free fallin'
subject the first: marinette
Alya smiles and waves. "Hello and welcome to the Ladyblog! Today I'd like to officially introduce you to someone who has been in a few of my videos before. She is one of the most important people in my life and is, by all accounts, a normal girl. But—well, you'll see."
She snaps her fingers and the video transitions to a clip of Marinette perusing a fabric store with her utmost concentration, her face scrunched up cutely as her fingers softly trail across different fabrics.
"This is my best friend, Marinette Dupain-Cheng," Alya's voice speaks as Marinette continues to browse. "She's an aspiring fashion designer and she loves making clothes for other people. Honestly, I think half of my wardrobe is made up of her designs. Pretty much all of her wardrobe is homemade."
Cut to a cute little bakery on a street corner. "This is the bakery owned by her parents. They live on the floors above it. Their pastries are the most delicious pieces of edible heaven that I've ever had the pleasure of eating, and her parents are two of the sweetest people you could ever meet.
"This is Marinette in her natural habitat." The screen flashes black and then a messy wooden desk fills the screen, Marinette poring over the papers and fabrics cluttering it. "She spends nearly all of her free time here, designing and creating. And stressing out! Just look at her. That is not the face of a well-rested university student."
"Alya, stop filming me," Marinette speaks on screen, not even bothering to look up. Her pigtails are coming apart but she either hasn't noticed or doesn't care enough to fix them.
"Can't. Project, and all that," Alya replies from behind the camera.
Marinette exhales in exasperation and finally turns to Alya. Her large blue eyes are startling in their intensity, compounded by the dark eye bags under them. "Alya."
"Marinette." Aly'as voice is disapproving. "Look at you. You haven't slept in days and you barely remember to eat. Or drink milk." Alya's voice is teasing.
Marinette blushes a little at an inside joke not privy to the audience. "Alya! I just—I have to finish this today! It's due tomorrow, you know, and I've barely begun sewing and—" She huffs. "I don't have time. There's still so much to do—and the fitting—"
"Oh-ho, yes, the fitting." Alya sounds sly. "I'll definitely be filming that. That's gonna be a good time."
"Alya!" Marinette's face is full red now. "Don't you dare! Give me your phone!"
"No way!" The camera jitters and shakes as Alya quickly moves away and the last scene of the clip is Marinette lunging towards her.
Alya fills the screen again. "So that went well." She rolls her eyes. "She banned me from the studio after that, but this reporter has her ways." She grins wickedly.
Green blurs the screen, and then adjusts to form leaves. Alya wrestles the plant into a comfortable position with a clear view of Marinette's work space. Marinette and a tall blond boy with green eyes and a wide smile are standing next to her mannequins, looking over the clothes she's made. One is a black suit made predominantly of leather and clearly resembles a black cat. The other is a puffy dress, black on top and black-spotted red on the high-low skirt, much like a ladybug. Matching feathery masks stand tall in Marinette's fist.
"Get a load at those outfits," Alya whispers excitedly. "Some of her best work so far, I think. Aren't they gorgeous?" Then the camera zooms in on the boy. "Now get a load of him. Adrien Agreste, people. The prettiest of pretty boys."
She zooms out and falls silent as she watches Adrien and Marinette talk. They look over the clothes and point at different things, perhaps flaws. Marinette hands Adrien the black mask and her lifts it to his face to try it out. Marinette mirrors him and they grin at each other. He reaches out and tugs one of her pigtails playfully, laughing when she pouts and pokes him in the side. He immediately squeaks and flails, evidence of being very ticklish.
"They are so disgustingly cute," Alya intones, sounding appalled. "God, how do they live with themselves?"
The video fast-forwards to the two trying on the clothes, still full of pins and not completely sewn together. Adrien reappears first, looking utterly dashing in the fitted shirt and fitted pants, a long black tail trailing him. He pulls on the green vest and buttons up and just as he's reaching for the suit jacket, Marinette appears, looking fidgety and uncomfortable but no less beautiful because of it.
Alya snickers. "Look at that face, oh my god. That is the face of a mortal looking at a goddess. Oh, he's blushing, how adorable! He can't even speak. Aw, and look at Marinette, blushing just as hard and—not watching where she's going, of course, oh—"
Marinette trips on something and Adrien shakes himself out of his stupor just in time to catch her. He says something to her, smirking (though still pink), and Marinette rears back, face blazing as she glares at him and scolds. He just stands there, smiling and watching her.
"Good ole Marinette," Alya sighs. "Her clumsiness is almost a physical thing. Her luck too, though." She focuses on the two again.
Adrien slides into the suit jacket and adds the cat ears and bell, and Alya coos. Marinette ties her hair up in long red ribbons. They make quite a striking pair.
Alya whistles. "If she doesn't get a full score on this project, I'm gonna have some complaining to do."
Suddenly, Marinette turns and her eyes narrow on the plant Alya is using as cover, but obviously not very effectively, because Marinette's eyes widen in horror and she beelines towards the camera.
"Uh-oh, gotta go!" squeals Alya.
Cut to black.
"Actually, I was wrong before. This is Marinette in her natural habitat." On screen, Marinette is pacing back and forth with no signs of tiring, ranting at an incredible speed and gesturing wildly. She throws her hands up in frustration when she notices Alya's camera.
"Why are you filming this? Alya, did you not even hear me? I can't believe I lost the key to the studio! I still have so much left to do—"
Marinette's voice fades through the clip continues and Alya's voice-over steps in. "She likes to worry, but I always tell her she wouldn't be nearly so stressed if she didn't say yes to everything. Obviously, there are her projects for school, but also helping out at the bakery on weekends? Also making clothes for friends' birthdays, and helping them with their projects, and not eating or sleeping? I don't know why she does this to herself."
Marinette's voice fades back in. "—and I just—I have so many ideas for other things, but I have to finish this first, and ughhh! Alya!" She turns on the camera suddenly. "Why haven't you been taking care of yourself? Filming during the day, editing at night! And you scold me! You're gonna pass out soon, you hypocrite, so help me—"
Alya's amused voice chimes back in, "Aww, look, she cares."
"—can't even work, so let's just eat! Oh my gosh, let's watch movies and eat ice cream, we haven't done that in forever!" Marinette claps her hands, suddenly enthusiastic. "Let's just chill a little tonight and be healthy—well, not really healthy, but healthy like actually doing human things, you know?—and tomorrow we can worry about our projects! Good idea?" Marinette beams at Alya.
Alya sighs fondly and reaches out for a hug. The screen turns black and fuzzy.
"Love you, Al."
"Love you too, Mari."
The clip ends and Alya reappears on the screen, as she had in the very beginning. Her face quirks into a smile. "So that's my best friend. Mari's a force of nature, isn't she? Passionate, clumsy, thoughtful, proud. I'm so lucky and honored to know her so well and for so long. I hope you enjoyed this video! If you see Mari on campus, don't hesitate to say hi, she'll love it. But don't ask her to make clothes for you. Only I get to do that." Alya levels a dark look at the camera, then grins brightly and waves. "Au revoir!"
notes: i'm on a roll!...aaaaaaand severely procrastinating UGH PHYSICS
ok i realize now that this chapter was kind of just another adrinette chap except from alya's pov lol. i was gonna include the scene of mari and adrien actually modeling the finished clothes for class but i thought the fitting would be cuter. also the focus was not meant to be adrinette. it was supposed to be alya's choice of mari as the subject of her video as well as their friendship. i hope that came across somewhat. lemme know what you think! this is experimental for me; describing a video is actually pretty hard. i don't think it flows very well but. well. i tried. sorry no new characters were introduced this time, i considered including a scene of chloe being chloe and mari telling her off but couldn't really fit it in and i think i'll just intro chloe a different way later. :D
again, lemme know what you think and what you'd like to see! i hope you enjoyed! see you next time!
edit: omg i can't believe i forgot to include these! here they are now for all the reviews from the first 3 chapters:
Nikita MLFangirl thedeathwidow thanks for your reviews! i took them into account decided to indeed continue the story in the same world. :D i hope you're enjoying it!
MakeItPopShift i'm glad you're enjoying the story, thanks for your comments! :D yeah pokemon go is actually getting to quite problematic. it's cool new tech, augmented reality and all that but, well, it's still staring at a screen. lol. wow you're like student president, how impressive! kudos to you! and i really hope this doesn't offend you, but objectively speaking, your friend doesn't sound much like a friend at all. :( if she gives you bad days often enough to pinpoint her as a distinct reason then she's really not a very good friend. in my case, i love my friends a lot and usually my days become good thanks to them. i think the reason i had such a bad day was because my friends were the source of my discomfort and that doesn't happen a lot. your friend, however, just sounds kind of thoughtless and inconsiderate. :/ i hope she does better for you. thanks again for your support! i hope you continue to enjoy the story!
the primrose path thanks! yeah writing is an outlet for me and it was pretty cathartic to write a happy end to mari's bad day, so i felt better too. :) aww oyu're too sweet, thank you! i'm so glad you're enjoying the story; tbh characterization has always been an insecurity of mine, i'm not really sure if i do it well at all, so your words mean so much to me, thank you! also YES LAHIFFE. YUUUUUS. SO MUCH GOOD. thanks again, and i hope future chapters don't disappoint!
© Copyright 2016 by The Siege
