Adrien Agreste/Chat Noir: Peter Pan

Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Ladybug: Marinette

Nino: John

Manon: Michael

Tikki: Nana

Plagg: Tinkerbell

Alya: Indian princess

I'm too lazy to do the other characters but you'll notice them in time...

And now ON WITH THE STORY!

Once upon a time,

All children, except one, grow up.

They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Marinette knew was this.

One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her maman. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Sabine put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!"

This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Marinette knew that she must grow up.

You always know after you are two.

Two is the beginning of the end.

Sabine's romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Marinette could never get, though there is was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.

The way Tom won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Tom, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her.

He got all of her, except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss.

Marinette thought Theo could have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off in a passion, slamming the door.

Tom used to boast to Marinette that her maman not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him.

Sabine was married in white, and at first she kept the books perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers dropped out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces.

She drew them when she should have been totting up.

They were Sabine's guesses.

Marinette came first, then Nino, then Manon.

For a week or two after Marinette came it was doubtful whether they would be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed.

However, it wouldn't be very hard. After all, they owned a bakery!

Tom took extreme pride in his child.

Tom had a passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had a nurse.

As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children drank, this nurse was a prim Kwami dog, called Tikki, who had belonged to no one in particular until the Dupain-Chengs engaged her.

Tikki took extreme care of the children as if they were her own. But she mainly had to be hidden as many other nurses complained about having to work aside a dog.

But Tikki proved to be worthy of the Dupain-Cheng family.

Sabine first heard of Chat Noir in the children's mind where they created their own Neverland.

Nino had a Neverland where he was alone except for a pretty girl who he always sought to please.

Manon being the smaller one, had a Neverland where she could control dolls to do her bidding.

Marinette had a simple Neverland where she at night took on the courageous form of Ladybug and at day, she was the top designer in all the world and she could sew to her heart's content.

"Yes, he is rather cocky," Mari admitted with regret. Her maman had been questioning her.

"But who is he, my pet?"

"He is Chat Noir, you know, maman."

At first Sabine did not know, but after thinking back into her childhood she just remembered a Chat Noir who was said to live with the kwami's.

There were odd stories about him, as that when children died he went part of the way with them, so that they should not be frightened.

She had believed in him at the time, but now that she was married and full of sense she quite doubted whether there was any such person.

"Besides," she said to Marinette, "he would be grown up by this time."

"Oh no, he isn't grown up," Marinette assured her confidently, "and he is just my size."

She meant that he was her size in both mind and body; she didn't know how she knew, she just knew it.

Sabine consulted Tom, but he smiled pooh-pooh. "Mark my words," he said, "it is some nonsense Tikki has been putting into their heads; just the sort of idea a dog would have. Leave it alone, and it will blow over."

But it would not blow over and soon the troublesome boy gave Sabine quite a shock.

Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them.

For instance, they may remember to mention, a week after the event happened, that when they were in the wood they had met their dead father and had a game with him.

It was in this casual way that Marinette one morning made a disquieting revelation. Some leaves of a tree had been found on the bakery floor, which certainly were not there when the children went to bed, and

Sabine was puzzling over them when Marinette said with a tolerant smile:

"I do believe it is that Chat again!"

"Whatever do you mean, Marinette?"

"It is so naughty of him not to wipe his feet," Marinette said, sighing. She was a tidy child.

She explained in quite a matter-of-fact way that she thought Chat sometimes came to the bakery in the night and sat on the foot of her bed and played on his pipes to her. Unfortunately she never woke, so she didn't know how she knew, she just knew.

"What nonsense you talk, precious. No one can get into the house without knocking."

"I think he comes in by the window," she said.

"My love, it is three floors up."

"Were not the leaves at the foot of the window, maman?"

It was quite true; the leaves had been found very near the window.

Sabine did not know what to think, for it all seemed so natural to Marinette that you could not dismiss it by saying she had been dreaming.

"My child," the mother cried, "why did you not tell me of this before?"

"I forgot," said Marinette lightly. She was in a hurry to get her breakfast.

Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.

But, on the other hand, there were the leaves.

Sabine examined them very carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she was sure they did not come from any tree that grew in England.

She crawled about the floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot. She rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls.

She let down a tape from the window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of thirty feet, without so much as a spout to climb up by.

Certainly Marinette had been dreaming.

But Marinette had not been dreaming, as the very next night showed, the night on which the extraordinary adventures of these children may be said to have begun.

On the night we speak of all the children were once more in bed.

It happened to be Tikki's evening off, and Sabine had bathed them and sung to them till one by one they had let go her hand and slid away into the land of sleep.

All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fears now and sat down tranquilly by the fire to sew.

It was something for Manon, who on her birthday was getting into larger dresses.

The fire was warm, however, and the bakery dimly lit by three night-lights, and presently the sewing lay on Sabine's lap. Then her head nodded, oh, so gracefully. She was asleep. Look at the four of them, Marinette and Manon over there, Nino here, and Sabine by the fire.

There should have been a fourth night-light.

While she slept she had a dream.

She dreamt that the Neverland had come too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it. He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also.

But in her dream he had rent the film that obscures the Neverland, and she saw Marinette and Nino and Manon peeping through the gap.

The dream by itself would have been a trifle, but while she was dreaming the window of the bakery blew open, and a boy did drop on the floor.

He was accompanied by a strange light, no bigger than your fist, which darted about the room like a living thing and I think it must have been this light that wakened Sabine.

She started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow she knew at once that he was Chat Noir.

If you or I or Marinette had been there we should have seen that he was very like Sabine's kiss.

He was a lovely boy, clad in black leather and a mask surrounding his eyes along with a belt for a tail and black cat ears with blond shaggy hair.

When he saw she was a grown-up, he hissed and clawed at her.