Stuck In A Bakery (With You), Chapter 43
Six eyes took turns focusing on the front door of the Tom & Sabine Boulangerie Patisserie. Sometimes, all six stared at once; other times, one or two pairs were otherwise occupied and the others politely took up the slack.
It was not a full-on case for alarm yet, Tom told himself. His daughter was known for the occasional disappearing act, but she has a very good head on her shoulders and a heart as big as all outdoors. The city was dealing with a pandemic, certainly, but she knows how to act appropriately during it, and gangs of roving viruses were not going to drag her into an alley and mug her.
But when ten minutes became twenty, and twenty became an hour, and an hour welcomed like company... it was increasingly hard to look at a worried Sabine and assure her that, yes, he remained sure that all was well, and that Marinette would come strolling through the door any second with a suitably good explanation.
And the boy? The young guest in his home who kept looking up at Tom with fragile eyes and a distracted mind, to the point where Tom directed him to avoid all sharp objects for the time being?
Oh, the words came out of Tom's mouth. But for Adrien, reassurance wasn't even an option right now.
Nnnnnngh.
Marinette rolled over onto her side, a flicker of consciousness returning to her head reluctantly. Her skull felt as if a tap inserted into the back of it would likely produce high-grade maple sap.
Nnnnnnnno. Not gonna move.
Her eyes remaining closed, she felt for her bedcovers and did not find them draped over her body. Mmmmusta kicked them off, she grumbled. Gettem later. S'ok.
Ssssssleeeep now.
"Still nothing?" Tom asked, in a resigned tone.
"Nothing," confirmed Adrien, staring at his phone. "She hasn't answered my messages, and I'm at three missed calls so far. She's showing as active on Messenger, so her phone is on... she's just not looking at it, I guess."
"That is strange," Tom grumbled. "Most of the time, she's very good about keeping in touch, or at least responding when we call. I do not want to be a worrywart..."
"I'll handle that for you, thank you," Sabine chimed in. "She didn't even hint where she was going?"
"She did not," said Tom. "Only that she needed some air and would be back soon."
"You know what I am going to suggest, of course," Adrien noted.
"Yes, and I'm not sure that it is a good idea," frowned Sabine. "If you were to be spotted out wandering the streets looking for her, and your father saw your picture in the paper, he might send a pack of trained attack lawyers our way."
"I understand that, I assure you. And the last thing I want to do is to cause you additional trouble, again." Adrien insisted. "But I would also like to know that there isn't something strange going on... to ease your worries and mine. And I might know some places where she goes sometimes to think."
"It's not as if we can stop him, technically," Tom shrugged towards a questioning Sabine. "He's not under house arrest. And he makes a good point."
"Are you sure that you want to do this?" Sabine asked Adrien, who nodded. "Then wait for a moment, please."
Sabine headed up the stairs to the main house, while Adrien and Tom glanced at each other. Tom shrugged, not knowing what it was she was after.
When Sabine returned, she had something dark in her hand. "Here," she said, handing it to Adrien. "I know that you have your facemask that Marinette made, but that didn't hide your identity too well last time, so... this was in with our winter clothes."
Adrien held up a black balaclava. "Aha," he smiled, pulling it over his head so that only his eyes were visible. "Something to cover up the blonde hair, too?"
"Exactly. Now... you have your phone, right?" directed Sabine. "Keep in touch, please. Be careful, and don't stay out too long yourself!"
"Will do. I promise," Adrien declared. Without further ado, he headed out the door and in the general direction he had seen Marinette go from there.
Owwww...
Marinette felt uncomfortable, increasingly so as her awareness began to return. Her head still ached, but this was something more localized. Moving a bit, but localized.
I'm not laying on something jagged, am I? she wondered.
Very gingerly, she wiggled her head, then her upper body slightly. It doesn't feel like it. Whatever is bothering me, it's more on the side or the back of my head, Marinette determined. If anything, this is a pretty comfortable...
...um...
...concrete floor I'm on?
Marinette opened her eyes, slowly, reaching out with one hand to steady herself. What the heck? she wondered. This isn't my room.
Of course it's not my room! I'm outside. I'm on a... roof?
Yeah... a roof. I remember leaping up and away as Ladybug... and then it was like I was in a smoothie machine, and I was the fruit. I'm probably lucky that I made it this far...
Hmmph.
She looked at her hand, which was clearly ungloved. Very lucky, since I transformed back! she noted to herself. I almost gave the director a peek at who's under the costume! I must've been out for at least five minutes. I'm fortunate that I didn't wake up in a hospital bed unmasked, with a lot of explaining to do.
The annoying sensation at the back of her head increased once more. "Wh... what is that?" she mumbled aloud, reaching back.
A small squeak was heard, and when Marinette brought her hand in front of her face, her handful of Tikki made it clear that her Kwami had been tugging on one of her pigtails.
Down in a nearby alley, Adrien prepared to transform.
"All right... I'll cover a lot more ground as Chat than as myself," he reasoned aloud. "If I see Marinette and she doesn't see me, I can hide and transform and approach her as myself. If she does see me coming, I'll approach her as Chat. It'd be easier to bring her home as Chat, anyway."
"Are you, er... sure that you'll need to bring her home?" Plagg asked, nervously. "You're not going to drag her by her hair, right? She's a big girl. She got wherever she went to on foot, and she must've had a good reason. I doubt that some Akuma's dangling her off a cliff... Maybe she just got sidetracked by something."
"That's very possible," agreed Adrien. "I'm not thinking that she's in trouble, necessarily... but it is strange that she's not answering her phone, don't you think? I'm just trying to plan ahead for how to handle this."
"Fair enough."
I don't know what you're up to, Marinette... but I wonder which version of you he's going to find? wondered Plagg. This could get very interesting.
"Claws out!"
"Hey!" yelped Marinette, dislodging Tikki's grip on her hair. "I'm awake, I'm awake! What gives?"
"What gives," moaned Tikki, "is that we've both been sleeping up here. I woke up about an hour ago, and I couldn't wait much longer for you to wake up naturally."
"An hour?" Marinette wondered in disbelief. "Are you sure? I thought that I'd only been out for a few minutes."
"Look at your phone," Tikki instructed her. "It's been lighting up and ringing like crazy for a while now."
Marinette took one look at her phone and nearly dropped it. "Oh... oh, no," she gasped. "We've been up here for almost three hours! There's... one, two... three calls from Adrien, two from Papa... and all these messages!"
"Exactly," worried Tikki. "I wouldn't be surprised if someone was already out looking for you."
"And Adrien would never find me up here," agreed Marinette.
No, the problem is that Adrien MIGHT, Tikki grumbled to herself, if he's transformed. And then how will you explain what you're doing up on the roof of a three-story building?
Across town, Chat sat on Marinette's balcony for a moment and considered his options. Reasoning that two could cover more ground than one, he flipped open his communicator.
"Hey, 'Bug. I've got a request for you," he began. "A friend of mine asked me to see if I can find a good friend of his - Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I know that you know her, too. She went out for a walk earlier today and never came back, and she's not answering her phone, and I'm... well, I'm worried."
"Maybe I shouldn't be... I might be overreacting... but she means an awful lot to me, too," Chat continued. "So I'm going out to try to find her now, just in case. If you've seen her, can you let me know? And if you haven't, and I can't find her, could I ask you to help me look? I'll let you know what happens."
Satisfied, he considered the layout of the nearby neighborhoods. Where could she have gone? he wondered. One of her friends' houses? She hasn't seen any of them in person lately... but she can call them on the phone or the computer any time, so that doesn't make much sense for her to do.
Maybe someone called her up with a big problem, and she went off to help them? That's certainly something that she would do. But who? And she couldn't have told any of us what or where or why?
Something just seems... off here.
Puzzled, he took a mighty leap and began his search.
"All right," Marinette declared, putting her thinking cap back on. "The first thing I need to do is get down to the sidewalk. Ready, Tikki?"
"H-hold it!" warned Tikki. "I had my snack, but that massive Lucky Charm took a lot out of me. I'm not sure if I can transform you yet, or if you'll have your powers if I do."
"...I beg your pardon?" asked Marinette, looking startled.
"Well, you needed to know that! I don't want you taking a flying leap and splattering on the ground," apologized Tikki. "When you created those masks, you put a lot more energy into them than usual, because you wanted them to last. If you don't focus hard on keeping a Lucky Charm around, it'll disappear when you detransform; that's how it works most of the time, very naturally. This time, you did put that much more willpower into them; that and their sheer volume drained both of us, big time. The energy will come back... but it'll take some time."
"Okay, that is valuable information. What's our plan B?" Marinette wondered. She scouted out the rooftop; it had only one visible access door, which was locked.
"That's not good," Tikki worried, looking around nervously.
"No kidding," agreed Marinette. Carefully, she checked the edges of the building; there was a fire escape on the north side, but it looked rather rickety at best. As Tikki flew down to scout it out, Marinette called, "What do you think?"
"There's an open window one floor down," Tikki replied. "You could go that far on the fire escape, climb inside and then take the stairs down to the ground floor. I don't know how you'd get out from there, though... but I'd rather have you inside than stuck on the roof."
"Is that fire escape safe?" Marinette wondered, looking dubious.
"For me? Yes," Tikki ventured. "For you... well, you're light. I wouldn't tap-dance on it, but it should be okay."
"Um..."
A hesitant foot reached out and tapped the metal floor of the fire escape. It displayed a somewhat reassuring lack of collapsing and plummeting. As she stepped out onto it and crept downwards, Marinette mumbled, "This isn't breaking and entering, is it?"
"Of course not. You're not breaking anything," joked Tikki. "This is just entering, right?"
A few minutes later, a nervous Marinette wandered around the ground floor of the building, which seemed to be some sort of business office. "At least this isn't, like, a bank or something like that," she whispered. "That would take a lot of explaining when the police showed up, if anyone saw me sneak in."
"If it's a desperate situation... transform," offered Tikki. "Then you could say to them as Ladybug, 'Oh, I thought there was a crime in progress here, my mistake!' and it'll be a lot more believable. But don't do that unless it's urgent, okay? That would take a lot out of me."
"I'll do my best," agreed Marinette. Studying the front door, an alarm system was obvious. "I'm not even going to try that way," she declared. "Why couldn't they have left a ground-floor window open, too?"
Circling around to the back, they located a push-to-open door near the bottom of a stairwell, fairly innocuous-looking. "What do you think?" asked Marinette. "Should I chance it? It's not chained shut or padlocked, and I don't see any alarm keypads near it."
"Well, you're not going to break a window to get out, right? So we have to try something," shrugged Tikki.
Marinette crossed her fingers, then pushed the door. It opened slightly, just enough for the slim young woman to slip through, then shut once more with a metallic THUNK.
"Okay," she breathed. "Looks like we got-"
*BREEP! BREEP! BREEP!*
The look of astonishment and fear on Marinette's face when the alarm went off was priceless.
"Marinette!" gasped Tikki, diving into Marinette's purse. "Gape later! Run now!"
Marinette took off down the alley as fast as her weary legs could carry her, trying not to laugh as she ran at the absurdity of the situation. She made it about three blocks before pausing to catch her breath.
"Hah!" she gasped. "Nobody's... chasing me... I think I got away! This is so not how I pictured-"
A loud THUMP! behind her startled her out of her skin.
"Well, well, well!" a familiar voice declared. "I don't have a lot of time to spend on you... and you don't really look like much of a hardened criminal, but you were running away from a burglar alarm. So, do you want to explain what you were..."
Marinette turned around to face Chat Noir, lowering her mask to show her face. "H-hi, Chat," she mumbled, turning crimson.
Chat stood very still for several seconds.
"Why, Princess," he said, at last. "You've picked up some new hobbies."
THINK FAST! Marinette screamed at herself. You only have one way out of this. And you'd better figure out just what that one way is!
An idea popped into her head, and for a lack of a better alternative, Marinette ran with it.
"Ch-hat..." she gasped, still breathing heavily, "I'm so glad you're here! I could use your help. I am completely exhausted."
Chat's sense of chivalry overrode his curiosity. "Oh! Sure... sure, I can help, Marinette. What is going on here? Can you explain?" he asked.
"It's... I was trying to help out, over at the hospital up the block from here," ventured Marinette. "And I had a big problem..."
She took a deep breath. All or nothing now, she thought.
"...with my Miraculous."