (associated with 4 seasons), the Black Turtle is also known as the Black Warrior. There should've been a lot more to Turtle than just sitting in your shell and allowing yourself to be knocked around.

- Su-Han I'd drastically change up. I'd keep in him being critical and stern, but he approaches things smartly and patiently. Before he dives into aggression and accusations, he wants to know what's going on. Why does this 14 yo have the Miracle Box? How was the Butterfly obtained and misused? And what the hell is going on??? How are these people so small and how did they get into this thin glass box?? Computer? What's a computer??? Essentially, have fun with the fact that Su-Han is essentially a time traveler and one great bonding experience to have with Marinette while also offering some good comedy is him learning about the modern time and her acting as his guide. Su-Han can give her guidance that Fu hadn't been able to give, and Marinette can offer her own in a way that Su-Han will need. Which by extension could remove Marinette having a near mental breaking point and revealing herself to Alya, and could avoid some of that drama of what's coming.

- Speaking of which, Adrien. I'd use Su-Han to finally address the issues with Adrien as a hero and partner. Su-Han prioritized Marinette as she has the Miracle Box, but Adrien is someone he'd take the miraculous away from. Adrien would get a very clear warning and call out for his actions and role.

#ask Punchie #long post #Adrien salt #Fu salt #Guardian salt

[concernedbrownbread]

Come Home With Me

For @adrienaugust Day 3: Umbrella

Summary:

“Adrien,” Plagg said softly, “It’ll rain soon.”

“Let it.”

His voice was vicious. Desperate.

He wanted to go home. But he really, really didn’t want to go back.

The rain started hitting his face harshly, punishment for his indecision. Adrien wanted to curl up in his bed and cry, but he didn’t want to ever see his too-white, too-big room again.

“Adrien?”

His eyes snapped open, focusing past the blur of water to the person who had spoken.

“Marinette?”

Or, Adrien finds himself alone in the rain, trying to find home, and Marinette lends him her umbrella.

Word Count: 1397

Relationship: Adrien & Marinette (Platonic, but can be interpreted differently), Adrien & Plagg

Warnings: Implied/Refrenced Emotional Abuse

Read here or under the cut

---

“You’re gonna catch a cold out here, kit.”

Adrien’s lips pulled into a bittersweet smile, “I think that’s the least of our worries.”

Plagg sighed, hovering just above his shoulder, “At least transform into Chat Noir.”

Adrien shook his head, “You’re tired, and I’m running out of cheese.”

Plagg sighed, and didn’t say, then maybe we should go back.

Adrien’s never going back to that manor. Father could try dragging him kicking and screaming, but he was never going back.

(He had said that before. So many times.)

The wind picked up, the chill of late October stinging against Adrien’s exposed skin. He was underdressed and overwhelmed, with nothing but his school bag and his phone. His calls to Nino and Chloe had both fallen through, the reception bad because of course his luck ran that way. Adrien truly did feel alone.

Alone, but away from that wretched house.

He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the park bench. At least he was free here.

(A terrible, nagging part of his mind that sounded so much like Father told him, you’ll go back eventually, he’s your dad, you’ll forgive him like you always do .

That part of his mind, cold and quiet, called this little stunt for what it was - a childish tantrum.)

Tears stung at his eyes.

“Adrien,” Plagg said softly, “It’ll rain soon.”

“Let it.”

His voice was vicious. Desperate.

He wanted to go home.

Plagg said nothing, finally realising that Adrien was serious about staying out. He settled onto Adrien’s shoulder, a comforting weight. He didn’t try to talk Adrien out of this stupid bit of rebellion, but he didn’t encourage him either.

Plagg always gave him space to figure things out for himself.

He appreciated that, but after a life of being told what to do, Adrien wasn’t sure how to figure things out.

The first droplets of rain are kind, a gentle warning. Adrien refused to budge. His heart hammered against his ribs, a steady rhythm that only picked up with the downpour.

Go back, Adrien tried to tell himself. Back to the manor, where it was cold but at least not drenched. Back to Father, who would hug him and say never leave me and it would be more suffocating than comforting. Back to his life, as Adrien Agreste, the perfect little model.

But he really, really didn’t want to go back.

The rain started hitting his face harshly, punishment for his indecision. Adrien wanted to curl up in his bed and cry, but he didn’t want to ever see his too-white, too-big room again.

“Adrien?”

His eyes snapped open, focusing past the blur of water to the person who had spoken.

“Marinette?”

She shifted her umbrella awkwardly, “Uh, hi. You’re wet - no, I mean, er - getting wet - “ she trailed off.

Adrien smiled fondly, “Yeah. What are you doing out here?”

“I was running an errand for my parents,” Marinette managed to say, with minimal stammering, “You?”

Her eyes were wide and concerned and warm against the autumn wind.

Though he counted Marinette as a friend, he couldn’t say they were close. He didn’t know how much to tell her, if anything at all. Had he been behind his mask, he wouldn’t have hesitated at all, but he never knew where Adrien stood with her.

Still, Marinette was dear to him, and always had a habit of showing up when he needed her most.

“I’m not sure what I’m doing here,” Adrien admitted quietly, “Or what I’m doing at all,” he scoffed, "Or where to go."

“Come home with me,” Marinette said boldly. Then, "Not - not home WITH me - I meant - come to my house - the bakery that is - at least, it’s out of the rain - and it’s close - "

She trailed off, smiling nervously, angling her umbrella so that it was covering him.

He couldn’t really say no. And the thought of macarons were always enticing.

“Thank you, Marinette,” Adrien said, “I promise to be out of your hair as soon as the rain clears.”

“Don’t be silly, you can stay forever - um, as long as you like, I mean.”

The bakery was much closer than Adrien had thought. Stepping into its warmth, Adrien was hit with the aroma of freshly baked pastries, which made him instantly hungry.

“My parents aren’t in,” Marinette said as she left the umbrella by the door, “Do you want something to eat?”

Everything, “Sure.”

“I’ll get you a towel too.”

Marinette got them so much tooth-rotting sugary goods that Father would flip if he saw them, which only made Adrien devour them with glee. Marinette giggled when Adrien got cream on his nose and tried to lick it off, completely forgetting he didn’t have Chat’s tongue right now.

They sat by the window, the steady pitter-patter soothing the last of Marinette’s nerves - enough for her to crack a pun about pastries, one that Adrien had to use next time around Ladybug. She laughed when he shared the story about the time he and Chloe had eaten enough sweets to make them sick, and he gasped at her story about how her dad invented a new kind of muffin recipe.

By the time they were finishing off the last macaron, Adrien had forgotten all his previous worries.

It all came crashing back however, when Marinette said, “I noticed your dad didn’t sign the form today. For the trip to Nice.”

Adrien flinched, “No, he didn’t.”

“How come?”

She was more curious than judgemental, which was why Adrien felt comfortable enough to confess, “I think he’s punishing me.”

Marinette drew back, “What? Why?”

“I messed up a photoshoot the other day. There was an akuma attack and I had to … go hide - I guess it’s not really an excuse - but - “

Marinette slammed down the glass she’d been drinking from, “That is SO unfair!”

Adrien shrugged, “It’s nothing new. He might just be being protective, I don’t know. Though … I sort of decided to not go back home today, because of it,” he laughed, “Overdramatic, I know.”

“He’s the one being overdramatic!” Marinette frowned, “Does Nino and Chloe know? I’m telling them, we’re kidnapping you. I’ll tell Alya too, she’ll tell the whole class,” she paused at her phone, “Should I tell Kagami and Luka? They’re not even on the trip …”

Adrien felt his insides warm. Hearing their names out loud … he sometimes forgot how many people he had, that cared for him.

Had he really been worrying over where home was, when he had already known?

“Marinette,” he said softly, “It’s okay. Thank you.”

“It’s not okay,” she pouted, but relented by putting her phone down.

“I know he loves me,” Adrien sighed, “I just wish he’d show it more.”

“Oh Adrien,” she reached over, covering his hand with hers, “I’m so sorry you have to go through that.”

“Yeah,” Adrien smiled, “Thank you.”

“You can stay here tonight if you like.”

Outside, the rain had slowed to a drizzle.

“It’s okay,” he said softly, “I think I’m okay now.”

Marinette didn’t seem to be pleased, but she didn’t push it, “At least take the umbrella with you.”

“I couldn’t - "

“It’s yours,” she blushed, “You - uh - gave it to me. First day of school.”

“Oh,” he grinned, “You kept it.”

“I forgot to give it back,” she softened, “Anyway, I think you need it more than me. For the next time it rains.”

Adrien gulped, blinking back the stinging in his eyes. He cleared his throat gently, “Um, before I go. This might sound weird, but do you have any cheese?”

Marinette laughed, “I do, actually! I keep it around for ... stray cats.”

It took Adrien a moment to realise she was talking about Chat Noir.

“You’re an amazing friend, you know that?” Adrien blurted out.

Marinette grinned, “I’ve been told. And you are too, don’t you forget it!”

Outside, holding plenty of cheese and pastries and one well-used umbrella, Plagg peeked out of Adrien’s jacket.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Plagg snorted, “Then let’s go home. Your dad’s worried.”

“I doubt Father even noticed.”

“Other dad.”

Adrien had no idea what Plagg was talking about until he checked his phone, only to be bombarded with seventeen worried messages from the Gorilla.

“I’m in trouble, huh?”

Plagg only laughed.

Adrien grinned back, looking up at the sky. The rain had come to a stop now, leaving the skies grey, but the world clearer.

---

Author's Note: When I tell you this fic refused to cooperate with me, I mean that I had 5 stories in my head and came up with the 6th this morning. At least I had fun writing the rain as a metaphor!

Platonic Adrinette is an under-used gem, they are such a wholesome duo. The ship is fine, but nothing beats friendship <3

Also, on Gabriel - I don't doubt that he cares about Adrien, but sometimes caring isn't enough. In this case, it DEFINITELY isn't enough.

#adrienaugreste #adrienaugust #adrien #marinette #plagg #friendship #hurt/comfort #angst with a happy ending #miraculous ladybug #ml #mlb #mlb fanfic #ao3 fanfic #fanfiction #platonic adrinette

[flightfoot]

ML Fic Recs for Alya Stans

can you keep a secret by euphorickiri:

Summary:

once alya had her mind set on something, it was hard for her to let it go. she often got herself into trouble because of this, but, in her words, this was the "life of a journalist". but when she uncovers a secret that seems too impossible to believe, alya opens up a whole new world of danger.

"with a mask and a costume, don’t you think adrien looks a little bit like chat noir?”

she comes to realize some secrets should stay buried.

Oh man, this one is underappreciated! (Also don’t worry about the summary and title being completely lower case, the fic has proper punctuation.)

This is one of the rare occasions where Alya has a ton of issues of her own going on, with just having recovered from being akumatized as Lady Wifi and REMEMBERING the whole thing (that’s plot-relevant), being harassed at school because this is still early in the series and people haven’t gotten the concept that anyone can be akumatized and it isn’t the victim’s fault, on top of some pretty severe issues at home with her parents using her as a go-between when fighting, being put in charge of her younger siblings’ care a lot, and being insulted and harangued by her parents whenever Alya can’t live up to their insane expectations and generally not considering how she feels about anything at all. Plus she keeps having some very, VERY disturbing dreams about Lady Wifi that feel way too real...

It’s rare to see a fic focusing squarely on Alya’s problems and emotions - which, granted, is likely because canonically we haven’t seen evidence that there’s a ton of strife in her life. But it’s very refreshing and interesting to see here, especially with Adrien constantly checking up on her, commiserating with her, helping her as best he can, knowing a lot of the kind of thing she’s going through because he’s experienced it himself. Just everyone focusing on Alya, on understanding what’s going on with her and trying to help (though there’s not always a ton that can be done).

I highly recommend it for any Alya or Adrien stan.

Me, My Best Friend, And Her Cat by @ladyofthenoodle:

Summary:

Ladybugs aren't known for being particularly sneaky. Good thing this Ladybug has a fox in her corner, watching her back.

(And giving Ladybug's love life a nudge along the way. Maybe more than a nudge. In Alya's defense, Ladybug can use all the help she could get.)

It’s always great to see Alya and Marinette being friends and Alya getting to be awesome. She makes for a great Secret Secret Keeper!

you’re the volcano (i’m the raptor) by SnappleSnapSnake

Summary:

“But what if everyone thinks that she’s meant for this, but she’s really not? Because, you know, it’s like crazy magic jewelry- and maybe she’s wondering why such a clumsy idiot would even bother to try and save the world.”

And suddenly, everything clicked.

She grabbed her new friend by the shoulders, effectively cutting off her rambling. “Oh my god, you’re Ladybug.”

Marinette’s voice went high, and she squealed out, “What? No! Not that! I am! Not that! Definitely, totally not that!”

Alya just grinned, eyes sparkling and awed.

(yeah, they were definitely going to be best friends for life)

A oneshot featuring a series of short vignettes after various season 1 episodes, with how things change since Alya’s aware that Marinette is Ladybug the whole time. Features a lot of friendly teasing and banter!

Outfoxed by @captorations:

Summary:

Lila Rossi is not a Miraculous wielder. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have power. Alya was under her spell, along with so many others, until the day Lila unknowingly overstepped herself. Freed at last, the true Fox recognizes magic when she sees it, even if it doesn’t come from a source she understands. She is none too happy about this pretender abusing her natural gifts to make fools of Alya and those she loves.

Alya Césaire might need an enchanted necklace and the aid of a tiny deity to cast illusions, but she swore to use her borrowed abilities for the greater good long ago. There is none better suited to facilitate the liar’s downfall.

And maybe she’ll help her best friend sort out her increasingly complex love life along the way.

I wrote an analysis on this fic, so I’m guessing a lot of my followers are already aware of it. I’m REALLY not a big fan of Lila takedown fics at this point, but this is an exception - largely because of how much it focuses on Alya and what a bi disaster she is. Alya, Adrien, the class, they’re all treated well, and it’s just really satisfying to get to see Alya take down Lila considering how Alya’s often treated in those kinds of fics, as well as having Marinette so highly value Alya. Also has a really nice sequel where the rest of the class gets to have fun and kick butt!

Final Restoration by InkyCoffee

Summary:

Six months ago, Alya and Marinette had a terrible fight after Marinette flaked out on an important event. This afternoon, Alya filmed Hawkmoth's defeat. Friendship fic, Alya's POV.

I really like fics where Alya and Marinette can have a fight without either of them really being in the wrong, with it mostly coming down to having incomplete information - in Alya’s case, with not knowing that Marinette’s Ladybug. This is just a really nice resolution to such a fight, with both parties reconciling once the full truth comes out.

Damsel In (Need Of) Destress by @angelofthequeers

Summary:

Ladybug and Ryuuko have a little competition going on. The aim? To rescue Alya during akuma attacks. And naturally, Alya is Done with her girlfriends' shenanigans, while Chat Noir is just oblivious to the three-way tension.

This one’s just cute and funny! Also it’s always great to see Alya being so highly valued and loved.

#alya cesaire #alya sugar #miraculous ladybug #ml fanfic #ml fanfic recs #rena rouge

[yanderecandystore]

Halloween Costumes [Yandere!OCS - Headcanon]:

Here is a little scenario I thought it would be cute to share. I'll answer your asks soon, is just that it has been kinda hard to create in this couple of days. This is just a little Headcanon about what types of costumes would my characters wear on Halloween night.

🍒 Bullies 🍭:

→Alexandra Coldwell:

A mummy, oddly enough. Although the twins are always expected to wear something similar every now and then, when it comes to halloween they rarely ever match costumes. Alexandra had a bunch of options inside her head, but a mummy was what she had decided to go with. Why? No one really knows, neither does she. It just felt fitting.

She is absolutely one of the cutest evilest mummies you would ever meet tho. Instead of being just toilet paper, you'll see a bandage cutie covered in gold and jewels.

→Adrien Coldwell:

He normally doesn't care about what costume he will choose, as long as he can exaggerate his costume in a fancy way. This year, why not go with a classic homoerotic vampire? Just because he is lazy and doesn't really care for what costume he chooses, doesn't mean he won't put in a lot of effort to interpret the most dramatic vampire you would ever meet. He could just wear a cape and a pair of fangs, but what is the fun in that?

Expect a really extravagant vampire boy with a sassy attitude to really seal the whole character. Just make sure he doesn't get his role over his head and starts to bite people.

🍎 Teacher 📕:

→Madeline Allen:

Little riding hood, for obvious reasons. I mean, as a teacher that already offers cookies to every single student she meets along the way, why not dress as a character that holds treats in a little basket? It could be really fun to give students and other teachers candies while dressing as a character from her favorite fable. Also because, well, red is her favorite color.

You would see her passing through school halls while maintaining her character just for fun. Although she would serve candy to everyone, she would make sure to give you more than everyone else.

→Matthew Robinson:

Werewolf. He is… Not exactly the most creative person (neither am I-). He likes the stories he heard when he was a kid about the wolves that lived in the woods around his town. Maybe he was really naive, but just the thought of finding one of them walking around would be enough to stop him from sneaking out of his house at night, until he was old enough to know that no, werewolves aren't real.

You should have seen his face while searching for an online costume. He found some of the most questionable things under the search of "Werewolves". Not that the costumes were necessarily bad, but not exactly the best for the public eye. He decided to wear something really, really simple but that would still be recognizable.

He still bought one of the questionable ones, just… For the curiosity of it. Maybe he'll need it one day, who knows.

🍋 Delinquent 🐍:

→Janette Sartorius:

Frankenstein. She thinks she can pull it off just because she has a bunch of scars. She just needs some paint and some "extra effects". She is planning on scaring people, either because she is going to be part of a "haunted house" attraction, or because she couldn't contain the need to make someone terrified. I imagine her volunteering to be part of a scare attraction to both earn her some money, but also if it's for some sort of fundraiser.

She is absolutely terrible at doing it on her own, so the effects are to help her acting so it doesn't feel so lacking. Would you help her set everything up?

→Jackson Macnee:

Michael Myers. Or Jason, he isn't sure yet. Any Slasher is fine for him. Especially since because of his height no one takes him seriously, so he is, uhn… Planning on changing that. Yes, yes he is salty that people offer him candy as if he is a little kid. He still takes them, but, ya know?? It's not cool… He prefers cigarettes and the blood of his enemies (coughs don't worry, he is being edgy again coughs).

Okay that's not really true, but come on! He has his own gang, he has robbed and he has hurt people almost to the point of killing them, he deserves some respect don't you think?

I'm joking around but like, you should probably keep an eye on him. His costume is covering his face and his digitals, so if the idea of murdering someone on Halloween night ever crosses his mind, I think you should stay close to him so he doesn't kill some rich kids or something.

👾 A.I 🍏(non-binary):

→Yuma Soma:

Doesn't really know the importance of this day. In their game, there was a halloween like event, where all characters wear spooky outfits, their original one was the skeleton, so they might as well choose a skeleton costume.

Yuma is starting to really like this holiday, as through the whole month everyone seems so excited and happy just because it's a spooky month. They're kinda jealous of the little kids that get free candy, doesn't they deserve some as well?? They're just if not more adorable than all of these pipsqueaks.

Because they're new to this whole shenanigan, you better tell them that A: they can't eat all the candy, it doesn't matter if they throw a tantrum. And B: Just because they see someone who looks like a video game character, doesn't mean that person really is that character, they're more likely just a cosplayer that likes the game and characters.

But despite your warnings, they'll still eat all the candy they can find, and they will still ask the Luigi cosplayer for some autograph.

🦊 Kitsune 🍬:

→Tatsumi:

Just a masquerade mask. Because firstly: He isn't planning on wearing any clothes the whole night, and secondly: Because he doesn't have the money to go all for it. If he could, he would probably dress as, I don't know, Tuxedo Mask? I mean, look at this man, he fits the role perfectly~

All jokes aside, Tatsumi feels a little too self-conscious to dress up as the things he wants to dress up as. Not because of his appearance, but more because of himself as a whole. He… Does have a little bit of self hatred hiding in there.

Even if he was invited time and time again to go to a party filled with monsters living a double life just like him, he would prefer to stay inside and watch some horror movies. If you don't mind, can you stay with him?

🩸Vampire 🍷:

→Abigail Barlow:

Halloween? Costumes? Do you think she is a clown? Just asking her out of curiosity would be enough to make her belittle you. Saying how such a thing was way beneath her, only commoners like you do such a childish thing. Unbelievable how little you think of her!

But, let's say, that for some coincidence the people of your village have decided to make a "ball" around the town's main fountain. Of course you would go, wouldn't you? A masked ball with only the common and humble folk of your village. Sounds really fun right?

But she can't have you finding some lowlife as a partner, that would be a disgrace to her and to you. Yet, she is pretty sure you wouldn't want to see her face around your folk, and you would probably question her hypocrisy.

Maybe you find a really interesting companion while you dance, maybe not...

🍰 CEO 📏:

→Ingrid Bright:

Even if people tell her to dress as Ariel or Merida (ha ha, redheads only dress as redheads), she would prefer something that could be practical, but she ended up choosing a demon anyway. I mean, she can totally rock any outfit, so why not?

Why not be a little devil? It should be fun. But it isn't really reassuring knowing how most of her co-workers see her as one already. Well, whatever, she'll wear whatever the hell she wants, and no one can stop her-

Oh look! What a coincidence, aren't you wearing a little angel costume? Oh, you two are opposites, how adorable.

What a strange coincidence, totally not the result of one month prior of planning and stressing over the possibility of her plan not working!

Really though, whatever her darling wears, she I'll wear the opposite of. It's supposed to be a cute coincidence but sometimes it can be so on the nose.

She hopes you don't mind her being near you all the time, flirting or towering over you. Come on darling, you can be the angel of this demon, can't you?

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

#yandere #sheep stuff #yandere oc #sheep's stuff #yandere bully #yandere twins #yandere teacher #yandere delinquent #yandere a.i #yandere a.i. #yandere ai #yandere vampire #yandere kitsune #yandere ceo #yandere headcanon #yandere oc x reader #yandere oc headcanons #yandere delinquent x reader #yandere teacher x reader #yandere ceo x reader #yandere a.i. x reader #yandere bully x reader #oh my god the tags never end #yandere kitsune x reader #yandere halloween #halloween headcanons #aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[coffeecomicsgalore]

She... Loves Me?

Ao3

Chapter 7 – Trust Barriers

“Adrien.” She whispered. Her voice sounding small.

Adrien could hear the sniffles as she tried to hold back her tears. His own were starting to well up too. The thought of hurting her to the point that this happened caused a wave of grief to hit him like a ton of bricks.

“Marinette, I’m so sorry.”

The line went quiet and Adrien believed she had hung up on him. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she did – he deserved it. He was surprised that when he pulled back the phone to see if it was true, she was still on the call.

He sighed. “Marinette? I- I understand if you don’t want to be my friend anymore.”

“Adrien. How could I ever lose you as a friend when you did something so selfless to help me?”

“Are you upset?”

“I won’t lie Adrien, but yes I am. You barely have enough free time as it is. The last thing I wanted you to do is sell your soul to her. I could have handled it a different way. It’s not like this is the first time she’s done something like this to me. I’ve dealt with her before and I’ll just do it again.”

“What do you mean she’s done this before?”

Marinette bit her lip. She realized her slip up and tried her best to move forward past it. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“Marinette?” His voice wavered into one full of uneasiness. “What did she do to you?”

When Marinette didn’t respond, Adrien decided to face time her instead. She finally answered the video call after a few rings, but when she answered, he could see that she didn’t want to look up at him. She had the phone in her hands, her arms most likely laid against her legs for stability, and her shoulders were slumped forward along with her head. Her eyes were focused towards the floor but from the angle she had placed him, Adrien could see the tear streaks that ran down her cheeks. The sight of her broken posture broke his heart further.

He whispered. “Marinette. What did she do to you?”  

Without moving her gaze, she spoke. Her voice shaky. “Um... She threatened me.”

She what? He felt sick to his stomach. “Marinette? What do you mean she threatened you?”  

She winced. “She cornered me in the bathroom. Told me if I didn’t listen to her, she would make me lose my friends, lose you.” She laughed bitterly. “Seems like she succeeded.”

“Marinette! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You told me to take the high road. I wanted to keep your trust so I ignored her as best I could. I guess it didn’t work because she still found a way to ruin me.”

Adrien’s stomach twisted with guilt. His words caused more damage than he ever imagined.  

The dam he tried so hard to hold back broke and the tears fell. “I don’t know how I can ever make this up to you. I never imagined that she would go this far. I just thought- I just thought that she just wanted to make friends. I thought she was just lying to make it seem like her life was amazing when it’s possibly so awful that lying seemed better. I should have never let it get this far.”

Marinette looked up and watched him as he broke into pieces. Her heart fell too, their minds not knowing where to go from there. The tension between them seemed to feel bleak, but Marinette couldn’t let it break their friendship. It seemed like they were both too important to each other to let that happen.

She breathed in a heavy breath and decided to break the silence. “Adrien. Let’s just try to move past this. You trying to take blame for all of this when in reality, we can both be to blame. But we shouldn’t. We were only trying to do what’s best, and the best was not the brightest idea.”

Adrien looked up, his eyes were red and full of unshed tears, but he watched her halt her own pain to remove the blame from him. This only showed him how strong of a person she really was. How amazing she truly is.

“What do you think we should do?” He said, somberly. He wiped his face with his hand, not caring how un-model-like he looked at that very moment.

Another bitter laugh escaped her lips. “Honestly? I don’t know. I just want to go up to her and prove every one of her lies wrong in front of everyone. But that would only cause me to look jealous or a terrible person - worse than what people are thinking of me - and then I would have to handle the repercussions of that. If you tried doing anything on your end, she could just use me against you. Or it could be even worse. She could ask your dad to do something on her behalf.”

He nodded but realized how she worded her thoughts. “No, Marinette. Anything that she does to you would be worse than anything that she could do towards me. Even if that means convincing my father that I’m useless or the sort. Unless she convinces him that I shouldn’t be in school, but then that means she wouldn’t able to use me like she has all day.”

“Wait, she’s using you? What do you mean she’s-”

Adrien waved off her worry. “The only thing that I could think of being worse than removing me from school would be if he forbade me to see you ever again. He’s already banned Nino from my house, but yet I still find time to hang out with him. But to not be able to see you? Then no. There’s nothing worse.”

Marinette turned pink. He figured it was from his words, but he tried to pretend he didn’t notice. He didn’t want to fluster her more. She still didn’t know he heard her confession.

She cleared her throat. “Fine. Then let’s try to stay clear of her. Maybe just keep the peace until we come up with something? But as long as we watch out for each other, I think we’ll be okay.”

“All I ask is that you tell me if she does anything towards you. I mean anything – she looks at you wrong, she mentions your name, she even breaths close to you – you tell me. Because the moment she does or even whispers a word to you, I’m done. I mean it. I’ll rip my contract in front of my father. I’ll refuse to work for him anymore. I’ll do anything I can but work with her.”

“Adrien. You- you don’t have to do that. I’m not worth it.”

“No, Marinette. You are worth it. I mean it. Please.” His eyes pleaded for her to understand how sincere he was being. When he saw that she understood, he continued. “If she does anything, anything at all, then I’m done. I’m not going to take her hurting my friends anymore. It won’t happen and I won’t let it. Never again.”

She pushed a stray tendril behind her ear. “Oh-okay. I’ll tell you. I promise. As long as you promise to do the same.”

He smiled. “I promise.”

She smiled back at his words. Finally, she real smile, one that he hadn’t seen in days. One thing he noticed was that he didn’t realize how much he missed her smile until it brightened up across his screen. Though as soon as it arrived, it was gone. Marinette turned to a muffled noise in the background and she turned back to him with a frown.

“Hey. I’m sorry, but I have to go. Maman wants me back in the bakery to help out with the afternoon rush. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Adrien smiled. “Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Adrien. And thank you.”

“Bye, Marinette.”

-----

The afternoon felt better than it had over the last two days. His guilt was mostly gone now that he and Marinette were on better terms now that they both knew where they stood on the whole Lila debacle.  

Yeah, they had an idea of what to do for right now, but he knew that it wasn’t enough. He wished there was something he could do to expose her lies, even if it was something small, maybe even to expose her for what happened with the exam answers. But, how could he without hurting them both?

When the bell rang, Nino started conversing about a new mix tape he started making during lunch. He mentioned how Alya liked it, but she wasn’t into the same type of beats and was hoping that Adrien could have a listen and give his take on it.

Adrien decided that he could try to play stupid and just continue walking with Nino, pretending that Lila wasn’t in the same room to “help” her with her things. So, he just continued to walk, not seeing her wave him down to help.

He was able to make it through the hallway and down to the courtyard before Nino had to part ways when Alya called out to him, and he happily obliged as he made his way to the locker room. But before he could get to his locker, he was caught in her path.

“Adrien!” The now highly annoying voice rang through the room. “You forgot to help me when the bell rang, silly”

Adrien facepalmed. “I am so sorry, Lila. I needed to get to my locker before our next class and I didn’t want to be rude to Nino and end his conversation mid-thought.”

“Oh, no worries Adrien. Sometimes forgetting things, especially when it’s not usually part of your normal routine, can happen quite often.”

Adrien came up with another idea. Hopefully this one wouldn’t blow up in his face. Seeing Alya and Nino walking into locker room behind her, he continued. “You’re right, Lila. Forgetting something isn’t quite normal for me, but maybe you can help me remember so I won’t do it again?”

“Sure Adrien, I would love to help you with this little problem. What is it that you need?”

He gave her a small smile, like he was thankful for her help, but really it was his Chat Noir smile, the one that meant he had a plan to spoil her fun.

“Well, this morning you told me that you have a lying disease and that sometimes you have a hard time keeping reality separated from what your mind tells you. It sounds like this is the same idea as forgetfulness because you have to try to make sense of what’s around you. How do you keep from forgetting?”

“Lila, you have a lying disease?” Alya turned to her, concerned for her friend.

The anger that shot through Lila’s eyes was terrifyingly quick. He caught it, just barely, but he knew that she had been caught in her lie and that there was no way out.

Lila turned to Alya and noticed that Nino was also there. A few passing students could also be seen behind them. They seemed to be hovering without looking like they were eavesdropping.  

“Uh, yeah.” She said, nervously. “I don’t tell very many people about it because I’m afraid people won’t like me anymore, especially if they think that all the words that come out of my mouth are lies.”  

She looked down to her feet, yet she continued her words with a sad tone. “I only tell my closest confidants. It usually happens when I get really upset about something or in the rare times I become angry, but sometimes my mind plays tricks on me and I think the tricks are a reality.”

“You’re the reason why Marinette was expelled? You lied about those things because you were upset?”

“Dude, not cool.” Nino shook his head. “Marinette didn’t deserve that.”

Adrien could hear the fear in her voice. He tried to stifle the smile, so he bit his lip to keep himself from smirking instead.  

“Please don’t be mad at me, Alya. It was an accident and I fixed it all up. I came in this morning and spoke to Mr. Damocles. Marinette has been reinstated and she’ll be back first thing tomorrow!”

Alya and Nino looked at each other. “No worries, Lila. At least you fixed it. Marinette didn’t deserve that, though. Next time when you’re upset, just let me know something’s up and I’ll make sure you are aware of what’s going on.”

“Thank you so much for not judging me.”

“I got you girl. I’ll talk to you later. I guess I should grab Marinette’s homework so she doesn’t get behind.”

“Oh, perfect! She’ll be so happy. Bye you too.” She said with a wave.

As soon as she was alone again, Lila turned to Adrien. “You will pay for this.” She seethed.

“Be careful, Lila. Friends don’t get angry with friends. And plus, you don’t want to alter your reality with your anger. Can’t have you lie to hurt anyone else now, can we?”

Lila growled and turned on her heel to head straight out the locker room doors. Plagg floated out of Adrien’s overshirt and watched the girl yell past the doors.

“Well, I guess the devil won’t be dragging you through the mud anymore.”

“Nope,” Adrien said with a devious smile, “and now that Alya and Nino knows what she’s capable of, and possibly a few others, it won’t be long before people question what she says.”

Plagg smirked. “Maybe a little chaos wasn’t such a bad thing after all.”

Adrien pulled out Marinette’s lucky charm from his pocket and rubbed the beads with his thumb. “Especially when I have my lucky charm with me, it’s not.”

#she loves me #adrien x marinette #lila salt #trust #ml fanfiction #miraculous ladybug fanfic

[sairenharia]

Sentimonster Theory

My own thoughts on this theory brought up by the episode Ladybug. Spoilers ahead.

1. Validity Of The Idea.

First off, Ladybug introduces this idea of a sentient Sentimonster. Not something brought up before, albeit we’ve only seen a few Sentimonsters so far. We know very little about the Peacock Miraculous ourselves, but just what we’ve been shown and told. Such as we know it’s broken, though not necessarily how.

But Ladybug said her Sentimonster was her own being. Since the series is from her perspective and the Sentimonster agreed to act with her, we can take this as a truth to a certain extent. Which is honestly all sorts of messed up. In particular because we are introduced to this concept only a minute or two before this sentient girl is then erased from existence.

If this was a generally dark show with dark concepts in the vein of Rick and Morty, then maybe this could be a one off. But it’s NOT. This is a generally light hearted show that glossed over a girl just got grant freedom and then died and barely played with that idea. Really Ladybug should have been a two parter and that Amok should have been a hot potato so we could explore Sentibug’s mental state and ability to choose.

But wasted potential aside, a light hearted show does NOT bring up something that grim dark and NOT have a payoff. Which means one of two things.

There will be a sentient Amok arriving and they will be a thing for a while, possibly Felix, possibly someone else, and there will be some kind of witch hunt or stab in the heart.

Or there is already a Sentimonster present within the show and the pay off will be finding that out. No one makes a Chekov’s gun like that and not use it.

2. The Candidates.

Who could be a Sentimonster? Obviously only those close to the Agrestes. The Agrestes themselves, Nathalie, Gorilla being the obvious ones.

I’m disinclined to believe it’s Emilie because they say she disappeared. Not ‘gone’ which is what’s usually said when shows don’t want to say ‘dead,’ but disappear. Gone implies they know what happened. Disappear means they don’t. So I really think it’s her body in the basement. And the reason she’s in a coma is because she’s  the one who made the Sentimonster.

Gorilla is the next one I find hard to believe if only because the Agreste’s are rich enough to just buy a man like that. He’s dedicated to his job, he’s a beast of a man, but he hasn’t done anything to warrant his worth in being put into a magic coma when money would do. And while a likeable guy on his own, we haven’t had enough focus on him to warrant the emotional payoff a sentient Sentimonster warrants. And personally, it puts a bad taste in my mouth making the mute person the secret inhuman being.

Gabriel certainly has the crazed focus that would be assumed of a Sentimonster. They are made with a purpose in mind, and if something unfortunate happened to the real Gabriel, then it makes sense Emilie would make him even at the cost of herself. But Gabriel would also be made by Emilie, and if she’s even half the saint Adrien paints her as, then it seems far more likely Emilie would be focused on him being back for her AND Adrien. Even if he struggled with the emotional, I doubt something like Riposte or Gorizilla would have happened with a Sentimonster Gabriel. Plus that would just be needlessly painful for Adrien because not only does he learn the man he thought was his father was the villain he’s been fighting for months, his dad is also probably dead. It’s like kicking a dog when he’s down.

Nathalie seems pretty likely if Emilie knew something was going to happen to her. Her job is to take care of Gabriel and Adrien and Nathalie does genuinely show care for both. She’s helped Adrien get what he wants, she will do anything Gabriel asks of her. For someone who seems to a not particularly passionate person, she loves two extremely socially inept people fiercely. If there was a guardian to be left behind by Emilie, Nathalie fits that criteria. The biggest question for this idea is the idea of an Amok being able to use the Peacock Miraculous itself. That seems like it shouldn’t work, but there’s nothing that says it can’t either. But even the Butterfly Miraculous has to be removed before it’s user can be Akumatized.

Then there’s Adrien. And oh boy, does a lot of things start lining up when looked at it like this.

3. The Narrative.

The thing about stories is things don’t have to be strictly in universe to reveal a truth of the story. That’s the fun of being an audience. We know Gabriel is Papillon because we’re the audience, so we see things the people in the story can’t. And the thing about Miraculous Ladybug as a narrative is there’s supposed to be a happy ending.

This is a show meant for kids. And while kids can handle dark things, Miraculous Ladybug is again, not that kind of show. The longer things go on, the less chance it seems like Adrien can have a happy ending, especially with the way they handle things between him and his father.

Adrien is getting closer to his father, but Gabriel is just diving further and further into his villainy. He keeps hurting people, he’s caused Adrien in particular some horrifying things from the times he’s died, to his three months as Aspik, to having him attack the love of his life. That sort of thing wears on a person and from Adrien actions in Gamer 2.0 and Partycrasher, both of which are after Viperion, Chat is certainly suffering from those three months. Finding out Gabriel did that to him is going to hit and it’s going to hit hard.

In particular for a point everyone has been talking about since we figured out it was Gabriel: he’s terrorized Paris to save his wife, while he treated his son like dirt. Gabriel is a man who seems intent to do anything and everything he can for love, much like Adrien does, but he also treats Adrien terribly. Their home situation is toxic at best, and abusive at worst.

Finding out the truth is going to break Adrien. More than that, with all Gabriel has done, and has treated his son, its hard to see how any end of this could allow enough room for Adrien to forgive Gabriel enough to be happy himself.

Unless, of course, the circumstances aren’t what they seem.

4. The Evidence.

Most evidence comes from what we, the audience, see, as well as some presumed things of Sentimonsters.

A. Cataclysm.

In Miraculer, Adrien gets hit with Cataclysm. Much to everyone’s surprised, he doesn’t turn to dust from something that’s turned harder things then flesh and blood to dust. We’ve seen it destroy indestructible items like the Bee Miraculous. We know Plagg killed the dinosaurs.

The first assumption is Adrien survived because he’s the Black Cat User, so he’s got some resistance to his own attack, or perhaps it’s because Miraculer was using the ability and thus it was a weaker version of it.

But here’s the thing. There’s that narrative thing again. Adrien got hurt. He got hurt real bad. We rarely see these kids hurt thanks to their supersuits, and here Adrien is, getting hit with his own death touch. This is something that, one it’s own, should have been an episode. This could have been great character development, they could have talked about the dangers of their job, or show a lot of Ladynoir, or how stubbornly stupid Chat is to fight like that.

But this wasn’t an episode about it. This was an episode about Chloe being Queen Bee, and meeting Mayura, and a five superhero team up, and a power stealer. All those things are episode worthy, so having Chat injured is odd. Especially since it wasn’t necessary where it was.

Miraculer had already established her threat levels, Ladybug had left to give the other Miraculous. She only finds out Chat is hurt when she’s handing off the Bee to him. If it was a matter of getting Chat to disengage, there’s many ways where Miraculer could have tossed him away as many Akuma have done. There is no reason to go that extreme. He certainly doesn’t need to be hurt for Mayura to have still grabbed the Bee like that, and struggling against two opponents is reasonable. There is no real narrative reason for him to be that hurt. The only point it MIGHT make sense is it meant Chloe really did have to go after Mayura herself.

But then it’d have made more sense to have him hurt on the rooftop. It would make the fight seem more high stakes because we don’t know how long it’d take, it makes everyone afraid, it’s dramatic! So why have him suffer half an episode like that?

Because the episode was overly full. It was to distract from what happened. There would be questions of why Chat is lasting this long, is this how it always is with people, or just him? Instead there’s the distraction of the new villainess, Ladybug needs to get the MIraculous, she needs to tell Chloe she can’t be Queen Bee. She has no time to wonder about Catacalysm, and Adrien doesn’t like dwelling on the unpleasant.

But we the audience see it. Adrien can take a Catacalysm and he can last a long time under the effects. And only one other thing has.

Reflekdoll, the Sentimonster Lady Noire used the power on. A thing made of pure magic. It was messed up, but it still functioned. It freaked out because it had no controller, but what if it could control itself? It may have done better, instead been dealing with it’s slowly breaking down body instead of wildly attacking everything.

Much like Adrien.

B. Adrien And Taking Charge.

Here’s the thing about Adrien taking charge: He’s terrible at it. We see it in Mister Bug, we see it in Viperion, we it in in Evillustrator. Adrien does not do well in that position. He gets too easily flustered and gets stuck in a tunnel vision or too emotional.

He’s great at second in charge! When he knows generally what he’s supposed to be doing, he’s great. He knows to protect, to teach, to comfort. He’s shown to be clever, a point actually made in Reflekta when he helps despite not having powers. Which makes it stand out even more when he struggles to do so in Reflekdoll. The difference being he’s no longer support, he’s the one whose supposed to be ‘in charge.’

He struggles as Mister Bug.

He uses Second Chance for Three Months because he can’t calm down, step back, and calmly watch things go down so he can gather information.

And all the way back in Season One, he has Marinette take away the stylus because he can focus on protecting her, but he couldn’t think of a good way to get the pen away, and he misses an obvious way out of the box.

We know Adrien is smart. We know he’s clever enough to keep up with Ladybug’s plans when she needs him to do something. But the moment he’s in charge, it’s like something in his brain just shorts out.

C. Adrien And Memories.

So something that has bugged me for ages is the fact he was not allowed out of the house until he got to go to school. He’s been locked up his whole life. Which made sense when I thought his mother disappeared years ago and his father became overprotective as a result. Then we learn his mother hasn’t even been gone a year by the time Christmas rolls around.

That changed a lot in regards to Emilie.

In Jackady, Chat’s outburst reminded Gabriel of Emilie. Which implies she was a woman who was at least somewhat of a spitfire. Someone Adrien saw as kind and who wanted him to be good. The person Adrien thinks about right before he almost destroyed the Christmas Tree and he stopped. Kind and willing to fight.

And still agreed to isolate Adrien.

And before she disappeared, Gabriel was supposedly less severe as he is now. Now this could be evidence that Gabriel is the Sentimonster, but with both Gabriel being at least a little more caring and a woman Adrien sees so highly, it’s weird they both agreed to raise him in basic isolation.

Not that I’m saying Emilie is anywhere near Gabriel’s level in canon, but Adrien is definitely looking at things with rose colored glasses. It’s not okay to raise a kid isolated from their peers like that. Especially a ray of sunshine like Adrien whose desperate for friends.

But at the Agreste parents very best, they were overprotective as hell.

We know Adrien is starting to realize his father is being unfair and overly harsh, we’ve seen him run away because of it, and he’s terrified of being locked up. He still sees Emilie as this saintly way though.

It may be because she made him. Of course he’d see her this way because she wouldn’t think there was anything wrong in wanting to protect him or she wouldn’t have gone to that extreme.

D. Adrien’s Demeanor.

Adrien is obedient. He’s a good boy who listens, and does as he’s told. Again, Adrien does not like to take charge. He rarely starts confrontation for his own sake, but he’s willing to step in for others. More so as Chat than Adrien, and Adrien is certainly more sneaky and subdue about it.

A Sentimonster is a being made to obey someone else. It’s not a giant leap to assume a sentient would still be highly inclined to obey, and more likely to stand up for others than themselves.

Then there’s Adrien’s more obsessive nature. Because let’s be fair. He’s obsessed with Ladybug. Most of the time it’s charming flirts of the safe nature, but he’s had times he’s let it distract him from the job, or made him sulk and pout. He can usually snap out of it to focus on the job, but it’s weird how he can go from one day handling his rejection with grace to the next handling it absolutely terribly. Like maybe he wants to accept it, but it’s hard to do so for a being whose usually focused on one person.

After all, Sentimonsters are protectors. Getting a little obsessed with who they’re made for makes sense.

E. Adrien’s rebellion.

It’s an interesting to note how Adrien rebels. He does things his father wouldn’t approve of, but usually goes the route of ‘what he doesn’t know won’t hurt me.’ If Adrien is told he can’t, he’ll go ‘but Chat wasn’t told he can’t.’ It’s rare we see Adrien disobey an actual direct order from Gabriel.

The only time that comes to mind as direct disobedience instead of just never asked or a technical loop hole was when he ran to school. You know. Right after he got Plagg and experienced chaos energy for the first time.

And yet, for the things Adrien deems truly important, he does try to bargain with his father. Like seeing his mother’s movie, or going to Marinette’s party, because these are important things to Adrien, and he wants his father to approve.

Oddly, when Adrien actually pleads and breaks the rules and shows how important a thing is to him, his father seems inclined to give it to him. Which I’ll get more into later.

F. Plagg, The Peacock Miraculous Was Right There, How Did You Miss It????

Listen, Plagg is a little gremlin who cares a lot more for people than he likes to show and it still seems weird he wouldn’t recognize a piece of jewelry he’s been in contact with for centuries when he could recognize the BOOK.

But that’s the thing, Plagg is a little gremlin who cares a lot. Who cares a lot about Adrien. Who, you know, he regularly fuses with and gives superpowers. There’s a good chance if Adrien is a Sentimonster, Plagg knows, and now he’s like ‘SHIT’ about the whole thing.

It’s likely Fu getting the Peacock Miraculous would spell the end of Adrien, so Plagg is hoping for an Alternate Solution to come up before he outs where the Peacock Miraculous is. He’s like millions of years old, he can be patient for a few years until he sees something, and the humans can take a little chaos in their life. Adrien’s HIS.

G. SYMBOLIC FORESHADOWING.

Gosh, copycat sure was a sculptor ‘in love’ with someone he couldn’t reach.

There sure is a lot of False Adriens and False Chats in the season where Mayura is a player between the wax statue of Adrien, Chat, and Adrien playing Chat’s Voice in the Ladybug Movie, and Lila pretended to be Chat and Adrien for a while in Chameleon.

Chat keeps being turned into a meat puppet by Gabriel an awful lot.

Reflekdoll got Catacalsymed by another Chat.

Miraculer sure was about Chloe’s friend trying to become another person for her love, while her other friend was living through something we never thought should be livable by a human.

Chat did think the Sentibug was a real person and choose her first.

Ladybug said Sentibug was too perfect to be human. While Gabriel and Marinette both call Adrien perfect. And Lila, and I think Chloe. Basically a lot of people call the boy perfect.

Thomas has a tendency to make tweets about ‘in universe’ views on the characters, thus when he said Chloe was a terrible person who would never have a MIraculous. And he sure calls Adrien perfect a lot himself.

H. Allergies.

Allergies are the immune system’s hypersensitive reaction to something. Worried about something being a threat even if it isn’t. And Adrien is allergic to feathers. A thing he may be made out of.

Maybe Sentimonsters don’t play well with feathers, maybe another feather can mess with theirs, I don’t know, but I find it very interesting one of his parents had a feather based superpower and he’s allergic to them and it feels like that should mean SOMETHING.

I. The Promise.

Gabriel talks to Emilie about a promise. A wish. A way to reverse a mistake. He never says he’ll bring her back or fix her, which is the obvious thing. He’s cryptic which means whatever he WANTS, it’s not as simple as saving her. He says it the way he does because we the audience aren’t meant to know yet.

5. The Wild Mass Guessing.

Because the rest was super coherent.

Two other points: A pure theory on Party Crashers. Gabriel is shocked at joy in his house, which could just be him realizing how many people were there, or an even more disturbing thought that he never expects joy from Adrien. OR it could be Gabriel can’t sense Adrien at all because he’s a Sentimonster, and neither Nathalie nor the Gorila are big on the joy spectrum;.

As for Chat Blanc, it could be Chat Blanc will be a seperate Sentimonster (and MORE foreshadowing????), or it’s because Plagg is also involved. Plagg is definitely a full entity, after all, and that may be enough to allow for an Akumatization.

BUT here is how I see things going down.

Adrien Agreste died, somehow or someway, probably preventable, and it was with his parents so it didn’t become news.

Emilie, unwilling to lose her son, decides to use the peacock. She may have sculpted something like Mayura did Ladybug and he’s got an Amok hidden around somewhere. Maybe Emilie used his body which is grim and also necromancy. It could be a lot of things.

But the Peacock is NOT the Miraculous of Creation. A Sentimonster is a temporary creation, a guardian, it’s not meant to be a longterm sentient being. Having a Sentimonster capable of some intelligent thought is understandable, because better guardian then, but it’s NOT meant to be a person.

Emilie pushes and this is what breaks the Peacock Miraculous. And this puts her into a coma because now she has to support Adrien’s existence with her own emotions and it’s too much of a burden for her to bear and remain conscious.

And Adrien the Sentimonster is born.

At first, he doesn’t have a lot in the way of emotions. This works out because now he’s supposed to be mourning his now disappeared mother and being blank is pretty understandable. He has the memories from his mother, maybe his father, he knows generally how he’s supposed to be, but he’s still figuring it out. Meanwhile he thinks it’s the depression because he doesn’t know he’s not real.

And Gabriel?

Gabriel lost his son, then his wife, and now he has This Thing in his home. Who thinks he’s his son and his wife almost lost her life for it and he has to. Deal with that. So he goes complete hardass because if he has to deal with it, then it would represent the Gabriel brand well. He models, he learns, he becomes the poster boy of a perfect son.

Adrien doesn’t understand why he’s being treated so coldly and he chalks it up to his father also being in pain at losing his mother. It makes sense.

Then Chloe demands to see Adrien and, well, telling Chloe no doesn’t work for long. And when Gabriel is ignoring Adrien, and Nathalie knows and is just being a professional, and the Gorilla is going about business as normal, Chloe just sees her depressed friend, and at some point there’s discussion of his wanting to go to school, to make friends, because Adrien is REAL. He’s a Sentimonster, but he’s REAL because that’s what Emilie wanted.

And real people crave love and affection eventually.

So Chloe gets him into school. And Adrien goes and passes his test with Fu. Because Adrien was always a kind and caring boy and a Sentimonster helps.

He’d forbidden.

And he meets Plagg and he’s magic and that feels right in the world.

And suddenly he’s not just Adrien. He’s Chat Noir. He has a purpose. He has people he can PROTECT and he is so eager to do so. He has powers he expects no hard limit to. He has a partner he has to work with.

He comes alive. There’s just been a pit of loss and need and yearning and suddenly he has that and more and moreover, he has a little bit of chaos on his side. Chaos that takes this order he’s been given.

And says no.

And Nathalie knows she has to tell Gabriel.

And he’s so, so very surprised. Because Adrien should not have been able to say no. And he thinks maybe, just maybe, Emilie did leave him a son after all.

So Gabriel let’s Adrien go to school.

Adrien’s birthday comes. Gabriel would always buy his son a gift. He can’t bear the thought of getting him a new fountain pen, a useful tool, a professional tool, because he’s still not sure he’s invested, so he puts the responsibility on Nathalie for the first time.

Jackady happens, Gabriel almost died, and all he could think about as he stepped away from the ledge was he almost left Adrien alone. And for the first time he hugs this boy who might be his son.

He destroys his office because it’s easy to pretend to be mad about this boy he might love and he hates he may make him lose his wife and perhaps his firstreal son. And yet the concern once he’s purified isn’t near the act he wishes it was.

Riposte becomes a test. Could he put the boy in danger. And he finds he hates himself more by the end of it then any other time.

Christmas, he decides to show a little care, maybe embrace this, and he’s terrified when he’s gone. Not enough to forget his wife and other child when an opportunity arises, but he finds himself wanting to make him happy when his friends show up.

Adrien starts asking for things. He pleads to hang out with his friends. He make arguments. He WANTS. He wants because he wants to be there for his friends, he makes a hand made gift because someone is important to him. These are not the actions of an obedient beast. Because that’s the thing, when Adrien begs, Gabriel gives in. And when Adrien wants to know more about Emilie, see her in other things, it shows someone whose view of her isn’t only her own self view.

He’s terrified when he thinks he might be Chat Noir. He has to be sure, he has to know NOW because he seems so very real and whether or not he is, he finds himself loving this Adrien and he doesn’t want him to be Chat Noir, and yet he does when he fall because the thought of him dying-

He even ponders giving up his wife for this boy. After he put him in danger. After he almost fell apart into glitter. He can’t bear to lose him too, he’s sure of it.

Adrien is growing. He’s learning to love others. He’s learning friendships. As Chat Noir, with chaos and purpose in his hands, he acts with abandon. He has love, he can protect, everything is clear.

But when Ladybug suffers and he’s unable to help, he just because more desperate and determined to save her next time. Even if it takes well over twenty thousand times and three months because that is his PURPOSE, so next time, he throws himself off the stage, and he won’t listen to Fu.

As Adrien, things are still confusing. Adrien wants to defend, but he also wants to be good for Gabriel, and making a scene is bad. Still, he sees Lila hurt people he loves, he cares about, so he decides to that being underhanded. If sincere earnestness doesn’t work like it does with Chloe, then he’ll make sure Lila knows if she won’t be his friend, then he’ll find a way to make her regret being his enemy. It’s not as direct as he likes, but he must be good for Gabriel to.

Gabriel is becoming more desperate by the day. He must save Emilie. He must save their son. And maybe this boy is their son? Maybe Adrien’s soul was there because they were so similar. He doesn’t know, all he knows is he needs the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous and once he has though, he can make everything RIGHT.

And there is the thing about happy endings.

As canon stands, Adrien is unlikely to get a happy ending. Because as the series progresses, he BONDS with his father. They seem to be getting closer, healing this rift that had been between them. If Adrien is to get out of this, he should be recognizing his unfair treatment, pulling away, getting farther to see how bad the situation is. Not getting closer. The closer he gets to Gabriel, the more it’ll hurt because how does he make peace with that? This man terrorized the city of Paris for his wife, while he barely gave his son the time of day.

And that’s if Gabriel doesn’t die using the Miraculous to save Emilie. Then Adrien will lose his father to get back his mother after his father didn’t even give him good memories to leave off of.

But the story changes if Adrien is a Sentimonster.

Because Adrien’s existence is draining Emilie. She can’t wake up while he exists. And Gabriel is a man who loves so fiercely and doesn’t want to love this boy, but DOES because how can he not? So like his son, so like his mother. So it becomes even more important to win, so Adrien will never know what his existence has cost Emilie, to make sure Adrien’s existence is never threatened by the loss of the Peacock.

Everything will hurt, but it’s not a man who choose a nearly lost wife while completely forsaking his son.

It’s a man whose nearly lost both and trying to save both.

And maybe, just maybe, the cost of stabilizing Adrien’s existence will be a cost he can bear instead of asking someone else to die.

#ml spoilers #sentimonster theory #adrien agreste #gabriel agreste #nathalie sancoeur #the gorilla #emilie agreste #miraculous ladybug

[tsuki-chibi]

The Cat Tale (Marichat May) Day 19: Tuxedo Chat

Or read it on AO3: The Cat Tale 

-------

Plagg is laughing at him again.

“It’s not funny!” Adrien whines, sinking down onto his bed.

“Correction, it is absolutely hilarious,” says Plagg.

“How was I supposed to know that you thought Marinette should be Ladybug?” Adrien says indignantly, sinking down onto his bed. The sun is just cresting the horizon; he spent all night in Chloé’s room, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Talking to another miraculous user, even a temporary holder, was refreshing.

“Ah, kid, you’re truly a lost cause,” Plagg says, wiping a tear of laughter from his eye.

Adrien pouts at his kwami, which just makes Plagg snicker again.

“You could’ve been more obvious,” Adrien mutters at last.

Plagg just looks at him and says, “I have given you the biggest clue of your life and when you put two and two together, I demand a dozen wheels of Camembert as compensation.”

“That would cost a fortune!” Adrien says, indignant.

“And if you don’t give me at least a dozen wheels, then for your next battle you’re going to show up as Tuxedo Chat from that anime you love so much so that Ladybug can make fun of you until she cries,” Plagg continues. “Or maybe in something worse yet, like that terrible banana suit you love to wear.”

“That was one time!”

“Hmm, I bet I could recreate your Ladybug pajamas,” Plagg says thoughtfully, and Adrien throws his hands up in the air and storms into the bathroom.

He has a headache, probably from a combination of stress and a lack of sleep. He’s thankful that he doesn’t have to suffer through a third day of that photoshoot; sometimes the flashing lights in his face are a bit much and can easily cause a headache to turn into migraine. As it is, when he glances in the mirror, there’s a tell-tale pallor to his skin that not even make-up could hide.

Still, he feels better for having some sort of plan in place. If all goes well, he could see his lady tonight.

But then what will he do about Marinette?

The smile fades from his face as he contemplates this problem. Nothing has really changed, yet it sort of feels like everything has. He doesn’t think he can just carry on as normal – because if Marinette does truly like him, that means he’s been oblivious to her feelings and that’s not right.

That begs the question, though: does Marinette really like him, or is that something the akuma manufactured?

But why would it do that? Marinette’s feelings for him, or lack hereof, have no bearing on whether Ladybug exists.

So that means it’s probably not the akuma…

Which means Marinette might actually really, honestly, like him.

He was just too dumb to notice.

Adrien sighs and turns the faucet on, then bends down to splash some water on his face. Just thinking about it makes both his head and his heart ache. He loves Ladybug. Like, he really loves her. Loves her confidence, her stubbornness, her determination to see everything through to the end. Loves her kindness, her devotion to the city, her snarky sense of humor. Loves her.

But Marinette…

Marinette is sweet and kind and stubborn and courageous too. She has many similar qualities to Ladybug – there’s a reason Adrien has called her their “everyday Ladybug”. And the way she smiles when she talks about Adrien; it’s enough to make a boy weak at the knees.

“You can love more than one person, okay? Humans, honestly! You’re not betraying Ladybug by liking Marinette, you know. You’re not even dating Ladybug. And you can tell yourself that Marinette is just your friend all you want, but the fact that you’re happily dating her in a world where there is no Ladybug speaks volumes.”

Once again, Plagg’s words flash through his mind. And he’s right, isn’t he? With no Ladybug, Adrien sees the other people around him. He sees Marinette.

Ladybug has been gentle but firm when it comes to Chat Noir’s advances. He’s always promised to devote himself to her, but, if he’s being honest, he thinks Ladybug would be happy if he told her he had found someone else. She would be happy for him, happy that their partnership is no longer weighed down, and happy that she doesn’t have to worry about breaking his heart.

So maybe…

Ugh, he hates it when Plagg is right.

#miraculous ladybug #adrien agreste #plagg #plagg is a little shit #confused adrien #all will become clear soon #the cat tale #marichatmay2020

[gotmilk5101520]

Miraculous Ladybug Rewatch Episode 67 Feast

Let the feast begin!

“Super Adrien…” “Isn’t Adrien Chat Noir?” “Shh. She doesn’t know that”

“Here, a black knight”

“Or Black Cat Miraculous holder”

“Here, a lady”

“Or a Butterfly superhero”

“Now this, Hercules”

“Or Lion Miraculous holder” Alya is smart. And she still can’t figure out Marinette is Ladybug.

“Why not a Bunny Miraculous while you're at it? Oh wait”

Man i wish i could see little details like this.

“According to my old man, the statue is almost two hundred years old!” “From what I found there hasn't been any Miraculous-wearing superheroes for the last two hundred years!” But in Backwarder Marianne knew of the Miraculous and how they work. So that would mean the remaining Miraculous, that Master Fu had, were used in secret.

“Alya is an excellent journalist. Sooner or later, she would have unveiled this secret kept under wraps for centuries” Can’t wait till it’s 100 years in the future and someone puts together the pieces that Marinette and Adrien were Ladybug and Chat Noir.

“Remember when I told you I made a terrible mistake? For you to understand, I must tell you the entire story”

“I was younger than you when I was chosen to be a guardian”

“My parents told me that it was a great honor. That I couldn't turn it down. So they took me to the temple” Okay, 2 things. First what does someone have to do to get picked to become a guardian? Do you have to sense something about them? And second Fu’s parents said this is a great honor that couldn’t be turn down. So people knew the Guardians existed back then? Was there like a village around the temple and the Guardians would go down there looking for successors?

“I wasn't very happy there. I would have preferred to live with my parents and be with other children my age. I didn't want to be a guardian of anything”

“One of the test to become a guardian required me to watch over a Miracle Box. For a full twenty-four hours without any food“ Noticed he said a Miracle Box.

“All I had for support was my apprentice's staff. Soon I was hungry. With each passing hour I became hungrier”

“And it was all because of the Miraculous. Because I had to watch over them. I couldn't take it any longer”

“So I took the Peacock Miraculous and used its power”

“All I wanted was a nice little companion I could sent to the kitchen to fetch me some rice balls. But the Miraculous must never be used for the wrong reasons” All in all this series keeps reminding us the Miraculous can’t be use for selfish reasons or something bad happens.

“The anger I was feeling mingled with my intense hunger. And I created a sentimonster that was very different from the one I had envisioned”

“A ravenous sentimonster out to devour everything, but specifically the Miraculous, since they were the bane of my life at that very moment”

“In my panic I lost my staff. The very object that would have enabled me to control it. I was just a young boy. I was so afraid I didn't even think of destroying it by simply using the Peacock Miraculous”

“I tried to erase all traces of the foolish thing that I had done. A monk told me to run away with the grimoire he managed to save, and the Miraculous Box. The very last Miraculous Box”

“That's when I realized my sentimonster had devoured all the other Miraculous Boxes that were kept in the temple” Wait i wonder if the people in the village i mentioned before noticed and went to check.

“And when the monks tried to stop it—the temple, the Order of the Guardians, everything… it was destroyed” Hold up he said the monks tried to to stop Feast. Did they use some of the Miraculous? Or were they skilled fighters without them?

“I tried to run away from the sentimonster”

“But by doing so, I lost the grimoire and both the Butterfly and the Peacock Miraculous”

“I thought the sentimonster had disappeared forever” Wait so the lava didn’t burn the sentimonster or the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculous?

“Nathalie sometimes gets dizzy spells. But it's nothing serious”

“Why the long face?”

“My mom used to have dizzy spells… just like Nathalie. My father said those weren't serious either” *Cries in French*

“I will help you. It comes from the region where we found our Miraculous” “Oh the place where your wife used the Peacock Miraculous, and that’s how we got ourselves in this mess”

How about a duet?

*Cries in French again*

Mayura has made it into Area 51

“Oh, but don't you worry, I'll give them back to you as soon as I'm done with them. I'll even give you the Peacock and mine as a bonus” Why would Gabriel want to get rid of the Miraculous after it’s over? Then all the Miraculous would be gone and no one would use them.

“Really? You just made it bigger?”

“What sort of fucking magic is this?”

Marinette has trained to face her biggest enemy. The Fence.

“Chat Noir? Is that you? Why a Banana? Where did you get it?”

“Well it was just laying around”

“Master, look! Ladybug and Chat Noir, despite their ridiculous costumes, okay where did they get those ridiculous costumes?”

“Hey, have a taste of this! Some exploding banana split from Bananoir!”

“Much tastier than any Miraculous!” Are you sure about that?”

Best side of the love square. Bikerbug x Bananoir.

“Hey! Leave them alone! I'm the one you have been wanting the past one hundred and seventy-two years!”

“The guardian of the Miraculous is this decrepit old man? Wait have i seen him somewhere before?”

“He’s that old man!”

“I am not scared of you anymore!”

“Okay, maybe i still am”

“There are only two places where your staff could be. Where the temple was, or…” If it was still at the temple then they would’ve been fucked.

“Hurry, my lady, this thing already swallowed my stick whole!” Yeah “Stick”

“Uh, you sure it's the right time, my lady?” The right time for what?

“Oh no, not the tongue…”

Yeah right.

“Man, look at all these things it ate. Wait are those humans?” “Pretty sure they’ll die once we defeat the sentimonster” “What if they don’t?” “Then we can show them memes”

“Don't be bemused, it's just the news! Extraordinary and inexplicable!”

“That pretty much sums up the surprising reappearance of this temple in the Tibetan mountains—”

“ —a hundred and seventy-two years after it was destroyed”

“Let's go to Clara Contard on location” Umm why were they watching? It makes sense to see Gabriel, Nathalie, and Alya. But Tomoe and Audrey? Why were they watching it? Are they planning to form some evil bad parents team?

“That's correct, Nadja. But what makes this phenomenon particularly unexplainable is that all the monks who used to live in the temple have also reappeared year 1844!” So who’s gonna show them memes?

“The monks have been freed and the temple has been restored. It’s going to be awkward for them seeing technology”

“I shall go and see them someday soon, and explain everything to them. And show them some fun cat memes”

“And the time has come for me to prepare you to become the new guardian”

“The guardian? But Master, you're the guardian! You have been for a hundred and seventy-two years! Let’s talk about this another time” “Marinette, it’s been 11 episodes since i told you. Stop delaying this”

“I was joking. Those strict traditions did no good when I was your age I mean it’s not like you’ll end up burning Paris to the ground” “Yeah... Hahahaha...”

“Now that Hawkmoth knows who I am it's too dangerous for me to live here” “Is the mustache really necessary”

“I'm not going anywhere until Hawkmoth is defeated. I'll never leave you” *Cries in Miracle Queen*

Now that was a feast to remember.

I want to play video games. No I must finish this!

#miraculous ladybug #milk rewatches miraculous ladybug

[waystobuild-blog]

Who REALLY Deserves a Miraculous

First off, please understand that these are my personal opinions and all. I’d love to have conversations about whether you agree or not. So these days there’s a lot of hate on Miraculous and honestly, that’s fair. This was a show that started out with so much potential, but they kinda really dropped the ball on it. I’ve got a lot of different opinions on the show and maybe I’ll talk about them at a later date, but for now… Let’s talk about how I think the Miraculouses should be handled because oh boy.

So… Miraculouses in the show are handled in the worst way. Everybody gets one. You sit next to Marinette in class, congratulations? You qualify to be a superhero. Awesome, right? So many people get these things to the point that new holders are arguably not even all that special anymore because it doesn’t really feel earned it’s just there.

First off, let’s talk about who has Miraculouses and whether or not I feel they should actually have one or not.

Marinette and Adrien are givens. Main characters and both have a lot to gain. Sure. Alya. She’s definitely earned it. Nino. Honestly, I stand by that he really shouldn’t have one as the current show stands. He’s definitely come his own as a hero, but he doesn’t really have much to gain when it comes to being a hero or having a Kwami. The only thing I can really think of is that maybe if they used Wayzz as way for him to learn to be a little more serious with his life and for Wayzz to mellow out a little. That’s really the only direction I can see it being valid, but otherwise, nah. Chloe is an amazing pick and I’ll get more into why later on. Luka barely has a character to begin with and now he gets to be a superhero too? Wonderful. Max really shouldn’t have one and I’ll get into why later on. Kagami is an amazing pick. Alix is great, but she’s another later. Kim is a pretty good pick and we’ll talk about why, later. Now a lot of the characters that are holders are because Marinette is the one giving out Miraculouses and I think the easiest way for the show to have avoided this is to have continued to have Fu do his job as Guardian and continue to pick who gets a Miraculous. Maybe he can ask Marinette and Adrien who they think would be neat but allow the ultimate decision to come down to him. This would also solve a little bit of the problem that Chat doesn’t get to know who anybody is but Marinette getting to know everybody.

But now comes my criteria of what should qualify a character to get a Kwami and why? Well, this can be summed up into four different categories and of course, I’ll be giving examples as to who I think does or does not fit some of them.

1. If their character arc seems to lead towards them getting a Miraculous and being a hero. Pretty plain and simple. If a character has really shown to kinda be inching their way towards the world of Miraculouses then yeah, they should be one. Alya is the best example of this and is honestly the most deserving character. Not only was she Marinette’s biggest supporter but she was also Ladybug’s. She was constantly throwing herself into the fray and had even helped out times where she could. Doesn’t help that she was Marinette’s first choice to be Ladybug in Origins. Alya earned it. Nino on the other hand is the opposite of this to me and I maintain that he should’ve stayed a civilian. He’s great with Adrien but has zero connection to Chat Noir and very few times has been involved with Akuma attacks outside of being one. He hasn’t really earned it as a hero, nor does his character or arc seem to be leading him towards one. I offered the idea for maybe the whole learning from Wayzz thing but I dunno. But hey, that leads me into my next one.

2. They can somehow benefit from getting a Miraculous or Kwami. Some characters show that they need a Miraculous or a Kwami for different reasons or another. This is more of the idea, if they can learn something or need a friend in their life or can become stronger because of being a hero and having a Kwami, then yeah give them one. Enter Chloe. Chloe is a terrible person, but as Queen Bee you thrust a lot of power that she doesn’t really know what to do with in front of her. Getting a Miraculous forces her to try and be a better person. Kagami on the other hand, is someone who can gain a lot from having a Kwami. We’ve seen how strict her mother is and understand that she doesn’t have many real friends because of this. She can’t relax or kick back because of that. But with a Kwami in her life, she has a sort of special friend that her mother wouldn’t be able to take away from her and I honestly think that’s great. It would also allow her to grow and change and maybe even begin to start to get some of her own real friends with the help of her Kwami. Category 2 can even be shown in the main characters of the show. Marinette becomes braver and far more confident as Ladybug and as such, this begins to bleed into her average life as Marinette and Tikki has been shown to be a great moral compass. Adrien on the other hand is allowed to have the freedom he desires as Chat Noir just like Kagami. Now as someone who doesn’t match this category, let’s talk about Max. Max getting a Miraculous is cool. But aside from that, I genuinely don’t think he needs one in his life. He’s got Markov for one and since the series has started he’s become more and more sure of himself on his own save for the occasional depressive moment. I think he’d honestly be better off as a sort of Oracle character if you wanted to get him involved, but otherwise he’s pretty good as is. I maintain that even though I love this character to death, he doesn’t need a Miraculous or a Kwami.

3. If they somehow have a tie to a Miraculous. If a character has come into contact with a Miraculous or if something is later revealed to be a Miraculous in disguise, I think it’s earned. The only one that fits here is Alix. But I thought it was clear that her watch was somehow special and the reveal that it was a Miraculous was great. I think she earned it. Plus, she also fits into the next category.

4. Admittedly, if they seem capable and it suits them. Pretty much, if a character just has the qualities that make it seem like they’d be a good superhero or at the very least a fun one. This is kinda the reason I’m okay with Kim. Kim is pretty warmhearted, a fun guy and all around good fun. A Miraculous suits him.

Ivan Ivan is an easy category 2. He’s got his anger issues, but he’s also really shy. Give him a Miraculous to help him work on both his confidence and maybe keeping his anger under control. Match him up with something that makes it where looking at things calmly that can make him learn a little more about himself and the world around him.

Marc Marc’s got a lot of shyness that can be worked out like Ivan. Give him a little more self confidence with a Miraculous. It’d be neat to see that translated for him.

Sabrina Sabrina is the one I think deserves it the most and like the others falls into category 2, but on an even greater scale. Being a superhero would give her some self reliance from an emotional standpoint. Skills that she could begin to apply to her real life that could get her away from Chloe or at the very least change their relationship, where they can actually become equals. But seeing Sabrina become stronger and stand on her own would be wonderful.

Nathaniel As for Nathaniel, he falls more in line with category 1. It’s true that he doesn’t have much of a character arc. But what he does have is constant interest in Ladybug and very clearly wants to be a hero of some kind. If they wanted to, they could build upon that and have it lead up to him becoming a hero. I think he’d make a great pick. Plus, a little bravery like the others putting him a bit in category 2. But that’s all I’ve got. Now of course, I don’t think that having a Miraculous should be a fix to all character development nor do I think that it should be the only way characters can develop. It’s just that I think when you have this focal point of your universe, it should not be thrown around like it’s nothing. Miraculouses in canon, just don’t feel special to me anymore and I think that more thought and consideration should be put into it over what’s cool and I think following this guideline would help.

But these are just my silly opinions at the end of the day and maybe I’m just overthinking a kid’s show. Haha.

#miraculous #miraculous ladybug #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #criticism #critique #i just want this show to be better

[marinetteplztakeabreak]

An analysis of Kagami’s character in season 3

Warnings: discussion of anxiety and not good parenting

I hated Oni Chan when it first came out, because it seemed like it was really butchering Kagami’s character, but I just rewatched it and... all of her actions seem really justified.   Looking at her thought process has lead me to a way deeper understanding of Kagami’s character

(under the cut because this got fairly long)

So obviously she acts way over the top while she’s akumatized, that’s how akumas work, but the parts where she’s acting of her own free will? Everything she did made perfect sense.

To review, just before being akumatized, Kagami is practicing fencing with her mother.   She gets a message on her phone, and her mother makes her wait until after she’s done practicing to open it.   Kagami looks really disappointed in herself for getting in trouble with her mom.   This is speculation, but that is her mom’s only spoken line in the entire episode, so there’s a chance that the only comment Kagami’s mother made during her entire practice was being upset at Kagami for her phone, and that would force Kagami to fixate on the message throughout practice.   She clearly wants her mother’s approval, and the message was getting in the way of it. Even if it wasn’t the only thing she said, it’s been shown that Kagami takes any criticism from her mother really hard.

Also, this episode comes before Ikari Gozen.   Kagami’s still has basically no friends (except maybe Adrien) and desperately wants to be accepted. There was a reason that she picked up her phone immediately and tried to look at the message; Kagami isn’t the type to just forget her mom’s rule.   So either getting messages on her phone is so rare that it’s something she never really had to deal with before, which would make the message something really special to her, or she just desperately wants friends enough that her eagerness to see the message won out over her strict discipline enough to make her forget the rules.

And then, after all the mental buildup, Kagami finished practicing and opens the message. So, keep in mind, on top of what I already said, that Kagami’s going to be physically exhausted because she just finished a workout, and probably also frustrated because her mother definitely didn’t give her the validation she wanted.   She’s going to be sort of on a knife’s edge anyways.   And, judging by her brief smile as she put her phone away while her mother told her off, the message was probably something that she was looking forward to as a way to ignore all the other pain.

Then comes the part that everyone criticizes. In the course of about 30 seconds, she 1) opens the message to see that it’s a selfie of Lila kissing Adrien on the cheek, 2) sort of growls as she throws her phone across the feild, 3) opens up a notebook, gently touches a photograph of her and Adrien at fencing practice that was carefully tucked between the pages, 4) pulls out the rose Adrien gave her which is now pressed, 5) we see a brief flashback Adrien handing her the rose in Frozer, and then 6) she picks up her sword, 7) we see a few tears run down her face, and then 8) she gets akumatized.   That all seems super sudden and needlessly dramatic at first viewing, but let’s break it down.

No matter what, it’s going to hurt to see the picture of Adrien who’s apparently casually hanging out with some other girl in his room.   Kagami “never hesitates” and I think it’s safe to assume that she’s already asked if she could visit him multiple times and been turned down because he’s “never allowed to have friends over” or something, so this is going to feel like a slap in the face. She doesn’t have enough time to think everything through, but just the brief suggestion that her only friend might have been lying to her to avoid her because he didn’t actually want to see her is an enormous blow to her fragile self-confidence.   Just by merit of having Adrien as her only friend, she’s going to hear a whole lot of “sorry I can’t interact with you ever my dad doesn’t want me to have friends” and by merit of being Kagami she’s got some huge doubts and trust issues, so I can almost guarantee that the fear that he was actually lying to her and just disliked her had probably been bubbling for a while and wouldn’t take much to set it off. Especially in during a post-fencing practice adrenaline high, throwing her phone was a pretty understandable reaction.

Then, there’s the photograph and the rose. So Kagami obviously cares deeply about Adrien if she’s carrying those around with her, but it makes sense.   He gave her the rose like it was something deeply special, he’d probaly be expecting her to keep it safe, and it makes sense that she’d want to preserve it forever.   And keeping photographs with friends is a pretty normal thing.  

Now, we don’t know the exact details of Kagami’s home life, but from experience interacting with my friend’s parents, her mom strikes me as the type of parent who’s obsessed with control and doesn’t believe that their children deserve privacy.   and 90% of the time, that kind of parenting leads to children who try to hide everything they can from their parents and are really good at sneaking away (like, maybe, lying to their mother about participating in a harmless game?   Knowing enough about their car’s security to hack it without a second thought?   Sneaking away from a fancy event the first chance they get?   Only having one number in their entire phone because their mom won’t let them talk to others?   Impulsively lying to their mom about interests?   I could go on forever but yeah Kagami’s a very familiar type of person that I see in a lot of my classmates and it hurts my heart.)

So back to the photograph and the rose being kept on Kagami’s person at all times: it makes total sense.   She doesn’t have any privacy anywhere else.   She’s going to be afraid to talk to her mother about any of her interests anyway for fear of being ridiculed, and even more terrified when that interest is friendship.   Look at Ikari Gozen.   Kagami brings up Adrien in front of her mom for the first time on screen, she says his first and last name like she’s trying to be really formal and distance herself emotionally from him.   Then, her mother immediately insults Adrien and you can physically see Kagami regret what she had said and try to change the conversation by just agreeing with her mother.  She knows she won’t ever change her mother’s mind and she does her own thing regardless of what her mother says, but that doesn’t make her mother’s disapproval not sting.   Of course, in a world where she has to hide any interest she has if she doesn’t want it to be attacked, she’s going to keep the photograph and the rose away from anyone else’s prying eyes.

And then, I’ll admit, at first I made fun of her impulsive reaction: where she saw a selfie of Adrien with another girl and then immediately started petting a photo of herself with him, but this time I thought about all of this from Kagami’s point of view and I had a huge realization.

I headcanon Kagami as having both anxiety and autism, and it’s pretty well supported by the show anyways, which is a conversation for another time.   But specifically, having both means that they can feed each other a lot.   If you’re having an anxiety attack because you think your friends might hate you, it’s a lot harder to break out of it if you also know that you’re terrible at reading social cues, and it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the fear that people are just subtly telling you they hate you and you’re missing their cues.   And that would relate to Kagami’s situation incredibly well: she doesn’t have anyone else to validate her, and Adrien’s nice and all but it’d be really easy, especially in the clutches of an anxiey spiral, to think that maybe his “excuses” are actually his way of tellling her that he doesn’t like her, and that her own lack of social nuance is keeping her from seeing it.  

This is obviously not a good place to be mentally, but as someone who has been there and who has a therapist, the best advice I’ve ever gotten to deal with it has been to step back and look only at concrete things, because my brain will take anything open for interpretation and turn it into an attack on myself.  

And this is exactly what Kagami does.   I’d bet that this has happened several times before, because Kagami had been overwhelmed by so much emotion that she had growled and thrown her phone; I think she was acting on instinct when she pulled the notebook out.   And it makes sense that this would be Kagami’s impulsive response: she was just flooded with an unmanageable wave of fear and doubt that Adrien had been lying to her, and then she turned to the concrete evidence she had that he did care about her.   Remember, this isn’t just about romantic fantasies, this is about the only friend she’s ever made and her own fear that she can’t even trust herself to read interactions; it’s going to be really overwhelming.   So she pulls out the photo of herself with Adrien.   It’s real, it’s proof that Adrien was there with her and acknowledges that she exists and smiles at her like that.   In the midst of a breakdown, that photograph would be a huge means of grounding herself in reality.   And then she pulls out the rose, even more solid evidence that he cares about her.   No matter what else, he did give her this rose, it’s real and it’s here.  

So I can completely see why she that was her immediate reaction: the message triggered a specific panic attack that she’s had multiple times before, she freaked out, and then she turned to calm herself down the best she could.   It may have all turned out fine and deescalated quickly.   Except, the rose is connected to a very specific memory: a very sad Adrien told Kagami that he was in love with someone who didn’t like him back when he gave it to her.

Take a second to think about this all from Kagami’s point of view: she’s ridiculously emotionally unsteady at the moment, she’s thinking about a time when Adrien was left brokenhearted by some girl who he’s still waiting on, and then she gets a photo of a girl being all flirty with Adrien.   She knows Lila Rossi specifically, I don’t know how much she knows about her lies, but she seems to know her enough to know that she’s a manipulative jerk.   So any implication at all that this could be the girl who’s continuing to break Adrien’s heart, and who he’s still loyally waiting on?   Of course Kagami’s going to go absolutely mental.   She cares about Adrien enough to want to protect him from anyone who’d toy with his emotions for their own benefit. 

I don’t know exactly why she picks up her sword, whether she was going to blow off some more steam practicing or what, but it was a time when Kagami had every right to act rashly.    Same thing goes with the fact that she started crying in that moment.  She’s so so overwhelmed.   And then of course Hawkmoth akumatizes her.

I’m almost done, but seriously, if you haven’t seen this episode in a while, please take a look at Kagami and Adrien’s interactions at the very end.   Kagami is so ridiculously happy when Adrien is nice to her, and in context of everything else, it’s almost sad.   But she very clearly does care about Adrien and wants to be able to trust him to make his own decisions.   

#oni chan #kagami tsurugi #ml kagami #miraculous ladybug #mlb

[quicksilversquared]

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

[flightfoot]

Divergent Points - Feast

AO3/FFN

Previous installment: Divergent Points - Weredad

Turning Points

Inspired partly by this conversation I had with @fearlessinger

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Plagg curled up against Adrien, purring. It’d taken a long time for Adrien to fall asleep.

He didn’t blame him. He’d be having nightmares himself for a long time after this.

Plagg had been separated from a lot of his cats. Most of the time, it was bittersweet. On the one hand, it’s hard to be around a person a lot who wasn’t COMPLETELY despicable and not grow to care about them, at least a little.

On the other hand…

Tikki got the “nice” wielders and the “nice” powers. Sugarcube got paired with idealistic, inventive users who would quickly become fast friends with her. At worst, they’d see her mostly as a tool.

But at least she wasn’t usually considered a THREAT.

Plagg’s wielders tended to fall into two categories; the cautious wielders and the unrestrained wielders.

The cautious wielders were usually wielders he was assigned to by some outside force. The Order of the Guardians, for example. He might get to pick among a few different candidates if the person in charge was extremely generous, but this was a rare privilege.

The most dangerous kwami were rarely allowed that kind of freedom.

 And he was considered the most dangerous of them all.

Those cautious wielders were chosen for their ability to temper both their destructive impulses and his own, keeping him on a tight leash. They were rarely outright malicious about it, and if he really, truly wanted to he could probably leave… well, most of the time.

But then he’d have to leave his friends behind. And if the person was mistreating him badly enough that he was at the end of his rope and WANTED to leave…

The monk who had created the Miraculous in the first place in order to allow Kwamis to physically manifest, had also built a safeguard into every Miraculous, just in case the spirits he was trying to pull into the physical plane turned out to be malicious.

Not a totally unreasonable precaution, but it screwed him and all the other kwamis over. They’d never figured out a way to undo the compulsion, and he suspected that most of his wielders hadn’t really wanted to, either.

If his wielder was terrible enough that he wanted to bolt? It was very rare he’d be able to.

He sympathized with poor Nooroo. He’d been in that position often enough.

In those cases, he was lucky if he just wanted to leave because he felt stifled or ignored or unwanted, and his wielder was just enough of a jackass that they wouldn’t let him go or listen to him.

The unrestrained wielders were often far worse.

If he ended up with one of them, it was usually due to something going horribly wrong. His ring falling out of the Miracle box and getting lost, for instance, like what happened to Duusu and Nooroo. Or more commonly, being stolen from one of his other wielders.

With the wielder being either random or an outright thief, he’d rarely had a good time with those wielders, at least not for long. Some of them could be okay at first, giving him more freedom than he’d normally have and not treating him like he was about to launch a cataclysm at any moment.

But they were often the worst ones, because unlike the cautious wielders, they often became corrupted, if they weren’t already. The power to destroy ANYTHING, very, very easily, was a heady power, especially in the wrong hands.

He was often glad to go back to a cautious wielder after his miraculous was inevitably removed from the offender. The cautious wielders wouldn’t make him kill anyone.

Over time he’d just… tried to stop caring. Make light of destroying the dinosaurs, of sinking Atlantis, of any mistake he’d ever made, and it wouldn’t hurt as much to have it thrown back in his face.

Then he was given to Adrien.

At first, he thought this would be just like the other cases where he was assigned; given to a cautious wielder who’d be nice enough, but was ultimately there to control him. Yeah this kid was a lot younger than his usual wielders – while some of the other kwami were assigned to kids for bonding purposes, the Order of the Guardians usually assigned him to adults, who wouldn’t be influenced or persuaded by him as much – and he hadn’t been raised as a monk or even really been vetted much, but Fu had chosen him. Considering how cautious and fearful Fu was of Plagg going out of control, he doubted that the monk would’ve chosen any sort of loose cannon or free spirit as his wielder.

He’d underestimated Fu’s desperation and lack of vetting.

When Fu’d said that he’d found the right wielder for him, he’d known that Fu wouldn’t have been able to look deeply into the wielder’s background or get to know them – they were operating on only a few hours of notice. It’d made him pretty nervous about the type of person he might get, honestly. He’d seen even people who appeared nice and kind slowly become corrupted and dangerous over time.

With only having a few hours to research? There was no telling whether the wielder would be decent even at the outset.

Turns out, Fu’s actual vetting process wasn’t even THAT extensive. Wayzz had told him later that Fu had just randomly tried to walk into the middle of a busy street to see whether anyone would help him, and decided that the first person to help should be Tikki’s wielder. For finding Chat Noir, he just randomly acted like he was super frail, dropping his cane and pretending he couldn’t get up, and waited to see who’d help him. Adrien did, so Fu decided that he’d be Plagg’s wielder.

Honestly he was lucky that Adrien was as famous as he was, otherwise Fu wouldn’t have been able to find out where he lived. At least with Marinette, he’d been able to see her leaving her house beforehand.

…Okay, maybe he was being a little harsh on Fu’s vetting. He genuinely had almost no time to work with, and his tests at least established whether that person cared about the APPEARANCE of being a kind, helpful person.

Plagg shuddered. It was a good thing Lila hadn’t been around at that point. She probably would’ve passed the tests. She at least knew it was a good idea to appear helpful and kind. Made it easier to manipulate people later.

But it hadn’t been Lila.

It had been Adrien.

Even the first time he met Adrien, he liked him.

The kid was bright-eyed and thrilled to see him. Still, just because he was thrilled right off the bat didn’t mean much. Plagg had wanted to make a good first impression – they’d probably be working together for awhile after all – but also test him a bit. Feel out where the boundaries were and how controlling Adrien would be. So he gave a little test. Flying around the room trying to eat everything sounded like a great way to test his patience and his new wielder’s problem-solving capabilities.

Also it was just plain fun. He’d never have been able to get away with this in the temple!

Adrien had gotten annoyed, but nothing worse than that. Had to compliment the kid’s acrobatic skills too. The leap off his climbing wall was impressive, to say the least.

He’d given Adrien the usual spiel about not telling anyone about him, keeping his identity secret, his powers, etc. Well, maybe wasn’t fast enough on explaining his powers. Kid jumped the gun a bit on that one.

After he’d told Adrien some basics about the Miraculous, he’d gone and spread toilet paper all over his room. To his surprise, Adrien didn’t seem to care much. Around that time he’d realized that while Fu may have thought that he’d given Plagg to a cautious wielder, that definitely wasn’t the case. A cautious wielder would’ve lectured him about making a mess, probably in that calm, authoritative voice they often had. Better than the yelling he’d gotten from some of his unrestrained wielders at least.

And then…

“But I'm stuck here! I'm not even allowed to go to school! What good is a superhero who's imprisoned in his own house!”

That was the first glimpse he’d gotten of Adrien’s frustrations.

The first glimpse of the similarities between the two of them.

Their imprisonment, their caution, were for different reasons. People feared Plagg and tried to, if not imprison him, control and restrict him at least. Adrien’s father (and Plagg used that term in a loose sense) at least claimed that he was imprisoning and controlling his son to try to keep him safe. Considering how he acted whenever Adrien did something that was perfectly safe, but that didn’t benefit Gabriel and ESPECIALLY when it threatened his control? He had his doubts. Plagg had had enough wielders justify enslaving him as “keeping everyone else safe from destruction” that he knew the type.

At least Adrien had the Dupain-Chengs now. He may not have been willing to run away to stay with them permanently – yet – but they were there for him. He had a safe place to go with adults who cared about him as a person rather than what he could do for them.

Sadly, he couldn’t say that about any other adults in Adrien’s life. Gorilla came closest, but even then the most he’d really been able to do was look the other way when Adrien needed a bit more freedom than he was technically allowed. He wasn’t really able to give him the support he needed.

Plagg winced a little. While he’d given Adrien some support even early on, he tried not to give too much. Get too attached. The kid was nice and a lot more fun than most of his other wielders, but… well, he’d been burned a lot.

But Adrien had a way of worming his way into even Plagg’s cheese-obsessed heart.

He’d get annoyed with Plagg, but never in a way that suggested he was a burden or unwanted.

He genuinely enjoyed spending time with Plagg, even if most of it was just Plagg sitting around eating cheese.

Most importantly, Adrien NEEDED him. Not just for his abilities – though for that too – but as a person.

Adrien was lonely. Even when he did get to hang out with his friends – which wasn’t as often as he liked, and was prone to changing at a moment’s notice – he still didn’t feel comfortable showing all of him. He had a lot of feelings he kept repressed, that he felt like he HAD to keep repressed, because that’s what he’d been taught to do. And if he stepped out of line where his father could see… well, it wouldn’t be the first time that Gabriel had threatened to pull him from school.

Plagg had been the first person who was always there for him. Who couldn’t be taken away. Who he could express all sides of himself around. Anger, frustration, adoration… everything. Even as Chat, he mostly just let out the part of him he didn’t feel safe showing normally. He still didn’t really show every side of his personality.

Plagg had always been the one who people felt like they needed to teach and lecture.

He’d never needed to be the one to teach and provide support instead.

It made him feel needed. Wanted. In a way he’d never been before.

And this kid…

He looked at Adrien’s sleeping face as he twitched, making small distressed noises.

Plagg snuggled up against him harder. “Don’t worry, kitten,” he whispered. “I won’t leave you. Not forever. I’ll always come back.”

Somewhere along the way, Adrien had turned from just a kid, to being HIS kitten.

He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when the change had occurred. It just kind of… was. But he knew when he first suspected it.

Adrien hated being left in the dark. Feeling like he wasn’t trusted. Wasn’t wanted.

But it wasn’t Plagg’s place to bring him to Fu without a very good reason. Not when Fu could’ve gone to Adrien at any time and chosen not to.

Plus – well, there was a more selfish reason.

He was afraid that Fu would interfere in the bond he had with his kitten. Teach him about how uncontrollable and dangerous destruction was, how out of control Plagg’s powers could get, and that he should keep him on a tight leash.

Even as Adrien’s frustration grew, Plagg still didn’t give in, though he was tempted. And not just by exotic stinky cheeses, though those WERE tempting.

Then Adrien reached the end of his rope. He took off his Miraculous and detransformed, believing that it genuinely didn’t matter whether he was around or not. That he wasn’t needed, that no one would notice or care if Chat just… didn’t show up.

That’s when Plagg realized just how much he cared about Adrien. And how much his kitten needed to hear that. That HE would care if Adrien wasn’t Chat Noir. If he didn’t see him again.

I  will!

Why? Because you won't have anyone to give you Camembert?

Oh, I'm sure there'll be another Chat Noir to give me cheese... but he won't be you. 

That’s what Adrien needed. People who genuinely trusted and respected him as a person, and not as a tool. Who valued his feelings and opinions.

As nervous as Plagg had been about how Fu’s interference could affect his bond with Adrien, he was glad he’d showed up right then. That Marinette had cared about her partner’s distress over the seeming lack of trust – of not even having enough information to know WHY he was being left in the dark – to push Fu into talking to Adrien directly. To showing Adrien that it wasn’t that Ladybug didn’t trust him or believe they were equals, but that it was just Fu’s commands, and it wasn’t her secret to tell.

Even if it meant that Adrien might put him on a tighter leash, if meeting with Fu helped Adrien… well, he’d survived being restricted before.

But that hadn’t happened. In either sense.

Sure, Fu had met with Adrien ONCE – but that was it. Only once. And only after being pressured first.

Plagg kept on waiting for Fu to contact Adrien again. He might not be able to hand out his address – with Marinette visiting regularly, there was too much chance of them bumping into each other – but he could still drop by and visit Adrien. Or even ask Ladybug to arrange a private meeting between him and Chat Noir, if he couldn’t get to Adrien without being spotted.

But he just… hadn’t.

Plagg had entertained the idea of asking him on one of the occasions he himself went back over there, but he doubted he’d get a satisfying answer. It hadn’t seemed worth having a confrontation about at the time.

Even at that point though, he still wasn’t quite ready to tell Adrien everything. He trusted Adrien, he really did, but… well, old habits die hard. He was terrified that this would all end, and Adrien would turn cold and controlling, like some of his other wielders.

Which was why for Nooroo’s birthday, he created a stand-in and didn’t tell Adrien that he was leaving. They were already going behind Fu’s back to do this. Going behind his wielder’s back just seemed normal. Natural.

When Tikki had told him that she’d just told her own wielder exactly what she was doing, he wasn’t surprised. Tikki rarely got the controlling ones. Telling the truth rarely had negative repercussions for her.

Then the akuma happened.

And Plagg hadn’t been there.

When Adrien had needed him most, he WASN’T THERE.

And Adrien didn’t even know what’d happened to him.

He’d flown back to Adrien as quickly as he could.

Finding him imprisoned in his room, alone, desperately pulling on bars he KNEW wouldn’t bend  - he’d known that Adrien feared being imprisoned. That he lived in a gilded cage, one that Gabriel would open the door of occasionally, but that Adrien always had to return to lest he lose that right.

And worse than being imprisoned? Being alone.

Without even knowing why the person he’d cared for, the person who’d cared for HIM, had vanished.

He’d felt pretty guilty after that, especially seeing Tikki and Marinette affirm how much they trusted each other.

Because honestly?

He trusted Adrien too.

He might have hang-ups about his previous wielders, but taking that out on Adrien was unfair. And that day, it had hurt him. Badly.

So when Adrien had told him that he knew what it was like to have his freedom restricted, that he didn’t need to sneak around to leave – that was when he’d decided.

His previous wielders were his previous wielders. They were NOT Adrien.

And it was high time he returned the trust that Adrien had placed in him.

Because Adrien placed a LOT of trust in him. He didn’t even fear his powers! Everyone else was always worried about Plagg going out of control and destroying everything, even his fellow kwamis.

Adrien had never doubted him.

On Heroes Day, he showed no fear or trepidation about Plagg causing a little destruction in the street to let Adrien escape from Gorizilla and transform. He KNEW he could do it. And when he did? When he managed to keep his powers in check himself, only causing as much destruction as was needed? Adrien had patted him on the head and called him his hero.

Now it was time to be Adrien’s hero again.

Carefully, he extricated himself from Adrien’s side. Now would be the WORST time to wake him. Seeing Plagg gone after what he’d just been through? Would be his worst nightmare.

But at least Adrien still had the ring this time. He’d know that Plagg hadn’t been stolen. And he trusted that Plagg would come back.

Still, best to be back before Adrien noticed he was gone.

He looked back at Adrien – his wielder, his best friend, his kitten – and flew off into the night.

Fu was sound asleep when he arrived.

Unsurprising. Feast being around wouldn’t have been conducive to sleep, even if Fu HADN’T pulled his little escapade during the middle of the night.

He was probably exhausted after the kind of day he’d had.

Unfortunately for Fu, Plagg, frankly, didn’t give a crap about that.

If he didn’t want to do this now? Tough luck.

“WAKE UP!”

Fu startled awake, flailing wildly.

“WHA-?”

Wayzz appeared at his side. “Plagg, what are you doing here? Master needs his sleep.”

Plagg growled. “Well, he should’ve THOUGHT of that before KIDNAPPING ME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!”

“I had to,” Fu mumbled groggily, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. “Feast would’ve eaten Adrien and Marinette otherwise.”

Plagg glared at Fu, then took a deep breath. “You were willing to put your own life in danger from Feast, but not theirs. You believed that taking their Miraculous was the only way to keep them safe. Fine. I can respect that.”

“What I CAN’T respect is everything you did surrounding that.”

Fu looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“You gave me and Tikki to Marinette and Adrien with almost no explanation, no training, and no support. And I was fine with that at first! Just sink or swim, either they’d manage or they wouldn’t.”

“But then I got to know them better. And I got to CARE about them. Fu, Marinette is drowning in her responsibilities. I don’t get to see as much of her as I do Adrien, but- well, she’s not subtle about it, and Chat’s one of the few people she can open up to about it. It’s gotten better recently since she can talk to Alya and Nino about it as well –“

Fu’s head shot up. “What! Alya and Nino know her identity?”

Oops. He didn’t mean to let that little fact slip.

“For how long?! Marinette knows the rule-“

Oh HELL no.

“THAT IS A STUPID-ASS RULE!” Plagg shouted. The shop shook slightly, his destructive energy leaking out – though thankfully not enough to actually cause permanent damage.

Still, he needed to reign himself in. Destroying Fu – or the rest of Paris – was not on his agenda.

He wanted to shake Fu and make him understand what he was doing wrong, not make him go the way of the dinosaurs.

Once everything stopped shaking, he took another deep breath and continued. “I understand the reason you don’t want anyone else to know their identities. If Hawkmoth akumatized or just had the right mind control akuma take control of that person, their identities could be jeopardized, putting them, as well as Tikki and I, in danger.”

“But you know what? NOT having anyone else know their identities is ALSO dangerous.”

“They’ve both been suffocating, Fu. Marinette in her responsibilities and the pressure to maintain her double life, and Adrien with not being able to really show all sides of himself, and of having very little stable support.”

Fu frowned. “Marinette is a bright young woman who has handled the Ladybug Miraculous admirably, and Adrien seems to have managed well enough before now.”

Plagg bit back some nasty curses. Best not to destroy the shop. Or Fu, he guessed. “Yes, they’ve MANAGED. Which is more of a testament to how resilient they are than anything you’ve done. But the point is, just because they’ve MANAGED doesn’t mean that they should be expected to! They’re only FOURTEEN. They need more support and help than you’ve given them – than you can provide. Alya and Nino give them that. They were able to take babysitting off Marinette’s shoulders, help them sneak out when they need to transform, and just generally have their backs!”

“Wait, so they know not only Marinette’s, but also Adrien’s-“

Plagg flew up to Fu’s face, an inch from his nose. “If you even THINK about taking me away from Adrien again, I will cataclysm you where you stand.”

“Plagg!” Wayzz shouted, dismayed. “How could you threaten-“

“How could I? HOW COULD I?!” Plagg screamed. Vases started to rattle.

Deep breaths, Plagg. Think of cheese. Lovely, delicious, stinky cheese.

After getting a handle on himself, he spoke, struggling to keep his voice level. “You have no idea what waking up to find me gone DID to Adrien. What that’s like for him.”

Fu frowned. “I know he’s your friend, but he survived before I gave you to him-“

Plagg growled, quivering with rage. “SURVI-“

He cut himself off as the shop started to shake again.

“PLAGG, GET CONTROL OF YOURSELF!” Wayzz yelled, positioning himself in front of Fu.

As much as Plagg hated to admit it, Wayzz was right. He needed to calm down.

Mmmm… Adrien with Camembert… Camembert bread straight from the Dupain-Cheng Bakery (seriously why couldn’t they just live there, human laws were stupid)… Marinette and Adrien kissin-

Nope. Nopenopenope. He’d seen enough of that. Those two were gross together, why would that even come up when thinking of calming things?

(He steadfastly ignored the warmth that filled his chest when he saw the two of them finally able to be together and happy. It was warmth from eating tons of cheese bread, that was all).

Ok. Back to yelling at Fu. He NEEDED to understand this.

“Do you know what his life was like before he met me?” Plagg hissed.

Fu blinked. “He’s grown up wealthy, so he’s never wanted for anything – except going to school. He models a lot, though he only started doing that in the past year, after-“

Fu’s eyes widened, realization dawning. “After his mother went missing…” he ended softly.

“Do you get it now? At least that small part of it?” Plagg asked.

“He probably had flashbacks to when his mother disappeared,” Fu murmured. “Thinking that he was losing someone else he cared about, so soon after losing a parent.”

“Yeah.” Plagg deflated slightly. “That hit him pretty hard, but he’s persevered and done REALLY well despite that. Especially considering – well, you know what you said regarding him ‘never wanting for anything’? That’s not true. At all. Him not getting to go to school? That’s the tip of the iceberg. Gabriel – that man does NOT deserve the title of ‘father’ – has kept him isolated from people for basically his whole life. Maybe his mother too, I’m not sure, I’ve been afraid to pry too much. She’s a sensitive topic, and even I know better than to stick my paw in that.”

“Anyway, Adrien’s only friend growing up was little miss cause-of-half-the-akumas-in-Paris CHLOE, and even THAT was mostly because Gabriel saw some value in having his kid be friends with the mayor’s daughter! And once Emilie went missing, he didn’t even allow Adrien to see HER! He was stuck all alone in his room with no one to talk to or support him right after losing his mother. And by ‘stuck’ I mean actually imprisoned, because yeah, Gabriel’s a DICK, and worse than that, he’s a RICH dick who can afford a security system that seals all entrances and exits in his house!

“Oh, and remember when I said Adrien was ‘alone’? Well I MEANT that. His father’s only left his house a handful of times since Emilie went missing, but does he spend any time with his son, who just lost his MOTHER? NO! He constantly makes Adrien cancel or just prevent him from making plans so they can eat together at least, but he only shows up maybe a fifth of the time! No apology, no nothing. Adrien has to drop everything to accede to his wishes, but he doesn’t even CARE enough to apologize on the few occasions when they DO see each other in person! He treats Adrien as an employee at best and an object at worst. He only holds value as long as he does EXACTLY what Gabriel says, and if he ‘fails’ him in any way – doesn’t do quite as well at a photoshoot, isn’t as perfect at piano-playing as Gabriel would like – he’s punished severely, often by taking away his ability to spend time with his friends, some of the only people who DO care about him as a person!”

“I care about Adrien!” Fu interjected, affronted.

“Do you?” Plagg growled. “You’ve only visited him ONCE, after Marinette asked you to. You’ve never asked me what his life was like or how he was feeling or doing, even though I’ve visited here a few times! So tell me, how have you showed that you care?!”

“Master was willing to let himself die to keep BOTH Adrien and Marinette safe,” Wayzz cut in. “Yes, Fu may have made some mistakes, but he DOES care.”

Plagg breathed out. “Ok, yeah. I’ll give him that. He was ready to sacrifice his life for them. But the way he did it – that didn’t exactly scream ‘I know and care about them as people’. He had you KIDNAP me ad Tikki, and he didn’t even give Adrien the luxury of knowing what was going on beyond a quick letter! The only reason he wasn’t completely lost on that was because Marinette texted him with details after talking to Fu, because she was TIRED of leaving her partner in the dark when he didn’t need to be.”

“Fu never gave me or Adrien the chance to protest or argue, present alternative plans or arguments. He never gave us the chance to decide. He just decided that that would be the best course of action, and that was that. No one else’s opinion mattered, because HE’D made a decision. If anyone protested? He shut them up.”

“Well…” Wayzz looked uncomfortable now.

“Oh.” Plagg’s voice lowered, his ears pinning back. Softly, he said, “He did it to you too, didn’t he? Shut you up when you started poking holes in his plan? When you said things that went against his decision?”

Wayzz squirmed, not looking Plagg in the eyes.

“..Yes,” Fu admitted, taking over from Wayzz. He walked over to the turtle kwami, cupping his hands, allowing him to rest in the bowl shape they formed. “I’m sorry, Wayzz. I should never have done that. I truly believed at the time that taking the Miraculous was the best move to protect them, but at the very least, I should never have tried to stop you from talking. To renounce you so I didn’t have to listen to your arguments.”

Wayzz just gave a small nod.

“You see the problem?” Plagg asked. “You care about other people’s lives – I’ll agree with that much – but you keep on forgetting that they’re people, and that they have the right to know information that affects them, to give their input, and to make their own decisions. Yes, Marinette and Adrien are young, but they’re the ones out on the field, not you. They have the right to know whatever they need to in order to make informed decisions – BOTH of them, not just Marinette. She normally takes the lead, and she’s damn good at it too, but don’t dump everything on her shoulders. Let her have support, let her lean on other people. And give other people the ability to provide that support. Yeah, you can’t tell both of them everything – there are some things even we kwami can’t be allowed to know, in case we’re compromised – but you can sure tell them more than you have. Like for instance, what happens when a Guardian renounces their Guardianship?

Fu flinched. “I don’t know how much longer I have before Hawkmoth catches up with me. I don’t want her to worry before then.”

Plagg’s tail lashed. “Oh sure, and you don’t think she might worry AT THE TIME?! I know she’s a superhero, but she’s still HUMAN! And she’s just a kid! I understand not wanting to worry her, but when you plan to dump the guardianship on her lap, she has a right to know what it comes with!”

“And that’s another thing – did you ever bother to really ASK her whether she was okay with being Guardian? Or did you just decide she would be?”

Fu looked at the ground, mumbling. “That’s how it’s always been done…”

“Yeah, and ‘how it’s always been done’ is STUPID,” Plagg said. “Look. Honestly? You’re a decent Guardian compared to some of the others I’ve had to put up with. But that’s not saying much, and Adrien and Marinette deserve better.”

As Fu opened his mouth, Plagg hastily added, “And by that I do NOT mean shove the Miracle Box onto Marinette and skip out of their lives! –well, let’s be honest, out of HER life, you’ve never done squat with Adrien.”

“The sad thing is? I’m not sure who has it worse – Marinette for being the one you shove everything onto, or Adrien for being left in the dark.”

Fu was quiet for a moment.

After a few tense moments, he spoke. “I knew I had failed as a Guardian – that I was never even really a Guardian in the first place – but I’d never realized I’d failed these young people so badly.”

Plagg nodded. “Yeah. You have. But that doesn’t mean you can just skip out because you did poorly. You made this mess. Now, you need to fix it as best you can.”

Fu nodded, determination shining in his eyes. “What do you recommend? Beyond what you’ve already said.”

“Well for one thing, actually try to get to KNOW Adrien. Talk to him, treat him as a person, not just a tool. Let Marinette and Adrien know that the secret identity rule is rescinded, reassure them that you won’t take their Miraculous, and that you’re ok with Alya and Nino knowing.”

Plagg hesitated a moment, but then plowed on. “And… this one really IS more of a suggestion, not an order. But. Maybe observe Alya and Nino and get to know them as well? I think they might also be good candidates for permanent Miraculous, and Nino might be a better Guardian candidate than Marinette. Not because she’s not perfectly capable – she’d make an awesome Guardian I’m sure – but because that’s really too much to dump on her, and to prevent hers and Chat’s relationship from becoming too imbalanced again. Divide the responsibility, so it’s not all resting on a single person’s shoulders – especially when they haven’t agreed to it, and don’t know what all it entails.”

Fu closed his eyes, contemplating. “If you think that’s best, then I’ll follow your suggestions. If there’s one thing this incident with Feast has taught me, it’s to listen to others seriously. And honestly – you’re right. About everything. And… I’m sorry.”

“Apologize to Marinette and Adrien, and try to fix this mess. THAT, will be a sufficient apology,” Plagg said.

Fu smiled. “I will.”

As Plagg flew towards the window, Fu called out, “Oh, and Plagg?”

Plagg stopped, turning around. “What?”

“Thank you.”

Plagg grinned. “Hey, I’ll give you a kick in the butt whenever you need it. Just – don’t need it again, alright?”

He flew off into the night, back towards his kitten.

It looked like things would change for the better.

#divergent points #ml fanfic #miraculous ladybug #feast #fix-it fic #Plagg #Master Fu #adrien agreste

[theunluckiestchat]

Remembrance 6

AO3 link Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 Summary: Marinette starts so remember some things.

Chapter 5

She watched Sabrina leave, reaching out and wanting to say something but not really knowing what. She also didn’t have time for this right now, she had a mission.

“Woah-ho!” suddenly and out of nowhere Chat Noir dropped down in front of her. “I thought I’d have to save you from this girl’s clawtches! Get it? Clawtches!” she was still stunned but wow, that was a terrible pun. “But I haven’t even introduced myself! I am… Chat Noir!” he knelt down and kissed her hand.

She quickly drew away her hand, just like always even though this situation was very different.

“Uh, yeah... I know! You kinda save the day all the time and stuff...I'm Marinette! So... What are you doing here?” she had to hand it to herself, she was very good at acting like a nervous fan.  

“I’m your knight for tonight’s ball, Princess” while he was talking Chat Noir started to flex. Always a show off. Of course, she just had to start making fun of him when he wasn’t watching, it was just too funny not to. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll watch over you!”

“That puts my mind at ease” back to acting like a fan.

He put his hand against the wall and leaned closer. “But I’ll need a little helping paw. You up for helping a superhero?”

She decided to turn around with her back towards him. “But where is Ladybug? Aren’t you a duo?” she was a little curious as to what he was going to say, but mostly she just wanted to keep making fun of him.

“She's busy with something tonight, so...You get to be my Ladybug”

That did not sound great.

“Me and Chat Noir? Fighting crime together? Amazing! What do I do?” but pretending to be an adoring fan excited to work with him was pretty great. At the very least, very funny.

“You just need to keep him away from his pen, Princess. The rest, I’ll take care of” he gave a salute and jumped away. As he did so, she giggled. This was hilarious.  

When Marinette woke up, she was confused. She had been hoping for sweet dreams full of Adrien’s kisses but instead she got… she wasn’t sure what. It wasn’t a dream, that much was obvious. Her dreams were never this coherent, they were always swirls of images that mostly confused her. This was more like a memory.

…

That made sense. It was a memory. She had remembered something. For the first time since the accident, something had come back to her. She supposed she understood that why her brain had reacted so much when Adrien talked about being a knight and calling her princess. It reminded so much of what Chat Noir had said in that memory. It all made a lot of sense now. She would have to thank Adrien for saying that later.

There were still a lot of things that confused her though. Like why she acted so familiar with Chat Noir. She couldn’t remember them really talking or being close. What if they had been? If so, she would have forgotten a whole friendship and that sounded more awful than she could believe. But Chat Noir hadn’t really acted like he knew her. They did both introduce themselves in that memory so they couldn’t have been friends before that, right? Maybe she acted like that because of Alya running the Ladyblog, and therefore Marinette knew a lot about Chat Noir? That didn’t really make any sense either but it was the only thing she could think of to explain it. If only she could remember more.

There wasn’t really any point staying in bed and thinking about it though and her stomach had started making sounds of distress. She needed breakfast. As she was getting up from her bed she reached out and grabbed her phone from the bedside table. A text was waiting for her, from Adrien.

[Adrien | 08:07] – Good morning princess!! I hope you slept well! Last night was so great, hopefully we can do it again soon? 😊

Marinette felt her heart flutter as she read it. He’d sent her a good morning text! And he wanted to go out with her again soon, which she definitely wanted too. It also seemed like the ‘Princess’ nickname from last night was sticking. It was sort of cheesy and dorky, but she had to admit she really liked it. She also felt a little guilty for not replying to him sooner but she couldn’t help she wasn’t a morning person.

[Marinette | 09:51] – Good morning, I did thank you!

[Marinette | 09:51] – and yes of course!!! I had a great time too!

She sent the two quick texts before getting dressed and going out to the kitchen. Alya was sitting by the small table they kept in there, typing away on her laptop. When Marinette entered, she immediately stopped but kept quiet. Marinette tried to ignore her piercing eyes as she started preparing her breakfast. Of course, that only made the smirk Alya wore grow and by the time she sat down to eat it was a full-on grin.

“Soooo…” Alya said.

“So?” Marinette repeated trying to stay indifferent but she already felt her cheeks heating up.

“How did it go last night?” Alya’s eyes were shining with curiosity and delight. “I heard you squeal in your room after you got home”

Marinette ducked her head to hide the big, dopey smile that appeared. Alya, of course, noticed anyway and laughed as she skootched her chair closer. She grabbed Marinette’s arm and started shaking it.

“Come on! Tell me, tell me, tell me!” she said and Marinette giggled loudly.

“Okay, okay! Give me my arm back!” she laughed and pulled her arm out of Alya’s grasp.

Alya obviously didn’t mind. She just propped her head up on her hands, looking like a child waiting for a fairy tale.

“Last night was amazing” Marinette began and Alya grinned while motioning for Marinette to continue. “He took me to this restaurant with this awful pun in the name” she giggled a little. “It was sort of awkward in the beginning but then we started talking and it was perfect” she sighed a little dreamily. “Alyaaaa, he really is the most amazing, kind, sweet, funny, gorgeous person I’ve ever met”

Alya chuckled a little. “So, 14-year-old Marinette is definitely back” she said and Marinette pouted a little, making them both laugh.

“Anyway” she gave Alya a pointed look. “Afterwards he walked me back home, and he held my hand and…” she started blushing. “We kissed”.

“You kissed?” Alya echoed loudly and Marinette nodded. “Holy crap! Girl! Finally!”

Marinette laughed and continued blushing when Alya hugged her tightly and started talking about how all her hard work finally paid off. She said something about needing to text the girls from collége and tell them that Adrinette was finally a thing. Marinette shook her head slightly at her friend’s antics, but she didn’t really mind. Alya had always been her number one wingwoman, she had the right to be excited too.

When the text was sent and all the responses read aloud, Marinette could finally get back to her breakfast. She gave a few more details about the date, but they quickly got distracted by their own things. Alya went back to what she was typing in her laptop and Marinette got caught up in her dream again. It still wildly confused her.

“Hey, Alya” she said and Alya hummed back. “Did I ever meet Chat Noir?”

The typing stopped and Alya closed the laptop. She looked at Marinette a little confused and even more concerned.

“Yeah, you did. Several times. Why do you ask?”

“I just… Don’t remember it” Marinette said. “Or I didn’t, until now”

For a few seconds the kitchen was entirely quiet, and then Alya gasped.

“Did you just remember something from before?” she asked and Marinette nodded. “Girl, that’s amazing! It’s the first time, right? This is so great, what did you remember?”

Marinette couldn’t help but smile fondly at Alya’s rection. She was always so supportive and her friendship was one of the best things in her life. She told her about the dream, excluding the things about how familiar Chat Noir felt. She didn’t feel like it was something she should talk about just yet, since she could barely understand it. When she finished Alya nodded.

“Yeah, that must have been during Evillustrator, when Nathainel was akumatized. Wait, I have the Ladyblog article here somewhere”

She opened her laptop and searched for a few seconds before pushing it over to Marinette with the article up. She read it quickly. It added up with the dream and there were even a few quotes from Marinette herself which she felt very weird reading since she couldn’t remember saying them.

“So, it really happened…” slipped out of her mouth.

‘Chat Noir was super cool’

She could almost hear herself saying it. It was so similar to the things she said in the dream. But then she was only pretending to be starstruck. What had she really thought about Chat Noir?

“It did” Alya said and Marinette’s head snapped up and looked at her. She smiled gently. “This is awesome, you know that, right? Maybe you’ll start remembering more things”

“Yeah, maybe” Marinette said as she looked at a photo of her at fourteen edited next to a photo of Chat Noir striking a hero pose. She hoped she would remember more. She wanted to figure it all out.

“Alright, girl. Stop hogging m laptop. I have an anniversary article to write” Alya said, effectively snapping Marinette out of her own thoughts. “If I could just figure out what to write. It’s literally just the same thing every year. They won the battle, they saved us all, they are heroes, bla bla bla”

Marinette giggled. “Just write something else then” she said.

“That’s what I’m trying to do! I just can’t come up with something good”.

Marinette hummed and drank from her tea. Alya went back typing at her laptop, even though she seemed to backspace more than actually write. Marinette once again thought about her dream, or well, memory. Chat Noir was a hero, but the one personal memory she now had of him wasn’t of him doing something particularly heroic. It was him being a person. A person that she apparently found dorky and funny.

“Why don’t you write about them as people instead?” she said and Alya looked up, questioning expression on her face. “I mean instead of writing about how they were heroes and saved everyone, you could write about what they were like. You did a lot of interviews with them, you probably know better than most” she said.

Alya looked thoughtful for a second, but then lit up. “That’s genius, Mari!” she said and closed her laptop before grabbing her notebook instead. “I could even interview others about them. Most of our class back them met them at least a few times” she said excitedly and started scribbling down names in the notebook. “I’ll still write about them being heroes, though” she said with a raised eyebrow and Marinette giggled in agreement.

Maybe she could help Alya with this project. Hearing other people talking about him might just solve her own Chat Noir mystery.

#mine #miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug fanfic #ml fanfic #ml #fanfiction #remembrance #adrien agreste #marinette dupain-cheng #adrinette #love square #my stuff #alya cesaire #chat noir

[freedom-shamrock]

Two are Better, But Three is Best

Also on AO3

Heads up, this goes Lukanette pretty quickly and will move toward a Lukadrienette end game.  If that bothers you, feel free to skip it.

Marinette jogged up the stairs to the fourth floor of the apartment building.  She'd been warned that the elevator was slow and smelled a bit funky, and years of being Ladybug had kept her in good shape, even though Hawk Moth wasn't as active as he'd once been.  Her phone chirped with a notification, and she slipped it out of her sling purse to check.

Alya: Grl, you need to get here ASAP. This party's smokin'

Marinette rolled her eyes and handed the phone back to Tikki as she leaned against the fire door for the third floor, pushing it open with her weight.  She could already hear the music, something a bit different from Nino's usual repertoire. "Tell her I'm just outside the door."

Tikki giggled. "At least you already know it's going to be worth putting aside your projects for the evening."

"Pfft."  Marinette laughed. "We've established that Alya's idea of a good time is not always mine." Her bestie was a total extrovert, and if a party wasn't up to her standards, she was at liberty to drink enough to make it fun.  Marinette preferred to stay sober in case her Ladybug skills were needed, which meant she had to see every event without the filter of inebriation. That said, she hadn't seen her friends in too long, and Luka's apartment-warming party was a perfect opportunity to both welcome him home and see her other friends.

Marinette was just reaching for the doorknob when the door swung open, revealing a beaming young man with shaggy shoulder-length black hair. "Marinette!" He lunged forward, but froze short of pulling her into an enthusiastic hug.

"Luka!  Welcome home."  She stepped closer, helping complete the hug, and giggling when her feet left the floor.  "I'm so glad you're back to stay."

"Yeah?"  He set her back down, still beaming, and lightly pressed his forehead to hers. "Me too.  Especially if it means I'll get to see you on a more regular basis."

She felt the heat in her cheeks and hoped he wouldn't notice.  But then, he always did have that effect on her, though she fortunately never lost her ability to speak in full sentences with him.  "I hope that's a promise."

"You'd better believe it," he insisted, finally stepping back.  "Hey, can I show you around?" He looked excited now, his pretty blue eyes wide.

Marinette nodded.  "I'd love to see your new place."  She felt her pulse pick up when he caught her hand to gently tug her inside. It was fair to say compass Marinette was turned completely around, and she was fully embracing it.  

The apartment was small, but it probably had to be, for him to afford it on his own so soon after university. It felt downright tiny with the sheer number of people crowded into it. She waved to those she knew, their shared friends as well as his friends who she'd met over the years.  She saw Nino, Alya and Adrien in the living room, where the music was playing. Juleka and Rose were mixing drinks in the kitchen as they passed through.

"Name your poison, Marinette," Rose called, waving a cup in the air.

"Do you have any juice?" Marinette asked.

Rose looked off to the side for a moment.  "Yeah. Pineapple, tomato, and cranberry."

"Pineapple, please," Marinette replied.  Trust these two to be running a full bar at a party this size.

"Spiked or…?" Juleka waved a bottle of vodka in the air.

Luka shook his head.  "You know Nette doesn't drink, Jules."

"Things can change," Juleka pointed out.  "I just like to be open to all options."

"Just the juice, but thanks, Juleka," Marinette said.  "I appreciate the thought."

Luka lead her down a short hallway.  "Bathroom." He pointed to a closed door.  "Portal to Narnia." He pointed to another door.

"Really?" she asked, laughing.  "Can we go now?"

He snorted and opened it, showing mostly bare shelves.  "Fine. You caught me. It's the linen closet, and I'm shy on linens."

"Well that gives me at least one good idea for a housewarming gift," she said.

"You don't need to get me anything Marinette," he insisted. "Though I'd love it if we could get together, maybe hang out some now."  He shot a shy smile over his shoulder at her.

"I'd be terribly disappointed if we didn't do that," she agreed.  "But I can still give you a gift. The two things are not mutually exclusive."

He shook his head and pushed open the door at the end of the hall. "And this is my bedroom." He stepped back and waved at it. "I know it's all a bit bare yet, but I think it'll become home soon enough."  He had a double bed on a bare frame and a simple dresser. The walls were bare.

She patted his upper arm.  "Don't apologize. I can see that this has great potential to really be your place."  They'd kept in touch by text and chat, getting together whenever he was in town, and she knew how much it meant to him to have his own place after all the roommates and creative living situations he'd been in over the last five years. She was excited to see him at this point, even if the apartment didn't have his personal touches stamped all over it yet.

He sighed happily. "I knew you'd see that.  Most everyone else just focuses on the weird emptiness."

Marinette shook her head.  "You finished moving in two days ago.  It's not like you've had time to paint or decorate.  I'm pretty sure everyone here is on a relatively tight budget… well, not Adrien, but he has his own issues."

Luka snorted. "Nino and I were talking about that while we were setting up his sound gear."

She nodded, well aware of Nino's prediction that Adrien was coming up on a rebellious phase.  He was probably right, and she was curious and worried what that would look like. Too many rich kids got messed up with drugs, and she didn't want that for her friend… or anyone, really.  "You look so happy, Luka, it's nice to see." She stepped back so she could give him a once over.

He grinned.  "And you like what you see?" He held out his arms and posed, arching his eyebrows.

She poked him lightly in the stomach, making him curl in a bit. "You could stand to eat a bit more," she said with a giggle.  "But yes." She reached out and caught the ends of his hair. "I kind of miss the color though."

"The end of semester leading up to graduation was a beast, and I didn't have time to do it before this," he said, shrugging, then taking a step closer. "I'm redoing it tomorrow.  Probably going to go all out and do my nails while I'm waiting out the bleach."

"I'm free tomorrow if you want help," she offered.  

"Yeah?" he asked.

She nodded.  "I wouldn't want you to mess up your polish before it sets."

"I'm going to get the feeling that you like me," he warned.

She rolled her eyes.  "If you haven't already figured that out, I'd be worried about your brain."

He laughed. "Uhm… Okay, so I'm going to do this, even though I totally swore to myself I'd wait a week. And I don't even get to blame alcohol, because I've only had soda." It was almost like he was talking to himself; his smile was a little nervous and his cheeks had gone pink. "I feel like… and you can disagree if you want, but I feel like we've been kind of dancing around each other for years."

She stared at him, her stomach flipping over in hopeful surprise.

"We have this amazing chemistry, Nette, but there was never a point when we were both on the same page."  He met her eyes, his expression almost painful in its earnestness.  "We each had our phase of being completely obsessed and distracted by an unfairly hot and painfully oblivious blond guy."

She tamped down on her giggle, but nodded.  Adrien could be so stupid for someone so smart.

"We've needed time to focus on our arts, and it just wasn't good timing when I was so far away."  He licked his lips and took a deep breath, seeming to gather his courage. "But I need to admit that when I thought about coming home, I was really hoping all that would sort of fall away."

"Are you asking me out?" she asked, reaching for his hand and hoping he could read the happiness off her.

"Yeah."  He glanced down at their hands for a moment. "You're so amazing and gorgeous and I've been crazy about you for years."  He inched a little closer. "And I really want to kiss you right now." He dipped his head enough to get close, but didn't follow through. "But I'll understand if you aren't--"

She popped up onto her toes, just barely able to brush her lips against his.  Still, it was enough to stop his words and answer his question. Before she could lose her balance, his arm slipped around her waist to pull her toward him as he leaned in further.  It started gentle, like they were cautiously testing the waters. When she flicked the tip of her tongue against his upper lip, he opened eagerly to her and the kiss suddenly went much hotter and more intense. For a moment, she forgot all about the party going on around them.

When he pulled back, he gave her two gentle kisses before straightening up and opening his eyes.  He looked blissfully happy, and it made her feel warm and pleased to be part of that.

"You're adorable," she said, lightly tapping his nose. "And an excellent kisser."

"Marinette!" Alya called rounding the corner into the short hallway. "Where are yoooou?"

Luka laughed, shaking his head. "Best go appease Alya."

Marinette sighed.  "Fine. But we'll talk about this..." she gestured between them. "Before I go. Kay?"

Check out chapter 2 >>>

I've been trying to get this assembled for the last two or three weeks, but crazybusy life was not permitting it. Hope to update routinely. Currently no clue on end length.

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If you’re so inclined, feel free to support me over on Ko-Fi

#Miraculous Ladybug #fanfic #My Writing #Marinette #Luka #Adrien #Lukanette #Lukadrienette #Two are Better