What if Dark Cupid shot Marinette instead of Alya?
Cupidity
Chapter 1: Mailbox
Marinette and Alya stood before the mailbox at the corner of the entrance to the Place des Vosges, which was right across from Marinette's house. Marinette had a heart-shaped valentine clutched in her hand. She had answered the love poem that Adrien had dropped in the trash in the classroom that morning, but now she was nervous about making the commitment to dropping it into the mail.
"Come on, Marinette!" said Alya. "Do it before you chicken out!"
Marinette nervously slipped the valentine into the slot for local mail.
Alya said, "Yeah!"
Marinette shouted, "I did it!"
They hugged to celebrate Marinette's courage in finally confessing. Then their phones signaled incoming text messages. They were both from Chloé.
"Chloé? Since when did she start texting us?" asked Alya.
The message had an attached image of Kim, kneeling and presenting the piece of jewelry that they had both seen that morning. He had been splashed with water and a potato chip bag was stuck to his face.
"What a witch!" said Alya.
"And I was the one who told Kim to do it!" said Marinette. "I didn't know he was talking about her!"
"Dang, I hope Adrien doesn't do the same thing to you," said Alya.
Marinette panicked and started tugging at the mailbox to try to get the love letter back. She jumped on top of the box and tugged some more. It was useless.
Alya said, "I mean—Girl, calm down! Adrien would never do that."
Alya looked up and saw a flying person in a red costume.
"What in the world is that?" Alya said, pointing up.
Marinette turned to look.
Dark Cupid looked down at the two potential targets.
Alya was holding two heart-shaped candy apples. That made her a good symbolic target.
"All hearts must be destroyed!" he said to himself.
Then he changed his mind. Marinette was a better choice, with her sappy optimism – telling him to "go for it" when all that got him was humiliation.
His arrow struck Marinette and gave off a black puff of smoke as it vanished. Marinette's lips turned black.
"You set me up to mail that valentine!" Marinette snarled at Alya. "Why did I let you talk me into it? I hate Adrien, and I just disgraced myself by sending him a love note."
"Girl, what has happened to you?" said Alya. "It's me, your BFF, remember?"
"We're not friends. I hate you!" said Marinette, jumping down from the mailbox and closing in on Alya with her fists raised.
Alya stuck the candy apples onto Marinette's chest and ran before the akuma victim could attack her.
Marinette pulled off the apples and threw them to the ground.
Tikki peeked out of her purse. "Marinette, what's going on?"
"I don't like you anymore, Tikki, but I'm still your master. You're going to help me fix a big mistake."
Marinette ran to the nearest partial cover in the park, one of the benches. There didn't seem to be anyone looking, so she called out her transformation phrase.
"Tikki, spots on!"
The scowling, black-lipped Ladybug walked back to the mailbox. Whirling her yo-yo at high speed, she sliced open the box.
There was her valentine. To her disgust, she realized that it was not only without a signature, but without an envelope, stamp, address, or return address. It might have gotten to Adrien anyway, because it had gotten stuck with a bit of candy apple coating to another valentine addressed to him. Now it wouldn't: Ladybug ripped both valentines to shreds.
There were several more valentines for Adrien in the box and she ripped them all up.
"Good work," Ladybug told herself. "I really despise Adrien. What else can I do to him today?"