I was inspired by tumblr, and hopefully this'll get me out of my writer's block that I've had for my other works.
I don't own Miraculous Ladybug, or really this idea, but anyway.
ENJOY!
SLEEP
Marinette could describe the past two months in one word: tiring.
Hawkmoth, in his annoying, evil glory, decided to take advantage of the bane of her existence. The bane of all existence. He dared to trespass into unholy ground. He dared take advantage of the one thing most people dared not impede upon. He dared to do the near unspeakable.
He akumatized students going into final exams.
It wouldn't have been so bad, since he could apparently only akumatize one person at a time save for if an akuma cloned itself, if the local area had exams within the same couple of weeks. But no, not only did the local schools get out at separate times, meaning staggered finals, there was also the fact the schools didn't get all the exams done in one day, instead dividing them over three very stressful days.
Luckily, the final exams at Marinette's school were almost done, with her final exam on history not being until next week, something to do with the prompters getting sick or too terrified of the akumas or… something. Frankly, Marinette was too tired to properly listen to that particular announcement.
She didn't even actually remember taking the finals. She knew she took them, she knew that she somehow managed to pass them, but any memory of taking the tests or of getting the results simply did not exist in her brain at the moment. No, the only thing fueling her was spite (for Hawkmoth), obligation (for school), and caffeine (thank god for coffee… and caffeine patches… you could use three of those at a time, right?).
Since their final history exam wasn't until next week, the school tried to have a slightly less hectic studying session for the students. Being students, however, Marinette's class was mostly goofing off and not actually studying, and their teacher, a substitute, couldn't have really cared less. Didn't really effect their paycheck, after all, and they'd much rather go through their usual social media rather than actually teach kids history. Their major was in math anyway, at this point they'd more likely hurt the class's chances of passing rather than help.
This would have been all fine with Marinette. She could be here physically and not mentally, and when the caffeine crash kicked in in about ten minutes, she could go to sleep no problem. In fact, Sabrina and Chloé weren't even in class that day. Small graces.
But then there was Alya.
Don't get Marinette wrong, she loved Alya to pieces. But, at the moment, she was about to rip Alya to pieces if she didn't shut up soon, oh my goodness.
Alya tried to get some conversation out of Marinette at first, but when that failed, she went to her next best option. "Nino!" the reporter-to-be nudged the boy out of the handheld game he was playing. "Did you hear about last night's villain?"
Nino turned around to look at Alya fully. "No…? I was asleep. Like a normal human being."
Alya plowed on. "Well, listen to this! It's another examinee student! That's the fifth night in a row that there's been an examinee villain victim, and that doesn't include all the other one from the past couple of months."
Yes, Marinette was well aware of this. She'd been up for nearly six days straight fighting them.
"Was this one at least original about the stressed examinee thing?" Nino asked.
No.
"Not really," Alya said. "It was just like at least five others. They would turn others into famous historical figures that would spout off historical facts. The only twist was that it's famous painters."
Marinette did have the distinct impression that she had punched Picasso in the face earlier that day, but she had chalked it up to sleep-deprived hallucinations. Apparently not.
Nino hummed softly. "What'd this one call themselves?"
"Renaissance Man."
Adrien, looking equally dead, groaned at that.
Nino patted his half-dead friend on the back. "Agreed, that's just a bad name."
Alya scrunched her nose. "Why's he out of it? I thought Mr. Agreste kept him on a strict sleep schedule or something."
"From what I can tell he usually does," Nino said. "But Adrien's too out of it to say what's been up lately."
To that, Adrien just groaned again.
Nino patted him again before looking over to Marinette. "What about Marinette? She looks like death and near murder."
Marinette glared, but didn't raise her head out of its place in her arms, her to-go coffee mug held loosely in her right hand. He wasn't exactly wrong after all. She was pretty sure she hadn't even brushed her hair in at least two days.
"Not sure about her either," Alya said. "You're both pretty tired. Have you two been meeting up after hours?"
If only. Marinette might have enjoyed an evening with Adrien. Heck, just an evening with Chat Noir would be fine. So long as there weren't any akumas, she'd take Chloé as company. That is, if any of them didn't mind her being asleep the whole time.
"Come on now," Alya lightly poked Marinette's side. "Tell me what's up! Secret meetings, studying, a new project, give up the dirt!"
"Alya…" Marinette mumbled her first word of that morning. "Just leave me be."
"Hey now, grumpy pants," Alya said lightly, "I've let you be for the past couple of days, but you just keep getting more tired! What's going on?!"
What's going on.
What's going on indeed.
Marinette had been pulling all nighters fighting akumas on and off for roughly two months.
Marinette had spent nearly a week awake with only small cat naps here and there and a serious new addiction to caffeine.
Marinette was starting to run low on allowance because of said newfound caffeine addiction.
Marinette had finals.
Marinette was tired.
Marinette…
Marinette was done.
"Fine!" Marinette caught the attention of the room as she sat up straight, with even Adrien poking his head up to see what was going on now. "You wanna know what's going on? Fine!" she slammed her coffee on the table that she and Alya shared. She stood up, hiked her leg up on the table, and stood in front of the class.
"Wait, Marinette-" Alya tugged lightly on Marinette's leg. "Okay, you win, I'll let you nap, tell me when you're not so upset-"
"No, no," Marinette said, taking a slightly side step on the space available, effectively getting out of Alya's light hold. "You wanna know? Fine. I'll tell you." She turned to the whole class. "Listen up, I'm only going to say this once, and then I'm going to go back home and sleep for the next forty eight hours if I can help it. I've spent the last few days awake because I've been fighting villains, and you wanna know why? I'm Ladybug, that's why!"
Several stunned gasps spread through the room. Adrien felt slightly more awake, even managing to sit up fully. The words hadn't quite properly processed, but they still got his attention.
"Don't believe me? Fine. Tikki, could you come out please?" From Marinette's bad, a small creature came out. She had energy, but seemed to be exhausted in a way that came not from lack of sleep, but from pure frustration of some sort. "Yes, hi, quick version, this is Tikki, she's like a god or… something. Anyway, Tikki, transform me or spots on or whatever the phrase is-"
Tikki was quickly sucked into the earring without protest, not really caring that her charge had just revealed her identity to her class, since she felt much of the same frustration and annoyance at these near constant akuma attacks. The single most unenthusiastic magical-girl transformation that anyone had ever seen took place right before Marinette's class, leaving an exhausted Ladybug standing where previously their exhausted class president had stood.
"Thanks Tikki," Marinette rubbed her earring before having her hands firmly planted on her hips, her shoulders slouched with exhaustion. "So, now that you see that I'm not making this up, I'm going to trust that you'll tell no one, or at least wait a couple of days so I can at least be awake for when the press starts to run after my heels, okay then?"
The class, stunned and slightly, could only nod to that.
Marinette-or rather, Ladybug-nodded back. "Great. So, if you don't mind-"
"Wait-" Adrien said, getting up on his table despite Nino's protests. "-I have something to confess too. Plagg-"
"Yeah yeah, whatever," a small little creature that had a striking similarity to Tikki popped out of Adrien's shirt.
"Transform me, claws out!" Adrien, well, technically he yelled it, but considering how much he really, really needed sleep, it was more of a pathetic cry, but it did the job, as another unenthusiastic transformation took place. Chat Noir slumped where he stood, his face ears slightly pulled back and his belt-tail-thing looked particularly lifeless. Pawticularly. He was so tired he couldn't even do puns.
Marinette would later actually process the whole event, but at the moment, as Ladybug, as an extremely sleep deprived teen, all she could manage was a, "Huh. Okay then."
Adrien, or Chat Noir at the moment, simply nodded. "Yep. Figured-" Chat let out a large yawn before continuing, "-that you shouldn't be the only one at this dramatic reveal party."
"Hm, well anyway," Ladybug said, jumping down from her perch with a little hop and grabbing her bag. "I'm going home. Bye." She started for the door, Chat Noir not far behind her with his bag. "Can't wait to sleep and regret this later."
Chat nodded, holding back another yawn. "Yeah, I'm going home too. See you guys… wait is today Friday? See you Monday."
With that, the two famous Parisian superheroes up and left their class completely speechless as they more or less stumbled home to sleep, not entirely sure when or if they shrugged off their transformations by the time they got out on the streets or even when they got home.
Alya, whose mouth had been open wide like everyone else for the past five minutes, slowly clicked her jaw closed. "Um."
Nino was the next to at least partially recover. "You're… not putting that on the Ladyblog, right?"
"No… Um. Did anyone even record that?"
Max had, for some reason, already been filming, so he did get that on camera. Which he sent to Alya and promptly deleted because he now knew that his class prez could kick his sorry hide six ways to Sunday and he was not about to mess with that.
Alix looked around at her recovering classmates. "All in favor of not telling Chloé or Sabrina say aye?"
"Aye."
She turned next to the teacher at the desk, their feet still propped up on the wood. "Teach, mind not telling the school board?"
"No way am I explaining that the reason I let two kids out of class was because they're both very tired and very irritated superheroes. I happen to like my job, thanks."
And so was born the single most hilarious 'snitches get stitches' scenarios (Alya preferred 'loose lips sink ships' purely because she was doubly motivated to get her two friends to hook up already) in the entire history of the school, because the two superheroes didn't even halfway try to hide what was going on after that day.
As for the two superheroes exactly two days later?
"OH MY GOD TIKKI ADRIEN LIKES PUNS?"
"MY LADY SAT BEHIND ME IN CLASS SHE'S HEARD ME MUTTER FAKE LATIN SPELLS TO FREAK OUT THE MYTHOLOGY TEACHER PLAGG WHAT DO I DO?"
SLEEP
Not sure if this was actually any good or not, but anyway. I wrote this in one go while sleepy to help with the 'tired of this bs' tone of the whole thing. Anyway, later!
