Black and White
Ch. 1: Traffic Safety
It was half past midnight in Paris, the City of Lights as all the daytime workers and kids who had the misfortune of having to prepare for school come next week, all were in their beds, resting the fatigue of a long day away as the city of Paris was turned over to the night owls, the men and women who did what they did best in the dead of night that they were used to and were more comfortable working. The night was still young as the city winded down to more of a quiet setting which was very much welcome to those who would like to just stay in bed and die for about eight hours. One such person, an elderly masseur who had an unusually busy day was finally allowed the rest he craved after finishing cleaning up around his place. For five minutes.
Ring… Ring… Ring… he could here coming from the other room much to his dismay. He would have loved to ignore it but a small prodding on his forehead was forbidding him.
"Master Fu, I believe the phone's ringing," the old man heard a polite and level voice as he opened his eyes, greeted by the sight of a familiar face that he could see even in the low lighting of his bedroom. A small, floating, green tortoise-like being flew in front of his face. The being looked just as tired as he did.
"I've noticed, Wayzz," Master Fu remarked dryly as he pulled himself from his bed and made his way to the phone, floor creaking slightly beneath his feet. He could navigate his home blindfolded if he had to so he didn't bother turning on any of the lights to save his eyes from having to readjust. "Why would anyone call at this time of night?" Fu asked rhetorically. He answered the phone just before it would have stopped ringing. "Hello?"
"Is this Master Fu?" a voice on the other line asked. It sounded like another elderly gentlemen though the accent was Japanese and the English wasn't… really good. The voice was familiar to Fu but he couldn't quite figure out why right away.
"Yes, this is. Might I ask who is calling?" Fu inquired, hoping to understand why someone is trying to contact him in the middle of the night.
"It's me, Makizou," the man on the other end responded, causing Fu to recoil in surprise having to suddenly remember who this Makizou is.
"Makizou… Makizou… Ah yes, Makizou!" Fu exclaimed as he finally remembered who Makizou was but he had a question of his own that came with it, "What's going on? You haven't talked to me in thirty years."
"I… realize that. I'm going to be in Paris soon and I heard that's where you were currently so I figured I would call and see if you'd want to meet up like old times," Makizou's voice was uneasy, a fact that was not lost on Fu and he had a pretty good idea why that was the case.
"You do know that's forbidden, right? We're to never be close by to one another unless…" Fu began before his voice trailed off and his body filled with dread.
"...Unless it was a dire state of emergency," Makizou finished the sentence for Fu. "And I'm sorry to say that we have reached that state. They're gone," Fu listened to Makizou's explanation before his face changed from one of dread to a more determined face. He knew something bad was going to happen.
"What do you mean 'they're gone'?"
1 week later…
The final week of vacation came and passed like it didn't even happen. For the school age children of Paris, Monday had come too fast as now they had to spend their time resuming their studies when they'd rather being doing anything else. Some had it bad and others had it worse but at least those guys didn't have to spend their first day of school running away from a possessed crossing guard who could stop people and objects from moving at will like one school did.
"Stop where you are!" A man dressed in a mix of a orange jumpsuit with yellow crossing guard attire over it so he could be easily seen from Mars shouted as a red beam of light blasted out of portable stop sign, hitting a few hapless bystanders who were trying to cross the street to get out of danger. "You do not cross when the crosswalk light is red! You could be run over!" the man shouted, clearly not seeing any problem with putting people in danger to keep them out of danger. While all this was happening, a black-haired girl happened to be noticing the commotion from the other side of the street. The girl was dressed in dark gray blazer with a white shirt decorated with pink and black leaves and a pair of pink jeans and ballet shoes with a light pink purse over her shoulder.
"It's been awhile since Hawk Moth made an akuma," The girl mumbled to herself as she quickly ducked out of sight, clutching her light pink purse as she ducked into an alleyway. She looked to make sure no one was around before opening her purse to let out a little red being with two black spots on the side of it's head and a big one right on it's forehead as well as two hair-thin antenna sticking out the back.
"Time for Ladybug to make an appearance then, Marinette!" the being declared with high-pitched and slightly squeaky voice. Marinette nodded to her friend before standing up.
"Tikki, spots on!" Marinette shouted with a flip of her hair to reveal red earrings, which Tikki was sucked into. Marinette was then transformed as a new red skintight suit with red spots appeared around her body to replace her old outfit with a matching domino mask across her eyes and a yo-yo wrapped around her waist.
"You all will obey the law of Crossguard!" Back with Crazy McStopsign, as he moved from turning people into statues to stopping cars dead in their tracks as they tried to speed out of there like they're being chased by something they wanted no part of… because they were. "There is a school right there! You could hurt a student with your reckless driving!" Then when the drivers tried to get out, he froze them too for good measure though his timing left a lot to be desired as he left them in the middle of the road. As he was aiming down another such victim, he felt something wrap around his hand and throw off his aim. He looked to see a red with black dots yo-yo around his wrist. He followed the cord up to see Ladybug holding his arm away from shooting who he was targeting.
"Ah, Ladybug, I see I've gotten your attention," Crossguard said with a smile as Ladybug rewound her yo-yo back to her hand. "Do you like my work? I'm finally instilling some respect for the rules of the road into these human health hazards."
"By leaving them trapped in the middle of the road?!" The two heard another voice from down the street. Ladybug recognized the voice and who it belonged to. She looked to see a blonde-haired boy with two cat black ears clipped into his hair. He was dressed in a similar skinsuit but his was all black and had a belt around the waist. He was holding a gray metal staff in his right hand. His most striking feature was the eyes beneath his black domino mask, there were exactly like a cat's with large iris and slitted pupils. Ladybug noticed that a lot of people who were in the streets before had been moved. He quickly moved to join up with Ladybug. "Something tells me you need to stop being bad at your job and just go on and surrender before you cross us!"
"Ugh… I see your vacation wasn't spent working on your puns, Cat Noir..." Ladybug groaned at the whirlwind of puns that spewed out of Cat's mouth like slop from a sluice gate.
"Oh come on, you know you love them, LB" Cat said with a wink before turning his attention back to Crossguard who now had a pink butterfly outline around his face before it disappeared.
"I'll be taking your miraculous now!" Crossguard the cross crossing guard shouted as he fired another red beam at the duo which they nimbly dodged before trying to close the gap though that proved difficult when his fire rate made moving in tricky since one shot was game over. Choosing instead not to go all in on the first take, the two had to find cover while they thought of a way to get close.
"It's gotta be in the sign! Got any plans, Bugaboo?" Cat asked as he saw Crossguard leisurely stroll to where they were like he was in no hurry. Ladybug looked around and noticed that not only were the people Cat Noir saved not in the street but they also weren't there at all.
"Cat, where'd the people you saved go?"
"Oh, when I tried to pick them up to get them off the street, they started to move again so they must have legged it out of here. Looks like he can only keep anything still as long as no one touches them," Cat explained as he kept an eye on Crossguard to see how far he was. About thirty feet or so and he'd be right on top of them very soon.
"If one of us can get on the other side of him, we could have one of us draw his fire while the other gets the sign," Ladybug looked to her partner before motioning her head. "Cat!"
"Be my pleasure, my lady," Cat said with a bow before leaping from behind the car to immediately be put under fire, causing Crossguard to forget that Ladybug was also behind that car.
"Let's see what we can use... Lucky Charm!" Ladybug threw her yo-you into the air and after watching hearts spill out, out dropped a ladybug printed mirror. "Okay, a mirror. I can make this work," Ladybug said as she racked her brain to come up with a plan.
"Not only are you a bad crossing guard, you're an even worse shot!" Cat quipped as he dodged blasts of freezing lasers aimed at him while quickly made a half circle around Crossguard so that his back would be to Ladybug. Crossguard got angrier and angrier with Cat before the butterfly outline reappeared for a couple seconds and a surprised Crossguard turned to see Ladybug preparing to take his sign with her yo-yo. He dodged her attempt before turning fire on her, forcing her to put up the mirror for defense which caused it to bounce off but it failed to connect with Crossguard.
"Cataclysm!" Cat Noir exclaimed as he summoned a black orb into his hand before crushing it. He then touched the street, causing it to collapse beneath Crossguard's feet, making it hard to shoot at Ladybug. Cat Noir quickly stepped in to try and take the sign but Crossguard caught him before he could get close, freezing him still.
"Got you, you irritating child!" Crossguard exclaimed in victory. He quickly noticed that Cat was stuck in a frozen car's path and it gave him an evil idea. He flipped the sign around to the green "Go" half and aimed at it. Ladybug, not thinking about it and acting completely on impulse, threw the mirror to intercept the laser, which it did but caused it to bounce off the mirror at a weird angle and just fire aimlessly into space. Undeterred by this turn of events, Crossguard just tried again and this time, it hit its target, causing it to continue moving as it did before, with Cat right in the way.
"CAT NOIR!" Ladybug shouted before a green blur zipped by and tackled Cat Noir out of the way but it ended up catching the feet of the blur and sending a part of his skates into a nearby bush. Ladybug and Crossguard struggled to even process what happened, as did the blur, or more accurately, boy expressed.
"What possessed me to do that?!" The boy shouted. Ladybug, taking the opportunity, quickly smacked Crossguard in the head with her yo-yo and stole the sign in one smooth motion.
"Get out of her you, nasty bug!" She yelled as she quickly broke the sign over her knee, which expelled a small black butterfly out of the ruined remains. "No more evildoing for you, little akuma! Time to de-evilized!" She flicked her finger over her yo-yo, causing it to pop open before spinning it around and catching the akuma. "Gotcha! Bye-bye, little butterfly." Ladybug picked up the mirror and threw it into the air before calling out "Miraculous Ladybug!" From the discarded mirror exploded a swarm of bugs that quickly returned everything to normal.
Cat quickly turned to the boy that saved him who was looking through the bushes. He had brown hair underneath a forest green helmet and was wearing an also forest green windbreaker that had "Dunn Right Gardening" written in a complementary magenta with blue carpenter jeans and a pair of red rollerskates. Though Cat thought the skates were kind of weird looking. They looked like a mixture of sneakers in shape but had rollerblades on the bottom. The wheels looked to be missing from his right skate and were taken off when he tackled him out of the way.
"Need help, hero?" Cat asked with a smile as he walked up. The boy seemed to jump in surprise of Cat's voice. Cat got a good look at his face and figured he had to be about his age.
"Uh… S-sure, thanks. It's a set of red wheels like the others." he said, his voice a bit unsteady from the adrenaline of jumping in front of a car to save someone.
'Guess you've got your own set of priorities,' Cat remarked in his thoughts that he was a bit eccentric that after what this guy did, his first concern was just tracking the wheels for his skate shoes down.
"Thanks for the help back there. I'd be down to eight lives without the save," Cat patted his savior's shoulder as he looked.
"Well, if we find my wheels, we'll call it square, huh?" Cat looked over and saw the wheels in a bush about five feet down and picked it up. They were all stuck together on a track and looked like they were going to be a pain to repair with the tips connecting to the shoe being completely torn.
"Sounds like a good deal to me," Cat joked as he lobbed the wheels over. The brown-haired boy quickly sat down at folded the still attached wheels back into the sole of the shoe, hiding them with a click sound. He then stood up just the student body of the nearby school came out to celebrate Ladybug and Cat Noir.
"That doesn't look good…" he sighed as he looked at the remains of the wheels. "Thanks for the help!"
"No, thank you for the save. See ya later, hero!" Cat said as he quickly bailed as he ring beeped. After Ladybug did as well, everyone was quickly rushed back inside by the school bell and teachers. Marinette, now out of costume, quickly ran into the same school that she attended. With the akuma now stopped she just had to make sure she wasn't late on the first day. Now that would be embarrassing, she thought. Especially in front of… him.
"Sorry I'm late." Marinette sheepishly apologized to her teacher as she walked into homeroom and took a seat next to a red-headed girl who was giving a smirk as she eyed her friend from beyond her glasses.
"Well technically we're all late so I won't hold it against you... today." the teacher said with a warm smile that didn't mesh well with what Marinette could only have taken as a threat. She quickly waited for everyone to be seated before continuing. "Before we get started I have some great news for everyone. We have two new foreign students," The class quickly burst to life as everyone quickly began talking about the new info they just here. Marinette felt a soft poke to her arm, drawing her attention to the girl next to her. She was wearing a white, orange, and purple plaid shirt over a white tank top, blue jeans and white sneakers.
"Two new students, can you believe that?" The bespectacled girl next to her asked.
"I know, Alya, I wonder what kind of people they are," Marinette said with an excited giggle.
"Let's hope we don't get another 'Chloe'. I don't know how any of us would cope with that."
"Don't jinx it, please. For all our sakes," A boy with a red baseball cap and orange headphones joked from in front of them.
"Don't you think you're being a little paranoid, Nino," To Nino's right, sat a blonde haired boy with a white button up shirt that was left unbuttoned and a black shirt with five stripes going across his chest. He seemed like he didn't want his friend to start worrying over something that might not be worth worrying over.
"Probably, Adrian, probably, but this is a case where it is perfectly acceptable to be paranoid. It could be the difference between a year with one Chloe and one with with up to three of them. That's some horror movie stuff right there!"
"Now, now everyone, please be quiet as I bring them in." She motioned for someone on the other side of the doorway to come in. The first one was a girl wearing a purple shirt with a bird flying near her breast, blue jeans and black sneakers. Her long, black hair was held back in a knot by a small, batwing hairpin while a few strands fell across her shoulders. She was definitely asian and by the semi-unhappy face she had, she didn't look like an easygoing person.
"Why don't you introduce yourself to the class, dear?" The teacher asked. The girl's face softened in a small smile, almost like she was putting on a mask.
"My name is Amara Akibara, and it's nice to meet all of you. I'm am from Nara, Nara, Japan," she explained as she bowed toward the class. Her smile disappeared immediately after. The teacher motioned for the other student to come in.
The other one, however, everyone in the room immediately recognized as the boy from earlier who came out of nowhere to help Cat Noir from becoming road kill. He came in with a much more genuine smile then Amara's but he was clearly bashful about being put in front of everyone who saw what he had did.
"Hello, everyone! My name is Adam Dunn, and I'm from Warren, Michigan, United States. Nice to meet all of you. I'll try not to cause too much trouble… though it might be a bit late for that."
A/N: Speaking of hellos, my name is UnKnownSalvation but you can call me Sal for short. I've been on hiatus recently due to just all the things I want to do but don't have the time but the writing urge is back and now I'm feeling like writing a story that I've had on the back burner for a while. I got into Ladybug and Cat Noir after watching the show back in February although I have no recollection of how I found it. I just… did though surfing the web one day and BAM! There it is. So while I was busy with another story, I was also making a basic story development page for this story but I only recently got the urge to actually start it after watching the first season again.
Also, in the help department, is anyone here an artist that can make me a cover for this story? If not, I do have a backup plan so it's not a big issue or anything. Also maybe an assistant in proofreading this. My normal proofreader doesn't watch this show so he wouldn't be good for fact checking so I'm kinda on my own to spot my own errors and that's a crapshoot if I ever saw it. I can only remember so much.
As you no doubt noticed by now, I'm basing this off the english version since that was the version I've seen (I.E. why the text was commenting on Makizou's less than stellar English instead of French). I'd watch the french version with subtitles but frankly, once you see one version, watching another is… surreal. Same face, different voice. It's weird and I'd probably just get distracted and miss details that would be useful.
This story is one-hundred percent AU past season 1 and will not include any elements from season 2 onwards (if this story lasts that long for me to learn of said elements) unless I can fit them in semi-seamlessly and it doesn't get too cluttered (for instance, I haven't used what would be the obvious follow-up to the end of season 1 but I will have it. Just not right off the bat because I have a lot of things to establish first and foremost). And even then that might not be avoidable considering all the things I have planned.
If you're interested in any of the background facts of one of the OCs, feel free to ask though few of them have any real good explanations that are interesting.
Thank you for reading my long author's note but it's just something I felt like I had to say or something. Till next time, Sal out!