THIS EPISODE IS ALSO KNOWN AS "THE REVEAL: PART 1"
PROLOGUE
WOW, THIS ISN'T A JOKE. YOU'RE ACTUALLY DOING THIS, AREN'T YOU?
{No one believed a frog could be an astronaut... but that didn't matter... the frog was going to prove them wrong...}
...TO BE CONTINUED…
Miraculous Migraine
Episode 19: Obviously Oblivious Oafs
By: I Write Big
When it comes to love, people like to think that there's this thing called destiny. They like to think that there's some invisible hand or natural way of the Universe guiding and pushing things into place so, no matter what, two souls who are destined for each other fall in love.
Well, the Universe got the hell out of here over 20 chapters ago, so...
How about we believe in the fundamental goodness of mankind instead?
Oh fuck, this is not going to end well.
The girl awoke not in a bed but on an elevator. Her head was spinning and her body was sore. Despite the dizziness, her mind managed to gather basic facts. There was a polka-dotted tube of lipstick in her hand, there was a doodle on the wall of a smartphone pointing at a turtle, and, for some crazy reason, she was clad in red polka-dotted spandex.
"GAAAH! WHY AM I NOT WEARING UNDERWEAR?!" she cried, covering the more intimate parts of her skin-tight onesie.
"Somebody say something about a naked girl?" asked another voice. The girl spun around and saw a boy slumped in the corner. He was dressed, strangely enough, like a black cat. "What? Huh? Hold on, why am I wearing so much leather? Is this a tail?"
"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!" the girl screeched.
"I-I, uh..." The boy scratched his weird pointy cat ears with a lost look. "I don't know. Who are you?"
The girl at first didn't believe him, but then suddenly realized she was also drawing a blank on her own name. "I don't know who I am either," she said. "What's going on? Who are we?"
"Well, based on our costumes, we're either cosplayers, furries, or we're into some really kinky interspecies roleplaying sex. I'm hoping it's the last one."
At this moment, both the boy's ring and the girl's earrings started to beep. Both teens had the same thought at the same time.
"BOMB!"
They frantically tried to tear off their jewelry. Before they could, both of their costumes vanished in a flourish of red and a blast of black, leaving them in what appeared to be casual clothes.
"Underwear! Finally!" the girl cheered, hugging her thighs.
"Look!" The boy pointed at the light from their costumes. The glittery substance gathered in the air and morphed into these bulbous rat-bug creatures. The things groggily rose, rubbing their bellies.
"So hungry," they moaned.
"GAH!" the girl screamed. "THEY TALK! AND THEY'RE GOING TO EAT US!"
"AAAH!" the boy screamed and kicked at the monsters. They phased right through his foot as if they were… "GHOSTS!"
The elevator lurched and shuddered. Something heavy had landed on the roof and was now punching dents into the metal over their heads.
"VELOCIRAPTOR!" the boy screamed. The teens scrambled to the elevator doors and tried to pry them open, but they wouldn't budge.
The ghosts curiously watched the chaos unfold. "Should we help them?" asked the red ghost.
"Depends," the black ghost replied. "As a ghost, can I eat a velociraptor?"
"I don't remember what a velociraptor is and I feel like we shouldn't stay to find out."
The ghosts floated over to the button wall and phased into it. A few short circuits later, the doors opened. The teens tumbled out seconds before the elevator roof crashed open. A thick cloud of dust and debris filled the elevator, blocking anyone from seeing whatever creature had just fallen in.
"EAT HIM, NOT ME!" The girl grabbed the boy and lifted him over her head. Ding! The elevator doors shut, saving them from their pursuer.
"Were you just about to throw me at the raptor so you could escape?" the boy asked.
"No..." The girl put the boy down and dusted him off, hiding her guilty smile. She quickly ran for a door. "Race you to the exit!"
Down the emergency staircase they ran, the ghosts close behind, until they reached the ground floor. But they were shocked to find the lobby of whatever building this was was in utter ruin. Mountains of shrapnel and steel rebar cluttered the doors, there was no way out.
"WE'RE TRAPPED! GAAH!" the girl screamed. "HELP! ANYBODY! HEEEEELP!"
"Wow, you're kind of a coward," the boy remarked, not sounding the least bit worried.
"HOW ARE YOU SO CALM?! A RAPTOR IS HUNTING US!"
"Well, we don't actually know it's a raptor. I just sort of said that. For all we know it could be a tiger."
"AND THAT'S BETTER?!"
WHAM!
The elevator doors behind them bulged. Something was trying to get out. Something strong. Tiger strong.
"THE TIGER-RAPTOR FOUND US!" the girl screamed. She bolted into the girl's bathroom and locked the door behind her.
"Hey! Let me in!" she heard the boy say.
"No! Do what boys do best in horror movies and sacrifice yourself so that the girl can live!"
The red ghost phased through the door with an annoyed look and unlocked the door. The boy slipped inside. He was not amused.
"Uh, hooray, way to break gender biases?" the girl offered.
"Enough with your drama!" the black ghost bellowed. He eyed the boy with hunger. "My belly is empty and you smell tasty, human." With a ferocious snarl, the black ghost tackled the boy and burrowed under his shirt. The boy flailed and yelled but he couldn't stop the voracious specter.
"GAAAH!" the girl shrieked. The red ghost floated towards her, drool spilling out of her impossibly wide mouth.
"So hungry..." the thing moaned.
Then the black ghost popped out of the boy. In his phantasmal teeth was a wedge of cheese! "False alarm," the ghost said. "I wasn't craving human flesh, just the food in his pocket."
"Are you sure?" the red ghost asked, the girl already halfway down her gullet.
"Totally. This cheese stuff kicks ass."
The red ghost spat out the girl and asked, "What food you got?"
Traumatized and now knowing what the inside of a stomach looked like, the girl searched her pockets and her purse until she found a polka-dotted macaron. The ghost inhaled it.
"Mmm," she said. "Oh yeah, way better than human flesh. No bones that get stuck in my teeth or gushy blood that makes me feel bloated."
As the horrific spirits feasted, the dripping girl huddled against the petrified boy and whimpered, "I'm sorry I tried to leave you behind to die. We don't leave each other's sides again. Deal?"
"Deal," he whimpered back.
And as the two held each other in fear, the girl thought of something. "Wait! Our pockets. We can figure out who we are from our belongings." She combed her purse again. "Let's see, lip gloss, a lot of macarons, is this a mustache? Am I a crossdresser?"
The boy considered her looks for a moment, then shrugged. "I think you could pass for a boy."
"Thank you...?" She raised an eyebrow at him for a second, then resumed digging. "Aha! My ID! My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng," she read.
Excited, the boy searched his pockets and found his ID too. "Adrien Agreste. Why is my ID made of solid gold and why does it say 'organ receiver?' Shouldn't it say donor?"
"PHONE!" Marinette exclaimed, pulling out her smartphone. "I can call Animal Control and maybe the Ghostbusters!" Before she could dial, there was a crash out in the hall. "Oh no, the tiger-raptor," Marinette whispered.
They all ducked into a stall and climbed onto the toilet just before the bathroom door burst open. Whatever was stalking them crept closer, its breath ragged and inhuman. The stall on the far end of the room was flung open, then the next and the next and the next, slowly heading down the row towards their hiding spot.
"It's going to find us," Adrien hissed. "We have to get out of here!"
Marinette searched their surroundings, thinking as quickly as she could. Her sights landed on something in particular and a bright idea presented itself.
The tiger-raptor arrived at their stall and bashed the door open. The first thing it saw was the open ventilation shaft. The second thing it saw was the stall's tampon dispenser cracked open like an egg. Its contents were stuff inside the toilet which quivered with mounting water pressure.
"Uh oh," the tiger-raptor said.
In the ventilation shaft:
Adrien and Marinette crawled away frantically with the ghosts in tow. Behind them, they heard a wet explosion followed by a disgusted, "NOOOO!"
"You hear that?" Adrien asked. "The tiger-raptor can speak. It's learning!"
"Clever girl. We need to find dinosaur-repellent or a gun or something," Marinette replied.
They reached another ventilation cover which Adrien removed. They were in another stairwell. Quiet as mice, they climbed out of the shaft. At least, they were quiet as mice until Marinette's toe caught on something and she belly-flopped onto Adrien. The boy quickly recovered.
"Ow. Are you okay, Marinette?"
She didn't respond. She only kept laying on top of his abs, which Adrien just now noticed were exceptionally chiseled.
"Marinette?"
He lifted her and looked into the eyes of a corpse!
"AAAAH! She's dead! How?!"
"Fright," the red ghost suggested. "The sheer terror of the situation must've stopped her pathetic human heart. Or maybe my saliva is toxic, I don't know, I'm not a doctor."
"Give her CPR, human!" the black ghost said.
What little of Adrien's memory there was still held the medical basics. He flipped Marinette over and began administering chest compressions. "Come on, Marinette, don't give up on me!" He leaned down and blew into her mouth. As soon as his lips touched hers, she instantly came back to life. Unfortunately, her resurrection wasn't quick enough for Adrien to notice. He gave her another breath and killed her.
This cycle went on for a bit.
"She's not breathing!" Adrien wailed after killing Marinette for the eighteenth time.
"Hold on," said the red ghost. "I got an idea." She floated to Marinette's body and, to everyone's surprise, melted into her skin. A few seconds later Marinette's eyes shot open and she gasped back to life. The red ghost popped out.
"Marinette, you're alive!" Adrien cheered. "How did you do that, ghost?"
"Eh, I figured since we're ghosts I could possess her and force her heart to start," the ghost said with a shrug. "And if it didn't work, then I'd have my own meat puppet to haunt you with. Win-win."
"STOP TOUCHING ME!" Marinette shrieked and scrambled away from Adrien.
"Marinette, what's—"
"Stay back! I don't know what the hell is going on, but every time you touched me I died!"
Adrien gasped. "You did?"
"From now on, a six-foot distance at all times, Grim Reaper!"
Finding a mop nearby, Marinette kept the wooden pole pointed at Adrien like a sword as they made their way upstairs to a random floor filled with cubicles. They checked their phones, but they were locked.
"Great," Adrien groaned. "What do we do now?"
"Wait a minute… " Another bright idea presented itself to Marinette. She breathed heavily on her phone. The foggy outline of the secret unlocking pattern appeared on the screen.
"Whoa!" Adrien said. "You're so clever, Marinette. Who should we call for help?"
"I guess… our parents?"
Adrien unlocked his phone and swiped down his contacts until he saw the name 'Agreste' next to the face of a vampire. "This must be my dad!" He dialed, but it went straight to voicemail.
"Hi there," said a pre-recorded chuckling voice. "Gabe can't come to the phone right now because I stole it and hid the device somewhere in this giant mansion. If you want your phone back, Gabe, you'll have to follow a series of increasingly complicated riddles. First, what's black and blue and bleeding out under Toothless' water bowl? HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH! Leave a message after the beep."
Beep.
"He's not picking up," Adrien murmured.
Marinette swiped down her contacts until she found a woman named 'Sabine Cheng.' She dialed.
"Marinette? Are you okay?" the distraught woman who picked up said.
"Yes, lady who may or may not be my mother, I am fine," she replied.
"Thank goodness. The news said Ladybug and Chat Noir were battling at Montparnasse Tower where you and your class were taking your field trip today, but they vanished a while ago and nobody knows where they went. Do you need us to come over there and fix things?"
"Ladybug and Chat Noir? Battling?" Marinette muttered. "Wait, did you say 'fix things?'"
"Of course, sweetie, your dad and I may be retired but we still know how to be supervillains. We can handle a little scrappy fight."
"MY PARENTS ARE SUPERVILLAINS?!"
Adrien's voice cut in. "Uh, that sounds interesting, but, Marinette, you might want to see this."
Marinette turned and saw he was pointing at something on the wall. The sight of it made her jaw drop.
"Of course we're supervillains, honey," Sabine prattled on. "Don't you remember? We had that emotional heart to heart and you said you had your own big secret that you weren't quite ready to tell us an—"
"I'll call you back." Marinette hanged up. What Adrien had found was a giant movie poster advertising an upcoming animated film about Ladybug and Chat Noir. The characters were dressed in the same exact weird costumes they had been wearing on the elevator. They stood with their backs pressed against each other like they were ready to fight. Marinette had a pretty good idea what was that big secret she wasn't ready to tell her parents.
"I'm a superhero?" Adrien whispered in awe.
"And I'm a supervillain!" Marinette gasped. "That must mean I'm your..."
"Sworn enemy!"
"That must be what my mom meant about us battling. It makes perfect sense. Why else would I have thousands of photos of you on my phone? I'm clearly stalking you, looking for my opportunity to strike."
"It makes total sense," Adrien agreed. "You're a coward who puts other people's lives at risk to save your own, you come up with slippery escape plans on the fly, you know sneaky techniques for breaking into other people's phones, and you're the daughter of two supervillains. You must be a bad guy. And all these photos I have of you on my phone in your villain costume must be study material for me to find your weakness. I must've hidden the images in the folder labeled PORN to throw off the scent in case you ever hacked in with your dastardly ways."
"And that's why your touch kills me! We must be cosmic opposites or something, like light and dark!"
The teens glared daggers at each other. They took battle-ready positions. Marinette armed herself with a pair of staplers. Adrien raised a computer like a shield.
"Humans, we figured it out!" the red ghost said as both phantoms flew between them.
"So did we," Marinette seethed.
"She's obviously my nemesis who fights for her own dark selfish gain," Adrien sneered back. "And I'm the force of justice standing in her way."
"Oh," said the red ghost. "Really? We could've sworn you guys loved each other and were both heroes called Ladybug and Chat Noir and you work together to defend Paris from the evil Akumas of Hawkmoth and that we're actually not ghosts but the metaphysical concepts of Creation and Destruction made incarnate who bestow your superpowers upon you."
"Not even close," Marinette said and jabbed a stapler at the red ghost, "You are clearly my ladybug-themed henchman."
"And whatever is chasing us is probably your latest evil plan gone wrong, Ladybug," Adrien added.
"No doubt because of you and your meddling, Chat Noir!" she j'accused. "Whatever my diabolical plan was, you won't stop me. Henchman, destroy!"
"Ladybug!" the red ghost shouted like it was her pokémon name and bared her fangs at Adrien.
"Sidekick, defend!" Adrien ordered the black ghost.
The black ghost hesitated, still unconvinced about this entire henchman-sidekick thing. "Okay, can I be frank with you guys?"
"I don't see how changing your name is gonna help," Marinette replied.
"Can I still be Adrien?" asked Adrien.
"Shh," the red ghost shushed, "let Frank speak."
The black ghost groaned and rubbed his head. "Screw you guys," he said. "I'm outta here. I'm going to be my own ghost and torment a cheese shop." And he floated out the window and started spooking every human he came across.
Completely alone, Adrien braced himself for the battle of his life. He hurled the computer at the villains, but the red ghost caught the thing in her gaping maw and swallowed it whole. She dove at Adrien. He dodge-rolled out of the way. Marinette bellowed a mighty war cry and unleashed a volley of staples. Protecting himself from the tiny bullets with his arms, Adrien tackled Marinette and put her in a headlock.
"Give up, villain!" he said.
"Never! Henchman, consume!"
"Ladybug!" the red ghost growled and opened wide to take a bite out of Adrien.
Ding!
Everyone glanced at the elevator and the doors slid open.
"Ladybug, Chat Noir, where are you?" a familiar pair of ruthless voices asked from within. Out stepped the tiger-raptor. Only it wasn't a tiger-raptor, it was a purple void shimmering in the shape of a humanoid figure with a freaking Mega Man blaster arm!
Adrien, Marinette, and the red ghost eeped and hid behind a filing cabinet.
"What's the matter? Don't you remember your old pal Oblivio?" the walking space anomaly asked, beginning to scour the cubicles. "Of course they don't, we shot them with our memory-erasing blaster, remember?" Oblivio asked themself. "Yes, we know that! We were trying to be scary! Quit wrecking our flow!" they shouted at themselves. "It's called constructive criticism. Learn to take it."
As Oblivio continued to argue with themself, Marinette whispered to Adrien, "Listen, this is a classic Frankenstein's monster turning on its creator scenario. Even though we clearly despise one another and have a long history of clashes so intense that they're making a movie about our neverending war, we need to set aside our differences and work together to get out of this alive. What do you say?"
Adrien didn't like the idea. He grimaced at the window through which Frank had abandoned him. There really wasn't a choice. "As much as it goes against the hero code, just this once, Ladybug and Chat Noir will team up. What's the plan?"
"Plan? Me?"
"You're the evil mastermind, Marinette. You've got to have something up your sleeve. Just imagine you're running from the police."
Summoning what she assumed was her nefarious thinking power of doom, Marinette scanned the nearest desk and saw a coffee mug… a pad of sticky notes… and a roll of tape. For the third time that day, a bright idea came to her. From the depths of her throat rattled a sinister chuckle. "Hehehehehehe... Give me your phone."
"My Astruc," Adrien shivered. "Your evil laugh is soul chilling."
Meanwhile, Oblivio searched for them, tossing desks and cubicle walls aside. "Come out, come out, wherever you are," they said. "Are we trying to be scary again? Yes! Oh, well, it's not working. SHUT UP! WHY DO YOU ALWAYS DO THIS?!"
Their fight was interrupted by the rumbling of a phone!
"Aha!" Oblivio stormed towards the noise. "You should've remembered to silence your—" Oblivio turned the corner and found no one. There was just a lone sticky note on the floor that had the message 'Look Up.' Oblivio did. Directly over their head was a filing cabinet, barely held to the ceiling with a mass of sticky notes.
"Oh fuck."
The sticky notes gave and the filing cabinet fell. It phased through Oblivio but crashed through the floor. It kept going, falling through floor after floor, and Oblivio fell with it. After the thing's cries grew distant, Adrien and Marinette poked out of their hiding spot.
"Wow," Adrien said, impressed. "You really are a criminal genius."
"Ladybug!" the red ghost concurred.
Marinette took a proud pose. "Ha! Oblivio won't be back anytime soon. They're no match for my evil brilliance."
As she basked in her victory, Adrien felt a thud in his chest and realized something he'd forgotten about himself. "Oh no," he muttered. "I think smart girls of action are sexy."
Unfortunately, Marinette overheard him and a vile grin spread across her lips.
Meanwhile on the streets of Paris:
The black ghost moaned and groaned like the undead. "OOOoooOOooOOOO! I am a ghost! Fear me, puny humans!" The terrified masses of Parisians fled in terror of him. "I don't know my own name but I do know that I cannot be put to rest unless I have cheese! Cheese! MORE CHEESE! OOGITY-BOOGITY!"
"Ah! There's something strange in the neighborhood!" screamed one person.
"Who are we gonna call?" screamed another.
Suddenly, a white hearse peeled around the corner in hot pursuit of the black ghost. The passenger-side door, which had a cartoony image of a beret-wearing ghost being crossed out, opened and the rider in the chair leaned out. They fired their proton pack at the phantom.
"French Ghostbusters, motherfucker!"
Back in the building:
"No! Stay back, you fiend!" Adrien covered his crotch and shrunk away from Marinette as if the mere sight of her was painful.
"What's the matter, hero?" Marinette snickered as she malevolently jiggled her hips at him. "Are you being seduced by evil?"
"Get away, succubus!"
"Maybe the PORN folder isn't a red herring, after all. Maybe you do like me."
"You'll never turn me to the dark side, Ladybug! No matter how beautiful you are!"
Marinette froze. Beautiful. That word left an unexpectedly familiar warmth in her chest. It was like internal bleeding. Except nice. "You think I'm b-b-b—" She couldn't say it. With every attempt, she could've sworn her teeth were becoming bigger and sharper. Adrien saw his opportunity and got in her face.
"That's right, you're Beautiful with a capital B!" he spat. Now it was Marinette who shrunk away as Adrien advanced. "Not only that, but you're bright and resourceful. I can't remember anything before an hour ago, but I think it's safe to say I've never met someone so quick-witted."
"Stop it," she weakly protested as if his compliments were sapping her of her strength.
"You have to be the smartest, most gorgeous girl I've ever met. If you were a good guy, who knows, maybe we'd be a thing."
Not willing to give up, Marinette grabbed Adrien by the collar and shoved him against a wall. "And where's the fun in that?" she barked. "Isn't it more exciting that I'm a villain? Doesn't the forbidden nature of your feelings make me that more tantalizing? Just the thought of me corrupting you, me tearing down the heroic Chat Noir's moral compass gets me hot!"
Adrien grabbed her collar too. "No! I believe in justice! I won't waver! It is you who will fall for me!"
"Like I'd ever fall in love with you! Boy scout!"
"Temptress!"
Glaring into each other's eyes, they both raised their fists!
"Do-Gooder!"
"Do-Badder!"
Both fists cocked back for punches aimed at each other's jaws!
"Blonde!"
"Bluenette!"
The fist flew forward like torpedoes! And missed! The fists sailed past the jaws and instead grabbed the back of their opponent's heads. They pulled each other into a furious kiss.
Less than three minutes later:
Adrien and Marinette laid next to each other, naked, sweaty, flushed, and blissfully out of breath on the makeshift bed of desks and office supplies. Both stared in wide-eyed wonder through their tangled hair at the ceiling.
"...Wow..." Marinette said as most do after somebody just rocked their world. "How did mouth-to-mouth kill me but I managed to survive that?"
"I don't know," Adrien replied as shellshocked as most boys are after they've experienced the endgame of puberty for the first time. "But, despite being adversaries, I think we might have a thing for each other."
Marinette nodded. "We should double-check."
Less than three more minutes later:
"Mmmmm, y'up, we definitely have a thing for each other," Marinette purred, cuddling against Adrien with a satisfied look. "Triple-check?"
"I need a second," Adrien wheezed, exhausted.
Meanwhile:
Oblivio raged on the roof.
"Where are you, Ladybug and Chat Noir?!" they roared. "We searched every floor from top to bottom. Actually we wouldn't say we searched every room thoroughly. We gave a couple of floors a cursory glance. LET US VENT, DAMMIT! SCREW THIS! WE'RE MAKING THEM COME TO US!"
Oblivio aimed their blaster at the sky and fired a continuous beam. The laser gathered in a ball and began to expand and expand until the mass became wider than any building in the entirety of Paris!
"Ladybug and Chat Noir! Show yourselves or we shall erase the minds of everyone in the city!" Oblivio declared. "Including us?" They asked themself. "No, of course not us! You have 10 seconds to comply!"
"Make that 10 minutes," Hawkmoth ordered his Akuma. "I still need to find my phone." He inspected Duusu's second riddle that he got from the printer hidden under Toothless' water bowl. It had been bleeding ink toner. "Let's see… 'I'm covered with keys but the only locks they open are people's hearts. What am I?' The fuck does that mean?"
Downstairs:
"LADYBUG!" the red ghost sputtered, snapping both nude teens out of their post-triple-check spooning sesh—Adrien had been the little spoon. The specter held up Marinette's phone which had the news app open. On the screen were several clips from around the city of people not knowing how to do their job.
There was a cop standing in the center of a cluttered traffic intersection, clueless on how to clear up this mess.
"HEY!" an angry driver said. "Are you going to do something or not?!"
"Uh…" the cop, completely lost, drew his gun and fired at the car.
There was a British-looking rockstar standing outside a plane, unsure how to get on.
"Last call for the flight to London," called a flight attendant. "Mr. Stone, do you have a ticket or not?"
"What the bloody hell is a ticket?" Mr. Stone asked. The plane left without him.
There was some news lady staring blankly at the camera.
"Nadia, you're on the air!" someone offscreen said.
"No, I'm not. I'm on a chair," Nadia replied.
"Just read out loud the paper in front of you."
"What's paper?"
"UGH! Come on! This is, like, the easiest overpaid job in the world! A child could do this! You know what." Hands pulled Nadia out of frame and dropped a child in her place.
"Hi there!" the kid said. "I'm Manon and it's time to get your news on! Since naptime a stupid meany face called Oblivio has been making people forget important stuff like cutting the crust off those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I like to burn. Ladybug and Chat Noir have been fighting the meany face in the um, uh," she squinted at the paper, "Mont… Mont… Mont-parfait Tower? Let's go to a clip."
The feed switched to a previous recording of Nadia when she still had her memories. She was in a newschopper, commentating over Ladybug and Chat Noir's fight with Oblivio on the building's roof. Ladybug was blocking Oblivio's memory-erasing blasts with what looked like a spinning shield.
"—get it through your thick skull! Now make yourself useful!" Ladybug shouted and then chucked Chat Noir at Oblivio.
"Whoa," Adrien remarked as he zipped up his pants. "You really are evil."
"Yeah," Marinette chuckled proudly as she clipped on her bra.
Adrien's past self landed ungracefully at Oblivio's feet and got a blast to the chest.
"Ugh! You suck!" Ladybug swore. She lassoed Chat Noir and flung him into the roof's elevator. She quickly uncapped something and doodled on the elevator walls before a blast bounced off a wall and hit her too. The sight of her past self's actions brought a faint glimmer of memory back to Marinette.
"The drawing!" she said. "I drew myself a message! A turtle!"
She swiped down her contacts again until she found a number that didn't have a name or a headshot. There was only the picture of a turtle.
"Yes! Criminal mastermind strikes again." She dialed. After a few rings, a man's terrified voice answered on speakerphone.
"H-Hello, Marinette?" His fear pleased the girl.
"Turtle Henchman, I have a task for you," she declared with great authority. "Tell me how to transform into Ladybug."
"Henchman? Me henchman now? How you forget how to—"
"(You dare talk back to your Master?!)" Marinette howled in what was a very convincing impression of an enraged Dark Lord. Adrien could've sworn her eyes flickered red for a second.
"No! Me good! Me good! Don't hurt me!" the Turtle Henchman pleaded pathetically. "Me tell you. You transform with words, 'Tikki, spots on,' and Tikki turns you into Ladybug."
"Tikki!" Tikki said, delighted with her new pokémon name.
Marinette grinned. She now had the key to her villainous powers again. Victory was hers! She spared a glance at Adrien, still clueless about his abilities. As long as he never figured out how to transform back into Chat Noir, he'd never be able to stop her. Marinette should've been relishing the power she had over him, but instead... she felt bad for him.
She sighed. "And what about Adrien?"
"Adrien?! Wait, you know each other's ident—"
"(DO NOT QUESTION ME!)"
"Yes! Yes! Me sorry! He say, 'Plagg, claws out,' and Plagg turns him into Chat Noir."
"Plagg? That must be the black ghost."
"Yes, yes, listen, you two cannot know each other's ident—" The battery died, cutting the Turtle Henchman off.
"Oh well, I'm sure he had nothing important left to say," Marinette shrugged. "Tikki, spots on!" In a flourish of red she became Ladybug. "Haha! Yes! I can feel my wicked power returning! The great and terrible Ladybug is back, baby! Cower before my wrath!"
She pointed her yo-yo with every intention of shooting lightning bolts. Instead, the device popped open, revealing a screen.
"Ooh! An FAQ? That's handy. Let's see… 'powers, super agility, super strength, Emergency Way To Quit Being Ladybug As Many Times As Needed?' Why the hell would I ever want to give up my powers? Delete that. What's this? 'One-time special ability: Lucky Charm?'"
At her words, her yo-yo radiated with magical ladybugs and a polka-dotted teapot dropped to the floor.
"I see..." Ladybug cackled, picking up the teapot. "I must've designed this yo-yo to arm myself with the tools I need to win. This teapot will be my ultimate weapon! MUAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAH!"
As she laughed evilly, Adrien regarded her with an uncertain look.
"Why did you do that?" he asked.
"Every villain laughs like a maniac. It's their thing. Really gets the blood pumping."
"No, why did you figure out how to make me Chat Noir again? You didn't have to help me."
"And what?" Ladybug replied nonchalantly, looking away with her arms folded. "Just beat you when you can't fight back? That's no way to win. I want to defeat you, not bully you."
She felt a hand on her shoulder. Adrien smiled kindly at her. "I think I know why I fell in love with you. You may be a bad guy, Marinette, but you're a good person. I'll help you."
Ladybug smiled warmly back as he armed himself with a ruler. His unfaltering bravery and determination to face this trial by her side made her heart flutter. She took the ruler away. "No, you have to stay here. It's not safe without your powers. And besides… I think I'm figuring out why I fell in love with you too." She held his hand and asked with a lecherous smirk, "You're good for a quick quadruple-check, right?"
"Oh definitely," Adrien said and ripped off his shirt. "Keep the mask on."
Meanwhile, at a café:
One of the French Ghostbusters passed the black ghost a cup of tea and a wedge of cheese.
"So you see, little guy," the Ghostbuster said, "you don't need to haunt anybody. Your spirit may be trapped in the physical plane but, as a ghost, you have abilities that people could only dream of and you should use those abilities to help those in need. And who knows, that one good deed might be your unfinished business that needs doing so you can finally pass on to the other side."
The rest of the French Ghostbusters at the table nodded sagely.
The black ghost sipped his tea and nibbled his cheese, reflecting on the wise words. "Wow, I never thought about it like that. I can't remember who I was when I was alive, but I feel like I was meandering around, pretending I had a big master plan when in actuality I was barely existing without any clue what I was doing with my life."
"Well, now you have a second chance," said French Bill Murray. "What are you going to do with it?"
The black ghost craned his head up at the top of the office building where the gargantuan memory-erasing ball waited. He finished his food and said, "I'm going to save the world."
To the righteous applause of the French Ghostbusters, he took off.
On the rooftop:
Ladybug wandered onto the top floor, her teapot under her arm and her nose in her FAQ.
"There she is, Oblivio!" Hawkmoth said, victoriously shaking Duusu's third riddle which he had found in Adrien's piano. "And a good thing too, because I have no idea what 'a forgotten repository of money and noxious gas' means. These riddles are just getting too complicated. Erase her mind completely and take her Miraculous!"
Oblivio took careful aim and fired!
They missed. By, like, ten feet.
"What the fuck?!" Oblivio said. They unleashed a maelstrom of blasts at Ladybug. Every shot missed.
"Oh my Astruc, I forgot about this bullshit power," Hawkmoth groaned.
"'Ultimate Luck,'" Ladybug read, unaware of the hail of blaster fire around her. "'Passive ability. Things will generally go your way. Almost nobody can shoot you and you can fall from any height without injury.' Huh." She noticed Oblivio and the constantly missing shots for the first time. "Well, that's bullshit."
"Hurry, Oblivio!" Hawkmoth ordered. "Bounce your shots off reflective surfaces. It's the only way to hit Ladybug!"
Oblivio aimed at some glass and fired. The blast bounced and very nearly struck Ladybug. She scrambled away, using her newly discovered super agility to evade with nimble flips and cartwheels.
"Woohoo! This is fun! I feel like I can fly!"
She ran out of rooftop.
"I CAN'T FLY!" she screamed as she plummeted. Desperate, Ladybug flicked her yo-yo and luckily caught a pylon. She swung along many windows of the building. "I got everything under control!" she blabbed as she passed Adrien's floor.
But the boy wasn't convinced. She needed his help. As a hero, he had a duty to protect everyone, including villains. He searched his surroundings for a weapon and his sights landed on a stack of cardboard boxes.
On the roof, Ladybug didn't know how to stop swinging. So, instead of loosening her yo-yo at the apex of her swing and landing on the roof like a badass, she swung past the roof and sailed straight into the air, around the memory ball, past the Pink Devil and Timetagger's hoverboard joust, and went so high that a passing satellite mistook her for a UFO. She fell back down and came to a sudden stop inches from the roof.
"Am I floating on nothing right now?" she asked Oblivio. "How do I get down?"
"Hell if we know," Oblivio replied and aimed at the nearest glass.
Ladybug flailed her arms and legs like a swimmer but she stayed in place, a floating duck. Suddenly, a wad of tape phased through Oblivio and hit Ladybug. At its touch, Ladybug dropped to the ground. Oblivio whirled around and saw Adrien, disguised in cardboard armor.
Hawkmoth gasped! "It's Cardboard Girl! I thought she retired. Disarm her quickly, Oblivio, she has a flamethrower!"
Oblivio blasted Cardboard Girl and easily knocked the cardboard tube sword out of their hands.
"Well, I had no backup plan," Adrien said and ran away.
Before he could get blasted in the back, a yo-yo lassoed around him and pulled the boy behind the safety of some air conditioners. As he and Ladybug recovered, a familiar face appeared.
"Fear not, humans, I have returned," proclaimed the black ghost.
"Plagg?" Adrien gasped.
"Pl-agg..." Plagg sounded out the name. "Yes, that feels right. I am Plagg and I have seen the errors of my ways. Thanks to my new friends, I now know that it's okay if I don't have a plan. I don't need some grand scheme to come together for my life to make sense or have meaning. What matters are the people around me and what I can do to better the lives of the unfortunate. From this day forth, I will not rest, I will not laze about, I will dedicate my afterlife to others—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, Plagg, claws out!" In a blast of black, Adrien became Chat Noir!
The dynamic duo had little time to celebrate as Oblivio found them and opened fire again. Spinning her yo-yo into an impenetrable shield, Ladybug protected Chat Noir as he read his FAQ.
"Let's see, 'enhanced feline senses, cat-like reflexes, chronic hairballs, 9 lives?' That's cool. Oh man, I already used them all. Huh, 'How To Switch Miraculouses With Other Wielders Even If One Has Already Quit?' Oddly specific and I have no idea what's a Miraculous. And 'one-time special ability: Cataclysm.'"
"NO!" Ladybug tried to stop him, but it was too late. Ultimate Destruction coursed through his hand and disintegrated his battle staff.
"Whoops."
"UGH! How are you my sworn enemy?!"
"Sorry, Ladybug, you got any more evil plans?"
Ladybug searched their surroundings, digging deep into her villainous mind which had no doubt been used to hold the world hostage with a death ray on more than one occasion. She considered the polka-dotted teapot… Oblivio's blaster… Chat Noir…
Then she got an idea. An evil idea. Ladybug had a wonderful, evil idea.
"Chat Noir," she said, "would you be kind enough to throw yourself at the raptor for me so I can escape?"
Chat Noir blinked. "Are you being serious or are you asking me to distract them in a cutesy callback way?"
"Little of both." She grinned and shoved him out in the open. Eager to strike the easy prey, Oblivio fired at Chat Noir who frantically fled on all fours. No longer their target, Ladybug charged at Oblivio and dove in front of them, pointing the teapot at the monster. Oblivio fired!
"What? Where am I? Who am I?"
Ladybug glanced down at the source of this new snooty high-class voice and saw it came from the teapot.
"I can't remember what I am anymore!" cried the teapot. With every word, the object's lid opened and closed like a mouth.
"Uh..." Ladybug turned to Oblivio. They shrugged back. "You are… a piranha...?" she said.
The teapot stared at her. "Oh, that makes sense. Thank you, young lady." Then the teapot's lid bit at Ladybug like it had rows of fangs.
"Perfect." Ladybug smirked and chucked the piranha-teapot at Oblivio. The ravenous creature latched onto their blaster-arm and chowed down.
"NO! AH! HELP!"
In the crunch of metal, a black butterfly fluttered out. "What the fuck…?" Ladybug muttered. She grabbed the insect and consulted her FAQ. "Oh, here we go, 'Purifying Akumas and Casting Miraculous Ladybug.'" Following the instructions, she de-evilized the insect. Oblivio was swallowed by bubbling darkness and separated into a boy and a girl.
"Jeez, you create monsters out of harmless butterflies and innocent civilians?" Chat Noir remarked. "You are super evil."
"You think that's evil? With Miraculous Ladybug, I can magically put the world back to the way it was before any of this happened. No consequences to any of my actions. I am the Ultimate Evil Bitch, bitch! MUAHAHAHAHA(HAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAAHA—)"
Chat Noir took her hand, cutting her malevolent laugh short. "Maybe. But I think you'd make a pretty awesome hero."
Ladybug smiled back, the red in her eyes shifting down to her cheeks. "Nah, being a hero is too blegh for me. I'm thinking… anti-hero. I can live with that, but I need a full-fledged hero to show me the ropes."
"It would be my pleasure," Chat Noir said.
There was a quiet moment between them. A moment where they silently promised they would never fight each other again. A moment where they silently promised to love one another no matter what. A moment they silently promised they would never forget.
"My hunger has been sated," the piranha-teapot said between dry gasps. "Hurry, humans, you must return me to the water so I may join my carnivorous fishy brethren."
"Nope. Miraculous Ladybug." She tossed the piranha-teapot into the air. Magical ladybugs appeared and began putting the world back together.
The giant memory-erasing ball vanished.
The office building was reconstructed.
All traces and possible pregnancies from Ladybug and Chat Noir's multiple checkings were taken care of.
And as the magic did its things, Ladybug and Chat Noir kissed, sweet and gentle, ready to start their life anew, not as sworn enemies, but as allies, friends, and lovers. It should also be noted that this kiss was so perfect and life-changing that both Ladybug and Chat Noir instantly knew the secret to world peace and the cure to cancer.
Then the ladybugs washed over them and ruined everything.
Both heroes' eyes shot open and saw where their faces were connected.
Chat Noir stared.
Ladybug stared.
Chat Noir slipped in his barbed cat tongue.
Ladybug punched him across the roof. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!" she screamed.
"Just going with the flow, M'Lady," Chat Noir suavely replied from his crater.
"We're in the middle of an Akuma fight! Where's Oblivio?"
"Actually, dude, you already beat them," Nino said, coming to the heroes. "Oblivio was me and Alya fused together." Behind him, Alya was laser-focused on her phone, her fingers dancing across the screen.
Ladybug recognized the parasitic glint in her eyes.
"No..." she whispered in horror. "NO!" She lassoed Alya's phone and ripped it into her own hands. Just as she feared, there were thousands of photos of her and Chat Noir's mistake. She smashed the phone on the ground and stomped on it until there was nothing left but silicon dust.
"Too late," Alya sang. "It's on the internet, you can't get rid of it now."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Later, on the bus:
Marinette's class was all aboard, waiting to ride back to school. Marinette, however, was not seated. She was shaking Max silly in front of his laptop.
"Hack, you nerd!" she begged. "Make it go away!"
"I'm endeavoring at my best!" Max said. "But someone keeps making copies and bouncing them across servers around the world. It's impossible to keep up. Whoever is doing this is either a master coder or has enough astronomical wealth to purchase the services of thousands of hackers!"
A few seats away, Adrien sent another payment to his army of Russian hackers.
At the front of the bus, Alya and Nino moped aboard with looks of shame.
"Hey, guys," Alya said morosely, "We wanted to apologize about Oblivio and to let you know it was all Nino's fault."
"What?! Dude! No!" Nino shouted back. "You were totally the one who was trying to get us back together with a game of Super Penguino!"
"It was a platonic game between platonic friends, as platonic as Plato envisioned when he came up with the concept of platonic friendships to excuse why he couldn't get laid. If you had played seriously, we wouldn't have been in that closet long enough for the class to find us and laugh at us for playing a kid's game!"
"I was your hostage! You boarded up the closet door and wouldn't let me out unless I played that stupid game!"
"Guys, it's okay," Rose sweetly consoled. "Me and Juleka play Super Penguino corrosively."
"Constantly," Juleka corrected.
"So do me and Ivan," added Mylene.
Sabrina tapped her Dom pin expectantly at Chloe who rolled her eyes and said, "My Mistress and I play it too."
One by one, the class admitted to playing the game.
"Wait…" Alya said, "you all play Super Penguino and you still made fun of us?"
"Y'up, we're assholes," Alix said.
"I don't play that game," Lila lied.
"Of course you don't, Lila," Alya eagerly nodded. "You are perfect in every way and we are blessed that you deem us worthy of being near you."
"All hail Lila!" the class chanted. "Praise be to Lila!"
That night, in Marinette's bedroom:
"THIS IS A DISASTER!" Marinette cried, bashing her head against her desk. The kiss was already being sold on t-shirts, coffee mugs, buttons, scarfs, medical masks, socks, posters, bumper stickers, regular stickers, and hamburger wrappers! Up in the night sky, a blimp flew, continuously flashing the photo to the city! There were even rumors that the kiss was going to be in the upcoming movie! The moment she wanted to be erased from history had spread to every corner of the globe. "How did this happen? How did I end up kissing Chat Noir? HOW?!"
"I don't know," Tikki replied uncaringly, more preoccupied with picking at something in her teeth. "Probably because without the blindfold of your self-imposed prejudices you were able to get to know him as a person and truly fell in love."
"FUCK YOU! THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN!" Marinette emptied her stores of wine and whiskey and carried the booze up to the roof, ready to drink until she puked. "I DON'T CARE WHO CHAT NOIR IS UNDER THE MASK! EVEN IF HE TURNED OUT TO BE THE PERFECT GUY, (I'D RATHER LET THE WORLD GET DESTROYED THAN LOVE HIM!)"
An ominous wind of foreshadowing blew by the window, but Tikki didn't notice because she had just pulled one of Marinette's hair ties out of her mouth.
"Ugh, Marinette, I think I ate you at some point."
Meanwhile at Adrien's:
Adrien sipped a glass of chardonnay as he admired the life-sized photo of him kissing Ladybug. It hung nicely over his fireplace.
"I get the distinct feeling we all learned something very important about ourselves today and grew as people," Plagg said astutely. "Oh well, too bad we can't remember. Guess we all learned nothing." Plagg pulled out his Master Plan book and added several dozen more pointless steps.
"Mmm-hmm," Adrien mumbled absently, hearts in his eyes. He commissioned several more portraits to be made.
In the next room:
Nathalie came out of Gabriel's walk-in closet with the man's phone. "It was in those pants you never wear, sir," she said.
"In my… Oh! I get it!" Gabriel read the final riddle again. "The 'forgotten repository of money and noxious gas' is my pants. It's a fart joke. Ha!"
END
Writing 101: The line, "That makes sense," is the most unnatural string of words in the English language. I have never heard anyone say, "That makes sense," without being sarcastic. The only time any of your characters should say, "That makes sense," is when what they're saying makes absolutely no sense.
Make sense?
And this is as far as I got before Nickelodeon said they wanted another script. No new chapter next week. The series will continue when I'm done. Don't worry, you'll survive.