Four: Birthday

Author's Note: Epcot97 here! ChubbyUnicornMama and I are working our way though #MariChatMay2019 and I get to do this chapter for May 4. Neither of us have heard back from the producers of Miraculous, so our hopes are dimming that we will work for them on Season 20. Needless to say, we also do not own any part of MLB.

Can a fully costumed superhero successfully bake a birthday cae for the special person in his life? Not, perhaps, without some help. This chapter is loosely connected to the chapter from yesterday, May 3, and slightly feeds into tomorrow's chapter from CM – but you can read all three individually as well. Enjoy! - ep

Why I thought I could cook while transformed, I'll never know. But Marinette's parents only knew me as Chat Noir, so when I approached them about doing something special for her birthday, one thing led to another and landed me in Tom's kitchen, claws and all, the Saturday morning of her special day.

It was doubly difficult as I'd never made a thing in my entire life. Having a personal chef will do that to a person, but I'd become determined that I would bake a cake for Marinette. Tom had been skeptical of the entire endeavor, but had agreed after Sabine nudged him. After my third attempt to crack an egg into the flour mixture resulted in another deep-sea expedition to remove the shell pieces, though, he'd had enough.

"Chat," he said, carefully tamping back his frustration with me, "let's take a break, shall we?"

"Of course, Monsieur," I said.

"There's coffee in the kitchen upstairs," he said, none too subtly ushering me out of the disaster I'd wreaked in the kitchen. Apparently one does not turn the mixer on full tilt with dry ingredients in the bowl. Good to know.

I slowly worked my way up the staircase, trailing poorly mixed batter and slightly disillusioned at my prospects. Sabine met me in the kitchen and looked past the flour that had covered most the front of my costume. I may have even had some in my hair. She put a steaming mug down on the counter, murmured something, and stole off to Tom's kitchen to ensure her husband hadn't decamped for parts unknown.

I plunked my head on the counter, feline ears wilting. I could even feel something sticky on my tail. Idly, I wondered if it was too late to book a private table at Philippe's Italian Bistro. It was a tough reservation to get, but throwing around the Agreste name might get me through the door.

What was I thinking? I thought gloomily. I'll be lucky if Tom even lets me into the Bakery proper after this.

"Chat?"

Marinette's cheery voice broke through my storm clouds as she crossed into the kitchen and took the barstool next to mine. I turned my blonde mane in her direction and ignored the shocked expression on her face as she took in my general disarray. "Happy Birthday, Princess," I said, trying to feign enthusiasm.

"Thanks…?" she said, raising an eyebrow. "Maman said you'd be here this morning, but I thought you'd be visiting me."

I grimaced. "I… I wanted to do something special for someone who is special to me," I said. "I talked your dad into helping and succeeded in destroying his kitchen and my prospects at a long, happy life with you."

Her eyes widened and I saw her surreptitiously check my ring. "You didn't—"

"No," I said, chuckling slightly. "I didn't dissolve any critical components of the kitchen, if that's what you're wondering. But I did manage to go through a dozen eggs and several pounds of flour." I pounded my head on the counter again. "The online video made it look so easy…"

She put a hand to my head and gently pulled an eggshell out from behind a feline ear. "What, exactly, were you trying to do?"

I turned my head back to her again. "I heard through the grapevine that you love chocolate cake," I said, obliquely refurring to a fishing expedition Adrien had gone on a few days prior at school. "It seemed like a sweet thing to make for your birthday," I smiled, adding, "literally."

Marinette looked at me. "You did, did you," she said.

"Yeah," I said, sitting up. "I may be an amazing superhero, Princess, but apparently I am hopeless when confronted with a cookbook."

"We may have to fix that," she said solemnly. "But first, let's get that cake out of the way."

My ears perked up. "You want to helpme?" I asked. "That could be dangerous, according to your father."

"Yes," she said, and I saw the determined look she took on when she was faced with a challenge that needed to be surmounted.

That made me nervous. "Uh, okay…"

She took me by the flour-covered paw and we returned to the Bakery kitchen. Tom and Sabine had managed to undo the worst of the damage, but neither was terribly excited to see me back in that space. "Honey," Tom said. "I'm not sure—"

"I will take care of this," Marinette said firmly. "Chat and I will make sure the kitchen is spic-and-span when we're finished."

Tom shot a look at Sabine, who smiled and shrugged. "All right," he said. "If you need me, I'll be upstairs."

And with that, her parents quickly evacuated.

Marinette turned toward me. "Ready?"

"Absolutely," I said.

"First," she said, handing me an apron, "put this on."

I held the cloth out. "I'm already wearing attire that can't be destroyed," I reminded her, raising a masked eyebrow.

"You need to get into the spirit of it, Chat," she said. "Humor me."

I pulled the apron on, gently weaving it over my feline ears, and tied it around my back. "Apron. Check."

She looked at my hair, glanced toward one of Tom's spare chef caps, and thought better of it; instead, she pulled on a pink polka-dotted number, well stained, that I knew was her apron. "Go to the cabinet over there and pull out the small tin of chocolate powder," she instructed. "I'll get the sugar, butter and eggs ready over here."

I trotted over and located the tin, and brought it back to her.

"Okay," she continued. "Next…"

Over the next hour, she carefully walked me through combining the ingredients for the batter, slowly mixing in the various parts until we had a richly dark colored liquid that I then carefully decanted into two circular baking dishes. I set the oven to the temperature she pointed to on the back of the tin, and then we set to work getting the filling and icing mixed up and stashed in the fridge for later.

While the cake perked along in the over, I helped her wash up the equipment we'd used. To my amazement, the kitchen remained in one piece, and by the time the buzzer on the oven went off, we'd managed to wipe down the final surface and thus eradicate the last of my earlier disaster.

I grabbed a towel and carefully pulled the two halves of the cake out of the oven, setting them on the trivets Marinette had placed on the counter. My feline sense of smell had gone into overdrive – the flavors blending in the air were the first indication that maybe I'd managed to pull off part of this project. "This smells good," I said. "At least, to me," I added, with a worried glance to Marinette.

"Oh, it smells divine," she assured me. "Now it needs to cool before we frost it."

"How long?" I asked.

"Half hour. We could shorten it if we put it into the fridge."

"Let's not rush it," I said, smiling.

"Uh oh," she said, catching the glint in my eye. "Why am I worried?"

"Don't be," I said, taking off the apron. "That just means we have time for a quick walk."

She looked at my stained costume. "Not like that, we aren't," she said.

I looked down. "Good point," I said. "Can I, uh, use your restroom?"

"Sure," she said.

I vaulted up the stairs and past Tom and Sabine, then up another flight to the bathroom. After locking the door, I stood in front of the mirror for a moment and tried hard not to laugh at the image I presented. "Plagg – claws in!"

The green wave of transformation washed over me, and Adrien appeared in the mirror, smarty dressed as always. Plagg floated up. "This is going well," he said, the sarcasm dripping from every syllable.

"It's getting there," I replied as I tossed him some Camembert. "Ready for the next round?"

"No," he said.

"Plagg – claws out!"

The green wave washed over me again, and a now perfectly normal Chat Noir appeared in the mirror.

One of the benefits of magic, my image laughed silently, is there are no dry cleaning bills.

I returned to the Bakery kitchen and raised eyebrows from Marinette. "Much better," she said.

I smiled. "Good. Do we still have time?"

Marinette flicked her eyes to the counter. While I'd been changing (as it were) she'd managed to remove the cakes from their circular prisons and put them on wire cooling racks. "Yeah," she said turning back to me.

I grabbed her by the arm and we scooted out through the side door to the kitchen. I held out my arms to her. "Now boarding," I said, smiling.

Looking somewhat askance at me, she jumped up into my waiting arms. "I thought you said walk."

"I wasn't specific about which one of us would be performing that task," I replied as I leapt up into the air.

"You and I have very different definitions of the term," she said as she tightened her grip around my shoulders.

"Clearly," I chuckled as I trotted quickly along the sides of the buildings that ringed the small park her Bakery fronted. One final leap and I was on my favorite rooftop overlooking the river and with a fabulous view of Notre Dame. Gently, I let Marinette down.

I'd done some prep work in the early hours of the morning prior to appearing at the Bakery. Light pink tissue paper streamers with just the right number of twists hung from the wrought iron railing we were next to; red and blue balloons were tied in two clusters of four to the railing, and carefully strung between them was my hand-lettered Happy Birthday! banner. All of it framed the magnificent view.

It wasn't much, but it was what a cat with no income (per se) could come up with.

"Happy Birthday, Princess," I said. "Thanks for letting me spend some of it with you."

Marinette had a wide smile and was clasping her hands to her chest. "Wow," she said appreciatively. "This is quite thoughtful."

"I'm glad you like it," I said as I unzipped my costume pocket and produced a small envelope. "These are for you," I explained as I handed them to her. "It's not much."

She slit open the envelope and removed the card; her eyes bulged out when the two tickets to the Jagged Stone concert fell out into her hand. "Chat! This has been sold out for months!" She looked at me and then back to the tickets. "And these are front row!" She looked back at me again. "How..?"

I smiled. "I have an in with Kitty Section, and they happen to be opening for Jagged," I said, hewing close to the truth, since I was the keyboard player for them. "They scored the tickets for me."

"This is absolutely amazing," she said, giving me a massive hug. "Thank you. And you'll come with me, of course."

My masked eyes widened. "Me? Uh, I assumed you take one of your friends…" I said. "Besides, I'd stick out like a—"

"You're coming and that's all there is to it," she said. "It'll be the perfect coda to the perfect birthday."

Well, that was going to be awkward. Especially since I had to be onstage with Kitty Section. As Adrien.

"Of course, Princess," I sighed, trying to fathom how I was going to pull off being in two places at once. Idly I wondered how Kitty Section would feel if a real cat stepped in on keyboards for them and then realized it might be a tad obvious who my alter-ego was if I pursued that path.

"The cake should be ready to put together and frost," Marinette said. "Ready to take the next step?"

I picked her back up and leapt to the railing, thinking about that for a moment.

"Yes," I said, answering more than just the question she had asked. "Yes, I am."